To those who muse about "Spreading Democracy", revisited (Kim Jong-il version)

During an acute famine in the 1990's, starving North Korean refugees--often accompanied by human traffickers--attempted to cross the Tumen River into China; death by freezing was commonplace

And who, while decrying the dictatorial splinter in the collective cornea of yet another palm-tree-lined nation* doing us no harm, all the while ignoring the beam lodged in their own myopic eye; and who, to this day, and despite mounting evidence to the contrary, tell the citizenry that promoting freedom is what they've been doing all this time, even as the blood and treasure belonging to their own people continue to spill unabated while those occupied but not yet dead face an uncertain (but certainly violent) present and future; and who persist, inexplicably and without remorse or fear of reproof, in sanctioning further curtailment of that selfsame freedom with the suspension of habeas corpus and with every presidentially-approved, unconstitutional wiretap and illegal invasion of citizens' privacy, I offer the words of another notable Latin American:

THE DICTATORS

By Pablo Neruda

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence.

[* Upon learning that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il had died, my thoughts returned to Pablo Neruda's poem, to its vital and crystalline truths and how they live on. I had a similar reaction to the one shared above when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro stepped down in 2008. Plus ça change...]

Sunday Frank: Zappa in Czechoslovakia with Václav Havel, 1990

This is some wonderful footage of Frank Zappa in 1990, when he visited the late Václav Havel in then- Czechoslovakia shortly after it became autonomous. This is Part Three of Four in the collection posted on YouTube (thank you, reldditmot). (Here are the others, which are very much worth watching: Part One, Part Two, Part Four.) It's an interview Zappa did with Czech press, covering various political topics, including what Zappa saw as a sort of institutional stupidity that had taken hold in the States over the past decade or so.

This stupidity condition, Zappa said, has largely been imposed on the citizenry by popular culture and religion, then aided and abetted in its contagion by a leadership with its own nefarious reasons for keeping everything and everyone dumbed-down.

Do watch it. Zappa was, undeniably, a curmudgeon. His opinions can rub liberals the wrong way (I certainly don't agree with everything he ever said, but then, about whom can any of us say that?). But as you'll see, he was right about the consequences of not funding education properly; of allowing the shortages of teachers, especially in critical subjects, to continue; of spreading teachers too thinly and having them teach subjects other than the ones they've trained in. (Zappa points to geography as one overlooked, underfunded subject, and expresses his dismay that many American kids can't identify their own country, much less foreign ones, on a world map). And he points to a dangerous problem--one that has only worsened in the years since--namely, the control of textbooks and their content. Textbooks should of course contain only facts, but instead acquire an overtly theist framing--and thus bias--due to their having to pass muster with Christianist censors (and be edited accordingly) before the public school system can buy and use them.

And finally, oh dear, was Frank Zappa not scarily prescient about what happens when a national complacency pandemic takes hold--usually during strong economies--and people are comfortable and not paying attention to the the goings-on within government, meanwhile politicians begin stealing and pulling tricks that benefit a tiny minority?

RIP Václav Havel
RIP Frank Zappa

How to travel with your rights intact (or, How much time have you got?)

Air travel in America--at any time of year--carries with it a certain amount of stress and worry no matter how well-prepared we are. During the holidays, however, airports are routinely more crowded and travelers more harried, with weather events causing flight delays and global events often leading to frequent changes in security procedures that are almost impossible to keep up with (and, to be sure, that are inconsistently applied, further adding to the confusion).

Those of us who do not wish to give up our civil liberties in order to get from Point A to Point B might face additional delays. The ACLU offers excellent guidelines for navigating airport security, but even they warn travelers that "opting out" of the notorious scanners, for example, will probably mean you'll have to wait for an appropriate agent to be located (or freed up) in order to perform the also-notorious "enhanced pat-down". And if you decline to answer a question during the so-called SPOT interview, you may well be selected for secondary screening. Meaning, more delay. From their website:

OPTION: Decline to answer

You can decline to answer questions or reply to each question politely with the simple words, “personal business.” However, if the TSA officer does not feel that you are answering his or her questions, they may select you for secondary screening.

