The Paranoid Defenders of the Playground-bully Pissident

I'm guessing anyone finding themselves in this obscure backwater is sufficiently savvy that there is no need for a full breakdown of the plain-speaking by Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA, for the record) during the S-CHIP debate this week. Yes, the dumb-bunny machine on the right is howling. Yes, Pelosi felt she had to do some wrist-slap with a feather or something.

No mas. I felt it was a terrific move, up there with Senator Dodd's promise of a hold and/or filibuster on the concept of immunity for felonious influence-buying telecommunications mega-corporations.

And I shared my enthusiasm for his words with Congressman Stark, just as I communicated my enthusiasm for Dodd's position with Dodd, and demanded support for him from Murray/Cantwell (my senators), and Feingold/Wyden (the only two senators who, on the losing end, voted No in committee on the telecom bill).

On the off-chance you need a little jump-start on this, here's easy access to the House of Your Representatives and Your Elected Senators . Typically each "law-maker" has their own website, with opportunity to send them a message one of the first things that you come across. And why not - they are supposed to answer to you. While the lobbying and semi-legal bribery by large corporations obviously influence them, plentiful input from constituents can also have an effect. Hint. Hint. Make them work for You.

Here's a bit more on the Stark business:

CNN is reporting that 88% of those voting in their Friday morning online poll say there is no reason Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) should apologize for remarks blasting President Bush on the floor of the House of Representatives.

In the course of debate on expanding SCHIP funding, Stark told Congressional Republicans "You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people, if we could get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their head's blown off for the president's amusement."

House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner quickly issued a statement demanding a retraction and apology, in which he said, "Our troops in Iraq are fighting against al-Qaeda and other radical jihadists hellbent on killing the people we are sent here to represent. Congressman Stark’s statement dishonors not only the Commander-in-Chief, but the thousands of courageous men and women of America’s armed forces who believe in their mission and are putting their lives on the line for our freedom and security."

There has predictably been support for Stark on the left, along with endorsements of Boehner's outrage on the right. A thread at the liberal Democratic Underground site asked members to "DU this CNN poll!" but also expressed amusement that the sentiment in favor of Stark was already running at 87% to 13%. One commenter suggested that "the poll has been Freeped, it was 89% before, now it's 87%," to which another replied "amazing what consitutes freeping these daze."

"Freeping" is a reference to the practice initiated at the conservative Free Republic message board some years ago of sending members to overwhelm online polls with indications of support for right-wing policies and politicians. Liberal sites like Democratic Underground and Daily Kos then began countering this strategy with similar exhortations of their own.

The lopsided result of the CNN poll is striking, especially since the mainstream consensus seems to be that even if Stark was just shooting his mouth off, as he has many times in the past, he may have crossed a line of bad taste in suggesting that the president actively enjoys seeing American soldiers' heads blown off.

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Ahem. When did "bad taste" (as if it was, see below) become a basis for giving a pass for causing the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, more-or-less destroying their country, and, not incidentally leading to the death of thousands of Americans and the life-destroying disability of at least tens of thousands of other Americans. "Bad Taste?"

Let us not forget that presidential stunt of pretending to hunt for WMDs in the corners of the room while on camera. Tee-hee. That was Ever-so-Funny mister pissident who never served and was never elected according to conventional election law. Anything to amuse your puerile little mind - i.e. the one that gives every evidence of full-on narcissistic personality disorder.

Women as Chattel

We recently gingerly dipped a toe courtesy DVD aftermarket into the HBO series "Big Love." There was ginger on several fronts, but probably primarily on the basis that we have all the tube-addiction or habituation we need, given sports avidity (oh so sorely tested here these last months), a certain propensity towards the Daily Show and Steven Colbert, recent discovery of Arrested Development, and assorted other interests (movies, Dancing with Anyone Who Can Stand Up, Olbermann, etc.).

But this seems to be an entertaining, surprisingly lighthearted romp through polygamy, as done by three-wife, seven-child family. Three houses, more or less making up their own cul-de-sac, both literally and figuratively. We have only seen two episodes, and are not burning for more, given other tube interests limned above and actual lives-to-be-lived. But entertainment value was pretty high on first watching. A big part of that is that already there is what seems a wholly non-LDS amount of open competition among the wives (possibly even conspiracy), not to mention relishing of amorous activity. I thought it was supposed to be just a job according to J. Smith, but these folks obviously wandered off the path. We do have the next disk racked up and ready to go.

But the perfect real-world antidote/counterpoint for me is that I just read Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven." A disclaimer is probably needed that I have relished every Krakauer piece I have read, and that includes I believe at least three other books and quite a few magazine articles. This book is also excellent, but more of a challenge and distinctly more gritty than his prior works given theme that weaves together a history of the violence-ridden Mormon martyrdom-adventure and specific horrifically violent familial homicide committed in the early 1990's by hard-core "fundamentalist" Mormon renegades.

I gather that there are numerous fundamentalist Mormon sects scattered around. Krakauer mentions enclaves in BC, Alberta, Oregon, Arizona, Texas, and Mexico (Utah goes without saying). The most common distinction between these groups and the mainstream Mormon church appears to be an insistence that polygamous marriage is something more-or-less insisted on by the church's prophets. The mainstream Mormon church under considerable duress officially rejected polygamy a good while back, e.g. 1890's (though practice was apparently continued in secret by church heirarchy - much as it had been practiced for years by them prior to finally sharing with the masses). The official rejection of polygamy was essential to get the Federal Government off the church's back. That seems to have worked, as I believe Mr. Romney's organization is the most rapidly-growing denomination in the world thanks largely to the very aggressive international missionary/proselytizing program that all church members are expected to participate in.

