I suspect that most people who watched Game Four of the NBA playoff series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Mavericks the other night likely suspected that the team that deserved to move forward did. The mighty Lakers were not only embarrassed on the court, but several of their players displayed—as Magic Johnson lamented afterwards—a complete lack of class. While there are few people, like Mike Golic and Dave Miller, who say that Laker center Andrew Bynum’s hit on the Mavericks’ Jose “J.J.” Barea was “part of the game,” most thought it was clearly “dirty.” To recap, in the fourth quarter Barea—the little man who was running circles around the Lakers’ big men whenever he got off the bench—was taking the ball on a fast break to the hoop when Bynum lunged hard from below into his armpit in what was obviously not an effort merely to prevent a basket; the eventual winner of the game and the series was by then already a foregone conclusion. Barea felled hard to the floor and stayed there for several minutes.
If this act was not meant to alter the result of the game, then we have to conclude that the hit was either meant to hurt Barea, or to “send a message.” First of all, Bynum was perfectly aware that the hit would get him ejected from the game, and everyone else who saw it knew it too; no sooner than Barea landed on the floor, Bynum was walking toward the exit, ignoring the official who made the call. Thus Golic and Miller were wrong to say that it was “part of the game.” It is not “part of the game” for a starter to do something that he knew would get himself ejected. Bynum didn’t care if he stayed in the game; he had by then already quit, so as “part of the game” the hit was pointless as well as dirty. So the idea that he was “sending a message” is only relevant if we conclude that the “message” was an acting-out of personal malice.
That leaves us with the intention to hurt—or more likely, injure—Barea. One thing that most commentators have not discussed—but is important in understanding what may actually be in play here—is what happened in Game 2 of the series. Barea was dribbling the ball up-court when Ron Artest stepped in front of him and “close-lined” him—deliberately thrusting his arm out and striking Barea full in the face (for some reason, I am reminded of the incident involving hockey player Marty McSorley in 2000). Replays showed that Artest had literally pushed aside another Laker defender in order to do this. This move was so punk and without any “part of the game” rationale that not only was Artest ejected from the game, but he was suspended for Game Three, which of course was no help to the Lakers’ efforts to actually win the series. Artest’s “play” on Barea was probably even more “dirty” than Bynum’s, because it was clearly not a legitimate basketball play, but a deliberate attempt not just to hurt Barera—but to show contempt for him as a player, as if he didn't belong.
And this contempt is the crux of the matter. Barea is Puerto Rican, in a league where Latino players can be counted on one hand. Now, some people will jump in and say that his “ethnicity” was not a factor, but who knows what goes on in the heads of some players, especially under the influence of “frustration.” Artest’s actions showed that his personal animosity toward Barea completely clouded his judgment—particularly given the fact that Barea hadn’t displayed any physical or verbal aggression in kind to justify what he did. Artest’s current and otherwise bizarre explanation for his action does have one element of truth, in that he admitted he did it out of malice. After Bynum’s dirty play on Barea, who was it who greeted him after he was thrown out of the game? Artest. We may not know exactly what these two said about Barea in private, but their actions speak volumes.
While we’re on the subject of Latino athletes, I want to mention my disgust at some of the things I hear on the local sports radio stations. Now, the Seattle Mariners baseball team is clearly jinxed. The Toronto Blue Jays—who joined the AL the same year as the Mariners—have won two World Series. Recent entries like Tampa Bay, Florida, Colorado and Arizona have already been to the Series. Even the Brewers have one World Series appearance to their credit. The only team to share the Mariners futility is the Montreal/Washington D.C. franchise. This team has the bad fortune of trading away “mediocre” players who turn out to be stars for other teams, and trading or signing free agent “stars” who turn out to be mediocre. The fact is that while the Mariners have brought-up Hall of Fame material like Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson, they didn’t stay—while they were never able to attract any true free agent star to the team; even a rare gem acquired in a trade, Cliff Lee, was gone before you could bat an eye. They traded one of their top prospects, Adam Jones—who has been solid if not spectacular with the Orioles—for Eric Bedard, who for three years gave the Mariners absolutely nothing; that may yet extend to a fourth year. But while star players tend to avoid coming to Seattle if they can help it, isn't it heartwarming that other teams' cast-offs actually want to stay?
But what do you hear from local commentators? Jose Lopez—who gave the team four solid seasons, including a 191-hit year, and 96 RBIs another—was scapegoated and made the butt of jokes for all the failings of a 101-loss season last year. Carlos Silva was as recently as Monday remembered as “trash” and “garbage” despite have moderately successful seasons before he came to the Mariners—and after he left them; with the Cubs last year, he had a 10-6 record. Yuniesky Betancourt hit .279 with the Mariners, which didn’t prevent the locals from trashing him and having him run out of town; that .279 average has been looking mighty good these past two seasons. Nor did it take long for Freddy Garcia to lose favor with the local media, even though the team stunk his last season—a 3.20 ERA was only good enough to get him a 4-7 record. The season after his trade to the White Sox, Garcia pitched in and won the decisive Game Four of the World Series. This year, the Yankees thought enough of him to put him in their starting rotation.
Yes, Edgar Martinez, who spent his entire career with the Mariners, and Felix Hernandez for the past three years, have been in the good graces of the local blowhards. But they have been the exceptions to the rule; it seems that you have to be at least above average if you are a Latino player to avoid being characterized as "trash." Probably because of the heat generated by the immigration issue, heaping contempt and abuse on Latino players is tolerated. Think I’m making this up? Last season the Angels' Torii Hunter derided Latino players for being worth a "bag of chips," while Latino players of African descent were "imposters." Some people have derided the New York Mets as “Los Mets” in an effort to blame Latino players for the team’s failure to make the playoffs these past years.
On the other hand, the just released Milton Bradley was a known clubhouse character and particularly undependable on the field when he came to Seattle, but the locals kept giving him a mulligan nearly to the very end. Ryan Langerhans (a white guy) hitting around .160 and who also just released, was never referred to as “trash” and “garbage.” In fact, his parting was lamented because he was a “nice” guy. Pu-lease. Michael Saunders (another white guy) is awful, but the “trash” label has evaded him so far. And the horrible Jack Cust supposedly has too much “upside” to be called “trash” or “garbage;” I suppose it is just expected that this white guy should have twice as many strike-outs as hits. But then again, it is too much to expect that Mariner management would have realized, as Oakland did in time, that he was a bust in the making.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Gender shouldn't be an excuse to promote unequal opportunity in schools
The front page of the Seattle Times’ Sunday edition featured a story written by a reporter named Linda Shaw which was typical of the way the Times (and the media in general) approaches gender issues. Take for instance a story a few years ago that dealt with alleged education disparities between girls and boys in Pakistan. Pakistani girls living in the U.S. are receiving educational opportunities that most would not be receiving in their native country. Only 18 percent of girls in Pakistan have some high school education. This is a prime example of gender discrimination. Pakistani boys residing in this country are presumably receiving superior education as well, but to mention that leads us off point. Boys in Pakistan do, on the other hand, have much greater access to a high school education—or so we are supposed to believe.
Here is a multiple choice question: What percent of Pakistani boys would you guess have some high school education, information buried somewhere in the rump area of the story:
A. 93 percent
B. 77 percent
C. 54 percent
D. 23 percent
If you guessed A, you are obviously strongly influenced by the propaganda. If you guessed D, you would be right, and it shows that you have an awareness of how class often trumps gender in many less than completely “developed” countries. Just because men may dominate political and economic life in certain countries, the people that do are usually members of the elite class that maintains itself by keeping the majority of people—males as well as females—in an illiterate or under-educated state. In many parts of the world, boys are given guns instead of an education, to be used as cannon fodder by warlords.
The Shaw story, on the surface, purported to be about what some inner city school was doing to help failing students. Fine—except that the focus was on what teachers (apparently white) were doing to help female students. Now, I don’t know if this was only an impression constructed by the fact that the reporter was uncomfortable with male students—or maybe it wasn’t merely an impression: Maybe the teachers were, in fact, focused solely on helping female students. We have heard time and again that girls are “disadvantaged” in school, but if this was ever true, it hasn’t been true for many decades, especially since the numerous “Titles” instituted in the early 1970s mandated “equality.” The “girl friendly” rules that tried to emasculate boys have had the effect of portraying their strengths as “weaknesses.” One of the complaints was that boys were too “eager” to answer questions, which was seen as “bullying” and “suppressing” the girls. The effect of suppressing the boys' instincts is like saying to them “We don’t care about your education. Fend for yourself.” It goes without saying that black and Latino males are most likely to be negatively-effected by such attitudes.
I remember watching a CNN report regarding a National Women’s Law Center “study” on the “alarming numbers” of Latinas who fail to graduate from high school after four years, for the usual cultural reasons. Typical of these narrowly-focused and politicized studies, numbers are cited without context or concern about the other side of the equation. The “other side,” of course, is that all over the country states are reporting that black and Latino males have by far the highest drop-out rates of any measurable demographic. Why the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund chose to be a party to this partisan political report focusing solely on girls and ignoring the problems of Latino boys flies in the face of the fact that the very year this “study” was released, New York and Massachusetts were reporting that not only do black and Latino males have the highest non-high graduation rates in their respective states, but they are most likely to be dumped—and forgotten—in special education classes.
A report just released by the Seattle School District examining the graduation and dropout rate in Seattle high schools for the classes of 2008, 2009 and 2010 provide the same depressing picture. The numbers for each year vary widely, and a surface examination shouldn’t be taken as suggesting a “trend.” 2010 had a lower dropout rate but also a lower graduation rate, because of a greater number of students “still enrolled.” In two of the three years, American Indians had more dropouts than graduates, and blacks and Latinos had dropout rates in thirty percents. Males had around a 30 percent greater likelihood of dropping out than females. Yet here we are presented in the Times a story that once more seems to indicate that teachers are only interested in helping the girls, while the boys are either dumped in those special-ed classes or simply ignored, probably because they are seen as “scarier” and less “cooperative” than girls (that’s a matter of opinion, of course). If girls are treated more deferentially and know it, of course they will respond—and go on to college, where some reports indicate that they out-number male students by a 60-40 margin (I would like to think that this isn’t due to a bias against male applicants in college admissions offices). This has yet to be seen as a “crisis,” because, as the Times once opined, we can’t do anything to help boys if it means “hurting” girls.
I also recall a report from something called the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey that took note of this bias against minority males. “For Latino males, it has not yet received the type of national attention you would think,” according to Victor Sáenz, an assistant professor of higher education administration at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the report. “Sometimes it’s difficult for folks to want to have this discussion about gender inequity because it has traditionally been framed in a very different way, in terms of women not being granted full access to educational opportunity.” According to the report, Latino males represent less than 40 percent of Latinos enrolled in college; one reason for this is suggested by the fact that Latino males 16-24 (that is, beyond four years) are nearly twice as likely not to graduate from high school than the Latinas, who we recall were viewed as “victims” by the National Women’s Law Center without the benefit of context.
This bias toward girls in schools is so politicized by activists that the problems we really ought to be focused on are mostly hidden from view. In a New York Times story, Ronald Ferguson of Harvard’s Achievement Gap Initiative said that “There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten. They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have,” including “conversations about early childhood parenting practices. The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”
Do parents—and in particular, the single, high school dropout parent—give their toddlers and young children “toys” that promote brain development? Do they read to them? Do they talk to them in standard English? I don’t know—you tell me. All I know that it would help. And how are black boys to learn responsibility and self-respect in a fatherless home? Why do so many young males prefer to spend their time on the streets, or in gangs rather than spend their time at home doing their homework, where they have a parent who (we would think) knows more than they do to help them? Maybe it is because for the disinterested parent who still thinks like a juvenile, education isn’t important, and this rubs off on the child. Naturally, gender activists don’t want to have this conversation because they know where that road begins in too many cases.
Here is a multiple choice question: What percent of Pakistani boys would you guess have some high school education, information buried somewhere in the rump area of the story:
A. 93 percent
B. 77 percent
C. 54 percent
D. 23 percent
If you guessed A, you are obviously strongly influenced by the propaganda. If you guessed D, you would be right, and it shows that you have an awareness of how class often trumps gender in many less than completely “developed” countries. Just because men may dominate political and economic life in certain countries, the people that do are usually members of the elite class that maintains itself by keeping the majority of people—males as well as females—in an illiterate or under-educated state. In many parts of the world, boys are given guns instead of an education, to be used as cannon fodder by warlords.
The Shaw story, on the surface, purported to be about what some inner city school was doing to help failing students. Fine—except that the focus was on what teachers (apparently white) were doing to help female students. Now, I don’t know if this was only an impression constructed by the fact that the reporter was uncomfortable with male students—or maybe it wasn’t merely an impression: Maybe the teachers were, in fact, focused solely on helping female students. We have heard time and again that girls are “disadvantaged” in school, but if this was ever true, it hasn’t been true for many decades, especially since the numerous “Titles” instituted in the early 1970s mandated “equality.” The “girl friendly” rules that tried to emasculate boys have had the effect of portraying their strengths as “weaknesses.” One of the complaints was that boys were too “eager” to answer questions, which was seen as “bullying” and “suppressing” the girls. The effect of suppressing the boys' instincts is like saying to them “We don’t care about your education. Fend for yourself.” It goes without saying that black and Latino males are most likely to be negatively-effected by such attitudes.
I remember watching a CNN report regarding a National Women’s Law Center “study” on the “alarming numbers” of Latinas who fail to graduate from high school after four years, for the usual cultural reasons. Typical of these narrowly-focused and politicized studies, numbers are cited without context or concern about the other side of the equation. The “other side,” of course, is that all over the country states are reporting that black and Latino males have by far the highest drop-out rates of any measurable demographic. Why the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund chose to be a party to this partisan political report focusing solely on girls and ignoring the problems of Latino boys flies in the face of the fact that the very year this “study” was released, New York and Massachusetts were reporting that not only do black and Latino males have the highest non-high graduation rates in their respective states, but they are most likely to be dumped—and forgotten—in special education classes.
