Climate Tuesday: Like I was Saying, People are Missing All of the Points

So, the takeaway from Naomi Klein's book, if I just boiled it down to the simplest message is, "For crying out loud, not everything has to come down to the Almighty Buck!"

So here's another example of people who seem to be missing all of the points in the extractivist quest to mine for gold in...the dumbest places.  So here we go--West Virginia.

I like West Virginia, it's a beautiful state. The Ohio River is lovely, and its water serves the thirst requirements and more for over 3 million people. So, of course, oil companies are looking at that stream of liquid life and thinking,

"Hey, could there be natural gas under there?"

Yep. The state that just recently had water services to 300,000 residents interrupted by a chemical spill wants to play River Roulette. Sad to say, the governor there is a Democrat, albeit I guess a pitiful one. Which is a reminder that stupidity in the pursuit of petrodollars is not a partisan issue--it's a problem all over.  Fossil fuel royalties are no way to plug a budget hole if it's a stopgap at best and poses more serious clean-up problems down the road. This is the kind of short-term political thinking that makes things worse.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate (A Review)

I greatly looked forward to reading Naomi Klein's latest, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate, and having read it, I'm pretty happy to recommend it. Klein's book approaches our fossil-fuel dependency as a cultural crisis and an economic fixation on the profit motive--an "extractivist" ethos that insists on exploitation of our natural resources for monetary gain. Her book is, in many ways, a wake-up call, viewing the echo chambers of the denialists and the pie-in-the-sky carbon-fixing schemers as needing to just face reality.

And the reality is grim. We are poisoning our planet with fuels that are not clean to burn in the first place and are increasingly more difficult to extract. We're dumping toxic chemicals into our air and our water, and the possibility that life as we know it right now is in any way sustainable is pretty much foolish.

Which might imply that this is an altogether grim book, but no. Along the way, we are introduced to pockets of resistance across the globe against the extractivist forces. Who, after all, may have the money, the propaganda, the hired security, the ability to purchase government officials by the job-lot and armies of lawyers at the ready--but might not actually be a match for a dedicated local resistance, which comes from, in some cases, even historically disadvantaged people--who are, let's be clear, often disproportionately screwed over by the forces of "progress".

What she shows is an alternative--maybe there's a sustainable future where companies don't make hand-over-fist profits, but people, working together, can discover old and tried methods for  insulating homes against heat and cold, irrigating and fertilizing crops, and mix those things with new technologies like solar panels to live just a bit lighter on the earth. Maybe there's something to the idea that the "quality of life" doesn't have a monetary value, but is precious and should be preserved just because.  Because it's the only way we--humans--even can go on. Maybe we need to see the connections between ourselves and the dying fish and dolphins and coral reefs and caribou and realize we, too, are a part of a chain of being on this planet, and what hurts any creature, weakens us all.

I found this book a wise and engaging read, by no means alarmist, but very clear-eyed and realistic. So if you were wondering whether you'd like this--I'd say if you care about the environment and are skeptical of our Cash Rules Everything Around Me culture, you'd like it rather a lot. I did.

Values Voters 2014 is a Commentary on the 2016 GOP Goat Rodeo

It's probably no coincidence that the Value Voters Hootenany considers Sarah Palin as much of a draw as CPAC does. They adore prop comedy. (Since Dennis Miller hasn't made regular folks laugh since the 1990's, I really think wingnut welfare should at least comp him a rubber chicken. If he can't incorporate it into his act, maybe he can bite it.)  Once again, Senator Ted "Tailgunner" Cruz is the beneficiary of the Bible-based zeitgeist. (Nota bene: Christie was not invited and finished behind Biden. Even us big-time lefties aren't putting Biden in our "sure thing" column. If he's winning over Christie in the VV14 poll, that's kind of a message, you think?) But I can't pretend that I know. I don't speak "Values Voters" lingo fluently.

I will say, I think Palin is irrelevant, but everyone has known that since 2009. She's there for schtick, and I commend the right wing for keeping vaudeville alive. But Santorum and Huckabee and Rand Paul and Cruz all spoke (and Anne Laurie at Balloon-Juice gives great re-cap of all of them) and all kind of gave a hint into the ways they aren't serious 2016 candidates.

I see things as an internetizen first and foremost--if it is on Youtube, it cannot die. I don't know how anyone can drop red meat at a VV do, and then pretend it doesn't exist in a general election. So if, say, Bobby Jindal, wants to allege Barack Obama doesn't understand American exceptionalism in a week where "we" are bombing ISIL in Syria just because--he's out on a ridiculous limb. Ditto Rand Paul on "personhood", or Cruz on a lot of things.

I see easily a time when the Values Voters' do is a thing to avoid, because I don't see anyone selected by it in a straw poll as viable in any general election. But I do see the GOP probably pandering to that crowd for some time to come, anyway.

Climate Sunday: Oil Under Them Thar Ice Floes

Here's the sort of news story that makes one fairly certain that people in the oil industry are missing all of the points regarding climate change:

Russian energy giant Rosneft says it has discovered oil with its US project partner Exxon Mobil at a controversial well in the Arctic.

Drilling was completed in record time, it said, but questions remain about how quickly the well can be developed.

