Small world iftar all.

Thanks, Google, for making it a proper April 1.

He is leavened!

Gingerbread Jesus by MewMint.

Talk to the Hand, Lower-Earthlings

Naturally competing blogs exploit credulous and foolish labour from the outermost reaches of the body. Here at Substance Laboratories™ we have found that if one has the enormously enviable means to keep up one's payments to the Guild of Professional Alphabetizores then one has access to the very best available six-for-one special deals on professionally designed Aktual Nowns©, with which one may construct automated disembodied hands as one sees fit, both to use in the lab and as home companions. Try it yourself!*



Why then would one even need to make employment offers to light-fingered and pestidigitatious extremetists? NOT EVEN WHY, THAT IS HOW MUCH WHY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. Globalization merely sets the stage for automization, I said, posing in my smoking jacket as my Magic Mirror™ evaluated the sagacity of all in the land and found me NINTH AND RISING.

With all that established, we are enjoined by the Labour Ministry to announce publicly that all contracted workers now possess the required paperwork, as the workers who were missing the goddamned forms HAVE BEEN FIRED across the Substance Laboratories™ Executive Trap and Skeet Range.

*The thumbs were misaligned in the latest shipment; be assured that top-quality disembodied hands will be available soon.

Correction

You: A couple of moderately old folks going uptown on the no. 5 bus having an animated conversation about Dinah Washington.

Me: An unnecessary third party old folk who insisted for some reason that this song was by Rogers & Hart rather than the Gershwins. I was wrong. I believe the band here is Count Basie's.

And here's another version, stunning in a different way. I'm not quite sure why I stopped putting up music a while back, but I'm starting again. Hope you all like it.

CBS Studios, Paris, France on May 23, 1963. Originally released on Blue Note (4146).
Dexter Gordon (tenor saxophone); Bud Powell (piano); Pierre Michelot (bass); Kenny Clarke (drums).

Who cares about the deficit?

Pretty porky putti! From Christopher at ReptileMind.

The answer could be a lot simpler than you think: rich people are overwhelmingly terribly, terribly concerned about our burgeoning annual budget deficits—and nobody else is.

That's the indication of an ongoing study conducted by Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University, a survey of "Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good". [jump]
Working with a systematic sample of one-percenters from the greater Chicago area (most population samples just don't have enough people that rich to draw inferences from), he finds that the very rich are different from you and me, in their views on social policy I mean:

• 87% of the very wealthy call deficits a "very important problem"
• 32% call deficits/excess government spending the most important problem (versus 7% of the general population)
• 11% list unemployment or education as America's top problem (versus 53% of the general population for jobs/the economy)
• they oppose setting minimum wage above the poverty line
• they oppose providing a decent standard of living for the unemployed
• they oppose increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit
• they oppose having the government provide jobs for those who cannot find them
• they oppose tax-funded health insurance
• they oppose spending to ensure that all children can attend good public schools
• they oppose ensuring that everyone has a chance to go to college
• they oppose worker retraining in the face of economic change
• they oppose more regulation of big corporations (the general public favors it)
• they oppose corporate tax increases to fund government programs (a majority of the general public is OK with that too)
• they oppose using tax policy to redistribute income from rich to poor (most of the general public wouldn't mind in the slightest)

The very rich also are more attentive, if that's not too delicate a way of putting it, to the needs and feelings of our elected officials:

• two thirds had contributed money (average $4,633) in the last presidential elections
• more than 20% had helped to bundle contributions in the same campaign
• about half had initiated contact with at least one senator or House member in the last 6 months
• 44% of their contacts with officials concerned their own narrow economic interests

I have a funny feeling you're not surprised to hear about any of this. But it's pretty startling to see it supported by actual research, don't you think?

Left, the Dives refuses Lazarus crumbs from his sumptuous table, and the dog licks his sores; right,  Lazarus in the Bosom of Abraham, while the Dives looks on from the torments of Hell. From Fisheaters.

Inside the mind of Dana Loesch

Bayonet*. Image from Get Stuffed.

Penis. Image from HealthTap.

Are we starting to see a pattern here?

*She doesn't actually say "bayonet"—just "assault weapon", with the stipulation that it's used for "stabbing". She didn't say "penis" either, come to think of it, but rather an unnamed something that "resulted in... pregnancy". So I'm just clarifying here.

Fulfilling It

David Limbaugh:

Unlike certain cultural icons today, Jesus didn't preach what people's itching ears wanted to hear. He didn't cater his sermons to curry favor with the popular culture. He articulated a higher standard of morality than even the Old Testament did.

More importantly, He did not reject but wholeheartedly endorsed the Old Testament generally and specifically. He didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He said that "until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished," "the scriptures cannot be broken," and, "I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

Jesus also affirmed the historicity of many important events recorded in the Old Testament, which many today dismiss as mere allegory or pure fiction, such as the creation of Adam and Eve, the flood, Jonah and the whale, the miracles of Elijah, and the miracles of Moses in the wilderness.

Who says the Bible is true? JESUS.

Cheap shots and fancy love

From Scotthouse Hotel, Rome.

Rhetorical questions that will stay that way:

Why wouldn’t we want a further unpacking of the teachings of Pope John Paul II on human sexuality? (Kathryn Jean Lopez, via House of Substance)

I'll tell you why I wouldn't want one if you'll tell me why you wouldn't.

