248. TORTUROUS BROADCASTS

From the Archives. (September 2006) Well the boy emperor is no longer even denying the existence of the secret CIA prisons abroad.

How many years has it been now that he’s been holding these people without trial? Five? And now he’s moving 14 who are purported to be the “world’s most wanted Islamic extremists.”

(Um, except for bin Laden, whom you cannot seem to catch?)

Consider, for a moment, what is not said in this sentence: “Most of the detainees have been interviewed extensively and are believed to have little remaining intelligence value.”

Despite evidence of water-boarding, the boy emperor said “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world. The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.”

Nope. You just send your prisoners to offshore torture houses and avert your eyes while other people do it.

Interesting timing to announce the existence of 14 detainees purported to have orchestrated 9/11 just days before this somber anniversary and weeks after losing a case in which the government insisted that it is authorized to hold prisoners without trial for as long as they damn well feel like it.

(Oh and just 2 months before the midterm elections in which Republicans are floundering.)

Meanwhile Blair refuses to set a date when he will leave office.

Time to re-read Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, folks.

245. PRESIDENTIAL CHOREOGRAPHY

Since 9/11, military contractors like United Technologies, which makes Black Hawk helicopters, have seen their profits explode and their executives and top shareholders rake in windfall salaries. And as the rest of us shell out record prices for gas, oil executives claim that “we’re all in this together.” (Alternet)

From the Archives. (31 August 2006) And what about Haliburton and those $40 Cokes?

Spent the day trying not to barf from viewing all the carefully choreographed footage of GWB kissing up to shell-shocked NOLA residents in an obvious attempt to cast his abysmal leadership failures in a more favorable light.

I guess his advisors are finally worried that his pathetic approval ratings might adversely affect the GOP come election time.

Let’s think big picture though boys: this guy and his administration are adversely affecting history—at least until someone manages to add up all the subterfuge and Constitution-be-damned under-the-radar actions they’ve undertaken since 2000.

So what’s the administration’s spin on the 1,700 people who died and the hundreds of thousands of families that lost their homes as Shrub strummed his guitar?

Well, let’s see. This was an opportunity for Amurrrrricans to learn how to respond better to our public image er catastrophes because, damn it, you people actually documented the atrocities that this administration can no longer pretend didn’t happen.

That’s right. An opportunity. Just like getting booted out of the welfare system is an opportunity to find minimum-wage work as a toilet cleaner.

(Now forget what you saw on your TV sets, citizens, and get back to shopping.)


This administration has illustrated to the world what the politics of greed looks like and wouldn’t know what to do with Melvin McLeod’s observation that “the real substance in politics is in the heart, not the head” if it slapped them in their privileged faces.

Thich Nhat Hanh, profound Vietnamese priest, founder of the Engaged Buddhism movement, and prominent author, says that we must learn to see others’ suffering as our own, that this alone is how we can save our world in the twenty-first century.

•

So yeah. Today marks one year from the date when our boy emperor observed the destruction of Hurricane Katrina from the safety of Air Force One while the inhabitants drowned.

Meanwhile, Susie Sexpert has posted a blog entry entitled God Is My Sex Toy Co-Pilot.

Her message: zealots must stay in bed with Jesus/ Allah /Krishna as they copulate—which is, she observes, “a threeway you can’t ever quit.”

190. DATA MINING WHILE RULING WITHOUT RESTRAINT

From the Archives

(February 2006) All this talk about NSA’s illegal data mining exploits reminds me of Mud’s bright yellow textbook that had the words “DATA MINING” splashed across it in huge block letters. I remember it well because every time I saw the thing I started humming we are miners, hard rock miners. To the shaft house we must go ... and I feel like I’m dying from mining for gold. Yes I feel like I’m dying from mining for gold.

But hey! Let's turn lemons into lemonade, shall we, and make this West Virginia’s new post-regulation theme song now that miners seem to be getting trapped or killed on a daily basis.

•

So don’t you find it odd that President Bush has suddenly discovered science and now says he wants to recruit 30 thousand math and science professionals into our public classrooms?

