Friday Funk: Johnny Guitar Watson; A Real Mother For Ya

For my money, this is one of the best bass lines ever. I dare you to try to sit completely still, ha!

Bon Weekend, everyone.

XXX
D.

Wednesday Grace: Steve Vai; I Know You're Here; Denver, 2003

Beautiful guitar music for a summer night's musing. Spiritual Steve looks so grown-up compared to his protégé days of playing alongside Frank Zappa (who called him the "Little Italian Virtuoso") while wearing leopard-print t-shirts and wowing the girls. I love (and relate to!) the glasses, too--apparently even rock-'n-rollers get around to needing them sooner or later.

Health Care Reform's Public Enemy #1: Rick Scott

Please watch this important film short; feel free to share it far and wide.

Via Collateral News.

Walter Cronkite with Dennis Kucinich: For a Department of Peace

In September 2005, the late, great Walter Cronkite sat down with Rep. Dennis Kucinich to discuss a novel and, as yet, heartbreakingly little-explored approach to making our world a better place: create a Department of Peace. Watch and be inspired.

Sadly, the idea makes far too much sense to be a plausible goal for our violence-addicted culture, especially when you consider that many of our leaders have track records of slavish devotion to the makers of Things That Go Bang in the Night. And that said leaders themselves are, all too often, wealthy white male draft-dodgers with pneumatic Caymans accounts in need of constant feeding. But you never know--perhaps we can get Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, et alia, interested in the dove-breeding and butter-distributing business?

(H/T commenter atheist over at Roy Edroso's place.)

Beautifully Said

Actress Rita Hayworth points out that she donated her car’s steel bumpers to the war effort; note Hayworth's crisp outfit, jaunty brooch, and prettily-curled hair.
(Photo from the National Archives.)

She's probably too modest to mention this herself, so I'm going to tell you about Cogblog contributor Lisa Simeone's winning column/blog, Glamor Girl, over at Baltimore STYLE Magazine. In today's piece, Lisa discusses the importance, now more than ever, of creating and appreciating beauty--including gorgeous fashion. I encourage you to go read the whole thing and show her some comment love:

Asking, “what’s the point of fashion?” betrays a profound ignorance. What’s the point of music? Of art? Of literature? With so many more “serious” concerns in an often brutal world, why waste time on anything as trivial or as frivolous as creativity? What’s the point of beauty? Of joy? Of aesthetics?

I would argue that it’s precisely because the world can be such a cruel, barbaric place that we need beauty, we need pleasure, we need self-expression. We need the dreams and fantasies of designers made incarnate.

And it’s not all just a Madison Avenue conspiracy, another inane theory floating around out there. Maasai teenagers in Kenya don’t primp and preen in front of car mirrors in the bush, comparing their red shukas and trying to one-up each other in adornments, because they’re being pressured by ruthless advertisers. Their sisters and mothers don’t spend hours and days fabricating intricate beaded jewelry because some corporate titan came along and urged them to do it.

Oh, and my favorite—the pseudo-feminist argument that fashion is a method of oppressing women. As a proud loudmouthed feminist, I’m particularly rankled by that one. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian women had for the first time in their lives the chance to buy beautiful, lacy, feminine bras. Yes, bras. Middle-class and blue-collar women would save up for months, forgoing other needs, just to buy one beautiful bra. Why? Because Western capitalists were trying to oppress them? No, because they craved beauty.

I couldn't agree more--Hooray for beauty, hooray for creativity, and down with wanton destruction and violence, I say. Go read!

Leave Sarah ALOOOOOOONE!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Half Baked Alaska
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

In case you missed last night's Daily Show, here is the fabulous Samantha Bee explaining Sarah Palin's resignation to Jon Stewart. Priceless!

(Very well, I promise this is the last thing litbrit will post about Sarah Palin.*)

* Until and unless she sets forth any heretofore unexploited comedy gold, in which case it would irresponsible not to mockulate.

Sarah Palin's personal magnetism: It is what it is

One of various inspirational refrigerator magnets
scattered around the litbrit desk

In her now-infamous resignation "speech" last Friday, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, having exhausted the deciphering skills of supporters and reporters alike with a seemingly never-ending stream of nonsensical explanations for quitting her office mid-term, spun around and denounced the very need for explanations in the first place:

I think of the saying on my parents’ refrigerator that says “Don’t explain: your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe you anyway.”

Refrigerator magnet wisdom! Well, that explains everything. Not that you really need an explanation, mind you.

We are a nation of slogan-lapper-uppers, aren't we? Just Do It. It's the Real Thing. I'm Lovin' It.