Still from Mysteries of a Barbershop by Erich Engel, 1923, concept by Bertolt Brecht. Image from Wikipedia.

Please don't explain:

The interview being aired by NBC as news content is part of a larger documentary called “The Framing of Joe Paterno.” On his website, Ziegler lambasts the Freeh Report of the Penn State scandal, which concluded [jump]
Joe Paterno “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.” Ziegler attacks the testimony of assistant coach Mike McQueary who said he observed Sandusky sexually assaulting a child in the shower. Ziegler says “the evidence indicates that McQueary did not witness an assault, but rather a botched ‘grooming’” (Judd Legum for ThinkProgress; my bolding) 

Botched grooming of 1923.

Rush Limbaugh clarifies lesbianism, from ProgLegs at Kos, via Dr. Turk:

"And, of course, the answers to the first case is they don't have to deal with men, so they don't have to worry about their appearance. They're not trying to please men. So they can be obese. It's no big deal. Alcohol, who knows? They're having to deal with women so they're drunk." 

Dear me, Rusty, I think you've outed yourself there. (And I guess it's a lifestyle choice after all, obviously the man wasn't born a lesbian.)

Divorce cake by Fay Millar.

Mr. Chief Justice Roberts smells a lobbyist, via the Big Bad Bald One:

“I suppose the sea change has a lot to do with the political force and effectiveness of people representing, supporting your side of the case?  As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.” 

Ah, your honor, you've caught us out: Yes, marriage equality is an astroturf effort, secretly bankrolled by the billionaires of the patisserie-industrial complex, planning to profiteer off a state of permanent wedding, fed by their vile cakes. Oh, and thanks for Citizens United, judge, we could never have pulled it off without you.

Classic Mr. Justice Roberts, via TBogg. Yes, the patisserie-industrial complex does pies, too.

He Lies Best Who Lies Last

Shorter Conrad Black:

This puffed-up self-important insider and so-called writer is a FRAUD. His name is Conrad Black Bob Woodward.

No seriously, for real now:

Gradually, inexorably, the great Watergate fraud is unraveling. The Knights of Revelation, 40 years onward, are being exposed, in the light of analysis unclouded by cant and emotionalism, as the myth-makers they always were. Bob Woodward, unable to resist the temptation to try again and again to be at the forefront of investigative journalism, is being steadily exposed as a chronically dishonest myth-maker. Carl Bernstein, his Watergate partner, is at least cautious enough not to tempt the fates with a regime of endless returns to the well of public gratitude for spurious and destructive exposés. Though there is no sign that he is conscious of the proportions of their original Mt. Rushmore–sized canard, he has been relatively uncontroversial these intervening decades, sheltering in the greasy slick Vanity Fair.

Myth-makers, said the pretend lord sheltering in the greasy slick National Review. Congratulations on your release from the pokey.

OFF-TOPIC UPDATE:

Introducting a new feature in the lobby at Substance Laboratories™, The Fountain of Adjectives, a crucial and necessary enhancement of the SL™ brand, the mind-boggling expense of which should have no impact at all on our investors. Ships with a premium of free caviar for board members!

Human Rights

I've mentioned before how I grew up in Holmes County. And I wouldn't change this for the world. I absolutely loved growing up in a small, rural community. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone's business too. I knew everyone in my graduating class, and even most people in my high school. We spent weekends having bonfires and camping, canoeing/brewing and 4-wheeling, driving an hour to go see a movie and going bowling (hey- not many options!). And it was perfect.

Disclaimer: Please please, no one be offended by this- it is just my experience- and in no way is meant to speak ill of Holmes County and those that I know there. As I've said, I loved growing up here. But everyone has their own opinions, and this is mine.

As much as I loved growing up here, there was one major downside. One, that with the joys of Facebook, I'm forced to remember every day- especially the past few days. As a county that will always be a red in any election, my views and beliefs were always different than the majority of my friends and classmates. Views and beliefs that I still very strongly stand by, and I thank my parents every day for raising me the way they did, supporting me to have those beliefs even if I was often ridiculed for it.

Of course, I'm referring to gay marriage. And not just gay marriage, but just over all support of gay couples. Two of my parents closest friends when I was growing up where a lesbian couple who owned a farm in Holmes County. I was never told they were lesbians; it was just normal to me. But when I once heard someone refer to it as "The Lesbian Farm" and throw all sorts of derogatory terms in the same sentence, I was shocked. These were two women who had been a huge part of my childhood, and to hear people (who had never even met them) talk about them in that way- still makes my blood boil.

Now again- I loved where I grew up, but moving away from Holmes County was probably one of the best things that I ever could have done. And not only did I move away, but I went to Ohio University...in Athens, Ohio...which is ALWAYS on the blue side of things. There was such a higher level of tolerance for people- it didn't matter if someone was black or white, gay or straight. There was support for them at OU.

And in the past two days, with Facebook turning red and overwhelming support for gay marriage, I have also seen a large number of comments (I won't say ignorant...I can't even think of a proper word here) that again, make my blood boil. And every. single. one. of these comments has been from someone I went to high school with. Needless to say, there were quite a few hidden comments yesterday- and even a few unfriended.