A report just released by the Seattle School District examining the graduation and dropout rate in Seattle high schools for the classes of 2008, 2009 and 2010 provide the same depressing picture. The numbers for each year vary widely, and a surface examination shouldn’t be taken as suggesting a “trend.” 2010 had a lower dropout rate but also a lower graduation rate, because of a greater number of students “still enrolled.” In two of the three years, American Indians had more dropouts than graduates, and blacks and Latinos had dropout rates in thirty percents. Males had around a 30 percent greater likelihood of dropping out than females. Yet here we are presented in the Times a story that once more seems to indicate that teachers are only interested in helping the girls, while the boys are either dumped in those special-ed classes or simply ignored, probably because they are seen as “scarier” and less “cooperative” than girls (that’s a matter of opinion, of course). If girls are treated more deferentially and know it, of course they will respond—and go on to college, where some reports indicate that they out-number male students by a 60-40 margin (I would like to think that this isn’t due to a bias against male applicants in college admissions offices). This has yet to be seen as a “crisis,” because, as the Times once opined, we can’t do anything to help boys if it means “hurting” girls.
I also recall a report from something called the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey that took note of this bias against minority males. “For Latino males, it has not yet received the type of national attention you would think,” according to Victor Sáenz, an assistant professor of higher education administration at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the report. “Sometimes it’s difficult for folks to want to have this discussion about gender inequity because it has traditionally been framed in a very different way, in terms of women not being granted full access to educational opportunity.” According to the report, Latino males represent less than 40 percent of Latinos enrolled in college; one reason for this is suggested by the fact that Latino males 16-24 (that is, beyond four years) are nearly twice as likely not to graduate from high school than the Latinas, who we recall were viewed as “victims” by the National Women’s Law Center without the benefit of context.
This bias toward girls in schools is so politicized by activists that the problems we really ought to be focused on are mostly hidden from view. In a New York Times story, Ronald Ferguson of Harvard’s Achievement Gap Initiative said that “There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten. They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have,” including “conversations about early childhood parenting practices. The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”
Do parents—and in particular, the single, high school dropout parent—give their toddlers and young children “toys” that promote brain development? Do they read to them? Do they talk to them in standard English? I don’t know—you tell me. All I know that it would help. And how are black boys to learn responsibility and self-respect in a fatherless home? Why do so many young males prefer to spend their time on the streets, or in gangs rather than spend their time at home doing their homework, where they have a parent who (we would think) knows more than they do to help them? Maybe it is because for the disinterested parent who still thinks like a juvenile, education isn’t important, and this rubs off on the child. Naturally, gender activists don’t want to have this conversation because they know where that road begins in too many cases.
The cough that roared
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had her Jessica Lynch moment last week. You remember Jessica, don’t you? Pvt. Lynch was one of the soldiers who was fortunate to come out alive with minor injuries after Iraqi insurgents ambushed their supply convoy. After being captured by the insurgents, she was rescued in a daring raid by American commandos. There was another female soldier captured, but because she was black and not white and blonde, the media ignored her (recall also that the media—Wolf Blitzer in particular—was utterly loath to admit that a black male military policeman was more the “hero” than the white female MP during the Fort Hood massacre, or that he even existed to spoil the moment). According to initial military and media reports, Lynch put-up a stiff fight before being put-out of action. The reality was that she was knocked unconscious almost immediately, was taken to a hospital by insurgents who were probably embarrassed they were fighting women, and practically begged U.S. authorities to take her off their hands. The Bush administration, however, decided that a “daring” raid was a public relations stunt they couldn’t pass-up. Lynch, to her credit, would later testify before Congress of her embarrassment over the unjustified media hype.
I’m sure everyone has seen the “iconic” photograph of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Clinton and various other persons observing in “real time” the attack on Osama bin Laden’s lair via a video monitor. Everyone (except the brigadier general scanning a laptop) are seen in various degrees of “intensity.” The editors of Women’s Wear Daily—which predictably takes a superficial view of things—thought they saw something “powerful” in Clinton’s hand-over-mouth demeanor. They asked the photo editors of two news magazine that typically puff-up (white) women and deflate men—Newsweek and TIME—about their take on Hillary’s importance to the composition. Newsweek’s Scott Hall effused "The mystery of what's happening off camera is captured wholly in the expression on Hillary's face," while Kira Pollack of TIME gushed "The Hillary Clinton expression is the one that holds the photograph fully. The reaction of her hand over her face. Her eyes. Clearly, she's reacting to something she's watching…To me, the whole image is about Hillary. In some ways, she holds the image. You look at her first, and then you look at everyone else."
Now, admittedly in looking at the photo, Clinton does capture one’s attention, but not necessarily for positive reasons. Is she becoming overly emotional? Is she putting on a show to get attention? Is she over-compensating for being a bit character in the drama? I suspect Clinton herself is aware that these and other questions are ones that a more cynical person might ask: "Those were 38 of the most intense minutes. I have no idea what any of us were looking at that particular millisecond when the picture was taken." Something important must have been occurring during that millisecond: "I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs." So we can at least credit Hillary for taking a page from Pvt. Lynch’s playbook and admitting some embarrassment at the gushing media “perspective” that portrays her as the only person worthy of being noticed.
Well, she wasn’t the only the person of “note,” as it turns out. Who is that “mystery” woman sticking her head out in the back of the pack? Her name seems to be Audrey Tomason, according to one source the “Director for Counterterrorism.” The main point seems to be that she is the only other woman in the room. Of course, it could also be pointed out that Obama is the only minority in the room—but then again, he is the president; they couldn’t really leave him out of it.
I’m sure everyone has seen the “iconic” photograph of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Clinton and various other persons observing in “real time” the attack on Osama bin Laden’s lair via a video monitor. Everyone (except the brigadier general scanning a laptop) are seen in various degrees of “intensity.” The editors of Women’s Wear Daily—which predictably takes a superficial view of things—thought they saw something “powerful” in Clinton’s hand-over-mouth demeanor. They asked the photo editors of two news magazine that typically puff-up (white) women and deflate men—Newsweek and TIME—about their take on Hillary’s importance to the composition. Newsweek’s Scott Hall effused "The mystery of what's happening off camera is captured wholly in the expression on Hillary's face," while Kira Pollack of TIME gushed "The Hillary Clinton expression is the one that holds the photograph fully. The reaction of her hand over her face. Her eyes. Clearly, she's reacting to something she's watching…To me, the whole image is about Hillary. In some ways, she holds the image. You look at her first, and then you look at everyone else."
Now, admittedly in looking at the photo, Clinton does capture one’s attention, but not necessarily for positive reasons. Is she becoming overly emotional? Is she putting on a show to get attention? Is she over-compensating for being a bit character in the drama? I suspect Clinton herself is aware that these and other questions are ones that a more cynical person might ask: "Those were 38 of the most intense minutes. I have no idea what any of us were looking at that particular millisecond when the picture was taken." Something important must have been occurring during that millisecond: "I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs." So we can at least credit Hillary for taking a page from Pvt. Lynch’s playbook and admitting some embarrassment at the gushing media “perspective” that portrays her as the only person worthy of being noticed.
Well, she wasn’t the only the person of “note,” as it turns out. Who is that “mystery” woman sticking her head out in the back of the pack? Her name seems to be Audrey Tomason, according to one source the “Director for Counterterrorism.” The main point seems to be that she is the only other woman in the room. Of course, it could also be pointed out that Obama is the only minority in the room—but then again, he is the president; they couldn’t really leave him out of it.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Police more efficient than Kevorkian
On Wednesday, a man with a gun at the Kent Station park and ride excited several witnesses to call 9-1-1. Actually, that was KOMO’s initial erroneous report; police were in fact responded to a call from a cabbie reporting that a passenger had a weapon on his lap. When the cab arrived at Kent Station, the driver jumped out, and the police advanced toward the vehicle, where the passenger was still sitting. The man then apparently got out of the cab with weapon in hand, refused to comply with an order to drop it, was asked by an officer if he “wanted to die” and the man allegedly answered in the affirmative. Supposedly he advanced “threateningly” toward the officers, who “obliged” his “request” by shooting him dead on the spot. Amazing how helpful the police can be sometimes. The officer who shot him was a three-year “veteran”—meaning he hasn’t much experience in diffusing such situations in non-lethal manner, as if a twenty-year veteran has any more.
The bus routes were moved outside Kent Station while the police were looking for “evidence.” People on the bus I got on were talking about the incident; I asked the rhetorical question of why the police didn’t wound instead of killing him; the answer was that the police were worried about a potential lawsuit. I suppose it makes “sense” considering a man suffering from permanent brain damage was recently awarded $10 million, while the family of the Native American who was unjustly killed received a somewhat lesser amount ($1.5 million), while the Guatemalan mother I talked about earlier in the week was awarded only $75,000 for the murder of her unarmed son.
According to the latest reports, the man’s family stated that the Vietnam veteran was depressed and terminally ill, suffering from diabetes, hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver. Apparently suicide—assisted or otherwise—was not an option, perhaps due to religious scruples or consideration for the family. The police and media have coined the phrase “suicide by police” to justify shootings as described above, suggesting that police really can’t be blamed, or doing the victim a favor. But the fact is that these are not intended by the victims to be seen as “suicides.” The victims are merely acting on the knowledge that police have itchy trigger fingers, paranoid enough to use lethal force upon the slightest “provocation.” I might feel "sympathy" for police in these situation, except that even if they knew this was "suicide by police," they'd shoot him anyways. The man’s family said that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, and he apparently believed the way of ending his life that was least painful for his family was to die from the hands of someone else. Who better to oblige than the police? They do it all the time.
In any case, chalk-up another “hit” for the Kent police, which I’m sure some in the department will use as a “warning” to the “bad” guys that they are just as “bad” as the SPD, which is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for various civil rights abuses. The Kent police probably have a higher kill rate per capita than the SPD, a rather strong possibility suggested by the photos of two-dozen youths whose lives were “stolen” in recent years by the KPD, on a banner that I saw the other day on a Kent sidewalk.
While we’re talking about law enforcement, I might as well tell another thrilling tale of yesteryear about my experiences with our “heroes” in black and blue, this time concerning the Renton police. One day after work I decided I needed to go the Fry’s Electronics in Renton for some reason that escapes me, and there was a Sound Transit bus that I could take from the airport to its general vicinity. I got off the bus in Renton and started walking down the sidewalk to the store. I noticed a police car going in and out of parking lots behind me, which seemed rather peculiar. A few minutes later I found myself hemmed in by three police cars. Three officers jumped out of the vehicles and had me stand at attention; I enquired as to their business with me, and I was informed that a bank had just been robbed. I informed them that it couldn’t have been me; I had just gotten off a bus after work. Couldn’t they see I was wearing a work uniform? Well, the robber was wearing a “dark” outfit, too.
I was told to empty out a little bag I was carrying; I was a little upset by this time, and so I dropped the bag on the ground. One of the officers proceeded to dump the contents all over the sidewalk. I insisted that they were wasting time while the real robber was about; at least one of the officers knew that this was likely the case, but had to put on a performance to justify what they were doing. He called the dispatcher on his radio for a description of the crook which I was supposed to hear: A white male with gray hair, about 6-feet tall, wearing dark clothes. “See?” the officer exclaimed, you are wearing dark clothes, so that makes you a “suspect.” No, I said, what makes me a “suspect” is that I am 5-feet-5 with dark hair, and “ethnic.” But the police just couldn’t stop performing this farce. Shortly thereafter another police car arrived; I could a see a black female civilian in the back seat, apparently to take a look at me. The next thing I knew, I was standing alone, no apologies and my belongings still strewn on the sidewalk. The whole episode lasted about twenty minutes, time of which I’m sure the real crook was happy to take advantage of.
The bus routes were moved outside Kent Station while the police were looking for “evidence.” People on the bus I got on were talking about the incident; I asked the rhetorical question of why the police didn’t wound instead of killing him; the answer was that the police were worried about a potential lawsuit. I suppose it makes “sense” considering a man suffering from permanent brain damage was recently awarded $10 million, while the family of the Native American who was unjustly killed received a somewhat lesser amount ($1.5 million), while the Guatemalan mother I talked about earlier in the week was awarded only $75,000 for the murder of her unarmed son.
According to the latest reports, the man’s family stated that the Vietnam veteran was depressed and terminally ill, suffering from diabetes, hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver. Apparently suicide—assisted or otherwise—was not an option, perhaps due to religious scruples or consideration for the family. The police and media have coined the phrase “suicide by police” to justify shootings as described above, suggesting that police really can’t be blamed, or doing the victim a favor. But the fact is that these are not intended by the victims to be seen as “suicides.” The victims are merely acting on the knowledge that police have itchy trigger fingers, paranoid enough to use lethal force upon the slightest “provocation.” I might feel "sympathy" for police in these situation, except that even if they knew this was "suicide by police," they'd shoot him anyways. The man’s family said that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, and he apparently believed the way of ending his life that was least painful for his family was to die from the hands of someone else. Who better to oblige than the police? They do it all the time.
In any case, chalk-up another “hit” for the Kent police, which I’m sure some in the department will use as a “warning” to the “bad” guys that they are just as “bad” as the SPD, which is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for various civil rights abuses. The Kent police probably have a higher kill rate per capita than the SPD, a rather strong possibility suggested by the photos of two-dozen youths whose lives were “stolen” in recent years by the KPD, on a banner that I saw the other day on a Kent sidewalk.
While we’re talking about law enforcement, I might as well tell another thrilling tale of yesteryear about my experiences with our “heroes” in black and blue, this time concerning the Renton police. One day after work I decided I needed to go the Fry’s Electronics in Renton for some reason that escapes me, and there was a Sound Transit bus that I could take from the airport to its general vicinity. I got off the bus in Renton and started walking down the sidewalk to the store. I noticed a police car going in and out of parking lots behind me, which seemed rather peculiar. A few minutes later I found myself hemmed in by three police cars. Three officers jumped out of the vehicles and had me stand at attention; I enquired as to their business with me, and I was informed that a bank had just been robbed. I informed them that it couldn’t have been me; I had just gotten off a bus after work. Couldn’t they see I was wearing a work uniform? Well, the robber was wearing a “dark” outfit, too.
I was told to empty out a little bag I was carrying; I was a little upset by this time, and so I dropped the bag on the ground. One of the officers proceeded to dump the contents all over the sidewalk. I insisted that they were wasting time while the real robber was about; at least one of the officers knew that this was likely the case, but had to put on a performance to justify what they were doing. He called the dispatcher on his radio for a description of the crook which I was supposed to hear: A white male with gray hair, about 6-feet tall, wearing dark clothes. “See?” the officer exclaimed, you are wearing dark clothes, so that makes you a “suspect.” No, I said, what makes me a “suspect” is that I am 5-feet-5 with dark hair, and “ethnic.” But the police just couldn’t stop performing this farce. Shortly thereafter another police car arrived; I could a see a black female civilian in the back seat, apparently to take a look at me. The next thing I knew, I was standing alone, no apologies and my belongings still strewn on the sidewalk. The whole episode lasted about twenty minutes, time of which I’m sure the real crook was happy to take advantage of.
