83-yr-old blogger skewers Palin and Pals - Priceless!

Some mornings I just ramble around, reading online stuff here and there, finding things that either inspire me or crack me up--and I ramble so much I have no idea how I got to the places I've been. Such was the case this morning when I found "Margaret and Helen".

Margaret and Helen have been best friends for over 60 years. They lived near each other in Texas almost all of their lives, until Margaret and her husband moved to Maine. Then they talked on the phone every day, sometimes for hours. Then Helen's grandson set up a blog for her so that they could communicate that way. Most of what they wrote when they first started was personal, but then people found it and started commenting. Helen embraced her new audience and started writing to them and for them. (Margaret is the foil, so to speak--Helen's Ed McMahon.)


But lest you think that M & H are just two boring old grannies, let me tell you, first, that as of today they've had 2,016,391 hits on their WordPress blog.

Why are these two old ladies so popular? Let me quote for you some stuff from their blog. This is Helen in a piece called,"Sarah Palin Called a Family Meeting and the Rabbit Lived. . ." :

I would cut [Palin] some slack but she used up all her slack with me while on the campaign trail. This is the woman who called the parts of the country where I don’t live more Pro-American than the part where I do live. She stirred up crowds across the country to the point that McCain campaign stops frequently resembled a lynch mob. She mixes religion and politics like I mix gin and tonic but then calls for less government involvement. Freedom from government is her battle cry until a vagina gets involved and then watch how much involvement she wants. Show me a woman who is making a private medical decision to end a pregnancy and I’ll show you a Palin screaming for more government involvement.

In her piece called "In Appreciation or Depreciation of Michael Jackson", she wrote:

If it were up to me, I would establish a few rules right about now regarding hypocrisy. Something along the lines of:

• If you’re Michael Jackson’s father now is not the time to be enjoying the limelight.
• You can’t be Pro-Life and Pro-War at the same time. If one of these dispositions has to be in your cadre, then pick one and live with the consequences.
• You can’t deny the right to marry to some and then cheat on your spouse. The right to happily marry belongs to all no mater how unhappy it makes you.
• You can’t tolerate the atrocities of one President for eight years and then assign the consequences to one who follows. From this day forward everything was Reagan’s fault.
• The Christian Right should be forced to spend a week in Iran. May the best radicals win.
• The Real Housewives should actually be housewives.

About that last one. I mean it. Really.

Here's Helen in "My Big Fat Ass":

Margaret, whatever happened to common sense? I eat a lot of pie. I have a fat ass. I get the connection. You hardly eat anything, walk everyday and a strong wind could blow you over. Again, I get the connection. So why is it so hard for Bill O’Reilly over at Fox News to understand the connection between what he says and how someone responds to what he says?

It’s just not that big of a leap to see a connection between the television news calling someone a Baby Killing Nazi over and over again and some religious fanatic deciding to finally pull the trigger. I get that it is not quite the same as the pie making my ass fat, but I don’t work for Jenny Craig. Bill O’Reilly, however, works for Fox News. The emphasis, of course, is on that last word – News. He should know better. He is paid to know better. He should be fired for not knowing better.

And lastly, but not leastly, this one from "Shit Happens":

I’m 83. For most of my life, I drove a big car and watered my lawn in the middle of the day. Now I think twice about how I live because I realize life goes on and my grandchildren will be here long after I am gone.

For most of my life I never gave much thought about gay people. Now I watch Ellen and really hope she and Portia are happy together. What do I care if gay people want to get married.

For most of my life I really didn’t care too much who ended up in the White House. Then one day a lunatic took up residence and started an unnecessary war, condoned torture and made me ashamed of my country. So now I pay attention… because shit happens. Really. I mean it.

Margaret blogs, too, and I've given her short shrift here, but I suspect she's used to it.

Check them out. They're two of a kind. (The comments are terrific, too. Am I jealous? You bet. But I can't be Helen. There's only one Helen.)

Really.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)

Chamber of Commerce vs. Labor Unions: Guess who Wins?

Labor is the great producer of wealth: it moves all other causes.
Congressman Daniel Webster, 4/2/1824

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than the other association of men.
Clarence Darrow, The Railroad Trainman, 1909

Without labor nothing prospers.
Popular banner

The history of America has been largely created by the deeds of its working people and their organizations. Nor has this contribution been confined to raising wages and bettering work conditions; it has been fundamental to almost every effort to extend and strengthen our democracy.
William Cahn, labor authority and historian

We insist that labor is entitled to as much respect as property. But our workers with hand and brain deserve more than respect for their labor. They deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, fireside chat, 1936

If I were a worker in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt

The first thing a dictator does is abolish the free press. Next he abolishes the right of labor to go on strike. Strikes have been labor's weapon of progress in the century of our industrial civilization. Where the strike has been abolished … labor is reduced to a state of medieval peonage, the standard of living lowered, the nation falls to subsistence level.
George Seldes, Freedom of the Press, 1935

The right to join a union of one's choice is unquestioned today and is sanctioned and protected by law.
President Harry S. Truman

Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.
President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961), general and Allied Supreme Commander in World War II

There's s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.
Walter Reuther

In light of this fundamental structure of all work… in light of the fact that, labor and capital are indispensable in any social system … it is clear that even if it is because of production in any social system … it is clear that even if it is because of their work needs that people unite to secure their rights, their union remains a constructive factor of social order and solidarity, and it is impossible to ignore it.
Pope John Paul II

The history of the labor movements needs to be taught in every school in this land. America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life. … We ought to be proud of it!
Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (1865-1969), Lyndon Johnson Administration

Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
President John F. Kennedy, 1962

The AFL-CIO has done more good for more people than any (other) group in America in its legislative efforts. It doesn't just try to do something about wages and hours for its own people. No group in the country works harder in the interests of everyone.
President Lyndon Johnson, 1965


(Above courtesy of the American Labor Studies Center.)


The EFCA is an attempt to radically overhaul our labor law system in the favor of union organizers. EFCA is a power grab by union bosses who seek to inflate union membership by skewing the careful balance that is designed within our labor law system.
NAM (National Assoc. of Manufacturers) Talking Points against EFCA

_____________________________________

Nobody should be surprised that business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce , The National Right to Work Committee and the National Association of Manufacturers are looking out for themselves. The whole purpose of organizing is to build up membership, and thus the funding, to promote their own common welfare.

Labor unions are in business for the same reasons. There have always been labor or trade organizations where workers could gather in order to protect their livelihoods (and, in some cases, their lives.)

In the days before industrialization, there were guilds, alliances and brotherhoods. In every workplace, then and now, employers and employees had relationships that could best be described as contentious. Neither side has ever trusted the other. Every day in every way self-interest reigns supreme.

Often, as is the case with many relationships, the differences become irreconcilable. In the case of workplace irreconcilable differences, management prefers to call that "cause for dismissal" and considers it their duty to put an end to it.

Every now and then, in an all-too-rare but slightly enlightened environment, a stab at "concessions" is made. But even then, going in, it's a pretty safe bet that management will come out ahead 100% of the time.

Even the most labor-supportive of us can understand the reasons behind the statement above. The difference between labor and management--the main, the very ultimate difference--is that management holds all the cards. They don't have to do any of the things labor comes up with. Not unless they're forced to by some ridiculously tight-assed government agency. (Which, luckily for them, they haven't had to confront for ages now.)

Whole cities of people, especially in the South, think they understand the need to keep labor from gaining even an inch. Unbelievably , many of those naysayers and saboteurs are laborers themselves. Somehow they've been convinced that the way to success is to keep management happy at any cost. (It's an odd spectacle when workers cut off their noses to spite their faces. They look really, really foolish.)

Their motto: Never complain, always explain, give hosannas to the highest for your crummy workplace and your measly paycheck. And if you really want to keep management happy, get behind them in every skirmish, whenever unions rear their pushy little heads.

They'll chant, "I hate unions". They'll march against them and connive with management to keep them out. They'll even repeat management's talking points, as if they're their own:

1. Unions make workers lazy. They can get away with murder if there's a union behind them.

2. Unions try to bleed their nice company dry with "demands" for high wages and decent benefits.

3. Unions "demand" safe workplaces. All those regulations cause no amount of grief for the Lords of the Manor.

4. Unions "force" their will upon workers.

5. Unions are evil because, well, because they're UNIONS .

So I wonder--what is it going to take to convince the un-organized laborers of this country that it isn't the unions that are holding them back. One look at our history shows that we were stronger and healthier as a nation when the unions were stronger and healthier. There is no denying that, no matter who does the denying.

This is an argument that has gone on and on and on. I'm always shocked when I see how many workers have bought into the lie that unions will destroy our society. One brief memory of the past couple of decades, one look at the sorry state of employment today should be enough to convince even the harshest critics and the densest of dolts that the Chamber of Commerce, NAM, and every other group or politician who spends considerable amounts of time pretending that unions are evil are not now, and never have been, our BFFs.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)

The Mainstreaming of Hate: That's Entertainment!

As a group, they are the pop culture equivalent of necrotic carrion beetles, crawling with insectile determination from one infected open wound in the American psyche to another. The wounds include fear of race, fear of foreigners, fear of sexuality, fear of difference, hysterical religious fundamentalism, violent nationalism, and paranoia. They lay their eggs in the infected abrasion, then scuttle away. When the eggs hatch, disgorging rage and discontent, they start counting money.

Michael Rowe on the Pop Culture hate mongers, "Death at the Museum and the Degradation of the American Dialogue", Huffington Post, June 11, 2009

There have been mutterings for years about the insidious effects the constant barrage of hate talk has on the unhinged fringe. One day's look at the internet, one day's listen to the radio, a few hours of Fox News prime time is all one needs in order to get the full picture. Hate sells. That's the bottom line.

Never mind that it corrodes our National psyche and sends the loonies to near-orgasm. . .it's fun! The people who are out there on the front lines selling hate--Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, Savage, Coulter, Hannity, et al--are enjoying the hell out of the impact their carefully choreographed and mostly disingenuous rantings have on an increasing number of followers.

