Within the Empire

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009): Part I - Less than Meets the Eye

2011-05-25T00:22:00.000-07:00

The Month of Bayhem concludes with our video review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009): Part I - Less than Meets the Eye

Transformers (2007)

2011-05-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

Today, we repost our 2007 review of Transformers (2007), the One That Started it All, because I'm hammering out next week's review of Revenge of the Fallen and, believe it or not, that's gonna take some time.

The Island (2005)

2011-05-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

And so, Bayhem continues with The Island (2005). That is all.

A funny thing happened to me on the internet the other day

2011-05-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

And I figured I'd talk about it here since I've barely paid attention to this site in months and feel fairly secure breaking the fourth wall over here. But Something funny happened to "me" on the internet over the weekend, and I figured I'd talk about it here rather than clutter up the main site.

At this point, I've been posting at-least-weekly reviews on And You Thought It Was Safe(?) for over a year. In that time, I've managed to increase my audience by a factor of five billion through the steady application of my nose to various grindstone. And yet, over the weekend, the author, blogger and Glenn Beckite Kathy Shaidle decided to pat me on the head, initiating one hell of a traffic increase. Seriously: more people saw my stuff last Sunday than normally see it in a week. That's as staggering thought. No matter how much I do, I am not Legion. You fine people in the internet are.

But the fact I'm such hot shit even Canadian libertarians love me isn't the funny part. The funny part is, a majority of those who came from fivefeetoffury immediately checked out my Vault of Past Reviews, Organized by Rating. Where they immediately encountered, at the top of the charts, sitting pretty with perfect scores of 5 out of 5

-The Ridley Scott horror movie

-The early 90s Batman cartoon nobody remembers

-Fight Club

-The John Carpenter horror movie

-The Spike Lee documentary

-The Noam Chomsky documentary

-The Michael Moore documentary

-John Carpenter's sci-fi send up of Reaganomics and,

-The feminist country noir that perfectly captures my home region: bleak, bloody, overrun with meth dealers, and depressing.

Now if that's not comedy, I don't know what is. I wonder how far they got before the realization sunk in. "Jesus fucking Christ, this asshole's a flaming liberal! Ge even lives in Or-ray-gon! I'll bet he even knows...immigrants! And Muslims!" Buy my cigarettes from 'em, in fact...though I don't know how devout they are, considering they don't seem to have a problem selling me smokes. Or alcohol.

And Kathy? I'm glad you liked it. Thank you.

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis - Part VIII

2011-05-16T20:14:00.000-07:00

Reposted Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis - Part VIII over at AYTIWS(?) That's all for now.

Bad Boys II (2003)

2011-05-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

Shit gets real over at And You Thought It Was Safe(?) as we review Bad Boys II (2003). You're welcome.

The Rock (1996)

2011-05-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

The Month of Bayhem continues today, when AYTIWS reviews The Rock (1996)

Bad Boys (1995)

2011-05-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today at AYTIWS, the Month of Bayhem begins where it all began, in Miami, with Bad Boys (1995).

Godzilla The Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis - Part VI

2011-05-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

Today at AYTIWS, it's a repost of Godzilla The Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis - Part VI.

New Review: King Kong (1933)

2011-04-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

Today, AYTIWS decides to intentionally bait fan boys by taking a critical dump on King Kong (1933). You're welcome.

New Review: Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film (2009)

2011-04-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

Today And You Thought It was Safe(?) takes a crack at what Fangoria described as "the best documentary of its kind in years." And we all know losers love to whine about their "best." Does Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film (2009) come away a loser? Or does it go home and fuck the prom queen, like winners are supposed to do?

Darkman (1990)

2011-04-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Nothing new here. But over at And You Thought It Was Safe(?) we have Darkman (1990) Go there. See the dancing freak. Only five bucks! To! See! The! Dance! Ing! Freak!

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis - Part IV

2011-04-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis - Part IV

New Review: Resident Evil (2002)

2010-09-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

This week, AYTIWS(?) watches on in horror as Paul W.S. Anderson pulls a career out of Milla Jovovich's ass in Resident Evil (2002).

Gay Air Force Nurse Wins Job Back; DADT Wins Raised Middle Finger

2010-09-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

Via BBC (among others):

In the state of Washington, a judge ruled the ban unconstitutional and said the firing hurt morale in her unit.

Maj Margaret Witt sued after the Air Force sacked her upon learning of her relationship with a civilian woman.

President Obama and some military leaders have called for the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but Congress this week rejected the bid.

On Friday, US District Judge Ronald Leighton became teary as he praised Maj Witt for her struggle to win back her job following her 2004 suspension and subsequent dismissal.

"There is no evidence that wounded troops care about the sexual orientation of the flight nurse or medical technician tending to their wounds," Judge Leighton ruled.

Thankfully, there's overwhelming evidence at least one District Judge is as fucking sick and fucking tired of waiting for Congress and Our Glorious Leader to pull their thumbs out of their asses as I am.

Oh, I'm sorry, make that two.

The ruling is the second this month in which a federal judge has said the "don't ask, don't tell" policy violates the US Constitution. Analysts say the twin rulings add further momentum to the growing movement to overturn the policy.

The only thing stopping it? The same thing that stops everything, pinky: upcoming elections. If politicians solved problems, what could they promise to fix during their campaigns? Good God, how could they raise funds? Who could they possibly scare the jaded, coddled, apolitical public out of their gadget-stuffed homes, off their ever-fattening asses, and into a voting booth?

That's why we'll have no tax on rich people. That's why "don't ask, don't tell" is still on the books, despite being barbarically stupid. That's why we'll have no direct federal hiring, no net neutrality, no universal health care. Nothing but greed, money grubbing, and desperation for this Empire tonight...punctuated by the occasional bit of good news, in between drone aircraft attacks and the disaster movies sprung to life. The Apocalypse might be upon us, but at least my lesbian sisters can go down fighting. For "freedom," of some kind.

New Review: Event Horizon (1997)

2010-09-19T14:06:00.001-07:00

This week, And You Thought It Was...Safe(?) explores the early works of director Paul (Resident Evil) Anderson, diving back into the late '90s with as much retro zeal as the rest of American political culture seems to have developed. Hence: Event Horizon (1997).

A Public Service Announcement from D.O.I.T.

2010-09-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

And Speaking of Labor Day...

2010-09-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

...my own labors continue. Received my first rejection slip of the month today, pushing one more short story back into the "like a rolling stone" category. On a Sunday, of all days. And a holiday weekend, too. Feels good, in all sincerity. The sour taste in the back of my mind lets me unequivocally know I've been rejected by a by-God professional.

New Review: New Moon (2009)

2010-09-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

And so AYTIWS returns to fictional-Forks with New Moon (2009). You're welcome.

New Review: If God is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010)

2010-09-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

In a rare Wednesday update, AYTIWS reviews Spike Lee's latest letter from New Orleans: If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise.

Fighting the Future, with Paul Krugman and a Dick named Morris

2010-08-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman read my mind this Sunday, meaning at leas one of us is telepathic:

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment — at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

And GOP pollster Dick Morris has confirmed the veracity of my precognative powers:

Republican pollster Dick Morris told conservative political activists that newly elected Republicans should shut down the government next year. Morris said the party must elect lawmakers who will stand up and say "No" to President Obama's requests for more government spending and predicted a repeat of how Republicans forced a shutdown under President Clinton after they won control of Congress.

"There's going to be a government shutdown, just like in '95 and '96 but we're going to win it this time and I'll be fightin' on your side," Morris said at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation Conference on Friday in Washington.

Now, that's not exactly campaign trail material, but it's a fascinating glimpse into what Republicans may put into action should they win back control of Congress. Morris' suggestions, memes and talking points frequently end up in GOP campaign materials, so we'll be keeping a close eye on this one to see if Republicans will back up his promise for a government shutdown.

It's also quite interesting given that Morris was a Clinton campaign operative in 1995 and 1996 when the Republicans forced a showdown over government spending. (A gamble which, of course, didn't help them much politically. Clinton was able to win reelection in part by running against the GOP's obstruction.)

I've been saying it ever since nostalgia for the 1980s decayed into a sick and futile parody of itself: '90s Retro is coming, baby. You barely survived it the first time. Now get ready for round two and this time the President really is black. To paraphrase Jello Biafra, the 2010's may suck but at least they won't be boring.

New Orleans 8/29/05: Never Forget

2010-08-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

Quote of the Day: Joe Bageant on Truth

2010-08-17T17:51:00.000-07:00

After decades of hyper-militant consumerism and its attending alienation, and a national consciousness spun from pure capitalist bullshit and mirrors, it is testimony to the American people that they can still see to piss straight, much less recognize any sort of truth whatsoever.

(from Honk if You Love Caviar: Understanding America's Class System by fellow-strumpetocrat Joe Bageant, which, apart from being one hell of a rant, is also one hell of a sociopolitical history and required reading for everyone with eyes. Unless you care more about a mosque that isn't a mosque in a city that isn't yours which suffered a disaster you had nothing to do with almost nine years ago. Which, if you're American, you probably do.)

New Review: Kick-Ass (2010)

2010-08-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

This week And You Thought It Was Safe(?) reviews Kick-Ass (2010). Because the power of nerds compels me.

New Review: Predators (2010)

2010-07-30T20:12:00.001-07:00

Predators (2010)

Memo from Long Island: Darth Vader Reduced to Petty Theft

2010-07-23T01:50:00.001-07:00

No, really...the Dark Lord of the Sith robbed a Long Island bank yesterday.

We live in interesting times.

Memo From New Zealand: Twilight Kills!

2010-07-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night, police discovered a twenty-three year "transient" slumped in his car, dead, outside a Wellington, New Zealand theater screening of Eclipse, the series latest film installment.

To paraphrase my favorite Quaid, I've been saying it for years. (Ain't I been sayin' it, Miguel?) Twilight is undeniable blueprint for murder, more potent and viable than all the "violent" video games I've ever played in my life put together.

The official cause of death is yet to be determined at press time...but I think we could hazard a few guesses. The continued success of the Twilight series has led me to contemplated suicide once or twice myself, and frankly I'm grateful to find I'm not alone. So I'd like to salute you, anonymous transient man, and let the whole world know that you're death was not in vain.

(h/t Jezebel and the NZ Herald)

From Your Cold, Dead Hands

2010-06-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

Today, in a 5-4 decision that should surprise absolutely no one, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gun ownership is an individual right. I know. "Duh," right? Apparently, this is only news to constitutional scholars and the court system that draws it's members from them.

Apart from restating an obvious, on the ground fact, this ruling once again proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that John Roberts and Sam Alito are the bought, paid-for, and kept whores of the knee-jerk, Wrong Wing, conservative ideologues who handed them their jobs in the first place.

The court was considering a restrictive handgun law in Chicago and one of its suburbs that was similar to the District of Columbia law that it ruled against in 2008. The 5-4 decision does not strike any other gun-control measures currently in place, but it provides a legal basis for challenges across the country where gun owners think that government has been too restrictive.

"It is clear that the Framers ... counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty," Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote for the conservatives on the court.

[...]

Alito said that the court had made clear in its 2008 decision that it was not casting doubt on such long-standing measures as keeping felons and the mentally ill from possessing guns or keeping guns out of "sensitive places" such as schools and government buildings.

"We repeat those assurances here," Alito wrote. "Despite municipal respondents' doomsday proclamations, (the decision) does not imperil every law regulating firearms."

Sir, with all due respect (that is, none)...bullshit. And you know it. You know it, and you don't care, because you've spent your whole life imbibing this brand of NRA bullshit. The NRA's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, has already said, “We’re going to go everywhere cynical politicians attempt to pervert, defy or nullify the decision,” and they won't stop until they've got the whole chicken coop sown up. Hell, they won't stop until every one of this Empire three hundred and fifty million citizens has a Glock 17 strapped to their ass, ready to go at a moment's notice.

Today, the halls of Remington, Smith & Weston, and Charter Arms are ringing with jubilation. They've won, their butt-boys (like LaPierre) know it, and they're going to make sure they keep on winning, regardless of the human cost.

Not that that really matters. If you're a citizen of the West your hands are already covered in the invisible blood of your fellow man. Why not slather on a few more layers by "accidentally" shooting your wife and child in a fit of work-stress-related rage?

I used to favor gun "control" measures, whatever their source...then, one day, I realized favoring such policies is a self-defeating exercise in Playing The NRA's Game. It's a Game they've spent forty years rigging, and thanks to Our (former) Glorious Leader, George Jr., and the shaved apes he placed inside the Nation's Highest (and I do mean highest) Court, their efforts are finally paying off.

Except this Empire armaments industry has always reaped extraordinary benefits from careful manipulation of the "democratic" process. Hate a gun-control advocate? Brand him/her a ~~communist terrorist~~ socialist in disguise. Then, all you have to do is sit back and throw money at his/her Primary or General Election opponent(s). Should your candidate ever express concern about the amount of gun-related homicides in this country, or our massive cultural addiction to adolescent Rambo fantasies, all you have to do is remind them of how they got their job in the first place. And that they could loose it just as easily.

But assume the worst and suppose a gun "control" law actually makes it on the books. No problem. Sue. And sue. And sue. Tie up the local, state and federal judiciary for as long as it takes because, remember, you're right and they're wrong (whoever "they" are), so fuck them, their fat wives, and their so-called courts. Don't worry: if you need more lawyer money you can always tell the NRA's rank and file to "remember Ruby Ridge." Or Waco. And watch the money tree grow.

In mixed company its best to avoid mention of those unfortunate incidents. Instead, quote from Gospel of Reagan, chapter 6 verse 66. Repeat along with me, kids: "If Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns."

(Bonus points if your handpicked Legislative lackies regularly decry "frivolous lawsuits"...you know, like those brought by individuals against corporations who've screwed them out of pensions, poisoned family members, or dumped toxic waste into the local water tables.)

The real irony is, Wayne LaPiere is right. Over a year ago he told the Conservative Action Committee "Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules." Thus our two hundred year history of genocide, frontier violence-as-justice, and our Do What We Say or Die foreign policy. Furthermore, the return of the Armed Maniac to the national, political stage (more of them every day, as seen in this campaign ad from the National Socialist State of Arizona) will only encourage those of us who honestly hate guns to go out and buy them. For personal defense, of course. This will, in turn, further enable the Iron Mongers among us, allowing them to pack "our" government with their handpicked allies, ensuring more Judicial homicide enabling. So it goes.

I'll let George Washington Universe law professor Paul Butler have the last word, he being a law professor and all.

It’s not every day when four justices of the Supreme Court accuse the other five of having blood on their hands. The majority opinion doesn’t immediately lead to any change in a specific law, almost like the court is afraid of what it is setting in motion. But the dissenters were correct. Sooner, rather than later, the blood will flow.

New Review: Fantastic Four (2005)

2010-06-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Four (2005)

New Review: Yongary Monster From the Deep (1967)

2010-06-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

Yongary Monster From the Deep (1967)

Artificial lifeform created: Microbe declares mankind "already dead."

2010-05-20T23:19:00.000-07:00

Via the Daily Mail:

But the breakthrough, which took 15 years and £27.7million to achieve, opens an ethical Pandora's box. Ethicists said he is 'creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history' - with unparalleled risks.

There are fears that the research, detailed in the journal Science, could be abused to create the ultimate biological weapon.

And there are also warnings that one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend.

Like this

That fucking tears it. Every crap sci-fi film you've ever seen or even heard about is coming true. Soon, the killer robots will feast on our flesh side by side with all the victims of the zombie-sparkly-vampire-apocalypse virus, right before the killer tidal wave washes a bumper crop of giant monsters into the remains of our more-photogenic cities. Indeed, God help us all.

In Deference to Reason

2010-05-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

...Reason Magazine, that is, we celebrate the First Annual Everybody Draw Mohammad day. And, since I can't draw, I offer you this blast from the past:

(The Prophet Mohammad defends Washington D.C. from the ravages of a giant, stone Abraham Lincoln. Circa 2001.)

Time Warner Gives USCG, Federal Courts, One-Fingered Salute.

2010-05-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

In a strange twist of fate, Time Warner Cable threw itself under the anti-movie piracy bus today, stating publicly that it had no intention of complying with the 2,049 subpoenas generated by German crap-filmmaker Uwe Boll's suit against peer-2-peer downloaders. None. Zip.

I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, this is just one more example of the fact corporations can do whatever they want, and will do whatever they can get away with, employing any excuse. In this case, it's lack of manpower, and resources tied up in the parallel wars on Crime (remember that one?) and Terror.

"Copyright cases involving third-party discovery of Internet service providers have typically related to a plaintiff's efforts to identify anonymous defendants whose numbers rank in the single or low double digits," wrote the cable company. "By contrast, plaintiff in this case alone seeks identifying information about 2,049 anonymous defendants, and seeks identifying information about 809 Internet Protocol addresses from TWC."
Time Warner Cable does not have enough employees to respond to these requests. In a typical month, the company receives an average of 567 IP lookup requests, nearly all of them coming from law enforcement. These lookup requests involve everything from suicide threats to child abduction to terrorist activity, and the company says that such cases take "immediate priority."

On the other hand, I cannot support anyone, anywhere, exchanging money for a Uwe Boll film. Fuck Uwe Boll, and his horrible movies. Fuck the underwear models posing as lawyers on the U.S. Copyright Group's website. USCG has made a name for itself partnering with independent film studios, distracting the courts with these massive lawsuits in a futile attempt to roll back the technological clocks to 1995.

On the third hand, I can't support illegal file sharing, because I'm afraid I'll get sued if I do. And that, in case anyone was wondering, is how terrorism works.

The Policeman Will Shoot Your Pet

2010-05-14T21:24:00.000-07:00

On February 12 of this year, police in Columbia, Missouri, serving a search warrant for narcotics, raided a man's home in full SWAT regalia, guns drawn. Acting on a tip that the man was some sort of Kingpin of Pot, the police handcuffed him and "accidentally" shot his pet corgi.

Via the very evenhanded (all things considered) Reason Magazine, which rightly points out raids like this go on all the time. The only difference is, this one was caught on film.

Look around your back yards. Ask yourself, what are your local police doing? Do you even know? Quick, who's your local Commissioner Gordon? Mine's the mayor, Sam Adams. He just fired Chief Rosie Sizer two days ago, officially taking the helm of a police department he'd delegated to city commissioner Dan Saltzman. Saltzman must've drawn the short straw. He got the task of apologizing to the family of James Chasse Jr, who died in September 2006. Portland police officers broke 16 of his ribs in the process of tackling him, puncturing his lungs.

And my friends tell me the drug war is over. Barack Obama is supposedly going to save us all. But how long will this naivete allow our nation's cops to take out their pent up aggression on the nation's defenseless pets?

Answer: As long as Pakistani's trying to set off bombs in Times Square.

Question: Why in God's name would anybody want to blow up Times Square?

Answer: Because nothing's changed. Two wars going nowhere fast, U.S. sanctioned torture, spying, environmental catastrophes...sounds like 2005 to me. Where are we again?

I would communicate with others...

2010-05-07T09:42:00.001-07:00

...but I'm in school. I'll let Professor Chomsky explain that to you:

New Review: Predator (1987)

2010-04-29T21:54:00.000-07:00

Predator (1987): Arnold Schwarzenegger and his elite Special Forces squad of doomed, ancillary characters, must outwit an extraterrestrial trophy hunter and escape the jungles of Central America. It must be the 80s.

The Cartoons that Shook the World

2010-04-23T21:33:00.001-07:00

As I'm sure everyone knows by now, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone received several (not-so) veiled death threats over the very idea of depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his name) in their show's two hundredth and two hundredth and first episodes. The later, which aired last Wednesday, ended with a multi-character "I-learned-something-today" speech, a callback to nearly every South Park episode of the first six-or-so seasons. A series of drawn-out, audio "bleeps" completely obscured the content of these speeches in what I first took to be a meta-joke on the boy's part. Then I read their statement @ South Park Studios:

We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. [Show's what I know. - ed] Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear.

Well, shit on that idea. Intimidation and Fear rule the land, and the creators of South Park are in a better position than anyone to realize it. Their battles with the MPAA are legendary. Yet their home network has always backed them previous to this.

Comedy Central's decision to be chickenshit corporate scumfucks, and then hide behind some delusion that they're "protecting their employees" (as Jon Stewart, loyal company man that he is, put it) reveals a truth even the South Park boys probably haven't guessed. For all their excessive obscenity and supposed irreverence, things have only gotten worse in the fourteen years since their debut. The nine years since they last depicted the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his name) certainly seem to have been one long, downward spiral of censorship and intimidation. We had Janet Jackson's breast in 2004, the original Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005, a flare up one year later, and just last year Yale University Press beat Comedy Central to the punch, preemptively removing all Muhammad cartoons from their upcoming book, titled...The Cartoons that Shook the World.

Were I a more conservative commentator, I might suggest the terrorists are winning. After all (and I'll say it again, because this bears repeating), Yale University Press decided to remove all Muhammad cartoons from a book titled Cartoons That Shook The World. Only Fear and Intimidation could inspire such a colossally stupid decision. But of course there are no terrorists...only a few crazed maniacs on the one hand and clutches of toothless, suit-wearing shills on the other.

So, in solidarity with Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kurt Westergaard, Roger Köppel, various members of the Danish People's Party's youth wing, and all artists the world over who labor under the threat of religious intolerance and extremism, I offer this pictorial depiction of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his name):

along with a fervent prayer to all the messiahs of the world, whatever their affiliation:

Lords, save us from your followers. They know not what they do, but we know very well what they'd like to do. Especially to those of us who don't want to turn the clock back to the eleventh century. Help us, Super Best Friends. Like the sign in The Crow: City of Angels said, "Save us."

What Every Person Should Know About War

2010-04-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Via WikiLeaks ("The intelligence network of the people.") And God bless the Pentagon for finally talking about them, allowing the mainstream media permission to do so as well. I would've never heard about the damn site if not for the fact that it's suddenly everywhere. All over an incident that took place two years ago, in a little country no one really talks about very much anymore. Almost as if we share a new national hope: if we just close our eyes and click our heels often enough, the whole sordid, evil nightmare will just go away...

There's no place like Iraqi. Unless you count Afghanistan.

New Review: Watchmen (2009)

2010-04-02T01:23:00.000-07:00

Watchmen (2009)

Health Scare: The Final Friday

2010-03-26T22:05:00.001-07:00

Dateline: Constantine's Rome, U.S.A. After a year of fearmongering, deception and compromise, our bought-and-paid-for political system at last knelt on the Great Toilet Bowl and squeezed out a fibrous chunk of a bill, now being sold as “the most important piece of social legislation since the 1960s”.

That from David Frum, a “fellow” at the right-wing, non-think tank, the American Enterprise Institute...who lost his job yesterday after he dared criticize the Republican Party's flailing, and ultimately failed, strategy of Fear and Surprise, Surprise and Fear.

Yes, the battle is over, and the narrative is already set. One must either embrace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 as a milestone carved from gold and set at the latest American Crossroads...or despise “Obamacare” and everyone who supported it, “baby-killers” and “assholes” that they are. This bill with either usher in a new bumper crop of healthy, wealthy and wise American citizens...or bring about the “Apocalypse” We've been marinating in Right Wing fear-juice for so long now, I'm not surprised by any of this...only saddened that, as usual, those of us who don't align our thinking along what Jon Stewart called “the Hannity-Olbermann Scale” are not allowed to sit and talk at the Big Kid Table. Can't something be “the most important piece of legislation since the 1960s” and a massive corporate welfare boondoggle? In today's Washington, these are not mutually exclusive things. It seems like giving free money away to corporations is about the only thing the two wings of our one-party state can agree on.