So perhaps Governor Palin is just following a grand Madison Avenue tradition here, using the vague and universal pronoun "it" in such a way as to allow the audience themselves to fill in the begged question of "it", drawing on their own deeply-submerged wants and needs. After all, when Nike says Just Do It, the "it" is supposed to mean exercise, but the more profound message is that one should engage in whatever "it" is that strikes one's fancy, no second-guessing, no excuses. When Coca-Cola told us that "it" was the real thing, they were, at first blush, referring to the beverage in the curvy glass bottle in the print ad, but they could just as easily have been referencing the curvy model's main asset. I'm Lovin'...what exactly? The reliable sameness of the burger or the burger itself? Which is "it"?

And so "it" goes with Sarah Palin's ridiculous non-explanation explanation. The following examples of Palin invoking the usefully vague "it" are quoted directly from the governor's Website, where she's proudly posted the entire text, as it were, of her resignation speech as it appeared on the Teleprompter (and yes, you read that right: Sarah Palin actually wrote that speech ahead of time and read it to you).

But I won’t do it from the Governor’s desk.

It’s not what is best for Alaska.

it’s no more “politics as usual”

I cannot believe that there are people in this country--hell, people who supposedly went to journalism school, an endeavor that used to require basic competency in English--who seriously think such a person is capable of being the president of the United States.

This is due, in large part, to the fact that we are a nation of superficial, looks-obsessed, slogan-lapper-uppers.

Is that not it? It is.

Also at Cogitamus.

BREAKING: Exiled President Zelaya en route to Honduras

At or around 3:50 pm EST today, President Zelaya boarded a Venezuelan jet bound for Tegucigalpa. The Honduran capital appears to be in an extremely volatile state as an apparent showdown draws near; I worry that innocent, unarmed people are going to be hurt and killed, simply for protesting. I suppose it's naïve of me to hope that all this goes productively and without incident, but here's wishing for that, nonetheless:

Honduras' exiled president took off for home in a Venezuelan jet in a high-stakes attempt to return to power, even as the interim government told its military to turn away the plane.

Zelaya won wide international support after his ouster a week ago by the military, but the only prominent escort aboard his plane was the U.N. General Assembly president after Latin American leaders backed out, citing security concerns. Honduras' civil aviation director said Zelaya's plane was being redirected to El Salvador.

Several other planes carrying Latin American presidents, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States and journalists were leaving Washington separately, trailing Zelaya to see what happens in the skies over Honduras before deciding where to land.

Thousands of protesters descended on the airport in the Honduran capital in anticipation of the showdown. Police helicopters hovered overhead. Commercial flights were canceled, and outside the airport about 200 soldiers with riot shields formed a line in front of the protesters.

''The government of President (Roberto) Micheletti has ordered the armed forces and the police not to allow the entrance of any plane bringing the former leader,'' the foreign minister of the interim government, Enrique Ortez, told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Flying with Zelaya were close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur, and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister who personally condemned Zelaya's ouster as a coup d'etat.

Speaking live from the plane through Telesur, Zelaya called on the Honduran military to leave the airport free for him to land.

Honduras: As you are me and we are all together--Coup, coup, k'joob

Today in Teguc (emphasis mine):

One day after the country’s president, Manuel Zelaya, was abruptly awakened, ousted and deported by the army here, hundreds of protesters massed at the presidential offices in an increasingly tense face-off with hundreds of camouflage-clad soldiers carrying riot shields and automatic weapons.

The protesters, many wearing masks and carrying wooden or metal sticks, yelled taunts at the soldiers across the fences ringing the compound and braced for the army to try to dispel them. “We’re defending our president,” said one protester, Umberto Guebara, who appeared to be in his 30s. “I’m not afraid. I’d give my life for my country.”

Leaders across the hemisphere joined in condemning the coup. Mr. Zelaya, who touched down Sunday in Costa Rica, still in his pajamas, insisted, “I am the president of Honduras.”

As you may have noticed in comments about the Honduran coup at Cogitamus, a number of opposition party supporters have deluged my post, as well as writings at other US blogs and newspapers, with bold assertions about the Honduran army having "protected democracy" and "upheld the rule of law". Numerous allegations about President Zelaya's various transgressions are scattered throughout the thread, but not a single one is supported with linked documentation; I have not been able to verify them independently, outside of what the international media are reporting, and what they are reporting--namely, that the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations, and the European Union, unanimously and unequivocally, condemn the illegal arrest and kidnapping of President Zelaya--flies in the face of that which our new Honduran rightwing friends are saying, and saying with gusto, sometimes in ALL CAPS, and often in Spanish, with a few insults aimed at CNN for good measure.