So what this all comes down to is why do you care? What difference does it make on your life? Is it really affecting you in any way, shape or form? I have heard the Bible argument. I have heard the "It's gross. I don't want to see it" complaints. And seriously? That's idiotic. There was a lot of rape and killing and polygamy in the bible- but that's not cool. And to me, it's gross to see ANYONE making out in public, straight or gay. Keep the PDA at home.

Pragmatic sanctioned

I hear the Man Called Petraeus has resurfaced, embarking on his redemption tour with a dinner address to the ROTC of USC in which he may have mentioned his "extremely poor judgment". I think we can expect to see him engaged to Mother Kardashian before too long. It gives me pride to note here that my hometown newspaper, the New York Times, has declined to headline this story, and I had to Google to find a paper that did (one of the Posts, Washington or Sideboob).

Image from Cafe Press.

Anyway, it's given me a sort of disquieting thought. I've been telling myself this pleasing story about Obama choosing Father Brennan to lead the CIA so as to take away their drones and generally reconvert them from their current status as presidential secret army to the good old conventional role of central intelligence agency for which they were originally named. ("I think I'll call you 'Central Intelligence Agency'," beamed President Truman as he tickled the infant outfit behind its ear.)

The disquieting thought is this: if it weren't for the extremely poor judgment of the Man Called Petraeus and the Woman Called Broadwell and their email habits, to say nothing of the sex part, an unforgivable breach of biographer ethics—if not for that, the militarization of the CIA would be carrying on apace while Obama and Brennan sat in the Situation Room chatting about Niebuhr, wouldn't it?

So which does Obama actually support? When the General was running the Company like the Petraerian Guard, did Obama agree with that and then change his mind, or did it just take him five years to get the CIA director he wanted? Or is it not important? Is the program simply to make the agency go, regardless of where it goes in particular?

Does he pick people for jobs and then ask them, "Well, what would you like the CIA to do?" "Jeez, Arne, I can't stand high-stakes testing, but you're the boss." "Golly, Eric, you don't have to indict any bankers if you don't want to, I just thought you might enjoy it."

What Is This SH...

The Lovely Daughter: You say "I hear the theme of a puppet show."
Me: I hear the theme of a puppet show.
TLD: Then you say "What is this puppet show?"
Me: What is this puppet show?
TLD: It's a show from Israel! Because I'm Jewish!
Me: What is this puppet show?
TLD: It's Shalom Sesame, because I'M JEWISH!
Me: Wow.
TLD: Now you say "WHAT IS THIS SHALOM?"

The ultimate homicide

David Brooks writes:

I don't see any guns! Image from etsy.

Suppose you wanted to write a novel about a homicide. You'd want to describe the killer's neighborhood and family, of course, and his school—I say "his" school, because you'd probably want your book to have a male murderer, since most murderers are men, and fairly young, so their school is important; and his culture, because murderers tend to belong to a particular culture, right? They're rarely just regular people. And you'd have to describe his gang, you know how murderers always belong to gangs.

And in the same way you'd want to describe how he embarked on his criminal career and how many times he's been arrested and how many times he's been jailed and how he gets along with his probation officer. I mean, you can't really have a murderer if he doesn't have a probation officer, can you?

In other words, you'd want to do what I did with my novel about marriage, "The Social Animal", where I created the characters by adding up all the most [jump]
typical things I could think of, so my Harold and Erica would represent a kind of Everycouple, and carry a universal meaning, like the Ultimate Marriage. Only my editor kept saying this isn't a novel, it's a sociological treatise, and so I finally went with that, and it must have been okay, because they're still getting thirteen bucks for it on Kindle. But in the same way you would have the pattern, or profile, of all the factors that go into making up the Ultimate Homicide.

Over the past quarter century in America, it looks as if our authorities were reading that novel, because they have locked onto just about every factor in the profile except for one. Police have massed in the more murderous neighborhoods where kids from murderous families go to murderous schools, and they've focused on the murderous genders at the murderous ages, and so forth, and they've jailed practically everybody they could find that fits the description, and laid off all the probation officers too. You don't really need probation officers anyway, unless you're going to let all those criminals out of jail, and that would be crazy.

From Guns of Icarus.

There's just one element they've neglected, which is the gun thing.* Because guns are involved in a lot of murders. More than hammers. Not every conservative is going to admit to that, but I will, because that's the kind of honest, plain-spoken, clubbable conservative I am. Also, because it doesn't really make any difference. Maybe they did leave guns out of the equation, but they still managed to reduce homicide rates by incredible amounts.

Now the debate on violence has started up all over again, and while you'd think people would take advantage of the moment to give themselves that pat on the back and talk about all the things we've been doing right. But no, all anybody wants to talk about is guns, guns, guns. Frankly, it's baffling.** All I can think is that it must have something to do with Americans being material determinists. They see a piece of lead traveling through somebody's brain and they just don't understand that without metaphysics that lead wouldn't be going anywhere.

