Call It What It Is: Terrorism

I am tired of reading headlines such as this one from the PBS newsletter: "Shutdown Nears as Congress Remains Deadlocked."

The word "deadlocked" suggests a false equivalency, as if both parties are equally to blame for this current impasse. What is really going on is one party holding the government hostage in order to extort what it could not gain from the voters.

It is also very angry making when House leaders claim to be reasonable and willing to compromise, if only the Democratic Senate were not so intransigent, and they go unchallenged. They are willing to compromise in the sense that they are ready to reduce their unreasonable demands by two, while still holding the gun to the head of the country.

I hope Obama and the Senate leadership are explicit in explaining that "we do not negotiate with terrorists, period."

No Gloom, No Doom

It is not even a year since the Democratic party achieved a super majority in California and set off a flurry of dire predictions on the right. Think I'm exaggerating? A couple minutes of google searching will show you I'm not. Here is one of my favorites, from a writer for The Sovereign Investor.

No doubt that voters sending Barak Obama back to the White House was the biggest news in the November elections. But another vote – this one in California – could ultimately prove equally consequential to the future of America.

There, the spendthrift, welfare-worshipping Democratic Party won a supermajority in the state legislature. Though the Dems have controlled California politics for 40-plus years, this is the first time since the Great Depression that they’ve fielded a supermajority – a voting block large enough to override Republican resistance and pass any piece of legislation they and their tax-mongering leader, Gov. Jerry Brown, want.

California has always been a trend setter, and with this particular election it could establish a new trend that will see America slowly disassembled.
My prediction: The supermajority could mark the beginning of the end for California as a unified state … and, if it happens, that will establish a trend that sees a quest for smaller, more-responsive government across America.

Actually, California's system is still screwed up, at least in so far as it continues to take a super majority to increase taxes, and it will still have those awful, and dangerous propositions on the ballot (although Prop 30 worked out alright). And Bill Maher perhaps exaggerates California's cultural influence on the rest of the country, but he is certainly right in sticking it to the gloomers and doomers who were rooting for the Democrats to drive the state off the cliff.

Clever Book Titles

Alexander McCall Smith
Smith, born in Rhodesia in 1948, is a recognized expert in medical law and bioethics.  He is a professor (emeritus) of medical law at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a prolific writer, much of whose fiction is set in Africa. He definitely has a way with titles. Here is just a short selection:

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
Baboons Who Went This Way and That
The Careful Use of Compliments
The Charming Quirks of Others
The Double Comfort Safari Club
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Lost Art of Gratitude

Alexandra Fuller
Fuller, too, grew up in Rhodesia, and Africa is the setting for her poignant non-fiction books about her family.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
Scribbling the Cat

 Karen Cantwell

I don't know anything about Cantwell, but I like these titles:

Silenced by the Yams
Citizen Insane
Take the Monkeys and Run
Saturday Night Cleaver

And the rest are just some titles I've made note of over the past few months:

Chihuahua of the Baskervilles
Maui Widow Waltz
Bratfest at Tiffany's
Paris Trance
Death, Taxes and Extra-Hold Hairspray
A Lie for a Lie
Beware False Profits
Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes
Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger

It's a Puzzlement

A few curiosities:

Many of the same people who insist that the the most important issue facing the country is the national debt we are leaving to our children and grandchildren are willing to glibly bet the entire future of those same children, grandchildren and beyond on their conveniently self-serving belief that the world's climate scientists are idiots.

People can get appropriately incensed about a video currently circulating in which an adult woman seizes a baseball out of a child's hands at a major league game, and they feel quite comfortable in labeling her evil. How many of those people are similarly infuriated by the greedy adults who have taken nutritional assistance, or food stamps if you will, away from thousands of similar children. Oops, I forgot, they're just moochers.

And of course there are the long-standing traditions in some circles of being more concerned with humans in the fetal stage of development than in any of the post-birth stages, and of holding firmly to the belief that all life is sacred, except for those evil lives the state needs to take by execution.

There. That felt good.

Conservatives vs. Reactionaries

I just read a quote where Rainer Stinner, the head of the liberal Free Democratic Party in Germany, referred to Angela Merkel as "the ultimate incrementalist." It reminded me of the difference between European conservatives and their American cousins. Of what important conservative leader in the U.S. could that be said?

An incrementalist is still interested in creeping ever so slowly forward. The most powerful and influential American conservatives, the ones who are running the conservative party, are still trying to roll back the New Deal and deny the concept of a social contract. They want to move backward, and not at a snail's pace either.