Clearly, the vast majority of travelers are interested in getting to their destination (and out of that crowded, hectic airport!) as quickly and smoothly as possible. Thus, the TSA dangles the carrot of convenience over our heads: "Just go through the scanner; it's much quicker!" or else "If you refuse to answer more specifically, we'll have to send you through secondary screening, which is currently backed up and could take...oh, another forty-five minutes to an hour, at least".

Regardless of what your personal boundaries are when it comes to acceptable intrusions into your privacy, if you must travel by air, it makes sense to be as fully-informed about current security conditions as possible, and if you're flying with medical devices, medicine, or breast milk, to print out the TSA's own rules--you have the right to request that an office conduct a "visual inspection"--and carry them with you in case the agent you encounter doesn't appear to be terribly well-versed in them. (Although as observers will note, even doing just that--printing out the TSA's rules for medicines and milk, etc., and carrying a copy with you--will not always prevent your being unfairly detained and seriously delayed, as this unfortunate working mother discovered.)

TSA Newsblogger Sommer Gentry has an excellent post that further details what the TSA can and cannot do. She describes how she avoids the scanner machines in part by choosing her routes (and airports) carefully and provides a link to TSA Status, which is updated frequently (almost in real-time!) and lets travelers know which airports (and terminals) are using the scanners, and to what degree. She further reminds us that:

Every traveler has a right to refuse TSA searches

If the TSA tries to do something to you that you find offensive, you should say no. Although the TSA has threatened travelers with fines and tried to argue that walking away isn’t permitted, in practice the TSA has no power other than the power to deny you access to the boarding gates. The police do have the power to detain you, but that requires individualized suspicion, something that you do not exhibit merely by purchasing an airline ticket.

Since the TSA has steadfastly refused to describe exactly what anyone might be subjected to at a checkpoint, many travelers will find themselves pressured to bow to unpredictable and unreasonable demands. For instance, a handful of flyers report being physically strip searched in private rooms, and some women were coerced to bare their breasts to male screeners in a stairwell – would you comply?

Protecting yourself from invasive searches requires only willingness to abandon your travel plans and make new ones. United Airlines was wonderful and rebooked me for a later flight the same day from Reagan Airport, where there are no scanners in Terminal A. The United employee who helped me even agreed with my stance, telling me that he thought the scanners were “not decent. They shouldn’t do that to people, it’s just not decent.”

To my mind, the best (and perhaps most difficult-to-follow) security-related travel advice of all is this sentence: Protecting yourself from invasive searches requires only willingness to abandon your travel plans and make new ones.

Which means, research other flight options well beforehand, if possible, and plan your day accordingly. If you wish to avoid the scanners for privacy or health reasons (or both), build in plenty of extra time for the agency to locate that elusive special person to do the enhanced pat-down. If you're 100% opposed to being physically searched on certain parts of your body--and plenty of us are, for a number of reasons--understand that you may have to walk from that particular flight and take another one, perhaps from a different terminal or city, even.

As for me, I was thrilled to recently learn that Tampa has a lovely renovated and historic train station which is itself a "tourist destination"--where have I been?!--although I am not so thrilled to learn that the TSA has been conducting passenger searches and pat-downs, as part of the VIPR program, at Amtrak and bus stations too. And John Pistole is pressuring Congress to add 12 more VIPR units to the current 25 in 2012.

That's another post for another day.

Also at TSA News Blog.

The US government's unconscionable and unconstitutional brutality toward its own peaceful citizens

Police begin pepper-spraying the faces of peaceful student protesters at UC Davis; shortly thereafter, they beat them and held them down, forcing pepper spray down their throats.

Photo by Louise Macabitas

"I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere." —President Barack Obama

Oh yeah?

The United States will stand up for them everywhere?

What about right here at home, President Obama? What about refraining from violence against peaceful protesters RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA? Or is it easier to just turn the whole thing over to the jackboots in Homeland Security and let them coordinate these shocking, brutal crackdowns as you distance yourself from the Occupy movement lest you piss off your Wall Street donors?

Where is the leadership?

Not to go all Emoprog here, but really, What the fuck, President Obama?

WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP?

#ThisIsNotAmerica

Taking it to the belly of the beast: Occupy the Boardroom

This project--Occupy the Boardroom--is the newborn brainchild of friends, and it is brilliant, having truly taken off, and just in the past week. Even Jamie Dimon has received (and opened) his messages. Limitless greed and malfeasance on the part of Wall Street and the banks have devastated the lives of American families everywhere.