Hasn’t he made the connection between scientists leaving public education and his party’s Dark Ages attempts to force scientists to teach myth-based bullshit?

And why does he refer to Social Security as a so-called entitlement program when I’ve paid into it every month since I was sixteen years old?

The man talks about our nation falling behind in technology and scientific knowledge, then refers to the federal student loan program as an entitlement program too (as opposed to an intelligent investment in the future—one that gets paid back with interest, as I know all too well).

And does it strike anyone else as depressingly humorous that Bush actually bragged about his party’s “spending restraint” with a straight face yesterday?

Anyone with a brain can see that taking another scalpel to already lean social programs while hemorrhaging money in a war fought on false evidence while operating under the faith-based notion that the dollar will remain the exchange rate while handing even more money to the super-rich is not exactly showing fiscal restraint.

Maybe he meant to say the Republicans are restraining from paying home health-care providers and the working poor adequately (which seems more like ethical restraint to me).

When yesterday’s policy—clearly written by special interest lobbyists from the insurance and drug industries—passed, even Republican party members were acknowledging that this administration’s reverse-Robin-Hood approach is unsustainable (although they didn't always get the reasons right).

Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) said “the present course is unsustainable. We can’t keep cutting taxes and cutting revenues, while cutting programs to protect the most vulnerable in society.”

John Dingell (D-MI) said “the stench of special interests hangs over the chamber.”

Is the administration oblivious to the burgeoning lobbying scandal or do they believe that no one will make the connection to this special-interest butt-kissing and even more civil and criminal complaints that have just been announced against former insurance executives for apparent financial inproprieties?

Meanwhile, NPR ran an interesting show last night about health savings accounts, during which a guy from the Wall St. Journal said that each GM car has about $1,800 dollars in health-care costs rolled into its cost. These benefits makes it hard for US corporations to compete with overseas sweatshops.

The Republican solution is to quit offering health-care benefits to employees.

Why doesn’t it occur to these people that we can refuse to do business with overseas sweatshops instead and force human rights issues onto the table?

(Wouldn't be prudent?)

Remember that bumpersticker: The Labor Movement. We’re the folks that brought you the weekend?

Meanwhile, these corporations are raking in profits and getting tax breaks hand over fist right now.

For instance, if you want to get really pissed, take a look at the record oil company profits that occurred as we paid outrageous gas and heating bills.

The climate is right for corporations to shit on laborers and customers right now though.

Here’s another quote that references yesterday’s bill (that passed): “A vote for this bill is a vote, literally, to take away health care from our children so we can give more money to the super-rich” (Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY).

Where’s the goddamn outrage?

But, as Tom at tomdispatch.com notes, “This disconnect between the garnering of potentially staggering powers to rule without restraint and the incapacity to use them for the well-being of just about anyone on the planet (other than a few friends and cronies) is now a major part of our domestic landscape.”

READING: tax documents.

LISTENING TO: someone’s stupid car alarm

SANG IN SHOWER: Why should I keep loving you when I know that you are not true? And why should I call your name when you’re to blame for making me bluuuuuuue?

BEST OF SPAM: Before i wrote you,i prayed that you will be a honest and reliable person whom i can work with to achieve this deal of our life.From my section in the bank, I discovered an abandoned sum of EIGHTEEN MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS...

188. I NEED A HERO, I’M HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO TILL THE MORNING LIGHT ...

From the Archives

(February 2006) Just drove to the Gothic Wonderland to hear my friend Tuscaloosa read. The place was packed and she was, as always, brilliant and charming and oh so literate.

I’m so proud of her and the good work she’s doing.

Our friends remain aghast that Tuscaloosa and I never got together and, occasionally, I’m surprised by this too. In many ways, we’re a perfect fit. But I was married, then she was married, then I was married again and, well, the timing just never worked out.

We are very dear friends who recognize each other’s gorgeousness however and she’s someone I can talk with about anything—and someone I do talk with about writing on a very regular basis.

I’m going to include a long excerpt from Molly Ivins’s “Why Hilary Won’t Save Us,” but, first, can you believe that I actually heard an advertisement for a Toddler Spa (!) that offers designer haircuts and manicures?

