Friday, June 11, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
And they haven't even debated yet...
No time to blog today but must link good news... Especially promising considering Bush's current attempts to capitalize on Reagan's death - go to www.georgebush.com and what do you see?... One can only imagine, especially considering the country's current feelings toward Bush, that this attempt could only point up how much he ISN'T Reagan...
It's not all good news of course - it's still tight, and people still have these misbegotten views of Kerry (no doubt misbegotten from those epically misleading Bush-Cheney '04 ads...) but there's plenty of time, and plenty of debates to be had, during which I have no doubts at all Kerry will trounce Bush handily and make him spin like a bug on the pin of his own lies. There's just so much material to go on...
It's not all good news of course - it's still tight, and people still have these misbegotten views of Kerry (no doubt misbegotten from those epically misleading Bush-Cheney '04 ads...) but there's plenty of time, and plenty of debates to be had, during which I have no doubts at all Kerry will trounce Bush handily and make him spin like a bug on the pin of his own lies. There's just so much material to go on...
In Praise of the Bad Houseguest
In other words, in praise of Michael Moore.
I can't wait to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Putting aside my worries for the moment that it will end up being, instead of the political hand grenade it will no doubt deserve to be, simply another case of preaching to the choir (albeit a brilliant and massive preaching to the choir), I can't wait to experience the two hour condensation of Michael Moore's personal and therefore patently brazen and unflinching scrutiny of the Bush Administration's activities for the past three years. I've fudged a bit over Michael Moore the past year, flinching under the indisputable revelations of his own penchant for torturing fact to make a point, and wishing (stupidly) that he would learn to "behave", to keep his innate gutsiness intact but cool down his rhetoric in order to tailor his message more to the people, like my mom and dad for example, who have the most to gain (in my hopelessly lefty opinion) from what he has to say. Without even actually seeing his Oscar speech, merely on hearsay, and groans from even some of my lefty friends, and reading one critic who described Moore after this performance as that bad houseguest who, after you politely ask them into your house, pees on the furniture, I started questioning whether Moore might not even be "bad for the cause". We're a notoriously nervous crew, we lefties these days, always wondering whether our PR folks are DOING THE RIGHT THING (just witness the tedious way John Kerry's every sniffle is carefully parsed for the possibility of electoral fallout). I started to even question out loud whether he wasn't just the liberal version of the crankcases on the Right like LimbaughCoulterHannity.
But I always came back to the realization of the crucial difference between Moore and the bloviators on the Right, which was this: LimbaughCoulterHannity are essentially nothing more than professional scoffers, people paid very well to offer nothing in any way constructive to our democracy, but instead just to act as the honorary shruggers-off of all critique of the United States of America, offering instant gratification to an apparently sizable portion of the populace who for whatever personal reasons rely almost pathologically on a shining, blindingly pristine view of their country, like parents who despite glaring evidence to the contrary refuse to acknowledge even the slightest traces of their children's faults. Anyone who might suggest that (for example), well, America's roof is getting a little leaky, and um we might want to do something about those windows in the front of the house with the bullet holes in them, and well, I don't know but the way things tend to slide across the floor, it appears that the foundation is sinking a bit, or maybe more than a bit... in other words, anyone who would suggest that something needs to be done, that sacrifices might have to be made, that we as a country - an extended family - might just have to own up to our own imperfections in order to actually work at becoming a bit more actually perfect, anyone who might suggest that our work, as proud members of a hopefully still fully functioning democracy, is not yet done, gets branded as a crackpot (in the case of Limbaugh) or worse yet, a traitor (in the particularly nastily reductionist cases of Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter).