And their followers slurp up every spurting syllable, as if from God's lips. . .

Janet Napolitano tried to warn us in a Homeland Security memo entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment", but was so severely shot down she ended up having to apologize for it!

I wish she wouldn't have done that. I wish the White House had backed her up and let it ride. We cave to extremists at our own peril--which is exactly what her own memo warned us about.

Eugene Robinson writes about it today:

For days, some conservative commentators tried mightily to paint the memo as an underhanded attempt by the Obama administration to smear its honorable critics by equating "right-wing" with "terrorism." It made no difference to these loudmouths that the number of hate groups around the country has increased by more than 50 percent since 2000, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. It didn't matter that the memo was backed up by solid intelligence and analysis. For these infotainers, the point isn't to illuminate a subject with light but to blast it with heat.
And it wasn't just the Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world who pretended to be outraged. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele accused the administration of trying "to segment out Americans who dissent from this administration, to segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration, and labeling them as terrorists." Steele seems to have decided that telling the truth isn't nearly as important as the high-temperature exercise known as "firing up the base."

The thing is, though, that words have consequences.

There's profit for the pundits, and perhaps personal advantage for some politicians, in calling President Obama a "socialist" and calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a "racist Latina" and claiming that Democrats want to "take away your guns" -- in creating and nurturing a sense of grievance among those inclined to be aggrieved. But what about those who might not understand that it's all just political theater?

Paul Krugman writes about it today, as well:

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

This set the crew at "Morning Joe" off on such a tangent, they were practically foaming at the mouth (and it wasn't Starbuck's froth). Suddenly Krugman, that past Morning Joe guest, that great American hero, that deserved Nobel Prize winner, was nothing more than a Left Wing toadie. The gushing is over.

It's an odd state we're in when supposedly reasonable, responsible, intelligent adults defend extremism from any quarter. And yet we see it all the time. We declare the First Amendment as our arbiter. Free speech, as long as nobody dies. Free speech, above all else.

Adam Liptak wrote a piece in Wednesday's NYT called "Hate Speech or Free Speech? What Much of West bans is Protected in U.S." In it, he talks about how much stricter Hate Speech laws are in Canada and other civilized countries:

A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States did not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.
Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.
Under Canadian law, there is a serious argument that the article contained hate speech and that its publisher, Maclean's magazine, the nation's leading newsweekly, should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their "dignity, feelings and self respect."

Oh. My. God. Can you imagine the battle royal in this country if we came up with something similar? Wouldn't those hideously hateful entertainers have a field day with that one?? Here's more:

Canada, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Well, who cares? We hate all those countries, anyway. What do they know? They're not the Greatest Country in the World.

So which one of us is going to be the first to admit that it's time to cast a new look at our First Amendment rights? What does it really mean? Are there absolutely no limits? The fomentors have gone way beyond "sticks and stones". They not only revel in the attention it brings, they're addicted to it.

There are millions of people who take to heart every seriously off-base utterance from the Right Wing extremist "entertainers", and the number of incidents caused by their acting-out is only going to increase--unless we as a society stop allowing hate speech to masquerade as amusement.

Even little children understand how hurtful words can be. We teach them not to lie or to slander. We would never condone in children the kind of language we protect in adults.

And the irony to me is this:  Those adults we're in the business of protecting? They're not worth it.

Ramona

Obama's "I Have a Dream" speech

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

MLK, August 28, 1963, Lincoln Memorial.

I watched President Obama's speech at Cairo University this morning--this intelligent, thoughtful cry for justice, tolerance and peace given in front of an intelligent, hopeful audience of young people who hold the future of their worlds in their hands-- and as I listened, I realized that this was Barack Obama's "I have a dream" speech.

When Martin Luther King gave his impassioned speech that sizzling day in Washington in 1963 there were no illusions that it was the speech that was going to change the world. It gained resonance and built power and ultimately became the battle cry and the triumph of the civil rights movement because of MLK's eloquent observations of simple truths. We could no longer defend the notion that a nation as strong as ours could go on denying a segment of our population equal rights under the law. We were a better people than that.

Over time we either forgot or ignored those lessons--that we can only function as a whole when we all have the same opportunities to rise above--and it cost us. But today our president, Barack Hussein Obama, reminded us that we are citizens of the world. He reminded us that other cultures, other religions, other beliefs live side by side with us here in America. He reminded us that we as a people, as a nation, have an obligation to ourselves to do the right thing.

It was a brave speech. He talked openly about Muslims and their place in the world, knowing that the hatemongers would barely wait for the speech to be over before they would begin their attack. He talked about what we as Americans would do to help bring peace to a tattered Middle East, but there were no promises that we would provide the solutions.

There was loud cheering whenever Obama talked about Muslims and their rights, but noticeable silence when he talked about peace in Israel. There is still a long way to go, but there was no question that Obama sees himself as a citizen of the world. He comes to it naturally, given his background, and he has allowed himself to see the world from all viewpoints.