At least the Republicans remain honest to a fault. They have the stones to brazenly declare, loudly and proudly for all who might hear, “Yes: we are the party of eternal warfare, greed, fear mongering, and bigotry.” The Democrats try to look like they feel bad about eternal warfare, greed, fear mongering, and bigotry, even as they tacitly support all of those things in a continuing bid to Right-flank the Republicans. Because bourgey suburbanites are the only people who bother to vote any more, and they're so mean and stingy they'd rather bankrupt themselves putting their kids through private school than pay another dime in taxes that might go to help brown people.

I do not cast my tar with a wide brush. I am not Glenn Beck...though, if you believe him, I am a Cancer on the American Political scene. If only I could metastasize a few members of Congress...I'm sure Joe Liberman would get stuck in my throat...but what if I dissolved him first, in some sick, twisted, pre-digestive process...then again, why waste good vomit drop? Liberman's so desperate to be noticed these days he'd probably get a kick out of the free publicity:

“The Huffington Post received word today that Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Himself) will convene a press conference in the Senate Briefing room at three p.m. There, a strange combination of human being and house fly, a freakish, bastard child of Science Gone Horribly Awry, will dissolve the Senator's face with what the estate of esteemed Canadian physicist Seth Brundle described as, 'a corrosive enzyme.' Pundits from Faux News to the General Electric Pseudo-Liberal Primetime Lineup are already speculating that this may be Liberman's first act in a 2012 bid for the White House.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world...there actually are eighty-three out-and-proud, real-life Progressives in the Congressional Progressive Caucus—including my Representative, Earl Blumenauer. They are not the malignant, flesh-consuming disease that Glenn Beck would have you believe. They did all they could to keep their yuppy-fied “allies” in the Corprocrat Party from turning the bill into an even bigger hand out to medical supply industry. But their efforts were largely in vain. They'll be no “public option,” for anyone. No universal health care. No socialized medicine. Not even its shammiest sham of a cousin. Merely a requirement we all buy into the same, piece of shit, for-profit plutocracy that's killing us now. Hillary Clinton loved the "individual mandate" system (it's got the word "individual" in it - it must be good). Candidate Obama decried it...but the people who get money from medical insurance companies (hospitals, corporate drug dealers) loved it, and those are the people who put money into politician's coffers. It's not a Donkey vs. Elephant thing: don't think of either. The corporatocracy doesn't care. It throws its cash around wherever power resides, hedging every bet against the chance of a real socially-democratic revolution in this country.

They get what they pay for. The whole Health Scare debacle just goes to show you can have all the Committee Chairmanships you want, in both Houses of Congress, plus the White House, and every left-leaning weirdo in whole country at your back (as Obama did, this time last year) and still cave in on everything the people who put you in office held dear, thanks to venial, virulent vermin like Bart Stupid (with his need to control women's internal organs) or Joe Sleezeberman (with his vindictive temper-tantrums – hey Joe, Ned Lamont may be a playboy millionaire, but at least he's not a complete dickhead). Our esteemed Progressive members still have only the same number of votes as those two jackasses. And there are a lot more Stupak's than Blumenauer's in the Democratic Party's ranks.

As a nation, we're over-worked, drugged-up, nail-bitingly paranoid, and (more than likely) not making enough to scrape by, petrified by the possibility of our job disappearing into the wilds of India, China, or Taiwan. So it's no wonder we're reacting to all this with name calling, death threats, and random shots into the air.

At least 10 House Democrats have had to request additional security since Sunday's health-care vote. Someone left a coffin on the lawn of Rep. Russ Carnahan's home in Missouri. Glass doors and windows were broken at the district offices of Reps. Louise Slaughter of New York and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. Vandals have damaged Democratic Party offices in Wichita, Cincinnati and Rochester, N.Y.

And Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, whose last-minute compromise on abortion funding guaranteed final passage of the reform act, has received a flood of abusive phone calls at his office and home. Someone faxed him a drawing of a noose. One voice mail, subsequently posted on the Internet, was left by a woman who wanted Stupak to know that "there are millions of people across the country who wish you ill." Another caller was more direct: "You're dead. We know where you live. We'll get you."

Indeed. Check it out, people: it's getting dangerous out there. So stay in your homes and let Super Rockin' Mr. Magic entertain you. After all, according to that great storehouse of modern journalism, Access Hollywood, those White House party crashing yuppies we were all supposed to care about months ago are set to appear on Real Housewives of D.C.

According to The Daily Beast, they also have a tell-all book in the works, which will “set the record straight” on the rumors that have surrounded them since their uninvited adventure.

“People will be surprised when the truth about the Salahis is finally told,” literary agent Sharlene Martin told the Beast.

Meanwhile, the real housewives, house-husbands...real people, in fact, of all genders and social situations...seem poised to catch one final “fuck you” before “our” Congress goes to its Easter recess. After proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are terminally disconnected from the tribulations of really-real Americans, none of the "leadership" in Congress seems to mind that unemployment benefits, flood insurance, and all manner of things that actually provide real, immediate help to real, immediate people...the ones they supposedly represent...are set to expire. Again.

Last week, the House approved a $9 billion measure containing one-month extensions of unemployment insurance, COBRA health benefits and federal flood insurance. Senate Democrats hoped to have their chamber approve the same bill Thursday. But Republicans refused, complaining that the bill is not offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

They said the same thing in early March, when Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) brought the chamber to a halt for five days over another extension that wasn't offset.

Senate Democrats and Republicans spent hours negotiating among themselves and with each other to find a compromise. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) discussed the possibility of a one- or two-week extension of benefits that would be fully paid for, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was opposed to the idea, according to two Senate aides.

As a result, the House and Senate will leave town without further action. COBRA and flood insurance will expire March 30, and unemployment benefits will expire April 5. The Senate will return to session April 12.

Meanwhile, AIG CEO Robert Benmosche took home a cool $7 million this year, along with $3.5 million in bennies and stock options. This is the “socialism” Glenn Beck keeps yammering about. This is a “redistribution of wealth” on a grand scale. For a year and half I've watched these bastards feed at the public trough and all I see are the rich getting richer while the rest of us get stuffed.

Six of eight [AIG] managers who had their 2009 awards set by Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master on executive pay, had their overall packages increased this year, according to a Treasury Department report [released on the 23^rd].

As “special masters” go Feinberg's sure made a mess of things. His “socialist takeover” of America's businesses looks a hell of a lot more like a giant cash-grab. Corporate welfare. Socialism for High Society. That's the real danger, lurking out there in the noise fields. And unless people wake up and realize that corporatist politicians (whatever the consonant next to their name) aren't going to ride in on their white horses and save us, we'd all better get ready. Things'll get a lot worse before they get any better.

With the Great American Health Scare “debate” tabled for Easter, our national Infotainment Complex will have to flail about until it finds the Next Big Thing to distract from how badly we're getting fucked. Sure, it's a mid-term election year, but who cares about those races anyway? Osama bin Laden just put out another mix tape, threatening to...gasp...harm Americans he's supposedly holding prisoner. (Gee, what a surprise. And here we thought you'd just sit them down for a nice, hot meal and a discussion of the Theodicy Problem, O-man.) Sister Sarah has returned to the headlines yet again, swooping down from Alaska to try and save old man McCain's ass from a loony, disingenuous, teabagging primary challenger. Election 2010 icons are already appearing across this great Web of ours. And that new Twilight movie's coming to a theater near you. God must be in his heaven, and all is truly right with the world. More wine, please? Thank you...I think I'll go for a garden stroll, my path lit by bodies of a few burning terrorists. Oh, sure, they call themselves “martyrs,” but what the hell do they know? Then we've got the orgy at three...and that bribery session at four...what's the point of Easter if I can't go home to extorting some more cash out of my past contributors?...And what the hell is that sound I hear in the distance...is that...Mel Brooks shouting something...what could it be?

“Gentlemen! We've got to protect our phony-baloney jobs!”

Well said, Mel. Well said.

Jon Stewart's "Con-serv-ative/Li-bert-arian"

2010-03-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Conservative Libertarian

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

Just when I thought it was safe to write a send-up of Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart does my job for me. Damn you, Stewart! Stop reading my mind. Bastard.

New Review: Q (1982)

2010-03-25T15:46:00.001-07:00

Q (1982) @ And You Thought It Was Safe(?)

New Review: The X From Outer Space (1967)

2010-03-11T12:43:00.001-08:00

The X From Outer Space (1967)

Health Scare #5: Eric Massa Admits Love of Grabass on Glenn Beck

2010-03-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

Gay Bashers of Not-Too-Distant Future Claim Apocalypse Imminent, Obama-era Navy Full of Gay

Rep. Eric Massa's resignation from the House of Representative's is a intergalactic bummer on a lot of fronts. For one thing, his tales of a vast, left-center conspiracy to oust him from office over health care "reform" made him the new It Girl of the Rupert Murdoc's noise machine, Faux News. Every time Glenn Beck interviews a guest, somewhere, a kitten dies.

But what an interview. And what a wonderful opportunity to showcase a madman and claim, “He is a gigantic Progressive,” as Beck did. “And I think I'm pretty clear on where I stand with Progressives.” If nothing else, it's a good excuse to laugh at Glen Beck's demagogic style. But first, the apparent facts:

Former representative Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has been under investigation for allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office, according to three sources familiar with the [Congressional Ethics] probe.

The allegations surrounding the former lawmaker date back at least a year, and involve "a pattern of behavior and physical harassment," according to one source. The new claims of alleged groping contradict statements by Massa, who resigned his office on Monday after it became public that he was the subject of a House ethics committee investigation for possible harassment.

I'd like to propose a joint investigation into allegations I've just made up that Representative Massa is completely out of his gourd. How else can you explain his statement that, “I wasn't forced out. I forced myself out,” which came in the same breath as this: “And goodness only knows what kind of allegations they're gonna throw at me.” They?

"If someone on my staff thought I was un-Congressional, that I was inappropriate, I own that. That's why I resigned." But he seemed to have no trouble blaming anonymous “attackers.” Glenn displays little interest in figuring out who these attackers actual are during the interview, seemingly more concerned with being a total bastard. Rather than wring an actual accusation out of his guest, Beck implores Massa to think of the “damage” he's doing to “your lovely wife" his children and "the country.”

Massa thankfully avoids this proto-fascist trap and repeatedly apologizes...while simultaneously making sure we all know he's the real victim here. “What my attackers don't get—and trust me this is all planned and calculated—we'll leak this, we'll leak that—”

Despite Beck's stupidity, its not hard to figure out which attackers former-Congressman Massa might be thinking of. Rahm Emanuel's showertime fun, whether true or not, is now a story for the ages, and a mental image I'd rather get out of my head. Does Rockin' Rahm just wander the halls naked, ravaging interns and lobbyists, foaming at the mouth and spouting obscene, Lovecraftian gibberish unfit for human mouth parts to pronounce?

Seriously, though, I can believe Rahm is a dick. He may, in fact, be exactly the kind of dick George W. Bush found in Dick Cheney. Those not rendered impotent by the thought of arguing with Naked Rahm in the Congressional showers, I ask you, join me in solving the overpopulation crisis and consider arguing with Naked Dick Cheney. There. Now you all know my pain. Stew in it.

But you'll have to watch the whole interview to really enjoy the pain. Let it settle in there. The centerpiece comes when Massa pulls a photo album out for Beck. Identifying several photos, he declares, “It looks like an orgy in Caligula, and anybody who's been in the Navy knows it.” Cue the Village People and expect Pat Robertson to jump on this new evidence of the Gay Navy, set to bomb Colorado Springs with absolutely fabulous Tomahawk missiles.

The worst part of all this? Massa may have once believed in a single payer health care system, yet at one point he plainly states, “We're never gonna get there,” conceding the debate before it even begins. In this he's the perfectly groomed “Progressive”: bloodless, devoid of balls, and stupid enough to go on Glenn Beck's TV show and admit the Navy gave him a life-long love of playing grabass.

It's no wonder Emanuel went after him, in the showers or otherwise. Bullies have uncanny senses. They can sniff out psychological weaklings across miles of swampy ground, and our capital is the biggest swamp going. Your nearest grade school can provide all the examples of this that you need. And Rahm Emanuel is nothing more than a sixth grader who can't let go of that time his older brother paid someone to beat him up, back in third grade, and must now beat your ass in turn.

In the grand tradition of small minded jocks from sea to shining sea, Rahm views politics as a game. He talks of “scorecards,” “winning,” and “loosing.” He's called his boss' natural constituency “fucking retarded,” when they dared try and do his job for him and twist some Conservative Democrat's arms. Note that he apologized to the head of the Special Olympics rather than those whom he actually declared “fucking retarded.” One would think intelligent {rogressives would take a hint from this: Rahm Emanuel is not our friend. Never was and never will be. This is the man who strong-armed NAFTA past the few Progressives who doubted its wonderfulness back in 1994. He does not give two shits about us.

In his year in office, Emanuel's displayed a Machiavellian willingness to play paddy-cake with whomever he can, regardless. The man has no principals. He's not even a man. Rahmbo is an Aristotelian political animal, a so-called “realist,” who'll sacrifice it all for the “big win.” Whatever that means to a millionare Richard Daley fundraiser, Bill Clinton adviser, and former-Freddie Mac director. As my old St. Louis connection used to say, “Never trust a politician from Chicago.”

Or...never trust a politician. The conservatives are all theocratic monstrosities, and “progressives” like Massa make even Teddy Roosevelt look like a rational being (albeit a racist, ecocidal one). At least Teddy's “muscular Christianity” propelled him to get the occasional Big Thing done. Would he knuckle under to every threat the American Taliban threw at him? Or is it Rahm who, scarred by his experiences in Clinton's White House, reacts with shame a horror at the thought of every little conservative backlash? Is he the one tossing red meat to the mouth-breathers while reducing “our” so-called “team members” into rambling shells of themselves with showertime shakedown sessions?

Many have called for Emanuel's replacement, from Sarah Palin to Michael Moore (who's agent, Ari Gold, oddly enough, is Rahm's brother). I'd echo that sentiment if I thought it went far enough but I say, throw all of them out, from our Glorious Leader on down to the last, yellow-bellied, slime-sucking lobbyist on K Street. March every white man with a suit and tie out of Washington and lead them, like the Piper, into the sea. I think I know a song that might get them all going.

In the Navy
by scorpiomusic

Health Scare #4: Profits Matter More Than People

2010-03-07T00:10:00.000-08:00

Nothing could be more truthful than the fact that I don't want "government run health care." But I don't want for-profit health care either. So, as usual, I'm left with nothing. No options, no outlets. Trapped out in a world where Onion stories come true with remarkable ease and depressing regularity. Like this gem from last year:

WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.

"Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue."

"Ultimately, though, it's our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve," Pelosi added.

The legislative stalemate largely stems from competing ideologies deeply rooted along party lines. Democrats want to create a government-run system for not providing health care, while Republicans say coverage is best denied by allowing private insurers to make it unaffordable for as many citizens as possible.

"We have over 40 million people without insurance in this country today, and that is unacceptable," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. "If we would just quit squabbling so much, we could get that number up to 50 or even 100 million. Why, there's no reason we can't work together to deny health care to everyone but the richest 1 percent of the population."

(Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care, The Onion, August 19, 2009)

The bald-face, plain-as-day fact remains: people are dying, right now, from lack of health care. While Our Glorious Leader and his Randian hack "opponents" sit around a table and spar over bullshit talking points, people are dying. Yesterday, today, every day. It's gotten so bad even the New York Times finally noticed:

As members of the Obama administration and Congress met on Thursday to try to find common ground on health care, a new report warned that without comprehensive legislation, more than 275,000 adults nationwide will die over the next decade because of a lack of health insurance. Nearly 14,000 of those deaths would occur in New York State. [Emphasis mine.]
An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 people died prematurely in 2000 because they lacked insurance; the Urban Institute updated that figure to 22,000 in 2006. The new study, by liberal advocacy group Families USA, applied the same methodology used in the previous reports to drill down and calculate, on both a national and state-by-state basis, the latest figures.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg, and the most severe consequence, which is death,” said Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy at Families USA. In addition, thousands of other citizens, perhaps millions, are experiencing a reduction in the quality of their lives and their health because they lack insurance, she said.

Unfortunately, the Time's reveals its real concerns by burying all of those horrible numbers in its websites Health section, safe from the prying eyes of everyone who isn't already and old fart, or an old-fuck-at-heart (like your humble narrator).

On the more-prominent U.S. page we find a more typical example of the media's Health Care "Reform" coverage under the headline Pelosi Struggles to Corral Votes for Health Care Bill:

The future of President Obama’s health care overhaul now rests largely with two blocs of swing Democrats in the House of Representatives — abortion opponents and fiscal conservatives — whose indecision signals the difficulties Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces in securing the votes necessary to pass the bill.

The article is a prime example of Horse Race Journalism, a genre that now dominates American political writing thanks to years of pressure from the mouth-breathing media whores on the Right and the more-intelligent but (apart from Michael Moore) ideologically hamstrung media whores of the "Left." That is, the politically empowered "Left," symbolized by Pelosi, Reid, and Our Glorious Leader, the president, who are little more than rich, privileged shills for the very power structure left-wing politics are supposed to oppose.

This creates the twin phenomenons of political "centrism" and policy "triangulation," rhetorical red herrings meant to mask what the economist John Williamson identified (way back in 1989) as the "Washington consensus."

Being an economist, Williamson saw nothing particularly seedy or evil in this term (at least, not at the time...he has since recanted his choice of words for all the usual, wrongheaded reasons). At the time he originally coined the phrase he was attempting to outline a complex of economic ideas that everyone in Washington could agree upon, regardless of their politics. These included deregulation, unfettered access to credit, trade liberalization, the privatization of state assets, the deification of private (which, in most cases, means "corporate") property, and the destruction of even the the shadow of a functioning "welfare state." All of this motivated by a free market fundamentalist belief that economics can do more for people than politics.

If you happen to be rich, then, yes, it can. If you're poor, well...fuck you running. It's your own fault for not playing the proper Horatio Alger game. You must be out of favor with the Invisible Hand of the Market, what Jello Biafra called "God Incorporated." Did you eat meat on Friday? Sacrifice the wrong goat? Whatever it was, it certainly can't be the fault of a system that threw you overboard before you were even born. In any case, the System couldn't care less. It's far too busy bribing Congress with one hand and slapping their pitiful excuses for "reform" back with the other:

Anthem Blue Cross, a unit of WellPoint, recently informed subscribers in California that premiums for individual insurance policies would rise an average of 25 percent, with some rates going up as much as 39 percent.
“Raising our premiums was not something we wanted to do,” [WellPoint CEO] Ms. [Angela] Braly said [in her testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday]. “But we believe this was the most prudent choice, given the rising cost of care and the problems caused by many younger and healthier policyholders dropping or reducing their coverage during tough economic times. By law, premiums must be reasonable in relationship to benefits provided, which means they need to reflect the known and anticipated costs they will cover.”

Translation? It's not our fault we're so rich, or that we're legally bound to do everything we can to get richer. It's those damn doctors and their damn hospitals. It's the damn old people and their stupid needs for care. It's the damn young people jumping ship because they can't afford our base rates in the first place, only to slink back like beat dogs when something goes wrong.

According to Reuters, Ms. Braly pulled down over $9 million last year. Now that she's Chairman of the Board as well as President and CEO she can expect a raise this year, at the very least. The other witness quoted by the Times, Lauren Meister of West Hollywood, can expect to supply Braly with that raise now that WellPoint has pushed her premiums up by two hundred dollars:

“We saw what deregulation did to the cost of utilities in California,” Ms. Meister said. “We saw what the lack of regulation has done on a national level to our financial and banking system. Well, it’s doing the same thing to our health care system.”
Ms. Meister added: “The City of West Hollywood, where I live, regulates how much landlords can raise the rent each year to keep rents stabilized. Why can’t the federal government regulate how much health insurance companies can raise their rates per year, in order to stabilize premiums?”

Well, Lauren, it's got a lot to do with the insane amounts of money the health care industry has used to grease our government's wheels. Since 2005, that's been a $46.6 million investment, counting publicly-disclosed campaign contributions…who knows how much more cash changes hands away from the cameras? It's all a matter of profits over people, power of progress, and money over matters of life and death. So rejoice and be exceeding glad: they'll be no "government run" health care in this country. Not until the greedheads and glandhanders figure out how to run it straight into the pockets of their true constituents.

Health Scare #3: Limbaugh, Beck, Ingraham Laugh at Toothless Woman, Flash Everyone With Evil Underbelly of America

2010-02-28T12:24:00.000-08:00

Thanks to David Brock's penance, Media Matters, even those us who consciously chose not to amerce ourselves in the Right-wing noise machine get to learn (as if we needed a refresher) just how evil a nation the United States really is.

During her turn at health care summit, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-New York) talked about plenty of stuff. But because our media is full of sensationalist bullshiters, the only comment of her's with any legs turned out to be the story of a constituent so poor she "wore her dead sister's teeth."

The store grew gams thanks, in part, to the noise machine, a prime example of political symbiosis that keeps this country deadlocked into a uneven tug-of-war between centrist and rightwing crazies. A so-called "liberal" tells a horrible story in public. So-called "conservative" voices respond to it with ridicule, vitriol, and spite. And we can already here liberal voices rising in a chorus of indignation (MediaMatters holding the baton) at the Rightwing mouthpiece's callous indifference to the suffering of their fellow Americans. As if something like this:

LIMBAUGH: You know I'm getting so many people -- this Louise Slaughter comment on the dentures? I'm getting so many people -- this is big. I mean, that gets a one-time mention for a laugh, but there are people out there that think this is huge because it's so stupid. I mean, for example, well, what's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for? Isn't that why they make applesauce?

should come as a surprise. "Let them eat cake," Marie Antoinette shouted. Well, no, she didn't, but never mind. Evil people have shouted it ever since, whenever they wanted to display their complete contempt for the rest of the human race.

While discussing the probably results of privatizing Medicare (sick, old people tossed out of hospitals, into the streets, to join the legions of crazy people already tossed out in '80s), Rep. Slaughter declares, "We're better people than that." Well, I'm sorry, Congresswoman, but we're really not. Have you seen Glen Beck's ratings? I have. More people watch his rambling civics-lesson-tirades in one night than visited these pages last year. Surely all of them are sincere, red-blooded Americans, hoping to keep pace with the endless treadmill that is the News. And maybe they like their current events served up in silky, semi-sweet Beckness. Who am I to begrudge them?

Such was my thinking. Until I heard this:

On his February 26 radio show, Glenn Beck played an audio clip of Slaughter's account then said, "I am wearing George Washington's dentures right now. I'm wearing his teeth right now." He later added, "I just like wearing dead people's teeth. But in America -- I'm sorry, I didn't know that that was -- I've read the Constitution before. I didn't see that you had a right to teeth." Echoing Limbaugh's remarks the previous day, Beck stated, "The environmentalists should be all over Slaughter. 'How dare you say that?' My gosh, they're just recycling. They're just reusing."