How about some of that global warming for a change?
Statistics always fascinate me. Occasionally to pass the time, I might do some doodling during the course of which I might actually learn something that I didn’t know before. For example, I couldn’t help but observe that this past April was particularly cool at the airport. There was only one, maybe two days that could be described as “sunny.” The rest were merely miserable. But just how miserable? Using the data from NOAA and the National Weather Service compiled by the University of Washington’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, I discovered that there was 73 percent more rain than normal for the month (compared to 68 percent above normal for March). But what about temperatures? By adding (or subtracting) the differential between the “normal” and actual daily high temperatures, the average high temperature for April, 2011 was just a shade under 6 degrees below normal, which is rather significant; you can tell just by looking at Mount Rainier, which from this distance appears to be entirely smothered in white. Only one day in April was at or above the normal high temperature, and only five other days were within 3 degrees of normal; the average high temperature of 52.2 degrees was the lowest recorded in Seattle since such records began. The average low temperature for April was 2.6 degrees below normal; the difference between the high and low differentials can be explained by the fact that while the lack of clear skies during the day tends to keep temperatures lower than they might otherwise be, but at night cloud cover keeps whatever warmth that was generated during the day from escaping too rapidly. The overall temperatures in April was slightly over four degrees below normal.
El Nina will be blamed for this, but then again it was predicted that this phenomena would bring Puget Sound a much harsher winter than we actually had; except for a few days in mid-November and late-February, there was no snow. It also couldn’t explain the weather of last May, which was nearly 4 degrees below normal highs. There are two varieties of climate change—gradual and abrupt. The abrupt changes are more obvious—such as what we experienced in April in the Puget Sound area. Why there are abrupt changes has something to do with the Earth system being pushed into a different state by a combination of “forcings” which could include changes in the ocean, atmosphere, land, cryosphere (land covered by ice), as well as the Earth’s orbit and solar events; man-made effects, of course, are also blamed. However, scientists have been unable to accurately predict when these abrupt changes will occur or by how much—which also prevents accurate forecasts for effects on agricultural and water resources; abrupt changes in weather are also trickier to plan for than the gradual change, since it doesn't allow us the convenience of "time."
Nevertheless, the National Research Council states that it is not wise—as the Republicans and conservative scientists would suggest—to simply do nothing:
“It is important not to be fatalistic about the threats posed by abrupt climate change. Societies have faced both gradual and abrupt climate change for thousands of years and have learned to adapt through various mechanisms, such as moving indoors, developing irrigation for crops, and migrating away from inhospitable regions. Nevertheless, because climate change will likely continue in the coming decades, denying the likelihood or downplaying the relevance of past abrupt events could be costly. Increased knowledge is the best way to improve the effectiveness of response; research into the causes, patterns, and likelihood of abrupt climate change can help reduce vulnerabilities and increase our ability to adapt.”
For most people, wearing an overcoat instead of a windbreaker is sufficient to overcome the affects of unusual weather changes. But changes are not always so simple to adapt to. Across America, only 6 percent of spring wheat planting—from a normal of 39 percent—has been planted at this time of year as of last week, due to cool temperatures and excessive rainfall, which prevents fields from drying out enough to begin planting. This may not have obvious affects now, but weather of this sort continuing into the summer or for a number of years could have consequences on the food supply that simply ignoring the climate problem will not solve. Another consideration is that we might be on the cusp of a “Little Ice Age.” The last ice age of this sort occurred from 1550 to 1850, characterized by colder winters and cool, wet springs and summers. This may be just an anomaly; we wouldn’t know for another century or two if we are really in a cooling, rather warming period. At any rate, it is fascinating to speculate—especially if you don’t like cold, wet weather all the time.
El Nina will be blamed for this, but then again it was predicted that this phenomena would bring Puget Sound a much harsher winter than we actually had; except for a few days in mid-November and late-February, there was no snow. It also couldn’t explain the weather of last May, which was nearly 4 degrees below normal highs. There are two varieties of climate change—gradual and abrupt. The abrupt changes are more obvious—such as what we experienced in April in the Puget Sound area. Why there are abrupt changes has something to do with the Earth system being pushed into a different state by a combination of “forcings” which could include changes in the ocean, atmosphere, land, cryosphere (land covered by ice), as well as the Earth’s orbit and solar events; man-made effects, of course, are also blamed. However, scientists have been unable to accurately predict when these abrupt changes will occur or by how much—which also prevents accurate forecasts for effects on agricultural and water resources; abrupt changes in weather are also trickier to plan for than the gradual change, since it doesn't allow us the convenience of "time."
Nevertheless, the National Research Council states that it is not wise—as the Republicans and conservative scientists would suggest—to simply do nothing:
“It is important not to be fatalistic about the threats posed by abrupt climate change. Societies have faced both gradual and abrupt climate change for thousands of years and have learned to adapt through various mechanisms, such as moving indoors, developing irrigation for crops, and migrating away from inhospitable regions. Nevertheless, because climate change will likely continue in the coming decades, denying the likelihood or downplaying the relevance of past abrupt events could be costly. Increased knowledge is the best way to improve the effectiveness of response; research into the causes, patterns, and likelihood of abrupt climate change can help reduce vulnerabilities and increase our ability to adapt.”
For most people, wearing an overcoat instead of a windbreaker is sufficient to overcome the affects of unusual weather changes. But changes are not always so simple to adapt to. Across America, only 6 percent of spring wheat planting—from a normal of 39 percent—has been planted at this time of year as of last week, due to cool temperatures and excessive rainfall, which prevents fields from drying out enough to begin planting. This may not have obvious affects now, but weather of this sort continuing into the summer or for a number of years could have consequences on the food supply that simply ignoring the climate problem will not solve. Another consideration is that we might be on the cusp of a “Little Ice Age.” The last ice age of this sort occurred from 1550 to 1850, characterized by colder winters and cool, wet springs and summers. This may be just an anomaly; we wouldn’t know for another century or two if we are really in a cooling, rather warming period. At any rate, it is fascinating to speculate—especially if you don’t like cold, wet weather all the time.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Limbaugh has the blues over Bin Laden's demise on Obama's watch
I awoke this morning to the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed during a raid by U.S. forces on his compound in Pakistan. I’m sure it came as a complete surprise to most people, for whom Bin Laden had become somewhat of a bit player on the overall world stage. Nevertheless, the idea that Public Enemy Number One received his just deserts after years of thumbing his nose at U.S. efforts to apprehend him seems to be the only “logical” conclusion to this saga (a pacifist like commentator Mike Malloy might call this "murder," but I doubt the number of Americans who share that sentiment can be described as significant). If Bin Laden had surrendered and allowed himself to be taken alive, he would have had a forum to cause more mischief, inflaming the passions of his followers through impromptu propaganda speeches in court, and becoming even more dangerous as a living “martyr” while spending the rest of his days in prison. But given his own statements, he had no intention of being taken alive by the Americans, no doubt hoping that his place in "paradise" was secured by his crimes.
I was curious about how right-wing radio would deal with this success occurring during the Obama administration. I first tuned to a black-oriented radio station, where I listened to one caller say that this was one thing that the anti-Obama media could not take away from him—that history would record that Bin Laden’s end had come under Obama’s watch. I wanted to know what Rush Limbaugh had to say about that, but first I had suffer Glenn Beck and his radio show for a little while; he seemed to be in a somber mood, just happy that Bin Laden was dead. He did mention that he was unhappy about the jokes about him and his Fox News cohorts at the Correspondents Dinner, complaining about how everyone tells lies about them; actually, the “enemy” does nothing more than use their own quotes against them. What the Fox News contingent is really concerned about is that their commentary has been recorded for posterity, for the perusal of future historians examining the reasons why during a certain period of U.S. history, fringe-right media commentary contributed to an atmosphere where civil discourse could not prosper. Having a few more minutes to burn, I turned to KOMO, just in time to hear an elderly white woman on the street tell a reporter “Yea for OUR troops” when ask her opinion on the Bin Laden news. Her scornful tone made it clear that she was unwilling to give Obama any credit in the action. Something told me that this opinion was not an isolated one.
So what did Limbaugh have to say? Now, I did read with some amusement a brief Los Angeles Times piece that quoted Limbaugh saying that Obama was the "only" person in the room "qualified" to carry out the mission, in fact doing it all "singlehandedly." He ended his initial comments by declaring "Thank God for President Obama." Limbaugh's tone suggested, however, that he was being "ironic." The person who recorded the initial comments in the Times did a disservice to readers by not waiting to listen to Limbaugh's comments after the first break. I suspect Limbaugh made these initial comments right off the top because he knew the "lefties" were listening in, and once they got this "non-partisan" soundbite, they'd turn away. In allowing itself to be suckered-in by Limbaugh's jesting (which Limbaugh himself found amusing), CNN once more proved that in the reporting of hard news, it lacks credibility.
After the break, Limbaugh lifted his veil and told us what he really thought. One of the first things out of his mouth was that he was glad that “Obama—I’m sorry, Osama—is dead.” Limbaugh gave Obama “credit” only for “continuing the Bush-Cheney policies,” keeping the “team” that was allegedly already in place ready to take-out Bin Laden, and allowing Gitmo to remain open for business because of all the “valuable” information we were getting out of the detainees. Otherwise, Obama and his national security advisors contributed nothing of import. Limbaugh derided what he claims he heard in Obama’s announcement of Bin Laden’s demise that he did it all singlehandedly, as if anyone else was stupid enough to interpret Obama’s comments in that way; Limbaugh even claimed to have counted the number of times Obama used the words “I” and “me.” The man’s hatred of Obama cannot be over-stated. Is Limbaugh a racist? He once answered his own question if the opinions of the 13 percent of the population that is black matter in forming domestic policy: No,they don’t matter.
First of all, Afghanistan and Bin Laden ceased to be a Bush administration priority once the Iraq war began (which Bush declared as “won” a few months after it started). There were many theorists who though that Bin Laden was already dead as early as the initial attack on Tora Bora, and as the years passed, Bush insisted that the capture of Bin Laden was not a vital U.S. concern. Bush also continued to engage his “friends” in Pakistan, even though they failed to stop Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives from escaping unmolested into its territory. It is rather telling of the Bush administration’s failure to accurately judge a regime that apparently not only knew of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, but protected him, likely in exchange for keeping al-Qaida fighters from conducting attacks inside Pakistan. Obama stopped the failed policy of treating Pakistan as if they were our “allies” in fact (if not publicly), as the CIA was allowed to largely ignore Pakistani complaints about their operations inside the country; Obama rightly did not inform the Pakistanis of the operation before it occurred, due to fears that our “friends” would warn Bin Laden of his peril.
There was also no “quick strike” team set-up by the Bush administration sitting in Afghanistan for years waiting for an order to take-out Bin Laden; the Bush administration seemed satisfied with bombing his alleged hideouts, and then withdrawing resources and troops from the region. Although the CIA continued to operate in the area, their ability to maximize use of intelligence was hampered by the dilatory attitude of the Bush administration toward Afghan operations; it was only after the Obama administration committed resources into Afghanistan that it became possible to conduct the intelligence operations necessary to lead to success in locating Bin Laden. Limbaugh also over-estimated the value of the intelligence received from Gitmo detainees; it was no “revelation” that Bin Laden was employing couriers to send messages back-and-forth (information gleaned from waterboarding, according to Limbaugh). Is our intelligence services that bad not to have realized this all by themselves, since this was the logical modus operandi of someone in hiding trying to maintain communications secrecy? If in fact the identities of some of Bin Laden’s couriers was gleaned from the information provided by detainees, there couldn’t be any assurance that the information was current; it was fortunate that at least one of the couriers was still a trusted Bin Laden confidant. Nevertheless, it is still telling that it wasn’t until the Obama took office that this information was taken seriously to commit the resources to confirm it, and take advantage of it.
Obama does, furthermore, deserve all due credit for the success of the operation. He is, after all, the Commander-in-Chief who ultimately had to approve of the details of the operations, and make the decision to back the riskier, but more certain, attack plan; some of us still remember the ghosts of the disastrous operation to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. Again, give the president the credit he deserves for carrying out his responsibilities with care and fortitude. Limbaugh? He is just a bigoted, outrageously overpaid fat man with an opinion that he can stuff. And finally—and more despicably—while elsewhere the media is referring to “Bin Laden,” Limbaugh only refers to “Osama.” He does this for a reason: It gives him an opportunity to repeatedly suffer “slips of the tongue” by referring to Obama before “correcting” himself to say he meant “Osama.” Yes, it is his own pathetic attempt to portray Obama as a “terrorist” himself and an enemy of America.
There was a time, a long time ago, that Limbaugh actually was “witty.” Those days are long gone. Today, he is just a man consumed with irrational hate (especially of the racial variety) and an inflated sense of self as bloated as his girth.
I was curious about how right-wing radio would deal with this success occurring during the Obama administration. I first tuned to a black-oriented radio station, where I listened to one caller say that this was one thing that the anti-Obama media could not take away from him—that history would record that Bin Laden’s end had come under Obama’s watch. I wanted to know what Rush Limbaugh had to say about that, but first I had suffer Glenn Beck and his radio show for a little while; he seemed to be in a somber mood, just happy that Bin Laden was dead. He did mention that he was unhappy about the jokes about him and his Fox News cohorts at the Correspondents Dinner, complaining about how everyone tells lies about them; actually, the “enemy” does nothing more than use their own quotes against them. What the Fox News contingent is really concerned about is that their commentary has been recorded for posterity, for the perusal of future historians examining the reasons why during a certain period of U.S. history, fringe-right media commentary contributed to an atmosphere where civil discourse could not prosper. Having a few more minutes to burn, I turned to KOMO, just in time to hear an elderly white woman on the street tell a reporter “Yea for OUR troops” when ask her opinion on the Bin Laden news. Her scornful tone made it clear that she was unwilling to give Obama any credit in the action. Something told me that this opinion was not an isolated one.