As he was talking (reading from his prompters, if you must) I thought about our last "president" giving a speech of that magnitude and how it would have gone over. The best speechwriters on the planet couldn't have given GWB the power, the presence, the authority to handle it. It wouldn't have been seen as anything even close to genuine. Nor would it have held up over time, as Obama's speech surely will.

But I happened to be watching MSNBC during the speech and so when it was over, it was Joe Scarborough who was there to give the commentary. This is what Joe said minutes into his own speechifying:

"I found it fascinating that he didn't move away from George W. Bush's belief in democracy and the rights of women."

No, it's true. He really said that. Then, moments later, he brought in Liz Cheney to dissect Obama's speech and give her take on what it all means. He really did.

And moments after that I changed the channel to CNN, where intelligence reigned and people from all sides and other cultures discussed the speech at length.

I have no illusions about Barack Obama's power to make changes. I don't see him as a deity. I don't always agree with everything he does. I don't see an end to Muslim extremism.

But at this moment, on this day, I give thanks that he's where he is and that he's who he is. I'm proud of our president. I haven't been able to say that in a very long time.

Ramona

Sure Road to Success - Stick It to Labor

I can say this because I'm a liberal and a Michigander: My heart breaks for the laboring class in this country. I feel sorrow even for the workers who can't see that the unions are their only lifeline and inexplicably fight against them with a passion reserved only for one's worst enemies.

The working class, the significant majority in numbers, has somehow, ever since Ronald Reagan declared war on them, become the least of us--the minority. Privatization and outsourcing have rendered them nothing more than powerless drudges.

The working class is the laughingstock, the disposable, the darling of the politicians when they need their votes, and the most wretched of pariahs when the monied class sees their mountain top begin to erode.

The children of the working class hold no status and deserve no consideration. There are millions of people who would rather spend their money fighting against abortion laws than feed and care for poor children.

• More than 9 million children are estimated to be served by Feeding America, over 2 million of which are ages 5 and under, representing nearly 13 percent of all children under age 18 in the United States and over 72 percent of all children in poverty.
• According to the USDA, an estimated 12.4 million children lived in food insecure (low food security and very low food security) households in 2007.
• 8 states plus DC have more than 20 percent of children living in food insecure households, the states of Texas (23.58%) and Mississippi (22.84%) have the highest rates of children in households without consistent access to food.
• The top four states with the highest rate of food insecure children are Texas, Mississippi, Arizona, and New Mexico.

There is a concerted effort in this country to abolish public education, which means that the working majority would receive little or no schooling. Instead of working to fix the massive education problems that face us, there is a faction (which includes sitting politicians) that would, instead, like to see all education privatized and turned into a money-maker.

The working class is subject to scams that in any other culture would be considered criminal. PayDay loans and cash advance loans are legal in all but a few states. Credit card interest rates can run as high as 35% legally. Usury laws went by the wayside, along with even the most basic consumer protections. All that those concerned, including governmental agencies, can do now is put out bulletins warning against scammers.

The goal is the impoverishment of the working class, and I believe we're reaching that level faster than any Imperial Fat Cat could have imagined in his wildest wet dream.

What stuns me and keeps me awake at night is that there are millions of laborers here in America who see no disparity, no unfairness, no real need to change the status quo. Wages and protections go down at a dizzying pace while costs to live rise by the minute.

Robert Reich wrote in his blog today that manufacturing jobs are gone forever, so we might as well

. . .stop pining after the days when millions of Americans stood along assembly lines and continuously bolted, fit, soldered or clamped what went by. Those days are over. And stop blaming poor nations whose workers get very low wages. Of course their wages are low; these nations are poor. They can become more prosperous only by exporting to rich nations. When America blocks their exports by erecting tariffs and subsidizing our domestic industries, we prevent them from doing better. Helping poorer nations become more prosperous is not only in the interest of humanity but also wise because it lessens global instability.

Want to blame something? Blame new knowledge. Knowledge created the electronic gadgets and software that can now do almost any routine task. This goes well beyond the factory floor. America also used to have lots of elevator operators, telephone operators, bank tellers and service-station attendants. Remember? Most have been replaced by technology. Supermarket check-out clerks are being replaced by automatic scanners. The Internet has taken over the routine tasks of travel agents, real estate brokers, stock brokers and even accountants. With digitization and high-speed data networks a lot of back office work can now be done more cheaply abroad.

I don't know. Maybe that's what so depressing--that notion from even the most learned, the most logical, that we might as well just give up. Privatizing and outsourcing works. Our days of actually producing goods are over. Where it used to be patriotic to produce goods, we now find that the best way to keep our country strong is to send the workers packing.

So now what do we do? Here's Reich again:

The biggest challenge we face over the long term -- beyond the current depression -- isn't how to bring manufacturing back. It's how to improve the earnings of America's expanding army of low-wage workers who are doing personal service jobs in hotels, hospitals, big-box retail stores, restaurant chains, and all the other businesses that need bodies but not high skills.

Unbelievable. Even Reich. They got to Reich. Who's next? God??