You can hear Beck and his "sidekick" break out into frat-boy giggles when Rep. Slaughter says, "she wore her dead sister's teeth." Now I want to be clear, here: I respect Glenn Beck's right to laugh at the pain and suffering of Rep. Slaughter's constituents. All I ask in return is that he, and everyone else, respect my right to fantasize about his parent company's (owner's) destruction at the hands of an angry mob. That makes me giggle.

After all, Glenn Beck's program is taped at the News Corporation office studios, 1211 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue to the rest of us) New York, New York, right down the street from MSNBC's 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

So imagine, if you will, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow leading a torch-wielding procession of correspondents, line producers, key grips, camera operators, runners, ADs, journalists, bloggers, and talking-heads through the night streets of Manhattan, singing "All Hell Can't Stop Us," or "I Wanna Free Miss Liberty" or some other fine selection from the IWW's Little Red Songbook. They storm News Corps' offices, overwhelming security. Rent-a-cops shit themselves in fear as red-eyed, foam-mouthed, Brooks Brothers-outfitted lefties, fed up with years of taking conservative shit, break down the revolving doors and pour in. Shattered glass twinkles in their frosted, TV hairdos.

Enmass they rush raving up the narrow stairwells, pouring out like a latte-fueled wave into the live studios. Sound men battle with boom mikes for bo staffs. Camera men's faces are driven into teleprompters by rebellious runners. Studio and viewing audiences keep their seats, shocked into rigidity by the sight of liberals actually doing something for a change. Other than bitch on endlessly about how dirty, evil and mean are those ol' conservative media whores, dag nab them.

Bill O'Reily, dragged from behind his desk, exposes his rubber-ducky emblazoned, $2000 silk boxers to a stunned and horrified world. He declares the whole "fucking thing sucks" as he's carried out to the streets on the shoulders of Chris Matthews Show interns, who proceed to tar, feather, and set Bill marching south, down Sixth Avenue, with instructions not to stop until he reaches the Village.

Meanwhile, back upstairs, Maddow stomps Laura Ingraham into bloodied unconsciousness with a pair of Manolo Blahnik's alligator boots, while Beck looks on, enraptured. Not by the girl fight. No, our man is caught by the visionary's paralysis. Like the audience itself, he is enrapture by the sight of his own worst fears made flesh. In a last ditch moment of egoism sure to make his spiritual grandmother, Ayn, proud, Beck has just enough time to stand and declare, "See? I WAS RIGHT!" before an Ed Schultz boot-to-the-naughty-bits reduces him to a simpering ball of well-dressed muck...

Whew. Sorry. Blacked out there a minute. And now I've got old union songs stuck in my head. What was it we were talking about?

Oh, yeah. Right. Fantasy.

Ayn Rand: The Beast 666

2010-02-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

I keep running into Ayn Rand, for she seems to have regained her place as the darling of the American Right. Very creepy experience.

My life with Rand began in junior high. My mother the English teacher receives an annual maildrop of information about the Ayn Rand Ayn Rand Institute Essay Contest. Every year the Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Irvine, California, splits $85,000 into 569 prizes and hands each to a Junior High or High School student brave enough to read one of Rand's godawful novels. Many a money-conscious parent has force many a young reader into undergo that traumatizing experience. It's probably destroyed more budding socio-political novelists than anything since television.

A Jewish pharmacist's daughter, born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersberg, 1905 (the year of Bloody Sunday and revolution), Rand was twelve in 1917, when revolution again seized Russia, this time for good.

Escaping to America in 1926, young Alisa Rosenbaum committed the kind of auto-genesis her characters are always going on about and renamed herself. Alisa Rosenbaum may have got on the boat, but it was Ayn Rand to when to Hollywood.

During this period, she ran into Cecil B. DeMille, designed costumes for RKO and married an actor. She also, according to the eXiled's Mark Ames, began idolizing the serial killer William Edward Hickman, "The Fox."

Hickman was a check forger, convict, and armed robber who kidnapped his former employer's twelve-year-old daughter, strangled her, cut her into bits, and tossed the bits out of a moving car all over Los Angeles. His capture in the town of Echo, Oregon, trial, and subsequent execution were the celebrity trial of 1928. And, as Ames notes,

This is the “amazing picture” Ayn Rand — guru to the Republican/Tea Party right-wing — admired when she wrote in her notebook that Hickman represented “the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should.”
Other people don’t exist for Ayn, either. Part of her ideas are nothing more than a ditzy dilettante’s bastardized Nietzsche — but even this was plagiarized from the same pulp newspaper accounts of the time. According to an LA Times article in late December 1927, headlined “Behavioralism Gets The Blame,” a pastor and others close to the Hickman case denounce the cheap trendy Nietzschean ideas that Hickman and others latch onto as a defense:

“Behavioristic philosophic teachings of eminent philosophers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer have built the foundation for William Edward Hickman’s original rebellion against society…” the article begins.

The fear that some felt at the time was that these philosophers’ dangerous, yet nuanced ideas would fall into the hands of lesser minds, who would bastardize Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and poison the rest of us. Which aptly fits the description of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy developed out of her admiration for “Supermen” like Hickman. Rand’s philosophy can be summed up by the title of one of her best-known books:The Virtue of Selfishness. She argues that all selfishness is a moral good, and all altruism is a moral evil, even “moral cannibalism” to use her words. To her, those who aren’t like-minded sociopaths are “parasites” and “lice” and “looters.”

"Thriller" novelist Michael Prescott (who's Next Victim my Aunt Judith happened to be reading over Christmas, so props to you, Michael) adds more depth to the picture on his page of Rand:

In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.

The more I read up on her life, the creepier she becomes. A picture emerges of writer, speed freak, and sociopath. A cult-leading Anne Coulter. A dress-wearing Glenn Beck. A roadshow barker, tossing red meat to the masses she despised, labeling them “parasites” to be ground under food.

Over at Slate, Johann Hari concludes his little book review/psychoanalytic biography of Rand with this eminently reasonable assessment:

Rand was broken by the Bolsheviks as a girl, and she never left their bootprint behind. She believed her philosophy was Bolshevism's opposite, when in reality it was its twin. Both she and the Soviets insisted a small revolutionary elite in possession of absolute rationality must seize power and impose its vision on a malleable, imbecilic mass. The only difference was that Lenin thought the parasites to be stomped on were the rich, while Rand thought they were the poor.
I don't find it hard to understand why this happened to Rand: I feel sympathy for her, even as I know she would have spat it back into my face. What I do find incomprehensible is that there are people—large numbers of people—who see her writing not as psychopathy but as philosophy, and urge us to follow her. Why? What in American culture did she drill into? Unfortunately, neither of these equally thorough, readable books can offer much of an answer to this, the only great question about her.

Now, Rand's followers, on the other hand, diverse nothing but scorn. And, as Ames points out, some very highly placed people--Alan Greenspan, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Batshit Crazyville), Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and God only knows how many ordinary Americans who have nothing like her fucked up childhood to use as an excuse.

Whenever you hear politicians or Tea Baggers dividing up the world between “producers” and “collectivism,” just know that those ideas and words more likely than not are derived from the deranged mind of a serial-killer groupie.

One who died the year before I was born, alone and unloved, from lung cancer. So it goes.

You'd think, in a nation so obsessed with protecting our children, we might do something to protect them from the cackling-mad doctrines of this evil old woman. To say nothing of the fact that her books are downright boring. Even her early novels, like Anthem (which I read in eight grade) show signs of terminal Victor Hugo's disease, a kind of sprawling, preachy romanticism that went out when Dostoyevsky died.

Yet Rand's crap remains popular, and tough economic times are forcing pundits from all corners to blame populism. Yet the essence of her "objective" truth is elitism--the belief that you are superior to everyone and everything around you. And what could be more American than that?

Health Scare #2: We've Already Lost. They've Won

2010-02-24T14:21:00.001-08:00

In the lead-up to tomorrow's health care "summit" (i.e., pointless political show-pony piece), the quixotically-named Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released a wonderful (pdf) list of just how much health care cash each of the participants has received. Ranked from highest to lowest, reading it is an exercise in "Oh...now I understand. That's why John Boehner, Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer have been acting like such god-almighty dicks this past...zombie Jesus, it's been almost a year already. Where does the time go?" Straight down the drain, along with any chance you ever had of affordable health care.

From CREW's website

According to CREW’s study, the five summit invitees who have received the most health care dollars since 2005 are:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who has received over $2.5 million in contributions, $777,113 from the pharmaceutical/health products sector alone;

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has received over $2.2 million, $802,500 of which came from doctors, other medical professionals and their trade associations;

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has received nearly $2 million, $483,750 of which came from the insurance, HMO and health services industries;

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who has received almost $1.9 million, $572,237 of which was contributed by hospitals and nursing homes; and

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who has received over $1.8 million, and like Sen. McConnell, received a large portion of that -- $709,261 -- from health professionals

So. We see the bribery wheel continue its Grand Round. Where she stops, nobody knows, but odds are good it won't be anywhere you (you less-than-filthy rich, politically disconnected, more-or-less completely disenfranchised person, you) would want to go.

And lest any of the ten or so people who actually bother to read these notes (not that I have anything but love for all you wonderful lurkers who come to steal my screen shots from Godzilla the Series) think Our Glorious Leader is somehow, magically above all this, CREW reminds us all that, "Additionally, President Obama received over $18.6 million during his presidential campaign."

Since precious few of us will ever see any side of $18 million, I took a quick walk around the internet and found that such a chunk of change is:

the total amount raised by Bono's Product Red campaign for The Global Fund, despite a year's worth of endorsements from every supposedly-conscientious celebrity from Stephen Spielberg to the Mad God, Oprah. (Called a "meager $18 million" by the industry shills at Ad Age...which just goes to show you what world they really live in. Big hint: it ain't ours.)
the amount of stimulus money the AARP received last year for the Senior Community Service Employment Program ("Hello! Welcome to Wal-Mart! Been a nice winter, hasn't it?")
the rumored sale price of the Fire Island Pines resort. And if you don't know what that is, congratulations: whatever doubts, masturbatory fantasies, or drunken, back-seat-of-a-car "experiments" you might've had in the past, I hereby declare you straight. Go forth and sin some more.
(and) the amount of money allocated for a upgrade to one (that's one) government website. Which one? Recovery.gov, of course. Because its not really "irony" until you feel that knife twist a bit.

Happy political theater, everyone. How's that "Canadian system" looking?

John Yoo's "Bloodshed of the Two Torture Memos"

2010-02-20T17:19:00.001-08:00

Two Decembers ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney said,

"we don't do torture."

And the authors of the two most-famous Bush-era "torture memos"--the ones advocating "enhanced interrogation techniques" including waterboarding and the forced consumption of Brittany Spear's albums--were just cleared of any and all misconduct by an internal Justice Department review. So we must not "do torture."

And yet, on February 14th, Cheney brazenly admitted "I was a big supporter of waterboarding."

So just so we're clear, here...

You're the Office of Legal Council to the President of the United States. The Vice President's office sends word down that we're fightin' a new type of war and all, and maybe that ol', moth-eaten Geneva Convention really don't apply to the people we catch up in this war. Maybe we just need to, oh, I don't know...start letting the CIA kidnap people, throw them in some hole in the ground somewhere...like Morocco...or Cuba...and start torturing them, ya know? The Vice President's representative asks you to whip up a way this might be accomplished. What do you do?

Do you:

(a) Politely thank the Vice President's representative (probably his lawyer, David Attington), show him out the door, immediately grab the phone, call the President, and inform him his Number Two is a raving mad asshole who wants to undermine that greatest of great myths of ours: the rule of law, warping the character of this great nation into a grinning, horrible, schizophrenic parody of itself. Or do you

(b) Inform the Vice President's man that you'll do everything in your power to see that such a policy conforms to the laws of the United States, as proscribed by the Constitution and determined by the courts, or

(c) Inform the Vice President's man you'll be sure to write a memo equally sure to abandon "fundamental practices of principled and balanced legal interpretation,” fail "to cite highly relevant precedent, regulations, and even constitutional provisions," and misuse "sources upon which it does rely," conveniently ignoring everything else in a hard-line, insane drive to vest the Executive Branch of this country with unrivaled power. After all, we're at war. No time to be liberal pantywaist and wring our hands over "the laws". It's time to go all Howard Roark on these Camel Jockey assholes. Tell you what, screw writing up a legal case. You've decided to join up with the U.S. Marines right now, because that'll be the shortest distance between you and you ventilating terrorist scumbags.

Or do you

(d) Call a meeting with other senior lawyers from the Attorney General’s office, the White House counsel’s office, the Departments of State and Defense, and the National Security Council regarding whether the Geneva Convention applied to members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Inform the Vice President's man that, at these meetings, you and your lawyer pals will do everything in your power to draft a memo sure to abandon "fundamental practices of principled and balanced legal interpretation,” fail "to cite highly relevant precedent, regulations, and even constitutional provisions," and misuse "sources upon which it does rely," conveniently ignoring everything in a hard-line, insane drive to vest the Executive Branch of this country with unrivaled power.

(These quotes come from a 2007 critique of John Yoo's torture memo written by Dawn Johnson, currently head of the OLC under Our (new) Glorious Leader, President Obama--so suck on it, Johnny.)

Said memos will be sure to justify the Vice President's stated wishes, producing documents the President, Vice President, SecDef and Attorney General will spend the next eight years (Yoo wrote the torture memos back in 2002) hiding behind. Remember when Bush and Dick used to go on and on, when they were all, like, "Nope, we good. It's all legal. We've got these memos from the OLC, and they say it's fine. Foggedaboutit, not problem. Stop trying to coddle the terrorists and grow your balls back, you liberal pantywaist." Weren't those great times?

And it'll be okay. Really. No one will ever hold you accountable for providing a legal cover to the Bush Administration's obviously-adamant wish to torture people. You can even write a book all about it and no one will even bat and eyelash.

Let's be clear: Dick Cheney's valentine this year? Waterboarding. Fuck Liz and the kids, right? Sick fetishist is all about strapping men down to tables, putting washcloths over their mouths, and dribbling two-gallon milk jugs full of water onto them until their gag reflex makes them puke, or pass out, or both. Former Vice President Dick is a self-described "fan" of this. A "big" one. Sweet bleeding Jesus.

But wait: it gets worse. Lawyers for a Tunisan Gitmo prisoner, Rafiq Alhami, have just filed a lawsuit alleging that CIA kidnapper-spooks were torturing people as far back as December, 2001

In his lawsuit, Alhami stated, as the Associated Press described it, that, from December 2001, he was held in three CIA “dark sites,” where “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and where, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.” He also stated that his interrogators “sprayed pepper spray on his hemorroids, causing extreme pain.”

[...]

Moreover, although the OLC memos dealt specifically with a “high-value detainee” program that began with the capture of Abu Zubaydah on March 28, 2002, it’s also clear that the administration began working out how to deal with prisoners outside of existing legal frameworks within days of the 9/11 attacks. Most of this centered, at the time, on expanding the program of “extraordinary rendition” developed by the CIA under Bill Clinton in order to deliver “terror suspects” to third countries, where they could be interrogated by proxy torturers or even “disappeared.”

This in itself was enormously worrying, of course. The Clinton-era program occupied a horribly gray area, in which “terror suspects” — mostly Egyptians — were seized by the CIA and rendered to the custody of the Egyptian government, which was then free to kill them, torture them or imprison them after show trials, but it was at least a carefully controlled program, involving 13 prisoners between 1995 and 2000, according to research undertaken last year by Peter Bergen for Mother Jones, and a detailed paper trail that required the existence of a sentence by a court, even one handed down in absentia by a government with a disturbing human rights record.

After 9/11, however, all these restraints were abandoned. Within 12 days of the attacks on New York and Washington, a Yemeni named Jamal Mar’i, who worked for a Saudi charity in Pakistan, was kidnapped from his house in Karachi and rendered to Jordan, one of several countries with whom the Bush administration had swiftly established arrangements involving “extraordinary rendition” and torture. In the ten months that followed, before the OLC issued its indefensible opinions, at least 25 more prisoners were rendered to torture in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Syria, and we now know, from one of three more OLC memos released two weeks ago — written in May 2005 by Steven G. Bradbury, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and revisiting the OLC’s August 2002 torture opinions — that, after the CIA brought torture in-house in August 2002, 94 prisoners in total were held in secret CIA custody.

The fact I can even cut and paste these words without my head exploding, gumming up the keyboard with fragments of skull and brain goo, just goes to show you how far down the moral-evolutionary ladder eight years of Dick Cheney has really pulled us. Congratulations to us as a nation and as a culture: we've re-branded torture and once again made it cool by embracing it in absentia, through our "elected leaders." Great job all around.

Maybe next we can bring poisoning wells with dead bodies back to good. Quick, someone think up a name for that that won't scare people when they hear it on the six o'clock news. Something boring and bland, like the rest of American politics..."enhanced...water treatment techniques"?

Obviously, the correct answer to the above is (d), since torture memo authors John Yoo and Jay Bybee were ruled "not guilty" of professional misconduct. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility did what the government does best and issued a report about it on Friday. Remember when your kid told you about that flunked Math test on the trip home from Six Flags? Well, the DOJ just pulled one of those one us. With Congress out until Monday (thanks, President's Day) and nobody important watching TV Friday night, they knew they could get away with giving Johnny and Jay a cute little smack on the wrist. Bad, bad boys, you two; letting that mean-old Mr. Cheney talk you into writing things. That gets you in trub-ble!

This sends a clear and concise message to conscientious men and women within the American government, and, indeed, all free governments of the world: suck-up, brown-nose, and bend over backward to please your powerful superiors. Not only will this allow you to twist and mutilate the law, but if your superiors are evil enough, you'll even get to twist some human beings along with it.

Christ sake, these two won't even be disbarred. Bybee will go right back to his day job as a federal judge (of all things), while John Yoo gets right back to the business of molding young minds at...Berkeley...of all the goddamnedest places in the Universe. Yoo, at least, has out-and-proud admitted he fixed the law to justify his "client's" (the Administration's) wishes. In the middle of bitching about Obama's decision to close Guantanamo Bay (and, one year out, what the hell's going on with that anyway?) Yoo even let slip the fact "President" Bush himself personally authorized waterboarding "three times in the years after 9/11."

(Sidenote: you know the Spirit of the 60s is well and truly dead when the man who literally wrote the book [and, first, the memo] on American torture programs can remain in his job at UC Berkeley with, apparently, no loss of life, limb, or property. God, the political Left in this country really is a coalition of toothless, bourgeois hypocritical fucks. He's authorized waterboarding for goddsake. C'mon Berkeley radicals: the least you could do is trash the man's office.)

Obviously, at this point, no one in the Obama Administration is the least bit interested in investigating the crimes of their predecessors. Why should they be? President Clinton was equally obliged to let the previous Bush Administration get off scott-free. It's not as if moral, ethical, or even legal concerns are foremost in Our Glorious Leader's mind. You noticed all this "extraordinary rendition" bullshit (when FARC does it it's just called "kidnapping" but I guess American "doesn't do that" either) started under Bill Clinton, didn't you? Good ol' Slick Willy sure stabbed us in the back on that one. The point is, all this is bigger than one evil, little man...or one evil, god-all-mighty-stupid presidential administration.

Let's be clear: U.S. torture policies grow out of fundamental assumptions of U.S. foreign policy. Foremost is the assumption that we, as the U.S., have the power to do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it. And get away with it. Until we get over that little canard, there's not a damn thing voting for your favorite corporate puppet is going to do about all this.

Just FYI.
(Within the Empire is supported in part by a grant from Dick Cheney Foundation: doing what Dick Cheney says, before he shoots us in the face. And by the annual financial support of Dick Cheneys like you. Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go fuck yourself right up the butt.)

"take my pound of flesh and sleep well"

2010-02-18T15:41:00.000-08:00

Around nine o'clock this morning, central standard time, a man named Joseph Stack set his house on fire, stole a Piper Cherokee from a nearby Georgetown, Texas airfield, and crashed the plane into an Austin office building, the Echelon I.

Echelon I is home to both the FBI and IRS field offices. Two people are in hospital. One is currently missing. Joe Stack is, rather obviously, dead, and already he's been christened the new Grey Champion of his age. Or the new Osama bin Laden.

Whichever way you lean, copies of Stack's suicide note/exegesis are now available in a variety of places, for the informing of your opinion. Titled "Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well," it paints the portrait of man driven out of his mind by fifty-four years of good ol' American hypocrisy. Signed, "Joseph Stack 1956-2010. 2/18/10," it shows deliberation, for all its short comings of coherent rhetoric (which its author freely admits). At once autobiographical and firmly political, Stack's note is scathing indictment of American political culture, sure to be swept under the rug at the first convenient opportunity.

In his note, Stack narrates of a life of repeated failure, with IRS bureaucrats, repeatedly cheating him out of his retirement savings. He rails against government bailouts of big business (GM, the airlines, the drug and insurance companies who grow fatter by the day thanks to "the joke we call the American health system") and big business' corruption of government ("there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say"), tacking right off the deep end of America's political spectrum with a new, violent populism, which is really as old as this continent. He justifies his heinous actions (which we at Within the Empire would never in any way condone, defend or advocate) by concluding

"I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along."

In other words, watch out, America. Your citizens are growing desperate, dangerous, and crazy. Not that we've ever been otherwise. But under certain strained circumstances, we have historically been moved to act on our national inclinations.

Personally, I'm putting everything I've got into canned food and shotguns.

Memo from the Climate Scientists: We're All Screwing Ourselves

2010-02-17T12:49:00.000-08:00

Via Climate Progress, "a project of the Center For American Progress Action Fund," overseen by Dr. Joseph Romm (author of Hell and High Water) comes a chart n' graph-laden Illustrated Guide to the Latest Climate Science everyone interested in facts should at least glance at sideways before opening their mouths.

The gist? We're screwing ourselves as a nation, as a species, and doing it faster and more thoroughly than even the most pessimistic number crunchers ever though possible. But with all that snow on the ground, don't try to tell anyone about global warming. No. Obviously God Himself has answered those effete, elitist scientists with a triple handful of "treacherous," continent-ravaging storms. That's what we get for letting evil secularists study problems without their partisan blinders firmly stapled into place, and issue uncensored reports.

My dentist paused in the act of torturing my teeth to reveal his own ignorance. "Well," he said, glancing out the window at dead, Midwestern grass, "the climate's changing all the time."

Sure, Doc. But that's not the point. It's changing faster and more radically because of what we do. We, the collective entity known as "the human race" are senselessly murdering our biosphere thanks to a combination of ignorance, willful-stupidity, gross incompetence and greed. Blithely labeling this problem "Global Warming" or (as it was re-christened under Bush) "Global Climate Change," is itself a symptom of our wider, cultural myopia and unwillingness to confront the problems we create for ourselves.

Personally, I told my dentist, I like to cut through all the bullshit and lies and just call the problem what it is: the Apocalypse. Or, at the very least, an Apocalypse. As Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel spent years trying to teach us, there's always another Apocalypse around the corner. Only the concerted efforts of those fighting the "good" fight prevent them from destroying us hundreds of times over.

My problem with Dr. Romm? He (and thus, his organization) have fallen into a trap. By critiquing the Bush-era's Apocalyptic policies, decrying the "politicization" of a global crisis (as if global crisis' occur in the Ideal universe of Plato's Eternal Forms, far removed from politics) he, his organization, and the PAC that funds it, have all fallen into the very trap they hoped to set at Dubya's feet. They have politicized themselves by entering the arena of America politics. And bloodier, more unforgiving stage you will not find this side of Restoration-era England. They have ceded the high ground, because the American System (to use Henry Clay's term) as its currently constituted, requires them to get down in the mud, with paleolithic assholes, like the Republican Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell. Who, in his ~~White Presidential Power rally~~ response to Our Glorious Leader's State of the Union Address, brazenly declared (in a nod to Dominionist voters across the Old Dominion and throughout the national TV audience):

We are blessed here in America with vast natural resources, and we must use them all.