Oh for the love of gawd throw your precious little rugrats outside and let them get grubby instead.

I mean, come on, if they can’t get their hands dirty when they’re toddlers, what hope do they have?

Anyway, here’s Molly. It’s just too good not to paste here:

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to relearn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy—rough, tough Bobby Kennedy—didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines, who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes. The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. Who are you afraid of?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

... Oh come on, people—get a grip on the concept of leadership....

Alito is all but confirmed. New scandals are erupting daily. Please! Someone rise up already and call a spade a spade. As Barack Osama said of Rosa Parks, “she reminded us all of the central truth of the American experience—that our greatness as a nation derives from seemingly ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

We are in need of a person who can do extraordinary things right now, before the corporations completely take over. (Alternet, 1/23/2006)

Molly’s letting out all the stops now.

179. LET THE DNA CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY

From the Archives

(4 January 2006) Julian day 2,453,740 and I am wondering if John and Yoko named their son after this measure.
It’s 12:02 AM and I am backing up my four-thousand-plus iTunes songs in anticipation of an upgrade to Creative Suite II tomorrow.

So lots to ponder these days. A Virginia coroner’s preserved blood samples were subjected to modern DNA tests, and they exonerated five inmates who spent a total of 90 years in prison on rape convictions. Gov. Warner has now ordered that the coroner’s other samples be tested and has vowed to “let the DNA chips fall where they may.”

Meanwhile, at a time when it’s well nigh impossible to avoid suggestions of Republican corruption, King Bush the Latter has announced his nominees for the Federal Election Commission. His choices, according to the New York Times., “would keep the policing of campaign abuses firmly in the hands of party wheel horses.”

Our would-be king waited till the Senate recessed to make his announcement in an effort to avoid confirmation hearings (which certainly makes me believe that there’s nothing, nothing at all, to worry about).

Even though one of his nominees “is reported to have been involved in the maneuvering to overrule the career specialists” at the Justice Department who “warned that the Texas gerrymandering orchestrated by Rep. Tom DeLay violated minority voting rights” and in “such voting rights abuses as the purging of voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 elections.”

It appears that big money has taken over our voting rights now too.

(An did I mention Shrub’s connections to the company that makes the popular [and untraceable] electronic voting equipment?)

I suppose I could have entitled this entry “Let the Republican Chips Fall Where They May,” since Ralph Reed (ha ha snort) and Tom DeLay (who will yet be found guilty of money-laundering and conspiracy yet) and Dennis Hastert and Sonny Bono’s widowed wife-turned-representative and Trent Lott and numerous other Republicans who accepted $4.4 million in funneled corporate funds plus lavish gifts from super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff have been squirming in their loafers ever since Abramoff agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the burgeoning corruption and bribery investigation of Washington lawmakers.
According to the Times, the soon-to-be-falling Republican chips could make Abscam and The Keating 5 look like small potatoes.

So let’s see, there’s CIA leaks and NSA wiretapping, and nd Michael Scanlon, former aid to Tom DeLay, pleading guilty to conspiring to bribe officials and now cooperating with prosecutors.

And Abramoff, who scammed $80 million from native-American tribes (my ancestors curse you, now cooperating with prosecutors.

It won’t take long, according to the Times, to follow the bouncing Abramoff ball to David H. Safavian (indicted former head of the White House procurement office), Karl Rove (whose former employer became Abramoff’s personal assistant), Tyco (whose executives funneld $2 million to Grassroots Interactive), Ralph Reed (demanded laundered tribal money from Abramofff), Tom DeLay (“Abramoff is one of my closest and dearest friends”), and Rep. Ney (R-Oh), who went to Scotland to golf on Abramoff’s dime.

And that’s just what we know right now.

Let’s say that out loud fast: law makers breaking laws. No ethics none.

This certainly explains the Democrats' strategy of fighting Republican culture of corruption in the next election, eh?

(And who knew that Ralph Reed was even a candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia? Why Georgia? And is this a step to higher office à la Pat Robertson?

