Scarabus

I was alerted to this via the AlterNet newsletter. I think it’s a hoot! It’s on the ThinkProgress website.

Global warming deniers forced to cancel meeting due to Tropical Storm Fay.

By Amanda on Aug 18th, 2008 at 6:33 pm

Global warming deniers forced to cancel meeting due to Tropical Storm Fay.

This week, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) planned to have town hall meetings in Ft. Myers and West Palm Beach, FL. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson notes, “AFP is a front group for the right-wing pollution company Koch Industries, with an agenda of attacking ‘global warming alarmism‘ and promoting increased offshore drilling.” In an ironic twist, AFP has canceled its meetings because of Tropical Storm Fay. From a message on the group’s website:

Ft. Myers and West Palm Beach Town Hall Meetings Rescheduled

The August 19th Ft. Myers town hall and August 21st West Palm Beach town hall will be rescheduled as a result of Tropical Storm Fay. We apologize for any inconvenience.

More on how global warming intensifies tropical storms here.

The website Progressive Independent used to be sort of strident and narrowly focused. Good people there, mind you! But perhaps too much focused on favored trees at the expense of blurring understanding of the overall forest. Good news! The site’s “presentation” is much more professional and “together” now, and it’s perspective is much more encompassing. Check it out!

One of the posts there referred to Terrence McNally’s article “How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America,” which heavily references Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of Unreason.* (Haven’t read the book yet, but I’m going to order as soon as I post this rant!) I ventured a response to the post on Progressive Independent, and here ’tis.

Douglas Hofstadter published Anti-Intellectualism in America a couple of decades back. Al Gore published Assault on Reason a year or so back. Susan Jacoby published The Age of American Unreason just recently. And the corporate media yawn. The dumber the nation, the better for them.

So who ya gonna call? Wish I knew.

Fanatically fundamentalist Muslims beyond our borders; fanatically fundamentalist Christians within our borders; the mortgaging of our nation’s future to the oil despots and to the awakening dragon, China; the sapping of our nation’s military strength in Iraq and Afghanistan; the trampling of our nation’s moral and diplomatic capital, stature, and credibility because of our naked aggression; the blind eye turned toward the disintegration of our nation’s infrastructure, system of education, system of health care, integrity of our voting system….

And the band known as the “4th estate” plays on: Which female celebrity has most recently flashed her beaver? which celebrity couple has most recently either adopted or welcomed the birth of a baby (or babies)? which celebrity has most recently assaulted a police officer? which bride, having had second thoughts, has most recently bugged out? which baby has most recently gone missing from its mother? (It’s usually the mother, right? As with Susan Smith?)

Oy!

Just this afternoon I watched yet again the wonderful clip of Buster Keaton’s standing at attention on his boat as it slides down the ways for its maiden voyage, descends beneath the surface, and settles on the bottom. Only when he’s forced to wade or swim does the imperturbable Buster wake up and realize that he’s screwed.

When will we Americans wake up? Not until the ship of state has slipped beneath the surface and become mired in the deep muddy quicksand? (Yes! Allusion to the great Pete Seeger. His song Waist Deep in the Big Muddy should be playing every day on every progressive outlet in the country.)

Phillip Butler was a POW at the same time as McCain. In fact, he had already been a POW when McCain was captured. He graduated from the Naval Academy, had a distinguished career in the Navy, and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from University of California at San Diego. Citing his own website, “He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals.” In other words, this guy has “cred” up the yang—much more cred than McCain.

I’ve written more than once about how Bob Schieffer’s treatment of General Wesley Clark, and his simultaneous groveling obeisance to Senator McCain, continues to rot my socks. What did Clark say to get Schieffer’s hackles up during his Face the Nation appearance? First, he said that commanding a unit in peacetime is not by any means the same as commanding one in wartime. So who ya gonna call? Clark did both; McCain held only a peacetime command; neither I nor Bob Schieffer has done either! For cred here, you have to go with Clark.

Second, Clark said that being shot down, captured, and held as a POW can by no means be considered an important qualification for the presidency. Just one or two seconds’ reflection reveals how obvious that is. But, once again, neither I nor Bob Schieffer has ever been a POW…and neither has General Clark, to my knowledge. So for true cred we need to hear from someone who has been a POW, who does know the Navy at least as well as McCain (and I suspect graduated a lot higher in their class at Annapolis!), and who does have an earned Ph.D. in a relevant field of study: Phillip Butler.