Because obviously, if we don't, the terrorists will win.

This Apocalypse is not insolvable. The simple fact is, the vicious plutocrats who control the ruling institutions of American (and, to a large extent, global) society do not care. They don't give a high, holy fuck about you, me, the plant, or anything on it unless they can turn a profit by converting whatever-it-is (you, me, our homes, our fellow citizen's lives) into a market derivative. Forget the politicians, as Saint Carlin said,

"Politicians are put there to give you the illusion you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long-since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, the City Halls, they've got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control all the news and information you hear. They got'cha by the balls. They spent billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well we know what they want: they want more for themselves and less for everybody else...They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking...You know what they want? They want obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it..."

So what are you doing reading this? Time to climb into your S-Fuck-UV, sit in traffic for an hour, making sure to kill your quota of polar bears, show up five minutes late to your designated cube and waste another ten minutes getting a multisyllabic reaming from your asshole boss, who's surely in the same sinking boat as you, as all of us, are. But may all the gods lend you aid in getting him to recognize that fact. After all, "The climate's changing all the time." Nothing wrong here. Go back to sleep.

In Honor of President's Day

2010-02-17T01:57:00.001-08:00

we offer this critique of the Obama Administration by special guest columnist Friedrich Nietzsche:

Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods` gift to man, on the outside a beautiful, enticing gift, called the "lucky jar." Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that that jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good--it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man`s torment.

--Human, All Too Human (1878) #71
(Photo by Photo by Pete Souza, whitehouse.gov)

The Empire's Collapse Continues Unabated (2009 In Review)

2010-01-25T22:55:00.001-08:00

The Supreme Court finally came off the bench today (pun most certainly intended), firing yet another salvo in the all-but-officially-declared Class War the United States' corporate masters have spent decades waging against we mere mortals.

The decades-old system of rules that govern the financing of the nation's political campaigns was partially upended by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued just ahead of the pivotal 2010 midterm congressional election season.

Thursday's landmark decision, approved by a 5-4 margin, could unleash a torrent of corporate and union cash into the political realm and transform how campaigns for president and Congress are fought in the coming years.

[...]

The new ruling blurs the lines between corporate and individual contributions in political campaigns. It also strikes down part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that banned unions and corporations from paying for political ads in the waning days of campaigns.

Even before the court's decision, national political campaigns had been growing increasingly expensive. Watchdog groups worry that by removing limits on expenditures by corporations that are not coordinated with candidates' campaigns, the court will boost the role of special interests in politics.

That last sentence is the kind of “no shit, Sherlock” reporting you can only find on NPR, a paragon of mainstream media tedium. Nevertheless, the implications of this ruling are so blatantly obvious even Nina Totenberg felt compelled to admit, “[The ruling] will undoubtedly help Republican candidates since corporations have generally supported Republican candidates more.”

Occasional liberal hero Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) seems to be the only member of “our” Congress capable of seeing the implications of all this through the fog of lobbyist cash:

"If we do nothing then I think you can kiss your country goodbye," Grayson told Raw Story in an interview just hours after the decision was announced.

"You won't have any more senators from Kansas or Oregon, you'll have senators from Cheekies and Exxon. Maybe we'll have to wear corporate logos like Nascar drivers."

Grayson said the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling -- which removes decades of campaign spending limits on corporations -- "opens the floodgates for the purchases and sale of the law."

Nice words, and Grayson at least has the courage to do what his position allows: In the lead-up to this decision, he introduced five bills with wonderful names like the Business Should Mind its Own Business Act, intended to plug the new holes Justice John Robert's court seems intent on burning into our Constitution. Yet Grayson still appears blind to the essential problem of “our” democratic institutions. Within this little Empire of ours, there is no law that can't be overturned by the influx of cold, hard cash.

Add to this the fact that Our Glorious Leader has renominated Ben Bernanke to his apparently-sacrosanct position as head of the Federal Reserve. The merest hint of a delay in his reconfirmation sent the jackals, vultures and vampires of Wall Street into an uncontrolled, three-day orgy mass nappy-soiling, despite the soothing promises of Senate Banking Committee Chairman, former presidential candidate, and all-around toothless, corporate hack, Chris Dodd.

Add to this the fact that, over a month ago, on December 13, Our Glorious Leader's top financial-industry waterboy and former Laura Ingraham date, Larry Summers, won the unofficial Within the Empire Holy Shit Award when said, live, on CNN, that “everyone agrees that the recession is over,” a comment that certainly holds true for the billionaires he's helped enrich throughout his entire career. The rest of us are faced with one, undeniable message from America's ruling class: “Bend over, shut up, and take your medicine, you fuckin' crybabies. Don't act like you don't like it.”

Meanwhile, the lunatic asylum more commonly known as the U.S. Congress has shelved any further discussion of health care reform until former nude model Scott Brown takes Ted Kennedy's old seat in the Upper House, providing him a greater vantage point from which to join his fellow Republicans in their by-now-year-long campaign to demonize President Obama and piss on the non-billionaire citizens of this country. Their fear-mongering intransigence, along with the opportunism and stupidity of their Democratic “rivals,” has destroyed any chance at meaningful health care reform, ensuring that, whatever legislation eventually appears on the president's desk, it will include a massive give-away to the insurance industry.

From Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) comes conformation of my worst expectations, among them that,

at the highest levels of the Senate and the White House, there's still no plan, and he doubts whether President Obama will insert himself forcefully into the process.

Of course he won't. Our Glorious Leader has two foreign wars to fight, plus the domestic propaganda war against the paleo-conservatism. Hamstrung by his own post-ideology ideology, he seems incapable of realizing the scope of this last war, perhaps the most important one of his first term. With three years to go, the score is a rather obvious 0-1, and no amount of rousing speeches in Ohio or on television are going to change that, Mr. President.

Mr. Obama's appearance coincided with new state figures showing Ohio's jobless rate climbed last month to 10.9%, from 10.6% in November, nearly a full point higher than the national average. National figures released Thursday showed a jump in the number of Americans who applied for jobless benefits, with claims rising 36,000 to 482,000 last week, the third straight week claims increased. Analysts had expected new claims to slip to 440,000.

I offer these comments with no wonkish solutions to the crisis this country faces. Mass firings of those responsible for our current financial crisis would only a trigger another, for which Our Glorious Leader would, in true “liberal” fashion, fall all over himself to take the blame, even without an opposition ready, willing, and clearly able to foist it all upon him. Despite all the myths surrounding President Obama, he is and always has been a conciliator, a self-conscious shill for the status quo. That is the awful truth at the heart of his non-ideological ideology: a truth that, by its ability to please the robber barons that truly own this country, ensured his election in the first place.

How Obama won over the managers and money movers of this country remains the great untold story of the 2009 campaign. The results of this marriage between the centrist politics and the robber barons are visible on any street in the country not named “Wall.”

Outside the corridors of power, the status quo is quickly becoming unmanageable. Now, from the series of tubes comes word that Our Glorious Leader has agreed to cut his party's throat, announcing a freeze in discretionary spending...except for that which is sure to disappear down the military-industrial complex's black money hole across the Potomac River from his house, otherwise known as the Pentagon.

New Review: Star Trek (2009)

2010-01-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

Around here, we like to start the New Year off right.

I'd feel remiss here if I didn't add that this was the last film my father and I saw together, on December 28, 2009. He (as a Terminator might say) is the man most directly responsible for my three key obsessions: technology, Star Trek and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Absent these three key ingredients I would literally have no friends...Instead, I have the best group of people a misanthropic writer could ask for. Thank you all for everything in these dark times. We are, all of us, under orders to be happy. So sit back, grab a loved one, and enjoy a movie. Though not necessarily this movie.

And once again, Dad, thank you.

Memo from the Obit Desk

2010-01-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

Gary Edward DeMoss passed on to the Gray Havens at 5:15 a.m. on January 6, 2010, one day shy of his sixty-third birthday. He is survived by his big sister, Jenni, big brother Jack, son David and beloved wife, Gene Kay. Per request, he is to be cremated and his ashes scattered where ever the fuck we want. There will be no funeral, but there will be a private party held in his honor as soon as the weather breaks, featuring plenty of margaritas. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be sent to your nearest food bank and/or homeless shelter. Have a few margaritas yourself while your at it, in honor of my father, the hero.

Tariq Ali and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Afghanistan and Pakistan

2009-12-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

Came across a somewhat-dated but nevertheless kickass speech by Tariq Ali today while drinking after class. Since I didn't know either, I quote from Democracy Now, which calls him a "British-Pakistani writer, journalist, and historian, Tariq Ali spoke at Hampshire College on November 17 for the the Twelfth Annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture. The annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture honors the teaching, scholarship, and activism of the late Eqbal Ahmad, who was a longtime Hampshire College professor."

I cast this video into the web because Ali has the wonderful habit of saying things like this:

I'd say the big problem in Pakistan is the grinding poverty; is the lack of education; is the lack of basic health facilities; is the fact that many many villages still do not have electricity. Running water is in short supply. And on top of this you have a corrupt political and military elite—they're equally corrupt—who sit on the country, live in a bubble, send their children to the top schools, send them abroad, and use the English language to maintain their monopoly.

Wonderful.

Why We're Not Leaving Afghanistan

2009-12-02T18:06:00.001-08:00

Our Glorious Leader destroyed the last shred of his already-dubious credibility last night, distorting history for his own already-decided purposes and failing utterly to assuage anyone of anything besides our own, most-cynical suspicions. At best, by dragging out his ninety-day “policy review” before more-or-less submitting to that stuck-up little poindexter of a general, Stanley McChrystal, President Obama has supplied his political opponents with distracting, rhetorical ammunition, endangering (perhaps purposefully) his halfhearted attempts to pass health care “reform” and proving, for all and sundry, that no matter how much he might him and haw, in the end Obama will bend to the prevailing winds of Washington.

Just like all the rest of 'em.

How long, oh Lord, how long? Forever, if at all possible. As the president told last night's class of West Point Cadets:

“If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow. So no, I do not make that decision lightly. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Notice that slick insert at the end. “Afghanistan and Pakistan.” And presumably any other 'stan that might harbor “terrorists” or “Taliban insurgents” or whomever the Bad Guys will be next. If history holds, once the Taliban are “defeated” (presuming they'll ever be), the U.S. will in all likelihood turn on the corrupt, slave-driving warlords who genuinely rule Afghanistan outside of “President” Karzai's Kabul Bubble, our current “allies” in our lop-sided, ghost war against “terrorism.”

It didn't take long for President Obama to lose me. After about two minutes of rhetorically flogging the memory of 9/11 (the defining knee-jerk reaction of every American politician in this blighted age) he reminds the cadets that Congress and NATO give him the cover to continue Bush's First War. “Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy, and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, we sent our troops into Afghanistan.”

Bullshit. If the Bush years have taught us anything, it's that the United States government requires neither domestic unity or international legitimacy. For anything. We do what we want, when we want, at times with all the subtitle tact of the Borg: We say “Comply!” and the nations of the world would do well not to hesitate, not even to ask, “How quickly?”

The fact remains, Afghanistan's Taliban-led government (which was as diverse and factious a group of power-mad assholes as you're like to find) offered to give us bin Laden repeatedly, before and after 9/11, if only we'd offered them some way to save face. The word in Pashtu is aabroh. We know the concept as "an out." Assume you've got a guest in your house. Your guest contracts nineteen guys from the surrounding neighborhood to go over to someone else's neighborhood and fuck some shit up. Representatives from that neighborhood demand you hand your guest over, but how can you do that in public and still save face with the rest of your neighbors?

As Bush's cadre of power-mad assholes rushed through the halls of NATO and the UN, State Department officials and (one can only assume) CIA back-channelers scrambled to arrange some kind of deal with the Taliban, presumably to head off the war. “We were not serious about the whole thing, not only [the Bush] administration but the previous one," Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California, told the Washington Post in 2001. “We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities.”

President Obama conveniently forgot to mention that the sticking point, at the time, seems to have been the State Department's insistence that bin Laden face trail in U.S. courts, a novel idea that went by the wayside pretty damn fast once the bombs began to fall and the CIA Black Sites began to rise up. The seriousness of either side in these negotiations remains an open question, as it probably will far into the future. But there's a wonderful quote in that same WAPO article, straight from the first “war president's” mouth:

“We know he's guilty. Turn him over,” Bush said.

Let's stop right there a moment and invert things. Imagine if some crazed, fundamentalist Christian-American, or some radically Ayn Randian, freemarketeer decided to bomb...oh, I don't know...lets just say the Blue Mosque. Imagine if the Taliban demanded then-Glorious Leader George Bush hand over said “terrorist,” that he might face the “justice” of Afghanistan's Sharia-soaked court system. Now imagine if Mullah Omar (remember him?) went on television and answered our requests that Afghanistan provide evidence linking our hypothetical Randian to his alleged crime by declaring, “We know he's guilty. Turn him over.”

And what, gentle citizen of the Empire, do you think the United States would say to that?

Apparently, sometime in February, 1999

...Taliban security forces took bin Laden from his Kandahar compound and spirited him away to a remote site, according to media reports at the time. They also seized his satellite communications and barred him from contact with the media.

Publicly, the Taliban said they no longer knew where he was. [Former Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. ] Inderfurth now says the United States interpreted such statements “as an effort to evade their responsibility to turn him over.”

Others, however, say the cryptic statements should have been interpreted differently. [Former CIA station chief and footsoldier in the 1980's jihad against the Soviets, Milton] Bearden, for example, believes the Taliban more than once set up bin Laden for capture by the United States and communicated its intent by saying he was lost.

“Every time the Afghans said, 'He's lost again,' they are saying something. They are saying, 'He's no longer under our protection,'” Bearden said. “They thought they were signaling us subtly, and we don't do signals.”

We certainly don't do “subtle”.

The Thirty thousand more troops Our current-Glorious Leader plans to pour down the dank, awful hole that Afghanistan has become (on top of the forty thousand he committed back in March) are not a subtle tool. Neither is General McChrystal's plan to bribe the country's various factions into not shooting each other (as we've done in Iraq). It might work—so long as we continue paying the bribes. But what happens when we stop paying the bribes? Iran, 1979, anyone? In the meantime, this policy will leave us with a cadre of unreliable, insecure, drug-dealing warloards for allies.

And all of the above reminiscences might be immaterial anyway. Former Pakistani Foreign Minister Niaz Naik told the BBC in October, 2001, that “senior American officials” told him “in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.”

Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.

He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.

And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban [sic].

We have no real reason to believe Mr. Naik out of hand. After all, he's only accusing the Bush Administration of having a secret plan to start a war everyone now claims was foisted upon us by September Eleventh. Even Our (current) Glorious Leader repeated this last night.

“Now let me be clear:” President Obama said. “None of this will be easy.” Thus, on top of his Nobel Prize, Our Glorious Leader earns 2009's No Shit Awards Grand Prize for Speechifying. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will be an enduring test of our free society and our leadership in the world.”

I agree with that last sentence completely. These are dangerous times, and they will expose the true, beating, bleeding heart of this country. There's no need to assume we'll find anything as prosaic as the president describes in there, once we crack the country's ribs. Examining such a rarefied organ will require time we may no longer have. Iran may get the bomb. Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel already have it, and God knows who else is keeping it on the down low. Antarctica is melting, and nobody cares because no one can find out how to make money from the problem. Unemployment hits 10 percent and what new jobs program does our Commander in Chief roll out?

Say, do you like long hours, low pay, and freezing your ass off in the mountains of a country you couldn't even pronounce eight years ago? Discover a strength like no other, and a country so weird Alexander the Great took one look at it and said, “Fuck...”

“After 18 months,” President Obama continued, “our troops will begin to come home.” Ri-ight. “These are the resources that we need to cease the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.” Until, that is, our publicly announced troop increase causes the ranks of foreign fighters crawling across the 'stans to swell like a cake-addict's boobs. Iraq, 2004? Anybody? How about Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Soviets tried sinking a hundred thousand plus soldiers into that deeper well?

None of this enters into the calculation of our Empire's ruling class. We've known since October that leaving was “not an option” in Afghanistan. We had that right from the horse's mouth...and Robert Gibbs is no broke-down old mule: he's the Administration's designated show pony. As with health care, the real solution to the “problem” of Afghanistan was removed from consideration before we even began. This allowed President Obama to invite a bunch of people over to the White House and emerge three months later to claim what he considers his great “victory”: a “bipartisan” consensus.

The fact is, such a thing exists. In our president's mind, we can never really leave Afghanistan. As soon as we do, what stops the Russians or the Chinese from rolling right over all those poor little Pishtu tribes people? Genghis Kahn tried that too and it worked out great, let me tell ya. I say God's speed to the Russians and the Chinese if they want to waste blood and treasure in those mountains.

But nobody asked me. My opinion is not considered in the debate.

“I am painfully clear that this is politically unpopular,” Obama told a small group of columnists [including the assume-liberal David Ignatius, from who's column this comes] “Not only is this not popular, but it's least popular in my own party. But that's not how I make decisions.”

So congratulations, Teabaggers, for being right for all the wrong reasons. Our Glorious Leader has just admitted, in public, that we do not live in a democracy. Go forth a shop, plebs. Christmas is here. Rose Bowl's coming up, with the Super Bowl afterward, and really, and who really cares about Afghanistan anyway? As Denis Maloney, one of six pro-war protestors who gathered across the street from the two hundred fifty-strong anti-war candle light vigil, said,

“If you consider the fact that that area of the world produced people who killed 3,000 Americans in America, maybe it's about time we went over there and stomped them out.”

God, I love my country.

The Full Speech:

Science and the Occult: A Weird History: Part I

2009-11-23T09:11:00.001-08:00

Over the last four hundred years, science and the occult have enjoyed a strange, complex relationship. Partisans for both sides would have us believe that relationship ended in a bitter, drawn-out divorce, sometime in the nineteenth century. This is an illusion. As is so often the case, the reality is much more complex than that.

To understand why, we must begin at the beginning of modern science, with Issac Newton, despite the fact that this beginning is entirely arbitrary. Human beings have consulted occult forces in the course of their daily lives for the whole of recorded history. Over the millennia, certain thinkers have rebelled against this trend, claiming that human beings were quite capable of understanding the world just by observing it. One such thinker was Newton.

Born the year Galileo died, in 1643, Newton grew up to dream of reuniting religion and what we now call science. He hoped to reconcile the animosity each system of thought had developed for the other over the previous four hundred years. He offered up his “laws” of motion as quantifiable proof, not only of a mechanical, explicable universe, but a universe ruled by an immanent God.

"Gravity explains the motions of the planets," Newton said, "but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done." In writing his Principia, he said, "I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity"

Note the choice of words: this was not the god of some church, be it Catholic, Anglican, or Orthodox. This was not the God of Abraham and Issac and Jacob, but an imminently reasonable God, who created a rational universe out of rational bits and pieces that any rational man can pick up, look at, and understand.

Newton implied that, thanks to our God-given five senses and that all-important, divine gift, reason—separating us from animals—man can know the mind of God. (Women, who obviously lacked reason, would have to wait another few hundred years for that.) The mind of God is, in fact, right there, in that falling apple, and in the undeniable fact that there are rational, mathematical rules governing the way apples fall. All you have to do is invent the mathematics to prove it.

For Newton, the objective of science was not, as Descartes said, to control the world, so much as to describe it. Newton sat in wonder at the ingenuity of a God who could create a being smart enough to sit in wonder of His ingenuity. Writing more on the Bible than what we would call science and what he called “natural philosophy,” Newton studied Scripture for secret codes and hidden messages all his life. This concerned him more than esoteric questions like true the nature of gravity.

It could be, he said, that gravity is an expression of God's eternal love, pervading the universe with the perfect will of the Divine, which obviously seeks itself out. At its core, Newton's physics was an esoteric Christian's retelling of Aristotle's: the apple wants to fall, not because it has an independent nature, but because the independent nature of an imminent God willed it to fall. And fall just so, invariably. Divine intervention was central to Newton's universe.

The image of “God the watchmaker” is not his. It comes from a joke made by one of his detractors, a fellow called Gottfried Leibniz, who, in a letter to a friend, remarked, “God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."

Leibnitz was a German philosopher and mathematician, one of Newton's contemporaries. We use his integral sign every day, if we use calculus, along with his differential notation. He said he came up with calculus in 1674, and published an example in 1684, beating Newton's Principia to press by three years. There's a little bit of calculus in the Principia, but it's not the point of the book, and Newton didn't publish a notation system until 1696, despite claiming he came up with the idea in 1666. Now we have artifacts to prove that...but for some strange reason they didn't come to light until after Newton's death. The feud between Newton and Leibnitz, carried out almost entirely through a series of letters written by their friends, has become one of the great controversies of early-modern science. Today, that feud's role in how Newtonian science would come to be understood by politicians, scientists, and the general public is barely discussed.

The God of Newton's understanding still cared about the world enough to permeate it with His essential love. Thanks to Leibnitz's joke, all that changed. Newton's disciples looked at Liebnitz's theological diss (a comment on the level with, “Your God is stupid he can't even come up with a self-winding watch.”) and thought, You know...that's a good point.

After all, if God is so obviously powerful and perfect (he created man, and gave us our five senses and our reason) then why couldn't God create a perfect universe—a universe in perpetual motion? A clock that needs no craftsman. We puny humans started making things like that in the 1500s, when Galileo caught sight of a swinging candelabra and got the idea of using weighted pendulums. To the English Enlightenment philosophers, it seemed absurd that God could not have beaten Galileo to that idea by eons.

John Locke's God, the consummate watchmaker, was thereafter re-imagined as the ultimate rational designer. No longer immanent, Locke's God became transcendent, the system He created just so damn perfect He can walk away from it with no problem at all. Almost as if it were an experiment. Or a mathematical formula so brilliant it eventually solves itself. Because for all his religious beliefs, Newton's laws were ultimately mathematical equations. You could plug them in and let them do all the hard work for you.

Maybe not all of it—there was some problem with the orbits of the planets not quite agreeing with Newton's calculations, and all these stupid peasants kept insisting they'd seen rocks fall out of the sky or some such nonsense. But thank God for those irregularities. Without them, what Newton's contemporaries called “natural philosophy” and what we now call “science” would've died in infancy for lack of work. The way it stood after Newton's death, natural philosophers could hold up new breakthroughs in their calculations as further proof that the universe was harmonious, lawful, and (most importantly) self-contained. When you have a rational universe created by a rational god and operating on rational principals, there's no need for divine intervention. No need for a Heaven or Hell either, since both are unobservable. Falling outside the spectrum of our five senses and reason, theological questions thus fell outside the realm of natural philosophy.

Newton's most radical disciples (particularly in France) even began to toy with the idea that nothing existed outside the physical universe at all. There was quite enough stuff inside of it to deal with, thank you. And nothing within the universe could exist save through the agency of Newton's laws. Even if something outside the universe did exist, it would have no effect on the physical world, since there is nothing in the world that operates contrary to Newton's laws.