Yes, those are some "1-percenters" in the pic; they're yukking it up while actually drinking Champagne on a balcony over the Wall St. protests.

(I love a glass of good Champers as much as anyone, but I'll never be that, er, classy.)

Here, read just one true story. Then go read the rest and get truly pissed-off. You might even be moved to share your own tale with one of the many "pen pals" OTBR has listed. Or else just share the post itself. Courage!

Tax Breaks Aren't For Offshoring Jobs
From July 1, 2008 until May 18, 2010, I worked for JPMorgan Chase. I was hired through a temp service to do internal IT support over the phone. When hired I was told that if I kept my statistics (first call resolution, and call times) down that I would eventually be hired as an actual employee of Chase. Despite my statistics consistently being in the top 10 of all of the employees in my department, not just the other temps, after two years I was not only not hired, but I was laid off. However during that two years other temps with stats much worse than mine were hired. My reason for not being hired was never explained to me. It could have been the fact that I am in a wheelchair and Chase didn’t want a disabled woman bringing up their insurance rates, or perhaps it is because I am a lesbian and other than myself there was one other homosexual in the department who was actually an employee, but was also laid off at the same time as me.

The whole come work for us and we will eventually give you a great job with awesome benefits was just a scheme. In 2008 Chase received a State tax credit from Ohio and in return they were to create 1200 new jobs within the state. So what did they do? They hired a bunch of temporary employees, got their tax credit, and kept the temporary employees on staff long enough to not only not lose their tax credit, but to also set up their call center in the Philippines. Then two years later they laid off hundreds of people causing the state to lose more jobs than they had gained during that two year period. Other internal IT departments were outsourced to Mexico and the credit card fraud department was exported to India. Though you surely know all of this.

So through a loophole in the system your company caused more people in our state to be unemployed and still took taxpayer money to stuff your own pockets with under the guise of being a company creating more jobs.

-Name Withheld

An exemplar extraordinaire--please join me in saying Brava! Bravissima! for Lisa Simeone

Greetings from the warm wilds of Florida's Gulf coast, where exhausted mothers can stop talking (or writing) for weeks before someone notices, and of course all hell (and other great stories) will break loose in the meantime, and someone will eventually go, Er, anyone heard from D in a while?

I know, I know. I am a horrible blogger sometimes--my only excuse is that blogging must necessarily come after all the other concerns, and once those are addressed, I am often too wiped-out to scribble out as much as a grocery list (not that I do those, actually--I'm an incorrigible fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants person). So, personal matters, health matters, and a dire lack of energy on my part have occupied my life and consciousness even as real live human beings have occupied our imagination and city squares, demanding that our leaders pay attention to the vast majority of us--and our serious problems, which include (but are not limited to) the ongoing unemployment disaster, the foreclosure crisis, and the dramatically escalating costs of healthcare in the face of an insurance system that simply does not work.

I have of course been keeping up with the efforts of numerous friends who've participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement (and its many offshoots) and the October2011/Stop the Machine protests, particularly the work of friend and former Cogitamus co-blogger Lisa Simeone.

It will come as no surprise that I support Lisa's work and that I admire her. Tremendously. She has done what so few of us are able or willing to do: put her money where her mouth is, so to speak. Like me, Lisa was appalled at the Wikileaks revelations (re: Afghanistan brutalities) and disgusted at the unconstitutional treatment of PFC Bradley Manning, the soldier responsible for sending the government-embarrassing data to Wikileaks and who remains in prison, without formal charges, to this day.

Unlike me, all safe and comfy in my Florida home with my family and computer, Lisa marched at the White House and got arrested for her efforts.

She participated in the DC protests, keeping us up to date on the demonstrations and police activities alike.

Then, a horrible e-mail: Soundprint had fired her.

Simeone said she was fired Wednesday night by Moira Rankin, executive producer of “Soundprint,” a weekly documentary program that Simeone hosts. The program, independently produced, airs on NPR stations around the country.

“It was bewildering,” Simeone said. “She started by quoting all these reports from the Daily Caller, and I didn’t know even what that was. She said, ‘Are you involved with this organization [October 2011]? I said, ‘Yes, I was one of about 50 people who helped put this together.’ She said, ‘That’s a problem because I’m getting all these calls. I think you violated the NPR code of ethics.’”