So what did Limbaugh have to say? Now, I did read with some amusement a brief Los Angeles Times piece that quoted Limbaugh saying that Obama was the "only" person in the room "qualified" to carry out the mission, in fact doing it all "singlehandedly." He ended his initial comments by declaring "Thank God for President Obama." Limbaugh's tone suggested, however, that he was being "ironic." The person who recorded the initial comments in the Times did a disservice to readers by not waiting to listen to Limbaugh's comments after the first break. I suspect Limbaugh made these initial comments right off the top because he knew the "lefties" were listening in, and once they got this "non-partisan" soundbite, they'd turn away. In allowing itself to be suckered-in by Limbaugh's jesting (which Limbaugh himself found amusing), CNN once more proved that in the reporting of hard news, it lacks credibility.
After the break, Limbaugh lifted his veil and told us what he really thought. One of the first things out of his mouth was that he was glad that “Obama—I’m sorry, Osama—is dead.” Limbaugh gave Obama “credit” only for “continuing the Bush-Cheney policies,” keeping the “team” that was allegedly already in place ready to take-out Bin Laden, and allowing Gitmo to remain open for business because of all the “valuable” information we were getting out of the detainees. Otherwise, Obama and his national security advisors contributed nothing of import. Limbaugh derided what he claims he heard in Obama’s announcement of Bin Laden’s demise that he did it all singlehandedly, as if anyone else was stupid enough to interpret Obama’s comments in that way; Limbaugh even claimed to have counted the number of times Obama used the words “I” and “me.” The man’s hatred of Obama cannot be over-stated. Is Limbaugh a racist? He once answered his own question if the opinions of the 13 percent of the population that is black matter in forming domestic policy: No,they don’t matter.
First of all, Afghanistan and Bin Laden ceased to be a Bush administration priority once the Iraq war began (which Bush declared as “won” a few months after it started). There were many theorists who though that Bin Laden was already dead as early as the initial attack on Tora Bora, and as the years passed, Bush insisted that the capture of Bin Laden was not a vital U.S. concern. Bush also continued to engage his “friends” in Pakistan, even though they failed to stop Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives from escaping unmolested into its territory. It is rather telling of the Bush administration’s failure to accurately judge a regime that apparently not only knew of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, but protected him, likely in exchange for keeping al-Qaida fighters from conducting attacks inside Pakistan. Obama stopped the failed policy of treating Pakistan as if they were our “allies” in fact (if not publicly), as the CIA was allowed to largely ignore Pakistani complaints about their operations inside the country; Obama rightly did not inform the Pakistanis of the operation before it occurred, due to fears that our “friends” would warn Bin Laden of his peril.
There was also no “quick strike” team set-up by the Bush administration sitting in Afghanistan for years waiting for an order to take-out Bin Laden; the Bush administration seemed satisfied with bombing his alleged hideouts, and then withdrawing resources and troops from the region. Although the CIA continued to operate in the area, their ability to maximize use of intelligence was hampered by the dilatory attitude of the Bush administration toward Afghan operations; it was only after the Obama administration committed resources into Afghanistan that it became possible to conduct the intelligence operations necessary to lead to success in locating Bin Laden. Limbaugh also over-estimated the value of the intelligence received from Gitmo detainees; it was no “revelation” that Bin Laden was employing couriers to send messages back-and-forth (information gleaned from waterboarding, according to Limbaugh). Is our intelligence services that bad not to have realized this all by themselves, since this was the logical modus operandi of someone in hiding trying to maintain communications secrecy? If in fact the identities of some of Bin Laden’s couriers was gleaned from the information provided by detainees, there couldn’t be any assurance that the information was current; it was fortunate that at least one of the couriers was still a trusted Bin Laden confidant. Nevertheless, it is still telling that it wasn’t until the Obama took office that this information was taken seriously to commit the resources to confirm it, and take advantage of it.
Obama does, furthermore, deserve all due credit for the success of the operation. He is, after all, the Commander-in-Chief who ultimately had to approve of the details of the operations, and make the decision to back the riskier, but more certain, attack plan; some of us still remember the ghosts of the disastrous operation to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. Again, give the president the credit he deserves for carrying out his responsibilities with care and fortitude. Limbaugh? He is just a bigoted, outrageously overpaid fat man with an opinion that he can stuff. And finally—and more despicably—while elsewhere the media is referring to “Bin Laden,” Limbaugh only refers to “Osama.” He does this for a reason: It gives him an opportunity to repeatedly suffer “slips of the tongue” by referring to Obama before “correcting” himself to say he meant “Osama.” Yes, it is his own pathetic attempt to portray Obama as a “terrorist” himself and an enemy of America.
There was a time, a long time ago, that Limbaugh actually was “witty.” Those days are long gone. Today, he is just a man consumed with irrational hate (especially of the racial variety) and an inflated sense of self as bloated as his girth.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Spring cleaning
It is my opinion that the news media could have killed this “birther” business about Barack Obama, or at least marginalized it to the lunatic fringe where it belonged, had they just taken the time to expose it for what it was from the beginning. Instead, it was kept alive as if there was any grain of truth to the belief that this man with a vaguely “terrorist”-sounding name and dark skin couldn’t possibly be a “real” American. But there being a hardcore of older people still living in the Jurassic Age and Republicans and right-wing radio eager to take advantage of them, the story runs on legs continuously injected with stimulants that have the side effect of numbing the brain to common sense. I’m not exactly certain what George Stephanopoulos was trying to accomplish grilling the president on why he hasn’t done more to put the issue to “rest,” when the whole thing is just one of the more pathetic elements of the right's attempt to delegitimatize Obama. In a recent interview on Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos allowed Donald Trump to air-out what are essentially his own made-up “facts” as to Obama’s citizenship as a means to “advance” his quest for the presidency, rather than expose the infantile nature of Trump’s thought processes. He did a better job catching Michelle Bachmann first in a lie and then forcing her to face the consequences of lying. Stephanopoulos reminded Bachmann of her appearance on Fox News the previous day in which she still questioned Obama’s citizenship, which she denied she had done by making the ludicrous claim that “The People” were asking Republicans like herself to vouch for Obama—which, of course, they “can’t” do without “evidence.”
The reality is that Bachmann and other Republicans are using the “birther” propaganda as a partisan political attack weapon. And why not? A shocking 43 percent of Americans, according a recent poll, are still not convinced that Obama is a native-born citizen. When Stephanopoulos surprised Bachmann by producing a notarized copy of Obama’s birth certificate, stamped with the official state of Hawaii seal, she refused to even look at, as if doing so would cause her permanent blindness (not necessarily a bad thing, since it might teach her to appreciate her other senses—or lack of). To publicly acknowledge her ethical and factual shortcomings was clearly not something that Bachmann was prepared to do; having not actually studied the document that Stephanopoulos was thrusting at her, she could claim later that since she hadn’t actually seen it, she still can’t “vouch” for its “authenticity.” This is how Republican/Tea Party fraudsters operate: The facts are right in front of them, but because they live in an alternative universe, lies pass for truth. Even now Bachmann is comparing taxes to the Holocaust, and trying her best make the complaints of the rich a white cause; if the working class’ “economic liberty” is being sucked from them, it is not due to the policies of Obama or the liberal “socialists,” but by the plantation master-and-slave and profits before living wage philosophy of corporate America and their Republican stooges. Bachmann, Sarah Palin and others might call attacks on the current status quo as “anti-American,” but the real anti-Americanism is the repeated use of lies and misinformation in support of a society rife with inequality and economic injustice.
So why don’t we just tell the truth about the birther matter? No one with a European name is being asked to produce their birth certificate. John McCain was born in Panama and nobody is professing to have an issue with that. The birth certificate really isn’t the point; the point is that it is just an excuse to highlight Obama’s name, his race and his “foreignness” for whites to whom race—along with all the paranoia and stereotypes applied to it—is and has always been their primary “concern” about Obama.
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Some more thoughts on Donald Trump’s delusion that he is presidential material: He’s obviously been conned by his own public relations machine. He’s been portrayed as a “successful” businessman, but really he’s just a “celebrity”—perhaps a little more substantive than Paris Hilton and her friend Nicole Richie combined. The fact is that he’s made his money gaming the system, having been in and out of bankruptcy courts for at least twenty years. And he’s not a “self-made” man—his father, Fred Trump, was. “The Donald” benefited immensely from his father’s success and good name as a builder of residential homes and rental apartments in New York City, and Trump used his father’s Trump Organization assets to set himself up; he’s a good salesman of the infomercial variety, but otherwise people should not be fooled by this self-promoter and charlatan.
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While I was waiting for the weather report that comes “every ten minutes” on KOMO radio, I was forced to listen to some right-wing guest of John Carlson complain about why we are in Afghanistan; do you think this hypocrite realizes that he actually has something in common with the “progressive” left? Of course not; wasn’t it Obama and the socialist left that got us into the war in the first place? I started to chuckle when he said that the Bush administration erred not by putting too few boots on the ground in the beginning, but because he put “too many” boots in the country; it always kills me how these conservative extremists put aside common sense and tell blatant fabrications just to play partisan games. It was claimed that all we needed were a few soldiers to patrol the porous Afghan-Pakistani border—without acknowledging the fact that the failure to have sufficient troops on the ground led to the escape of the majority of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces to fight another day. Again, the left has argued all along that we really can’t “win” in Afghanistan because of the lack of infrastructure—social, governmental or otherwise—and now trying to appropriate the common sense view if they see it plays better with their constituency. Obama’s mistake was that he thought that he could “fix” Bush’s mistakes, but after six years of neglect, that is clear that by then it was too late; we should cut our losses by negotiating a settlement with the de facto powers that be. But why kid ourselves? If Obama had decided to pull out of Afghanistan soon after he took office, the right would be saying that he left the country wide open for terrorists.
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I read a story about Amazon’s Kindle “E-library,” which called this development the sounding of the death knell for the traditional book. Twenty years ago a college professor told me that computers would make books obsolete; however, they still seem to be hanging around. I admit that devices like Kindle are theoretically useful in the fact that they can store multiple titles in its internal memory, although what happens when the hard drive or memory stick is damaged or the software is crippled (or when the battery runs out, for that matter) are issues that prevent me from getting too excited about the technology. I still much prefer the paper book. Why? Primarily because I don’t trust the longevity of electronic media, but also because I’m one those people who rarely reads a book from page one, especially if it’s a historical work, and particularly if I am already familiar with the timeline. On the other hand if, if there is something that requires a little background checking to understand, then I can quickly flip back to the relevant section. You can’t do that with an e-book, at least not easily. Person who reads a real book should also be seen to be a more serious reader than a person with a Kindle, who is probably more interested in the technology than in retaining inspiration for the long-term. And imagine what would happen if we had one of those solar flares that knocked-out electricity all over the globe? People with books can at least pass the time more usefully than those whose sensory abilities are limited to what the electronic world feeds them.
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There’s a good bet that the last Academy Awards ceremony will go down as the lamest in history, not merely because of the presentation but because of the lack of compelling product. I didn’t see the “Black Swan” in a theater, but I did watch the DVD because I thought it was supposed to be “good.” Wrong. Even if I forced myself to get past the politics, there was nothing that compelled me. How come lesbian sex is always supposed to be “meaningful” in a bad movie with stupid caricatures and makes absolutely no sense, except on a political and “metaphorical” level? It always amuses me that in programming like “The L Word,” women who look nothing like the bald, tattooed and nose- ringed women I see on Capitol Hill howl like they never heard of the word “fake.” It all seems so, well, political. “What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?” Yeah, my ears and incredulity. In the movie, the ballet director is the stereotypical Euro-trash sex predator, but that doesn’t mean it’s a true caricature. Some people have portrayed the film as “pornographic” because of all the action between the bulimic Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis; sorry, but neither one of them does a thing for me—together or apart—and worse, for a movie with so much “sex,” there is no nudity at all in it. No reason for me to suffer to watch it again. They could have cut the boring sex scenes and concentrated on Portman’s lines; it would have made her Oscar win more palatable and less stomach-grinder material. It just goes to show you that film reviewers—just like music critics today—have to pimp for anything vaguely “meaningful” so they can keep their job descriptions viable. It might be hard to believe now, but there was a time when telling a compelling story that forced the viewer to ask questions was important to a filmmaker—or at least knew how to make such a film.
To be fair, I can’t leave “The King’s Speech” be. Now, I suppose watching a commoner break the uptight King down into a cussing fit has its charms, but if that’s the highlight, I’ve seen better cussing by other kings; Peter O’Toole’s profane Henry II in “The Lion in Winter” was entirely more entertaining. I don’t understand it; why are Americans—or rather the American media—fascinated with British royalty anyways? Didn’t American “patriots” fight a revolution so they wouldn’t have to kneel before these arrogant, posturing clowns? All this fuss about the royal wedding between Prince William and what’s-her-name with the giraffe neck—we should see it for what it is: just more bread and circuses for the British proletariat. Snore. It was said that the former Labour Party (what’s with the extra “u” anyways?) prime ministers were not invited because the Labour Party was not as supportive of maintaining the antiquated monarchy and their puffed-up fakery. And no, not all the colonials are pining for the old days of King George; when I came into work the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, the graveyard shift apparently preferred to sleep than watch the wedding. Anyways, for “The King’s Speech” to win the best picture Oscar only means that this was yet another year of subpar filmmaking. Back in the day, it was possible for real drama in the presentation; for the 1976 Oscars, great films like “Rocky,” “Taxi Driver,” “Network” and “All the President’s Men” were under consideration and all would have been perfectly acceptable winners (“Network” probably should have won over “Rocky”). That’s my opinion, anyways.
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There is a men’s restroom in the ramp area at the airport that I am certain is much less aesthetic than the women’s room across the way in more ways than one. Despite the fact that there are three urinals, there are some “sensitive” people who insist on not just urinating in the stalls, but either urinate on the toilet seat, or not flush, or both. I suppose that some people from certain countries who have never seen a urinal and have no idea what it is for; on the other hand, there are certainly some people who do it just because they have no concern for the anyone else. But I have another theory: Those who should know better do it because they’ve been taught that this is the “right way.” Who could that be? Mothers? Girlfriends? Wives? We’ve all heard that female complaint that men always leave the toilet seat up instead of down. Well, they should leave men be who are actually doing the right thing in regard to toilet bowl etiquette: Putting the seat up before pissing in the bowl. Perhaps the women would like it better if they peed all over the seat. So what if they forget to put the seat back down; it’s better than the alternative of suffering the unpotty-trained. Just take it as a life lesson learned.