Having only read portions of the Honduran constitution (and arrgh, if you think legalese in English makes for tricky reading...), I cannot say for certain that it does not have a special amendment tucked into it somewhere that legally authorizes the congress to order soldiers to invade the president's bedroom, kidnap him at gunpoint, fly him out of the country in darkness, falsify a letter of resignation from him and forge his signature on same, and install a brand-new president within hours. But I'm reasonably sure there are no provisions of that nature. If, however, there is such an article, subsection, or amendment that I may have missed, Estimados Lectores con abilidad de leer en Español e interpretar la ley Hondureña para nosotros Gringos, favor de avisarme.*

[*Dear Readers with the ability to read in Spanish and interpret Honduran law for us Gringos, please let me know.]

Mr. Zelaya, 56, a rancher who often appears in cowboy boots and a western hat, has the support of labor unions and the poor. But he is a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest. His term was to end in January. [...]

The military also appeared to be moving against Mr. Zelaya’s allies. Local news outlets reported Sunday that Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas and the mayor of San Pedro Sula, the country’s second-largest city, had been detained at military bases.

The government television station and another station that supports the president were taken off the air. Television and radio stations broadcast no news. Electricity was cut off for much of the day in Tegucigalpa on Sunday, in what local reports suggested was on military orders. Only wealthy Hondurans with access to the Internet and cable television were able to follow the day’s events.

The Congress met in an emergency session on Sunday afternoon and voted to accept what was said to be a letter of resignation from the president. Mr. Zelaya later assured reporters that he had written no such letter.

Interesting, don't you think? Grassroots movements cannot possibly spread when they're trampled by combat boots day in and day out; contrarily, Astroturf will grow like a bloody weed when its opponents can't access any means of electronic communication. And as you'd imagine, the poorest citizens of the Americas' poorest nation are not exactly weighed down with Apple products and satellite dishes.

Also at Cogitamus.

Heads Up: Honduras in political crisis after apparent coup

UPDATE II

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemns Zelaya's arrest.

Countries and leaders of all political persuasions, and across the Western Hemisphere, are united in their opposition to the Honduran coup.

A Honduran resident, commenting at the NYT (emphasis mine):

I want to report that all national and international news networks were pulled out from the cable system as the Coup unfolded. Now at noon only the Televicentro Network, owned by Rafael Ferrari, and main critic of Manuel Zelaya Administration along with OPSA (owned by Jorge Cahanhuati) is back on air along with others that favored the Coup (Maya TV). The rest of newtorks that leaned towards Zelaya remain off the air along with international networks. Even CNN HD was pulled out shortly after John King reported President Obama's comments on the issue.

The Congress has received a resignation letter from President Zelaya and has accepted it. Mr Zelaya has denied he signed the letter on CNN en Español.

Hope The Times do something to verify my version and denounce this limitation of freedom of speech.

UPDATE

From President Obama's statement: “I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic charter,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

From Tegucigalpa:

Later on Sunday, the Honduran Congress voted Mr. Zelaya out of office, replacing him with the president of congress, Roberto Micheletti. [...]

Political tensions have increased as Mr. Zelaya pressed ahead with plans for a nonbinding referendum that opponents said would open the way for him to rewrite the constitution to run for re-election despite a one-term limit. In the weeks leading up to the referendum, supporters and opponents of the president held competing demonstrations.

Last week, the Supreme Court and Congress both declared the referendum unconstitutional. But on Thursday, the president led a group of protesters to an air force installation and seized the ballots, which the prosecutor’s office and the electoral tribunal had ordered confiscated.

After the armed forces commander, Romeo Vazquez, said that the military would not participate in the referendum, Mr. Zelaya fired him. But the Supreme Court declared the firing illegal.

Honduran soldiers guard streets around the residence
of just-exiled President Zelaya.

Early today, presumably in the wee hours of the morning, Honduran soldiers burst into the bedroom of President Manuel Zelaya, firing shots; according to his wife Xiomara de Zelaya, they then beat the president and dragged him away.

Troops moved through the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, and surrounded the presidential palace and other government buildings. The state television network was off the air as hundreds of angry Honduran citizens poured into the streets and shouted support for Zelaya. "The fact is, this is a coup d'etat and the president of Honduras has been kidnapped and beaten up," Honduras' ambassador to the Organization of American States, Carlos Sosa Coello, told CNN's Spanish-language network.

Janina del Veccio, minister of security for Costa Rica, confirmed that Zelaya was in her country. She told CNN that the president said he had been kidnapped from his bedroom and bundled into an aircraft, in which he was flown to Costa Rica. He was scheduled to speak to the press later this morning, she said.

The military action followed days of unrest ahead of a referendum over constitutional reforms scheduled for today. The vote was to ask Hondurans whether they wanted another referendum to change the constitution in a number of ways, including allowing re-election of the president.

Army leaders opposed the vote, which they, Congress and election officials said was illegal. In response, Zelaya last week fired the top military commander and then ignored a Supreme Court order to reinstate him.

I confess that despite my higher-than-average level of interest in Honduran current events (I lived in Tegucigalpa during my middle school years), I was caught completely unaware this time, and sort of stumbled upon the news of the coup via the BBC website, which led me to search around for more information.

