Life goes on, except when it doesn’t. A guest posting from contributor TOMM.
1938 LIFE Magazine reprint of an RCA press release.
A roundup – politics, important medical news (eyes, Aids, and more), the usual flux of general emotional debility.
Doesn’t feel as though I’m likely to assemble such a congerie of doom again, so y’all can relax that reading this one may be the last such importunity from my little Fortress of Solitude. Instead, just go every day to Political Animal
for a brilliant, pithy, clearly thought out roundup of happenings in this crepuscular age, Ragnarok at the speed of crumbling infrastructure.
The Bible says that without divine intervention “there would no flesh be saved alive.” (Matt 24:22) What is truly striking to me is the number of people arrogant enough to think that that’s a Good Thing because THEY will be among that number, and all of their friends & family, but No One they disagree with because those SOB’s finally will be getting what they so richly deserve….
I don’t understand how a group of people who so noisly pray on street corners and seize Vengeance from its rightful possessor, so conspicuously shun Charity and with brazen tongue make nonjoyful noises (Cor 13:1 and following) and spread The Adversary’s lies rather than accept even a smidgeon of humility or make any effort to be their brother’s keeper.
Ewige Blumenkraft [eternal flower power] my eye.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Whimperbang!
BTW, have you noted the guy who just got the Hero medal, first living etc.? HE has a story that is truly amazing and admirable, so naturally the pigs are complaining that he did not deserve the medal he got because he was saving his fellow soldiers, aka cannonfodder, and heroism is really only about destruction and high body counts, so the whole honor thing has been “feminized” by the N***** and his commie-nazi anti-business dictatorship.
Seriously, if you have not actually seen the guy talk, pls go see him talk. People like this don’t turn up often in one lifetime. Colbert had him on last week, and their brief encounter wd be a good intro. He’s not only a standard-issue GI, he is articulate to the point it seems he’s swallowed the Blarney Stone. Truly amazing.
It’s not only what he did, which is combat heroism enough, but what he says about it: I didn’t do anything special, every day every soldier is out there giving their all, I’ve got the medal because they gave it to me but not because I did different than everyone else so I accept it on behalf of all the people who don’t get noticed and wd trade it in a heartbeat to have my fallen comrades back, etc. etc.
This guy, Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, sounds like Howard Fast (in his pre-Fascist days). Inspiring. I did not see the 60 Minutes piece the day before he got the medal, but somewhere I came across the story of his role in the firefight and ambush. And this is considered suitable behavior and circumstances for humans to be in, here in the year ool 2010. Pathetic that we are all still so unevolved.
Even more fundamentally:
We’ve reached the point at which prominent far-right activists can’t even applaud an American war hero when he’s awarded one of the nation’s highest honors.
The long-held assumptions that the right somehow has the high ground when it comes to honoring and valuing the military are in desperate need of re-evaluation.
Same thing going on as when the president of the United States won the Nobel Peace Prize. Rachel said that, objectively speaking, this was a very great honor for which all America should be proud. Ha! As if!
Another interesting part of this new nihilism is that Republicans no longer support the United States military.
In fact, the U.S. military leadership and congressional Republicans are also on opposite sides of everything from civilian trials for terrorist suspects to closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay to Iran to torture to how the U.S. perceives the Middle East peace process in the context of our national security interests. GOP lawmakers haven’t even fared well on some veterans’ groups congressional scorecards.
The notion of Republicans siding with the military is supposed to be one of those assumed truths that we’re all supposed to just accept. But over the last two years, on most of the major policy disputes related to national security and defense, it’s been Democrats (on both ends of
Pennsylvania Avenue), not Republicans, who’ve been siding with U.S.
military leaders.
Those old partisan assumptions just don’t apply anymore.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026746.php
Rachel [Maddow, MSNBC] called them out on this last week, so some people Are noticing, but hardly enough to make a difference. It’s the same claptrap that says Dems are bad for the economy– an empirically, objectively, easily documented lie.
And look what they want to do instead of support the troops and the unemployed. Step one — abolish the Ethics Office. Also, what could be more important? — end a century and a half of birthright citizenship. Also, kill the Dream Act; surely that’s better than having a policy of their own, right?