Michael Moore on the other hand, unlike these self-styled, flag-draped "patriots" who have nothing to offer their country but emptily jingoistic theatrics and open disdain for those who would dare to suggest, oh horror!, that social critique has any place in an active democracy, honestly seems to hold fast to the real American dream, that is, a dream of a country that can stand up to closer scrutiny, that can be honed to perfection, that can be made better for all members of the household, but only by close scrutiny of the house and those living under its roof, and especially close scrutiny of those who purport to be protecting the house while in fact stealing the lumber and the concrete and all of the tools that one had purchased to repair it, and stealing on the way out the door (on their way to the Cayman Islands) everything in the medicine cabinet and the kitchen sink for fair measure. Moore believes refreshingly in such a quaint concept (by today's standards) as accountability in our government, and he's singularly unafraid to be considered rude as he bangs his pots and pans to point out that while the roof might not be on fire, it certainly does seem to be producing one hell of a lot of smoke.
So now, Fahrenheit 9/11. May it be allowed to open windows into hitherto stalwartly closed minds. May the condemnation from the right come so thick and fast that the curiosity of some handful of conservatives whose brains are not yet the consistency of days-old concrete might lead them to actually venture into a theatre to see it. On Michael Moore's site, right on the home page, he proudly displays his now-infamous Oscar speech in glorious streaming video, loud boos and all. After finally getting to watch it after all the hype, I didn't honestly understand what all of this talk was about his shrillness, and I think after a year of this war his words have been more than vindicated. Watching the speech, listening to the booing, I thought Michael Moore should be proud, for being ballsy enough to say exactly what he means given a rare moment on a platform of truly global reach, despite the social niceties that dominate in a realm where politics is normally only ever allowed in through the backdoor of a joking innuendo by Whoopi or Billy, that inevitably gets washed away, no matter how pointed, in the tide of the evening's shimmering, glamorously tedious nullity.
In other words, every even slightly anti-Moore sentiment that I've uttered over the past year I summarily reject and hang my head however momentarily in shame. As for that arch critic and his snakily snarkily stabbing critique of Moore, it reminds me now, in its suggestion of Moore as a bad houseguest peeing on the furniture, of a great lyric by Joni Mitchell, describing Van Gogh: "Tourists talking about the madhouse / tourists talking about the ear. / The madman hangs in fancy homes / they wouldn't let him near. / He'd piss in their fireplace! / He'd drag them through Turbulent Indigo..." Not to suggest that Michael Moore wouldn’t use the bathroom if he came over to your house, but to remember that the reaction to every bold visionary is generally strong, initial rejection, something that fortunately for Michael Moore and for us, after his vindication at Cannes, is currently in very short supply.
I can't wait to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Putting aside my worries for the moment that it will end up being, instead of the political hand grenade it will no doubt deserve to be, simply another case of preaching to the choir (albeit a brilliant and massive preaching to the choir), I can't wait to experience the two hour condensation of Michael Moore's personal and therefore patently brazen and unflinching scrutiny of the Bush Administration's activities for the past three years. I've fudged a bit over Michael Moore the past year, flinching under the indisputable revelations of his own penchant for torturing fact to make a point, and wishing (stupidly) that he would learn to "behave", to keep his innate gutsiness intact but cool down his rhetoric in order to tailor his message more to the people, like my mom and dad for example, who have the most to gain (in my hopelessly lefty opinion) from what he has to say. Without even actually seeing his Oscar speech, merely on hearsay, and groans from even some of my lefty friends, and reading one critic who described Moore after this performance as that bad houseguest who, after you politely ask them into your house, pees on the furniture, I started questioning whether Moore might not even be "bad for the cause". We're a notoriously nervous crew, we lefties these days, always wondering whether our PR folks are DOING THE RIGHT THING (just witness the tedious way John Kerry's every sniffle is carefully parsed for the possibility of electoral fallout). I started to even question out loud whether he wasn't just the liberal version of the crankcases on the Right like LimbaughCoulterHannity.