And then American experience shows that gun control just doesn't work.*** And it was found that the Brady bill only stops suicides.**** And the Center for Disease Control discovered that there was no evidence one way or another.***** So please, let's by all means try having universal background checks, although they won't work. But for heaven's sake let's remember what does work, which is what has worked in the past, which is going after Baltimore drug dealers, not West Virginia gun shows.******

*For example, according to one highly trustworthy source,

Policies at the federal, state, and local levels have attempted to address gun violence through a variety of methods, including restricting firearms purchases by youths and other "at-risk" populations, setting waiting periods for firearm purchases, establishing gun "buy-back" programs, law enforcement and policing strategies, stiff sentencing of gun law violators, education programs for parents and children, and community-outreach programs. (Wikipedia)

Of course that's just a bunch of—well, government. Congress, on the other hand, in its majesty, has taken to ignoring the gun thing as hard as it can, even to the point of shoving it sort of violently out of the picture:

However, federal legislation also aims to prohibit intentional interference of weapon sales to criminals domestically and insurgents abroad by prohibition of ATF and local law enforcement from access to digital databases for the purpose of idenfitication of the place of sale for weapons recovered at crime scenes.  

**Could be because the newspapers have been so full, coincidentally, of stories about non-dark, non–gang member murderers without criminal records or probation officers shooting large numbers of people dead, many of them six or seven years old, in nice exurban out of the way places in Connecticut, Colorado, or Arizona, the very kinds of places in which Brooks and his little pal Professor Kotkin see America's commodity-society future.

***Wait a minute, two paragraphs ago you said it hadn't even been tried.

****And why on earth would anybody be concerned about that? Anyway suicide is only a fraction of total gun deaths in the US—two thirds, to be exact.

*****There was no evidence because Republican-led legislation denied funds for anybody who wanted to research the question.

******Jeez, how do you even do this? Do you realize what you're saying? That gun control is flawed because it discriminates against white murderers in favor of black ones? Are you trying to... Oh, never mind.

Little Conspirators. From Etsy.

Counts as a Post

Apparently I am on vacation, which ideally means I have the time to fuck around with blog stuff, but apparently not. Oh wait, I may have a JanusNody item soon which should be of interest to two people in the world. Exciting! I know you can wait.

Retroactionary watch: Tehran

Peter Hart at FAIR catches Time magazine discovering that Iran's march toward nuclear supremacy has taken a retroactionary direction:

Nowhere does Time's Massimo Calabresi mention one rather inconvenient fact: There is no evidence that Iran is actually pursuing a nuclear weapon. Regular inspections have failed to turn up any evidence of that. Instead, we read things like this: "Iran itself has slowed down its efforts, converting some enriched uranium to a form that can be used only in research, not in weapons." This is treated as evidence that Iran is heading towards its nuclear weapons more slowly.

Yes, Iran has slowed to the point where they're actually going backward—making progress in reverse. The fiends! At this rate, they should be able to construct a working weapon by 2009 or so, and there will be no way we can stop them!

Photo by Rick Steves.

Clarifying an Argument

Clarifying an Argument
Very useful post by Erik Loomis on Greenwald's dishonesty. Speaking of clarifying arguments, I just figured out why it bothers me that Greenwald's case against Obama relies so heavily on reminding us that Aulaqi was an American citizen. It's the implication that if the drone program just killed foreigners that would be OK. Or maybe not quite right but not as bad.

To me it's exactly as bad. Nobody should ever have a missile dropped on their head for any reason at all. If there's anything that mitigates the badness, it is when the victim of the attack is an active belligerent. It is not anything to do with the victim's passport.

I think I disagree with Obama on who needs to count as an active belligerent, or how often those missiles need to be dropped, but I agree with him on the basic moral framework here. I think Greenwald's moral framework is perverted and fascist repulsively legalistic.

Our Robot Future. From Animal New York.

Weekend recap!

Friday was relaxing. After waking up with enough sinus pressure that I felt like my head would seriously explode, I took a sick day and relaxed at home for most of the day. We did manage to squeeze grocery shopping and a Kohl's trip in there (all while heavily drugged by hardcore sinus meds). A relaxing evening rewatching the last few episodes of last seasons Game of Thrones in preparation for the upcoming season and it was an early to bed night.

Saturday, I headed to Columbus for my friend Kari's bachelorette party. After rocking out to the new JT cd while getting ready at the hotel and dinner at Gordon Biersch, we headed to Big Bang piano bar, where we spent the rest of our evening singing way too loud, dancing a lot, and even goat singing a little when they played Taylor Swift (we were really awesome). It was an awesome night with some great ladies! 

That of course lead to a very very lazy Sunday on the couch watching Center Stage and a few episodes of Alias.

Best gift ever.
"Love me like you love deer season"

Can't wait for birthday weekend in Chicago with these ladies!

Love her :) Can't wait for her bach party!

With the bride!! Such a fun night with these girls

And now it's Monday...and we woke up to like 3 inches of snow. Seriously, Cleveland? Stop it.

He still lives in the Village, though

So if it wasn't Pollack's and O'Hanlon's war, as I was saying,—Kenny and Mickey's excellent adventure—whose war was it?

Was it Condi's war?—a war of "necessity" because "he" was a "threat" who must be "contained", who had attempted to kill Bush's Daddy (reacting with startling hostility to a man who had merely commanded an invasion of his country, despoiled him of his new province and many of his old ones, and spoken of him in very insulting terms—these Arabs get so emotional*) and must therefore be deemed capable of any mayhem whatsoever, including blowing the entire world into smithereens.

But it obviously wasn't her fault that those Weapons of Mass Destruction did not exist. "No, Sir," she said, "I don't believe I recognize that war at all. Does it claim to be from around here? Maybe it comes from England."