“I said, ‘Can you explain how?’” Simeone went on. “Scott Simon writes Op-Eds. Cokie Roberts [is paid] tens of thousand of dollars in fees talking to business groups. Mara Liaason* goes on Fox TV to express her opinions. They all report on the issues — which I don’t do. I finally said, ‘Are you firing me?’ She said yes.”

But Lisa--a freelance radio host and writer, it should be noted, not an employee of NPR--was not buying it.

“I’ve never hid my views and my opinions have never leeched into what I do on NPR. People can listen to all my shows. When I was talking about ‘Tosca,’ I could have talked about the relevance today of Cavaradossi, the tenor who is a political prisoner and who is tortured. I didn’t mention it. It’s a show about opera, for God’s sake.”

There were talks. I wish I had been a fly on the wall. All I know is this: Lisa will continue hosting NPR's World of Opera.

And I hope to hell that a big cable channel will see her and hear her and offer her a plum position reporting on the arts, compensation to include unlimited use of the company's private jets.

Because Lisa--multilingual world traveler and connoisseur of beauty Lisa--has completely stopped flying in protest of the TSA's unconstitutional searches and seizures.

(Lisa, let me know if this comes to pass--I'll go with you to Paris or Palermo. Have vintage suits and old-school round hatboxes and hard-sided suitcases; will travel.)

And thanks also to Sir Charles for writing about this at the Cogblog.

Finally, an early Christmas present for Tucker Carlson:



* Edited to properly report Liaason's name, which Salon had misspelled. -- DNT

Chris Hedges speaks at Occupy Wall Street

Writer and activist Chris Hedges has some powerful things to say about the forces and conditions that have led to the peaceful and many-days-long demonstration currently taking place in New York: Occupy Wall Street (peaceful on the part of protesters, that is; utterly and unforgivably violent on the part of the NYCPD, who are brutalizing and macing non-resisting people left and right, while shouting "Don't resist! I said, STOP RESISTING!" in an obvious attempt to cover their pathetic asses.)

Please watch and share. (And of course, watch the updated videos at Occupy Wall Street and share those, too.)

Book Review: Nassir Ghaemi's A First-Rate Madness is a first-rate read

As I have written about before, I am more than passingly familiar with the euphoria of creativity-filled up-cycles as well as the darkness of their unfortunate counterparts, those hideous depressive phases during which everything seems boring or bleak; tears and hopelessness are the order of the day; and even simple activities like picking out a shirt or brushing hair turn into loathsome, dreaded, and even inexecutable chores--forget actually doing anything productive. So it was with great interest that I dove into the literary results of Dr. Nassir Ghaemi's intriguing research and analysis, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness.

Mental illness--well, I like to call it being Mentally Interesting, for which descriptor I will thank the writer (and fellow Mentally Interesting Person) Jerod Poore--is not quite the taboo subject it was a few decades ago; it is no longer a hush-hush domain to which mysteriously disappeared classmates are consigned ("Where did she go?" "I don't know, but I heard she had a nervous breakdown"); and--thank the Fates, along with relatively recent advances in neuroscience--it's no longer a complete mystery (although, it must be said, the human mind is inarguably the last great frontier, and modern medicine has only just begun to embark on its journey toward solving the biochemical and behavioral puzzles therein).

The core thesis of A First-Rate Madness: Rational, calm, balanced, agreeable, reasonable, conciliatory, and sane people are lovely to have around. Ahem. But when all Hell breaks loose, you want a leader who can stand at the edge of the abyss, confront the monster within, and stare that horned and tentacled bastard down. For this kind of nation-saving and history-making leadership, only a Mentally Interesting person will do, knowing as he or she does (like the back of the hand, in fact) the precise reach of said monster's limbs and the explicit scope of its awfulness.

At the outset, Ghaemi identifies the parallel nature of a clinician's diagnosis (of a mentally ill patient) and a historian's analysis. Both require a careful study of symptoms, of course, as well as an identification (if possible) of genetic components and an overview of indicated treatments--those sought, those avoided or not yet available, and those which succeeded (or failed).