Exxon has said it will "wind down" the project following US sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

****

Rosneft boss Igor Sechin, himself a target of US sanctions, said the well had produced "an astonishing sample of light oil".

Sure. They've got that nice, easy to drill, easy to refine stuff. Good for them. Still and all, is this where they seriously want to develop a drilling infrastructure and transport system? Because, I don't know. Light crude or not, it still seems a bit dear, you know?

"Astonishing samples' aside--is this the sustainable model? The Artic? Are petrocorps that much persuaded this is the future (especially as global warming reduces the ice in the area)? They are exploring an area they only can explore because the use of this kind of fuel has changed the geography to make it more accessible. Are they counting so much on the idea it won't change in less agreeable ways? Or are they just planning on selling gas-powered air conditioners to the polar bears?

Why Would a A Sniper Wear Diapers in the Woods?

I know I've got basically no survivalist know-how at all--for me, "roughing it" means the local restaurants only have watery domestic beers on tap. But I am definitely puzzled by this news regarding the survivalist/cop shooter at large in the Pennsylvania woods:

The search has yielded an empty pack of Serbian cigarettes, Bivens said. Frein claims to have fought with Serbians in Africa and has studied Russian and Serbian languages, according to the FBI, which last week named him one of its 10 Most Wanted fugitives. Soiled adult diapers were also found, perhaps used by Frein to stay in a stationary position for long periods of time.

Yes, I can read "stay in a stationary position for long periods of time."  But he does have to stop, drop and take care of hygienic business with whatever is handy (I dunno, foliage?) when things get extra squidgy down there, which I am sure is even more jacked up than it would be if, being in the woods, he just did as the bears do. That's sure to slow him up.  And in the meantime, he's kind of leaving a trail.  And no doubt has a not-so-fresh feeling.

I think he's liable to get a rash.

Know Your Class War: What a Rising Tide Does

This chart has been going around lately, and basically sums up a tenet of the "Know Your Class War" philosophy:

A rising tide doesn't lift all boats--some boats just get washed away.

We've been told that benefits of growth would trickle down, but they do so less and less. Reminder: the best kind of profit-sharing if employees were really seen as partners in any business would be compensation for services rendered that contributed to the overall success of the enterprise. But workers are viewed as expenses. You know, except in banking and stuff like that.

They Say "If You're Explaining, You're Losing,"

(h/t TPM)

but if you are explaining that you are people...what does that mean?

I don't even know. I've never doubted that Republicans were people, myself, and I even like some people I know who lean conservative. It's the party's ideas that I'm not sold on.

But I'm some kind of card-carrying "L" word, so what do I know? I'll probably think some more about this over some arugula and latte or whatever.

Khorasan and the Kinds of Things I Turn Over

I'm surprised enough about finding myself on the "do something" side of a foreign policy argument that backing up why I feel that way seems awkward. It seems to me that there isn't exactly a threshold for when something has to be done--I hate analogies in foreign and military affairs. I think every scenario is different, and I don't think "Don't do stupid things" has to mean "Don't do things." If the Obama Administration is committed to pushing back ISIL in Northern Iraq, then the fight is against ISIL as an organization, not just as a specific geographic menace. If they are supplied, financed, armed, or able to regroup from some area just over the border, I don't actually see an advantage to pretending anything going on the other side of that border is "hands-off".  Same guys--why do we care more about the border than they do?  If we're debating whether ISIL should be confronted at all, then this should have been dropped already; Yazidis, Kurds, Chaldean Christians or who ever else is next on their eliminationist shitlist--the US is not doing stupid things for anybody.

I think there's a point to addressing ISIL in Syria for another reason though, and that is the three way civil war. Supporting the Assad regime is unthinkable-and I don't think that's what confronting ISIL is for. It's easy to read the administration's line that Assad would be dealt with if he went after US planes in his territory as another "red lines" thing, but I wouldn't. It seems to me that it just makes sense to reduce the influence of ISIL to make sure they aren't the ones benefited when and if Assad is toppled. There's scads of rebel groups and no easy way to trust which of them are and aren't basically comprised of extremists (and yes, I appreciate that the idea of a "moderate rebel" has an inherent absurdity) but I've come to the conclusion that ISIL is aspirationally at least, looking to be not just "some bad guys" but a force in the region--a movement. They may have broken from al-Qaeda, but that does not mean they are not in synch with that mindset of religious zealotry and self-expression through extreme violence.

US is now making airstrikes in Syria

Or to be more specific, the United States and "several Arab Allies" are now making multiple strikes against ISIL targets in Syria in and around Raqqa.

I don't know that I'm especially surprised. The likelihood of US strikes in Syria was expressed by the President not that long ago. Sooner is better than later, in some respects. I'm not so sure how well the cognitive dissonance will sit with the "Obama appeases terrorists" crowd, but who really cares what flaming assholes think?

I am not a pacifist, and I don't like stupid wars, pretty much in the exact sense that Obama articulated before even becoming president. ISIL has persuaded me that they need taking care of by the kinds of messages they are putting out. (Yes, I know, the Daily Mail...but the right wing here in the US ran with it almost approvingly. Seriously--agreeing with ISIL because you all hate Obama and Kerry so much? Useful idiots! Thanks for playing!) But I do like the idea of ISIL getting their ears pinned back.