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)

Sometimes a Picture isn't Worth a Thousand Words

On the issue of the latest torture pictures, many, if not most of the people whose opinions I normally value are going against me on this one. (Joan Walsh, Jonathan Turley, Rachel Maddow, Sen. Russ Feingold. . .)

But I believe Obama is doing exactly the right thing in withholding those pictures from public scrutiny. It's hardly "hiding evidence", as so many are suggesting. It's simply keeping them from being broadcast al over the world. The people who need to see those pictures have either already seen them or will see them. That's where "transparency" comes in. Because you and I and the other guy haven't seen them doesn't mean there's anything nefarious or even dishonest going on. Nor does it mean that Obama is going back on a promise.

There are thousands if not millions of items that we may never see because they're classified. As I see it, this is entirely a security issue. I do believe our military will be compromised if they're made public. The clamoring for viewing baffles me. What would it gain? What is it any of us needs to see? Isn't it enough that we know they're out there? Do we really need to see them over and over again, day after day, night after night, for weeks or months on end--knowing that the whole world is seeing them, too--including our enemies?

Jonathan Turley called Obama's decision not to release the new photos "Positively Orwellian".

Joan Walsh said Obama sounded "positively Rumsfeldian" when he announced that he would recommend not releasing the photos.

Janis Karpinski, the retired brigadier general formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib prison, told CNN today, "It is sad and tragic. The reversal will absolutely stir up more controversy than release of the photographs, causing an outpouring of rampant speculation -- What is the government hiding? Who are the people in the photographs? How awful can these new photos be? And worse."

She may be right concerning the speculation. We live in an age of information overload, where "news" is broadcast 24 hours a day, with the chance that the day's stories might be repeated 30 or more times. We could spend mountains of time speculating about what is in those photos, or we can spend days poring over the photos themselves. Or--here's a thought--we could get over the fact that we may not see the actual pictures any time soon and move on to the fact that it was Obama himself who released the OLC torture memos in what some might call a refreshing display of. . .transparency.

The fact that we know that thousands of these photos exist is sickening enough. People have been torturing in our name and have been obscenely, absurdly, photographing the acts. That is horrifying--but it's out there. President Obama hasn't swept that fact under the carpet.

There are many who say that we can't possibly get the same gut feelings--and thus the appropriate rage--from a written account of incidences of torture as we can from actual photographs or film. That's assuming that gut feelings and rage are the bottom line here. They're not. It's justice we're after, not a balm for our anger.

But the larger point is that, whether or not the public has a chance to view the new torture photographs, nothing is going to change.

Obama either will or will not pursue the prosecution of American war criminals. (Something I'm all for.)

His administration either will or will not actually change policy concerning confinement, interrogation and torture. (A necessary step if we're ever to hold our heads up again.)

And culpable members of the Bush Administration may or may not get their comeuppance.

Sam Stein wrote a piece yesterday in The Huffington Post quoting an ACLU lawyer who spoke on Fox News (Really? ACLU? Fox News? Together??) about the president's decision to stop the release of the photos. Jameel Jaffer said, "These photographs are critical to the historical record so it is very disappointing... that the administration is going to try and suppress them."

I haven't heard from anyone that the pictures will never be made available. To use the "historical record" argument as a reason to release such inflammatory pictures during a time of war is disingenuous.

Stein also quotes an "anonymous White House aide":

"The President would be the last to excuse the actions depicted in these photos. That is why the Department of Defense investigated these cases, and why individuals have been punished through prison sentences, discharges, and a range of other punitive measures. But the President strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing US forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. "

There is no real indication that Obama is going to sweep the wartime abuses of the Bush Administration under the carpet. There is no evidence that any of that information, including the photos, will be destroyed. We've already begun to have congressional hearings concerning the use of torture in American military prisons. (What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration)

Matthew Alexander, leader of the Zarqawi interrogation team in 2006 and author of "How to Break a Terrorist", gave written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, explaining how useless torture really is. Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent involved in interrogations, spoke behind a screen at that same hearing, saying basically the same thing.

Get some perspective, please. And be honest. We don't need to see those actual photographs in order to get a good picture of prisoner abuses perpetrated in our name. The evidence is surfacing daily and the word is getting out. New witnesses keep coming forward, new memos keep popping up. So how is that happening? It's happening because we finally have a government in place that understands the need for honesty and transparency.

But there are still responsibilities associated with the release of information regarding our actions. Those photos won't tell us anything we don't already know.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo)

Color This Purple - And Keep It Away from Children

I have to say that even though I think using a coloring book that includes a drawing of the Twin Towers going up in flames as a tool to ease kid's fears about the crumbling world around them is completely, dazzlingly wrongheaded, I have to admit to ever-so-slightly mixed feelings about it. That's because I'm a liberal and I understand about letting your heart get in the way of your head.

We do these things because we love.

"A Scary Thing Happened" was put out by an Albert Lea, Minnesota Crisis Response team after a terrible tornado season, and illustrated by a grandmother of 10, with support from a medical center associated with the Mayo Clinic, a plumbing company, a printing company, and a bank, among others.

