Idea of the Day: from America Speaks Out

Dana Milbanks has written up the GOP's lame new effort at providing a speak-out platform. Apparently they are hoping the common muck might help them figure out what the hell their party is supposed to stand for these days. Milbanks chooses a few funny samplers, but the actual site is even better. Democrats (or, at least, anti-Republicans) are out in legion posting such stuff as ...

The Republicans need to get as far away from Socialism as possible. Therefor, they need to shed associations with one of the most socialist figures in our country: Jesus Christ! Yes, this man took from the rich and gave to the poor. He aided people who were in dire needs, instead of letting private enterprises do it. This man is Pure Evil and we will not tolerate the association of Republicans and Jesus Christ! Republicans may want to burn an effegy on a cross to send a signal to all of us American-loving, conservative voters of how they are now with us instead of against us!

Completely Forgettable London 2012 Logo

I am not a graphic designer, not even a good amateur designer, but maybe I serve as a valid critic here because my eyeballs are Average Josephines that like or dislike a visual element the same as any other member of the common muck.

The London 2012 Olympics, to my eyes, is horrible. A series of disjointed shapes that do not, for me, ring a bell. What the hell are they supposed to be? Is this a map of the fairgrounds? A representation of the continents? Not only do I not "get it", but it does not even make a lasting impression on the brain, it is too complex. Too many shapes, with edges too serrated to leave an imprint. Show someone the logo for 10 seconds. Wait a few days and show it to them again -- just the shapes with the words removed this time. I'd bet that person would not be able to tell you what they're looking at.

Besides. It's just FUGLY:

A Spark of Hope

I don't know that I could survive if I did not encounter the occasional news story that re-inspires hope that the human race has merit and can join together to reinvent our world.

Worldpress.org posted a piece, A Palestinian Village that Started a Movement, that started my day off right:

A new feature documentary film Budrus, produced by the Washington, DC and Jerusalem-based organization Just Vision, documents nonviolent Israeli and Palestinian civilian efforts to resolve the conflict. It tells the story of Budrus, the village where this movement was born....

The movement aims to stage nonviolent protests to change the route of the separation wall off of Palestinian-owned lands....

The film captures images of Palestinians weeping over lost olive trees, Israeli border police struggling over whether to use violence against Israeli peace activists, and Palestinian youth being chastised because their rock throwing at Israeli soldiers threatens to turn a peaceful movement into a violent confrontation.

Some of the most moving scenes show Palestinian women jumping away from bulldozers and a female Israeli soldier establishing a rapport with Palestinian women in Budrus. While this film captures the story of this village in particular, its larger goal is to show that change can be accomplished in the Middle East through peaceful means."

Just Vision has posted a trailer:



I will try to "stay tuned" and will post when the movie becomes available in theaters or online.

UPDATE 2010-05-19 08:02 -0400 --

Budrus was shown on Apr 28 at the Tribeca Film Festival (an event I swear to myself each year I will attend "next year" ... I'm such a stick in the mud!). I hope it returns to New York soon...

There is an official Budrus site that lists screenings here.

What He Said

My Country, Tis of Me - Magazine - The Atlantic ... Michael Kinsley's standout passage:

... the Tea Party movement is not the solution to what ails America. It is an illustration of what ails America. Not because it is right-wing or because it is sometimes susceptible to crazed conspiracy theories, and not because of racism, but because of the movement’s self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault.

“Personal responsibility” has been a great conservative theme in recent decades, in response to the growth of the welfare state. It is a common theme among TPPs—even in response to health-care reform, as if losing your job and then getting cancer is something you shouldn’t have allowed to happen to yourself. But these days, conservatives far outdo liberals in excusing citizens from personal responsibility. To the TPPs, all of our problems are the fault of the government, and the government is a great “other,” a hideous monster over which we have no control. It spends our money and runs up vast deficits for mysterious reasons all its own. At bottom, this is a suspicion not of government but of democracy. After all, who elected this monster?

This kind of talk is doubly self-indulgent. First, it’s just not true. Second, it’s obviously untrue. The government’s main function these days is writing checks to old people. These checks allow people to retire and pursue avocations such as going to Tea Party rallies.

Tweet of the Day: Adobe p(r)opoganda

adamwilcox: "Dear Adobe, when the name of your 'open' product contains two uses of ® then it isn't open."

Short-Sighted in 3D

Washington Post reports in James Cameron: 3-D will become standard format:

"Avatar" director James Cameron said Thursday that 3-D will replace 2-D as the standard, mainstream format for film, television and online content in less than 25 years.

Viewers will soon not only enjoy films in 3-D theaters but all forms of entertainment, including sports and music shows on TVs and laptops, Cameron said at a technology forum in Seoul.