Reed is, after all, the strategist who came up with the idea of placing stealth Christianist candidates in public office. And gosh, don’t those untaxed Christian Coalition purse strings keep getting looped around every corrupt Republican thing?)

Meanwhile, Free Press has moved up the release date of James Risen’s State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration to Today, since the AP already exposed Risen’s major revelation that the US is secretly eavesdropping on US citizens.

This book outlines how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. In fact,

State of War provides an account of the origins and scope of the wiretap program that basically repeats the revelations contained in Risen and Lichtblau's stories in the Times. But the book also argues that the NSA's eavesdropping policy shows the extent to which the war on terrorism has spurred the intelligence community to flout legal conventions at home and abroad. Risen's chief target is the CIA, where, he argues, institutional dysfunction and feckless leadership after 9/11 led to intelligence breakdowns that continue to haunt the U.S. Though much of State of War covers ground that is broadly familiar, the book is punctuated with a wealth of previously unreported tidbits about covert meetings, aborted CIA operations and Oval Office outbursts. (Time magazine)

I am losing faith. (Not that I had much to begin with.)

When exactly will the impeachment procedures begin?

144. BIBLICAL LAW

From the Archives (August 2005)

If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us—1920s Texas governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, barring the teaching of foreign languages in public schools

What the Bible purportedly says is often the grounds upon which political battles are decided in our country and, these days, some Bible factoid that a slick preacher can encapsulate in a rhyming soundbite often passes as knowledge and is used to try to sledgehammer bias and superstition into policy.

The New York Times reports that an overwhelming majority of US citizens want both creationism and evolution to be taught in public schools. And many are under the erroneous assumption that none of the tenets of evolution are proveable. The fact that we are carbon life-forms, that our ancestors were carbon life-forms that can be traced to a certain era is not theory, but that's missing from this debate.

Meanwhile, the science backing creationism or so-called Intelligent Design remains nonexistent.

The bigger question, of course, is WHY is manipulated public opinion dictating what people are taught in science classes?

When I was a child, a primary tenet of Southern Baptist faith was the absolute separation of church and state. Baptists perceive of themselves as hard-working, good-hearted minorities who would be protected by the rule of law, but they eschewed politics (and carved furniture and fancy make-up, and...) as worldly and unclean.

That’s all changed now, almost as radically as the Baptist version of Jesus has changed.

Jesus, back when I was creating tinfoil lakes and burning bushes in my Vacation Bible School diorama projects, was the supreme authority—the all-knowing, all-loving savior who made everyone equal before the eyes of God. Fundamentalists have replaced this authority with Old Testament fire and brimstone now and assert that the Bible is not open to interpretation.

Nosireebobtail, it’s not a human translation of original Hebrew or Greek written by a host of fallible people, but is instead the literal word of God. And this Old Testament God's wrath, not Jesus’s inclusion, is the authority now.

As the bumpersticker I see too often says God said it. I believe it. That settles it.

Interesting how the Baptists exclude some chapters of the Bible found in the same caves as chapters that are included too. Are these texts somehow less the word of God? Or are they less easily manipulated for social control or insufficiently patriarchal or a little too sexy? (Or too Catholic, as a Sundahy School teacher once told me.)

Baptist ministers are also “called,” which means that some never attend seminaries or receive formal education. Do these religious um leaders even know that these other chapters exist? Or that they were written in the original Greek and Hebrew?

•

You and I can bring the rule and reign of the cross to America. That’s what Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of the 2,000-member Hope Christian Church in Bowie MD said on so-called Justice Sunday II (8.14.2005). And that’s what the fundamentalists want to do: enforce their brand of faith onto this nation.

I guess they’ve overlooked the fact that our Constitution calls for three co-equal branches of government, since they are determined to undermine the independent judiciary and thus undermine the separation of powers.