Under saner political circumstances, the Dream Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) would pass easily. It was written by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), is co-sponsored by Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), was endorsed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and enjoys the enthusiastic backing of most Democrats, immigrant advocates, and the Obama White House.
The pig party wants war against N Korea just as if no one has let them know that we’re running a little short on soldiers, money, and survival as a nation rapidly sliding into our new role as Haiti’s 3rd World twin bro.
Oh, btw, Chalmes Johnson died. No one noticed, but his old friend James Fallows has a nice little piece in The Atlantic online.
Here’s some good medical news:
Daily pill helps prevent HIV infection in men, study reveals
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/23/pill-hiv-prevention-study
AND:
Just today, UNAIDS announced that “At least 56 countries have either stabilized or achieved significant declines in rates of new HIV infections.” HIV mortality rates have declined by nearly 20 percent since 2004. That’s about 300,000 prevented deaths every year. Even Pope Benedict has unexpectedly opened a useful door with his recent comments that condom distribution is sometimes justified under Catholic doctrine to prevent HIV.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/79412/good-news-aids
ALSO:
2 Treatments for Retinas Make Gains
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: November 22, 2010
Since Mom and I both take supplements in hope of holding off macular degeneration, this kind of medical news is v welcome.
And then there is this:
It’s a whole, fascinating article in the NYT magazine. Absolutely most fascinating and surprising and educational and worthwhile and recommendable and important article on Health Anything that I have read in a very long time.
Part of the story is that diet can stop seizures, but that’s hardly the whole thing or a fair hint at what is included. Implications for all kinds of stuff. Huge breakthroughs that got swept aside and are now being rediscovered. Implications for new treatments and approaches to all kinds of things medical. Part of the story is like the movie about the parents who came up with Lorenzo’s Oil, or the even more recent (2010) Extraordinary Measures, which is a somewhat similar story with different parents, different medical issues.
All I know is that as I kept reading, I kept discovering new stuff that was really unexpected. It was one of those articles that illuminates far more than you think it even can illuminate, and I thought it was all just fascinating.
As for politics, and the like, we are so completely doomed it is hardly worthwhile even to think about it anymore.
I often find it confusing to understand what it is about health care
reform Republicans hate so much, but [Utah R. Sen. Orrin] Hatch’s
unhinged rant helps make the answer clear — they believe things that
aren’t true, because prominent public officials like Hatch are lying to
them. –Steve Benen http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026741.php
Republicans seem to have entered a post-post-9/11 era, in which national
security is no longer a higher priority than their interest in
undermining President Obama. –Dana Milbank, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111907268.html
They claim they are “listening” to “the American People,” but that is, of course, total horsesht. The American People want more health care coverage, not less. They don’t give a fig for balanced budgets; they want jobs.
And yet here come the bastards, eager to hold hearings on every damn thing, which costs money and wastes time while also– what a fortunate coincidence!– paralyze the legitimately elected government from functioning.
They are well on their way to shutting down the government for one thing. Not the slightest question about it. And, in the face of unanimous agreement around the world (except for NKorea and Iraq), they are very close to shooting down the new START treaty. Meanwhile, we have no inspectors for the tons of unsecured nukes inside Russia, and shafting the treaty will also lead directly to Russia supplying weapons to Iraq, nuke stuff to Iraq, and refusing to cooperate w/ us in numerous other areas.
‘I CANNOT FATHOM WHY THEY ARE DOING WHAT THEY ARE DOING’…. I think it’s fair to say Norm Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute, isn’t exactly a raging liberal.
So when he notes in his Roll Call column that Senate Republican tactics on the pending arms control treaty with Russia, New START, are”unsettling and depressing,” I hope Ornstein’s concerns are not only harder to dismiss, but are also taken seriously.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026780.php
Paul Krugman is even more dire:
“These days, national security experts are tearing their hair out over
the decision of Senate Republicans to block a desperately needed new
strategic arms treaty. And everyone knows that these Republicans oppose
the treaty, not because of legitimate objections, but simply because it’s
an Obama administration initiative; if sabotaging the president endangers
the nation, so be it.”