Invoking the personal and fascinating stories of figures such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Mahatmas Gandhi, Ghaemi then points to the qualities--conspicuous in their abundance--that variously characterize those leaders who suffer with (and also, to be sure, exalt in) mental illness throughout the course of their lives, those being: Creativity, realism, empathy, and resilience.

In the case of General Sherman, for example, we are shown a leader who wholly transformed warfare from the faltering Napoleonic model of concentrated frontal assault to a bold and creative approach which took into account the economic and moral aspects of rebellion and thus enabled a totality of destruction that was at once brutal and wildly successful. But he was not, despite popular myth, a glorifier of war. Ghaemi explains:

Reconstructing the real Sherman, with his coercion as well as his complexity, means recognizing that he had manic-depressive illness. In fact, of all the leaders in this book, I would say that Sherman is the prototypical mentally ill leader. In different aspects of his bipolar disorder, he displayed many of the powers of mental illness to improve leadership: depressive realism, empathy for the South (before and after the war), resilience beyond measure, and unique military creativity. Yet until recently, no historian had carefully assessed whether Sherman himself suffered from deep, indeed sick emotions. This task was taken up by Michael Fellman, a gregarious American, self-exiled in Canada since the 1960s, where he is professor emeritus of history at Simon Fraser University. A specialist in the American Civil War, Fellman had been taught traditional history: trace the documents of who did what, who said what, and what happened; pull it together for the reader; and let it go. Such history seldom made well-grounded analyses about the abnormal mental states of the people it studied.

Having himself suffered a painful depression, Fellman realized that traditional history was mistaken because such conditions have an enormous impact on people--famous, infamous, and obscure. He became attuned to evidence of abnormal mental states among the Civil War figures he studied. Besides Lincoln's melancholy, Fellman discovered depressive tendencies in Robert E. Lee, and outright mental illness in General Sherman. What followed was a biography--researching and reporting facts based on primary sources--that a century after Sherman's own memoir unmasked the whole man: greater than we thought, in part because he was much sicker than we knew.

Greater than we thought, in part because he was much sicker than we knew.

A First-Rate Madness is suffused throughout with this generosity of spirit, with bittersweet reflections and a profoundly humane sensibility. (In fact, while reading it, one might wonder if the author himself is also a Mentally Interesting human being, so impeccable and accurate are his observations of the afflicted.)

To wit: the layperson, upon reading about the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, might infer that pacifism and idealism were both central components of his character and dominant forces that controlled his worldview. Not so, asserts Ghaemi, who proceeds to construct a portrait far richer, and more textured and heartbreakingly real, than any study of Dr. King this writer has encountered to date (my emphasis):

The Martin Luther King of popular mythology is a cardboard icon, brought out once a year on a holiday, with little resemblance to the real historical man. The cardboard King was a pacifist idealist; he wanted everyone to make peace and hold hands. The real King was an aggressive, confrontational realist; he believed that all men were evil in part, including himself; he thought that violence was everywhere and unavoidable, including within himself. "Nonviolence" did not mean the absence of violence, but the control of violence so that it was directed inward rather than outward.

And there are many, many more such insights to be appreciated in this fine book, as well as a clear-eyed analysis of those leaders whose personalities might best be described as even-keeled, rational, or else well-balanced, but whose marks on history--if even they made any--are mostly pastel-hued and watery as opposed to fierce, glittering, bloody, or--invoking here the title of another enlightening book by a thoughtful psychologist (Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison)--touched by fire.

A written work may be described as truly successful, I think, when you find yourself quoting it in your head, even weeks and months after having read its final passages. Inasmuch as I have been doing just that--taking in the words and deeds of our current American leadership with new eyes, even--I'd say that A First-Rate Madness is an extraordinary accomplishment. And I highly recommend it.

-------------

Footnote:

Unlike numerous recently-published tomes, Dr. Ghaemi's book--refreshingly, and perhaps intentionally--steers clear of former half-term Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, despite her erratic behavior, propensity to deceive, and general mental instability, all of which are topics of analysis you'd think would be irresistible to any academic psychiatrist, particularly one who's exploring the connection between mental illness and leadership. When I wondered aloud why this might be so, my son's quip provided the obvious answer:

"That's because she's not a leader, Mama."

UPDATE: be sure to check out Dr. Ghaemi's blog, Mood Swings.