Climate Sunday: Time for a Revolution

There has been a kind of lazy thinking regarding climate change regarding the cost, and as part of my Climate (mostly) Sunday posts, I've often tried to track how the idea that converting our economy to a more sustainable and egalitarian track was proper and necessary.

Oil isn't the future once you've met peak oil--when tar sands or dilbit or whatever you want to call it means more effort and money is put into extracting more polluting fuels. It isn't even the future when you realize burning it is harming the atmosphere. Coal isn't the future when mountaintop removal dumps arsenic into groundwater, and high-sulfur coal produces sickening levels of particulate pollution. Fracking isn't the answer when groundwater is polluted and local farms and residences experience sickness.

The climate science deniers hedge their bets with the refuge that doing something about climate change will cost a lot anyway, so why be out of pocket just for the sake of trees and polar bears and poor people? The answer is that not addressing climate change will cost plenty in the long run. Denialists are basically screwing themselves. It's possible that addressing climate change could very well be beneficial to growth--if we get serious, creative, and on point.

I don't think we have time to waste--I'm enough of a cynic to believe that tipping points are real, and that we could reach a point of no return--but this can not mean that we don't try.

So I have very little time for people who want to blame climate scientists for "being in it for the money".  Seriously? I mean, seriously? Then you can't say addressing climate change is also communism. Sorry. The future might have to be local action, clean energy, water protection, and sustainable food systems. In other words, getting a better quality of life by not supporting pollution and destructive business practices.

And surprisingly, the only ones really hurt by that would be the people disproportionately benefitting from the current tilted and earth-damaging system.

Something has to give.

Philadelphia--there's Hope.

I was fairly negative with the title of my last blog-post regarding the assault of a gay couple in my city, but was heartened by the immediate internet response and the possibility that this event could lead to hate-crime legislation inclusive of sexual orientation. (Our Democratic candidate of governor, Tom Wolf, has made a statement in favor of this--good for him!)

And although the Diocesan response is still problematic, I think it should be acknowledged that a message was sent that the dignity of persons should be respected, not violently violated. This was a terrible example of how people can really suck, but also shows, I'd like to think, where change can take place.

I still hope those bigoted assholes get theirs, though.

Russian Jets are Just all Over the Place

For some reason, there were Russian jets all over on Friday:

Six Russian fighter jets were intercepted by American and Canadian planes off the coast of Alaska on Wednesday, US defence officials have confirmed.

They entered what is known as the Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), but did not enter US air space.

The planes, two of which were MiG 31 jets, left the area without incident.

Officials said this type of incident was not uncommon, and happens up to 10 times a year.

(OMG, Sarah Palin was right--Putin does rear his head in her airspace. All the apologies.)

Russian jets also turnt  up in Sweden a couple days ago. (Oh, and UK airspace.) I'm feeling like there's something uncommon about this synchronicity of events. Just saying, there's a guy running the show over there who is all about the gestures.

What did we do?

I dunno. If Putin wanted to send a message, he shouldn't have picked a Friday, is all I'm saying. No one pays attention to news on a Friday.

One Rather Expected More--Or Not

Josh Marshall says "You kind of have to see this video." And he's exactly right. James O'Keefe has, I am afraid to say, completely descended into farce. And there were such hopes for him, too, weren't there? But anyhow:



You know, when young James took it upon himself to manufacture an essentially fallacious narrative about ACORN that ultimately resulted in the disbanding of the group, I thought he'd got his foot in the door for star treatment on the wingnut welfare circuit but would need to up his game to remain viable for long. His output since has been hit or miss, mostly miss. Probably because he makes things up. And then there are the occasional civil prices paid. He's a damn liability to any credible journalism outfit, and even conservative media seems a little tired of him. That why I guess he's on this topical tip--one could hope for his sake he's trolling to fund some bigger project, but it looks mostly like performance art and bottom-feeding.

So what's a boy to do?

It would be neat if he applied himself to knowing the details that make foreign ISIL fighters crossing our borders nearly irrelevant, like the way that ISIL uses propaganda to recruit people right here in the west--even the US. O'Keefe must know how dangerous propaganda can be by now, certainly? He could even bother looking into how threats that ISIL makes regarding potential attacks here are aspirational and reflect the mixed messages ISIL keeps trying to make to project strength. Or even ask what kind of wall would have protected Australia (get a map, if you like, Jimmy) from terror plans. Porous border much?

He's a disappointment. One wants better targets of one's loathing, don't you think?

Ebola is Serious Business

I've been warily watching the ebola situation in Western Africa without saying a whole lot because I kind of took for granted that people would either take it very seriously or panic, which strikes me as just about the right level of interest.

Now, you know me, I am not about to holler "Oh my god! ISIS militants are schlepping ebola across the Mexican border to infect our precious bodily fluids!"