An abbreviated reference what Butler wrote is posted on DU, but for full and fair treatment it’s best to go Butler’s own site and read his statement in full. (If at all possible, always go to the primary source.)

Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain

Phillip Butler | March 27, 2008

As some of you might know, John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

<snip>

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60’s and 70’s. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John’s age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

I’m disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican.

I read on Digby that Sen. Obama’s staff have told Gen. Wesley Clark’s staff that the General’s “presence will not be required” in Denver. I acknowledge that, though highly educated in general, I am naive in many ways regarding big-league politics. Nevertheless, I gotta say that this strikes me as so wrong in so many ways that I’m left spluttering.

In our family we follow the policy that you’re not allowed to bitch and moan unless you’ve done or at least planned to do something to address the problem. After that, you get all the tender, loving care plus tolerance in the world. In accord with that policy, I feel entitled to complain. I wrote to the Obama campaign, and I quoted that email in writing to the Clark people:

Word on the net is that General Clark is being dissed by the Obama campaign. I have written to the Obama people saying that they owe us an explanation. I would like to ask you folks also for a response…but I know that might do more harm than good. Whatever. I’ll definitely vote for Obama, but with each new decision he makes it harder and harder for me actually to work for him. What follows is the email I sent them:

Clemons and others are saying that the Obama staff (surely with the Senator’s concurrence) have indicated that General Wesley Clark will not be welcome in Denver. I think the campaign owes its supporters an explanation.

One assumes this is a reaction to the General’s comments on Bob Schieffer’s show. The problems with that are two: What Clark said was absolutely true. The incredulity Schieffer expressed through his intonation was profoundly revelatory.

And Schieffer will be hosting one of the “debates.” The cognitive programing he revealed in that spontaneous moment will continue to filter everything he says, does, and asks.

I don’t pretend to understand power politics. But I do understand honesty, honor, and courage. Clark showed those qualities during the interview. Your campaign is trampling the qualities. You owe your perhaps naive supporters an explanation.

Granted the naivety I copped to above, I do think that at least two factors have to be in play here. The longer-standing one is Clark’s early endorsement of Clinton. At the time, I thought he might be angling for the Veep spot, especially given his obvious command and foreign policy experience. I was pissed, but I got over it. Since then Clark has strongly supported Obama, but the latter might still harbor resentment.

The other factor is the wingnut response to Clark’s comments on Bob Schieffer’s show. Frankly I can’t see any fault whatsoever in what Clark said, or in what he was too civil and gentlemanly to point out. Any rational person (including Schieffer) should have understood immediately.

The upfront stuff: Crashing a fighter-bomber (McCain was not a fighter pilot!) through either bad luck or lack of skill does not qualify one for the presidency—especially if that’s the third airplane one has crashed! Sympathy? Sure. But being either unlucky or unskilled as a pilot does not qualify one for the presidency.

[Want to see what guys like Bob Schieffer are unable to see, let alone say? Here's your link at Media Crashers.

Yeah. I should be able to embed the sucker. But the techno-gods are messing with me. I'll embed it later.]

Commanding a unit during peacetime is in itself worthy of significant respect, but it is by no stretch equivalent to commanding a unit during wartime. McCain commanded during peacetime. Clark commanded during wartime. Who ya gonna call?

McCain often re-writes or mis-remembers his personal history (not sure which I would prefer!). But for most of his political career he has acknowledged that he left the Navy because he learned he would never, ever make admiral. And let’s be honest: He would never even have been admitted to Annapolis—where he finished, what, 4th? 5th? from the bottom of his entire graduating class; he would never have been cut slack during flight training, despite having crashed two airplanes; he would never have advanced as far as he did…. Except that his father and grandfather had both been admirals.

Riding his forebears’ coattails could get McCain only so far in the military, though. The Navy was tolerant (especially during peacetime) but not stupid. McCain was never going to be promoted from captain to admiral. (Remember: He’s changed his story lately, but throughout most of his political career he has admitted as much.)

Might one mention that Wesley Clark earned his way to the rank of 4-star general? That he did command, not just a unit, but an entire battle group during wartime? Successfully? That he outranks McCain, out-performed McCain, and has much more serious foreign policy expertise than McCain? (For example, he knows that Czechoslovakia is no longer an independent nation; that Al Quaeda is Sunni while Iran is Shia; that Afghanistan and Iraq do not share a common border…..