I also have the impression from Banner that the fundamentalist cults - which seem to often have very cantankerous running battles going with the mainstream LDS church - may often go even further than that church in their intolerance for other belief systems, something that is hard to countenance in this country. But equally conspicuous is that the fundamentalists appear to be even more outrageous in treating women as second-class citizens - something the LDS church is already famous for. The mainstream church in my experience tends to virge on misogyny in terms of subjugating wives to their husbands and probably even sisters to brothers.

There is a lot that is disturbing about this whole business, as you were probably already well aware of if you are awake and possessed of one of those "inquiring minds." And I've barely mentioned the cold-blooded killing with a hunting knife of sister-in-law and infant because the former counseled abused wife to seek divorce. While the material is dark, I highly commend the book to your attention. I believe it is essential that we have some sense of the range of potential behavior around us, given that most of us have a pretty limited circle of acquaintances.

You can always take the edge off with a soapy (if non-reality-based) episode of Big Love.

Psychopath Dick's Nuclear Hypocrisy

Joe Conason has some great insights to share at Salon on the disingenuousness in our never-elected dick-head's obsession that we must attack Iran. Of course the unelected shrub is as always incapable of even forming a coherent thought on the subject, never mind coming up with an independent opinion.

Aside: it's incomprehensible to me how a person married to a librarian could be so antithetical to the concept of an "inquiring mind." I have to conclude that, probably among many other deviant and probably certifiable behaviours amongst this family/house-of-horrors, many by now well-documented, we are dealing with a Fake Librarian.

But, to get back on task, noting in passing that excerpting here damages the original - please follow link to whole article:

Trying to understand what is on George W. Bush's mind when he opens his mouth is often a fruitless exercise, but his latest statement concerning Iran, nuclear weapons and World War III was troubling as well as opaque. Just what did the president mean when he uttered those apocalyptic remarks on Wednesday?

"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," he blathered. "So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Sorry, but the Iranian leadership and many other unsavory figures around the world cannot be prevented from "having the knowledge" needed to build a nuclear weapon, since, as Matthew Yglesias has noted, the scientific and engineering information is commonly available.

What the Iranians don't have yet is the industrial capacity to make enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for that purpose and then to transform that material into a bomb. What they do have, unfortunately, is the means to achieve that end eventually -- and thanks in part to the irresponsible policies of the Bush administration, they also have both a motive and an excuse.

It is true that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ugly speeches about the Jewish state and the Holocaust leave little doubt about his attitudes. Moreover, there is no question that the Islamic Republic rejects Israel's legitimacy and has sought to undermine the Middle East peace process through every means at its disposal, including terrorism.

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Let us leave aside for a moment the Bush administration's abject failure in rallying the world for any purpose, let alone regime change or even nuclear sanity in Iran. Six years of neoconservative "toughness" has done nothing to discourage the Iranian regime, and instead has encouraged a harder line by the mullahs -- who have enjoyed a vast improvement in their regional power because of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. But the problems with Bush's approach go even deeper, because he has consistently provided the Iranians with excuses to do precisely what we and our allies want to stop them from doing.

Even before 9/11, the president and his policymakers set out to undermine the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), the same treaty whose strictures they cite in seeking to impose sanctions (or worse) on Iran. What almost nobody in the United States ever mentions -- but the Iranians and other hostile regimes know very well -- is that the Bush administration blatantly violates the NPT every day. The treaty's sixth article says in plain terms that the United States and other signatories that possess nuclear weapons are obligated to disarmament, in exchange for all the other signatories agreeing not to develop those weapons in the future.

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All these large and small hypocrisies undermine our moral case against Iran's nuclear program, especially when there is still no proof that the Iranians have a bomb-making program at this stage -- and when our own intelligence estimates suggest that any such capacity is probably still eight to 10 years away. The flaws in the American argument against Iran are amplified by Bush's continuing rejection of direct negotiations.

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What would we do if we were interested in "avoiding World War III"? We could start by engaging Iran in direct negotiations to bring the regime into the global and regional system, so that hard-liners like Ahmadinejad will have fewer excuses for pursuing their nuclear mania. And we might at last abandon the neoconservative fantasies of nuclear dominance, by restoring the American commitment to eventual nuclear disarmament as the only path away from worldwide proliferation.

Reason to Believe

In what might have seemed an obsessive spell a while back, I believe several of my posts went on about the soundtrack of Wonder Boys that I had recently acquired. Great music. I have had Cohen, Hardin, and Rush on my "must buy" list for my used-CD store dumpster-diving ever since.

With nada in the way of results, btw. I had a great Cohen compilation in my possession over the weekend, only the primary disk would not play. So I am still on the prowl.

But I experienced a wonderful connection-jolt on commute home tonight. I'm making acquaintance with "The Song Before It Is Sung," (Justin Cartwright), based on laudatory review in the paper a while back. This novel is based on historical events involving Jewish and German Oxford mates, the latter returning to Germany, purportedly to attempt to thwart Hitler, but leaving Jewish pal suspicious.

I'm just getting into the book, truthfully, but it was a great joy to find Hardin's "Reason to Believe" (a tune I have always cherished from first hearing as performed by PPM on Album 1700) quoted at length. Of course that was the Hardin entry on WB soundtrack.

If I listened long enough to you, I'd find a way to believe that it's
all true,
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried,
Still I look to find a reason to believe.

I suspect that the truly rara avis with what now seems the quaint quality of an "inquring mind" may be more subject to my particular tic for connections.