On the other hand, what a bad, uncontrolled outbreak of ebola in urban centers where it has more opportunity to spread can do as far as social breakdown goes, and the potential for the virus to mutate to a more communicable stage, are reasonable concerns. This is a disease with a high fatality likelihood and even more so when victims of it have no access to reliable care--there isn't a cure, but if it is beatable, nutrition, hydration, cleanliness and caring all help. If cases overwhelm the health system where an outbreak is occurring, then, survival rates would be far less.

There's Outrage, and Then There's The Defense of the Indefensible...

I don't agree with Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh on very much, so I really don't follow them and don't blog about "OMG, this terrible thing some pundit said!" because really? What would be the point? They have a right to express their opinions, and while I can say they are dumb opinions or how I don't agree, it makes very little difference--except for this recent confluence of exquisitely grotesque pro-abuse and pro-rape comments that made me seriously wonder what the fuck they were about.

Just to start with Hannity--

Hannity explained that he was hit by his father as a child, and he turned out just fine.

"I got hit with a strap. Bam, bam, bam. And I have never been to a shrink. I will tell you that I deserved it," he said.

"I think he went far," Hannity then said about Peterson. "But I don’t want to see this guy get a felony, I don’t want to see this guy lose his job. He deserves parenting classes."

Hannity then took off his belt to demonstrate the technique.

There are a lot of people who were paddled or whipped as kids, firmly, not to excess, and who lived and did well for themselves. But boasting that one has never been to a shrink is not that same as saying one hasn't experienced after-effects of one's abuse, and there could be an argument made that the discipline Hannity received taught him to be a punch-down, kiss-up authoritarian personality who goes out of his way to excuse power and malign the underdog. Just saying. But there's a real disconnect when someone tries to excuse the switch-beating of a four year old child that leaves cuts in his legs and scrotum. That just isn't acceptable. If Hannity can't see that this is a question not about the ability of parents to discipline, but the extent to which they carry that discipline out, then I really wonder. Can't parents carry out loving discipline that isn't harmful, and instill values by living them? Is that so preposterous? (For the record I may have been spanked, by hand, once in my life, by my parents. Never an implement.)

I am Skeptical About Airstrikes.

From General Dempsey:

Already, Mr. Obama’s policy has been tested by his commanders. General Dempsey said Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who oversees the Central Command, had recommended putting Special Operations troops on the ground to direct airstrikes during a recent campaign by Iraqi and Kurdish forces to retake the Mosul Dam from the extremist militants.

 

Mr. Obama rejected that recommendation, and General Dempsey said the United States used technology — a drone known as a Rover — to compensate for not having its own advisers on the ground. The American advisers remained in the Kurdish capital, Erbil.

 

The challenge will come, General Dempsey said, when Iraqi and Kurdish forces try to drive the militants out of densely populated urban areas like Mosul. In those cases, General Dempsey said, he might recommend deploying Special Operations troops to provide what he called “close combat advising,” essentially working alongside Iraqi commanders in the field and helping them direct their troops to targets.

I think the public is already being softened up for the idea of a ground war. Logically, bombing a an urban area is merely destructive and deadly to civilians as well as to the intended targets. We were told there would not be "boots on the ground". But the steel-trap logic of war (or illogic) is to do what it takes. Or so we get told. Eventually.

Philadelphia is not yet fully civilized--

There was a genuinely horrific beating on a gay male couple in Center City Philadelphia this past Thursday. The perpetrators don't look like some kind of cretins. They just actually are.

Even  hip young things aren't always already schooled in "How to not assault people who are different from you." The stereotypes about whether they are more accepting of others and whatnot is not always borne-out. You could hope we have less homophobia about, but apparently, some people just aren't ready to fit in with polite society.

I like to think that as a middle-age urban person, I am rubbing shoulders with people who aren't actually knuckle-dragging and knuckle-swinging cultural troglodytes who express their limited understanding and fears about things they don't understand via fist-to-face telegraph. Apparently, however, fist-swinging low-brows can assume a disguise as normal people and behave in thoroughly fucked-up ways.

I wish I were more shocked, is all. These dumb-asses need to be so busted they creep from now on.

Rick Santorum Does Not Understand that Words Mean Things

I held this particular gem in blogular reserve, because the sense of what my former senator was saying was rare and illogical to the kind of degree that that one needs time and sensitivity to broach.

But here is the thesis:

During the discussion, Santorum said that Christians have allowed their faith to be removed from the public square and need to start fighting back, arguing that removing the Bible from public school classrooms is not neutrality but rather the promotion of the secular worldview. He suggested that conservative Christians should respond by "calling secularism a religion because if we did, then we could ban that too."

Now, some people of faith are altogether comfortable enough calling us atheists and agnostics religious: we're accused of being pagans, of being Satan-worshippers--this isn't new. But the actual, basic definition of secularism is the separation of religion from government business. Just because some confused people decided to call secularism a religion, would not make it a religion. There is no particular way that secularism imposes other religions upon people of any particular faith. It only happens that attending public schools might make a child reared in a certain faith aware that people of other faiths exist--and living on our planet would eventually reveal that special information.

Secularism is kind of a protection against religious discrimination in that no particular faith is imposed--or critiqued. I've often wondered what a genuine course of study of the Christian Bible--a no holds barred study, might accomplish--but it would genuinely provide a distraction from the reading, writing, and 'rithmetic curriculum that any student might find more useful in the long run, so I've never thought it to be a curricular necessity as, oh, critical thinking might be.