But I predict we'll all be hearing more about this as the days pass. So here's at a bit of background on what has precipitated the current crisis, along with my memories of the bloodless (thank goodness) coup that took place back in 1974, when my family and I lived there.

Essentially, the current president-now-in-exile, Presidente Manuel Zelaya of the Partido Liberal de Honduras (the Liberal Party of Honduras or PLH), was chosen by the people in yet another controversy-wracked election in late November, 2005. The results were hotly contested and challenged by the runner-up and his party; Zelaya was declared the winner in early December '05, and ballot counts confirming his victory were released later that month. He took office in January 2006.

Zelaya's term, however, has been characterized by infighting, controversy, and severe disagreements with Honduras' military leaders, to put it mildly. The most volatile of these disputes centered around Zelaya's efforts to put to the vote a referendum that would have modified the Honduran constitution, including allowing a president to serve a second 4-year term if the voters so chose:

Zelaya, a leftist elected in 2005, has found himself pitted against the other branches of government and military leaders over the issue of Sunday's planned referendum. It would ask voters to place a measure on November's ballot allowing the formation of a constitutional assembly that could modify the nation's charter to allow the president to run for another term.

His four-year term ends in January 2010, and he cannot run for re-election under current law.

The Honduras Supreme Court had ruled the poll illegal, and Congress and the top military brass agreed, but Zelaya had remained steadfast.

In the end, it appeared the opposition to Zelaya was too great.

The military confiscated the ballots from the presidential residence, in effect canceling the disputed vote.

Honduras is no stranger to military overthrows of the government; indeed, the election of the PLH's Roberto Suazo Cordova in 1981 was the first time in over a century that the country had a civilian government. Nor is she a stranger to what I will charitably call "American guidance". At the bilingual school I attended in Tegucigalpa in the early 1970's, most of my classmates were the children of American and British diplomats, US Army and Air Force personnel and officers, agents of The Company, or--like my father--employees of American or British businesses operating in Honduras. As an eleven-year-old, it didn't occur to me to wonder why a small and terribly poor country--over 80% of Hondurans live in poverty--would attract so many Yanquis, nor did I question the purpose of building an enormous US-Honduran air base--Palmerola (now known as Soto Cano Air Base)--in nearby Comayagua. But years later, with my political conscience (and guilt-levels) appropriately raised, I figured it out.

Honduras is not an especially resource-rich country, but it is located right next door to Nicaragua, home of a then-brewing Marxist revolution movement--the Sandinistas--that grew out of disgust and disaffection with the corrupt, brutal reign of the Somoza family. The situation was obviously being carefully monitored by Uncle Sam et. al., and this was years before President Reagan upped the ante:

Upon assuming office in 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan condemned the FSLN for joining with Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries such as El Salvador. His administration authorized the CIA to have their paramilitary officers from their elite Special Activities Division begin financing, arming and training rebels, some of whom were the remnants of Somoza's National Guard, as anti-Sandinista guerrillas that were branded "counter-revolutionary" by leftists (contrarrevolucionarios in Spanish).

So, I watch today's developments with interest, with a heavy heart, and with no small number of memories awakened and rattling around in my head: turning on the radio one school-day morning and realizing that instead of the usual American Top Ten fare my friends and I enjoyed, it was now playing military marching music.

My mother telling us there was no school that day, and just to be on the safe side, let's all stay indoors. Soldiers, soldiers everywhere, even on the country's two television stations (which annoyed us housebound kids to no end--believe me, ancient re-runs of Popeye or Fractured Fairytales, all in black and white and dubbed in Spanish, are better than nothing, and certainly better than endless loops of soldiers marching!) Gunshot/guerilla drills when school did re-open (mainly, you're supposed to hit the deck immediately). Shortages of various food staples like sugar and flour, advance news of which had led my practical, smart Mum to stock our basement bodega, which dark and somewhat spooky storeroom, we were instructed, would also be the go-to hiding place for us children should our parents be away for some reason and soldiers came to the door (thankfully this didn't happen, but my arms bristle with goosebumps as I type this; my own boys just ran into the room, and once again I marvel at, and am grateful for, my mother's amazing calm and ability to somehow impart survival lessons to us without terrifying us to the point of paralysis).

I don't know the extent to which America is or will be involved in this latest development, but the fact that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has condemned the Honduran military's early-morning actions, and called for President Obama to do likewise, probably speaks volumes. My thoughts are with the warm and generous Honduran people, the poorest and least powerful of whom have been used as pawns, manipulated, stolen from, brutalized, and abused for as long as I can remember.

Photo via Reuters.

Also at Cogitamus.

