August 2010 archive

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

Well, sorta.  I’m not Harry Kemelman and this isn’t Barnard’s Crossing.    And it’s not 1964, though on some levels it feels like it.  I mean: there are a zillion right wing nutjobs trying to repeal the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution and deport 15 million people, and somehow those terrible ideas aren’t even being greeted with even the vituperation Barry Goldwater got when he suggested carpet bombing Vietnam back into the stone age (as if that were possible without killing everyone on Earth).  On the vituperate scale, Barry G got a 6.  The current mischagas gets about a 4.  Or less.  What I’m talking about is a country gone insane.  Just like 1964.

I know.  It’s hot.  Very hot.  When it’s August, all of the psychiatrists go to Martha’s Vineyard for the month, leaving behind voicemails that tell their distraught clientele to go to the emergency room if they need to.  If I were having cocktails right now in Chilmark, and I hasten to say that I’m not, I’d probably think that such a message was a good idea too.  But it’s not.  It doesn’t take into consideration the overwhelming, gigantic epidemic of mental disease and delusion now festering in America in the form of amnesiac tea baggers, Glenn Beck devotees,  birthers, racists, kooks of all stripes,  dittoheads and a Republican Congress that for all its orange skin and blow dried hair should have its own chapter in the DSM IV.  Yes, I know.  These loons don’t have shrinks who are on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.  Correct.  The people whose shrinks are in Martha’s Vineyard, people like me, living in New York and Boston, are in far worse condition: they’re sweltering in an apartment that cannot make it cooler than 80 degrees, the air is awful, and the only thing on the tube is the constant, annoying blathering of people so deranged that they throw even those like me, those with minor, urban, post information age neuroses into serious crisis.  You could take me for an example.

Let’s look at one thing, ok?  I heard today that the oil from the BP spill is all but disappeared and that soon Louisiana fisherman are going to start fishing and shrimping again.  Because, allegedly, that’s now safe and we all believe the Government and the pants-on-fire team at BP about that.  It’s safe?  I’ll believe it when I see BP’s executives eating oysters off the halfshell. Till then,  I’m sorry,  I can’t accept that.  Oil and all that Corexit, all gone now?  Nonsense.  In fact, these stories enrage me.  They are, to me, like tickling dynamite with a blowtorch.  If I had a shrink, I’d be speed dialing already.  “Help me,” I’d whimper, grasping the Blackberry in icy, flinching hands, “The most violent, greedy, despicable inmates have taken over the asylum.  And I need your help to deal with it.”

I know Obama and the Democrats were supposed to be able to play 11-dimensional chess when they took over.  Right now, I’m wondering whether they can even play checkers.  It’s too hot to be charitable, and the neighbors, that is, the other occupants of this country, are becoming louder and more deranged every day.  The summer heat is making the country even more insane.

Maybe what I need is a cocktail and a new outgoing message.

simulposted at The Dream Antilles and dailyKos

Keith and Rachel all night long.  Jon is repeating August 3rd- Will Ferrell, Stephen August 4th- Michael Posner.  David is also in repeats, from way back on June 23rd- Adam Sandler and Bettye LaVette.  Leno is at least live with Howie Mandel and Mike Posner (again, must have a book out).

Thank goodness for Adult Swim (though napping might be a good alternative).

• AMC– Michael Clayton again.  If I wanted to see it I would have watched the first time.  Rubicon repeat.
• ESPN– Cards @ Reds
• ABC Family– Secret Life of the American Teenager (premier) x 2.  Family oriented programming for Caribou Barbie.
• FX– Click.  Adam Sandler (click).
• History– Pawn Stars, American Pickers
• SciFi– Warehouse 13.1, Eureka crossover repeat.
• Discovery– Cash Cab in Vegas (new)
• TBS– Family Guy night
• Turner Classic– Splendor in the Grass (Warren Beatty night)
• TLC– Cake Boss night
• TNT– The Closer (last week’s and premier)
• Toon– Premier night, Adventure Time With Finn & Jake, Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Total Drama World Tour, Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated
• Travel– Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (premier)
• Disney– Another repeat of Summer Belongs to You

Later-

Well I’ve really sucked all the air out of it.  Alton does Oranges.  Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny is full of information about the the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the mysterious ‘Council of 13’.

• AMC– Yesterday’s Mad Men
• Comedy– Futurama repeats
• FX– Mr. 3000 (better than it should be)
• Turner Classic– Reds

Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP moves to well kill, kicks off compensation fund

By Pascal Fletcher and Anna Driver, Reuters

1 hr 41 mins ago

A recent Army report released showed the rate of suicides has been on a steady increase with this past June being the worst with 32 active and reserve soldiers taking their own lives either while still deployed or after their return home. This past Sunday on This Week , Christiane Amanpour interviewed Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the general in charge of the U.S. Army’s efforts to reduce the epidemic of suicide among U.S. soldiers.

Of course the true solution to suicide prevention for the troops is to bring them home, all of them.

Listen to her interview with Gen. Chiaelli about the report, its causes and the solutions for prevention. Transcript link is here

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Glenn Greenwald: Marriage and the role of the state

Ross Douthat uses his New York Times column today  to put what he undoubtedly considers to be the most intellectual and humane face on the case against marriage equality.  Without pointing to any concrete or empirical evidence, Douthat insists that lifelong heterosexual monogamy is objectively superior to all other forms of adult relationships:  such arrangements are the “ideal,”  he pronounces.  He argues that equal treatment of same-sex marriages by secular institutions will make it impossible, even as a matter of debate and teaching, to maintain the rightful place of heterosexual monogamy as superior:

   

The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support. . . . .

   If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. . . . But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate.  That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different:  similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

   But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.

This argument is radically wrong, and its two principal errors nicely highlight why the case against marriage equality is so misguided.

America Goes Dark

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 8, 2010

(A) large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble – literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education – they’re choosing the latter.

…

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

…

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud – to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

Monday Business Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP spends $6.1 bln on Gulf spill response

AFP

57 mins ago

On this day in 1974, one day after the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford is sworn in as president, making him the first man to assume the presidency upon his predecessor’s resignation. He was also the first non-elected vice president and non-elected president, which made his ascendance to the presidency all the more unique.

Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974. As the first person appointed to the vice-presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment, when he became President upon Richard Nixon’s  resignation on August 9, 1974, he also became the only President of the United States who was elected neither President nor Vice-President.

Before ascending to the vice-presidency, Ford served nearly 25 years as Representative from Michigan’s 5th congressional district, eight of them as the Republican Minority Leader.

As President, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward detente in the Cold War. With the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam nine months into his presidency, US involvement in Vietnam essentially ended. Domestically, Ford presided over what was then the worst economy since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. One of his more controversial acts was to grant a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. During Ford’s incumbency, foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the President. In 1976, Ford narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but ultimately lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the Republican Party. After experiencing health problems and being admitted to the hospital four times in 2006, Ford died in his home on December 26, 2006. He lived longer than any other U.S. president, dying at the age of 93 years and 165 days.

Well, my first diary here, so please humor me, I will make errors!  This is a brief request to support a writer and historian who may be close to our own hearts in terms of real Progressive and Liberal politics. Some say he might be the next Howard Zinn.

The title of the book we’d be supporting is The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power.

Paul has written many articles his most recent dealing with Wikileaks and whistle blowers: Revealing Moments: Obama, WikiLeaks, the “Good War” Myth, and Silly Liberal Faith in the Emperor