John Locke applied these ideas to politics. Without an imminent God, the Divine Right of Kings is meaningless. Men are born free, and it's up to each and every man (again, women would have to wait a few hundred years) to form a society, and run it as best they could. More importantly, it's up to each and every man-jack of us to consent to such a society, since rulers derive the only real power they have, not from God, but from the consent of those they rule. The Revolutions—from the Glorious one in 1688 to the Latin American ones of the early 19th century—were, in one sense or another, practical applications of these ideas, each experiencing various degrees of success.

If one could apply Newton's idea to human society, why not go further and apply them to human beings as well? In 1766, a German doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna did just that. He called his dissertation De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum (The influence of the planets on the human body), and in it he figured, since every body in nature submitted itself to Newton's laws, then the human body must do so as well. It must be some sort of machine, influenced by the gravitational forces of the planets. Since any doctoral student at the time knew the human body as a collection of various fluids, and Newton showed how the moon influences the fluids of the earth, maybe the moon, sun, and the other stars influenced the tides of the human body, causing all kinds of apparently a-causal diseases. Diseases that might be treatable if only we knew which planets influenced what tides. A little math, our doctoral candidate suggested, might save a lot of lives, or at least make a lot of deaths less painful. And isn't that what doctors should be doing? “First, do no harm,” after all.

Since this was cutting-edge stuff in mid-eighteenth century Vienna, our candidate got his doctorate and became Franz Anton Mesmer, M.D. Though he never comes out and says it, he may have borrowed his idea from one of Newton's friends, a Doctor Richard Mead, who wrote De Imperio Solis ac Lunae in Corpora humana, & Morbis inde oriundis (On the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon Human Bodies and the Diseases Arising Therefrom) way back in 1704. Closer to Mesmer's own time we find the sensationalist 1748 book L'homme Machine, by the French physician Julien Offray de La Mettrie. L'homme Machine was a reaction to Cartesian mind-body dualism, and La Mettrie the first thinker (that we know of) to explicitly invoke the image of man-as-a-machine, denying the very existence of the soul. He said a rough battle with fever gave him the idea. When he regained consciousness, La Mettrie reckoned that the conscious experience was nothing more than the product of a chemical balance (or imbalance) in his brain. No soul required. It really was as simple as that.

Popular outrage (by which I mean, outrage among the conservative, Catholic upper crust of eighteenth century France) at this materialist philosophy (even Enlightenment figures like Voltaire and Baron D'Holbach covered their mouths with lacy handkerchiefs in shock: “Man-as-machine, indeed! Hurrumph!”) forced La Mettrie to flee the country, because that's just how France worked in those days. He became court reader for King Fredrick the Great of Prussia and (not coincidentally) had his work translated into German for any curious Viennese medical students to pick up and read.

Almost seventy years later, Dr. Mesmer set out to influence his patient's “tides,” to induce “artificial tides” by having patients drink a solution of iron and attaching magnets to their bodies. Patients reported feeling streams of fluid move through them, providing hours of relaxation. Then, one day, Mesmer tried it without the magnets, only passing his hands over a patient. The effects remained constant. Mesmer had a eureka moment and declared that he'd discovered “animal magnetism.”

For three years he tried it out in Vienna. He'd sit across from a patient, their knees touching, gaze deeply into their eyes, and make passes over them with his hands. It was so weird someone had to invent a new verb to describe it. The man “mesmerized” you, and when he did, you experienced peculiar sensations. Or you went into convulsions. Either way, it was fine. Mesmer figured that blockages of the body's tides caused disease. Clearing the blockage with a little animal magnetism, rather than waiting around for the natural motions of the planets to do so, produced a sudden “crisis”. This was a sign of the healing process kicking into action, soon to be followed by a resolution, and the succession of all complaints.

Then, in 1777, Mesmer failed to cure a cute little blind girl—a musician named Maria Theresa von Paradis. Maria just so happened to be the daughter of the Hapsburg Empire's Imperial Secretary of Commerce. Branded a failure by some very powerful people, Mesmer figured it was as good a time as any to move to France.

He set up shop in Paris, practicing on the sly, since neither the Royal Academy of Sciences, nor the Society of Medicine, would answer his letters. Still, by the end of three years he was so popular he started treating people en masse, “magnetizing” whole bathtubs of fully-clothed ladies, who climbed in and allowed Dr. Mesmer to pass his hands over them. Even better: have patients pass their hands over each other, since animal magnetism was an innate property of the human body. The thighs were, apparently, a particularly sensitive area.

Four years of teaching proteges and establishing clinics in France's major cities was more than enough to draw the attention of King Louis XVI, who offered Mesmer a pension for life if only he'd promise to remain in France and allow a royal commission to verify his claims. Mesmer refused, and King Louis finally directed the Royal Academy of Medicine to look into this impudent Austrian, who'd become the talk of all the salons. Nobles and ministers were getting “mesmerized” left and right, and God only knew what they were doing to each other with their animal magnetism. His Most Catholic Majesty wanted to find out.

The Academy appointed a blue ribbon panel to do just that, made up of leading thinkers of the time. These included the newly-arrived American ambassador Benjamin Franklin, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, and Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who's name you should recognize. They ruled Mesmer a fraud, which meant King Louis did as well, forcing Mesmer back to Austria in 1780. Private benefactors raised three hundred and fifty thousand louis to finance Mesmer's return, and return he did, in triumph, the next year. Mesmer remained in Paris until 1784. Having ben banished from Austria, he settled in the German university town now called Konstanz, to die comfortable and famous in 1815. So famous he even turned down an invitation from the King of Prussia to build a school in Berlin. But his ideas lived on.

The King 0f Prussia even sent a doctoral student to learn Mesmer's trade, and Mesmer never seemed to turn down a chance to teach his techniques to others. He encouraged his students to spread the knowledge he'd gained, ensuring European doctors and aristocrats would carry right on mesmerizing patients and volunteers well into the nineteenth century.

Chief among these was Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, the Marquis de Puységur. One day, Puységur tried to magnetize a young peasant named Victor Race by stroking Race's head. Race fell asleep and remained insensate when shaken. Puységur commanded him to stand and was surprised as anyone when Race obeyed, still apparently locked in his trance-like state. It seemed Race would obey any command Puységur shouted to him and have no memory of the experience upon waking from his trance. Puységur called this "spasmotic sleep" or "artificial sleepwalking." Today we know it as "hypnotic induction," though it would take twenty years for anyone to invent the term "hypnosis."

In the meantime, John Locke's England prospered. The Anglican God still held high place and philosophers were fine to have Him. After all, He gave us these gifts of reason and our senses, the better to study His revealed Word and the Nature that made it manifest. He also granted England, through His infinite grace, a monarchy and a church leadership all-too happy to use the new science—a science of Newton and Locke and Sir Francis Bacon and James Watt—to their advantage. A science that would go on to transform Britain from an island of rustic seafarers into a worldwide, industrial Empire, the world's first. A science anyone, if they properly trained their five senses and their reason, could participate in, because Newton and Bacon and Locke had specifically designed it that way.

In this spirit of free and open scientific inquiry, middle-class dilettantes began toying around with any thing they could get their hands on. A few, beginning in the 1780s, grabbed on the hot new thing from France called "mesmerism." Sure, the French Royal Academy said Mesmer was fraud, but what did those effete coffee-drinkers know about Science? Hard-headed Englishmen (and -women) were expected to justify their beliefs through experience, and what better kind of a experience than a scientific one? After all, wasn't that what God expected of us, as proper English citizens? Besides, it's not like the Church or the state had any interested in policing scientific inquiry.

In France, on the other hand, thinking too much could catch you quite a bit of flack from both church and state. Ask La Mettrie. Ask Mesmer. In France, these institutions were so powerful, and so intimately aligned, that they had no need to establish and support a new, separate, scientifically-minded class of intellectuals. Sure, you could invite them to the salons, wind them up with a little Spanish wine and let them blather on about education, or social justice, or natural man, or some other damn thing. All in good fun. But if they got too loud, or too embarrassing, with their calls for natural rights, it was better to throw them into prison, or exile, before things became dangerous.

How much these ideas—the mathematical universe run by the watchmaker God—filtered down through the natural philosophers and the leaders of revolutions to the level of ordinary citizens will never be known. The religious character of the eighteenth century is far more blatant. The old conflicts between reason and faith continued through wars and revolutions that revealed the darker character of the Enlightenment to a very startled world. Like energy and matter, these conflicts are conserved in history, only changing their form as time goes on.

One Frenchman, Denis Diderot, even discarded the idea of a providential God altogether in his 1749 essay Lettre sur les aveugles ("Letter on the Blind"). Published anonymously, it was immediately censored by the authorities, its author arrested and tossed into the dungeon at Vincennes. After three months in prison, Diderot signed an agreement never to publish anything critical of religion ever again. Instead, he spent the next twenty years attempting to collect all human knowledge in his Encyclopedie, causing great controversy - particularly with its evenhanded views on Protestantism, natural rights, and Catholicism. Officially banned by royal decree, it never made its editor rich, or even comfortable. Forced to sell his personal library to pay for his daughter's wedding, Diderot's only real friend in the upper crust seems to have been Catherine the Great, of Russia. When she heard of the reknowned intellectual's fire sale, she bought up the entire library and offered Diderot a yearly salary to keep it safe for her in Paris until such time as she felt the need to read. Diderot used the money to pay for his daughter's dowry.

Thanks to these, and similar life-stories, the French Enlightenment divorced itself from both King and Church. Neither offered it any safe haven, so it threw in (or was dragged in, depending upon whom you ask) with the radicals and revolutionary agitators. England managed to ship most of those over to its colonies—to its eventual chagrin. France implemented exactly the opposite policy, to its eventual downfall. Thus, revolution, and the problem of revolutionaries since time immemorial: now what to do?

If you believe, as John Locke and Voltaire did, that human beings are rational creatures governed by the rational laws of a rational universe—laws that ensure human beings will do everything they can to preserve themselves by maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain—then you erect a rational society without those prideful, backward-looking institutions like the Church or the Monarchy, which only retarded human beings “natural" morality anyway. You reform the calender to do away with all the religious trappings stamped into it. You reform education based on Rousseau's Emile. And you suggest the idea for the guillotine in order to kill all those agents of the old society as humanely as possible. After all, the guillotine was a rational alternative to hanging, or burning, or a man with an ax who's arm often tired after a hard day's work, ensuring he'd need three or four whacks to do a proper job. It also became the symbol of a bloodthirsty, self-destructive regime that eventually transcended everyone's worst expectations and set the pattern for revolutions until well into the twentieth century.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars it triggered convinced Europe's conservative elites that the Enlightenment Project (as it was not yet known) was a morally-bankrupt one, just as they'd always said. It led inexorably to worse tyrannies than any monarch ever imagined. With no God to appeal to, the rational State, and the society it created, assumed His place in the minds, hearts, and mouths of the Revolutionary leaders. Leaders who were, as far as those who lived through their reign were concerned, nothing more than a collection of hypocritical power-seekers who appealed to the State the same way clergymen appealed to God. Because if you know the absolute, mechanical Truth of how the universe works, you can justify all sorts of atrocities. Theocratic dictators from Augustus Cesar to Stalin to Hitler knew this in their bones. So does every leader worth his or her salt today. As one of George Orwell's characters said, over a century after the last head rolled through the streets of Paris, “He who controls the past controls the future; he who controls the present controls the past.” For a time, the Enlightenment controlled France's present, and it would go on to gain control over the entire world, long after Napoleon destroyed the institutions it created.

Fort Hood: Mr. Self-Destruct

2009-11-07T01:30:00.000-08:00

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot
I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

--Popular verse, seventeenth century England.

By now you've all know that poem, and you've all heard of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who staged his own Gunpowder Treason yesterday at the Ft. Hood, Texas, Soldier Readiness Center, killing thirteen and wounding thirty, including the police office who eventually stopped him, Sgt. Kimberly Munley. All but two of the wounded are out of the hospital, according to USA Today. Major Hasan remains in the coma Sgt. Munley put him, attached to a ventilator at the Brook Medical Army Center in San Antonio, according to the Press Trust of India. (Nothing says the Brits once ruled our country like spelling “center” with that extra “e”).

It's difficult to write about one of these things as the reports come in. Our Glorious Leader has already warned us against jumping to conclusions. Mosques everywhere within the Empire are battening down the hatches, fearing reprisals from “mainstream” (no one dare call them “white”) Americans.

The New York Times reports:

When the shooting began, members of three units of Army reservists in the Combat Stress Control Detachments were inside a medical and services center at Fort Hood signing medical forms and getting last-minute vaccinations before they went overseas.

There is no evidence that Major Hasan singled out his fellow combat stress counselors, but an Army official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, said Major Hasan had been scheduled to deploy with the three Reserve units.

Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who owned a restaurant in Roanoke, VA, graduated with honors from Virginia Tech in 1995. He joined the service, got his commission, and received his medical degree from Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, in 2003, just in time to serve his residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He became a psychological counselor for wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, and stayed on until July of this year, when he transferred to Ft. Hood, the largest military base in the world.

Sometime in August, Hasan legally purchased two FN Herstal Tactical Five-seveN pistols from Guns Galore, a self-evidently-named gunshop in Killeen, Texas, the town Ft. Hood supports. FN Herstal's website describes the Five-seveN (which comes “NATO Recommended”) as “Well balanced, with smooth contours and no protruding parts,” needlessly insisting that it “will instinctively be handled correctly and is extremely easy to use.”

All the classic hallmarks of a public murder rampage are present in the absolute deluge of press accounts (15000 in Google News alone). The initial rumors of four, five, six shooters (no doubt all part of a secret Muslim plot to allow President Obama to take away our guns). The (attempted) suicide by cop. The terse statements of local authority figures. The rush to exploit tragedy by national ones. The fetishistization of the victims. The shocked insistence by co-workers, neighbors, family members and community religious leaders that Hasan was a dedicated professional, a quite man who turned to religion for solace after his parent's deaths in 1998 and 2001, attended Friday prayers in uniform, and toured his apartment building days before his rampage giving away personal belongings.

The standard, disingenuous “Why?” is already under debate on comment boards and talking head shows across the media landscape. As NPR noted in their own, alright-but-not-great report, two narratives are emerging: Maj. Hasan-as-crazed-Muslim-extremist and Maj. Hasan-as-crazed-PTSD-psychologist. Lost in the babel is any stable picture of Maj. Hasan-the-dedicated-professional who was “performing quite well” according to Col. Kimberly Kesling, deputy commander of clinical services at Darnall Army Medical Center, Ft. Hood's hospital. At the bottom of a sudden media dogpile, Col. Kesling is already rushing to distance herself from Hasan. “You would hope you never know someone who would have such a demon.”

S. Ward Casscells, a former Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs, came close to asking an impertinent question of USA Today (they being too chicken to ask it themselves):

“You're entitled to ask, was he moved to Fort Hood because he wasn't doing well at Walter Reed and they thought the fresh start would help?' " he said.
“Talking to people who knew him," Casscells said, "no one thinks that this was (post traumatic stress), and they are skeptical that he was subject to religious harassment.”
“That is not tolerated in the military. The military will look at all this closely and decide if there is any mental or physical illness, whether this is just a lonely guy with a remote personality who got a bad officer evaluation report and lost the confidence of his peers, maybe withdrew into religion as solace. What could we have missed? How could we do better?”

Every one seems to be missing the fact that, less than three years ago, Walter Reed was synonymous with bureaucratic inefficiency, crumbling infrastructure, criminally-neglectful mistreatment of patients, and the complicity of top brass in concealing all of the above. Two and half years can seem like a lifetime in America, but thanks to the internet, yesterday becomes today. Or March 1, 2007, as the case may be. That was the day the Washington Post reported:

A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.

Lt. Gen. Kiley resigned from his position as Army Surgeon General eleven days after that story saw print. The day after, March 2, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA's 30th) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to Major General George Weightman, the man who replaced Kiley as Walter Reed's commander (and was himself temporarily replaced by Kiley after being relieved of command on March 1, 2007). In the letter, Waxman informed Gen. Weightman to prepare himself for questions regarding an internal Army memo that fell into the Committee's hands. Written by Walter Reed Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi in September, 2006.

The memo (titled: “Challenges Concerning the Base Operations A-76 Study and resulting Reduction in Force (RIF) at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC)”) details the sad story of life inside Walter Reed from its worker's perspective. “It appears that over the past six years,” Waxman wrote,

the Defense Department has been engaged in a systematic effort to replace federal workers at Walter Reed with private companies for a host of functions, including facilities management, patient care, and even guard post duty entrance. This effort occurred under the A-76 process, which is shorthand for OMB Circular A-76.

The A-76 process was an element of Vice President Gore's reinventing government initiative. The idea behind A-76 is to force federal employees to compete with the private sector for the jobs being performed by the federal employees.

Then Florida happened, and Our (former) Glorious Leader, George W. Bush, ramped A-76 up full blast under the newly-rebranded rubric of “competitive sourcing initiatives,” opening up federal jobs of all stripes to private contractors. Like IAP Worldwide Services.

IAP Worldwide Services is a private company owned by Cerberus Capital Management LP, an asset-management firm (a company that owns other companies) chaired by Bush-era Treasury Secretary John Snow. Former Kellogg Brown and Ruth operating officer Al Neffgen holds the chief executive post and ex-KBR VP Dave Swindle (couldn't make that name up if you tried) holds the company president's chair. IAP would go on to achieve infamy in 2005 for it's bungled, over-priced attempts to deliver ice to Hurricane Katrina victims.

But back to Waxman's story:

In September 2004, the Army determined that the in-house federal workforce at Walter Reed could perform support services at Walter Reed at a lower cost than the bid received from IAP Worldwide Services. IAP protested this determination. As a result of the protest, the Army Audit Agency was directed [by whom? Waxman doesn't say - D] to reevaluate the bid from the federal employees. It has been reported that the Army Audit Agency withdrew its certification of the employee bid and unilaterally raised the bid by $7 million, thereby making the employee bid higher than the contractor bid. The Army then reversed its determination and resolved the A-76 process in favor of IAP.
When the employees sought to appeal this ruling, they were not allowed to make their case. Alan King, the Deputy Garrison Commander at Walter Reed, filed a protest of the contract award with GAO, but under the A-76 rules in place at the time, federal employees had no standing to object to A-76 determinations. Consequently, there was no similar cost review of the IAP bid proposal.

By January, 2006, IAP received a five-year, $120 million contract from Walter Reed, with the transition from in-house to out-sourced scheduled to being in January of '07. That year must've seemed a year of absolute hell as skilled government employees, including “skilled maintenance personnel and workers with specific knowledge of Walter Reed's systems and infrastructure,” left Walter Reed in droves, rather than wait for the inevitable round of lay-offs and replacements. By January, 2007, a trickle of twos and threes – an early retirement here, a change in position there – had become a flood, leaving Walter Reed with one-sixth of its original support staff workforce – maybe 60 people, out of an original 300. IAP fired those sixty and replaced them with fifty of their own people on February 3 when it took over management of the facility, but that was a little more than a panacea. Not even too little, too late. These were Dark Times at Walter Reed, when already-stressed infrastructure crumbled under incompetent new management and someone began to shoot his or her mouth off to the Washington Post about the mold on walls, the roaches, and the injured soldiers pulling self-assigned “guard duty” shifts, chasing away the neighborhood drug dealers working nearby street corners.

And is that a brown-skinned, thirty-something Major in a smock we see, making his rounds through all this chaos? Visiting soldiers no longer physically capable of visiting his office (assuming he still has one): men and women with missing arms, legs and faces living in darkness their own filth because the people who fix the lights and change the bedsheets are AWOL this week. Or this month. Imagine you're a young doctor, hot out of med school, interning at a place with a famous name, and all you want is to help soldiers with minds and bodies ground up by the grist mill of war. It'd be like getting up and going to hell every morning. Reports that Hasan received a bad performance review at Walter Reed (if true) should come as no surprise at all. Could you spend years at Walter Reed listening to soldier's stories? Could you then pick up and move to Texas? How is Texas a “fresh” start?

As Mark Ames has already noted (in a much better article than this one) Ft. Hood is no Disneyland.

For one thing, it holds the record for most soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan — 685 so far — and though we don’t know the figures, it’s reasonable to assume that Fort Hood is responsible for a sizable percentage of the tens or hundreds of thousands killed in those countries since America invaded them. Over the same period, 75 soldiers have committed suicide at Fort Hood, ten in 2009 alone — the highest of any base. In just one weekend in 2005, two soldiers who’d returned from Iraq killed themselves in separate incidents. Last year, in something right out of Full Metal Jacket, Specialist Jody Michael Wirawan, 21, of the 1st Cavalry Division, shot and killed his lieutenant, then killed himself when police arrived. And life in Killeen isn’t much nicer: it has one of the nation’s lowest median incomes and highest crime rates. Earlier this year, a 20-year-old Fort Hood soldier was killed by a Killeen cop who claimed he killed the soldier after being dragged underneath his SUV; the dead soldier’s mother filed a lawsuit claiming that the cop was notoriously out-of-control and violent, and that he shot her son while the car was pulled over.

In 1991, George Hennard Jr. killed twenty-three people at a local diner after driving his pickup through the wall, the deadliest rampage in American history...until Seung-Hui Cho shot up Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007.

Our hearts go with the citizens of Killeen and the families of all the victims. We owe it to them to understand why these things happen, in the hope (infinitesimal as it may seem) of preventing them from ever happening again. Understanding will be impossible as long as we engage in the process of separating victim from villain with a hard, fast line, and tossing epithets like "crazy" and "terrorist" around...as if we all agreed on their meaning. There is a deep malaise eating at the heart of our country, our culture and (I would argue) our civilization itself. Maj. Hasan is neither the first nor the most violent mass murderer of our history. Not even in the year-to-date.

On March 10, Michael Kenneth McLendon, a former police officer (who, like Hasan, "didn't last"), killed his mother, set her house on fire, and cut a bloody swath of mayhem across two south Georgia counties, Coffee and Geneva. Mad Mike killing ten people before turning the gun on himself in the parking lot of Reliable Metal Products, a factory where he'd once worked.

March 24: Convicted felon, Lovelle Mixon kills four Oakland police officers: two with an SKS, two with an AK-47.

April 4: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania resident Richard Poplawski used a bullet-proof vest, a .22 rifle, a semiautomatic pistol and...an AK-47...to hold off the Pittsburgh police for four hours, killing three officers.

April 30: Jiverly Antares Wong (or Voong) killed thirteen people at a Binghamton, New York American Civic Association center before turning the gun on himself (beating out Hasan on the sociopathic scoreboard).

June 10: James Wenneker von Brunn walked into the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington and shoot a security guard.

August 4: George Sodini shoot three women at an LA Fitness in Collier Township, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, before turning the gun on himself.

And, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.

New Review: Diary of the Dead (2007)

2009-10-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

Over at AYTIWS, we honor The Month of the Living Dead with:

Diary of the Dead (2007)

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-analysis (Part IX)

2009-10-23T16:49:00.001-07:00

(Back by popular demand, it's) Episode 10: Bird of Paradise

Inside the sweaty jungles of what the title card tells us is the Yucatan, a red-headed backpacker finds himself face to face with an Aztec pyramid, built into the side of a volcano. “There you are,” he says, as if greeting an old friend. Inside the pyramid, our Dollar Store Indiana Jones discovers a secret passage into the volcano's crater, complete with sacrificial alter and emerald-eyed bird statue. Because pre-Columbian Aztec engineers were just that cool, touching said statue makes the emerald eye glow and sets off a small eruption. A screaming, red shape escapes from the resulting blast of lava and noxious fumes. Cue credits.