Food, Inc., the movie: Food for thought; fuel for debate

In his Sunday column, and today's blog at the NYT, Nicholas Kristoff discusses the new movie Food, Inc., which aims to enlighten our increasingly unhealthy populace about the madness that is the nation's current and predominant food-production system (also known industrialized corporate agriculture or simply, Big Ag).

I’ve often criticized America’s health care system, and I fervently hope that we’re going to see a public insurance option this year. But one reason for our health problems is our industrialized agriculture system, and that should be under scrutiny as well.

A terrific new documentary, “Food, Inc.,” playing in cinemas nationwide, offers a powerful and largely persuasive diagnosis of American agriculture. Go see it, but be warned that you may not want to eat for a week afterward.

Full disclosure: my husband Robert's new venture--a solar-and-wind-powered organic and hydroponic vegetable farm with enclosed greenhouses--will be harvesting its first round of crops this fall. So as you'd imagine, Robert and I will definitely be going to see Food, Inc.; hopefully our state's various agribusiness barons didn't order armed guards to confiscate all the reel copies of it at the Georgia-Florida border (I kid, I kid...).

Have any readers seen it, and if so, what are your thoughts about the movie in particular and the effort to educate the public about Big Ag--and the health woes caused by processed, hormone-laden, genetically-manipulated, overly-fatty, corn-syrup-saturated rubbish that America has been conditioned to accept as food--in general?

Happy Fathers' Day, Dear Robert

With big hugs and kisses from your very own gang of Mini-Me's. (And me.)

3 Boys Rocks!

XXXXX
Deborah

@ President Obama: Please stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act

We Floridians are having one of those classic sticky-toffee summers, you know, the body-baking, inertia-promoting kind that predispose you to being in a bad mood, often before the day has even got off the ground.

It's not that. The normally all-affecting weather is irrelevant.

Nor is it the fault of Messrs. Worry and Fear; although I know them well (and who wouldn't, given how incessantly, how intrusively, they've been hanging around these days). Nor is boredom to blame, although that too, especially when I see someone engage in the same reprehensible behavior over and over, and especially, especially when that someone is not a child, but rather, an adult whom I'd previously admired; a leader, shall we say. At such times, as now, what I tend to feel is an oddly combustible combination of boredom and frustration, the results of which might best be described as fury, if that makes sense.

Right now, I am furious that in 2009, there are still some Americans who do not have equal rights, neither in reality nor even scrawled somewhere within the laundry list of moral abstractions that is the law. And I'm furious that the very presidential candidate who in February 2008 said this:

"Now I’m a Christian, and I praise Jesus every Sunday," he said, to a sudden wave of noisy applause and cheers.

"I hear people saying things that I don’t think are very Christian with respect to people who are gay and lesbian," he said, and the crowd seemed to come along with him this time.

...and who went on to become the first African-American to be elected president, igniting a breathtaking cosmic lightshow of a win for civil rights in America, has now, for reasons I cannot fathom, defended the loathsome Defense of Marriage Act in a brief filed by the DOJ, the logic of which was flawed; the language, utterly offensive.

From Credo, who will present a petition (goal: 30,000 singers, and they're already 70% of the way there) to the White House:

President Obama and Attorney General Holder cannot stand behind a brief which, per the New York Times, "cites decades-old cases ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an uncle and a niece."

Sign this petition today to ask President Obama and Attorney General Holder to withdraw this brief and apologize for its contents. We expect better from this administration than to compare same-sex marriage to incest.

Please do sign it, dear readers. It's but one thing, but it's something.

Also at Cogitamus.

litbrit joins the twitter olympics...

Well, the heavy-handed censorship that Iran imposed on its citizens during the recent election couldn't contain the ongoing uprising and the thousands of twitter messages that made it out to the world; this, above all else, has convinced me that I ought to get with the program, join the kewl kids, and give the, er, newfangled whizzo technology twit-thingie a try, so here goes (eventually, I'll get the feed thing going in the right margin). You can now follow this writer/mother/dreamer's quips and quotidian mumblings on twitter, should you be so inclined:

http://twitter.com/litbrit

Also, it gives me a great excuse to post another Python video (as if I needed an excuse, right?)

Feminism vs. the faint of heart: Help, help...I'm being repressed!

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses!

Posted as a little thank-you to talented feminist blogger The Apostate, who found herself hosting an impromptu (and ever-growing) discussion group for the departing readers and ex-contributors (like Yours Truly) of The Feminist Blog Formerly Known as Shakespeare's Sister. In a June 4th post, Apostate wrote:

There’s more drama going on at Shakesville. It doesn’t seem like that blog is going to survive long in its current format. That format would be the “community we cherish” format. That format is doomed to failure because online communities are by definition dysfunctional.