One of their strategies is court-stripping, but “despite the Christian Coalition’s best efforts, those pesky federal courts keep upholding the Bill of Rights and the separation of church and state. But not to worry, the group has a plan to fix that: take away the right of the courts to hear those cases in the first place. This bold gambit, called ‘court stripping,’ is all the rage among the Religious Right these days.” (Rob Boston, AUSCS’s Church and State, Nov. 2004)

Jesse Helms worked hard to deny the courts the right to hear school prayer cases too. In fact, for years now, the Christianists have insisted that Congress has the power to remove some “issues” from the purview of the federal court system.

Our separation of powers was designed to maintain balance while keeping the will of the majority from trampling on the rights of the minority. If lawmakers infringe on constitutional rights, then the courts pull them back from the fringe and protect citizens from cultural whims and biases and the sometimes boneheaded will of the majority.

You don’t have to go very far back in history to realize why we need this division of power either. Remember when the federal courts stepped in after local and state governments ruled by bias and failed to protect African Americans? They overturned the oppressive Jim Crow statutes that denied a portion of our citizenry the right to vote and imposed segregation(...and many a white southerner has stoked a simmering rage against the federal court system ever since).

Court-stripping was not a strategy back then, but think about it in the context of the present, with the Christianists who are now in Congress running things. With our theocractic-leaning president running things. If a federal court overturned the Jim Crow laws today, a court-stripping amendment could be pushed through to uphold them before lunch.

Now let’s step back to the days of ducktails again. In 1964, George Wallace attacked the passage of civil-rights legislation this way: “Today, this tyranny is imposed by the central government which claims the right to rule over our lives under sanction of the omnipotent black-robed despots who sit on the bench of the US Supreme Court.” Not surprisingly, Wallace insisted that legislation be passed to “curb the powers of this body of judicial tyrants.”

Judicial tyrants.

(Hey. Here’s an idea: if someone enforces a law that you don’t believe in, then don't step back to question your own biases. Instead, insist that you’re being vicitimized by tyrants. They don’t like me becawz I’m a Chwistian! Waaa!)

(Aww. Would you cry me a fucking river?)

James Dobson sounds like George Wallace these days. “Stop Judicial Tyranny,” he says on his Focus on The Family website, as he promotes court-stripping bills and attacks the federal judiciary for any ruling that displeases his quest for power.

And he gets tax breaks for doing this. Amazing!

•

Meanwhile, I’m reading What The Bible Says—and Doesn’t Say—About Homosexuality and A Response to Southern Baptists: A Gay Christian Answers to Fundamentalist Southern Baptists right now in an attempt to decide how to respond to my rabid aunt. This is from the latter title:

The conservative political takeover of Southern Baptist seminaries and other institutions has undermined the objective academic credibility of once great schools and boards and has made Baptists the object of scorn and ridicule in the scholastic world.... Baptists deny the Bible in their attacks on homosexuals. Baptist Greek scholars know, like all others do, that the Bible has no word for ‘homosexual’ in the Old Testament Hebrew or the New Testament Greek. Yet the same incorrect translations and out-of-context use of only six verses to attack and condemn gay people continues in this so-called ‘Bible believing’ denomination.”

Katherine Yurica transcribed Pat Robertson's television show The 700 Club in the early 1980s and points out that he was outlining his strategy to strip the federal judiciary of its constitutional powers 25 years ago:

Robertson wanted to reduce or eliminate the power of the judiciary. He denied that the Constitution provides a system of checks and balances between three separate and equal branches of government...

In fact, Robertson went further: he denied that the judiciary is a co-equal branch of the government. Instead, he saw the judiciary as a department of the legislative branch, which he believed was the dominant center of power in the nation. His reasoning went like this: Since Congress has complete authority to establish the lower federal courts and to establish "the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court," the court system is necessarily subordinate to the legislative. Robertson's idea was that congress could control the court by using its power to intimidate. For example, he said, ‘Congress could say “There's a whole class of cases you can't hear” and there's nobody can do anything about it!’

Now let’s shift our gaze to Rep. John Hostetler (R-IN). He said, at a recent Christian Coalition gathering, "When the courts make unconstitutional decisions, we should not enforce them. Federal courts have no army or navy. The court can opine, decide, talk about, sing, whatever it wants to do. We're not saying they can't do that. At the end of the day, we're saying the court can't enforce its opinions."