I personally actually prefer 2-D viewing, because for me the abstraction of human experience into the 2-D format transports me in such a way that I can "lose myself" in what's happening on the screen (on a good day, with a good flick). 3-D does not allow me to lose myself; instead it puts me into the picture.

Take that for whatever it's worth (or not), since I also love B&W movies, and to this day I still miss the hiss and pop of a needle on vinyl and the acoustic sound of musicians all sitting in one recording studio playing together in a room at the same time.

However, looking at the idea of a mass market for 3-D viewing as a practical matter, I just don't see this happening ... because of the glasses that one must wear to watch a 3-D movie or video. And for those who already wear glasses, the glasses-over-the-glasses.

Sorry, I just cannot see that millions of us would be keeping multiple pairs of 3D glasses in a home entertainment center drawer, passing them out to our guest, all of us sitting around in silly specs to watch every TV show or movie we rent.

I'll post back on this in 25 years :-)

Quote of the Day: Obama’s Remarks on Oil Spill Response

Text - Obama’s Remarks on Oil Spill Response - NYTimes.com:

Let me also say, by the way, a word here about BP and the other companies involved in this mess. I know BP has committed to pay for the response effort, and we will hold them to their obligation. I have to say, though, I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter. You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't.

Donor Strike: Rich Progressives Pledge To Withhold Cash

So the Stinkin' Rich may save the American political system from special interests. The irony of it all.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Driving While Hispanic, Being Presidential While Black

Frank Rich looks at the connections between Arizona's new "arrested for driving while Latino" law and the radical right's growing "Take Back America" campaign complete with its Birther members who would be so funny if they were not so sad and so scary. The GOP is bending over in full kowtow to the Teabaggers and I'm starting to think the overt racism of the past was less dangerous than the tide that is currently on the rise.

It's difficult, as always, to choose from among Rich's high-fidelity paragraphs a couple to quote. These were chosen sort of randomly:

It's harder and harder to cling to the conventional wisdom that the Tea Party is merely an element in the G.O.P., not the party's controlling force -- the tail that's wagging the snarling dog. It's also hard to maintain that the Tea Party's nuttier elements are merely a fringe of a fringe. The first national Tea Party convention, in Nashville in February, chose as its kickoff speaker the former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, a notorious nativist who surely was enlisted precisely because he runs around saying things like he has ''no idea where Obama was born.'' The Times/CBS poll of the Tea Party movement found that only 41 percent of its supporters believe that the president was born in the United States.

The angry right and its apologists also keep insisting that race has nothing to do with their political passions. Thus Sarah Palin explained that it's Obama and the ''lamestream media'' that are responsible for ''perpetuating this myth that racial profiling is a part'' of Arizona's law. So how does that profiling work without race or ethnicity, exactly? Brian Bilbray, a Republican Congressman from California and another supporter of the law, rode to the rescue by suggesting ''they will look at the kind of dress you wear.'' Wise Latinas better start shopping at Talbots!

Oh gosh, I can't resist adding one more paragraph:

In a development that can only be described as startling, the G.O.P.'s one visible black leader, the party chairman Michael Steele, went off message when appearing at DePaul University on April 20. He conceded that African-Americans ''really don't have a reason'' to vote Republican, citing his party's pursuit of a race-baiting ''Southern strategy'' since the Nixon-Agnew era. For this he was attacked by conservatives who denied there had ever been such a strategy. That bit of historical revisionism would require erasing, for starters, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, not to mention the Willie Horton campaign that helped to propel Bush 41 into the White House in 1988.

 Frank Rich so skillfully melds his pieces. He knits and purls together his thoughts, the news, our political history, and "startling" quotes you may not have heard about before. A read of the whole rather lengthy op-ed piece is highly recommended.

Spill, Baby, Spill (LOOK IN THE MIRROR)

From this morning's NY Times:

The latest effort to contain the oil spill that has poured millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico encountered a setback 5,000 feet underwater, officials said Saturday, meaning oil will continue gushing into the ocean for at least several more days, and possibly months.

This will be the worst man-made environmental disaster of my lifetime. My prayer is that it is never exceeded in anyone's lifetime.

Poisoned water will spread into the Gulf Stream, up the Atlantic seaboard, across the ocean. We have mainlined an overdose.

This is so sad; when I think of marine life, of generations future, of the vanity, selfishness and greed of our human race ... my throat clamps up and my heart physically hurts.

The oil companies do not have bottom-line responsibility here; there would be no oil industry without our demand for petroleum products. Do not point at BP and Big Oil. Let's each of us, instead, look in the mirror and NOTICE OUR OWN ADDICTION ...

• every time we start up a fossil-fuel-fired engine.
  
• every time we place a small order on the internet and, like pathetically stupid royalty, have a truck burn fuel to deliver, for our convenience, a small box directly to our doorstep
  
• every time we order take-out food that arrives in plastic containers
  
• every time we purchase shampoo, hand cream, laundry soap, bottled water, children's toys, household items that are contained in plastic.
  