It's hard to believe he was a Republican

“Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

- President Dwight Eisenhower (R)

Break for beauty: the amazing Alina Cojocaru dances Don Quixote with Johan Korborg

Meet Alina Cojocaru, a stunningly talented Romanian ballerina--now a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet of London--who in my humble opinion may well become the next Margot Fonteyn (and as you can imagine, I would never make such comparisons lightly). I'm not certain of the date of this performance; Cojocaru's Kirti (in Don Quixote) marked her debut ballet with the Kiev school in the mid-nineties, when she was a teen. She's now thirty and is engaged to her partner Johan Korborg, who, as you can see in this clip, is no slouch himself.

But as for Cojocaru...*sigh*...what beautiful lines and what absolutely incredible extension. I watched this three times, with a goosebumps bristling along my limbs and lump wedged in my throat. She's technically near-perfect but is by no means a flawless dancer, not yet: she travels a tiny bit while executing those whiplash fouettes, for one thing. And dancing Kirti requires more fire, at least to my romantic mind. Cojocaru will mature and develop subtleties like emotionality and musicality over time. In this performance, however, she is perhaps too calm and collected.

Nonetheless, I am sure Dame Margot would approve. I know I'll be watching.

Mutinous Memories

My Mum recently sent me the link to a 2005 article in Miami New Times about the heyday of a certain notorious nightclub in that city, where I lived as a teenager. It was called The Mutiny:

In its time there was nothing like the Mutiny Hotel and today it lives on in hindsight like the afterimage of a hallucination, bright but blurry. The Mississippi Delta is said to begin in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis; likewise the Mutiny in its day defined Miami's psychic boundaries. It was the nerve center of the city's exploding cocaine trade, a favorite hangout of globetrotting spies, and a desperately popular watering hole for Latin America's nouveau riche. It was meant to be elegant, and was, but early on it became infamous and edgy, and reveled in the reputation. Its most decadent highs were a carnival barker's advertisement for the Seventies, and its decline was an early object lesson in America's S&L crisis."I did a movie called life, with actors that were real people," says Burton Goldberg, former owner of the Mutiny. "We had dictators, secret police, drug people, bankers, the international trade, gunrunners, and celebrities: Rod Serling, Senator Kennedy, Cher, Hamilton Jordan, Jacqueline Onassis, George Bush. Mimes and magicians! Naked dancers in very fine taste, not prurient! Music! Chairs with enormous arms!

As it so happens, the Mutiny was where Yours Truly worked as a waitress for several months during a semester-long hiatus from my junior year at UF. A few years ago, I wrote about the experience here at Litbrit, as well for Ezra's eponymously-titled blog. At the time, I changed the names of the club--and certain patrons--to protect the not-so-innocent. But what the hell, the club itself is no more, and my choice of faux names--The Uprising--was a pretty transparent synonym for the club's real name, anyway.

If you like Scarface and spy novels--or perhaps just fancy a break from all the politics and sad, sad 9/11 stuff that's on the tube and in the 'Tubes this week--you might enjoy my little memoir/story about working and living it up Miami-style at the end of the Disco age. I invite you to read Sunshine, Cigar Boxes, and Semi-Automatics:

With Lena's help, I opened and poured bottle after bottle of Dom Pérignon; I served Ceasar salads and filets mignon and enormous Maine lobsters erupting crabmeat and brandied cream; and I brought several glasses of Johnny Walker Black on the rocks from the bar, where I'd already made friends with Sam, an art student at Florida International and a fellow Monty Python wonk.

"Alberto's here again, huh?" he said when I requested the third such cocktail. "Though pretty much everyone drinks this, you'll find. But it's Monday, and there aren't too many people who can put away this much Scotch on a weeknight." He drained the bottle and slipped its nozzle onto a new, full one. "You'll have fun here. You'll make good money."

So I had heard. But thus far, Lena and I had waited on exactly one party.

By three in the morning, though, I'd served a few other tables and opened another half-dozen bottles of Champagne. Alberto and his crew were beginning to look restless, but they hadn't asked for the check. I was certain it would be outrageous, well into the hundreds of dollars; Lena informed me that the two grand Alberto spent that night was nothing compared to some of his weekend expenditures, indeed, nothing compared to the bankrolls through which some of the club's other guests regularly burned. [Continued...]