Character! I’m sure that sewer-lickers like the deranged conspiracy-theorist Corsi could either find or invent negative marks against Wesley Clark’s character. But you need not go sewer-licking to recognize that McCain was serially unfaithful to the wife who had taken care of his children while he was away; that he dumped her for a beautiful, wealthy heiress (to whom he lied about his age and whom he had been “dating” while still married); that his complicity as one of the notorious “five” in the Keating scandal—which cost many older people their retirement investment

—did earn him criticism and should have earned him time in prison; that his support of the nation of Georgia might just possibly have been influenced by the fact that his senior adviser and business partner Randy Scheunemann was for a couple of years a highly paid lobbyist for Georgia….Etc.

Yep. The fact that his father and grandfather had been admirals took McCain a long way in the Navy and the facts that his wife is very wealthy and that he himself has been and continues to be a corrupt politician have taken him a long way in politics. Does that mean he’s the kind of guy who ought to be in the White House? Depends on your values. Does that mean he’s a guy whose character and integrity are beyond question? No Fucking Way!!

•••••

And let’s not forget that Bob Schieffer, the guy who licks McCain’s $520 Ferragamo loafers, will be hosting one of the presidential “debates.” (Ever wonder why Edwards’s $400 haircut was a big deal, but McCain’s $520 shoes are ignored by the corporate media?] If Obama comes out on top despite Schieffer’s ridiculous bias, I’ll be triply impressed! Seriously, though. If Schieffer, as an honorable man, were to watch a replay of the Clark interview, then surely he would recuse himself as irredeemably biased. He wants his 15 minutes of fame; but he’s not stupid, and he can’t be entirely devoid of character. But let’s not hold our collective breaths!

Brian Alexander has posted an article on the MS/NBC site regarding the effect of abstinence-only sex education on teens’ intentions and behavior. The gist is that this approach to sex education has little effect on kids’ behavior—and what little effect it does have is about as likely to be negative as positive! (I would add that the only ones seeming actually to benefit from such programs are politicians of the far right plus their friends who are in the business of providing content for the courses.)

The opposite of sex? Adults, teens beg to differ

Belief in abstinence doesn’t negate intent to have sex for some adolescents

By Brian Alexander
MSNBC contributor

updated 8:50 a.m. ET, Wed., Aug. 13, 2008

“Kids can believe in abstinence, but also intend to have sex,” said N. Tatiana Masters, a social scientist at the University of Washington and author of a new study on teens’ contradictory attitudes about abstinence and sex.

Masters found that the $1,500,000,000.00 spent on such programs thus far did have an effect…

But there was a catch. So-called “sex intention” powerfully modified “abstinence intention.”

In a range from 1 to 3, with 3 being the highest intention to abstain or to have sex, teens who scored very low on their sex intentions (1) were not likely to have sex regardless of their abstinence intentions. But among teens with high scores (3) on their sex intentions, those who also held the highest abstinence intentions were actually most likely to have sex.

“Increasing a kids’ abstinence intentions has little impact on the bottom line,” Masters said. But if a teen with a high sex intention obtains higher abstinence intentions, “he may become, we think, confused or conflicted and those heightened abstinence intentions may make him more likely to have sex in a kind of boomerang effect.”

Masters isn’t sure why this is, but speculates that the conflict might cause kids to feel out of control and less able to make rational decisions.

Does anyone know of a longitudinal study comparing the results obtained via abstinence-only vs. comprehensive sex education? including rate of pregnancy and STDs?

Three closing thoughts: First a plug for a friend. Do yourselves a favor and visit Roy Zimmerman’s website to check out his very funny Abstain with Me along with his other work. Roy Zimmerman: Funny Songs About Ignorance, War and Greed.

Second, a sex researcher named “Masters.” Can’t help wondering if there’s anyone named “Johnson” in her family tree.

Third, in my first sentence up above, instead of “has posted an article,” I first wrote “has up an article.” Considering the topic of the post, I decided that might not be the best choice of words.

[Apology: The typefaces in this post are grossly inconsistent. I'll figure out how to fix the design nightmare. Meantime, I hope that you will generously control your gag-reflex and concentrate on the content. I do definitely feel your pain!)

Ivory Tower academic alert! Lots of nerdiness in what follows!