Yes, he’s THAT Hostettler, the author of two recent court-stripping bills. (One was an amendment barring the use of federal funds to enforce the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals decision to remove the 10 Commandments from a Montgomery courthouse; it also restricts the court’s ability to hear cases involving other religious symbols. Hostettler drafted the so-called Marriage Protection Act too. This bill strips federal courts of jurisdiction over legal challenges to the DOMA.

Then there’s the so-called Constitution Restoration Act of 2004, which bans challenges to state-sponsored acknowledgments of “God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government” and retroactively overturns all existing rulings even as it sets up a mechanism for impeaching federal judges who uphold church-state separation. And this was written by a judge!

Maybe he never had to take Civics. Or maybe most current Congresspeople these days didn’t. Or maybe the Christianists went to Christian schools and were only taught what would make them complacent believers. Or maybe the Christianists haven’t yet realized that they can’t buy courts the way they can buy elections.

Whatever the case, our nation’s separation of powers means that Congress does not have the power to decimate the authority of the courts through legislation that deals with issues surrounding our Bill of Rights, even if some citizens would like to turn the courts into rubberstamps for Congress and the Christianists.

There’s much more to rant about in this arena and researching the Bible in my efforts to draft an overdue letter to my Aunt Becky is pushing me up onto my soapbox, but I gotta go for now so ciao bella.

143. EVIDENCE-FREE ZONES

From the Archives

(August 2005) Have been logging onto weather.com off and on all day to follow the hurricane and just read that two massive oaks outside the almost 300-year-old St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square fell on either side of the huge marble Jesus, snapping off the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.

This reminds me of a random fact I’ve always wanted to incorporate into a poem—one that would be a lot more effective if I actually believed in a savior (my utterances of “O Christ!” and “Oh For The Love of God!” not withstanding): When the black choirgirls died in the church bombings, the stained-glass windows remained intact except for Jesus’s face, which blew out ... almost as if he couldn’t bear to see the horror of what hate destroyed.

I hope we don’t find out just what happens when the urge to develo destroys over one million acres of coastal wetlands that once served as a storm buffer.

This puts me in mind of Hillary’s comments after her trip to Alaska. She said, after seeing the effects of climate change firsthand, “We can’t afford to live in an evidence-free zone where science takes a back seat to ideology” anymore.

What I find most pathetic is that the White House oilmen not only refused to join over 150 nations in signing the Kyoto Protocols to reduce emissions but also declared that, instead of regulating the harmful greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, they would instead make any such emission reductions voluntary.

The New York Times calls this “Washington’s stubborn passivity.” I call it Pure-T Greed.

Meanwhile, the mayors of over 130 cities have become exasperated enough with the oilmen’s failure to sign the Protocol that they have agreed to meet the emissions reductions contained in the pact at the local level.

And the state of California (which already went into the business of funding scientific research after Shrub announced his so-called moral prohibition against stem-cell research and which already has tough environmental laws on the books) is now exploring a regional agreement with Washington and Oregon.

Nine other northeast states have taken matters into their own hands too and agreed on a regional plan to reduce power plant emissions of carbon dioxide by 2020.

Dan Savage argues that we’re a series of cities that queers live in, that we Island hop between San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and the other big urban gay meccas, but progressive politics is alive at the state level in the humid Southland too. (And I must mention that Dan fails to include RTP in his formula, although it consistently ranks as one of the top 10 places for LGBTQ folks to live—and Asheville is right up there too, folks!)

The northeast states’ agreement exceeds the oilmen’s voluntary approach to reductions (which, no big surprise, has not produced a great response among the corporations and power companies). Of course, automobile companies are challenging these states’ laws too—particularly California’s, which will require a 30 percent reduction in vehicular greenhouse gas emissions. Car manufacturers argue that these laws are an illegal usurpation of federal authority to set mileage standards but, if the national leaders won’t do their job....

According to the Times, “Environmentalists who support a federal law to control greenhouse gases believe that the model established by the Northeastern states will be followed by other states, resulting in pressure that could eventually lead to the enactment of a national law.”