Meanwhile, back at H.E.A.T. Headquarters, all's right with the world. Godzilla's eating fish, Dr. Nick's making notes, and Randy continues to labor under the delusion that he's funny. Dr. Elsie Chapman and DGSE Agent Monique Dupre are caught up in that great American pastime: watching television. (Some scientists you all turned to be.) Good thing, too. Otherwise they might never have learned about the, “mysterious wave of destruction sweeping across southern Mexico.”

Enter Dr. Mendel Craven, with a timely phone call for Elsie “from a Lawrence Cohen.” The mere mention of his name is enough to make Elsie put on her constipated face. “He sounds pretty upset. Something about Mexico.”

That “something” amounts to a ruined small town filled with uncommunicative eyewitnesses. Monique quires Elsie on the status of their contact: “I thought your boyfriend was going to meet us?” “Lawrence was never my boyfriend,” Elsie insists. “Just someone I...knew...a long time ago.” Larry (voiced by Tate Donnovan, who played TV's Disney's Hercules for all of one season, the show's entire run) is also an ornithologist. And by “knew...a long time ago,” she meant “almost married.” The team's collective reaction to this is priceless. (Much better the show's Running Gag of the Week, involving Mendel and spicy foot.)

“Someone's work,” Elsie insists, “kept getting in the way.” But why quibble about the past? It's not like there are any other, better ways to flesh out Elsie's character. Off to the pyramid, and its volcanic home, “the resting place of Quetzalcoatl,” Larry informs us, “an ancient symbol of creation. His appearance signaled a bountiful harvest.” (Well...that's kinda right. Like sun gods from Atum to Jesus, the Feathered Serpent represented knowledge, civilizing forces, and the eternal cycle of creation we puny mortals perceive as the phenomenological universe...but who cares about accuracy, right Larry? It's not like you're a scientist or anything.) “No one can describe it. Q usually hides itself in the glare of the sun...I think that when I unsealed the temple, I may have released Quetzalcoatl.”

Indeed you did, Larry. Here it comes now. And you didn't even manage to get a picture of it. With the camera. Around your neck. Instead, you fuck around with the camera while the giant, fire-breathing bird attacks you and the hapless crew you lured into its lair. Frankly, my boy, I'd leave you at the alter, too. And since Randy's discovery of a Quetzalcoatl feather typifies much of what's wrong with this episode we'll only mention it here, with promises to revisit it.

First we deal with Elsie's righteous indignation at her former-fiance...which only lasts as long as the next scene. Turns out Larry's been slaving away at proving a direct evolutionary link between dinosaurs and modern birds. Q could be the culmination of that work, in living color and complete with dragon breath. Ironic, then, that this is the “work” responsible for downing their relationship, especially since it was probably what brought them together in the first place, Elsie being a paleontologist and all.

Well, it turns out all is not for naught. Elsie extends Larry a glance down the microscope by way of a peace offering. Seems the feather Randy found is really a scale, covered with enough silicate for the flying lizard to survive a five hundred year nap in the interior of a volcano. Dr. Nick bursts in at their most perfect moment together, to Elsie's consternation. “We were looking at a...science-thingy,” she stammers. Nick doesn't even blink. Is he enjoy this after all the crap Dr. Chapman's given him over his choice of romantic leads? I know I would be. In any case, clock's ticking. Time to saddle up for the third act. Q's attacking another small town. Its apparent invulnerability to tranquilizers necessitates some on-the-spot chemistry utilizing the venom of some local scorpions—Black Scorpions (har har). Nick warns Monique “We only have enough for one shot.” Because catching any more bugs would just be a chore. “Then,” she says with characteristic, French aplomb, “I will make it count.”

Promises, promises. The situation in town prevents Monique from showing off her markswomanship. Panicked civilians (unlike the Mexican army) are everywhere, forcing Elsie and Dr. Nick to once again become action heroes. Elsie even rescues the stereotypical Stranded Baby from the middle of the road...and, as a reward, gets carried off in Q's super-sized talons, along with a good chunk of local real estate.

Now we've got our third act's Ticking Clock all wound and ready. Any real shows might've cut right to Elsie waking up call and spared us the painful Call to Arms/Expository speech H.E.A.T. stands around and delivers to itself amidst the wreckage. About how all of Q's previous attacks were little more than materials gathering expeditions. About how those materials have gone to form a nest for God-knows-how-many “baby Qs.” And about how Elsie's to become their first breakfast if the rest of the team doesn't move, move, move (as Dr. Nick says—interminably). Hey, I know: let's stand around yaking about it some more. Then Elsie's sure to get eaten alive.

Back to the volcano, where Elsie is indeed being menaced by creepy, big-headed, plucked-chicken versions of Q. Big Mama Q, meanwhile, circles the volcano, making H.E.A.T.'s ascent hell. Desperation forces Nick to call in the team's not-so-secret weapon. Props to Larry for not even blinking when Nick gives the order to, “Signal Godzilla.” That's focus. After all, there's a redhead to save. Who has time to notice that Elsie's boss appears to have a thirty-story, atomic-powered engine of destruction at his beck and call?

Not Larry. While Godzilla and Q duke it out downslope, he rigs up a cable from the shattered bits of N.I.G.E.L. the Doomed Robot. Repelling into Q's nest, he joins Elsie in a frantic but not-too-tense chase scene before being rescued himself by the rest of H.E.A.T. Drawn by the desperate squeeks of her progeny, Q returns to the nest, no doubt eager to roast up the human morsels skittering around its edge. Godzilla, thankfully, has other ideas. Once again displaying the kind of higher-order thinking that would give me pause, were I a Scientist, he not only shoulder-checks Q back into the volcano's crater but proceeds to seal it, and Q, and her featherless babes (who we can assume die in the resulting avalance), up with a blast of his atomic breath. A collective cheer goes up from our human heroes and its time for the coda, wherein Elsie decides, even after all his heroics, that Larry is “still for the birds.”

This episode is a giant in-joke, designed specifically for fools like me, who spent our childhoods so desperate for a giant monster movie fix we watch anything even vaguely resembling a Godzilla movie. The concept, execution, and even the design of Q is a self-conscious throwback to 1982's Q: The Winged Serpent, a forgettable piece of fluff written and directed by (drumroll, please)...Lawrence Cohen. Larry Cohen (whom my colleague, Dr. Freex, characterized as “a Great White Hope” of the 70s and 80s) is a seminal Bad Movie maker, most famous for his Mutant Baby trilogy of It's Alive flicks. He also made the cinematic let-down God Told Me To (though any movie that features Andy Kaufman as a crazed cop can't be all bad), and the much-better, anti-consumer-culture horror flick The Stuff. But it's Q that concerns us here because, for all its low budget weirdness (mimes with guns, anyone?), Cohen's second attempt to discuss religion with the grammar of horror movies sticks in my head much more effectively than his first.

Q starred Richard “Shaft” Roundtree and David “Kwai Chang Caine” Carradine as a pair of cynical NYPD detectives with an unusual rash of disappearances and dismembered bodies on their hands. After about an hour of fruitless investigation, they discover a cult of New Wave Aztecs have made the unusually-stupid mistake of resurrecting the god Quetzalcoatl through sacrifice and prayer. Without so much as a “Thanks, dipshits,” Q proceeded to build a nest in the cone of the Chrysler Building and started thinning out New York's herd of window washers and rooftop sunbathers. The machine guns of the NYPD shuffle it off this mortal coil and (after the obligatory twist ending) the credits rolled. The End.

Unfortunately, only those who know all of the above will get any kind of kick from this episode. Unlike it, the movie Q had enough time on its hands for actual character development. At best, the character of Larry Cohen presented here is little more than a walking in-joke, with no real role to play in the proceedings. We know Dr. Nick can play action hero when he has to, and all Larry does is reduce Nick's opportunities to do so. Larry's presence necessitates that he contribute something to justify his presence and redeem himself for letting Q out in the first place. Too bad Larry never does anything unexpected. The final coda (wherein Larry breaks off a conversation with Elsie to photograph a Peruvian finch) proves that Larry's learned absolutely zilch from the whole experience. I hope the Mexican government gets wind of all this somehow and sues his Wrangler-clad ass into Chapter Eleven for all the collateral damage.

The entire episode suffers from the lack of a punchline. Had Larry proved willing to sacrifice Elsie to the very imminent god-monster he'd just woken up (out of some benighted hope of controlling Q, say, and getting revenge on all those stuffy academics who ridiculed his research)...had the link between gods and monsters, and the frequent trouble humans have telling the difference, actually come under discussion...had Godzilla not been consigned to clean-up detail...I might have more good things to say about Bird of Paradise. As it is, this episode remains another low point for Godzilla's first season. Poorly written by Neil Ruttenberg (writer of such classics as Deathstalker II and Prehysteria III), it's in-jokes are appreciated (“Black Scorpion,” indeed), but they cannot support an episode all by themselves.

Things just go too fast for their own good here. Randy's discovery of the feather is a perfect example. No sooner does he say, "Hey, check this out," then it's time for the first Q attack. Blink, and you'll be mighty confused about just where that feather came from. With twenty-odd minutes of action-packed show to fill, I'm not surprised to see character development thrown overboard. But I am shocked at how much the plot is truncated to make room for itself. There are too many things going on here: Elsie's relationship with Larry; Elsie's relationship with the rest of the team; Dr. Craven's adventures with real-by-God Mexican food; Larry's relationship to H.E.A.T. (which never gets past "cordial")...it goes on.

The point being, this is a treatment, not a script, and there's enough stuff here for half again as much screen time. If only this had been a two-parter. If only Larry had something real to do. Anybody can rescue Elsie. With Monique being French and three other male leads available (all of whom appear in the weekly credit sequence), Larry starts in fifth place and never moves up the pack. The episode suffers because of that, and usual lack of its titular star.

But I've bitched about that often enough. I think Winter of Our Discontent spoiled me mightily. But there'll be plenty of time for that next week, when we go down south. And Freeze.

What Anti-War Movement?

2009-10-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

Via Democracy Now: "It has now been eight years since 9/11. The United States is still engaged in Iraq and is escalating its wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan with no end in site. Speaking at the Bluestockings Bookstore on the Lower East Side in New York, Arun Gupta, a founding Editor of The Indypendent, takes a critical look at the failures and future of the once massive anti-war movement."

It's Official

2009-09-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

You are The Hermit

Prudence, Caution, Deliberation.

Via the MySpace distraction What Tarot Card are You?):

"The Hermit points to all things hidden, such as knowledge and inspiration,hidden enemies. The illumination is from within, and retirement from participation in current events.

The Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. You do not desire to socialize; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. You prefer to take the time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent but these feelings eventually lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity.

The Hermit represents a wise, inspirational person, friend, teacher, therapist. This a person who can shine a light on things that were previously mysterious and confusing."

A significantly more upbeat interpretation than the one on Wikipedia.

The Hermit is related through a cross sum (the sum of the digits) to The Moon. While The Hermit mostly integrates the lessons of the sunlit world, the Moon stands at the threshold of light and dark and churns the waters of life. In both cases, treasures can be uncovered through contemplation of what is brought forth. In both cases, monsters may be found.

Some say that The Hermit is a Threshold Guardian, representing an obstacle the Querent, the hero of the piece, must overcome to move on.

A potentially dangerous aspect of The Hermit is his retreat, his isolation. We all need to retreat sometimes; retreat and renewal are necessary for growth. But The Hermit may be tempted to completely withdraw from the world, not because the journey is done, but because the dragons of the real are too daunting, or because the trivial pleasures of the cave are too intoxicating. Withdraw at the wrong time, stay withdrawn too long, and growth stops.

The cowl The Hermit wears protects him and isolates him. Hopefully, at some point, he casts it off and rejoins the world.

Some say that The Hermit represents the time we learn our true names; who we really are. The Greek philosopher Thales is reported to have been asked, “What is the most difficult of all things?” To which he is said to have answered “To know yourself.” The Hermit is given time to obey the Delphic Oracle’s demand: know thyself.

So you're saying I should just go on doing what I'm doing? Thanks. That's Tarot cards, ladies and gentlemen: reinforcing your worldview since the 5,000 B.C....though I'm sure some Wikipedia dick would tag that last "citation needed."

Florida Raises Man-Eating Snake Alert Level to "Muthafucker!"

2009-09-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

Via ABC: Muthafuckin' snakes!

Now if only those giant, man-eating cormorants would get off their fucking asses and put the fear of God back into the "great" state of South Carolina.

New Review: Hulk Vs. (2009)

2009-08-23T23:13:00.001-07:00

Hulk Vs. (2009) - Marvel and Lions Gate attempt to tide us over between blockbusters by throwing us two animated bones for the price of one.

Wordslinger

2009-08-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

Special Announcement:

I'm proud to contribute my 2005 Evil Time Traveler story The Final Voyage of Carl Denning, 1609 to issue #2 of the ezine Death's Head Grin. Read, browse, and lend your support to any- and everyone who's made it their business to publish stories.

Marcus Brigstocke: British People Are Naturally Funnier

2009-08-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

Thanks To (and shamless plugs for) Joseph Lieberman

2009-08-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

The author of School Shootings took the time to answer a few of questions today. Details to follow. In the meantime, I'd just like to say we met at SE Portland's premier hole-in-the-wall, wi-fi/coffee bar, The Funky Door. (Give them money.)

But sheer coincidence, August 1, 2009 is the 43rd anniversary of Charles Joseph Whitman's attack on the University of Texas, Austin...a fact (believe it or not) I didn't even realize until just this moment.

Things went off without a hitch thanks to the vast improvements in microphone technology the CIA's seen fit to show us (I kid the CIA--we're really very close, they and I. No, not really.) I tremble at the thought of what Macaulay Culkin might've accomplished back in 1990 with the aid of my little Sansa. In fact, the damn thing worked so well I can hear just about everything in the room. So the quest begins for a good freeware sound mixer. In the ultimate scenario, the mix will bring Joe's answers into the clear while completely eliminating any

Thankfully, my subject was a professional. So much so that most of his answers come complete with their own paragraph-breaks. Expect a transcript and new movie review this week...just don't quote me on that. The Dog Days are almost here, and it's only getting hotter.

Take care of each other.

Fox News Graphics Department Makes Captioning Unnecessary

2009-07-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

From The Live Desk, July 27, 2009, via Media Matters.

Health Scare #1

2009-07-19T02:04:00.000-07:00

New Review: Falling Down (1993)

2009-07-19T00:35:00.000-07:00

Falling Down (1993)

Broken Onion News

2009-07-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

No, really. I've just got so much to read it takes awhile longer than it use to. Which is why I'm only just now noticing this piece, from last May's Onion:

Extra-Slanty Italics Introduced for Extremely Important Words

NEW HOPE, MN—In an attempt to address writers’ ever-growing word-emphasis needs, Minnesota-based Pica Foundry has developed a new, extra-slanty italic font, design director Jordan Soderblum announced Monday.

“When writing important words, authors too often bypass regular italics in favor of all capital letters, which not only look awkward but also disrupt the flow of the text,” said Soderblum, whose new italics design is slanted at a more acute 60-degree angle instead of the normal 75. “We believe that the additional 15 degrees of slant will allow authors to create a much more intense and immediate reading experience.”

Soderblum said that his design team is currently developing a demi-semibold typeface for writers who “kind of, but not really” want to accentuate subheadings.

--May 3, 2007 (via rightreading.com)

America

2009-07-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

America! Fuck Yeah!
by us_army_courage

And He Knows I'm Right

2009-06-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

2009-06-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows things are bad. And I don't want to reheat any particular plate of scaremongering hash today. The corporate media has that market cornered. I don’t want to make you my complacent audience. You're already that: look at you. Look at us, glued to our chairs, muscles atrophying into dust. But like Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves, I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad.

Kids in the Hall: Mass Murdering Isn't Easy

2009-06-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

The Kids in the Hall: The Megaset - Mass Murder Isn't Easy | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

New Review: Elephant (2003)

2009-06-16T12:36:00.001-07:00

Elephant

Book Review: School Shootings

2009-06-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

In the course of researching my next novel, I waited for Joseph A. Lieberman’s School Shootings to return to the county library. (God help the poor bastard at Homeland Security charged with cross-indexing my library records—lord only knows what he thinks I’m up to.) And before you ask, no, tonight’s author is not that Joe Lieberman. A journalist and twenty-two year veteran teacher from Boston, this Lieberman spent ten years as a “photojournalist, lecturer and author” in Asia before reentering our Empire in 1999. With Columbine a fresh national trauma, Lieberman set about researching the causes and consequences of such horrific events. His book (originally titled The Shooting Game in its first edition, 2006) is a monumental consequence in itself, a bridge between the sensationalist, bullshit True Crime of an Ann Rule (whom Lieberman quotes) or Charles Patrick Ewing (ditto) and the more-scholarly examinations of this topic, which we’ll examine next time.

Like Ewing, Lieberman provides over three hundred pages of exhaustive, almost exploitative, summaries of real life rampage school shooting events, interspersed with other crimes, such as the more-familiar workplace rampages, which Lieberman attempts to link to the main subject…successfully, for the most part. Throughout, Lieberman charts the lines of correspondence and coincidence you’re bound to find if you stare at any phenomenon long and hard enough. Many an H.P. Lovecraft story revolves around a scholar driven mad by solitary researches into the Abysmal Darkness of subjects just like this. In a modern twist, Lieberman’s own teenage daughter’s school became the site of a gun scare in 2007. No fatalities; the kid went to jail, where he belongs, and the principal even credited Lieberman’s book with helping prevent anything worse from happening.

Lieberman is modest enough to save this story for an epilogue. The bulk of the book revolves around the pathetically tragic story of Kip Kinkel, who killed two and wounded twenty-five on May 21, 1998. Neither the first nor the most infamous soldier in what Lieberman calls “the equivalent of small, personal civil wars fought by a scattering of individuals against their own families, communities and peers,” Kip provides an interesting intersection of banality and insanity. A spree killer, he methodically planned his assault on Thurston High in Springfield, Oregon. Hating society, he killed his parents the day before his rampage, apparently to spare them the social pariahhood suffered by parents of school shooters from Alaska to Arkansas. A nice, normal-seeming boy (when he wasn’t throwing temper tantrums or rocks at cars), Kip reportedly heard voices since the sixth grade. They urged him to kill and constantly reminded him of his status as a piece of human shit, unfit to live, too cowardly to die. He had to kill, in order to be killed. After being tackled by his fellow students (and beaten in the process—photos of his puffy, vacant face, taken the day of the rampage and included half way through the book in true True Crime Book fashion, make this clear) Kip begged to die by their hands. During questioning he pulled a knife on two Springfield police officers and begged for the same. No one obliged, and Kip remains in Salem to this day, waiting for a new trial to come through on appeal.

From Kip, our humble author spirals outward, casting a net wide enough to embrace a seemingly endless stream of incidents, from Charles Whitman’s 1966 Austin, Texas turkey shoot, to Seung-hui Cho’s massacre at Virginia Tech, last year. The gang is, literally, all here, and no one could as for a more exhaustive survey of this topic. All the familiar villains make their appearance, along with plenty of not-so-familiar madman-maniacs from late twentieth century history. Once again we (by which I mean I) meet Brenda Ann Spencer, who opened fire on the elementary school across the street from her house in 1979 because, “I just don’t like Mondays…Nobody likes Mondays.” Once again we see Stephen King’s/Richard Bachman’s Rage blamed for the shootings at Moses Lake, Washington (“Sure beats Algebra class, don’t it?”) and West Paducah, Kentucky. We even meet some of the men who might’ve inspired King to write that book in the first place…like Tony Barbaro, a sort of transitional fossil, who set fire to his school on December 13, 1974, and killed three by sniping at the responding firemen. Or Robert Polin, who shot six people at St. Pius X High School in Ottawa on May 28, 1975. From there we move forward, to the great explosion of 1992—nine incidents in a year when youth violence as a whole spiked higher than a punk’s mohawk—odd Lieberman doesn’t mention that last fact. Odd, too, that there’s no mention of those pesky Los Angeles riots, as if they’re best swept under the rug, like O.J. Simpson.

While its long on evidence and short on conclusions (like most pop-criminology), School Shootings does deliver the proscriptive goods throughout, and Lieberman concludes by advocating the same kind of paranoid lock-down strategies American scholars have seen so much of these last ten years. Explicitly comparing school shooters to Islamic terrorists, Lieberman goes on to suggest school should suffer the same security treatment enjoyed by airports across the country, and the world. Lieberman explicitly rejects any charges of sensationalism (don’t they always?), and he does not restrict his criticism to video games, or the mega-corporations that manufacture them (though he gives credence to that wonderful fantasy-syndrome, video game addiction, inadvertently aiding the military-industrial-pharmaceutical-complex—but then, nobody’s perfect). NRA activists, willfully-blind parents, oblivious school administrators (like the Principal of Columbine High, who denied the existence of any jock-worshiping culture at his school, thank you) and kids who know and do not tell--all get theirs in turn. Lieberman is enough of a journalist to editorialize without turning the book into a polemic, and enough of a writer to cover some of the ugliest topics in American history with sprightly, sparkling prose that commands you read on, even as you’re sickened by “the horror…the horror…”

Indeed—Lieberman advises us not to turn away from the monsters in our midst, while simultaneously remaining suspicious of everyone. And Lieberman does mean everyone. The enemy is very much among us, in a fundamental, Body Snatchers sense. He looks just like us; they’re here already; you’re next, and so we must monitor our children, force them to treat such incidents seriously (as the sign at Sea-Tac said, “It’s No Joke!”), and report them to the proper authorities. The policeman is, after all, your friend, and we are all in this together, part of the homogeneous block of wonderful that is the United States of America, glory be, praise God, world without end, amen. There’s a palpable, fire-eating sense that “we must safeguard our children” running through this book, and I’m sure all the right parents are, even now, in the process of implementing its recommendations.

I pity the children who go to those schools, much as Lieberman does. Echoing Danny Ladonne (creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, who’s documentary, Playing Columbine, I’ll be requesting for my birthday), Lieberman shares with us an email from a former Columbine High student who, two years ago now, wrote the current principal to let him (and us) know that not a damn thing’s changed in ten years. Another shooting, according to this anonymous source, could very well happen at Columbine…and at any time.

And if that isn’t enough fearmongering for one night, brothers and sisters, you should seek professional help. You, like this country, may have a fear addiction. So far, there is no cure.

Leaving aside questions of liberty (which students obviously have to sacrifice in the name of safety) is the American airport really an institution worthy of emulation? Study after study’s concluded that, for all TSA’s posturing and paranoia, airports are no safer today than they were in the 1970s, when you could still show up five minutes before your flight departed with no carry-on luggage, pay for a one-way ticket to the Dubai with cash, and joke your way into the stewardesses’ pants by asking her for a pat-down search. To find your gun. Not the one that’s for shooting; the one that’s for fun.