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One may recall that a month ago there was on the cover of TIME a picture of a rock that could be the savior of the world’s energy needs. No, it wasn’t a piece of coal or a Dilithium Crystal, but shale. There has been talk about shale before, in the rather expensive process of converting it into liquid oil. Now the talk is about exploiting the huge shale fields in the U.S. and Canada for natural gas extraction—and is already well underway in states like Pennsylvania. The considerable depths where this is found is causes extreme heat where the shale is naturally converted into a gas form; the problem is cutting through the impermeable rock to get to the gas. The method used to cut through the rock and maintain an opening to extract the oil is called “fracking,” which generally involves inserting chemicals to the drilling process to add pressure in order to expand the opening. The U.S. supposedly has enough of reserves to supply the country’s current consumption rate of natural gas for another century.
More sober analysis tells us that natural gas is only a partial answer to our energy needs, and does not even address transportation issues. The fracking process has received a lot of attention for the potential of chemical leaks poisoning water supplies, and the possibility of causing structural weaknesses that result in “seismic” events. There has been very little regulation concerning fracking; in 2004, the Bush EPA declared that there was no “adverse” impacts from fracking, and the issue didn’t warrant “further study”—not surprising, knowing that the EPA under the overview of James Watt disciple Gale Norton, who was in the pocket of industry. Natural gas from shale deposits is also much dirtier than that produced from conventional mean; the production of excessive methane gas—more dangerous a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide— is particularly troubling. In fact, shale gas may be even dirtier than coal.
Yet again the powers that be have presented us an “answer” from old ideas that set us backwards instead of forward. Solar and wind power help, but do not address transportation requirements. I remember when the “cold fusion” story excited a lot of people in 1989, but since then it has been derided as pseudo-science; I was listening to “Coast-to-Coast” the other night, which dealt with the alleged “conspiracy” against cold fusion, but the fact remains that it is physically impossible to generate the pressures needed to cause fusion at room temperature. Hydrogen gas has been touted as the “answer,” except that it still requires more energy input to produce than it outputs. Right now, the only “feasible” long-term energy “solution” to wean the country off imported oil is converting enmass to electric powered-vehicles, which would still require much more efficient batteries and recharging methods than currently available to make it a truly feasible option.
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According to the latest census information, Mississippi has a population that is 37.2 percent black, the highest in the country; only 0.9 percent of the population identifies itself as more than one race, half the national average. 17 percent of the population has a bachelors degree or higher, 2/3rd the national average. Although home ownership is slightly above the national average, half of all homes have a value of less than $72,000—60 percent of the national median. Median household and individual income is 70 percent of the national average, and the poverty rate is 60 percent higher than the national average; close to half of blacks live below the official poverty line. Mississippi, of course, has always been notorious for being last or near last in every quality of life indicator, as is its support for public and higher education.
And this is the perfect world according to the right. A Gallup poll in February identified Mississippi as the most conservative state in the country, with over 50 percent of the state identifying themselves as “conservative,” and naturally has been controlled by Republican governors for all but one term in the last 30 years. Since 58 percent of the state is non-Hispanic white, we might conjecture that at least 80 percent of whites identify themselves as conservative. The extent of this conservatism is such that another recent poll revealed that 46 percent of those who identified themselves as Republican believed that interracial marriage should be illegal. Although Democrats do maintain some presence in the state legislature, the essential conservatism of white Democrats is born-out by the unusual number of legislators who have switched parties while in office—so many in the Senate that the Democrats went from a 28-24 majority after the 2007 state elections to a 25-27 minority today without benefit of election; one suspects that the Democrats who switched parties did not want to be identified as being a member of the party with that “colored” president (I’m sure in private they use more “colorful” language to describe Obama). Many people claim (usually Republicans), that we are in the “least racist” period of the country’s history. We are also told that whites are “color blind.” But that is certainly not true everywhere, and certainly not true of Republicans, particularly in the South. You would think that 25 percent of whites in Mississippi at least share the idea of social equality for the greater good, but even that small minority cannot be mustered. White Mississippians may give some visitors the impression that they are friendly, but just don’t ask them questions like why the state has an Apartheid mentality. I am always reminded of the white female student in the southern college I attended who claimed she wasn’t a racist, but would never “go out” with a black man. Color-blind my fundament.
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There was a story recently about the FBI invaded some guy’s home, put him in a prone posture and demanded that he confess that he had been rummaging through the dung pile of internet child porn—except that it wasn’t him, but the guy next door stealing access to his Wi-Fi. The FBI has been accused of sending out fake hyperlinks to computers to see who they could “catch” displaying an interest in child porn (the 11-year-old Brooke Shields in “Pretty Baby” doesn’t qualify); the courts have ruled that merely clicking on a hyperlink (even if you don’t know what it is for) is sufficient to get a person arrested as a child porn pervert. Something tells me these guys can be quite persistent, to the point of harassment. I recall some years ago that one day I started getting these unsolicited e-mails that I at first regarded as annoying spam; if you spend a lot of time surfing the web, you will eventually encounter people with something to “sell,” especially websites that receive income from advertising for other websites. Anyways, it seemed that every day my inbox was filling up with links advertising “products” that I found disturbing and refused to touch save to identify them as spam to be deleted upon receipt. But no matter how many links were marked as spam, more replaced them each day. It got to the point where all I did every morning was click the “select all” button and delete the increasingly insistent come-ons.
Then one day, after a few months of this, the spam stopped. It didn’t merely dribble away to nothing; one day I checked my inbox, and there was nothing to delete. I wonder now what would have happened if I had actually hit one of these links, even just to find out who was sending this stuff, since there never was a dot-com indicated, just an obviously phony name and a tagline. I did feel someone was harassing me and making some rather offensive insinuations regarding my “interests.”
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Several news organizations managed to get their hands on some WikiLeaks documents, which they recently been given “permission” to release to the public, in regard to the prison operations at Guantánamo. It seems that not only did the Bush administration suffer intelligence breakdowns in regard to the 9-11 attack, but contrary to popular opinion, American intelligence experts were complete amateurs when it came to interrogation techniques and determining who was or wasn’t a detainee of “value.” The U.S. had to send in the “experts”—Chinese and Russian state security agents—with questionable results. According to newspaper analysis of the data, the information that interrogators did glean was mainly hearsay from detainees who claim to have heard something from someone else, but they personally had no knowledge of—or from self-described “insiders” who claimed to know more than they actually knew, making-up details and essentially making fools of U.S. agents; records show that many of these latter have been released for their so-called “cooperation.”
Naturally, Sean Hannity over at Fox News called the release of these embarrassing (for the Bush administration) revelations to be “treason.” Hannity can be easily dismissed for the bigot he is, and some of the criticisms from overseas should only be taken as self-serving, since heaping abuse on the U.S. has been a favorite pastime of Europeans since at least the 1970s. One may conjecture, given the incompetence of the interrogation techniques, that this displayed an adherence to anti-torture conventions prior to 9-11 that other countries cannot claim. Since the prisoners at Gitmo ultimately revealed nothing that aided in the capture of Osama Bin Laden—or anything else particularly useful—the Bush administration could have saved itself from these embarrassing revelations by treating the detainees like prisoners of war, and conducting intelligence work in the field, such as before something like 9-11 occured.
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The Obama Justice Department has warned the state of Washington that if the medical marijuana bill that was passed by both chambers of the legislature is signed into law, that it will enforce federal statutes that forbid “growing and selling” marijuana, despite the fact that the administration has “looked the other way” with regard to limited use of medicinal marijuana. The government has particular concerns about state employees being involved in issuing licenses to private persons for growing marijuana, which local authorities and police demanded in order to help ferret-out growers with illegal uses in mind. A Justice Department spokesperson, however, put out this rather quizzical statement: "We are not going to look the other way while significant drug-trafficking organizations try and shield their illegal efforts from investigation and prosecution through the pretense that they are medical dispensaries.” The problem here is that technically, this is exactly what the state hopes to avoid in passing a law establishing licensed dispensaries. The Justice Department seems to saying that they believe state regulators are secret drug dealers, trying to set-up their own operations, or give their drug-dealing friends a leg-up on the competition. This is not completely beyond the realm of possibility, but on the other hand this is a farfetched and paranoid interpretation to put on the law which seeks to reduce—not increase—illegal activity.
The “war on drugs” has been not only a clear failure and purely a political exercise, but in fact has produced more violence and illegality than it has stopped. The tact that the Justice Department should take is allow the law to pass, and simply stand back and see what effect it has. My sense is that it will not cause any uptick in drug-related crime, or cause a legion of Zombie-eyed addicts wandering the countryside. It might even prove that marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol or aspirin.
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A week ago, Newsweek had a cover story about “Dead Suit Walking.” Apparently this is in reference to older white men in white color management jobs and blue collar manufacturing jobs who are out of a job and supposedly no future. Feminists or other gender activists think this is a “good” thing. I have a limited amount of sympathy to spare for these fellas (certainly more than the fire department at the airport; it must be tough being an arrogant diva who once in blue moon actually has to do something to earn his or her paycheck); the fact is that it was their bosses who made the business choices that sold not just them, but many millions of working people who actually made things, down the river. Some take gleeful pleasure in this, as if this reveals some “insight” into the male psyche rather than an indication of how the country’s economy has eroded in the face of cheap labor and goods from Asia. Take this quote in the article from Judith Gerberg, an “executive career coach” specializing in “coaching” women:
“Many of these guys may be great on the back nine but totally lack the skill set to get them through anything like this. If you went to the college of your choice, married the woman of your choice, and bought the house of your choice, you’ve never dealt with rejection. You’ve never had to develop fortitude.” Meaning, of course, that these men are, once you strip away the façade, weak and vulnerable. Yippee. The reality is that in this society, men have the pressure of being programmed to understand that they are responsible for others; women, on the other hand, have been programmed to believe that someone else should be responsible for their well-being.
This week, not surprisingly, Newsweek “celebrates” the alternate “reality”: Two youngish white females who are “America’s next billionaires.” Self-made the Olsen Twins are not; they were infants when they became “famous” playing the same character on “Fullhouse,” standing in for each on alternate days to abide by child labor laws. By the age of seven “they” were marketing this gimmick. Of course, it was not ”they” who were the brains behind the scheme, but their parents, managers and PR department who thought a quick buck could be made in the “famous for being famous” generation. Their subsequent TV shows have been panned by critics and died rapid deaths, but no matter; the teen market is alive and well for the insubstantial; the twins are living Barbie Dolls for the “reality” TV age (no talent required, just be in the right place at the right time). The Olsens’ seem to be doing quite well representing a clothing line that has been described as the “homeless look”—i.e. the trashy look, which frankly along with baggy shorts and pants hanging half-way down the arse is less a “style” than an “attitude”—and not one that gives us much hope for the future. If the Olsen Twins “success” proves anything, it is how unfair life is; it reminds me of the old black woman in “Being There” watching the mentally-challenged Chance the Gardener on television being lionized by high society: “Yes, sir, all you've gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want.” At any rate, the Olsens’ “look”—along with their fraudulent good fortune—will hopefully lose its appeal in time, since there is nothing more nauseating than middle-aged women painting themselves up to look like teenagers.
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America’s greatest dramatist is Eugene O’Neill, although I doubt many Americans are sufficiently aware of their “culture” to know this. One of his great plays is “Mourning Becomes Electra,” and it is technically it is influenced by ancient Greek drama. It’s principle theme is about how jealousy, deceit, incestuous relations, revenge, murder, madness and suicide led to the downfall of a family. I saw the 1947 film version starring Rosalind Russell and Michael Redgrave; at slightly less than 3 hours in length, it was still truncated from the original text. During the 1970s, the play was mounted on public television in a version that was 100 minutes longer than the film version, and this version was released complete on DVD. I assumed that this version would be more satisfying than the film.
I was wrong, very wrong. It wasn’t merely that Roberta Maxwell in the key role of Lavinia fell noticeably short of Russell’s powerful performance; the film stayed true to the essential elements of this tragic drama, and the longer television version, unhappily, did not (Sidney Lumet, on the other hand, cut no corners in his television production of “The Iceman Cometh”). In the original play, the progression of events led inexorably to a self-inflicted horror, ending with Lavinia, with nowhere else to hide from her sins, voluntarily locks herself up forever in the family residence that had literally become a tomb of the dead. The television version destroys the awful power of the drama by tacking on a confusing “happy ending.” While the first and second sections of the play generally keeps to script, the tinkering with the third part destroys whatever intent that O’Neill envisioned. In this production, the denouement goes something like this: Lavinia’s brother Orin (who is tormented by his mother’s suicide) says crazy things, Lavinia’s suitor, Peter, arrives to comfort her, promise to marry her, and they will help Orin get better. While they are embracing, Orin comes into the room with a strange look in his eyes. That’s it. End of story. What is it supposed to mean? We don’t really know.
The power of the drama is literally emasculated by an ambiguous ending that holds out the hope for “happiness.” There is no such ambiguity in the more surprisingly more faithful 1947 film, which I absolutely recommend over this. The essential elements that O’Neill intended remain intact: Orin goes mad with self-incrimination, blackmails Lavinia by writing an account of the family crimes, and after Lavinia emasculates him verbally, he commits suicide. Lavinia, growing mad with her own sense of the world crumbling around her, frightens Peter with her aggressive desire to marry, and then ends any hope for a “happy” conclusion when she admits to a rumor (probably false) that she had some sexual escapade with a Pacific island native during a recent holiday. After Peter stalks off, vowing never to see her again, she tells her handyman to shutter-up the mansion, where she, as the last of the Mannons, will live out her life among the family dead.
All too often, we see the intentions of dramatists and authors twisted into something that that is allegedly more “palatable” for the audience's of filmed media. Some directors, like Sidney Lumet who was also responsible for the superb film version of “A Long Day’s Journey into Night” knew that tacking on “happy endings” made moot everything that went before it. In the Susanna Moore novel “In the Cut,” the main character paid for her lack of judgment with the belated realization that she was about to be a serial killer’s next victim, and she was helpless to stop it; Jane Campion’s film version, on the other hand, has a fairy tale-like ending that is entirely unrealistic. Richard Brooks, on the other hand, played no such games with the tragic, violent denouement of the novel he based his film “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” on—which still has not been released on DVD.