But I always came back to the realization of the crucial difference between Moore and the bloviators on the Right, which was this: LimbaughCoulterHannity are essentially nothing more than professional scoffers, people paid very well to offer nothing in any way constructive to our democracy, but instead just to act as the honorary shruggers-off of all critique of the United States of America, offering instant gratification to an apparently sizable portion of the populace who for whatever personal reasons rely almost pathologically on a shining, blindingly pristine view of their country, like parents who despite glaring evidence to the contrary refuse to acknowledge even the slightest traces of their children's faults. Anyone who might suggest that (for example), well, America's roof is getting a little leaky, and um we might want to do something about those windows in the front of the house with the bullet holes in them, and well, I don't know but the way things tend to slide across the floor, it appears that the foundation is sinking a bit, or maybe more than a bit... in other words, anyone who would suggest that something needs to be done, that sacrifices might have to be made, that we as a country - an extended family - might just have to own up to our own imperfections in order to actually work at becoming a bit more actually perfect, anyone who might suggest that our work, as proud members of a hopefully still fully functioning democracy, is not yet done, gets branded as a crackpot (in the case of Limbaugh) or worse yet, a traitor (in the particularly nastily reductionist cases of Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter).
Michael Moore on the other hand, unlike these self-styled, flag-draped "patriots" who have nothing to offer their country but emptily jingoistic theatrics and open disdain for those who would dare to suggest, oh horror!, that social critique has any place in an active democracy, honestly seems to hold fast to the real American dream, that is, a dream of a country that can stand up to closer scrutiny, that can be honed to perfection, that can be made better for all members of the household, but only by close scrutiny of the house and those living under its roof, and especially close scrutiny of those who purport to be protecting the house while in fact stealing the lumber and the concrete and all of the tools that one had purchased to repair it, and stealing on the way out the door (on their way to the Cayman Islands) everything in the medicine cabinet and the kitchen sink for fair measure. Moore believes refreshingly in such a quaint concept (by today's standards) as accountability in our government, and he's singularly unafraid to be considered rude as he bangs his pots and pans to point out that while the roof might not be on fire, it certainly does seem to be producing one hell of a lot of smoke.
So now, Fahrenheit 9/11. May it be allowed to open windows into hitherto stalwartly closed minds. May the condemnation from the right come so thick and fast that the curiosity of some handful of conservatives whose brains are not yet the consistency of days-old concrete might lead them to actually venture into a theatre to see it. On Michael Moore's site, right on the home page, he proudly displays his now-infamous Oscar speech in glorious streaming video, loud boos and all. After finally getting to watch it after all the hype, I didn't honestly understand what all of this talk was about his shrillness, and I think after a year of this war his words have been more than vindicated. Watching the speech, listening to the booing, I thought Michael Moore should be proud, for being ballsy enough to say exactly what he means given a rare moment on a platform of truly global reach, despite the social niceties that dominate in a realm where politics is normally only ever allowed in through the backdoor of a joking innuendo by Whoopi or Billy, that inevitably gets washed away, no matter how pointed, in the tide of the evening's shimmering, glamorously tedious nullity.
In other words, every even slightly anti-Moore sentiment that I've uttered over the past year I summarily reject and hang my head however momentarily in shame. As for that arch critic and his snakily snarkily stabbing critique of Moore, it reminds me now, in its suggestion of Moore as a bad houseguest peeing on the furniture, of a great lyric by Joni Mitchell, describing Van Gogh: "Tourists talking about the madhouse / tourists talking about the ear. / The madman hangs in fancy homes / they wouldn't let him near. / He'd piss in their fireplace! / He'd drag them through Turbulent Indigo..." Not to suggest that Michael Moore wouldn’t use the bathroom if he came over to your house, but to remember that the reaction to every bold visionary is generally strong, initial rejection, something that fortunately for Michael Moore and for us, after his vindication at Cannes, is currently in very short supply.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Oh Enron, My ----ing Enron
Okay my brother told me I should tone this down (and if HE tells me I need to tone something down, I know it must be over the top), so I'm editing this post to NOT include language a la the attached article.? So I will just express my complete disgust instead. I used to work (however tangentially) in the financial industry, and I certainly saw the occasional rat bastards like this Enron crew that got their rocks off on knowing that they were pumping up their personal portfolios by royally screwing the nest eggs of simple trusting folk throughout the country, but this is just as loathesome as it gets. Lest anyone forget - apparently everyone did only seconds after the first news of the Enron meltdown came out three years ago - Enron is married to the current Presidential administration closer than just about any corporation out there, with the possible exception of Halliburton and possibly Bechtel, and a lot of ex-Enron staff members worked, or in some cases still work, in this administration. I think, I've always thought, that the spirit at work here pretty closely mirrors the spirit I've always felt at work in Bush's presidency. Which is the subject for an upcoming essay. But in the meantime, read these transcripts in all of their shining glory, and remember that Kenny Boy Lay, Junior's (that's President Bush to you and I) good buddy, after overseeing the biggest corporate fiscal scandal ever witnessed, is still floating out there free as the breeze, while Martha Stewart - for the budget price of only 41k or thereabouts - is trying to figure out which cookbooks to bring with her for her time down the river at Club Fed...