*I for one as a matter of fact do not believe in the tale of the Kuwaiti whisky smugglers turned incompetent hit men who decided to snuff out the life of the elderly ex-president, but I suppose G.W. Bush did.

THE INVISIBLE ENEMY SHOULD NOT EXIST (RECOVERED, MISSING, STOLEN SERIES), 2007, sculptures created from Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers, made to resemble artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, in 2003, installed at Sharjah Biennial 8, 2007.

Illustrations from artwork by Michael Rakowitz as featured in Hanae Ko, "The Sweet and Bitter Road: Michael Rakowitz" in ArtAsiaPacific 78, May-June 2012.

Or perhaps the closely related Big Dick Cheney's war? According to which you could calculate the probability of any event and then respond to it as if it were real, as long as its ]jump]
probability was assessed at no less than 1%?

If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response. (quoted in Wikipedia)

Because surely there was at least a 1% probability that Saddam Hussein would blow the world into smithereens each year. But the fact is that the Big Dick is not quite the tough guy he seems—he shoots only drugged dude ranch birds, plus the occasional kibitzer, he doesn't go into the war in person, he's only responsible for the marketing. "That one percent thing came from over in creative, my office had nothing to do with it."

It really needs to be said, because people are not getting it, e.g. in the comment thread at this very nice bit of reading: if the WMD had existed, it still would have been a very bad idea for a war. It's very important that the WMD didn't exist, because it reveals the deep wickedness of those who made that war happen—they were making it all up, lying because they wanted that war so hard. But even if you believed General Powell for about ten minutes, as I did, you should have seen that it didn't make a casus belli (or "causus belli" as far too many people on these Internets are saying, what's up with that?).

Why didn't we invade North Korea? Why didn't we invade God-help-us Pakistan, with its fully developed nuclear arsenal and bizarre system of vertical warlordism where the president and the parliament and the army and the intelligence services are all mutually hostile armed factions? That's why—because you don't fix a crazy situation by adding more crazy. The only place where it is possible to have a war to prevent a country from acquiring nuclear weapons is in an alternative universe which is just like this one except that in around 1965 Israel was successfully prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Or voluntarily stopped after a personal appeal from Reagan and Gorbachev in 1986 following their decision (in the alternative universe) to get rid of their own—"Mr. Prime Minister, tear down this kval!"

VICTORY ARCH INSTALLATION (STRIKE THE EMPIRE BACK SERIES), 2009, large-scale sculpture of two arms, made to resemble the Hands of Victory monument in Iraq, holding Star Wars light sabers and plastered with pages from Saddam Hussein’s novels. Installation view at Tate Modern, London, 2010.

Whatever it was about, it wasn't about smoking guns and mushroom clouds and "he gased his own people" (though, to be sure, he only did it when he was our ally). And I don't believe it was deeply about oil or Halliburton; of course the oil folk and the Halliburton folk were pleased with it, and that helped with the marketing, because you can't do up a war properly without your profiteers swarming at the generals' feet; and of course the generals were fairly pleased too, at first, at the prospect of promotions and medals all round, and then out through the revolving door to the land of oil and Halliburton, until they started to feel embarrassed about losing, you know.

Was it Hitch's war? That's the one, truth to tell, I feel closest to, it responds to a certain cold-heartedness I can't always overcome in myself. People still don't understand about Hitchens, and I feel I do: his war was all about aesthetics. Of all the vile, corrupt, homicidal dictators on the world stage, Saddam Hussein seemed at the time to be the one with the worst taste—Hitch felt for him the same disgust as he felt for that hypocritical crone Mother Teresa. If some head of state had decided to attack Mother Teresa,  to bulldoze her establishment with her in it, to operate a violent regime change on the Missionaries of Charity, Hitchens would have signed up for it right away, and he signed up for the campaign against Saddam in the same spirit. The great irony was, of course, that he ended up indelibly associated with two men as vulgar and psychopathic as Saddam, Tony Blair and George W. Bush. Reached in the bar of the Mesopotamia Hotel in Hell, where he was having a cocktail with T.E. Lawrence (in full Arab drag) and Gertrude Bell, he said, "I just assumed they'd ask Kanan Makiya to come in as dictator, you see. I was totally shocked by the outcome of the whole thing." "Poor darling," said Miss Bell. "And he's so very sensitive."

Or was it Wolfowitz's? The funny little professor who spat on his comb in the Michael Moore movie?

Has anybody read Andrew Bacevich's open letter to Paul Wolfowitz in the current issue of Harper's? You should, it's important.

ENEMY KITCHEN, 2006–ongoing, for the first incarnation of the project, the artist teaches Baghdadi recipes at the Hudson Guild Community Center, in Chelsea, New York, to a group of middle and high school students who have relatives in the US Army stationed in Iraq. 

When in Rome

Outrage!

CBS has no comment regarding viewer outrage over an installment of The Amazing Race featuring a downed B-52 bomber as a prop and a pro-Communist tune sung to the show's contestants.

Sunday's episode of the Emmy-winning, globe-hopping reality show had contestants maneuvering around the B-52 wreckage as part of the Vietnam-based contest at hand.

The show also featured children singing the glories of socialism in front of the Amazing Race participants, including the following lyrics:

“Vietnam Communist party is glorious . . . Socialism is growing more beautiful with time. Follow the party’s step. Be loyal. Be pure.”