That was from his NYT column Monday.
So here’s what the very serious Mr. [former Senator Alan] Simpson said on Friday: “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April. … When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ‘em a piece of meat, real meat,’” meaning spending cuts. ”And boy, the blood bath will be extraordinary,” he continued.
from U.S. National Library of Medicine
Think of Mr. Simpson’s blood lust as one more piece of evidence that our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize.
The Nobel economist explains the debt ceiling and the consequences of the US being in default on its constitutionally mandated obligations and warns:
The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear
that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing
the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which
means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that
party’s cooperation — cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.
This is the kind of thing that is being published in America’s “newspaper of record,” and everyone smiles and nods and does nothing to stop the catastrophe that’s coming as surely as Katrina was gonna hit New Orleans, and with at least as much destruction.
It’s hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of
some kind. Mr. Simpson may or may not get the blood bath he craves this
April, but there will be blood sooner or later. And we can only hope that
the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize.
Things are, in fact, so bad, that last week the NYT ran an editorial along the same lines:
Editorial
With All Disrespect, Mr. President
Published: November 18, 2010There was supposed to be a bipartisan summit at the White House on
Thursday, but only the Democrats showed up. The Republican leadership of
the House and Senate somehow couldn.t find any time in their schedules to
meet with the president of the United States. If this is what cooperation
and mutual respect is going to look like over the next two years, then
settle in for more trench warfare and far less progress.
This is not a matter of policy or anything else– it’s the contemptible response of contemptible people who feel no obligation whatever to live up to their oath of office and govern the country for the best interest of its citizens rather than for their own personal benefit.
Beyond the practical implications of this rudeness, there is an
increasingly obvious lack of respect for the president and the
presidency, with Republicans interpreting their electoral victory as a
mandate to act with hubris. Steny Hoyer, the outgoing House majority
leader, noted Thursday that he couldn.t remember a single instance when
Democrats did not change their schedule to accommodate a request to meet
with President George W. Bush. Mr. McConnell has already made it clear
that defeating Mr. Obama is more important than negotiating on
legislation. Apparently, that also goes for snubbing Mr. Obama.
I am struck suddenly by the Pledge of Allegiance, now an article of perfervid religious devotion in some quarters– “one nation, indivisible.” Except for all the diehard Confederates and those malcontents who think armed insurrection and state secession are perfectly acceptable ways to defend the constitution.
Anyway, what I think is the most important piece of political reality I’ve read this month is the one where Benen spells it out so bluntly it is hard to see how people can write off his concerns– which, incidentally, are the same as Krugman’s, Matt Yglesias, and other noted pundits:
NONE DARE CALL IT SABOTAGE…. Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you
actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine
its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?You might start with rejecting the advice of economists and oppose any
kind of stimulus investments. You’d also want to cut spending and take
money out of the economy, while blocking funds to states and
municipalities, forcing them to lay off more workers. You’d no doubt want
to cut off stimulative unemployment benefits, and identify the single
most effective jobs program of the last two years (the TANF Emergency
Fund) so you could kill it.You might then take steps to stop the Federal Reserve from trying to
lower the unemployment rate. You’d also no doubt want to create massive
economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system,
promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing
re-write business regulations in general, considering a government
shutdown, and even weighing the possibly of sending the United States
into default.You might want to cover your tracks a bit, and say you have an economic
plan that would help — a tax policy that’s already been tried — but
you’d do so knowing that such a plan has already proven not to work.
Does any of this sound familiar?
The Boehner/McConnell GOP appears willing to gamble: if they can hold the
country back, voters will just blame the president in the end. And that’s
quite possibly a safe assumption.If that’s the case, though, then it’s time for a very public, albeit
uncomfortable, conversation. If a major, powerful political party is
making a conscious decision about sabotage, the political world should
probably take the time to consider whether this is acceptable, whether it
meets the bare minimum standards for patriotism, and whether it’s a
healthy development in our system of government.