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Reagan vs. Bush
First of all, this article by Paul Krugman is characteristically spot-on (or, if you happen to be a conservative a la Donald Luskin, characteristically deranged) as he describes the crucial differences between Reagan and our current Reagan-wannabe.
Then there are these various links to Reagan reality checks by Paul Waldman:
Reagan Myth #1
Reagan Myth #2
and from the New York Times, a good clarification of what was said then versus what is said now.
Then there are these various links to Reagan reality checks by Paul Waldman:
Reagan Myth #1
Reagan Myth #2
and from the New York Times, a good clarification of what was said then versus what is said now.
A little heartfelt and ever so justified Republican bashing
Big Brother sent a guest blog that I thought went a little extreme for a blog, but then my response to him got equally strident, so I figured, hell with it. With all of the over-the-top sanctifying of Reagan going on this week, a little balance is in order:
But in the end, is it really so surprising that they would do this? It's just par for the course with these people. It's especially funny when you think about the fact that Racicot or one of those stand-up comedians chastised Kerry for quoting scripture on the campaign trail. Talk about "give me a break"! These whited sepulchres are instantaneous self-parodies. It's only too bad a good portion of the population has no sense of the monumental levels of irony being played out by the RNC these days - not for political reasons, just because of the sheer sickening amusement they provide for those to whom the self-parody is so grossly apparent. For example, when Racicot does as he's been doing for the past month, and repeatedly accuses KERRY of going negative. Not unlike Chalabi accusing Tenet of providing “erroneous information about weapons of mass destruction to President Bush, which caused the government much embarrassment at the United Nations and his own country.” Maybe Bush and Company are learning a thing or two from Mr. Chalabi after all...
.
What's with Republicans? How is it that they claim to have such an upper hand on virtue when they pull pranks like this? Last week it was widely reported that the Bush campaign's was planning to enroll churchgoers to distribute campaign materials at their churches. In all accounts I read about the story there were concerns voiced by both political analysts and leaders of targeted churches that such a practice would endanger the tax-exempt status of the churches. So what do the Republicans do? Do they say, "So sorry. Our bad. We shouldn't oughta done this?" Are you kidding? No, indeedy. As reported in the New York Times today House Republicans added a measure to another bill that would give churches a "limited number of violations of the existing rules against political endorsements without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status"! What a bunch of slime balls! I can't believe I was ever a Republican! What a bunch of godforsaken rule-bending self-serving hypocrites!
But in the end, is it really so surprising that they would do this? It's just par for the course with these people. It's especially funny when you think about the fact that Racicot or one of those stand-up comedians chastised Kerry for quoting scripture on the campaign trail. Talk about "give me a break"! These whited sepulchres are instantaneous self-parodies. It's only too bad a good portion of the population has no sense of the monumental levels of irony being played out by the RNC these days - not for political reasons, just because of the sheer sickening amusement they provide for those to whom the self-parody is so grossly apparent. For example, when Racicot does as he's been doing for the past month, and repeatedly accuses KERRY of going negative. Not unlike Chalabi accusing Tenet of providing “erroneous information about weapons of mass destruction to President Bush, which caused the government much embarrassment at the United Nations and his own country.” Maybe Bush and Company are learning a thing or two from Mr. Chalabi after all...