• every time we use a disposable plastic pen (or, worse, throw away a pen for which we could, instead, purchase a refill) or lighter.
  
• every time we purchase or don clothing made with polyester fiber
  

A quick web search for "petroleum-derived products" turns up this page from Ranken Energy Corporation, an oil exploration company. "A partial list of products made from Petroleum (144 of 6000 items)":

One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline. The rest (over half) is used to make things like...

Solvents	Diesel fuel	Motor Oil	Bearing Grease
Ink	Floor Wax	Ballpoint Pens	Football Cleats
Upholstery	Sweaters	Boats	Insecticides
Bicycle Tires	Sports Car Bodies	Nail Polish	Fishing lures
Dresses	Tires	Golf Bags	Perfumes
Cassettes	Dishwasher parts	Tool Boxes	Shoe Polish
Motorcycle Helmet	Caulking	Petroleum Jelly	Transparent Tape
CD Player	Faucet Washers	Antiseptics	Clothesline
Curtains	Food Preservatives	Basketballs	Soap
Vitamin Capsules	Antihistamines	Purses	Shoes
Dashboards	Cortisone	Deodorant	Footballs
Putty	Dyes	Panty Hose	Refrigerant
Percolators	Life Jackets	Rubbing Alcohol	Linings
Skis	TV Cabinets	Shag Rugs	Electrician's Tape
Tool Racks	Car Battery Cases	Epoxy	Paint
Mops	Slacks	Insect Repellent	Oil Filters
Umbrellas	Yarn	Fertilizers	Hair Coloring
Roofing	Toilet Seats	Fishing Rods	Lipstick
Denture Adhesive	Linoleum	Ice Cube Trays	Synthetic Rubber
Speakers	Plastic Wood	Electric Blankets	Glycerin
Tennis Rackets	Rubber Cement	Fishing Boots	Dice

I suggest we shock ourselves about how Green we really are NOT compared to how Green we like to think we are, by studying this entire list.

I suggest that any one of us who does nothing to protest ocean-floor drilling has a barrel of spilled oil on our conscience.

And I suggest we look in the mirror, and assess our own role in using, and disposing, thoughtlessly and often needlessly, the products derived from oil drilling. Every time we use something. Every time we toss something in the trash. Daily. Every minute. Every time.

Quote and Blogger of the Day: Matt Taibbi rips a new one for David Brooks

In his blog piece Let Them Eat Work, Matt Taibbi shreds David Brooks (NYT) for asserting in the latest Opinionator Blog (with Gail Collins) that, "for the first time in human history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people. How do you construct a rich versus poor narrative when the rich are more industrious?"

Matt's piece is so good I had trouble picking what to pull out as my Quote of the Day". After several reads I decided to honor this sentence:

If [Brooks] keeps this up, he’s going to make his way into the Guinness Book for having extended his tongue at least a foot and a halfp farther up the ass of the Times’s Upper East Side readership than any previous pundit in journalistic history.

Heros of the Day: Zimbabwean Orphans

Nicholas Kristof's has been reporting from his lastest African travels in Zimbabwe, and offers a hard look at the impact of a corrupt and totalitarian ruler on the populace. Recommended reading: "Young Superheros in a Hut" and accompanying slideshow.

These kids are my heros of the day.

They come from two families. Both sets of parents died from AIDS and the kids banded together to raise themselves under the leadership of the eldest, who was 15 at the time the kids moved in together.

Are you connected to mountaintop removal?

A Day Late, 40 Acres and a Mule Short, in VA

Breaking news on washpost:

McDonnell issues thorough apology for leaving slavery out of proclamation

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) apologized late Wednesday for failing to include slavery in his proclamation declaring April as Confederate History Month.

 Nothin' like a majority voting block of persons of color and progressives to make a politician fall prey to Delayed Involuntary Sensitivity Syndrome.

Must-See of the Day: War comes to reality video

I am sorry to do this to you but this must be seen by anyone living in any country that has any troops in Iraq. And everyone else in every country that might some day send some troops somewhere. Unless you have witnessed or fought or suffered through war first-hand, even if you *think* that you think War Is Wrong, watch this classified video.

This is what our taxes fund. This is what we are not out in the streets protesting. This is our shame. This RIPS MY HEART.

(Props to Julian Assange and any/all others involved in creating Wikileaks ... a whole new breed of citizen journalism that our society so desperately needed.)

McDonalds v. Burger King

posted by Ilyse Kazar

That's how "Reverend" Billy Talen, Green Party mayoral candidate here in NYC termed the contest of two career politicians to be our next mayor.