Famous conservative writer Andrew Sullivan sees what is happening:
The ghastly truth is that we have one political party that is as close to
organized vandalism as one can imagine. START, the debt ceiling, civil
rights, real spending cuts and tax reform: all these will be subject to
the pure nihilism of the will to power. Their goal is the destruction of
Obama. That is all.http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/11/delay-delay-delay-ctd.html
Greg Sargent and Adam Serwer note the same things, with documentation about how the hubris party isn’t even pretending to have any other ideas. Benen cites them, among others, in his important follow-up to his original piece, which seems to be getting a fair amount of attention:
Of course, these names belong to people who are not necessarily known outside of online political circles and commentaries, even after they show up on the television machine.
But it is not only the wild-eyed middle that thinks the Cheney-Palin party is insane in a way that, frankly, is terrifying. Edward Luce, a reporter for The Financial Times, believes there is “a greater hatred of Obama” among congressional Republican “than there is a love of American national security.” On START, he explains, “Russia’s cooperation is something Obama has worked on very successfully, very patiently… for two years now and this puts that in jeopardy.”
Meanwhile, what ELSE is going on? Business is booming and getting richer faster than ever before, but Obama is “anti-business.” We see how serious financial reform is by noting the silly tsimmis over earmarks, as if that makes any difference whatsoever. Kill everyone one of them and not one penny is saved. Not one. And if every killed earmark made a difference, the whole amount still wd be something under one percent of the budget. Meanwhile, let’s have more money for nukes and let’s spend more on obsolete military technology. Oh, yeah, and let’s start by cutting taxes for the super rich.
What not to do? Let the courts work. The president cannot get even his most qualified and least controversial judicial nominees approved. There is an absolute crisis as a result. When the Senate moves names out of committee unanimously, they still cannot get a vote.
A determined Republican stall campaign in the Senate has sidetracked so
many of the men and women nominated by President Barack Obama for
judgeships that he has put fewer people on the bench than any president
since Richard Nixon at a similar point in his first term 40 years ago.The delaying tactics have proved so successful, despite the Democrats’
substantial Senate majority, that fewer than half of Obama’s nominees hve
been confirmed and 102 out of 854 judgeships are vacant.Forty-seven of those vacancies have been labeled emergencies by the
judiciary because of heavy caseloads.
And why is there a problem?
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has acknowledged
that his strategy is partly payback for Democrats’ blocking some Bush
appointees.
No wonder sober observers are predicting Bad Times ahead.
Me, I think the situation is indeed hopeless, that the Fifth Column Party is hell-bent on destruction. It’s all very odd, this total resentment and rage. Suddenly, the opposition party is turning its back on its own proposals and openly endorsing a consistent policy of sabotage.
It’s a fascinating thing to watch people whose entire identities are
built on a false sense of victimization come to power. Perhaps creepy and
frightening is a better way of putting it.http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/resenting-their-way-to-top_7034.html
Between seditionists and invertebrates, this country and the world in which it exists, are coming to an end faster than I am and at this rate may not outlive me. Interesting to see an empire being intentionally destroyed. I kinda think Obama and Biden shd both step down immediately and let Pelosi take over. At least she knows how to get things done, and the rage would be earth-shattering to the point that Fox would have to go off the air after most of its people die out in a wave of mass apoplexy.
What I can do about all of this is not even to track it any longer, but to roll over and cultivate my own garden. The triumph of Voltaire! And since there is nothing going on with me personally, I’m afraid what lies ahead in the form of e-mail may simply be movie reviews and occasional medical bulletins culled from the news. It’s not that there is nothing to do around here, but it’s no more interesting to go on about now than ever, and actually DOing any of the available chores and activities wd not necessarily making them any livelier a read.
It’s cold outside and tends toward dark. The last few days I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping, waves of exhaustion driving me to bed, even to the point of missing my telly– some of the shows are remarkably smart (think Diehard) but Morpheus takes precedence. Maybe there is just nothing in my life interesting enough to stay awake for.
–
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” –Ernest Hemingway\
–
Thanks, TOMM.
his vorpal sword will return from cyber-Thanksgiving soon. Real soon. Maybe even by Cyber-Monday.
Meanwhile … turkey sandwiches!
Courage.