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I was listening to the BBC world news radio program concerning an American’s glorification of Winnie Mandela. Shirley Jo Finney, because she was black and female (thus “sensitive” to the subject matter), was hired to direct “Winnie: The Opera,” the content of which was personally approved by Mandela. “I have always wanted to come to South Africa and Winnie the Opera speaks to who I am as an artist, a spirit, a woman, a mother and as a humanist, preparing for world-wide tour, celebrating the life of Winnie Mandela,” Finney said. She may be an icon to her die-hard supporters in South Africa, but it is a disservice to pretend that the opera tells the “whole story” in order to portray Mandela as some kind of saint.
It is true that Winnie Mandela participated as a focus for discontent among the dispossessed natives of South Africa, and she did serve a total of about 17 months in prison at various times in the 1960s and 70s. However, it appears that all the adulation passed her way turned her into a kind of megalomaniac—believing herself invulnerable as the wife of the imprisoned martyr Nelson Mandela. While Bishop Desmond Tutu was vocal in opposing Reagan’s policy of “constructive engagement” toward the Apartheid government and presented the moral challenge that foreign countries could not ignore without losing face, Winnie Mandela was terrorizing and killing those she regarded as her enemies—which should not have been difficult to believe, since she frequently employed rhetoric regarded as “bloodthirsty.” She operated as a virtual warlord in Soweto during the 1980s, with her “body guards”—the Mandela United Football Club—providing the muscle on her orders. Members of the “club” would later testify that Mandela had not only ordered torture and murder, but personally participated in such acts. She was eventually convicted for the murder of a 14-year-old boy—and was also suspected in the murder of her own personal physician, who refused to cover-up the crime—but her prison sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal. She would later be convicted on a fraud charge, but her popularity among her “people” is such that she was recently elected to a legislative seat.
Mandela was also far from the faithful wife of myth; she had numerous affairs while Nelson was in prison, and upon his release, it was said she could not bring herself to even touch him. Her violent rhetoric and temper was also at odds with Nelson’s desire for peace solutions after 27 years in prison. These days, Mandela spends her time attacking Nelson and Tutu, allegedly because they haven’t done enough to support a more radical redistribution of wealth, but mainly because their reputations are less sullied than hers. Nelson, for his part, has always spoken graciously of her, even after he divorced her after it was clear that their bond was more symbolic than real.
People tend to forget that although Nelson and Winnie Mandela were the symbol of the anti-Apartheid movement, it was Oliver Tambo who as the ambassador and de facto head of the “government in exile” served as the most effective representative for a post-Apartheid South Africa, which doubtless made the imposition of sanctions against the Apartheid government more palatable for some countries not inclined to do so—like the right-wing regimes of Reagan and the UK under Margaret Thatcher. Had he not been struck with a stroke, and later die in 1993, Tambo and not Nelson Mandela would likely have been the first president of a free South Africa.
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There was a story in the Seattle Times that is indicative of the double-standard applied to the “favored” and “unfavored” minority groups. While this state discourages educational and professional attainment of its own population in favor of foreign and out-of-state students for strictly "budgetary" reasons, Chinese immigrants, students and those with work visas are given glowing reviews despite their presence in high-paying jobs that might otherwise have gone to a “native,” and the fact of job losses here from unfair trade practices there. I personally don’t care if white people don’t care, but what I find particularly galling is that on the other hand they demonize Latinos for “taking” low-paying jobs; the Seattle Times in particular has frequently been involved in this mendacity. Of course, it will be said that the Chinese “contribute” more, but that only means they’ve taken the place of a native who could have contributed the same thing. All of this is indicative of the fact that the media, rather than report the news dispassionately, betrays the prejudices of its membership.
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Some people may have heard or seen an advertisement exhorting you to listen to a renowned “journalist”—who boasted that he “predicted” the Wall Street and mortgage meltdowns—tell you how to save yourself from the consequences of his “dire prophecy.” The website—or websites—where this vital information is to be found is called “endofamerica##.com.” The ## is actually a number, like 21 or 36; it is unclear why there are differently numbered messages, since they basically repeat the same line. The “journalist” is someone named Porter Stansberry, who runs a website company called “Stansberry Investment Research.” He basically drones on for over an hour about doom and gloom, anti-government, the world is over unless you wait to find out what secret information he has to impart. Much of what he says about the problem of government debt is true in isolation, but completely lacks context. In the radio and TV add teaser, we are warned that something “baaaad” is going to happen in the next twelve months, but he never gets around to telling us what exactly that is. Stansberry throws out words like “riots,” “martial law,” “protests” and “socialism” so often that it becomes clear that his real agenda is frighten the paranoid fear freaks into such state in the hope that he can snag at least a few of these suckers on his line. He claims credit for “predicting” the mortgage meltdowns of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, except that he forgets to mention that not only did they only represent a small percentage of the failed mortgages, but the fact that it was the Bush administration’s anti-regulatory stance that dismissed the Clinton-era lending rules that were meant to prevent predatory loans from being used to inflate affordable housing benchmarks. Stansberry also derisively dismisses the idea of taxing the rich as an option to close the deficit, even to maintain Social Security; this basically reveals him to be nothing but a right-wing hack engaging in a political diatribe. The CBO recently reported that federal revenues are at their lowest level as a percentage of GDP since 1950; Any sensible long-term plan should include raising the income ceiling on Social Security deductions—as well as raising the Medicare tax from 1.45 percent to 2 percent. At least it is much less onerous on the poor rich than the 70 and 90 percent top marginal rates of the past, so their complaints can’t be taken any more seriously than that of a child crying because he can’t have candy for breakfast, lunch AND supper.
After an hour of this, Stansberry finally gets to the “point”: How to hide your money from the government, the “secrets of the silver market,” and the “100 percent secret” which will shield you and your family from certain doom. All of this vital information and more can be had for half-off the list price of a subscription for his monthly “investment advisory.” While the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s has portrayed Stansberry as some kind of soothsayer, his defrauded customers say otherwise. In 2003, after Stansberry had been exposed as a stock “hypester” who sold “tips” to the unsuspecting investor which turned out to be false. One of his “tips” was that an AIDS drug called AidsVax was “proven” to work, driving-up the stock price. It turned out the drug had failed in clinical trials, and when news of this came out the stock subsequently crashed, causing many to lose their shirts but allowing Stansberry and his co-conspirators to profit handsomely—not from stock they purchased and sold while the stock was high, but from the sale of the “tip.”
The SEC filed a complaint against Stansberry, his newsletter and his publisher, alleging the following:
1. Defendants engaged in an ongoing scheme to defraud public investors by disseminating false information in several Internet newsletters published by Agora or its wholly owned subsidiaries such as Pirate (now known as Stansberry & Associates). Through various publications, defendants claimed to have inside information about certain public companies. Defendants suggested that its readers could cash in on the inside information and make quick profits. The defendants offered to sell the inside information to newsletter subscribers for a fee of $1,000 (this was also in reference to 1,217 investors who bought Stansberry’s “super insider tip” in another scam involving the energy company USEC).
2. Numerous subscribers purchased the defendants "inside tips" and made investment decisions based on that information. The purported inside information was false and, as a result, the subscribers did not realize the profits the defendants promised.
3. The defendants, however, profited handsomely. On information and belief, Agora received in excess of $1 million from the sale of false information to its newsletter subscribers.
Found guilty of selling stock “tips” based on fraudulent claims, Stansberry was fined $1.5 million. While the Wall Street Journal opined that the SEC had no case, because Stansberry was merely exercising his right to “free speech” and had not personally invested in the stock he “hyped,” the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, stating that fraud is fraud, regardless of the context. The judge noted that not only did Stansberry engage in activities that “undoubtedly involved deliberate fraud,” but repeatedly made “statements that he knew to be false.”
So if you are ever tempted to find out what “endofamerica.com” is all about, just know that in doing so, you will be force endure over an hour of doomsday “hype” by a man has been in the past sanctioned for selling fraud.
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The family of John T. Williams, the Native American woodcarver shot to death by ex-Seattle police officer Ian Birk, settled their wrongful death suit for $1.5 million. This compares with the $10 million received by a white man, Christopher Harris, after a King County Transit deputy shoved his head against a wall, causing permanent brain injury. We might also compare this to the civil suit against Bellevue, its police department and officer Mike Hetle that was eventually settled for $75,000—reduced from $5 million—in a case brought by the mother of Guatemalan immigrant Nelson Mendez, who had been shot and killed by Hetle in 2001. On the day he was killed, Mendez had packed his belongings into his car, intending to drive to the airport to fly to California that afternoon. His cousin, apparently upset that he was going to leave without paying his share of the rent for the Bellevue apartment they co-habitated, called 9-1-1 to claim domestic violence as a way to threaten him. As Mendez was leaving, three Bellevue police officers arrived, one of them Hetle. Hetle blocked Mendez’s car, and according to witnesses, within as little as six seconds he got out of his patrol car and shot Mendez several times. Hetle claimed that Mendez was reaching for a weapon, but all that was found was his wallet. Bizarrely, despite the fact that Mendez was probably already dead, the police pulled him out of the car and handcuffed him, likely in order to alter the perceptions of witnesses; however, the other officers did note that they did not understand why Hetle confronted Mendez with lethal force without waiting for them to arrive at the scene only moments later. At the subsequent inquest, jurors were not allowed to hear testimony that Hetle had already been reprimanded for threatening an Ethiopian woman with deportation after she complained of harassment and derogatory comments during a traffic stop (she eventually would receive a $5,750 judgment in court over the incident). But despite the fact that the jury reached the predictable “justified” verdict, one juror admitted they might have reached an “unjustified” conclusion if the questions they had to answer were not so narrowly tailored to favor the police. Latino residents of Bellevue have often complained of their treatment by Bellevue police; interestingly, a former Bellevue police detective, Carlos Preciado, charged the department with racial commentary and innuendo, both toward him and the Latino community. Naturally, no white officer in the department professed to know what he was talking about.
What about Hetle? The police chief jokingly suggested that he might want to talk to him about the Mendez incident, except that by then Hetle had managed to skip town; he had somehow been allowed to “serve” in Hawaii as a member of the National Guard. The conceited Hetle also managed to wrangle $30,000 from the city for what he called the “harassment” he received because of all the publicity over the killing and the business about the Ethiopian woman. Hetle was clearly a head case in his racist attitude toward minorities, which made him perfectly suitable for the Department of Homeland Security, which currently employs him.
The reality is that Bachmann and other Republicans are using the “birther” propaganda as a partisan political attack weapon. And why not? A shocking 43 percent of Americans, according a recent poll, are still not convinced that Obama is a native-born citizen. When Stephanopoulos surprised Bachmann by producing a notarized copy of Obama’s birth certificate, stamped with the official state of Hawaii seal, she refused to even look at, as if doing so would cause her permanent blindness (not necessarily a bad thing, since it might teach her to appreciate her other senses—or lack of). To publicly acknowledge her ethical and factual shortcomings was clearly not something that Bachmann was prepared to do; having not actually studied the document that Stephanopoulos was thrusting at her, she could claim later that since she hadn’t actually seen it, she still can’t “vouch” for its “authenticity.” This is how Republican/Tea Party fraudsters operate: The facts are right in front of them, but because they live in an alternative universe, lies pass for truth. Even now Bachmann is comparing taxes to the Holocaust, and trying her best make the complaints of the rich a white cause; if the working class’ “economic liberty” is being sucked from them, it is not due to the policies of Obama or the liberal “socialists,” but by the plantation master-and-slave and profits before living wage philosophy of corporate America and their Republican stooges. Bachmann, Sarah Palin and others might call attacks on the current status quo as “anti-American,” but the real anti-Americanism is the repeated use of lies and misinformation in support of a society rife with inequality and economic injustice.
So why don’t we just tell the truth about the birther matter? No one with a European name is being asked to produce their birth certificate. John McCain was born in Panama and nobody is professing to have an issue with that. The birth certificate really isn’t the point; the point is that it is just an excuse to highlight Obama’s name, his race and his “foreignness” for whites to whom race—along with all the paranoia and stereotypes applied to it—is and has always been their primary “concern” about Obama.
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Some more thoughts on Donald Trump’s delusion that he is presidential material: He’s obviously been conned by his own public relations machine. He’s been portrayed as a “successful” businessman, but really he’s just a “celebrity”—perhaps a little more substantive than Paris Hilton and her friend Nicole Richie combined. The fact is that he’s made his money gaming the system, having been in and out of bankruptcy courts for at least twenty years. And he’s not a “self-made” man—his father, Fred Trump, was. “The Donald” benefited immensely from his father’s success and good name as a builder of residential homes and rental apartments in New York City, and Trump used his father’s Trump Organization assets to set himself up; he’s a good salesman of the infomercial variety, but otherwise people should not be fooled by this self-promoter and charlatan.
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While I was waiting for the weather report that comes “every ten minutes” on KOMO radio, I was forced to listen to some right-wing guest of John Carlson complain about why we are in Afghanistan; do you think this hypocrite realizes that he actually has something in common with the “progressive” left? Of course not; wasn’t it Obama and the socialist left that got us into the war in the first place? I started to chuckle when he said that the Bush administration erred not by putting too few boots on the ground in the beginning, but because he put “too many” boots in the country; it always kills me how these conservative extremists put aside common sense and tell blatant fabrications just to play partisan games. It was claimed that all we needed were a few soldiers to patrol the porous Afghan-Pakistani border—without acknowledging the fact that the failure to have sufficient troops on the ground led to the escape of the majority of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces to fight another day. Again, the left has argued all along that we really can’t “win” in Afghanistan because of the lack of infrastructure—social, governmental or otherwise—and now trying to appropriate the common sense view if they see it plays better with their constituency. Obama’s mistake was that he thought that he could “fix” Bush’s mistakes, but after six years of neglect, that is clear that by then it was too late; we should cut our losses by negotiating a settlement with the de facto powers that be. But why kid ourselves? If Obama had decided to pull out of Afghanistan soon after he took office, the right would be saying that he left the country wide open for terrorists.
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I read a story about Amazon’s Kindle “E-library,” which called this development the sounding of the death knell for the traditional book. Twenty years ago a college professor told me that computers would make books obsolete; however, they still seem to be hanging around. I admit that devices like Kindle are theoretically useful in the fact that they can store multiple titles in its internal memory, although what happens when the hard drive or memory stick is damaged or the software is crippled (or when the battery runs out, for that matter) are issues that prevent me from getting too excited about the technology. I still much prefer the paper book. Why? Primarily because I don’t trust the longevity of electronic media, but also because I’m one those people who rarely reads a book from page one, especially if it’s a historical work, and particularly if I am already familiar with the timeline. On the other hand if, if there is something that requires a little background checking to understand, then I can quickly flip back to the relevant section. You can’t do that with an e-book, at least not easily. Person who reads a real book should also be seen to be a more serious reader than a person with a Kindle, who is probably more interested in the technology than in retaining inspiration for the long-term. And imagine what would happen if we had one of those solar flares that knocked-out electricity all over the globe? People with books can at least pass the time more usefully than those whose sensory abilities are limited to what the electronic world feeds them.