If you read the threads linked in the comment I linked to, and if you have been following many of the ridiculous McEwan flounces over not getting enough money from blog-readers, and other conniption fits and the ensuing apologies, and the slams on regular commenters over minor infractions and the constant language policing, and the self-shaming and the worship at the altar of McEwan, and blah blah blah, you know what I’m talking about – it’s a madhouse.

Shortly thereafter, the 'Ville went dark, sending its current readers into a tailspin over the weekend. Then, early this week, a magisterial magnum opus appeared, one which chided "the community" for all its transgressions against their leader--to whose head, it must be noted, no gun was held (and that metaphor right there would've led to me being drawn and quartered, as would that metaphor), since blogging, as we know, is neither mandate nor sentence, but rather, a voluntary exercise in expression--and laid out an eight-point commenting guide (!) from which condescension dripped and splattered like so much spilled syrup.

As Apostate noted:

I’m not sure why online “communities” are so fragile. I think the problem really is the medium. You can’t do community except in person, face to face. Any time you start writing shit down, congregating around a cause, or are removed from the physical presence of your fellows, there’s that much more information to manage and agree to without the civilizing influence of looking another person in the eye.

Yes. The concept of a "safe space" is, ironically, far easier to uphold in a physical environment for that very reason: humans are much less likely to insult or threaten a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human being who's right in front of them.

If you haven't read the naughty konagod's take on safe, er chafe spaces, I commend to you, with my heartiest cheers, kona's lengthy, hilarious, Carlin-esque parody of the aforementioned Magnum Hopeless:

While konagod considers konagod a progressive blog, or at least considers himself progressive in a lazy hippie kind of way, this is also a chafe space. Visitors need not check their privilege at the door (we have no bouncers and somebody without privilege might make off with it) so best you keep it close at hand and just be aware of it. No one is expected to be perfect; everyone is expected to be willing to self-examine and if you want to touch yourself in strange places while here, far be it from konagod to interfere. Focus on the fun. It's a blog. He can't see you.

And if all this strikes you as an awful lot of insider baseball because you've never wandered over to that blog and aren't especially interested in watching a trainwreck-in-progress, well, at least you've now got two compelling, new-to-you voices to check out--The Apostate and konagod--and a terrific political Python clip to watch. What are you waiting for?!

Also at Cogitamus.

Friday Frank: Watermelon in Easter Hay; Barcelona, 1988

I know, I've posted this beautiful instrumental before (it was a while ago, though). Call me selfish, but I feel a strong need for some inspiring artistry today, and since it's Friday, this FZ piece makes sense. If I recall, it was one of Frank's favorites.

As one YouTube commenter notes: One of my very favorite pieces of FZ music. Beautifully melodic, yet it still contains Frank's trademark, quirky phrasing. A brilliant piece of guitarwork for those not as familiar with Frank's own style as they are with those of some of his famous hired guns.

Bon Weekend, everyone!

Boycott Anti-American Psychotalkers! Sing it, Ed.

Via Firedoglake.

Propagandize this: Health care for all. Now.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

-- the late Australian social scientist Alex Carey

This article was published last year, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (then a candidate for the presidency) was proposing a system of allowing the private, for-profit health insurance companies to work together to cover everyone (?) rather than scrap it all and build us, from the ground up, a powerful, comprehensive, nationalized system like the ones they have in other developed (and even some undeveloped) countries. Jake at Whiskeyfire writes:

The truth is that large government run programs such as social security are models of efficiency. We have the data and proof. At any rate they couldn't be less efficient than the private health insurance industry. Many estimates of the waste inherent in the private healthcare industry run in excess of 1 trillion dollars annually. There is the answer to that question about where we might find a trillion dollars a year to finance this venture.

We should not forget as we wind our way through this debate about dollars, medical records, reimbursement rates, economies of scale and the like that real people are suffering every day at the hands of people who are willing to sacrifice the health of their fellow men and women for a bit more money. Let me just say that this is what evil looks like and if there is a hell this would consign one to the lower levels in my estimation. If your work causes people to suffer that is evil and your soul is corroding as quickly as your wallet is growing.

Under President Obama, the current reform plan under review is, let's face it, a diluted, hybridized, private-public version; it's far from the socialized medicine model many of us lefties believe is the fairest, most efficient, most cost-effective, and most humane way to care for the health and well-being of our citizens. Even so, the currently-discussed "plan" has obviously got Big Insurance, along with its PR firms and personal handmaids supporters in Congress--Ben Nelson, cough cough--in a tizzy. Big Insurance doesn't want us to have any public option at all. Because then, they will have to compete with an entity that actually provides access to health care. (What, you thought health care insurers were in it for the rewarding, patriotic, humanitarian aspects of providing access to health care for Americans?)

And for some reason, what Big Insurance wants is getting plenty of traction, when in fact there are, what, a couple of hundred million of us and a relatively small number of them?

Democracy? Now?