Certain religionists, however, explicitly reject even the value of critical thinking. I find that appalling. If our capacity to act as moral creatures relies in part on our ability to reason--how is deriding reasoning in any way a valid start to a moral education?

I'm not shocked in any way that possible 2016 GOP Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum thinks this way--he has for a long time been skeptical of the value of education and practically equates information with sin. I'm not even not clued-in that numerous other Bible-bangers are trying to rewrite history to make things appear more amenable to a moral narrative that never previously existed.

I suspect that might be considered "bearing false witness", but I am not pretending to be expert in such things. I'm just being critical--as any secularist might well be.

John McCain's Shadow Has More Reflection Than He Does

Even if in jest, former half-term Governor Palin's admission that she may have contributed to the failure of the 2008 GOP Presidential ticket betrays a very real paradox:

“To claim last night, also, our president saying ISIS is not Islamic, um, ISIS says they’re Islamic,” Palin continued. “They are so full of deception that America should be concerned with the policies that are going on. And, as I watched the speech last night, Sean, the thought going through my mind is ‘I owe America a global apology. Because John McCain, through all of this, John McCain should be our president.’ He had the advice, today, still giving it to Barack Obama, and he will not listen to it, about the residual forces that must be left behind in order to secure the peace in Iraq that we had fought so hard for.”

The first sentence is absurd, and insulting to not only largely Islamic nations and groups that US interests intend to ally with, but to the hundreds of thousands of Muslim people slain by extremists boasting this murderous and unorthodox doctrine of indiscriminate slaughter. Leaving aside that Palin's syntax largely consists of intermittent dog-whistles and static mixed with uncertain subject/verb agreement, she makes the case that Senator McCain should be president, but is not, because she agreed to run with him.

She's being entirely too hard on herself. The only reason she was in a position to agree to that unfortunate bargain was that he asked. And he asked, because his campaign had begun in such a perpetual motion of fail-flail that she looked like a good life preserver anchor. (Recall, things got so bad at one point that he needed not only to be propped up by herself, but also a stand-in for Everyman in the form of Joe the Plumber.) She looked like a serious running-mate to him. The individual who went on to blustering with a struck-deer face though a relatively soft-ball Katie Couric interview and made Dan Quayle sound like Marcus Tullius Cicero whenever she opened her word-hole.

It could be worse, of course. Sarah Palin has hardly been the albatross to Sen. McCain's credibility that, say, wanting to arm Gaddafi or, say, ISIL, should be. And yet the fact remains that Sarah Palin is, as these things go, a guest on a putative news-related program doling out foreign policy critiques when she is far better versed with drunken brawls * than the intricacies of basic newspaper-content. And McCain himself is still left claiming that he knows very well who to arm in Syria.  And I would humbly posit this claim is murky at best. But probably less murky than whatever impetus allows for McCain still being put out there by news-outlets as expert in any damn thing when the legacy of his 2008 run, Sarah Palin, follows him like a very loud and wrong shadow.

She is the proof of how unsuited for office he ever was and is.

*About which--you'll find the link comprehensive if not obsessive regarding the Palin Clan's dead common behavior, with such appallingly déclassé touches as a "stretch Hummer", the tacky war-cry of the barely-been: "Do you know who I am?", and the mental image of Track Palin, tipsy and shirtless, as though auditioning for a role on that long-running FOX reality program--Cops. Yes, there is a touch of schadenfreude within that scene--but however did she and the family end up in such a scene? It would appear, a lack of even basic social diplomacy skills, tribal loyalty, and a predilection for violence. And yet, not once has Sen. McCain issued a "global apology" for elevating the status of this unique creature to serious consideration for the Oval Office.

Ted Cruz is Hard to Stand...With

I think I've made it known that I think Senator Cruz (R-TX) is a schmuck. He has a naked ambition and a reputation for smarts, but he just isn't likeable. I've tried to argue things he does from the "is stupid" vs. "thinks everyone else is stupid" POV, and have found--I don't care. 

He comes off as a clod is all. It's no difference to me why he does--it's that he does that determines his political fate. I hope--because I understand that being a clod has a certain limited appeal in some circles. So upon hearing that Cruz wrong-footed it at a do for Arab Christians, I simply thought he was being a clod again. So he mentions standing with Israel--Israel and Hamas have been in the news recently, which might have brought Israel to mind, and then, there is the shared history of people experiencing persecution. It didn't strike me at first that he'd done anything more than be sort of off-topic.

But in reading further, I find I am in agreement with Rod Dreher and Rep. Dent. It looks to me like he was changing the subject from Arab Christian persecution (which is, in light of recent events, an extremely dire situation), to soliciting support for a regime in Israel that is perceived to be anti-Arab and there is some perception that they are anti-Christian, or at least, discriminatory, as well.  It does not help that his response to the criticism he received was to blast his detractors with the charge of anti-Semitism. One does not need to be an anti-Semite to have reservations about Israel's policies as a government.

It seems like what Cruz was saying, in effect, mirrors the literal Biblical words:

Genesis 12:3: “And I will bless them that bless you and curse him that curses you.”