I can see those grown-ups brainstorming around a table, thinking they needed to come up with something a frightened kid could look at and understand that they're not alone, that their feelings are perfectly normal, and that there are adults who get it and want to help. I could see me sitting around that table after that devastating tornado season, wringing my hands, pounding my head: Think. THINK. What can we do?? But I like to think that even I would recognize that using the destruction of the Twin Towers as a teaching tool for terrified toddlers was glaringly beyond the pale. Still, they didn't just include a page about 9/11 inside the little book, they flashed it in full color on the cover.

Word got around about the book and in 2003 it made its way to the FEMA website, where it could be downloaded from the Kid's Page as a pdf. file. Nobody seemed to pay much attention until recently, when somebody apparently saw it and complained about the cover. The new FEMA crew took a look and promptly pulled it from the website. When they were asked why, they said a parent did complain about the content, and anyway, they were redesigning their website.

It was supposed to be gone, but of course somebody always has everything, so finding it wasn't that hard. I found it on The Smoking Gun (no surprise) and downloaded the pdf. file to see it for myself.

It is meant to be a comfort--I can see that. But I'm a grown-up and not a child still into coloring books. Coloring books are meant to be a pleasant pastime; something to while away the carefree hours. One frightening page leads to another in this book and by the time the kid has finished, he/she has a right to be scared witless. Fires, tornadoes, floods--they're all out to get you. I can't imagine even one child feeling better about the crumbling world around them because they're able to color in disaster scenes or draw pictures of how they feel. ("Draw a picture of yourself when you heard about the disaster.")

These are the kinds of things we need to talk about with our kids face-to-face. They need to feel our arms around them when we tell them the truth about what they've either witnessed or what has directly happened to them. They need to be able to talk to us about their own fears. We need to do it together, without the distraction of visual aids. But more important, we need to keep it in the here and now, and not bombard them with the things that might happen, that could happen, that will happen.

That's the egregious part about the honest but rash effort on the part of the Freeborn County Crisis Response Team--they came at it from a grown-up's logical, dispassionate point of view instead of from a kid's fearful, nightmare image of a world already out of their control .

From my own point of view, the only visual aid a scared kid needs is the sight of us being there for them.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)

Blogorama: Of Free Speech and Miracles

When I first started writing, there was no internet and thus no blogging, and thus no everyday opportunity to opinionate--or bloviate, as the case may be. If we were lucky, our opinions would be published in our local newspaper's "Letters to the Editor", and we would be thrilled to see ourselves in print. If we were really lucky, we might secure a space on the Op-Ed page and actually get paid a few dollars a column to write about anything that popped into our wee little heads.

I did that for a few years, and while I worked hard at it and was every bit as passionate about the world around me as I am now, the chance for any meaningful readership numbers was about as slim as my chance to win the PowerBall.

Still, I wrote--and gave it all I had.

Now I write here, not out of any sense of ego or authority, but because I have something to say and I can do it for free on the World Wide Web. That's a concept that's pretty astonishing. (Okay, there may be a bit of ego--let's face it, how could it be otherwise? But I claim no authority.)

The downside to this freedom to bloviate is that the WWW is an equal opportunity monster of humungous proportions. A jillion people can set up a jillion blogs and do the same thing I'm doing right here, right now. I'm exquisitely aware that to be one in a jillion is to be nothing at all. A mere speck in the sands of exaltation.

But still I write--and give it all I have.

The upside of creating a blog, besides the obvious one of writing your heart out with the knowledge that you'll be "published", no matter what, is that you soon find yourself in amongst a community of like-minded bloggers who will pay attention to your blog if you'll pay attention to theirs.

As pathetic as that may sound, it's actually a terrific system, leading to all manner of serendipitous discoveries.

I "met" one such blogger by reading her comment on another blog, which I discovered when that blogger commented on mine. I went to her blog (Preserve, Protect and Defend) and commented on her comment and now she occasionally comments on mine, while I do the same on hers. She calls herself "Two Crows", which is fine with me. I don't need to know her real name to appreciate her writing. The point is, I never would have found her if not for the intricate, intertwining paths of the blogosphere.

Robert Reich has what he calls his "personal journal" through Blogspot. I was thrilled to find it, because he writes the way I would want to write if I had the talent, and more times than not I get to shout "Amen" while I'm reading him. But more important, he's using the exact same template that I chose for my blog. His is spare and elegant and at the same time welcoming--the perfect showcase for his words--while mine. . .well, you'll just have to take my word for it that we started out on the same page.

But the reason I bring any of this up is because I still haven't gotten over an extraordinary, spontaneous happening last week among the TPM Cafe bloggers on Talking Points Memo. I'm a blogger newbie on that site, so I have no real history there. I don't know any of the bloggers well yet, but I liked what I saw there from the first day I found the site.

One blogger in particular--dickday--stood out because he was funny and so very clever--a kind of modern day chronicler of deliciously skewed Arthurian legend. He commented on a couple of my blogs and was incredibly kind and welcoming. I was nervous as hell to be among such smart people so I latched onto one of them--dickday--and followed him wherever he went.