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There’s a good bet that the last Academy Awards ceremony will go down as the lamest in history, not merely because of the presentation but because of the lack of compelling product. I didn’t see the “Black Swan” in a theater, but I did watch the DVD because I thought it was supposed to be “good.” Wrong. Even if I forced myself to get past the politics, there was nothing that compelled me. How come lesbian sex is always supposed to be “meaningful” in a bad movie with stupid caricatures and makes absolutely no sense, except on a political and “metaphorical” level? It always amuses me that in programming like “The L Word,” women who look nothing like the bald, tattooed and nose- ringed women I see on Capitol Hill howl like they never heard of the word “fake.” It all seems so, well, political. “What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?” Yeah, my ears and incredulity. In the movie, the ballet director is the stereotypical Euro-trash sex predator, but that doesn’t mean it’s a true caricature. Some people have portrayed the film as “pornographic” because of all the action between the bulimic Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis; sorry, but neither one of them does a thing for me—together or apart—and worse, for a movie with so much “sex,” there is no nudity at all in it. No reason for me to suffer to watch it again. They could have cut the boring sex scenes and concentrated on Portman’s lines; it would have made her Oscar win more palatable and less stomach-grinder material. It just goes to show you that film reviewers—just like music critics today—have to pimp for anything vaguely “meaningful” so they can keep their job descriptions viable. It might be hard to believe now, but there was a time when telling a compelling story that forced the viewer to ask questions was important to a filmmaker—or at least knew how to make such a film.
To be fair, I can’t leave “The King’s Speech” be. Now, I suppose watching a commoner break the uptight King down into a cussing fit has its charms, but if that’s the highlight, I’ve seen better cussing by other kings; Peter O’Toole’s profane Henry II in “The Lion in Winter” was entirely more entertaining. I don’t understand it; why are Americans—or rather the American media—fascinated with British royalty anyways? Didn’t American “patriots” fight a revolution so they wouldn’t have to kneel before these arrogant, posturing clowns? All this fuss about the royal wedding between Prince William and what’s-her-name with the giraffe neck—we should see it for what it is: just more bread and circuses for the British proletariat. Snore. It was said that the former Labour Party (what’s with the extra “u” anyways?) prime ministers were not invited because the Labour Party was not as supportive of maintaining the antiquated monarchy and their puffed-up fakery. And no, not all the colonials are pining for the old days of King George; when I came into work the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, the graveyard shift apparently preferred to sleep than watch the wedding. Anyways, for “The King’s Speech” to win the best picture Oscar only means that this was yet another year of subpar filmmaking. Back in the day, it was possible for real drama in the presentation; for the 1976 Oscars, great films like “Rocky,” “Taxi Driver,” “Network” and “All the President’s Men” were under consideration and all would have been perfectly acceptable winners (“Network” probably should have won over “Rocky”). That’s my opinion, anyways.
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There is a men’s restroom in the ramp area at the airport that I am certain is much less aesthetic than the women’s room across the way in more ways than one. Despite the fact that there are three urinals, there are some “sensitive” people who insist on not just urinating in the stalls, but either urinate on the toilet seat, or not flush, or both. I suppose that some people from certain countries who have never seen a urinal and have no idea what it is for; on the other hand, there are certainly some people who do it just because they have no concern for the anyone else. But I have another theory: Those who should know better do it because they’ve been taught that this is the “right way.” Who could that be? Mothers? Girlfriends? Wives? We’ve all heard that female complaint that men always leave the toilet seat up instead of down. Well, they should leave men be who are actually doing the right thing in regard to toilet bowl etiquette: Putting the seat up before pissing in the bowl. Perhaps the women would like it better if they peed all over the seat. So what if they forget to put the seat back down; it’s better than the alternative of suffering the unpotty-trained. Just take it as a life lesson learned.
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One may recall that a month ago there was on the cover of TIME a picture of a rock that could be the savior of the world’s energy needs. No, it wasn’t a piece of coal or a Dilithium Crystal, but shale. There has been talk about shale before, in the rather expensive process of converting it into liquid oil. Now the talk is about exploiting the huge shale fields in the U.S. and Canada for natural gas extraction—and is already well underway in states like Pennsylvania. The considerable depths where this is found is causes extreme heat where the shale is naturally converted into a gas form; the problem is cutting through the impermeable rock to get to the gas. The method used to cut through the rock and maintain an opening to extract the oil is called “fracking,” which generally involves inserting chemicals to the drilling process to add pressure in order to expand the opening. The U.S. supposedly has enough of reserves to supply the country’s current consumption rate of natural gas for another century.
More sober analysis tells us that natural gas is only a partial answer to our energy needs, and does not even address transportation issues. The fracking process has received a lot of attention for the potential of chemical leaks poisoning water supplies, and the possibility of causing structural weaknesses that result in “seismic” events. There has been very little regulation concerning fracking; in 2004, the Bush EPA declared that there was no “adverse” impacts from fracking, and the issue didn’t warrant “further study”—not surprising, knowing that the EPA under the overview of James Watt disciple Gale Norton, who was in the pocket of industry. Natural gas from shale deposits is also much dirtier than that produced from conventional mean; the production of excessive methane gas—more dangerous a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide— is particularly troubling. In fact, shale gas may be even dirtier than coal.
Yet again the powers that be have presented us an “answer” from old ideas that set us backwards instead of forward. Solar and wind power help, but do not address transportation requirements. I remember when the “cold fusion” story excited a lot of people in 1989, but since then it has been derided as pseudo-science; I was listening to “Coast-to-Coast” the other night, which dealt with the alleged “conspiracy” against cold fusion, but the fact remains that it is physically impossible to generate the pressures needed to cause fusion at room temperature. Hydrogen gas has been touted as the “answer,” except that it still requires more energy input to produce than it outputs. Right now, the only “feasible” long-term energy “solution” to wean the country off imported oil is converting enmass to electric powered-vehicles, which would still require much more efficient batteries and recharging methods than currently available to make it a truly feasible option.
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According to the latest census information, Mississippi has a population that is 37.2 percent black, the highest in the country; only 0.9 percent of the population identifies itself as more than one race, half the national average. 17 percent of the population has a bachelors degree or higher, 2/3rd the national average. Although home ownership is slightly above the national average, half of all homes have a value of less than $72,000—60 percent of the national median. Median household and individual income is 70 percent of the national average, and the poverty rate is 60 percent higher than the national average; close to half of blacks live below the official poverty line. Mississippi, of course, has always been notorious for being last or near last in every quality of life indicator, as is its support for public and higher education.
And this is the perfect world according to the right. A Gallup poll in February identified Mississippi as the most conservative state in the country, with over 50 percent of the state identifying themselves as “conservative,” and naturally has been controlled by Republican governors for all but one term in the last 30 years. Since 58 percent of the state is non-Hispanic white, we might conjecture that at least 80 percent of whites identify themselves as conservative. The extent of this conservatism is such that another recent poll revealed that 46 percent of those who identified themselves as Republican believed that interracial marriage should be illegal. Although Democrats do maintain some presence in the state legislature, the essential conservatism of white Democrats is born-out by the unusual number of legislators who have switched parties while in office—so many in the Senate that the Democrats went from a 28-24 majority after the 2007 state elections to a 25-27 minority today without benefit of election; one suspects that the Democrats who switched parties did not want to be identified as being a member of the party with that “colored” president (I’m sure in private they use more “colorful” language to describe Obama). Many people claim (usually Republicans), that we are in the “least racist” period of the country’s history. We are also told that whites are “color blind.” But that is certainly not true everywhere, and certainly not true of Republicans, particularly in the South. You would think that 25 percent of whites in Mississippi at least share the idea of social equality for the greater good, but even that small minority cannot be mustered. White Mississippians may give some visitors the impression that they are friendly, but just don’t ask them questions like why the state has an Apartheid mentality. I am always reminded of the white female student in the southern college I attended who claimed she wasn’t a racist, but would never “go out” with a black man. Color-blind my fundament.
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There was a story recently about the FBI invaded some guy’s home, put him in a prone posture and demanded that he confess that he had been rummaging through the dung pile of internet child porn—except that it wasn’t him, but the guy next door stealing access to his Wi-Fi. The FBI has been accused of sending out fake hyperlinks to computers to see who they could “catch” displaying an interest in child porn (the 11-year-old Brooke Shields in “Pretty Baby” doesn’t qualify); the courts have ruled that merely clicking on a hyperlink (even if you don’t know what it is for) is sufficient to get a person arrested as a child porn pervert. Something tells me these guys can be quite persistent, to the point of harassment. I recall some years ago that one day I started getting these unsolicited e-mails that I at first regarded as annoying spam; if you spend a lot of time surfing the web, you will eventually encounter people with something to “sell,” especially websites that receive income from advertising for other websites. Anyways, it seemed that every day my inbox was filling up with links advertising “products” that I found disturbing and refused to touch save to identify them as spam to be deleted upon receipt. But no matter how many links were marked as spam, more replaced them each day. It got to the point where all I did every morning was click the “select all” button and delete the increasingly insistent come-ons.
Then one day, after a few months of this, the spam stopped. It didn’t merely dribble away to nothing; one day I checked my inbox, and there was nothing to delete. I wonder now what would have happened if I had actually hit one of these links, even just to find out who was sending this stuff, since there never was a dot-com indicated, just an obviously phony name and a tagline. I did feel someone was harassing me and making some rather offensive insinuations regarding my “interests.”
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Several news organizations managed to get their hands on some WikiLeaks documents, which they recently been given “permission” to release to the public, in regard to the prison operations at Guantánamo. It seems that not only did the Bush administration suffer intelligence breakdowns in regard to the 9-11 attack, but contrary to popular opinion, American intelligence experts were complete amateurs when it came to interrogation techniques and determining who was or wasn’t a detainee of “value.” The U.S. had to send in the “experts”—Chinese and Russian state security agents—with questionable results. According to newspaper analysis of the data, the information that interrogators did glean was mainly hearsay from detainees who claim to have heard something from someone else, but they personally had no knowledge of—or from self-described “insiders” who claimed to know more than they actually knew, making-up details and essentially making fools of U.S. agents; records show that many of these latter have been released for their so-called “cooperation.”
Naturally, Sean Hannity over at Fox News called the release of these embarrassing (for the Bush administration) revelations to be “treason.” Hannity can be easily dismissed for the bigot he is, and some of the criticisms from overseas should only be taken as self-serving, since heaping abuse on the U.S. has been a favorite pastime of Europeans since at least the 1970s. One may conjecture, given the incompetence of the interrogation techniques, that this displayed an adherence to anti-torture conventions prior to 9-11 that other countries cannot claim. Since the prisoners at Gitmo ultimately revealed nothing that aided in the capture of Osama Bin Laden—or anything else particularly useful—the Bush administration could have saved itself from these embarrassing revelations by treating the detainees like prisoners of war, and conducting intelligence work in the field, such as before something like 9-11 occured.
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The Obama Justice Department has warned the state of Washington that if the medical marijuana bill that was passed by both chambers of the legislature is signed into law, that it will enforce federal statutes that forbid “growing and selling” marijuana, despite the fact that the administration has “looked the other way” with regard to limited use of medicinal marijuana. The government has particular concerns about state employees being involved in issuing licenses to private persons for growing marijuana, which local authorities and police demanded in order to help ferret-out growers with illegal uses in mind. A Justice Department spokesperson, however, put out this rather quizzical statement: "We are not going to look the other way while significant drug-trafficking organizations try and shield their illegal efforts from investigation and prosecution through the pretense that they are medical dispensaries.” The problem here is that technically, this is exactly what the state hopes to avoid in passing a law establishing licensed dispensaries. The Justice Department seems to saying that they believe state regulators are secret drug dealers, trying to set-up their own operations, or give their drug-dealing friends a leg-up on the competition. This is not completely beyond the realm of possibility, but on the other hand this is a farfetched and paranoid interpretation to put on the law which seeks to reduce—not increase—illegal activity.
The “war on drugs” has been not only a clear failure and purely a political exercise, but in fact has produced more violence and illegality than it has stopped. The tact that the Justice Department should take is allow the law to pass, and simply stand back and see what effect it has. My sense is that it will not cause any uptick in drug-related crime, or cause a legion of Zombie-eyed addicts wandering the countryside. It might even prove that marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol or aspirin.
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A week ago, Newsweek had a cover story about “Dead Suit Walking.” Apparently this is in reference to older white men in white color management jobs and blue collar manufacturing jobs who are out of a job and supposedly no future. Feminists or other gender activists think this is a “good” thing. I have a limited amount of sympathy to spare for these fellas (certainly more than the fire department at the airport; it must be tough being an arrogant diva who once in blue moon actually has to do something to earn his or her paycheck); the fact is that it was their bosses who made the business choices that sold not just them, but many millions of working people who actually made things, down the river. Some take gleeful pleasure in this, as if this reveals some “insight” into the male psyche rather than an indication of how the country’s economy has eroded in the face of cheap labor and goods from Asia. Take this quote in the article from Judith Gerberg, an “executive career coach” specializing in “coaching” women:
“Many of these guys may be great on the back nine but totally lack the skill set to get them through anything like this. If you went to the college of your choice, married the woman of your choice, and bought the house of your choice, you’ve never dealt with rejection. You’ve never had to develop fortitude.” Meaning, of course, that these men are, once you strip away the façade, weak and vulnerable. Yippee. The reality is that in this society, men have the pressure of being programmed to understand that they are responsible for others; women, on the other hand, have been programmed to believe that someone else should be responsible for their well-being.