American Legion National Commander James E. Koutz fired off an angry letter to the network regarding the episode, but so far CBS hasn't responded to it or the outrage at large.

Perhaps the traitors at CBS also went to France and ate cheese.

Moral turfitude

Image from Men with Foil Hats.

Samuel Knight at Washington Monthly draws our attention to

“Fix The Debt” - the astroturf, defense contractor-linked lobbying group seizing upon the manufactured debt crisis to ram through a corporate agenda at the expense of everyone else - is asking Americans to share stories about how the national debt is affecting them.

No, really:

Why is it so important that we Fix the Debt? Why does it matter to your family? To your business? To our country? to YOU?

Our leaders in Washington need to hear from each of us. We need them to know that inaction is NOT an option. We must Fix the Debt.

You couldn’t make it up.

It’s likely that the majority of responses they are receiving are either full of: A) false generalizations about a “spending problem”; B) speculation about the future of Medicare and Social Security under the assumption that rich tax-dodgers can’t do any more or that the government shouldn’t negotiate with drug companies ripping it off; or C) good old incoherent right wing rambling.

Samuel thinks we might want to give them a chance to hear another point of view. Over and over again. Not so much an email bomb as an email stink bomb to skunk up their tubes. If [jump]
you participate, do make a copy of your contribution before posting it (the one you post disappears instantly into their own corporate cloud) and send it to him at the link at the top of this page.

Poster for Shin Geun-ho's film Bwulryang Namnyeo (Romantic Debtors), 2010, from AsianWiki.

I've sent three; two of them, chained together, go like this:

How does the debt affect me? 

Not all that much, to tell you the truth. If the debt was driving up inflation rates the way it's supposed to do that would be nice, as like most Americans I owe plenty of money and nobody owes me. But then it would be driving up interest rates and that wouldn't be so great; on the other hand maybe the bank would be less dawdly about our refinance, which is seemingly taking forever and driving us crazy. The Bush debt, being created out of deficits for lowering rich people's taxes and paying for illegal and pointless wars, just made me really angry; I can't say it affected me except by being so large that when it became really important to run deficits our congress was afraid to run them big enough: that debt, the Obama debt, was at least pointed in a useful investment direction and I guess its existence helps keep my urban hellhole clean and safe and my kid's schools staffed and so on. Things are getting better for me personally as the economy recovers; health insurance premiums are a way bigger problem than taxes, and I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes, but not just on deficit and debt reduction. Government spending is clearly not large enough, as you can see by the absence of inflation. 

I imagine most people who believe they are affected by the size of the national debt are victims of propaganda from the Peterson Institute and such. Goodhearted but poorly informed, older, feeling that the country is in some vague way going the "wrong direction", that young people are disrespectful and certain products are too expensive. They know that credit card debt is a problem, so why shouldn't government debt be a problem too? 

The only time the debt is a problem, to my mind, is when interest rates rise to a point where the government's payments interfere with its ability to pay for important things, which is very far from being the case right now. (Government is totally neglecting important things, but not to make interest payments; it's for stupid military aircraft and stupid deficit reduction and buying off drug companies.) This is going to happen some day, and at that point we will need to reduce the deficit, but it will be a lot easier if we are in a real recovery, with full employment and rising wages. The focus on the debt now is one of the main things stopping us from getting there. 

When I look at the Fix the Debt "Who we are" page, I see faces--virtually all of middle-aged and elderly white men--that have never known financial worry or insecurity, that have progressed without a hitch through college and career, that will never be dependent on Social Security or Medicaid. Professional politicians, heirs of industrialists, a few very successful academics. I see people who have never missed a meal, let alone a credit card payment, and who don't quite understand how somebody can get into a predicament where that's a problem, people with cash savings and portfolios and jewelry and comfortable relatives. And I kind of wonder where that horror of national debt comes from. What I figure is, it's fake--an act meant to attract a lot of sensible older voters, along with the famous "just like you balance your budget at the family dinner table" analogy. What these people really want is to keep bond yields at rock bottom until they're dead.

Debtors' prison. From Cult of the Dead Fish.

Eggs marks the spot

From David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006), via the Guardian.

O’Reilly points to a handful of small community centers and elementary schools that are hosting “spring egg hunts,” sometimes with a “spring bunny” emceeing the festivities. Nowhere to be found is the word “Easter,” laments O’Reilly, fearful that the nation’s six year olds will one day forget the religious symbolism of crawling around a grassy schoolyard on all fours searching for chocolate-filled plastic eggs. (Adam Peck, ThinkProgress) 

Peck probably thinks he's being funny here, under the assumption that the word "Easter", to say nothing of rabbits and eggs, has nothing to do with Christianity. Indeed, given that Ēostre/Ostara is the name of a Germanic goddess of the Dawn (rising in the east in a chariot drawn by a pair of hares), it would seem to have little relation to the death and resurrection of Bill O'Reilly's Lord and Savior. This, however, is to misunderstand the true meaning of Easter, which is essentially about Christians' deep and abiding conviction that they are not Jewish. Thus it is held approximately at Passover, but in defiant ignorance of when Passover precisely takes place, and prominently features the consumption of foods that are not pareve: ham, and powerfully leavened breads such as hot cross buns and popovers.