.
Monday, June 07, 2004
Chalabi
I've been really holding back on writing about Chalabi, because the more I read, frankly the more tortuous and involved the whole story behind him becomes. So I'm just going to link to this story in The New Yorker, and leave it at that for now. (Also, a link to Joshuah Micah Marshall, who's the main source of showing me how complicated the story really is.) The short of it is, the man is bad, bad news, and has been bad news for years, and the idea that he was the source of intel for the hawks that pushed for Iraq says, as far as I'm concerned, everything one needs to know about the (in)competence of the men that Bush has allowed to run the Defense Department over the span of his administration. For this atrocity alone, any sane electorate would immediately vote this man and his misguided cronies out of office.
"There's America, and then there's Texas"
From GWB's press conference after meeting with Jacques Chirac, there was this bizarre exchange:
Besides the typically thorough Bushian butchering of a source, there was the just general incomprehensibility of his comment, and the equally incomprehensible later attempt by anonymous aides to clarify the comment. “Another side to matters.” Ah yes, our President: such a master of framing such deeply metaphysical matters in such a gnomic, almost Confucian manner.
But, as with so many Bushian utterances, perhaps there is more hiding subliminally in his comment than one might at first suspect. After all, there's no question: there is America, and then, yes, there is Texas. Specifically, there is the Texas Republican Platform, which, among other possibly more insane planks, includes a specific call to immediately “rescind our membership” in the United Nations. Kevin Drum has all of the scary specifics here. As he points out, if this platform were from anyone else at all it would be dismissed as political extreme fringe looniness, but as it stands, it is the honest-to-God writ-in-stone platform behind the currently most powerful politicians in the land. In other words, people need to pay a lot more attention to what it has to say...
At the news conference, Bush turned curt when a French reporter asked him why his policies were "pushing your country and France to divorce," noting that former President John F. Kennedy had suggested that everyone has two countries -- his own and France.
"To paraphrase President Kennedy, there's America and then there's Texas," Bush retorted. He did not elaborate. The purported Kennedy comment was actually originally uttered by President Thomas Jefferson.
Aides later said Bush was just trying to suggest there was another side to matters.
Besides the typically thorough Bushian butchering of a source, there was the just general incomprehensibility of his comment, and the equally incomprehensible later attempt by anonymous aides to clarify the comment. “Another side to matters.” Ah yes, our President: such a master of framing such deeply metaphysical matters in such a gnomic, almost Confucian manner.
But, as with so many Bushian utterances, perhaps there is more hiding subliminally in his comment than one might at first suspect. After all, there's no question: there is America, and then, yes, there is Texas. Specifically, there is the Texas Republican Platform, which, among other possibly more insane planks, includes a specific call to immediately “rescind our membership” in the United Nations. Kevin Drum has all of the scary specifics here. As he points out, if this platform were from anyone else at all it would be dismissed as political extreme fringe looniness, but as it stands, it is the honest-to-God writ-in-stone platform behind the currently most powerful politicians in the land. In other words, people need to pay a lot more attention to what it has to say...
Reagan
I have a lot of memories of Reagan, like everyone who lived through eight years of his presidency. Reagan without question is central to the growth of my personal political views. The fact that I was such an ardent young Republican during the beginning of his presidency no doubt in part stands to explain the extremity of my current opposing political stance. My first real memory of Reagan was New Years 1980, when Mom and Dad were so fired up about his candidacy, and were so excited about the Republican ascendancy that they correctly predicted was going to occur along with it. This was New Year's Eve, and this was what Mom and Dad were celebrating! Yes I do come from obscenely political stock. And the Revolution happened – Reagan won, the G.O.P. recovered from the post-Nixon hangover, and the 80's began.