I know what I did this summer

[Definitely click to embiggen and read.]

Besides melting, boy-maintaining, reading, drinking iced-tea, eating watermelon, and playing with Photoshop, I was able to get in some high-quality sleeping, although I did have a few nightmares, most of them brought on by daytime musing on the prospect of a right-wing religious ideologue winning the presidency next year.

These nightmares intensified when I learned more about NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation movement, and its far-reaching involvement in American society, culture, and politics. NAR is the force behind newly-announced presidential candidate, Texas Governor Rick Perry. From the Texas Observer (emphasis mine):

Unlike other radical religious groups, the New Apostles believe political activism is part of their divine mission. “Whereas their spiritual forefathers in the Pentecostal movement would have eschewed involvement in politics, the New Apostles believe they have a divine mandate to rescue a decaying American society,” said Margaret Poloma, a practicing Pentecostal and professor of sociology at the University of Akron. “Their apostolic vision is to usher in the Kingdom of God.”

“Where does God stop and they begin?” she asks. “I don't think they know the difference.”

Poloma is one of the few academics who has closely studied the apostolic movement. It’s largely escaped notice, in part, because it lacks the traditional structures of either politics or religion, says Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher who has covered the movement extensively for Talk2Action.org, a left-leaning site that covers the religious right.

“It’s fairly recent and it just doesn’t fit into people’s pre-conceived notions,” she says. “They can’t get their head around something that isn’t denominational.”

The movement operates through a loose but interlocking array of churches, ministries, councils and seminaries—many of them in Texas. But mostly it holds together through the friendships and alliances of its prophets and apostles.

The Response itself seems patterned on TheCall, day-long worship and prayer rallies usually laced with anti-gay and anti-abortion messages. TheCall—also the name of a Kansas City-based organization—is led by Lou Engle, an apostle who looks a bit like Mr. Magoo and has the unnerving habit of rocking back and forth while shouting at his audience in a raspy voice. (Engle is also closely associated with the International House of Prayer—, Mike Bickle’s 24/7 prayer center in Kansas City.) Engle frequently mobilizes his followers in the service of earthly causes, holding raucous prayer events in California to help pass Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative, and making an appearance in Uganda last year to lend aid to those trying to pass a law that would have imposed the death penalty on homosexuals. But Engle's larger aim is Christian control of government.

“The church’s vocation is to rule history with God,” he has said. “We are called into the very image of the Trinity himself, that we are to be His friends and partners for world dominion.”

“It sounds so fringe but yet it’s not fringe,” Tabachnick says. “They’ve been working with Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Sam Brownback, and now Rick Perry. ... They are becoming much more politically noticeable.” [...]

The New Apostles talk about taking dominion over American society in pastoral terms. They refer to the “Seven Mountains” of society: family, religion, arts and entertainment, media, government, education, and business. These are the nerve centers of society that God (or his people) must control.

I plan to keep close tabs on these worrisome gentlefolk. NARWatch makes it easy--bookmarked and done (thanks, Rachel!) (To really stay up-to-the-minute, be sure to like NARWatch on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.)

Sorry, fundies, you may have succeeded in passing anti-women laws like mandatory ultrasounds in Florida, but I'm not ready to change my name to OfRobert and give up reading books. Not just yet.

Friday Frank: Heavenly Bank Account; New York, 1982

As relevant as ever.

That's right, you ain't got nothing, and they've got it all, and your miserable ass is up against the wall...

Thank you, Maestro; you certainly called it. *Deep sigh.*

And with that--oh hey, it's after three! I'm off to see if there's any rum left over from last weekend's mojitos.

Bon Weekend, everyone.

XXX
D.

Allen West is a gentleman

There are no words.

Memo to Joe Walsh: Taxes are already at a historic low--even lower than they were under Republican presidents

(H/T Laffy for the video)

I watched the exceedingly rude, arrogant, and condescending Congressman Joe Walsh on Hardball Monday night, and as he interrupted, sidestepped, and over-talked his host, I did a little talking of my own, to my hapless television set (come on, you know you do it, too).

Like virtually all who signed Grover Norquist's No Tax Increase pledge--and then deny that Grover Norquist tells them what to do--Walsh pushes the narrative that even closing loopholes and adjusting definitions of qualified deductions are the same thing as sucking the lifeblood from the job-creators who, he keeps promising, will eventually produce all these magical jobs if we just believe hard enough and stop asking them to pay their fair share.