In the same way, while in southern Europe the festival is simply called "Passover" (Pâques, Pasqua, etc.) as if to wipe the Jewish festival out of memory, in the Germanic cultures it takes the name of the goddess of the Dawn. This has nothing to do with worshiping Ēostre: it's simply a matter, like using the Roman names of the month or the Anglo-Saxon names of the days of the week, which are also the names of pagan gods, of obliterating the Jewish ones.

The eggs, on the other hand, commemorate a miracle in the vita of the martyred Saint Conilius, deacon in a congregation of 5th-century Bononia, who found his family at the end of one Lent too poor for meat with which to break the fast, except a little bacon. He saw a fat hare in his garden, nibbling at the new ramps, and lunged for it—but as he was readying himself to break its neck he saw its eyes filling with tears, and bethought himself of the Blessed Virgin's suffering through the death of her Son on the Cross, and let the animal go. It scampered away, but not without pausing here and there in the bushes, where it miraculously laid a sequence of eggs about the size of duck's eggs and equally rich, in a rainbow of different colors. Conilius gathered up a dozen or so and brought them home, where he invented spaghetti alla carbonara.

Well, that's enough for now, but by all means have a happy Easter and Paschal Period and remember, if it means Bill O'Reilly isn't Jewish then that really benefits everybody.

Yours in X,
Yaz

Ostara, by  Johannes Geerts, 1901. From Wikipedia.

Cheap shots and hot falafels

Senator, isn't there a letter missing? Maybe an "a"?

Great arousing speech by @sarahpalinusa at #CPAC!
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) March 16, 2013

Don't hate me, this is why I call it "cheap shots".

Sarah Palin models F.A. Bartholdi's famous statue, "La Liberté arrosant le monde avec du Dr. Pepper". Image from TownHall.

Did you know that there's a writer at Townhall who goes by the name of Jackie Gingrich Cushman? Hmm, I wonder where I've heard that name before. Anyway, she writes this week about the Steubenville rape case, and her right-wing take that sure, it was bad, and it was the parents' fault:

As a parent, it makes me wonder: What were their parents thinking? I grew up in a small town, and my life revolved around band, football and church. When I came home (before curfew), my mother would call out from her bedroom to make sure it was me. She never went to sleep, at least not fully, before I was home.

I came home on time because I understood her expectations and what the consequences of my actions would have been.

Oh, now I remember. This is Little Jackie, and Big Jackie was Newtie's high school history teacher back in the day. Newtie used to tell his mom, "I'm doing a project for history class. With a friend." He always preferred being truthful if he could.

Jackie Gingrich Cushman, from Sadly, No. I believe PhotoShop may have been used here.

I wonder if mentioning Jackie is going to drive my traffic up? One of the weirdest spikes ever was when I happened for no very important reason to drop the name of Benyamin Netanyahu's second wife. There are people who Google this poor woman's name on a daily basis, for reasons I don't even want to think about.

Via Alphabetically Inclined, who writes eloquently about the blogger's relationship to strange Googlers.

To those who may have been concerned about President Obama going on an "apology tour":

You'll be able to tell when he does it, by the people making the apologies. Hint: Obama might not be the one.

Prime Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel apologized in a personal phone call to Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for a deadly raid on a Turkish ship by Israeli commandos in 2010 that killed nine people, a senior American official traveling with President Obama told reporters on Friday.

(Correction: Due to the omission of a word, the Times referred incorrectly to Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu of Israel. He is not a cut of meat, even of very high quality.)

The Prime.. uh, Minister, with Turkish falafel. Times of Israel.

Friday's Letters

Dear Winter, I hate you. That's all. Dear Husband Thank you for making me lemon tea this morning after I call in sick. And a preemptive thank you for making me breakfast, since you're the best at that. Dear Sinuses, I would really appreciate you clearing up and stop causing me serious pain and headaches. Dear Cleveland, please give us some nicer weather for Indian's opening day. I would really enjoy a few drinks on a patio in the sunshine, and this would be the perfect day for it! Dear Weekend, I'm pretty excited for you! Game of Thrones tonight and Kari's bachelorette party tomorrow. Dear Blog Link-ups, Thank you for giving me something to post when I'm lacking serious inspiration/motivation these days.

Love remembering my own bach party!
The girl in the pink on the right is the one were celebrating tomorrow night.

                                             

Whose war that was I think I know

Young Ezra used a funny expression—

Rather than looking at the war that was actually being sold, I’d invented my own Iraq war to support -- an Iraq war with different aims, promoted by different people, conceptualized in a different way and bearing little resemblance to the project proposed by the Bush administration. In particular, I supported Kenneth Pollack’s Iraq war.

Pollack's war? Which one is that? I mean, other than being one of the ones that didn't take place (which would be, in fact, infinite in number, if I under)?

Rebuilding Afghanistan, Destroying al-Qaida, Setting Israel and Palestine on the Road to Peace, and Then, a Year or Two Down the Road After Some Diplomacy, Invading Iraq. In interviews and op-ed articles, Pollack himself still supports the war, saying that now is better than never. But it's fair to say that his book does not—or at least not Bush's path to it. (Chris Suellentrop in March 2003, cited in Wikipedia)

Oh, I see. That was the war where you'd leave the diplomacy running while you went out and did a bunch of other errands, so you could pop the war right into the oven when you got back. Also, the UN and the NGOs and Russia and what not were all going to like it better than the real one, for some reason, maybe because of Prime Minister Sharon tootling down that road to peace, so they'd be happy spending a ton of money to rebuild all the stuff you would have blown up. In short, it was delusional. Sorry, Ezra, I don't think that gets you off the hook.