The statistics laid out herein, alone, demonstrate that the bullshit we're already being bombarded with courtesy of Big Insurance--Oh, but Americans will lose their ability to make choices! Americans don't want to have health care rationed! Americans don't want to be on waiting lists!--is exactly that: bullshit.

Restriction of choices. Rationing. Waiting lists. Those of us who've sat through even a single semester of PR or advertising will immediately recognize these as negative transfer words, sledgehammers in any propaganda-writer's arsenal. They're words (oftentimes they're images) with widely-recognized positive--or, as in this case, negative--associations. And you plaster them all over the thing onto which you want to transfer the previously-established positive or negative reaction. Hence, if you want to make a politician look good, you place lots of flags, smiling children, and green rolling hills in his television spot, since people already react positively to flags, smiling children, and green rolling hills--in pretty much any context.

Correspondingly, if you want to make a policy proposal look bad, you recycle the same negative associations with worst-case-scenario tales from abroad--disingenuous, out-of-context, and even outright false though they may be--that were instrumental in deep-sixing said policy the last time around. Restriction of choices. Rationing. Waiting lists.

I'm just amazed they haven't resurrected Harry and Louise. (Or dug them up, since I don't remember them ever getting the coverage or the health care they talked about needing, so perhaps their stories ended as tragically as have the stories of so many Americans.)

Make no mistake: the companies fling that bullshit at us because they do not want Americans to think about the long wait-times and restriction of choices they already endure, even with top-drawer PPO health coverage: three or four weeks for a simple appointment at the pediatrician's; six months to see a psychologist or gastroenterologist (and if you don't have private insurance, forget about seeing those specialists altogether, because the first question the receptionist will ask, when you call, is not "What's wrong?" or "How may we help you?" but rather, "Who is your insurer?"); the "choice" of paying for vital but non-formulary (and thus exorbitantly expensive) prescription medicine instead of taking care of car-repairs or, heaven forbid, buying something to eat other than lentils and rice that month. They do not want Americans to consider the fact that "elective" surgery--i.e. having cataracts removed so that one can, you know, see properly, which is considered elective or optional surgery by many policies including Medicare--can cost an American tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket.

Or just bankrupt him completely: as reported everywhere this week, there are serious financial meltdowns going on within families around the country when someone falls ill or has a serious accident, which are things that can and do happen to us all, every single day. More than 60% of bankruptcies in the United States are caused by a health care crisis. Not frivolous spending or mismanagement of income or living above one's means. A health care crisis.

In other words, whereas some citizens of the world have free*, fully-accessible medical care, well-care, prescription medicine, and emergency care--plus the security of being able to live their lives, do their work, and engage in sports and exercise without the crushing worry that an illness or accident will strip them and their families of everything they own and have worked for--AND whereas those citizens might sometimes have to wait for non-emergent surgery like cataract removal (although that, too, will still be paid for by the state when it comes time for the surgery)--something not unlike the wait period that even the best-insured American, save perhaps the odd sports celebrity or movie star, endures to have any sort of non-emergent treatment, depending on the number of specialists in any given field and geographic location, and the demand for their services...

...whereas some citizens of the world get to have all that, America gets to have meaningless, semantically-dependent non-benefits like "choice" and "no wait times".

Well, no, of course there aren't any wait times for the woman who needs cataract surgery if she can't afford it. You don't get on wait-lists for something you can't have in the first place.

Of course there is no wait time for the millions of children whose parents can't afford insurance and who thus don't get their shots or visit the pediatrician; whose prenatal care was spotty (if it existed at all); and whose nascent medical problems, presenting now, could be addressed--but aren't--instead of being ignored and permitted to worsen and develop into chronic, full-blown, infinitely costlier problems as adults.

I don't get it. I really don't. How can the richest, most powerful nation on Earth fall for this? How can we stand for this? (Emphasis, as usual, is mine.)

Cuban life expectancy in 2006 was 77.6 years, while the life expectancy of the United States for that same year was slightly less, 77.5 years (United Nations Development Program, 2006). It is interesting that poor Cuba with a history of poverty before their 1959 socialist revolution, and a devastating U.S. imposed economic blockade since, is able to provide good healthcare for everyone through socialized medicine. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment, turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance, or allow insurance companies to decide, based on profit motive, whether the insured actually receive the care they paid for and need. The Cubans have done this by taking the profit out of illness and injury and providing healthcare as a basic human right.

Canada, like Cuba, has a higher life expectancy than the United States. In 2004 the life expectancy of Canada hit 80.2 years (Statistics Canada, 2004). With Canada’s socialized health insurance system, like Cuba’s socialized medical system, every single person is covered. In the United States 45.8 million Americans do not have health insurance (U.S. Department of Health and human Services, 2005).