Maybe if Pataki is elected....

But think of it, folks: states are working together in a cooperative action to correct our president’s blatant oversights. Now that’s hopeful!

136. SHOCK AND AWE

From the Archives (August 2005)

CONSUMER
by Jude Todd

Abysmal: extremely, hopelessly bad; of or pertaining to an abyss.

Abyss: hell; Hades; realm of the god Pluto, who opened a gaping maw in the Earth to trap and consume Persephone. Some say that the Iraq war is an abyss from which Americans cannot emerge. (See americium; engulf; plutocracy; plutonium.)

Americium: a man-made transuranic element produced by the high-energy helium bombardment of uranium and plutonium. Americium is found in weapons that employ depleted uranium (DU); ingesting the tiniest particle of americium can cause cancer (see consumption) and genetic defects. (See absysmal; Pluto.)

Consume: to eat; to use up; to devour. From the Latin sumere, “to take.” The “con” in “consume” is not derived from Latin con/com for “together,” in which case it might mean communion, as in eating together, i.e., sharing; rather, this “con” means “altogether,” or “wholly,” so to consume is to take wholly, i.e. to engulf.

Consumer: one who consumes; an organism that feeds on others. 20 percent of the world’s wealthiest humans consume 86 percent of its resources. U.S. Americans are particularly adept consumers; we currently engulf 30 percent of the Earth’s natural resources. We also produce more waste per capita than any other country. (See greed.)

Consumer goods: objects produced to satisfy human desires, often without regard for the good of either human or non-human others. (See greed.)

Consumption: the act of consuming. An older use of “consumption” referred to tuberculosis and to a progressive wasting of the body. Contemporary consumption results in the wasting of the Earth’s body and of the body politic of all nations. Wars waged to protect the U.S. consumptive lifestyle waste life. (See DU; greed; Gulf War(s).)

DU: depleted uranium, an extremely dense radioactive waste product of nuclear reactors, used in cluster bombs and other weapons in both Gulf Wars. DU is composed of uranium-238, neptunium, plutonium, and americium, all rolled into a hyper-dense b all of hell that burns on contact and causes cancer, neurological diseases, and genetic defects. In the first Gulf War, over 320 tons of DU were pounded into the Iraqi earth. The amount of DU used in Gulf War II is unknown. Because DU continues to kill long after its initial use, the United Nations considers DU a “weapon of indiscriminate use” and, therefore, a violation of the Geneva Conventions. (See abysmal.)

Engulf: to consume; to swallow up. (See abyss; greed; gulf.)

Greed: excessive desire for wealth. In many cultures, greed is understood to cause destruction, so their teachings guard against it. Even before the U.S. culture consumed this land, Pueblo Indians told stories of times when greed destroyed the world. (See abysmal.) In U.S. culture, however, greed is celebrated, and during a crisis it is especially prized. After the 9/11 attack, U.S. Americans were urged to fight that evil by buying more goods. (See americium; Gulf War(s).)

Gulf; a portion of sea enclosed in land; a deep hollow; an abyss. (See Pluto.)

Gulf War(s): wars started by George Bushes to preserve the consumptive lifestyle of the richest U.S. Americans. (See abyss; americium; DU; engulf; greed; plutocracy.)

Pluto: the Greek god who caused Persephone to be engulfed by an abyss in the Earth. Pluto imprisoned Persephone in Hades and consumed her, i.e., he raped her. The Earth shared Persephone’s shock, terror, and grief; grains refused to grow and all life wasted away. Pluto tricked Persephone into eating a tiny particle, a pomegranate seed, so that she would spend half her life in hell. (See abysmal; plutocracy; plutonium.)

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy, i.e., those who own most of the goods, those most adept at consumption. (See greed.)

Plutonium: a man-made transuranic element used to make DU. Its half-life of 24,000 years ensures that plutonium will be highly toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Engulfing even a tiny partcle of plutonium can cause cancer/wasting. (see abysmal; americium; consumption; Pluto.)

Waste: By-product of consumption. (See abysmal.)