Schools, for the vast majority of their inmates, are no fun, and as Michael Moore reminded us in Bowling for Columbine, things went from bad to worse in the wake of that fateful April morn. One could just as easily argue that airport-style (I almost wrote “Soviet style”) security measures have only made the problem worse, as the frequency of rampage incidents has remained steady, while body counts have increased, indicating an increasing sophistication on the part of the shooters. Seung-hui Cho made a point of chaining the doors shut before he opened fire at Virginia Tech. The lesser known, post-Columbine, post-9/11 spate of shooters almost to a man (for, despite a chapter titled “The Female of the Species,” women are all-but invisible in this universe of shooters) reference “sainted” Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, underlining Roger Ebert’s contention that sensationalist media portrayals of these events do more long-term damage than the events themselves. And while I disagree with Lieberman’s conclusions he and I do agree on two important things: these events are not predictable, and they’re not about to stop any time soon.

In the meantime, Mr. Lieberman’s book remains a good one-stop-shop for the discriminating researcher into these incidents. One paradoxically hopes, even as one “enjoys” the book for its merits, that a new edition will prove unnecessary, and that author Lieberman might be permitted to move on to greener pastures. Doubtful, but you never know. Hope does spring eternal.

And now, the Newswipe

2009-06-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

Watch the whole thing, or skip to the 5:25 mark for the real point.

David Carradine is dead. O, Discordia

2009-06-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

1936-2009

Book Review: The Paperback Apocalypse

2009-05-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

In the course of researching my next novel (and how I love the fact I don’t have to think up new hooks for these articles) I came across Robert M. Price’s The Paperback Apocalypse, a wonderfully thorough overview of fundamentalist End Times literature. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series is neither the first nor the most interesting entry in the field, which has a long and storied history. Left Behind only did for Apocalypse novels what Straight Outta Compton did for Gangsta Rap, propelling the sub-genre into national prominence. The Paperback Apocalypse functions as a road map through this Tribulation territory, with Mr. Price, a professor of scriptural studies at Johnnie Coleman Theological Seminary, as our ecumenical tour guide.

Our Humble Author doesn’t skimp on this trip, making sure to take the scenic route. We begin with genesis—the god Yahweh’s genesis in the moral power struggle between priests and prophets in fifth century Israel. Once an ass-kicking, plague-bringing, god of kingship and nationhood, Yahweh El Elyon morphed into his more-familiar, judgmental self after the Babylonian Exile. With Israel’s upper classes carted off whole hog, the laypeople were (ahem) left behind to puzzle out what the hell could’ve happened. How could their mighty God desert them so callously?

A quick glance at the lives of the prophets provided what we now call the Deuteronomic answer: Israel and Judah’s sins caused God to withdraw His favor. Surprise: it was all King David’s fault. His Royal Highness’ wandering penis had condemned the whole nation. Even if the priests and kings returned (as they would, relatively soon, with the support of Persia’s self-deifying emperor) it could all happen again the next time someone in high office violated the covenant. Better to believe that, someday soon, God would flex his warrior-king muscles and upend the whole status quo, returning to cast the priests into Gahenna. With God dwelling among them, Israel would become a land of priestly people, with all the world’s pagan kings reduced to servile servants of the restored Temple.

Meanwhile, the returning priestly aristocrats did what aristocrats like to do and cracked down on the people’s ad hoc worship. From Persia they brought with them a view of the world we now call Manichean, though back then it was simply Zoroastrian. A Persian prophet and (alleged) contemporary of Moses, Zoroaster taught that all the world’s a battleground between the forces of Good, represented by the god Ahura Mazada and Evil, represented by the antigod Ahriman. Balanced but not equal, Good would surely win out in the end, but until then every human deed, and every historical event, was a proxy battle in their Great War, its outcome a point for one side or the other.

Put these two beliefs together and you’ve got fertile ground to grow yourself a Revelation. Ground lain, Price devotes chapters two through six to an almost-exhaustive dissection of the modern fundamentalist Apocalypse. “Messianic Prophecy”; “The Gospel of the Anti-Christ”; “The Second Coming”; “The Secret Rapture”; all receive point-by-point, Scriptural refutation from our author, who swings a mighty big theological pipe. Actually, he’s Dr. Price, a fact I had to find on the Internet, despite his receiving the degree (in systematic theology from Drew University) twenty-six years before writing this book. Do I smell false modesty? Or is Dr. Price preemptively dodging the anti-intellectual arrows fundamentalists so-love to throw at anyone who questions their beliefs?

Price confesses a personal interest in Apocalyptic literature (calling it a “guilty pleasure” the same words we around this corner of the internet use to defend our love for Bad Movies) but never once mentions his own falling-out with fundamentalism. This isn’t about him; it’s about the indefensibility of modern fundamentalist beliefs. Price (rightly) identifies the “faith” of the Rapture Ready as a collection of half-baked misinterpretations, compounded by willful ignorance of the very Bible they claim to idolize. Like a certain Golden Calf I know, their doctrine breaks under the weight of all these scriptural quotations, from Isaiah to Revelations, which Price helpfully restores to their historical and cultural context, something beyond the keen your average, jumped-up, Southern Baptist.

With a firm grounding in the genre’s “classics,” Price jumps to the early twentieth century, and the first End Times novels. Given the fundamentalist condemnation of novel-reading as a sinful, worldly pursuit—like drinking, whoring, and card playing—its no surprise the first real entry in the genre comes in 1905, with Joseph Birbeck Burroughs’ Titan, Son of Saturn: The Coming World Emperor - A Story of the Other Christ. Now if that’s not a rip-roaring, full-throated, modernist title, I don’t know what is. Can’t you just picture Henry James off to the side, clucking his tongue at it?

From thence we move straight on ‘til morning—past Left Behind (which, fittingly, receives its own chapter at the very end) and right up to more-modern, less-successful, and (believe it or not) less-well-written entries in the genre. Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Hal Lindsey’s Blood Moon. Or William A. Stanmeyer’s Catholic-toned Day of Iniquity: A Prophetic Novel of the End Times. Or James BeauSeigneur’s Christ Clone Trilogy. Or Pat Robertson’s own entry, The End of the Age.

If you have, by now you’re probably pretty pissed at my flippant dismissal of your faith. (I invite you to utilize the Comments button below, and please don’t hesitate to describe the yawning torments of hell awaiting me in the Next World.) If you haven’t heard of these books you probably don’t care, except in an academic sense—marveling at the genre from a distance. Like most speculative fiction (call it “mainstream” as Price does when he reviews "mainstream" Apocalypse novels, like The Stand), fundamentalist End Times novels are the center of a multibillion dollar, international media industry, with more published every year. More, certainly, than anyone could read in a lifetime devoted to the subject.

Thankfully, Dr. Price reads these things for fun, and presents this book as a gift to us. Half-Biblical exegesis, half-book review anthology, The Paperback Apocalypse is just the ticket if you’d like a superficial knowledge of the genre and a thorough knowledge of how to refute its theological underpinnings. Unlike Dr. Price, I make no bones about my personal stake in both projects.

The Struggle For Today is Not Alltogether For Today; It is For a Vast Future Also

2009-05-17T17:56:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

New Review

2009-05-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Though I missed the true anniversary of Columbine (April 20th--ten years baby), I offer up this review of Zero Day as my own private observance.

Morning News

2009-05-06T10:49:00.001-07:00

And now the news. It must be Wednesday.

First, a headline that speaks for itself, so much so you won't see anything like it on this side of the pond: U.S. air strikes kill dozens of Afghan civilians.

The police chief Watandar said Taliban guerrillas had herded civilians into houses in the villages of Geraani and Ganj Abad, and these places were then struck by war planes. "The fighting was going on in another village, but the Taliban escaped to these two villages, where they used people as human shields. The air strikes killed about 120 civilians and destroyed 17 houses," he said, admitting, however, that the death toll was imprecise.

And while we're at it, here's an article from last year which vindicates decades of American culture warrior paranoia. Turns out I've been wrong all these years and violent video dogames inspire violence in children...provided those children join the military.

Fancy yourself as a tasty videogamer? [That's what my girlfriend tells me.--D] Then you might soon want to pursue a career in the army. Joypad dexterity, that most 21st-century of skills, is poised to assume a key role on the battlegrounds of Afghanistan and Iraq, now that defense contractor Raytheon has announced plans to use videogame technology in its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones.

There's a lot of messy connective tissue running between these two articles. Neither acknowledges the fact that, as war becomes more depersonalized, with cause further and further removed from consequence, we're going to have to get used to these civilian casualties. In a strange way we already are. We deny them (literally: see last August's raid on the village of Azizabad) but, since we supplied them, that only make sense. Our military's had a long, tawdry love affair with "strategic" bombing, consummated during World War II. Either we'll continue to shut our eyes to true cost of this poisonous, codependent relationship, or at last reach a point where we can no longer put up with with the overwhelming amounts of bullshit involved.

We are, as a nation, not quite there yet. We'll see how long it takes this "Long War" (oh, I'm sorry, "Overseas Contingency Operation") to break through our national self-denial.

Last note: Minion of the Long War by C.G. Estabrook.

As the World Burns (And Encouraging Message of Hope from Your Humble Narrator)

2009-05-03T23:22:00.000-07:00

Much as I despise the American Empire, I live here too, in the heart of a major American city I’d just as soon not see reduced to a cloud of ash.

Yet it is inevitable. Someone, at some point, will acquire the Bomb and use it, a fact previous generations understood. Visions of nuclear apocalypse are less popular now, with the Cold War a distant memory and the Terror War fast receding into the black hole at the heart of American national memory. Still, they do have their own, sick utility, insomuch as they inspire personal, national and international efforts to put the genii back in the bottle. A foolish dream, perhaps, and hard to hold in an era where non-martial dreams are ridiculed and despised, but it’s mine, nevertheless.

Others dream of phantom enemies. In a report released two weeks ago, as open, armed conflict resumed across northern Pakistan, David Albright—that is Dr David Albright, president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security—warned “the public” (which, according to my handy English-to-Think Thank-ese dictionary, means “Congress”) that “the security of any nuclear material” produced by Pakistan’s ever-increasing number of nuclear reactors “is in question.”

It’s not enough that al Qaeda-allied crazy folks are sixty miles from the capital. It’s not enough that the Pakistani military is, even now, bombing the northwestern portions of its own country back into the Precambrian Age. It’s not enough that this violence has displaced millions, killed thousands, and enraged untold multitudes who won’t hesitate for a moment to join up with the next charismatic asshat who comes riding over the mountainous border, intent on recruiting fresh martyrs to the cause. No. They have to have dirty bombs, too.

From The Power of Nightmares:

Book Review: Kids Who Kill by Charles Patrick Ewing

2009-05-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

I’m toying with the idea of turning this blog into research journal for the last two months, rolling it around in my mind the way you’d roll an unwanted interloper in feathers after dousing him with honey, or hot tar. The old injunction, “Write what you know,” is a challenge, not a straightjacket. The implicit corollary, “Learn more and you’ll be able to write more,” is my engine, driving a lifetime of education in subjects most schools would rather not touch. Like school shaootings.

In the course of researching my next novel (which is one of those wonderful sentences writers get to write, the kind that just glow at you) I’ve learned a lot about school shootings. Except that’s not exactly accurate. I’ve remembered a good ninety-eight percent of the more memorable stuff, since it began right around the time I began to pay attention to the world outside the bounds of my small, Midwestern town. The ten-year anniversary of Columbine (which I allowed to pass unnoticed) helped me tremendously in this. Time magazine even resurrected it’s deliciously sensationalist article on the subject from December, 1999, reheating the case’s particular blend of hash.

The Portland Community College library provided me two not-so-excellent books on the subject this week. Published ten years apart, they nicely bookend that extraordinary heyday of youth-perpetrated violence still blithely refer to as, “the 90s.”

One end, Charles Patrick Ewing’s Kids Who Kill, rests in 1989. Despite the copyright date (1990), Kids Who Kill is an unabashed product of the 1980s, filled with lucid accounts of heinous “juvenile” crimes, subdivided into chapter-length categories. Its chapter titles read like prime time, news-magazine show bumpers: “Family Killings,” “Senseless Killings,” “Cult-Related Killings,” “Gang Killings,” “Little Kids Who Kill,” and my personal favorite, the nebulous “Crazy Killings.”

Author Ewing is an all-but-invisible presence through all this, filling each chapter with capsule descriptions of theme-specific cases, drawn from the best mainstream media sources of his time: the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, UPI, the New York and Los Angeles Times. A source citation page totally devoid of web addresses is a strange artifact to find, from another, alien time…much like the book itself. Ewing’s tone is equally foreign to those of us on the other side of the great Faux News divide. After a decade and a half of personalized news, delivered unto us by news personalities (celebrity anchors, talking heads, snakeoil information salesmen, pundits), Ewing’s case studies seem fleeting, callous, bite sized examinations of events that garner round-the-clock, team coverage these days, and passed unnoticed in a world just coming to grips with the end of the Cold War and the dawning of our current New World Order. A typical entry, chosen at random, reads like the ticker at the bottom of your TV screen.

[F]our New Jersey youths—members of a much larger, self-proclaimed group of “Dotbusters”—beat a thirty-year-old Indian man to death in a city street. According to the police, these “Dotbusters”—who took their name from the red bindi mark worn on the foreheads of married Indian women—were responsible for numerous violent attacks against Indian and Pakistani immigrants. The youths in this particular case, who ranged in age from fifteen to seventeen, denied any racial motive for their brutal attack. Instead, they insisted that they attacked the Indian man because he was bald. Though charged with murder, they were convicted only of assault.

Another example:

On July 10, 1989 a fourteen-year-old Chicago mother was trying to watch television. After being interrupted several times by her one-month-old son who would not stop crying, the girl smothered the infant with a disposable diaper. The teenager was charged with murder, but a judge ruled that given her “previously clean record” she would not be tried as an adult.

And so long as I’ve Fair Use on my side, have one more:

In January 1988, seventeen-year-old Leslie Torres, a homeless New York City youth, went on a seven day “cocaine-inspired rampage”—a spree of armed robberies in which he killed five people and wounded six others. When arrested, Leslie told police that he committed numerous killings and robberies to support his $500-a-day addiction to the street drug [sic], crack. Charged with murder, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Testifying on his own behalf, Leslie told jurors that crack caused him to eel like God, but that he saw the Devil whenever he looked in the mirror. After examining Leslie, a psychiatrist testified that the teenager suffered from “cocaine induced psychosis” at the time o the robberies and killings. The jury rejected Leslie’s insanity defense and convicted him of murder. Finding that the seventeen-year-old “showed utter and total disregard for the sanctity of life” and “would kill again” if ever released, a judged sentenced Leslie Torres to sixty years to life in prison.

One hundred seventy pages of this is enough to make you take a bite out of capital-C, Crime, whilst simultaneously saying, "No" to the drugs and fantasy role playing games that are destroying our nation’s youth.

If the past is another country, writers must be anthropologists. A good anthropologist will take heed of a culture’s fears and superstitions. Kids Who Kill suggests that a peculiar fear of youth slumbers at the heart of our culture, occasionally rearing its head to freeze us with a Cobra gaze straight out of Rudyard Kipling. It rose up in 1990, and again in 1999, events building upon themselves, sprouting intertwining threads of correspondence and coincidence.

None of which has anything to do with Kids Who Kill, which is a strange, haunting little book that, in its final pages, suggests four commonsensical “known factors” common to killer kid cases: “child abuse, poverty, substance abuse, and access to guns.” School shooters of the now-familiar type (spree-killing monsters in black coats stuffed full of weapons) lying downstream from Ewing in the course of history, go unexamined. History responds in kind by refusing to vindicate the dire predictions Ewing puts forth in lieu of conclusion in his final chapter, “Juvenile Crime in the 1990s.”

There, Ewing predicts that juvenile homicides will reach “record high proportions” by the year 2000, ignorant of the fact juvenile homicide as a whole would peak in the recession years of 1992-3, years of riot and tumult, when American nonchalantly joked about being broke. (A bit like now, come to think about it…) Ewing leaves himself little time to flesh out his “known factors” or do anything more than refer back to a few previously described cases by way of illustration. There’s little analysis here (besides a few tables), and no discernible political agenda. When this book saw print the culture wars that drive (and define) today’s non-fiction publishing industry were barely a glimmer in Rush Limbaugh’s eye. If our wider, societal obsession with vicarious violence bares any blame for creating killer kids, Ewing does not say. Instead, he reminds us that Ronald Regan’s eight year “war on the poor” sure as shit didn’t help. Matter of fact (Ewing says, in his own detached, Joe-Friday, just-the-facts-ma’am way), Reganomics did plenty to exacerbate the four “known factors,” factors ignored and/or exacerbated by the then-current administration of George (HW) Bush.

Busy building a New World Order, America would go on to largely ignore Ewing’s slim little book, or its dire warnings for the future. Each of his four “known factors” remained in operation, resurfacing ten years later in the Great Explosion of school shooting and killer kid literature of 1996-9…some of which we’ll turn to next time, as our research into this negative image of the American dream continues.

Note: Special thanks to Anonymous for catching my Freudian slip involving the author's name. I was thinking of earwigs.

Philip K. Dick Android Built: Facist Overlords of Not-Too-Distant Future Claim "Apocalypse Imminent"

2009-04-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

What does he dream of?

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis (Part VIII)

2009-03-07T23:12:00.000-08:00

Episode 9 - Hive

On the vaguely-Pacific island of Santa Marta, a species of enormous, animate plant disturbs a band of youthful-looking looters, come to scavenge the island’s hastily-evacuated luxury resort.

H.E.A.T. arrives after the credits, and team lead Nick Tatopolus is quick to claim the moral high ground. “We’re not just here on their word,” meaning the looters. “The resort company also asked us to check it out.” The increasingly-annoying Randy, for once, delivers some useful information with his follow-up quip. “And he asked in the universal language: moolah.” We know now that H.E.A.T., like the Ghostbusters before them, work on spec, no doubt offering “Professional megafauna investigation and elimination.” Or “innovative, giant monster removal solutions.”

Whatever the case, an underwater thermal geyser spills Our Heroes onto the beach, wreaking their trusty inflatable motor raft. While Nick and Randy hotwire it, Craven, Elsie and Monique carve a path inland through the surprisingly lush foliage between beach and resort. Don’t volcanic eruptions tend to thin out jungles? And what’s Elsie talking about “underground nuclear tests” back in the 50s? This whole set-up spells BAD in big, blinking letters and you’d think someone (Nick, say?) would suggest staying together, at least until the boat’s fixed.

But no. Our team splits up. “Something inside the ash,” Elsie theorizes as they truck on, “must be acting as a super fertilizer.” Who died and made you Team Botanist, Doctor? Weren’t you a paleontologist a few episodes ago? Or are you just talking to fight the heeby-geebies? At least Mendel gives into them honestly; “Help me! Their alive,” he shouts, accidentally falling into a tangle of vines.

Elsie decides to climb a tree and gather samples, splitting the team up yet again. Mendel at least has the good sense to protest. Nevertheless, he melts at a wink from Elsie, so we know he is whipped.

At the hotel, French Fry and Cowardly Scientist find plenty of vicious vines. Retreating into the hotel, they also find a hive-full of pick-up truck-sized bees. Monique breaks an ankle evading them and still manages to keep Mendel alive. Her disdain is palpably French as they flee into the hotel’s ventilation system.

Offshore, Nick and Randy fix the boat. The island's active volcano has, of course, fucked with their communications, forcing them inland…right into the island’s vines. Godzilla arrives, apparently just in the nick of time (pun intended—that’s why I used italics)…until the vines ensnare him as well.

Now, let’s talk about fluctuating superpowers. About Superman turning back time by flying around the world. About He-Man holding starships in place with some magic lasso She-Ra stole from Wonder Woman. About Aquaman, cira Superfriends, and his glass jaw. About many a Decepticon taken out with one punch. I’m talking about Godzilla being unable to wrench himself free from a bushel of triffids. Why? So Nick and Randy can rig up a laser on site out of whatever they’ve got in their backpacks. Times like this, I wonder about Dr. Nick; he could be MacGuyver in disguise, befriended by a giant reptile. If so, I wish he’d hurry up and tell Godzilla to crush Nightrider.

Laser-equipped, Nick and Randy stand by at minimum safe distance and watch Godzilla trim the verge. And just when the series has lost me, it wins me back: a giant bee descends from the sky to snatch Randy away. Can I hope for the slow, painful death of this show’ s Odieus Comic Relief? There’s no real harm in that…is there?

No. Because you’ll remember the hive, which consumes most of the hotel. Nevertheless, Mendel and Monique (through sheer cartoon luck) happen to come out of the vents in the Queen’s Throneroom—formerly an Olympic sized swimming pool. Her Majesty needs all the space she can get though. Like so many cartoon monsters in this pre-digital age, Her Majesty will radically change size and proportion throughout the fight scene to come. As will Godzilla, who arrives to wreak havoc on the beehive, along with the hotel it just so happens to occupy.

Since we know H.E.A.T. works on a pay-for-play basis, I’d love to see someone try to deduct collateral damage to their assets out of Dr. Nick’s quoted price. Does Nicky start low or play high ball? He does seem to have the giant monster hunter market cornered, but how long will that last? Where’s the South Pacific’s answer to this shifty bunch of gaijin? (In a future episode, that’s where.) Where’s the army? Assuming there were underground nuclear tests “in the 50s,” what’s to say the Go’ment gave up its stake in this little bit of radioactive paradise? Maybe the whole “resort company” thing is a front—like Monique’s “casualty and property insurance” business.

A better episode than I remembered, Hive gives everyone something to do, even if that something amounts to “get captured.” Randy gets captured by a Killer Bee only to be rescued by the surprise team of Monique and Craven. She, of course, grows to respect Craven and his contributions to the team, and all it took was yet another traumatizing adventure in Science.

Elsie gets captured by giant vines…who don’t seem to do much beyond grab you and pull you above the treeline. Nick rescuers her with his new laser, and you can tell the boys in marketing really wanted to paint Nick as an Action Hero. Not only does he rescue the redheaded damsel with his handmade (rather Ghostbuster-like) blaster, he gets to catch her in his arms, a nerdy Fabio impersonator straight from a Harlequin Romance cover…if, that is, small armies of underpaid South Korean animators drew Harlequin Romance covers.

Godzilla’s neigh-invulnerability comes to the fore here, as the Big-G at last gets a decent fight scene under him. After the wrestling matches with El Gusano and the Orange, Candy-Striped Ooze, Godzilla’s had a run of low budget opponents. Not so with the Queen Bee or her hive of Killers. Having already survived the ocean’s depths and the U.S. military (who so-handedly dispatched the “first” Godzilla in 1998’s movie…which I really should get around to reviewing here at some point or another), Randy’s “Lizard King,” (no, honey, that’s Jim Morrison) survives a lot of crap in this episode. Bee stings, volcanic eruptions, hazardous falls, Randy’s one-liners…this Godzilla could give the Tick lessons in poise, and it’s nice to see…even if it does shoot any dramatic tension this show had left in the head. No, not the foot; the head.

The tropical resort provides a nice twist on the usually-monotonous Jungle Fight…though I always hate how easy it is for giant monster movie makers to lose perspective in natural settings. The tendency is to film (or animate) at your creature’s eye level, as once again our human heroes flee, leaving the volcano to clean up after Godzilla.

Clean up it does, wiping out the whole island in the tradition of Godzilla vs the Sea Monster. Godzilla survives, of course, to Nick’s evident delight. So, despite some weak spots in the middle, and the usual complaints, a good monster time is had by all. This is the most “traditional” episode so far, sharing its setting, plot-structure, and resolution with many an SF film “from the 50s.” I could rattle of a whole baker’s dozen of them (and those are just the ones that end with a spontaneous volcanic eruption). But then again, if you’re reading these words, chances are you can too.