Last week his regular posts just stopped. So did his always amusing comments. I vaguely wondered where he was but I didn't pay too much attention. Everybody understands that blogging can be every day or it can be sporadic. Apparently with dickday, it had come to be a regular event, almost like clockwork, and his followers were worried.

Then began a search the likes of which we've never seen since Stanley went looking for Livingstone.

After a day or so of scurrying around, someone finally heard from him. His computer had crashed and he was sending a feeble message from the wilds of his local library. dickday without a World Wide quill. Unthinkable! But money was tight and using the library as his home base was out of the question.

That's when the Cafe bloggers went into action. Within minutes (or so it seemed) someone had come up with the idea to find dickday a computer. Within a few more minutes someone offered a perfectly good CPU. Before long a PayPal fund was set up for donations toward the necessary extras, things were packed and shipped and someone who lived a few hours away volunteered to go over and set it up. The entire thing was a marvel in efficiency--Whoosh! Things happened.

But what was breathtaking to me was the caring, the concern, the compassion. I honestly have never seen anything like it in all my years on forums anywhere. So, I'm hoping they won't mind (because I and a few others were hesitant at first to make this so public), but this is my tribute to those folks who took it upon themselves to honor someone they have never met, and who did it with such extreme joy and such absolute good will.

Times are tough and it's easy to be cynical about the world we live in and the people we meet along the way. This was good. It was so good. If it doesn't qualify as a true miracle, it's probably as close as I'll ever get to seeing one.

Bravo to those good folks. May they ever keep joy in their hearts and a penny in their pockets. And may dickday get those fingers tapping and tell us a tale for the times.

(cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)

The Myth of the 2nd Amendment: Shoot the damn thing already!

The federal system for tracking gun sales, crafted over the years to avoid infringements on Second Amendment rights, makes it difficult to spot suspicious trends quickly and to identify people buying for smugglers, law enforcement officials say. As a result, in some states along the Southwest border where firearms are lightly regulated, gun smugglers can evade detection for months or years. In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, dealers can sell an unlimited number of rifles to anyone with a driver’s license and a clean criminal record without reporting the sales to the government.
James C. McKinley, JR - NYT 4/14/09
_________________________________

We are a country of laws. When you look around you, it's obvious that that's not an overstatement. Everywhere we go, we're expected to follow the law.

When we cross the street, we can't cross on a red light. It's against the law.

We can't cross that street, even with the light, naked as a jay bird. It's against the law.

We can't take an orange off of the vendor's stand, no matter how juicy that orange or how out there for the taking it appears to be. It's against the law.

We can't get in our car and drive it without first understanding the rules of the road, and then obtaining licenses for both the car and the driver. It's against the law.

In each of those instances, our rights and privileges haven't been infringed by the laws that affect them. We understand that laws are necessary to maintain a sane society. We live with laws every day of our lives.

So why the hell has this entire country been hornswoggled into believing that we can own, shoot and sell guns (that's GUNS--"shoot your eye out" at the least, lethal weapons always and eternally) without licensing or regulation?

What kind of NRA wizardry has taken hold when it comes to any logical restrictions on guns? How have we come to this, where we, once again, turn a blind eye to what's in our best interests and let gun nuts, of all people, hold us in their sway?

Yes, gun nuts. I live in the north woods, where guns and gun people are everywhere. Many if not most of the hunters we know are members of the NRA. In our day-to-day dealings they seem perfectly normal, but I can't get past the growing evidence that anyone who supports and defends the right to own guns without licensing or regulations has gone beyond nutty.

The gun people we know aren't "nuts" in the sense that they're out there picketing with signs saying "Obama, don't take our guns away". They're not that dumb. But sooner or later, in order for us to survive as a civilized society, they're going to have to give up following the NRA like little lost lambs and begin thinking for themselves.

The National Rifle Association, with their blind devotion to a lawless gun culture, has become the enemy as surely as if they were standing on our borders passing out heavy artillery to anyone with cash in hand. Their members--millions strong--are constantly, incessantly, being bombarded with dangerous faulty logic. They defend the supposed Second Amendment "right" to bear arms without feeling any accompanying obligation to defend the rights of the society in which they live.

As enraging as the New York Times article ("The U.S Stymied as Guns Flow to Mexican Cartels") was this morning, I can't say it was either enlightening or even startling. Everything in it has been out there before. But it is disheartening. How many times do these same outrageous, wholly un-American facts have to be reported before we finally say, "Enough"?

Consider this from the NYT article:

Federal agents say about 90 percent of the 12,000 pistols and rifles the Mexican authorities recovered from drug dealers last year and asked to be traced came from dealers in the United States, most of them in Texas and Arizona.

The Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, in talking with reporters recently, accused the United States of violating its international treaty obligations by allowing guns to flow into the hands of organized crime groups in Mexico.

But law enforcement officials on this side of the border say the legal hurdles to making cases against smugglers remain high.

“Guns are legal to possess in this country,” said William J. Hoover, the assistant director for operations of the federal firearms agency. “If you stop me between the dealer and the border, I am still legal, because I can possess those guns.”