On BAGnewsNotes (one of my daily must-see blog-stops), my academic colleague and online acquaintance Michael Shaw provides the top image that follows. Credit both to the photographer (Cover of the book. Photographer unknown. ) and to Prof. Shaw for providing material for academic analysis. Shaw urges comparison of this photo to the one that follows (From the NY Observer; once again, photo unattributed. ).

Shaw draws attention to the “calculating” meme implicit in both images. Scarabus agrees 100%. The question is, How should progressives and the Obama team respond to the propagation of this meme?

My suggestion? Here’s an approximate quote: “Where you see a problem, I see an opportunity.” That’s the point I want to make. I didn”t invent either the line or the thought; but, after reasonable though not exhaustive search-time, I can’t cite the proper source. (My being an academic, that totally rots my socks, of course!) Anyhow, lots of variants are extant, but I personally remember the line from the movie My Blue Heaven. Writer Nora Ephron wrote that line. Actor Steve Martin (the character “Vinnie”) delivered it.

Anyhow, distractions aside, my suggestion is that one should always think like an alchemist: You’ve been given lead? Turn it into gold. You’ve been given straw? Spin it into gold. You’ve been given shit? Turn it into sugar.

Whatever. Here’s the comment I appended to the post on BAGnewsNotes:

OK. Here are your options:

(a) This first guy flies off the handle, acts heedlessly, and then thinks about it afterward, if at all. (Like, maybe, a guy who calls his wife a trollope and a cunt in public; then, having been reminded that was both evil and bad PR, apologizes afterward.)

(b) This second guy calculates the costs, the benefits, and the possible consequences before acting.

Which of the two do you want representing our nation and holding a finger on the nuclear trigger?

In short, seems to me this meme can be turned back against those propagating it, to Obama’s advantage. I can imagine how a mash-up comparing loose cannon McCain with self-controlled Obama would make a nice viral YouTube video or campaign ad. And what adds a nicely piquant irony, given the candidates’ respective chronological ages, is that an uncontrollable temper is a sign of immaturity, self-control a sign of maturity.

McCain’s first wife, Carol, said that when he returned home he was a 40 year old guy who wanted to act like a 25-year-old. Now he’s a 72 year old guy who acts like a 12-year-old.

For quite a while now I’ve been thinking about how the nightmare world depicted in the 1975 film Rollerball seems eerily similar to the world in which we live. The film was written by William Harrison (based on his own short story “Roller Ball Murder”), directed by Norman Jewison, and starring James Caan. (The film was re-made in 2002, but I’m told that version is much more about pointless violence and much less about chilling political reflection than was the original.)

Rollerball is a dystopia, set in 2018. In Orwell’s 1984 the world is divided among a small number of multinational political units. In Rollerball it is divided among a small number of multinational corporations. The latter seems much closer to our world, doesn’t it. Apart from that, the horrors are horribly similar.

Think about Iraq. Most of the dying, crippling, and other suffering is borne by U.S. troops, their families, and the Iraqi people. Most of the profit is taken by multinational corporations like Blackwater, KBR, and CACI. The cost of the war is being borne by the present generation of U.S. citizens (indirectly via the crippling of our economy) and will be borne by many generations who will be stuck with the deferred “credit card” bills.

The wealthiest of the U.S. corporations and plutocrats gain much more than they lose because of this war. Remember the chilling moment in the film Fahrenheit 9/11 when the guy at the lectern says to the gathered “haves” and “have mores”—those Bush identified as his “base”—”There’s a lot of money to made in Iraq. A lot!” Collusion between firms like UBS (of which one of McCain’s closest advisers was an officer) collude with the government of Liechtenstein to shelter and hide that money so that the plutocrats can buy new toys while the American middle and working classes take it up the yang!

But it gets better. Consider Fishman’s book, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World (Scribner 2005). China is, in effect, inextricably both a single “holding company” and a nation state. In other words, China is a multinational corporation! And China holds our paper. How is the war being financed? By issuing bonds. And who is purchasing those bonds? China holds most of the paper, Saudi Arabia at lot, and the rest spread around. China holds the mortgage on the U.S.; and if our succeeding generations can’t manage to pay the principal and interest? China will own the U.S.

In a nice irony, in the film Rollerball the multinational corporations that control the world play out their rivalries and provide distracting “circus” entertainment for the plebes via the game rollerball. It’s sorta like roller derby in form, combined with Aztec basketball in its lethal consequences. Hmmm….. What’s happening right now in totalitarian China, Inc.? Oh, yeah. The Olympic Games (sic).



Shot from Rollerball.