On another key indicator of health, infant mortality, the United States is also nearly the worst in the developed world, only worse than the recently turned capitalist country of Latvia (Green, 2006). The infant mortality rate in the United States in 2002 was 7.0 deaths before the age of one per every 1,000 live births (Center for Disease Control, 2005). In comparison, other advanced countries with forms of socialized medicine and socialized health insurance have lower infant mortality. This includes rates per thousand births in Japan of 3.2, Germany with 4.4, Italy with 4.5, France with 4.6, and the United Kingdom with 5.6 (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003).

Cuba, with their system of socialized medicine has an infant mortality rate of 6.2 per thousand live births, a rate much lower the United States rate of 7.0 per every thousand live births (BBC News, 2002). This is also lower than every other Latin American country (BBC News, 2002).

The only other country in the Americas with an infant mortality lower than Cuba is Canada with their system of socialized health insurance. The Canadian infant mortality rate in the year 2000 was 5.3 (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003).

In addition, a United Nations report on the status of Native Americans in Canada has credited Canada’s relatively recently established socialized health insurance system with drastically reducing an extremely high infant mortality among Native Americans (United Nations, 1993). In 1979, that death rate for Canadian Native Americans was 27.6 per thousand live births, but by 1999 it had dropped to 8.0 deaths per thousand live births (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003). These improvements coincide with Canada’s passage of the Canada Health Act in 1984 that brought their socialized insurance system to the entire country at that time (Health Canada, 2002).

For Blacks in the United States between 1995 and 2002, the infant mortality rate was 13.9, more than double the rate of 5.9 for whites in the same time period (Center for Disease Control, 2005). Canadian statistics are a strong indication that a socialized insurance system in the United States could both decrease the infant mortality rate of the general population and dramatically decrease the infant mortality of oppressed and impoverished minorities such as Blacks, as it did for Canadian Native Americans.

The statistics show that socialized medicine is cheaper, saves lives, and helps alleviate class and racial inequalities in healthcare.

Give America health care, Congress, or you'll in effect be giving us death.

[*Free, in this context, means that instead of lavishing most of our tax dollars on the madcap, quaintly inefficient, legendarily-bloated, deathmongering shadow government known as the Defense Industry, we instead direct some of that cash toward buying America a chance at redeeming ourselves as thinking, feeling, moral human beings.]

Also at Cogitamus.

Friday Frank: Ravel's Bolero; Barcelona, 1988; with bonus Jeff Beck playing Bolero

I never tire of hearing Frank Zappa's version of Bolero. And while hunting for this clip, I came across the brilliant Jeff Beck's version, performed live at the Fuji Speedway in 2006, and thought I'd share it with readers, too.

Bon Weekend, everyone!

Keith Olbermann: O'Reilly and FOX created the climate for Dr. Tiller's Murder

Keith Olbermann says it so well: O'Reilly in particular, and FOX in general, were instrumental in whipping up the frenzy--with oft-repeated buzzwords and catchphrases that rhyme with the murdered doctor's name, for example--that grew and swelled, the way frenzies tend to do, and inevitably led to an act of extremism. In this case, a deadly, criminal, and irreversible act of extremism.

Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley appeared on Rachel Maddow's program and stated that First Amendment rights, particularly freedom of speech, meant it would be very difficult to successfully prosecute O'Reilly or any other talking head for incitement. Indeed, he said protected speech was a very broad category that even included what he referred to as "hate speech".

And he's right. O'Reilly can always just state that he is entitled to his opinion, and that's really all he was doing here: expressing his opinion, based on the facts, and the facts do include the number of abortions that Dr. Tiller performed and where he performed them.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech, in its typically polarizing way, conveniently left out the compelling and heartbreaking stories behind those late-term abortions themselves: women whose pregnancies had gone terribly, tragically wrong and who had to choose between a third-trimester termination and leaving their other children motherless; child rape victims; babies without vital organs; conjoined twins whose brief, pain-wracked lives--in the unlikely event they survived birth--would be spent hooked up to wires, tubes, and ventilators.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech was presented in the form of glib, soundbite-ish rhyming slogans and repeated over and over. Never mind that his campaign against OB/GYN Dr. Tiller--and ultimately, against a woman's right to bodily autonomy, period--was a classic case of propaganda that employed standard techniques: ad nauseam reinforcement, black-and-white fallacy, demonizing the enemy, half-truths, name-calling, oversimplification, repetition, scapegoating, and of course, the use of slogans and virtue words.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech enjoyed a multiplier factor, unimaginable to the Constitution's framers, in that it was electronically broadcast to millions of American ears and eyes, simultaneously. And then, repetitively.

I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool First Amendment supporter: Words have consequences, and so do viruses, often to a deadly degree. In protecting the former--as we surely must--let us not enable the proliferation of the latter.

Also at Cogitamus.