 
Which seems to be a significant token amongst certain, mostly dispensationalist fundamentalist Christians, whose support of Israel has a lot to do with their hope in the return of You Know Who. Where Ted Cruz became possessed of the idea that this is a helpful spirit to inject into a forum where there are people with real-world issues to relate--not "next-world" aspirations, is not actually even all that much of a puzzle.  But I think it is really telling about his character that he pulled that kind of stunt.
 
The US is a diverse nation, and we are one nation in a diverse world. Cruz's signifying and tone-deafness suggest that he just isn't capable of relating to the challenges of leading a nation like ours in the world we have because he sees things in a terribly limited and even mean-spirited way.
 
I find his POV actually scary.

9/11 Happens Every Year

There's a good reason Bretagne is my lead-in to this post--she's a good old girl. She's 15, which is old in dog-years. She's the last known 9/11 service dog left.  In  her way, she's had a more intimate experience of the destruction that happened than a lot of people do--but it has literally been a dog's age.

Today a co-worker remarked "Did you know this is the 13th anniversary of 9/11?" and the question just seemed weird. Of course, the date is 9/11--was it that it's been thirteen years that seems odd? I didn't ask. It's just math, or aftermath. Babies born then are in middle school. We're still in Afghanistan. Bin Laden is dead.

For awhile, there were bumper stickers that said "Never forget" (still are on older cars), and I can't and I won't. But time does pass. I heard a speaker on some news show say that it is never over for the families of victims, and while it's undoubtedly true, I wonder if the event recedes--it seems like it should. There should be healing.

Bretagne sniffed out the bodies of the fallen, but became an inadvertent therapy dog as well to humans on-site. I don't know how dogs understand things, or what memories she has. But there's something to be said for understanding that that intimate scent of death is in Bretagne's past. And ours. But the therapy goes on. For all of us.

We are still, in some ways, a nation in recovery from a terrible shock, and the actions that have taken place since are many, and the world is a little different for those of us old enough to comprehend a genuine sense of "before" and "after". We are still at war with terror, even if we don't call it a war on terror. In a way, this war is picking at an old wound.

I don't think our wariness is wrong. It only needs to be informed and right. I don't think the lingering trauma is wrong--everyone heals at their own pace. But I think the day comes that the focus needs to be on healing, service, and fixing the broken parts of our past so suddenly disrupted on that beautiful late-summer morning.

And it may happen even on some late-summer beautiful day that someone remembers--isn't it 9/11? as if they almost forgot. I think that day has to come. It may take more than a dog's age, but it will come. And it will then be normal.  And it won't be so bad, even, that it is.

We Have Always Been At War WIth ISIL She Sighed, Orwellianly

Just for a little background on the possibility of going to "operations" in Syria, it was this time last year that I was writing about the US possibly going into Syria against Assad. ( I referred to Assad as unelected--an inexcusable use of hyperbole to show my general opinion of some countries' manner of acquiring leaders--not that I think he's such a legitimate guy.)

So what do I think now that President Obama is suggesting going into possible operations in Syria to degrade and eventually destroy ISIL, who, if you haven't noticed, I have exactly no earthly use for?

Well, it's complicated. Because the dynamic hasn't changed, has it? We still have the Assad regime on one hand, which Obama himself admits having no sympathy with. There's ISIL, who only a bloody incompetent like Sen. McCain could temporarily love (I kid--only partisans out there in the world we created might think that.) There's the Free Syria Army, who are distinctively not human rights angels. Basically, there aren't any good guys, except for the millions of people who are likely to be displaced, as a million or so others have been already displaced, by this kind of effort.

Because these are the sort of unintended consequences we're seeing already in Iraq. I think it's very reasonable to ask what is to be done in the event that we are successful in routing out ISIL--because that has to be the extent of our business.  We are not responsible to build any other nation besides our own. The idea of setting up a temporary regency is inviting trouble and graft. Leaving a power vacuum seems to invite strongmen and militants to become the stewards of Syria's fate.

I'm just saying.

Meet the Press: The Optical Delusion 2

Via Balloon-Juice:

I'm perplexed on pivot to the economy and domestic cheerleading in that speech--confusing to people, different kind of USA exceptionalism
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) September 11, 2014

That being said, Obama was forceful tonight in his delivery and presentation so if you didn't process the words, it looked/sounded ok
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) September 11, 2014

Which essentially shows that the "optical delusion" dynamic is essentially the same as it ever was.

But this is your media on Twitter (imagine an egg cracked into a skillet in a very '80's War on Drugs era metaphor).

Meet the Press: The Optical Delusion

Just to follow up on the previous post, Chuck Todd made a fairly silly error in not noticing that President Obama (the Big "Get" interview for his debut, no less!) actually said "Syria" four times before Chuck Todd "noticed" that he had not mentioned Syria. Expect for those four times.

What did Chuck Todd get more granular about--oh, the optics of golfing. What, no follow-up questions about the tan suit? Oh, I kid. I've gotten my own digs in about golfing, but funny thing is--I don't actually get to interview presidents, so sometimes, golf is what I've got. Chuck Todd has the POTUS right there. He could probably get something more substantive.