But then whose war did we get, after all?

Photo by Winnie's Human.

Peters and the Rock

Run! Squawkslide down Mount Everblessed!

The new pope was scarcely installed, with a clear mandate to clean up whatever remains of the sex-abuse crisis, when the snipers who always surround the Holy See opened skirmishing on the subject of Pope Francis’s conduct 35 years ago when Argentina was governed by the heavy-handed military junta that evicted Juan Perón’s politically inept widow, a former nightclub dancer, in 1976. (The junta was sent packing by Margaret Thatcher, who evicted them from the Falkland Islands in 1982.) The sex-abuse crisis has been a horrible and shaming problem, but Catholicism’s enemies have amplified and exploited it to incite the inference that most of the Roman clergy are deviates compounding superstition with perversion. The most frequent and wishful version of these events is as a mighty coruscation before the great Christian scam expires in a Wagnerian inferno, an inadvertent Waco. It took the most antagonistic pundits, in their uncomprehending skepticism of the viability of what they regard as a medieval flimflam factory anyway, only one day to assimilate the election of a man none of them had mentioned, in their omniscience, as a contender, before pronouncing his papacy dead on arrival at the Sistine Chapel.

Yes of COURSE it's Conrad Black.

No one really has any idea what this new pope is going to do, but there seems no doubt that he has a mandate to impose a draconian screening and evaluation process to clear out sex offenders, prevent the admission of potential future offenders, and give everyone except the most rabid anti-papists a comfort level that this ghastly affair, which simmered and bubbled for centuries, has been finally lanced and ended and that the weaknesses that gave rise to it and tolerated it have been excised. Sensing that the Church may survive this wicked and psychotic conduct by 1 or 2 percent of its ordained personnel, the Church’s enemies have already moved on to Francis’s supposed lack of rebellious fervor toward the Argentinean military 35 years ago. It is reminiscent of the tempest in a thimble over Pope Benedict’s conscription as an “air-force child soldier” in an inactive German anti-aircraft battery in 1943. (He deserted at the first opportunity to do so without being executed.)

Black, though, is nothing if not a quixotic old queen-lover. Quoth he:

There must be a dogmatically respectable way to execute a dignified climb-down and declare the sexual act a consequential moral commitment appropriate to and generally reserved to marriage, but sometimes unexceptionable when undertaken with contraceptive precautions, and reprehensible only if entered into wantonly. By clinging to the objection to contraception, even among married couples, the Church conveys the false impression of wishing to make sex risky and inaccessible, of opposing useful science, and of putting its hostility to safe sex ahead of its mortal opposition to abortion, a much more defensible and important cause that would be directly assisted by ending the failed war on contraception. The Roman Catholic Church, with all respect to the long traditions involved, should not be in the business of appearing to be the party of joyless behavioral philistinism, and should not needlessly subject itself to unjust imputations of hypocrisy. The secondary controversy over an all-male clergy can probably be dealt with by laicizing more activities with equal opportunities for women.

Laicizing activities with women! I'm in! Plus contraceptives!

Reaction one from a fellow Cornerite:

[...] Also strange is the explicit reason he gives for wanting the Church to “accept” contraception: “The Church’s official position on contraception enables its enemies to portray it as an archaic society for the propagation of chaste humbug by an esoteric fraternity of superannuated clergymen in antiquarian costume.”

Black goes on to explain how important it is, for the whole world and not just Catholics, that the Church “be a mighty rampart against the outrageous gibe of Islam that the West is a completely profane and blasphemous society.” So, according to Black, it’s vital that the Church exist for the sake of Western culture, but it should fold on matters of sexuality so as not to be accused of irrelevance and hypocrisy. The organization that is so needed precisely because it has stood firm throughout the ages should buckle on contraception for the very important reason that people like to have sex just for fun and don’t want someone to tell them not to.

Reaction two from K-Lo:

Conrad Black’s piece today is bewildering. Just at a time when even some non-papal audiences have become sick of the bill of poisonous goods the feminist revolution made women and men sign up for in the name of faux freedom, he hopes Pope Francis not only abandons Catholic theology but good sense. It is surrender to the sexual revolution that has, in part, led to the catechetical and public-witness crisis we’re in. And while, of course, it is true that Catholics can tend to be just like everyone else when it comes to sex as “a mere extension of the pleasures of heterosexual affection,” it is meant to be something more. Don’t we want our children to see it as something more? Don’t we want something more? In her surveying, Mary Hasson of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has found even women who aren’t on board with all of Church teaching wanting to know more about it in Sunday homilies. At a time when we can see clearly in our midst so much of what Paul VI warned of in Humanae Vitae, why wouldn’t we want to repropose a beautiful understanding about men and women, the Sacrament of marriage, and God’s love for us? Why wouldn’t we want a further unpacking of the teachings of Pope John Paul II on human sexuality? We’d all lose out if the Church caved to critics who want it to “modernize.” The Church needs to communicate better, teach more, but not cave.

She also recommends Black read a book, which if he gives a shit should make him sputter.

K-Lo is right though: in the centuries since Vatican II the Church has stood firm.