(Comedian Bill Maher describes this nonsense as regarding "job creators"--aka the wealthy/corporate class--as some sort of delicate and endangered exotic animals at the center of a National Geographic feature: Shhh! Don't upset them! They'll run away!)

And while the deranged House Republicans chug along in their clown car, sometimes spinning in circles, always lurching toward the default cliff they seem to want to take the country right over, too many Democrats are oddly silent about the dire need to increase revenue if we're to ever get within spitting distance of balancing the budget one day, which is what the president wants, even if people like me would suggest that job creation via bold, broad, and inarguably necessary infrastructure spending should be the first priority.

Taxation in America--money coming in--is at a historic low. Expenditures, thanks in large part to those big, expensive wars, are at a historic high. I'm no math fiend, but even I can see the problem here.

But for those who, like Congressman Walsh, would seem to be even more math challenged than I, perhaps a nice graphic would help get the point across:

(Via.)

Alan Grayson running for Congress; vows to fight Washington's culture of "Meanies and Weenies"

All of this compromise hasn't accomplished anything useful for anybody on our side...the President should be saying to people, "The Republican party is cruel; the Republican party is bigoted; the Republican party cares only about tax breaks for the rich."

-- Congressman-to-once-again-be Alan Grayson, D-FL

YEAH.

Yesterday, Alan Grayson declared his candidacy; my Mum and Dad's lost cat Manuel suddenly showed up at their door after worrying everyone sick for a week (and he seems no worse for wear); and I baked an enormous pan of Georgia peach cobbler which my lads thoroughly enjoyed, hot from the oven, with vanilla Häagen-Dazs melting in rivulets all over it. Not bad for a Monday, and sweltering summer Monday at that!

What's making you happy this week?

Friday Frank: Montana; New York, 1982

I was just thinking to myself, Wow, I haven't posted a Friday Frank in ages. ( This rainy afternoon has inspired me to spend entirely too much time poking around YouTube for old favorites.)

This one is too good to not share. I only wish it were longer.

Bon Weekend, everyone--and stay dry!

XXX
D.

Fourth thought

"Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

-- John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty

Freedom From and Freedom To: We're giving away our privacy and liberty, and for what?

Comedian Lee Camp riffs on the worrisome state of American privacy in one of his great Moments of Clarity.

I have long maintained that the concepts of Freedom From and Freedom To are both vital components of human liberty (and I thank Margaret Atwood for introducing this concept to my young feminist's brain via her masterpiece The Handmaid's Tale).

Indeed, without Freedom From, Freedom To--the necessary foundation upon which any bona fide pursuit of happiness gets built--becomes, itself, an untenable concept.

As our Freedom From is curtailed, so goes our Freedom To. When law-abiding citizens are increasingly prevented from traveling freely about their own country by air, and now by train, bus, and car--as they are searched, x-rayed, groped, and humiliated, absent probable cause, mind you, and even assaulted, and by agents of the We-the-People government that is supposed to be by, for, and of US--these selfsame citizens are also realizing a parallel curtailment of their human potential.

Think of all the opportunities missed, the creativity hampered, the activism delayed, the commerce sacrificed, and the education denied due to the vast reduction of our Freedom From unconstitutional searches and privacy invasions. Every former gypsy and rambling man I know--even people who'd consider themselves apolitical and TSA-agnostic--has drastically reduced his or her travel to a bare minimum these days, if they even leave home at all. And when you ask why, the answer will never be fear of terrorism, but rather, will almost invariably center around an extreme distaste for the overbearing and omnipresent Security State and its concomitant time-sucking nature. It's just not worth it, they say.

It's just not worth it. That sad sentence would break the hearts of our forebears, don't you think? And yet, it perfectly encapsulates the American mindset right now.

Whither Liberty, ca. 2011? Whither Justice For All?

Perhaps we should ask a Constitutional scholar and professor. He might know.

"And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer: Let it be."

Violinist Michael Province, aged 15, and cellist Nathan Chan, aged 16, do John Lennon proud. What a beautiful, joyful interpretation of a song for our day.

Shine on 'till tomorrow, gentlemen. And bravo!

(H/T Diane S.)