Another example of American Exceptionalism.

Romesco Sauce

I will take a break from sharing my opinion that the Republican party has been taken over by idiots, although I reserve the right to return to that boringly obvious subject in future posts.

Instead I want to share a culinary discovery. The subject is new to me, but perhaps it is familiar to you.

A little more than a week ago the NY Times Dining section had an article about Romesco sauce, an all-purpose Spanish (Catalonian) sauce that I had not heard of. The author of the article was familiar with the sauce, because she is a food writer after all, but the gist of the article is that she had no idea how many variations existed.

Given that fact that I simultaneously learned (1) this sauce exists and (2) there are a lot of variations, I decided to just google Romesco sauce and see for myself what were my options. Indeed, there are a lot of recipes. The common ingredients in all of them are some kind of roasted pepper, and either almonds or hazelnuts, and garlic. Most of the recipes also call for tomatoes and paprika and, this seems really odd, some amount of stale bread.

I could give you the link to the recipe I opted to use, but I look at other recipes and know for a fact that they would be good too. So I will recommend the sauce and let you select your own recipe.  One of my reasons is that the recipe I have used, twice now, uses roasted red bell peppers. Many recipes call for roasted ancho peppers. I would love to hear from someone who used peppers with just a little more zing than the ones I've used.

The sauce itself is incredibly versatile. It is good with meat, chicken, vegetables and pasta. It is also said to keep well in the freezer, although I haven't tried that yet.

Heitor loved this sauce so much that he told a friend about it. This friend is a film critic and part-time chef, known to us as "Cigi, the cooker." Cigi didn't know about this sauce so Heitor took some pleasure in telling him he should "get Gerry's recipe." I told Cigi the same thing I'm telling you: why do you thing Gawd invented Google?

Surreality in the World's Only Superpower

The expression "hoist with his own petard," really does explain the current state of the Republican party. The crazies who they cultivated so assiduously over the past few decades have now, with Boehner's surrender, more or less officially taken over the party.

I have believed for a long time that the party needs to hit rock bottom before it can ever reconnect with reality. As regards their current juvenile attempt to shut down the government unless the President accepts their blackmail terms, my feeling is essentially "bring it on."

Punctuation

Since there are grammarians I suppose there are also puntuationarians (although my spell checker doesn't hold with that theory), or perhaps punctuation is considered a subset of grammar. So many questions.

At any rate, I am sure, whatever they are called, there are people concerned with punctuation who would be appalled at my use of three periods in the middle of a sentence in yesterday's post about grammar. Lynne Truss, the author of the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation would probably have a cow

I admit to not finding punctuation a very exciting subject as long as the intended meaning of the sentence is conveyed without ambiguity or confusion.

Who Gives a Rat's Ass About Grammar?

I just saw an interview with the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who was touting the latest federal education program. It's called "Race to the Top," if anyone actually cares.

He said it would result in "less crime, less teen pregnancy and less dropouts."

Typing this reminds me that the first person I ever heard used the phrase grow the economy was Bill Clinton back in the early '90s. He probably wasn't the first person to do so, but I hold him responsible every time I hear it, to this day.

I feel like someone's old maiden aunt, but...hey, like Ann Landers, I care.

How Language Shapes the Way We Relate to Our World

I was thinking of the German word Schadenfreude, the feeling of pleasure one gets at the misfortune of others, and searched out a few more that I like, and copied here

Toska

Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

Litost

Czech – Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that, “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

Tartle

Scottish – the act of hesitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.  Since Americans are able to make a verb out of virtually everything, as Heitor often points out, I suppose we would say "While introducing Cynthia to Randy, I tartled."

Wabi-Sabi - a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.

Tingo

Pascuense (Easter Island) – the act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them. This may be my favorite.

Saudade

Portuguese – the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost. You can feel (or have) saudade for people, for places, for situations etc. On one level it is equivalent to homesickness, but it can also express the feeling you have for a friend you haven´t seen recently.  There is a movie titled "Saudade for the Future," which gives a good sense of the difficulty of translating it.

Black-tracking

United States – “the act of changing one´s mind because President Obama has agreed with you.

Activism Works

It was thrilling to read a couple of days ago that Lawrence Summers has withdrawn his name from consideration as the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. It meant that all of those petitions that kept showing up in my Inbox (and later my Sent folder) had actually had some effect. Technically Summers' withdrawl was the result of four Democratic Senators on the Banking Committee announcing their opposition to his appointment. But the Senators' announcement just reflected the messages they had been receiving for weeks from us unwashed masses. Even the Wall Street Journal acknowledges, regretfully it seems, that it was the opposition of progressives that carried the day.