I think the problem is what I will call an "optical delusion", where conventional Beltway wisdom colors everything. Todd's Syria question comes from the popular misinterpretation of the lack of "strategy in Syria" (per POTUS) with a lack of desire to get one.

What he should have said, rendered into Washingtonese, is  "We in the White House are currently considering all of our options in Sria and are leaving nothing off the table. When we have adequate information, we will make known our plans to the American people."  It's the formulaic way of putting war-golems to sleep until further instruction.

Obama speaks Washingtonese like a gifted, but recent, speaker. He doesn't stroke the right appendages. Todd, sadly, is already mad-fluent. In other words, the show is going much like I expected, only without  Luke Russert, unless I missed him.

Don't Expect This to Be Rational

Via Steps to HOPE. (Click link to see enlarged view.)

 

There's been a lot of dissection of what Janay Rice did or didn't do regarding being very brutally punched in the face, and questions about why she didn't leave former Baltimore Ravens footballer Ray Rice. I'm not going to add to the chatter, because she has reasons, and they make sense to her. This is the private business of her family even if it's a pretty clear-cut assault. I don't know her relationship, or what steps they are undergoing together or separately. I hope they are getting good counseling--even though in some situations where there is abuse, it doesn't always help.

 

The bottom line is, I don't think anyone knows enough to judge her for her behavior and speculating about it is like trash-picking the neighbors' cans. But I do think the conversation about abusive relationships is useful and healthy to have, and I do think it's worthwhile to question the standards we have publicly regarding known cases of abuse.

 

So long as anyone wonders when seeing her go down in that video what she did to get hit, and not why her husband hit her, I think our conversation is problematic. He could have talked to her, restrained her, got out of the elevator and never looked back. There are options that are not hitting her. And if she seems like she is "giving as good as she got" before the hit, there are even reasons why a victim might instigate where there has previously been abuse. Because when you already know what is coming and that it's unavoidable, why not pick the time and place for a little control? It feels less like victimhood. It makes the narrative that you had it coming make sense.

Climate Sunday: The Round-up

In a piece of good news, it appears BP will be paying for some additional part of their culpability in the major 2010 gulf oil spill over and above the initial damage claims and clean-up. They've been found guilty of gross negligence. Halliburton will also be paying damages, to the tune of $1.1 billion.

I can't swear the parties involved won't be back in court over this, since events like the Exxon Valdez spill became entirely about the ability of the oil companies to invest in lawyers to try and tire out the argument in favor of their actually fixing things, but I dunno. Maybe they'll just pay this time.

I know I've written about ISIL a bit this week or so, but you know what--they aren't as threatening as climate change could be. Check Juan Cole out if you haven't before--he writes about foreign policy in the Middle East mostly, but he's also sterling on climate issues.

I'm looking forward to reading Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything going by this.

There are many more stories out there, but these were the ones that got me thinking this past week. You might also be interested to hear this summation of the Mann Defamation trial by a writer for the Union of Concerned Scientists.  It seems to me that the National Review editors should have very seriously considered whether they needed to have a scientist exonerated by many reviews of his work compared to a child molester. As an analogy, it sucks. As a slur, it's inflammatory. But the page views aren't worth the magazine's integrity, surely?  They will find out.

Meet the Press. Hmph.

I know it's kind of trivial, and I don't really watch Sunday talking-head shows that much anyway, but when it comes to where Americans (mostly) get their views on the issues of the day, our stalwart folks in the television medium, I kind of shudder. I do. One of the things I like about blogging, and the Internet in general, is that while there are troll-ish people who are happy to spread mindless disinfo, you can get good stories if you develop a sense of where to look; you begin to find sources of information that you trust, and while there are many partisan or biased writers out there (yours truly included), you have the luxury of listening to different voices and comparing and contrasting ideas--being an active editor of your own newsfeed. That ability kind of stimulates me in a way that being a passive consumer of tv news doesn't.

(Well, my family would attest that I'm not an all that actually passive television news consumer, what with the yelling at the poor electronic device that sends me images of dumb people saying dumb things and the occasionally expressive hand gestures. Ahem. But I do kind of dislike feeling my news is predigested for me, especially if I think I'm receiving it from the...ultimate point of digested material extraction.)

My thoughts on the replacement of David Gregory with Chuck Todd is that this is a bit of an improvement in that I think Todd is a more enthusiastic and curious personality. But I still have my reservations, to the effect that I think I'll somehow not like Meet the Press any more than I do now, and might end up liking Todd a hair less. The fault lies with the Meet the Press format, though, as I've said before.

Although speaking of things I've said before, I said then:

Huh? Maybe David Gregory has had some challenges in his role at Meet the Press, not in the least following in the footsteps of Tim Russert, who, having passed tragically too young, was, perforce, a bit hagiographized. And that may have left him wondering a tad if he was just a space-warmer, a regent over the show until the dauphin Luke Russert was installed or until the MTP powers that be gave up entirely and just let Sen. John McCain host the damn show. But for crying out loud, if he can show his face on television as a journalist after being MC Rove's back-up dancer, then what can't he live down? Maybe he isn't the greatest interviewer. Maybe he is lackluster, underprepared, and doesn't challenge his guests sufficiently.  So--granted.  Maybe some of us lefties are accurate in supposing he leans a little right--but you know what? Chris Wallace does also IMHO, but I like him better as an interviewer.