Africa by Basil Davidson

2009-03-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

Simply the best English-language documentary about the continent. Ever.

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis (Part VII)

2009-02-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

Episode 8 – What Dreams May Come

In Queens, a fifty-foot, six-limbed, godawfully ugly thing interrupts an obnoxiously “Nu Yawk” couple’s spat over the electric bill, reducing their five-story walk-up to scrap. Morning finds H.E.A.T. there (minus team-spy Monique), as they seem to be the only municipal agency at work in New York. Seriously, where is the Fire Department? Isn’t this a city in recovery from perpetual Godzilla attacks? Why does anyone still chose to live in this New York? But then again, why does anyone chose to live in Metropolis? Or Marvel Comic’s version of the City That Never Sleeps?

In any case, the team finds plenty of residual ionization, but actual, physical evidence eludes them…until a frantic phone call from Monique interrupts Our Heroe's search. The as-yet-unnamed creature is making its presence known down by the MTA bus depot. Team lead Nick and Mendel Craven (the Designated Cowardly Lion) leave Randy and Elsie to pick among the ruins, and on each other. Their constant sniping will be this week’s B-story, as each attempts to rest control of the teams Executive Officer position from the other.

Meanwhile, Nick and Craven join Monique at the MTA. Again they seem to be the only public servants in sight, rescuing civilians from the depot’s garage even as the still-nameless monster tears the place apart. Our (human) Heroes’ imminent demise once again appears at hand…until Godzilla, the real hero of the piece, stomps his way out of the ocean and into an inconclusive fray. The misshapen mutation appears to feed on electromagnetic energy, and reacts to Godzilla’s blasts of radioactive breath the same way mosquitoes react to type O-pos. Things look bad for Nick and his half of the team (who’re once again caught between the battle, and once again, survive uninjured, despite the flying buses and falling lizards all around) until Godzilla head-butts the creature into a cloud of debris…where it vanishes without a trace.

Stymied, H.E.A.T. reconvenes at their “high tech” condemned building of a headquarters. Elsie and Randy, for all their interpersonal sniping, managed to uncover something back in Queens: the one apartment in the whole building untouched by the destruction. That’d be the apartment of a Mr. Sydney Walker, an employee at the…MTA bus depot…who hasn’t been seen (at home or work) for weeks.

For all my disdain for Randy (I have a mild hatred for all characters who presume to speak for the audience) we occasionally think alike. “I see where you’re going with this,” Randy says. “Walker hates his job and everyone around him. So when he accidentally mutates into a giant bug zapper, he decides to get his revenge!” (Pause.) “What?”

"That Crackler thing can’t be a human mutation,” Mendel counters. “It’s not even alive.” Rather it appears to be a walking electromagnetic field—a walking, stalking, size-changing hologram, ripped out of its holodeck and set loose upon the world.“‘Crackler?’” Randy asks.

"Well, what would you call it?”

Indeed. Typically, the first scientist to discover a new organism gets the honor of christening it. Nick, never one to be a jealous fuck (except when his girlfriend’s involved), allows Craven’s name to stand as he doles out assignments. Elsie and Randy will proceed to Manhattan Neural Research Center, the last place anyone saw Sydney Walker alive (in human form, at least). Craven and Monique will join Nick for a little pleasure drive around the city. “Let’s go Crackler hunting,” Nick says. Do I detect a hint of relish in his voice? Methinks yes.

On their own again, Randy and Elsie gain access to the Center, despite Center personnel’s apparent obsession with security. “Looks like Walker isn’t here,” Randy says. “And he isn’t in room 213.” “Well,” Elsie counters, “let’s not pay him a visit.” Upstairs, they find two anonymous scientists and one sleeping man with more EEGs strapped to his head than a grand maul seizure patient.

Seems Mr. Sydney Walker checked himself in complaining of insomnia. “To put him under,” the male scientist explains, “we enhanced his Theta brain waves. That was…a week ago. We haven’t been able to wake him since.” Each attempt’s only achieved a slight increase in brain waves activity—accompanied by a massive electromagnetic discharge. “We assumed that dissipated into the atmosphere,” because that’s just what you’d assume…until the Humanitarian Environmental Analysis Team comes knocking. In the usual, haphazard way common to scientists in American media, our team hammers out a hypothesis through phone conferencing.

Seems like Walker (who’s psyche test “suggested intense repressed rage,” according to one of the Neural Research Center’s whitecoats—and you still went through with treatment? You bastards practically asked for a giant monster to hatch out of that man’s head), comatose state notwithstanding, controls the Crackler unconsciously, dreaming it into being and dreaming himself into the driver’s seat. Another Theta spike appears right on cue, setting up our final fight scene…and the predictable resolution.

Weird though this episode may be, it carries all the hallmarks of an American comic book icon. Yes, that’s Len Wein, co-creator of Swamp Thing, still slinging words from the trenches of American children’s television. (Show’s what happens to those unfortunate comic book creators who never secured the rights to their characters—hold them dear to your heart, boys and girls. Corporate American would like nothing more than to mine them for all eternity while paying you a pittance.) Being the case, you’ll find quite a few tropes from 70s-era comics scattered throughout the episode.

It begins in media res, with exposition (especially scientific exposition) delivered in clumsy blocks of dialogue, often in the middle of a fight scene. In the tradition of 70s-era team books, H.E.A.T. voluntarily splits itself up into more easily-managed micro-teams. This allows Nick, Monique and Craven to remain busy while Wein focuses our attention on the main characters: Elsie and Randy. Their separate and disparate skill sets do end up solving the case, despite the obligatory friction. Obligatory because, without it, how could you bring these character’s through a dramatic arch in twenty-two minutes or less? Bully to Wein, then, for not shoving that resolution in our face. It comes in a quiet moment during the final fight scene, as Godzilla’s battle with the Crackler tears apart Shea Stadium, not in a South Parkian, “I’ve-learned-something-today” moment…but with the simplest of gestures: an offered hand, by Elsie to Randy…who’s just been knocked across the room by an electric shock. You can see Randy’s entire character summed up in that rash but well-meant attempt to unplug Walker and shut the Crackler down. Of course his ad hoc, ask-questions-later tactics are going to run afoul of Dr. Elsie Chapman, team paleontologist. My only complaint is, since this is a kid’s show, its sympathies obviously tilt toward Randy; in the end, he’s always right. Even his “I see where you’re going with this” comment is more on-target than anything H.E.A.T.’s three scientists come up with—and that’s a bad sign all around. Do you want the punk kid to be the smartest one in a room full of “professional” monster hunters? I think not.

Standard monster movie tropes are bent over backward to provide a human interest story, parallel to and grounded by the big-ticket mayhem. Our monster turns out to be little more than a man with a lightning rod strapped to his head—a tiny, repressed, pathetic little man, who frees himself from his internal monster with a little help from Randy and some spontaneous, Primal Scream therapy (continued shades of the 1970s). Having confronted his trauma, Walker sinks into a crying jig as Randy consoles him with quite words: “No problem, dude. It’s over.” And just when I start to wonder about wishful thinking, Elsie steps in to give us an aside: “Except for the years of intensive therapy.” Amen, sister.

By provoking Walker into a shouting match, Randy (somehow) destroys the Crackler’s supply of emotional fuel. Godzilla, having battled the Crackler across Flushing Meadows (bye, bye, Unisphere), dissolves it with a well-timed fireball—miraculous, considering all previous attempts to nuke the Crackler only made it stronger.

In the end we have here a good stand-alone episode…that could’ve used a second draft and a little more thought put into its wacky excuse for physics. A little more money might’ve helped out as well, populating the otherwise-deserted monster scenes with fleeing civilians and/or useless human authority figures. By now I’ve probably worn your ears off with my complaining about Godzilla’s ancillary role in his own show, so there’s little need to reheat that hash here…except that Sydney Walker’s story, with its shades of Bruce Banner (the greatest giant monster in comics) has put me in that frame of mind. I liken Godzilla to Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk—a destructive force that shows up, no more than twice an episode, to solve things with a maximum amount of collateral damage. Is this the best role a giant monster can expect? Can we do nothing more without swinging wide into King Kong territory? And exactly what’s to become of that little Theta wave-amplifying, monster-creating, dream machine? No self-respecting “number one monster hunting team” in the world would just leave the damn thing sitting around the Manhattan Neural Research Institute.

Would they? Really?

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis (Part VI)

2009-02-21T11:19:00.000-08:00

Episode 7 – Leviathan

As a white-bearded, New England sea captain (complete with a little anchor on his hat) nervously checks his watch, Drs. Prolorne, Hoffman, and Sopler explore the mysteriously-pulsating alien starship they’ve found lodged in the Atlantic seabed. “Radio carbon dating confirms my hypothesis,” Prolorne tells us. “This ship is over ten thousand years old.” Unfortunately, its security systems (complete with pink, wriggling tendrils that seize our Scientists and drag them, screaming, into the darkness) remain spry as ever.

On the other side of the credits we find H.E.A.T. steaming toward what Monique Dupre calls “the Hazard Abyss.” Seems Dr. Mendel Craven’s locked on to a suspiciously terrestrial source of tachyon transmissions. “That’s impossible,” team-kid Randy Hernandez declares. “For human science, maybe.” Mendel counters. “So…what? Little green men?”

Indeed, as we see, once H.E.A.T. finds that stereotypical sea captain, and his boat, floating above the transmission source. Mendel recognizes it as “Dr. Prolorne’s ship,” though last I checked, xenobiologists weren’t exactly running around burning money on research vessels…except in Michael Crichton novels. But what do I know? In any case, Mendel has a professional chubby for Dr. Prolorne, and he’s sad as anyone to discover that the good doctor is now three days lost below the waves.

And so goes any chance for H.E.A.T. to discover where Dr. Prolorne makes his paper. (Probably the same mysterious source that puts gas in the Heat Seeker’s tank…unless H.E.A.T.’s burdening the French taxpayer through Monique’s Hearstian expense accounts). “ ‘Under no circumstances are you to come down after us,’” the unnamed Sea Captain quotes. “Those were Dr. Prolorne’s exact orders.” And if you recognize that voice, give yourself two points; that’s Ron “Hellboy” Pearlman commanding Prolorne's tub. The Good Doctor must be rollin' in it like Scrooge McDuck.

Before Dr. Nick can grow any more indignant at Captain Pearlman’s obedience of orders, Godzilla arrives, scaring the bejesus of everyone not named Tatopoulos. "Relax people,” Nicky says. “There’s no reason to panic. He only looks dangerous,” a patent lie, and a fruitless exercise in cross-species understanding. Godzilla (oblivious to Nick’s shouted commands) sniffs at the ship, casts his head about, and dismisses it with a straight-arrow dive, down, down, down…to the bottom of the sea.

Following in a secondary submersible (commandeered with a little help from Monique and her concealed weapon…no, really; that’s not a double entendre at all—she actually walks around with a gun under her arm, much to Nick’s further indignation), it’s not long before H.E.A.T.-proper encounters problems. Mendel does nothing to help Randy’s latent claustrophobia, reminding him (and us) that, once you drop past two miles, “the spray from a hairline crack will cut you in half.” Then the dinosaur arrives.

Identified as a Cryptocleidus by team-paleontologist Elsie Chapman, its menace is somewhat countered by the fact that human technology will always move faster than natural organisms sixty-five million-years-adapted to their environment. Always. Oh, and Godzilla arrives—convenient, considering his last known location. Our human heroes presently descend, leaving the Big G to fend for himself and thus disappear from the remainder of the episode.

Below, a massive, spine-ridged hulk of an alien ship lies, half-buried in the silt. Docking, it’s not long before equally-spiny, scale-skinned, guard dogs (“bred from ancient dinosaurs”—as opposed to all those new ones) assault the team. Fleeing through a conveniently-opened portal (which seals shut behind them) they find Dr. Prolorne…who warns them to leave, “immediately.”

“This is a very delicate First Contact situation,” Prolorne declares…though he’s willing to spare time for some exposition. "This ship crashed near the end of the Cretaceous Period. They’ve spent most of that time in stasis, of course; broadcasting an automatic distress beacon…human technology had to reach a level advanced enough to detect it.” Monique questions the intentions of their "hosts.” Dr. Nick requests some face-time. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” Prelorane deadpans, sealing H.E.A.T. into their anonymous-looking room with a masterful command of these alien control panels.

But not for long. With N.I.G.L.E.’s tachyon-detector guiding them, H.E.A.T. soon finds the control room—and the bulb-headed, Sumo-bodied, six-limbed, dual-tusked, telepathic beings within. “[Y]our race,” one of them declares, floating over for a meet-and-greet, “is ready to be assimilated. Your cities, machines, infrastructure, will serve my people well….Those who cooperate will find the new order satisfying…even stimulating.” (Ewww…) Those who do not will, apparently, receive telekinetic bitch-slaps and forced brain-drains.

Here we have the classic “Aw-shit-alien-invasion” situation. It’s the end of the world as we know it. Will anyone feel “fine” by the time these aliens are done? Will aliens “assimilate” (oh, that word) the earth? Will Dr. Craven’s professional respect for Dr. Prelorane turn him into a planetary Benedict Arnold? Will Godzilla show up in time to deliver unto us a climactic, underwater fight sequence? And just where the hell is he, anyway? Isn’t this his show?

Well…yes and no. And while H.E.A.T.’s moody, atmospheric travails inside the alien ship are all well and good, they begs the question: Why is Godzilla here at all? Omit him, and you’re left with a fairly decent, half-hour, sci-fi/horror show, complete with action, betrayal, and a creepy, cliff-hanger ending that practically broadcasts itself…while sliding right by Dr. Nick and his little band. They’ve obviously never watched a monster movie, or alien invasion film, in their whole freakin’ lives (not even Randy, Token Urban Youth that he is).

H.E.A.T.’s ignorance and Godzilla’s relative-absence are the only real causes for griping I can find here. Both elements are, in their own ways, necessary—the latter because of budgetary and time constraints; the former because…well, we’ve got to set up future episodes and reoccurring villains somehow. Can’t turn all of Nick’s old college buds into Evil Geniuses. Someone’s got to pick up the slack. And there is no trump card in the whole of Kaiju eiga quite like the Alien Invasion.

Japanese speculative fiction would have us believe that aliens are simultaneously Out There…and relentlessly scheming to get Here, take over our planet, strip its natural resources, and convert us all into chattel slaves…or three-course meals. During the original series (1954-78) Godzilla (and his “friends” among Earth’s terrestrial monsters) beat back no less than five separate alien incursions. Since the New Millennium, G’s put three more notches in his figurative belt (most recently in the derivative, over-hyped, headache-inducing, Fiftieth Anniversary blowout, Final Wars), and that’s just film. Godzilla’s video games and comic books inevitably throw down the Alien Invasion card as a framing device, with good reason. Simple and direct, it bolsters what might otherwise be a sorry excuse for a plot, allowing Godzilla to play Hero by providing a credible threat much more dangerous to humanity than he is, or could ever be.

Now’s not the time or place to plumb those depths. (Plenty of time for that once we come to this series’ vision of the Monster Wars.) At the moment, I’ve got the creeping suspicion that episode-writer Michael Reaves (veteran writer of Gargoyles, the under-appreciated Phantom 2040, and the best Batman movie in all creation, Mask of the Phantasm) had no idea what to do with Godzilla for the balance of this episode. Our titular character is, once again, left (literally) floating on the margins. Human stumbling around is all well and good but the best daikaiju creators keep their monsters well integrated into the main action…or, at the very least, well-occupied off screen.

While G’s underwater battles against the Cryptocleidi (once the episode gets around to them) are novel, they suffer from the slow pace and low drama common to cinematic scuba-diving scenes. James Bond and Creature from the Black Lagoon fans know what I’m talking about: it’s terribly hard to make a fight scene riveting when everyone’s moving at half-speed. Episode director Tim Eldred does his best to counter this by keeping the episode’s twin fight scenes short and to the point…robbing them of the visceral impact we get inside the alien ship.

It’s obvious all the eye candy went into the Leviathan and its pisonic crew of mind (if not body) snatchers. Bully to the design team for going all out on the place. They’ve obviously seen a few alien invasion pictures, and do a fine job bringing us their own (albeit in miniature, and sanitized for The Children's protection). The episode title is itself a nod to 1989’s Peter “Robocop” Weller vehicle of the same name, and the darkened corridors of this Leviathan echo that one in tone if not substance. H.E.A.T. brings a cloying sense of claustrophobia with them, into the ship. Randy’s freak-out allows us, the audience, permission to share his psychosomatic feeling, and few things put Fear in the stout of heart like the thought of all that water… pressing down…on you…burr, baby. Very burr.

Profiting, not in spite, but largely because of Godzilla’s absence, “Leviathan” stands as a high point of a first season, paradoxical and shambling, much like Godzilla himself. Jesus, I’m already into overtime and longing to be get back to safe, solid ground, where I can take easy potshots at the series obvious flaws.

For that join us next week, when the going shall get Weird, courtesy of Len Wein, co-creator of Swamp Thing.

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis

2009-02-15T19:28:00.000-08:00

Episode 6 – Cat and Mouse

Plot: As New York City slowly but steadily rebuilds itself in the wake of Godzilla’s first “attack,” our pre-credit teaser finds an unfortunate homeless man beset by a giant, mutated rat.

Cut to…some mid-town restaurant, where Dr. Nick Tatopoulos and WIDF News Correspondent Audrey Timmonds attempt to have A Talk. You know, one of those annoying “Don’t You Think Its Time We Defined Our Relationship?” talks, gratefully interrupted by separate calls to both participants.

While Audrey and cameraman “Animal” Polatti chase down rumors of giant monsters making life hard on Bowery bums, Dr. Nick and H.E.A.T. deploy into the subway, where something is literally chewing its way through Con-Ed’s best-laid pipes, plans, and walls. The inevitable complaining and clowning around ensue, proving too much for H.E.A.T. Token Badass, DGSE Agent Monique Dupre.

Back at base, Monique tells Dr. Nick, ”I am tired of being the only professional on this so-called team.” Nick’s all-too quick to let his French Secret Service agent go but, “Alas," she says, "it is not your permission I require.”

Godzilla’s arrival paves over this potential team schism, once again almost crushing his nominal human companions as he climbs out of the East River. How he avoids that, or something similar (like sweeping them into the East River as he climbs over their heads, pushing walls of water ahead of himself) is a miracle of cartoon physics.

Further miracles abound as Godzilla peruse the first of the giant rats that’ll miraculously evade him throughout the episode, causing “comical” mishaps on par with old Warner Brother’s cartoons. For example: the rat (big as a small horse) manages to sneak its way uptown, where Audrey and Animal are on location, handing out cash for monster stories. Reversing to dislodge the rat from its perch on their Ford Newsvan’s roof, they succeed in backing right up the top of Godzilla’s foot—he having stealthily arrived on the scene without so much as a fleeing populous to proceed him.

In fact, the New York of this crazy, parallel dimension is eerily deserted, making it that much easier for three rednecks—Bill, Dale, and Earl—to sneak into the city with their pick-up truck full of rocket launchers (helpfully labeled “Army Surplus”). Finding Godzilla in the midst of his rat-hunt, lead-redneck Dale aims to bag the Big G, and succeeds only in re-destroying the Chrysler Building, which suffered so much during the summer of 1998.

Still, Major Hicks attempts to calm the City’s excitable Mayor (no longer named “Ebert”) with humanitarian caveats. “Our options are limited until the city is evacuated,” he says…riii-ight. I’m sure the Pentagon might have a thing or two to say about that, Major. For all their talk of “defense” and “honor,” I hear they’re still big on “acceptable losses” down there. I doubt they’d hesitate to give the green light with Godzilla on a rampage…in New York…again…Still, somehow, Hicks manages to buy H.E.A.T. the two hours necessary to track the rat to its subway home…or their home, as it turns out.

Yes, there’s a whole colony of giant rats quietly breeding below New York’s streets…what else is new? With the team separated by mass rat attack, it's up to Audrey, Animal and Randy to save Nick and Monique from the jaws of death. Meanwhile, above ground, Godzilla fights his own, over-long battle against ever increasing numbers of rodents, human and otherwise.

All threads align in an abandoned subway platform somewhere below the city, with Godzilla literally bringing the house down, leaving human Heroes and Rednecks alike trapped below ground. It's Audrey who leads Major Hicks to their burrow, saving the day. And all without resolving a single issue raised earlier in the episode. The credits find our lovers standing alone under a New York streetlight, right back where they began, going their separate ways.

Analysis

What should be a rip-roaring good time of an episode instead becomes a testament to the true limits of this series, pulling its punches at every turn. Few things were harder in pre-computer animation than crowd scenes, or the kind of complex visual effects we take for granted now a’ days. This episode, then, is a relic of late twentieth-century, the Age of Pokemon, when American imaginations were not so well acquainted with images of death and destruction, and we worried about the effects realistic portrayals of such would have on The Children.

The result is a—dare I say it—childish little romp that robs its audience of excitement by robbing its subject of dramatic weight. Nothings appears at stake here; so what if Nick paints nightmare word-pictures of a rodentine apocalypse? He and his little band appear to be the only people left in New York City anyway. Even without pressure from the area’s top reptilian predator, the rat’s will dissolve into cannibalism soon enough.

As always, I have my questions to fall back on. Like what keeps Audrey from cashing in on her…ahem…intimate relationship with H.E.A.T.? Nothing held her back during the movie, where she flagrantly abused Nick’s trust for the sake of her career. Should we assume her continued silence indicates growth, as a character? If so, it’s made her an even less-interesting figure, and she has every right to have an official Talk with Nick about the state of their relationship.

In the Tarot deck of Giant Monster Movie Protagonists there is no Major Arcana more superfluous than The Chick. You know the type. Faye Wray set the Golden Age standards for the role, with Momoko Kochi’s Emiko Yamane the first Chick in Godzilla history. It’s taken sixty years for stronger women to inhabit the role, attempting to flesh out its barebones requirements, the easy way being to combine The Chick with that other, often-superfluous Arcana, The Reporter.

Audrey is not the first Chick to play the dual role, but she is an uneasy mixture, a volatile chemical. Having literally no place in the show’s format or Nick’s life, her presence strikes a sour note in what was fast becoming a harmonious symphony of destruction. I am grateful that writer Steven Melching reversed the usual Cinderella role here, with Audrey coming to Nick’s rescue (leaving Godzilla to once again do all the work for none of the credit). But I’m also saddened that, after this, The Series’ creators would find only one other role for her to play—the role of Damsel in Distress.

Monique, for all her temporary bitching, at least has a role to fill, and skills to contribute to the team, and proves herself invaluable against the rats. She leaves the episode convinced H.E.A.T. is much better led than not, realizing what everyone in the audience already understands: only a sad sack like Dr. Nick could possibly control this unruly bunch of teenagers.

I very much include Godzilla in this. He comes off the worst for the whole episode, barred by children's television censorship from actually catching his prey. Wouldn't want an explosion of rat gore spoiling The Children's Saturday morning. I certainly hoped for it, and it was sadly disappointed. My snarky comments during the synopsis should reveal my feelings as well as anything...though I'll state it plain if there's any doubt: Cat and Mouse is a low point early in the first season of a show obviously hobbled at the gate.

Tune in next week for greener pastures, and the coming of Leviathan...

What if the American People Learned the Truth?

2009-02-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

An uplifting series of rhetorical questions from Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX 14th)