Summers was well known to be Obama's choice even if the nomination had not yet been made, and Obama is reportedly pissed at the organized opposition to Summers.

Obama's embrace of Summers should be all the argument needed against anyone who still wants to pretend that the President is a leftist/progressive (let alone a socialist). The left was dismayed that Obama had installed Summers as head of the National Economic Council and as one of his principle economic advisers at the beginning of his administration. Summers was, after all, one of the poster boys for the deregulation measures which led to the mess Obama inherited. For Obama to focus on the role Summers has played in the recovery is something like giving a medal to someone who helps extinguish a fire that he, himself, lit. And, unfortunately, Summers seems to think the recovery is moving along quite satisfactorily because Wall Street is doing well.

A lot of the opposition to Summers focused on his abrasive personality and his misogynistic statements before he was forced to resign as President of Harvard. I never much cared about that, because I am not convinced those are legitimate reasons for his disqualification, and I thought there were plenty of other good arguments against making him chairman of the Fed. 

I also know that Summers cannot be held responsible for the below-the-radar sexist campaign against JanetYellin, the other principle, and most logical, contender for the chairmanship. Still, Summers is part of the very old-boys club group that seems to be leading the charge against Yellin. The argument heard the most against Yellin is that she lacks "gravitas," which at least one commentator considers code for lacking a Y chromosome.

He Needs to Talk With His Employees

While it is certainly true that the administration mishandled the whole "Syria thing," and more or less bumbled into the best possible resolution, the confusion on the right is almost fun to watch.

The anything-Obama-does-is-wrong bloviaters on the cable networks, especially Fox, are having a cow because Putin seems to have saved the day for us. Here is what Roger Ailes, the head of Fox "News" is quoted as saying in 2012.

Putin is angry. He thinks the United States doesn’t take him seriously or treat Russia as a major player. Okay, fine, that’s how he feels. If I were president, I’d get in a room with him and say, ‘Look at the slaughter going on in Syria. You can stop it. Do it, and I’ll see to it that you can get all the credit. I’ll tell the world it was you who saved the innocent children of Syria from slaughter. You’ll be an international hero. You’ll go down in history.’ Hell, Putin would go to bed thinking, ‘That’s not a bad offer.’ There will still be plenty of other issues I’d have with Russia. But instead of looking for one huge deal that settles everything, you take a piece of the problem and solve it. Give an incentive for good behavior. Show the other guy his self-interest. Everybody has an ego. Everybody needs dignity. And what does it cost? You get what you want you give up nothing.

Amen

Sending Messages

As I said in an earlier post, I can´t find any forceful argument in favor of U.S. strikes in Syria besides the need to project our super power status, even though there is tacit, if not outright, admission that there is no reason to think strikes would accomplish much of anything. And plenty of reasons to believe our action would make things worse, for example as regards Shiite-Sunni relations in Iraq.

But I found plenty of references to how a strike would send a message to Iran and to Hezbollah. The talking heads and opinionators are fairly explicit about the need to send messages. Now Heitor sent me a really good article by Robert Fisk in the The Independent making that very case,  that this whole thing about attacking Syria is really about Iran.

It would be nice not to have such a cynical view of our government. One would like to think we are considering action from a compelling interest in saving human lives, rather than taking Syrian lives to frighten the new leader in Iran.

It isn't without precedent, you know. How many scores of thousands of Japanese did we kill with our two WMDs just to send a message to Stalin?

The official cover-story rationalization is well known, that a million Americans would have been killed in an invasion of Japan had we not dropped the bombs. For over 65 years arguments that the U.S. had other options available have been dismissively pushed aside. I don't recall the details anymore, but the Smithsonian was forced to cancel a planned exhibit in the mid-19902 about the bombing, because the story they proposed to tell didn't follow the official 50-year old spin.

Still, documents have now been released showing that the Japanese had been trying to surrender for at least three weeks before Hiroshima, and that this was known by all of the Allied leaders. And of course all Allied leaders knew Japan was on the brink of defeat, in any case.

Always With God on Our Side

As soon as we intervene, these Syrian rebels will have attained the moral high ground by default...because that is always our position.

Taken from a video: Syrian rebel fighters standing over captured soldiers just before the soldiers were shot dead.