Billy raked in 0.8% of the vote. Considering he is a performance artist, activist and all-out, no holds barred critic of the power structure, I think it's great that 8 in 1,000 people voted for him!

The other "nice" thing about the mayoral vote was the 51%/46% split between Bloom-Borg and Thompson. Mayor mike is not as loved as he wanted to think. Especially considering the enormity of the differential in the money they each had to spend, Thompson's percentage is significant.

Response to a comment: Trickle-Down Piss

posted by Ilyse Kazar

A good buddy on Facebook commented on my post about today's VA and NJ governor races:

I wonder if it really Obama - that has people voting R - versus just how bad the economy is. Think we may not be finished with bad economic news (commercial real estate) And Americans want instant fixes - without them paying for it

I think people realized full well how bad the economy already was, and sensed how bad it might get, when they voted in November '08. I think people were hot to see some very tangible things done that directly benefited them. I think people were absolutely ready, in fact, would have cheered from the sidelines, to see the robber barons go down hard.

I also think people understood that fixing Dubya's mess was gonna cost and would not be a free lunch.

When we were on the purported precipice of complete economic meltdown, the people would  have been sobered by the need to pump a trillion dollars of funny money into the system, that will cost us so much as we move forward. But if the money had gone as deferred loans directly to keep real people in their homes, thereby ...

• saving whole neighborhoods from the sad loss in property values and crime and desolation that has resulted from foreclosures
• staving off the costs that we have yet to even calculate in feeding free lunches and offering other services to homeless children and families
• helped folks keep their jobs or find new ones quicker (it's nigh impossible to keep a job or walk into an interview like a positive fresh-faced prospective employee, when one is hungry and homeless)
• kept mortgage payments (preferably re-financed ones) coming into the banks that were crying they were collapsing because of mortgage defaults
• providing a way for the government to at least partially recoup our money when those homeowners get on their feet 

...  then folks could say, well, we can see the real benefits of this costly bailout in front of our eyes. They would have been sobered but not angered at so much money going down a stinking sink-hole while nothing changes in their towns and cities, nothing improves for their families.

Ditto if the money had been put directly into financing small businesses, to create or save jobs and help re-stimulate the Main Street economies.

I haven't noticed any revival of Main Street. I haven't seen the reversal of Reagan's trickle-down theories that have held sway in this country, to a huge extent, ever since 1980. The only thing I've seen is more piss trickling down on the little guy.

The Status-Quo Sucks (us back under)

posted by Ilyse Kazar

So, McDonnell takes VA and Christie takes NJ. This is just hunky dory. The Conservatives will now be spreading the meme that this is a rejection of Obama.

The distinction that will be lost: This is not a rejection of the Obama who promised to sock it to the special interests. This is a rejection of the glacial pace at which anything has been done along those lines.

If politics in Washington had ridden the tidal wave of sentiment re the little guy suffering at the hands of huge power blocks, if Washington had done a trickle-up bailout of homeowners instead of a fairly useless (to 99.999% of us) bailout of Wall Street, if Obama were pushing harder for the Dems to include a make-no-bones-about-it public option and if his administration had done a better job of selling it to the people, if stimulus money had gone directly to folks who needed to save or wished to start up small businesses, if Congress had immediately enacted some sort of real incentives to encourage Earth-friendly consumption and energy-user habits, if we had not only gone up against Coal but had the imagination to plan re-training, re-tooling and thereby a boost for the employment prospects of folks in areas where Coal has historically been the only employer ... this would not be happening.

I also blame this on all of us. We were all psyched during the election. There were leagues of us talking it up, knocking on doors, standing at tables, organizing and attending rallies.

Where is the march in Washington against escalation in Afghanistan?

Where are the dramatic news-worthy public events in support of universal health care, demanding real action against global warming?

Where are the demonstrations against the subsidies to factory farming mega-corporations?

I mean, shit, in my junior high school we staged a sit-in, complete with black arm bands, against the war in Nam. Where are you, people? In November 2008 we pulled levers, touched screens or punched chads. We poured out into the streets in a spontaneous celebration when the results came in. Then we sat back to watch and complain.

Maybe the election of more Christies and McDonnells is what we actually need. Maybe we simply have not reached that howling pain-point at which we will get up off our duffs. Maybe we needed this dangerous pivot, this wake-up call that if you don't push hard and keep pushing for Change, the Status Quo is whatchergonnagit.

We were going to take back America, remember?

Quote of the day: Steve Lacy on Music

We don't determine music,
The music determines us;
We only follow it
To the end of our life:
Then it goes on without us.

Excerpt from 'Saxovision' by Steve Lacy

Poem of the day: Lao-Tzu on non-being

We join spokes together in a wheel
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move
We shape clay into a pot
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want
We hammer wood into a house
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable
We work with being
But non-being is what we use.

(Lao Tzu)

... this is one that saves me again and again.