Fine. "Possess" the damn guns. But regulate them, for God's sake! License the hell out of them. Keep records on who owns them, who sells them, who buys them. Make new laws, make them stick, and throw the bastards in jail if they violate those laws.

And if all that happens--guess what? Nobody's rights will be violated. Lawful gun folks will get to keep their weapons. Fun will be had by all.

We can't keep ignoring the effects of our ridiculously lax gun laws. Here's a snip from another NYT story by McKinley, entitled "U.S. is Arms Bazaar for Mexican Cartels", published on February 26:
Drug gangs seek out guns in the United States because the gun-control laws are far tougher in Mexico. Mexican civilians must get approval from the military to buy guns and they cannot own large-caliber rifles or high-powered pistols, which are considered military weapons.

The ease with which Mr. Iknadosian [owner of X-Caliber Guns in Phoenix] and two other men transported weapons to Mexico over a two-year period illustrates just how difficult it is to stop the illicit trade, law enforcement officials here say.

The gun laws in the United States allow the sale of multiple military-style rifles to American citizens without reporting the sales to the government, and the Mexicans search relatively few cars and trucks going south across their border.

What is more, the sheer volume of licensed dealers — more than 6,600 along the border alone, many of them operating out of their houses — makes policing them a tall order. Currently the A.T.F. has about 200 agents assigned to the task.

It's not just the Mexican drug cartels who are finding it easy to get guns in the U.S, thanks to the NRA. This is from a California Progress Report article by Bill Cavala on unregulated gun shows in Nevada:
70% of the dealers at the Nevada gun shows lacked Federal Firearms licenses.
Nevada does not require background checks or that records be kept on private party sales at gun shows – unlike California.

At least two dozen “straw” purchases – firearms bought by one person but intended for another “prohibited” purchaser – were observed.

California lawmakers – aware of this problem – moved to regulate its gun shows several years ago.

But in States like Nevada, the N.R.A. has been successful in blocking similar efforts. The result is that criminals evade California gun shows to make their purchases where the N.R.A. actions protect them.

(Bill Cavala was a professor at U.C Berkeley in the 1970s, and has been actively involved in progressive politics every since. Take a minute to read the comments at the end of his article. The gun nut vultures are constantly out there circling and attacking any effort to "infringe" their phony rights. All that energy, all that stupidity. Leave it to them to use it to undermine our citizen rights of protection against the gun nuts.)

So when will this craziness end? When is a gun nut more than just a nut? Who will make the NRA see the light? What has happened to our America? How many more articles have to be written before we Americans get up in arms--so to speak?

From Carolina to Michigan: Not so far apart

In an odd juxtaposition that would mean nothing to anybody but me, I’m packing up to leave South Carolina, the state with the second worst unemployment, to go back to Michigan, the only state in the land that has it worse.

The difference between the two states is really and truly the difference between night and day. Here in South Carolina, for example, I’m looking out at palm trees and camellias and feeling a soft, warm breeze coming through the doorwall.

When I get back home to upper Michigan, where we live for the other nine months of the year, I’ll find three-foot snow banks and not a hint of green grass anywhere. It’ll be weeks before we’ll even see crocuses.

Unemployment is a huge problem in both states, for very different reasons, but the biggest difference is in how these two states are governed. In Michigan, we have Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, an untiring, unwavering advocate for the workers in her state. Michigan’s economy is based on industry first, tourism second. So when manufacturing goes by the wayside, as it has in the past decade or more, our economy slides downward, with no end in sight.

As I noted in an earlier post, Governor Granholm has been out there beating the bushes, looking for funding to help the people of our state. She’s not above begging if she has to, because she feels Michigan’s future is worth whatever it takes.

In South Carolina--a beautiful state with pockets of grinding poverty--tourism is the top game. The mountains, the beaches and the golf courses are a huge draw. When times are good, business people down here are in Hog Heaven, what with all the high living going on. But when times are bad--really bad, as they are now--the fun comes to a screeching halt and the purveyors are left high and dry.

The only way out, odious as it is to some, is to let the Feds come to the rescue. They're the only ones with a cavalry big enough to take on this mess. But Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, is barricading himself inside his plantation, yelling for those Damn Yankees to keep away.

He is one of a handful of governors--all Republican--who took a stand against the only rescue in sight, the stimulus plan. All of a sudden those same Republicans who were happy revelers during the Bush years, when rampant, raging capitalism came into full bloom, have now seen the light (Yea, verily, have seen the LIGHT). Now, when times are about as bad as they can get, they're ready to cut the cord, to tighten the belts, to put the troops on a diet of bread and water.

If Sanford is concerned with the condition of his state and the numbers of unemployed workers, he has a funny way of showing it. So where are the workers on this? How do they feel? Will they ever gain their voices and speak up?

Your pride, South Carolinians, is not in turning down what Sanford says is a government handout with strings. Your pride is in recognizing a chance to rise up from poverty and become an asset to America, where we're all working together to make this country strong again.

Ramona