Because We're In 7th Grade and The Idiot Parade Is In Town

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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I Am Not With Obama On This One

In much the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day, I find that I can agree with the Tea Baggers on the issue of Syria.

This is going to be interesting to watch. The Tea Baggers have taken control of the Republican party on all matters social and fiscal, but there is still a divide in the party on the role of the U.S. in the world. My gut tells me that the pro-military wing of the Republican party is strong enough to win on this, and give Obama the vote he wants, but not strong enough to support McCain and Graham in their eagerness for a larger commitment of troops.

I spent much of the weekend reading arguments for and against some sort of U.S. strike (it was better than watching sports) and the arguments in favor all seem to be about who we are sending a message to. U.S. involvement would send a message to Israel and to Israel's opponents. It would send a message to Iran and to Hezbollah. It would supposedly "show Syria" there are consequences to the use of chemical weapons. But nobody seriously suggests that airstrikes would deliver those consequences to the people who actually deserve them, or even prevent repetition of chemical weapons use in the future. Does anyone doubt that, whoever the main victims might be, someone is already calculating the acceptable number of collateral damages, oops, deaths?

In the spirit of fairness, I will give you a link to what I think is the most thoughtful pro-strike arguments, by Ross Douthat, a generally conservative-leaning columnist. It doesn't convince me, but I give it to you anyway.

Let's Call a Spade a Spade

I've used the term "cultural racism" in previous posts, and just decided to google it and see if it exists or not. Apparently it is not an expression in common use, at least in the way that I think of it. Maybe a better term would be endemic racism, i.e. endemic to our culture.

How else to describe the deplorable number of young black males who are incarcerated in the U.S? And those numbers are so disproportionate in large part because of the inequities in the way the various drug laws are enforced. There is no racial difference when it comes to the use of drugs, just in the enforcement of the drug laws. It is good to see that the Attorney General is supposedly looking at this issue and very encouraging that the usual obstructionists have been pretty silent so far.

It is no secret that Stop and Frisk laws have always been applied with a racial bias....on the basis of skin color, and certainly not on the basis of character.

I think white America knows that all blacks and hispanics, (the law-abiding, educated, middle-class included) experience a different day-to-day reality than do their white counterparts. Here a poet will break your heart in his description of a dialogue with his 4-year old nephew and then his own reflections on the culture in which that nephew will grow up.

The real racism is found in the long-term cultural indifference to the subject(s). These are not secrets.

But what am I supposed to feel when one party goes beyond indifference to actively promoting racist policies. The various restrictions to voting that have been enacted in Texas, North Carolina and other Republican-controlled state legislatures are intended to suppress elderly, poor and minority voting. Proponents or these laws like to toss out red herrings along the lines of  "If you have to show an ID to (fill in the blank), then why shouldn't you have to show one to vote?"  As I say, it is a red herring, because there have been virtually zero incidents of individuals trying to vote fraudulently. They are solving a non-existent problem. And what is the reason for North Carolina to eliminate early voting, other than the fact that it was most helpful to people who tended to vote for Democrats?

Republicans like to confuse the issue of voter fraud with election fraud which, if it exists, these voter-suppression laws will do absolutely nothing to address. Election fraud, which essentially has to do with how the votes are counted and recorded, can be addressed very easily. Although I have heard partisans claim that certain precincts around the country (Chicago, always Chicago) reported more votes for Obama than there were registered voters, I don't know if it is true. If it is, law makers at the federal level can certainly fix the problem easily. Let John Boehner introduce a bill to ensure fairness in federal elections; I and other non-Republicans will sign petitions to the Democratic Senate to support it.

Despite the cover story, occasionally one of these state Republicans gets caught (like Romney and his 41% comment) speaking truth to co-conspirators. Then, the truth comes out that this is all part of a strategy to deliver Republican victories. And why should anyone be surprised? It is a continuation of the Nixon Southern Strategy and the subtle racism implicit in many of the party's messages, which Lee Atwater, architect of many of them, admitted to when he knew he was dying.

The last Republican President was big on spreading democracy around the world. But the party is clearly intent on restricting it at home. And this is when other democracies are, logically, trying to widen the franchise rather than contract it. In Brazil, the law requires everyone under the age of 60 to vote. Heitor always misses elections when he is in Rio to cover the film festival there; later he has to appear before a certain body with documents to show that he was out of town. As far as I know, there is no provision in Brazil for absentee voting, but I will not swear to that. It is just as likely that Heitor is never organized enough to remember in time.

Until some sanity returns to the party, I do hope that the expression "last Republican President" continues to hold.