This week, not surprisingly, Newsweek “celebrates” the alternate “reality”: Two youngish white females who are “America’s next billionaires.” Self-made the Olsen Twins are not; they were infants when they became “famous” playing the same character on “Fullhouse,” standing in for each on alternate days to abide by child labor laws. By the age of seven “they” were marketing this gimmick. Of course, it was not ”they” who were the brains behind the scheme, but their parents, managers and PR department who thought a quick buck could be made in the “famous for being famous” generation. Their subsequent TV shows have been panned by critics and died rapid deaths, but no matter; the teen market is alive and well for the insubstantial; the twins are living Barbie Dolls for the “reality” TV age (no talent required, just be in the right place at the right time). The Olsens’ seem to be doing quite well representing a clothing line that has been described as the “homeless look”—i.e. the trashy look, which frankly along with baggy shorts and pants hanging half-way down the arse is less a “style” than an “attitude”—and not one that gives us much hope for the future. If the Olsen Twins “success” proves anything, it is how unfair life is; it reminds me of the old black woman in “Being There” watching the mentally-challenged Chance the Gardener on television being lionized by high society: “Yes, sir, all you've gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want.” At any rate, the Olsens’ “look”—along with their fraudulent good fortune—will hopefully lose its appeal in time, since there is nothing more nauseating than middle-aged women painting themselves up to look like teenagers.
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America’s greatest dramatist is Eugene O’Neill, although I doubt many Americans are sufficiently aware of their “culture” to know this. One of his great plays is “Mourning Becomes Electra,” and it is technically it is influenced by ancient Greek drama. It’s principle theme is about how jealousy, deceit, incestuous relations, revenge, murder, madness and suicide led to the downfall of a family. I saw the 1947 film version starring Rosalind Russell and Michael Redgrave; at slightly less than 3 hours in length, it was still truncated from the original text. During the 1970s, the play was mounted on public television in a version that was 100 minutes longer than the film version, and this version was released complete on DVD. I assumed that this version would be more satisfying than the film.
I was wrong, very wrong. It wasn’t merely that Roberta Maxwell in the key role of Lavinia fell noticeably short of Russell’s powerful performance; the film stayed true to the essential elements of this tragic drama, and the longer television version, unhappily, did not (Sidney Lumet, on the other hand, cut no corners in his television production of “The Iceman Cometh”). In the original play, the progression of events led inexorably to a self-inflicted horror, ending with Lavinia, with nowhere else to hide from her sins, voluntarily locks herself up forever in the family residence that had literally become a tomb of the dead. The television version destroys the awful power of the drama by tacking on a confusing “happy ending.” While the first and second sections of the play generally keeps to script, the tinkering with the third part destroys whatever intent that O’Neill envisioned. In this production, the denouement goes something like this: Lavinia’s brother Orin (who is tormented by his mother’s suicide) says crazy things, Lavinia’s suitor, Peter, arrives to comfort her, promise to marry her, and they will help Orin get better. While they are embracing, Orin comes into the room with a strange look in his eyes. That’s it. End of story. What is it supposed to mean? We don’t really know.
The power of the drama is literally emasculated by an ambiguous ending that holds out the hope for “happiness.” There is no such ambiguity in the more surprisingly more faithful 1947 film, which I absolutely recommend over this. The essential elements that O’Neill intended remain intact: Orin goes mad with self-incrimination, blackmails Lavinia by writing an account of the family crimes, and after Lavinia emasculates him verbally, he commits suicide. Lavinia, growing mad with her own sense of the world crumbling around her, frightens Peter with her aggressive desire to marry, and then ends any hope for a “happy” conclusion when she admits to a rumor (probably false) that she had some sexual escapade with a Pacific island native during a recent holiday. After Peter stalks off, vowing never to see her again, she tells her handyman to shutter-up the mansion, where she, as the last of the Mannons, will live out her life among the family dead.
All too often, we see the intentions of dramatists and authors twisted into something that that is allegedly more “palatable” for the audience's of filmed media. Some directors, like Sidney Lumet who was also responsible for the superb film version of “A Long Day’s Journey into Night” knew that tacking on “happy endings” made moot everything that went before it. In the Susanna Moore novel “In the Cut,” the main character paid for her lack of judgment with the belated realization that she was about to be a serial killer’s next victim, and she was helpless to stop it; Jane Campion’s film version, on the other hand, has a fairy tale-like ending that is entirely unrealistic. Richard Brooks, on the other hand, played no such games with the tragic, violent denouement of the novel he based his film “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” on—which still has not been released on DVD.
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I was listening to the BBC world news radio program concerning an American’s glorification of Winnie Mandela. Shirley Jo Finney, because she was black and female (thus “sensitive” to the subject matter), was hired to direct “Winnie: The Opera,” the content of which was personally approved by Mandela. “I have always wanted to come to South Africa and Winnie the Opera speaks to who I am as an artist, a spirit, a woman, a mother and as a humanist, preparing for world-wide tour, celebrating the life of Winnie Mandela,” Finney said. She may be an icon to her die-hard supporters in South Africa, but it is a disservice to pretend that the opera tells the “whole story” in order to portray Mandela as some kind of saint.
It is true that Winnie Mandela participated as a focus for discontent among the dispossessed natives of South Africa, and she did serve a total of about 17 months in prison at various times in the 1960s and 70s. However, it appears that all the adulation passed her way turned her into a kind of megalomaniac—believing herself invulnerable as the wife of the imprisoned martyr Nelson Mandela. While Bishop Desmond Tutu was vocal in opposing Reagan’s policy of “constructive engagement” toward the Apartheid government and presented the moral challenge that foreign countries could not ignore without losing face, Winnie Mandela was terrorizing and killing those she regarded as her enemies—which should not have been difficult to believe, since she frequently employed rhetoric regarded as “bloodthirsty.” She operated as a virtual warlord in Soweto during the 1980s, with her “body guards”—the Mandela United Football Club—providing the muscle on her orders. Members of the “club” would later testify that Mandela had not only ordered torture and murder, but personally participated in such acts. She was eventually convicted for the murder of a 14-year-old boy—and was also suspected in the murder of her own personal physician, who refused to cover-up the crime—but her prison sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal. She would later be convicted on a fraud charge, but her popularity among her “people” is such that she was recently elected to a legislative seat.
Mandela was also far from the faithful wife of myth; she had numerous affairs while Nelson was in prison, and upon his release, it was said she could not bring herself to even touch him. Her violent rhetoric and temper was also at odds with Nelson’s desire for peace solutions after 27 years in prison. These days, Mandela spends her time attacking Nelson and Tutu, allegedly because they haven’t done enough to support a more radical redistribution of wealth, but mainly because their reputations are less sullied than hers. Nelson, for his part, has always spoken graciously of her, even after he divorced her after it was clear that their bond was more symbolic than real.
People tend to forget that although Nelson and Winnie Mandela were the symbol of the anti-Apartheid movement, it was Oliver Tambo who as the ambassador and de facto head of the “government in exile” served as the most effective representative for a post-Apartheid South Africa, which doubtless made the imposition of sanctions against the Apartheid government more palatable for some countries not inclined to do so—like the right-wing regimes of Reagan and the UK under Margaret Thatcher. Had he not been struck with a stroke, and later die in 1993, Tambo and not Nelson Mandela would likely have been the first president of a free South Africa.
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There was a story in the Seattle Times that is indicative of the double-standard applied to the “favored” and “unfavored” minority groups. While this state discourages educational and professional attainment of its own population in favor of foreign and out-of-state students for strictly "budgetary" reasons, Chinese immigrants, students and those with work visas are given glowing reviews despite their presence in high-paying jobs that might otherwise have gone to a “native,” and the fact of job losses here from unfair trade practices there. I personally don’t care if white people don’t care, but what I find particularly galling is that on the other hand they demonize Latinos for “taking” low-paying jobs; the Seattle Times in particular has frequently been involved in this mendacity. Of course, it will be said that the Chinese “contribute” more, but that only means they’ve taken the place of a native who could have contributed the same thing. All of this is indicative of the fact that the media, rather than report the news dispassionately, betrays the prejudices of its membership.
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Some people may have heard or seen an advertisement exhorting you to listen to a renowned “journalist”—who boasted that he “predicted” the Wall Street and mortgage meltdowns—tell you how to save yourself from the consequences of his “dire prophecy.” The website—or websites—where this vital information is to be found is called “endofamerica##.com.” The ## is actually a number, like 21 or 36; it is unclear why there are differently numbered messages, since they basically repeat the same line. The “journalist” is someone named Porter Stansberry, who runs a website company called “Stansberry Investment Research.” He basically drones on for over an hour about doom and gloom, anti-government, the world is over unless you wait to find out what secret information he has to impart. Much of what he says about the problem of government debt is true in isolation, but completely lacks context. In the radio and TV add teaser, we are warned that something “baaaad” is going to happen in the next twelve months, but he never gets around to telling us what exactly that is. Stansberry throws out words like “riots,” “martial law,” “protests” and “socialism” so often that it becomes clear that his real agenda is frighten the paranoid fear freaks into such state in the hope that he can snag at least a few of these suckers on his line. He claims credit for “predicting” the mortgage meltdowns of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, except that he forgets to mention that not only did they only represent a small percentage of the failed mortgages, but the fact that it was the Bush administration’s anti-regulatory stance that dismissed the Clinton-era lending rules that were meant to prevent predatory loans from being used to inflate affordable housing benchmarks. Stansberry also derisively dismisses the idea of taxing the rich as an option to close the deficit, even to maintain Social Security; this basically reveals him to be nothing but a right-wing hack engaging in a political diatribe. The CBO recently reported that federal revenues are at their lowest level as a percentage of GDP since 1950; Any sensible long-term plan should include raising the income ceiling on Social Security deductions—as well as raising the Medicare tax from 1.45 percent to 2 percent. At least it is much less onerous on the poor rich than the 70 and 90 percent top marginal rates of the past, so their complaints can’t be taken any more seriously than that of a child crying because he can’t have candy for breakfast, lunch AND supper.
After an hour of this, Stansberry finally gets to the “point”: How to hide your money from the government, the “secrets of the silver market,” and the “100 percent secret” which will shield you and your family from certain doom. All of this vital information and more can be had for half-off the list price of a subscription for his monthly “investment advisory.” While the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s has portrayed Stansberry as some kind of soothsayer, his defrauded customers say otherwise. In 2003, after Stansberry had been exposed as a stock “hypester” who sold “tips” to the unsuspecting investor which turned out to be false. One of his “tips” was that an AIDS drug called AidsVax was “proven” to work, driving-up the stock price. It turned out the drug had failed in clinical trials, and when news of this came out the stock subsequently crashed, causing many to lose their shirts but allowing Stansberry and his co-conspirators to profit handsomely—not from stock they purchased and sold while the stock was high, but from the sale of the “tip.”
The SEC filed a complaint against Stansberry, his newsletter and his publisher, alleging the following:
1. Defendants engaged in an ongoing scheme to defraud public investors by disseminating false information in several Internet newsletters published by Agora or its wholly owned subsidiaries such as Pirate (now known as Stansberry & Associates). Through various publications, defendants claimed to have inside information about certain public companies. Defendants suggested that its readers could cash in on the inside information and make quick profits. The defendants offered to sell the inside information to newsletter subscribers for a fee of $1,000 (this was also in reference to 1,217 investors who bought Stansberry’s “super insider tip” in another scam involving the energy company USEC).
2. Numerous subscribers purchased the defendants "inside tips" and made investment decisions based on that information. The purported inside information was false and, as a result, the subscribers did not realize the profits the defendants promised.
3. The defendants, however, profited handsomely. On information and belief, Agora received in excess of $1 million from the sale of false information to its newsletter subscribers.
Found guilty of selling stock “tips” based on fraudulent claims, Stansberry was fined $1.5 million. While the Wall Street Journal opined that the SEC had no case, because Stansberry was merely exercising his right to “free speech” and had not personally invested in the stock he “hyped,” the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, stating that fraud is fraud, regardless of the context. The judge noted that not only did Stansberry engage in activities that “undoubtedly involved deliberate fraud,” but repeatedly made “statements that he knew to be false.”
So if you are ever tempted to find out what “endofamerica.com” is all about, just know that in doing so, you will be force endure over an hour of doomsday “hype” by a man has been in the past sanctioned for selling fraud.
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The family of John T. Williams, the Native American woodcarver shot to death by ex-Seattle police officer Ian Birk, settled their wrongful death suit for $1.5 million. This compares with the $10 million received by a white man, Christopher Harris, after a King County Transit deputy shoved his head against a wall, causing permanent brain injury. We might also compare this to the civil suit against Bellevue, its police department and officer Mike Hetle that was eventually settled for $75,000—reduced from $5 million—in a case brought by the mother of Guatemalan immigrant Nelson Mendez, who had been shot and killed by Hetle in 2001. On the day he was killed, Mendez had packed his belongings into his car, intending to drive to the airport to fly to California that afternoon. His cousin, apparently upset that he was going to leave without paying his share of the rent for the Bellevue apartment they co-habitated, called 9-1-1 to claim domestic violence as a way to threaten him. As Mendez was leaving, three Bellevue police officers arrived, one of them Hetle. Hetle blocked Mendez’s car, and according to witnesses, within as little as six seconds he got out of his patrol car and shot Mendez several times. Hetle claimed that Mendez was reaching for a weapon, but all that was found was his wallet. Bizarrely, despite the fact that Mendez was probably already dead, the police pulled him out of the car and handcuffed him, likely in order to alter the perceptions of witnesses; however, the other officers did note that they did not understand why Hetle confronted Mendez with lethal force without waiting for them to arrive at the scene only moments later. At the subsequent inquest, jurors were not allowed to hear testimony that Hetle had already been reprimanded for threatening an Ethiopian woman with deportation after she complained of harassment and derogatory comments during a traffic stop (she eventually would receive a $5,750 judgment in court over the incident). But despite the fact that the jury reached the predictable “justified” verdict, one juror admitted they might have reached an “unjustified” conclusion if the questions they had to answer were not so narrowly tailored to favor the police. Latino residents of Bellevue have often complained of their treatment by Bellevue police; interestingly, a former Bellevue police detective, Carlos Preciado, charged the department with racial commentary and innuendo, both toward him and the Latino community. Naturally, no white officer in the department professed to know what he was talking about.
What about Hetle? The police chief jokingly suggested that he might want to talk to him about the Mendez incident, except that by then Hetle had managed to skip town; he had somehow been allowed to “serve” in Hawaii as a member of the National Guard. The conceited Hetle also managed to wrangle $30,000 from the city for what he called the “harassment” he received because of all the publicity over the killing and the business about the Ethiopian woman. Hetle was clearly a head case in his racist attitude toward minorities, which made him perfectly suitable for the Department of Homeland Security, which currently employs him.
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