I remember when he was shot, I was in either seventh or eighth grade, I was in shop class, and I remember being completely shocked when fellow students, upon hearing the news, started actually cheering the assassination attempt, and saying how happy their parents would be at the news. I understood that some people didn’t like him as President, but even then, this blew my mind that people would actually be ecstatic at the prospect of his being murdered. This was more than a handful of students too, so it was a bit of a wake up call, a slap in the face to my rose-tinted version of a gloriously, happily Republican world.
Then of course I started growing up, growing (I hope) a bit wiser, joined debate and in debate started enjoying the intellectual pleasures of playing Devil’s advocate, constantly forcing myself to question my own inherited beliefs – and the closer attention I paid to actual facts and policies, the more I watched myself slipping away from the Right to the Left. Iran-Contra was probably the last nail in that particular coffin. By that point, my dread of the military-industrial complex was near fully formed, and Iran-Contra seemed to be a standing confirmation of all that that dread embodied. So for me personally, Reagan himself stands as the embodiment of misguided policy put in place with a sunny, distracting smile, and all the dangers that that implies. In the process, he also represents for me my move across the political aisle, and into at least somewhat more conscious political awareness. More ambiguously, he seems to stand for the potential for a man to be manipulated dangerously by the men surrounding him. But that’s a subject for a later time…
Of course, when Mom and Dad visited L.A. for the first time a couple of years ago, I was more than happy to drive them out to Simi Valley to the predictably hagiographic Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Simi Valley, in all of its alien arid suburban-wasteland-in-the-sun-baked-desert "glory", somehow feels like the perfect setting for the Reagan Library, but you'd have to experience it to understand. And watching those images of that charming smile, listening to his masterful rhetoric, reliving his inimitable ability to stay sunny even after having been shot, telling Nancy, "Honey, I forgot to duck," it’s easy to recall why he was so unshakeably popular. It was an interesting journey back into the sunny, unconscious idealism of my youth...
I remember when he was shot, I was in either seventh or eighth grade, I was in shop class, and I remember being completely shocked when fellow students, upon hearing the news, started actually cheering the assassination attempt, and saying how happy their parents would be at the news. I understood that some people didn’t like him as President, but even then, this blew my mind that people would actually be ecstatic at the prospect of his being murdered. This was more than a handful of students too, so it was a bit of a wake up call, a slap in the face to my rose-tinted version of a gloriously, happily Republican world.
Then of course I started growing up, growing (I hope) a bit wiser, joined debate and in debate started enjoying the intellectual pleasures of playing Devil’s advocate, constantly forcing myself to question my own inherited beliefs – and the closer attention I paid to actual facts and policies, the more I watched myself slipping away from the Right to the Left. Iran-Contra was probably the last nail in that particular coffin. By that point, my dread of the military-industrial complex was near fully formed, and Iran-Contra seemed to be a standing confirmation of all that that dread embodied. So for me personally, Reagan himself stands as the embodiment of misguided policy put in place with a sunny, distracting smile, and all the dangers that that implies. In the process, he also represents for me my move across the political aisle, and into at least somewhat more conscious political awareness. More ambiguously, he seems to stand for the potential for a man to be manipulated dangerously by the men surrounding him. But that’s a subject for a later time…
Of course, when Mom and Dad visited L.A. for the first time a couple of years ago, I was more than happy to drive them out to Simi Valley to the predictably hagiographic Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Simi Valley, in all of its alien arid suburban-wasteland-in-the-sun-baked-desert "glory", somehow feels like the perfect setting for the Reagan Library, but you'd have to experience it to understand. And watching those images of that charming smile, listening to his masterful rhetoric, reliving his inimitable ability to stay sunny even after having been shot, telling Nancy, "Honey, I forgot to duck," it’s easy to recall why he was so unshakeably popular. It was an interesting journey back into the sunny, unconscious idealism of my youth...
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