—from shock and awe: war on words, ed. By Bregje van Eekelen, Jennifer González, Bettina Stötzer, and Anna Tsing. Feminisms and Global War Project of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research (New Pacific Press: Santa Cruz, 2004).

JUSTICE SUNDAY?

From the Archives

(April 2005) I'm pasting this entire article because the news is so obscene. We’re already a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy; will we be a theocracy by the time Bush finally leaves office?

FRIST SET TO USE RELIGIOUS STAGE ON JUDICIAL ISSUE
by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, New York Times
Published: April 15, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 14—As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias [by SC Dixicrat Strom Thurmond-MEDEA], and it is now being used against people of faith."

Organizers say they hope to reach more than a million people by distributing the telecast to churches around the country, over the Internet and over Christian television and radio networks and stations.

Dr. Frist's spokesman said the senator's speech in the telecast would reflect his previous remarks on judicial appointments. In the past he has consistently balanced a determination "not to yield" on the president's nominees with appeals to the Democrats for compromise. He has distanced himself from the statements of others like the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who have attacked the courts, saying they are too liberal, "run amok" or are hostile to Christianity.

The telecast, however, will put Dr. Frist in a very different context. Asked about Dr. Frist's participation in an event describing the filibuster "as against people of faith," his spokesman, Bob Stevenson, did not answer the question directly.

"Senator Frist is doing everything he can to ensure judicial nominees are treated fairly and that every senator has the opportunity to give the president their advice and consent through an up or down vote," Mr. Stevenson said, adding, "He has spoken to groups all across the nation to press that point, and as long as a minority of Democrats continue to block a vote, he will continue to do so."

Some of the nation's most influential evangelical Protestants are participating in the teleconference in Louisville, including Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Chuck Colson, the born-again Watergate figure and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries; and Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The event is taking place as Democrats and Republicans alike are escalating their public relations campaigns in anticipation of an imminent confrontation. The Democratic minority has blocked confirmation of 10 of President Bush's judicial nominees by preventing Republicans from gaining the 60 votes needed to close debate, using the filibuster tactic often used by political minorities and most notoriously employed by opponents of civil rights.

Dr. Frist has threatened that the Republican majority might change the rules to require only a majority vote on nominees, and Democrats have vowed to bring Senate business to a standstill if he does.

On Thursday, one wavering Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, told a television interviewer, Chris Matthews, that he would vote against the change.

"By the way, when Bill Clinton was president, we, effectively, in the Judiciary Committee blocked a number of his nominees," Mr. McCain said.

On Thursday the Judiciary Committee sent the nomination of Thomas B. Griffith for an appellate court post to the Senate floor. Democrats say they do not intend to block Mr. Griffith's nomination.

That cleared the way for the committee to approve several previously blocked judicial appointees in the next two weeks.
The telecast also signals an escalation of the campaign for the rule change by Christian conservatives who see the current court battle as the climax of a 30-year culture war, a chance to reverse decades of legal decisions about abortion, religion in public life, gay rights and marriage.

"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and organizer of the telecast, wrote in a message on the group's Web site. "For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."

Democrats accused Dr. Frist of exploiting religious faith for political ends by joining the telecast. "No party has a monopoly on faith, and for Senator Frist to participate in this kind of telecast just throws more oil on the partisan flames," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

But Mr. Perkins stood by the characterization of Democrats as hostile to faith. "What they have done is, they have targeted people for reasons of their faith or moral position," he said, referring to Democratic criticisms of nominees over their views of cases about abortion rights or public religious expressions.

"The issue of the judiciary is really something that has been veiled by this 'judicial mystique' so our folks don't really understand it, but they are beginning to connect the dots," Mr. Perkins said in an interview, reciting a string of court decisions about prayer or displays of religion.

"They were all brought about by the courts," he said.

Democrats, for their part, are already stepping up their efforts to link Dr. Frist and the rule change with conservatives statements about unaccountable judges hostile to faith.

On Thursday, Mr. Schumer released an open letter calling on Dr. Frist to denounce such attacks. "The last thing we need is inflammatory rhetoric which on its face encourages violence against judges," he wrote.