And wouldn't you know it? We're getting graced with Luke Russert, who is like the "Fetch" of journalism. Why are they trying to make him happen, I wonder? (Hint--it's not because he knows stuff.) And Joe Scarborough, who makes occasional sense (I enjoyed one of his books that, incidentally, conservatives hated) but is a MSNBC shouty-head, will also be lending his opinions, for what they are worth.

The Powers that Be at NBC kind of really thought the problem was that the show wasn't insider-y enough. Hello? Unless they are willing to actually have political figures meet working journalists who ask questions, even hard ones, we don't have what the label says: "Meeting the Press".

And no, most other Sunday news talking heads shows are not any better. This Week with George Stephanopoulos is going to let Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Peter King, and Rep. Adam Smith be shouty, and then have some insider journos and strategists chat about shit tomorrow. That is the number one show in the ratings right now. I do not know if any of this is intended to be informative. And I frankly doubt it.

Rock the Casbah

In the course of about a week, I realized I'd gone from "militant shit happens" to "kill the lot of them" regarding ISIL, which is obviously, a big-ass turnaround.

I don't actually want a war with ISIL. I just think it's happening anyway. When Vice-President Biden says we will follow ISIS to the Gates of Hell, he's being the "nudge" that telegraphs where the debate is. And if it has to happen because the ball is rolling and tongues have starting writing checks that American asses will have to cash, I pretty damn well want to see a thorough job of it. And I'm coming around to the idea that there is something very poisonous about this particular group.

They spread their territory quickly and cast their influence wide (they have tentacles in Egypt and Libya), in some ways superseding al-Qaeda's influence in the hip'n'with-it fucking shit up set. They aren't pre-modern shit-fucker-uppers: they're POMO. They're attracting young westerners who aren't necessarily that well-versed yet in the particulars of their faith by promising them meaning by attaching the figure of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to a grand concept of a caliphate, which is basically crazypants. If he's the 12th imam, I'm Mary Poppins. But in any case, this shit is moving too quickly, and quite possibly in some disturbing directions.

This group just doesn't seem to have a good side. It's not like you can say: "If not for the kidnappings, the massacres, the rapes, and the ethnic cleansing, there's so much good they could be doing."  They are down with some sick destructive ethos, and as far as I'm concerned, I don't think we have time for that.  It  doesn't make us on the side of Assad, or Iran, it just means we can all basically agree these guys are something else, and letting them prosper is letting good folks die.

We can settle up with anyone else later. But there's reasons to nip these characters right off now. And I think comparing them to Aum Shinrikyo or any other cult fixated on death isn't far wrong. They are absurd. But more is needed than simply trying to make sense of them.

The 2012 GOP Primary is *Still* With Us. Really.

It strikes me as singularly weird that I'm doing another post regarding the reverb on the 2012 GOP primary and I'm still not talking about TX Gov. Perry's post-indictment chances or the low-level Mitt Romney chatter (Reihan Salam makes a few strong points, but Charles Pierce comedically upends them) . But no, I'm back mentioning this strange little grubby palm-greasing in Ioway. Because it still has ripples, somehow.

Call me a cynic, a skeptic, and a grump, but all the same, I just saw the volte face of Sorenson from Bachmann to Paul as a kind of estimation of their comparative electable merits. Ron Paul has a more or less coherent political message, and Michele Bachmann is not a great maker of coherent statements. End of story?--nope.

Now, to be completely real, until 2012, there was no reason for me to know who the hell Kent Sorenson even is. But it looks like, if you are big in the GOP in Iowa, you kind of are a big deal in getting a presidential primary campaign started, judging from what he seemed to have got out of the deal. (Ya know, before anyone looked into it.)

Labor Day: America, the Overworked

The face of this Labor Day, for me, is Maria Fernandes, who died at the age of 32, in her car, overcome by fumes from her running car and spilled gasoline inside of that car, while she was trying to catch some sleep between the shifts of her four low-paying jobs. Four. Part-time. Low-paying. Jobs. How in the hell can four jobs be so crappy in pay and hours, that one can or even has to fit all four into their schedule?

Well, the Star Ledger story does explain:

New Jersey has tens of thousands of people working multiple jobs, said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

"These are are folks who would like to work full-time but they can't find the jobs," Van Horn said. "They wind up in these circumstances in which they are exhausted. More commonly it creates just an enormous amount of stress," he said.

Many people have been forced to work two or three part time jobs after losing a full-time position in the recession of 2008.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 7.5 million people nationwide are working more than one job, Van Horn said, and those jobs still leave people with less income than their full-time work.

But this isn't just a New Jersey story. Millenials are liable to start out in low-paying service jobs and work at many jobs over a lifetime, and our economy has, since my generation (X) wandered out into the McJob landscape, mainly offered increasingly crappy pay, depressingly shabbier benefits, and it even looks like retirement has become a thing of the past for many older Americans--a past they didn't get to know.