I know there are "Republicans" out there who do not fit that description -- I even know some of them. But this is the party. These are the methods they have selected to gain control.
I'm sure there will be bruises and broken bones, and there have already been deaths.
But the worse harm is the disintegration of the democratic fabric. In a nation that was once ruled by the law and by ideas, I call it treason.
Why treason? Because this isn't dissent. It isn't argument or debate. It's negation.
A pluralistic society can withstand any ideology but one: that which insists on no ideology but itself. The only political stance that is absolutely unacceptable in an open democracy (to which we still cling), is one that will brook no compromise, no difference, no alternative.
What you are seeing today is a transition. The Republican Party has been plugging its ears and shouting "I won't hear you." Now, they are taking their fists out of their ears and putting them in your face and saying, "I won't let you speak."
If you still identify with this party, when these are its methods, that means you. Sorry.
That classic line is from Micky Rourke's first incarnation, in his role as Bukowski, the great street poet (who always reminds me of Tom Waites -- or maybe it's the other way around) in the movie Barfly. If you haven't seen the movie, you should.
First of all, it features the absurd and pathetic life of the talented Charles Bukowski. Bukowski wrote searing poetry, and steadfastly refused to clean up his act. Like many drunks and addicts, he believed his own hype and it made him an unbearably self-righteous person to be around. But his words were worth it (if you didn't have to live with him).
Second, it's probably Rourke's best role. It prefigures his turn as "The Wrestler," before his face was battered by his earnest courtship of boxing and equally earnest pursuit of chemical living. I guess that as a man he was already tiptoeing along the edge and that gives his portrait of Bukowski/Henry Chinaski a reckless core, convincing, probably because he was barely acting.
Finally, you'll get a dose of 1987 Faye Dunaway. If you're my age or younger, you're probably not quite old enough to remember the power of Faye's sexuality (or, she may have tormented your early adolescence). In "Barfly," she plays, like Rourke, an unrepentant booze-hound. But no matter how slovenly or sick she gets, her allure burns a hole in the film. Part of the tragedy of the movie is watching that light boxed off and traded away.
Anyway, drinks.
In what will surely go down as one of his many strokes of genius, my friend Rich married my friend Kristin. Together they came up with another nice idea: revive the cocktail hour.
There are many institutions from the first half of the 20th century that have thankfully fallen to the dustbin of history: segregation, smoking in restaraunts, sock suspenders. Yet in our headlong rush into the new, we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater: Vive l'Heure de Cocktail!
In support of that effort, Kristin and Rich bring you "52 Drink-up," now added to the "Stuff and Fun" blogroll to the right of this column. Drink along, and bring the "happy" back to "happy hour!"
I mean, just look at Sweden -- card-carrying socialist nazi communist totalitarian pinkos, each and every one of 'em, just like Barry Hussein Obama (except the bikini team). Didja know he's black? And not from here? It's true -- I've seen the fake birth certifikat. It's on the interweb -- it's a fake! This guy? He went to Ghana or sumwhere in Africa, or, no, wait, he called there, right? And spoke to the Darkie's grandmama, who said she was there -- in Africa -- when Barry was born. She was there! RIGHT THERE! It's on tape and everything. How could she be there when the crossbreed came out if he came out in Hawaii? I mean, I'm here, right now and you're there -- where you are -- so there's no way I could be here if I'm gonna be there when you pop out a chillun? I can't! I'd be HERE when it was born! So if someone asked me, "Were you there when this lady had her baby" an I said, yes I was right here, then you couldn't have had your baby there, you should have had it here! GET it?
Where was I? Oh yeah, Sweden. Fuckers.
The US ranks #5 worldwide in per capita income, with a $33,070 average. You have to tumble all the way to #8 before you get to the Swedes, who average out at $25,105. Stupid Swedes! I've got $8,000 here that says you're weak!
(Of course, skewing that statistic is probably the US's dominance of the "richest people in the world" list, Where the top two (both American) each have twice as much money as 3, 4, 5 or 6. Even among the stratospherically rich, the richest are much richer than their own "middle" class. Number 1 (Bill Gates) has $40B. Numbers 98 (a tie among 6) each have a paltry $5B. And yes, that's "B" as in "billion." To put that in perspective, if you cashed out America's four richest men (Billy Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and Jim Walton), you'd be able to balance every single state budget deficit in the United States. And they'd still have about $5,000,000,000 to split among themselves.)
Anyway, what do those stupide Swedes (I say "stupide" 'cause it's French, just like the Swedes -- stupid froggy swishy Swedes) get in exchange for being only the 8th richest country in the world (losers)?
Gah. Could you imagine? That would be horrible, just horrible. That's why we must all band together to stop our rapid slide! I want to keep living in a world where the Eagle soars ("like She's never soared before!"), we dominate the billionaires list (USA! USA! USA!) and you have to beg for unpaid time off to have a baby and hope to Sonny Jeezus that it doesn't torpedo your career. Wimins belong in the kitchen anyways. I'm Amurkin, dammit! Profit is God's holy water, blessings for the blessed! What? Huh? What? Fuck you!
Some of those things make absolutely no sense otherwise.
One of my favorite songs in college was "Plush" by Stone Temple Pilots. To this day, I can not tell you what the hell he's singing about:
Where ya going for tomorrow? Where ya going with that mask I found? And I feel, and I feel When the dogs begin to smell her Will she smell alone?
WTF? Yet it works as a song (particularly as a pop song, for which the bar of coherence is quite low).
With that said, perhaps the biggest mistake Sarah Palin made (aside from, oh, everything else) was delivering an "I Quit" speech instead of an "I Quit" song. Or, if you long for days of berets and smoky cafes, a poem:
This is a complete repost from someone on Democratic Underground calling themselves "Canuckistanian" regarding socialized medicine.
I'll only add that when I heard Rep. Louie Gohmert (R - Texas) say, "I know enough about Canadian care, and I know this bureaucratic, socialized, piece of crap they have up there, it gives them a generalized standard of care ... 1 in 5 people have to die because they went to socialized medicine," all I can say is, Louie, just to remind you, they have this thing called "democracy" up there, and if they really hated it so much, I'm sure they'd change it.
Canuckistanian:
As a Canadian I marvel at all of these terms that are so common to Americans, but are virtually unknown to us.
Here's a partial list off the top of my head:
1. "Out of network" There are no "networks" in Canada. Doctors and hospitals are not affiliated with private insurance companies. Doctors are private business entities and hospitals are usually run by non-profit boards or regional health associations.
2. "COBRA" Health coverage is NOT tied to your place of employment in any way. So any COBRA-like scheme is unnecessary.
3. "Co-Pay" The government pays 100% of basic care, 100% of the time. Drugs are not covered, but are subsidized by government to a point. And because of mass buys, discounts are obtained from the drug companies. That's why our prices are so much lower. Most employers offer a drug plan that pays for 100% of drug cost coverage.
4. "monthly premium\deductible" Wazzat? We don't consider our health to be the same as our possessions.
5. "waiting for approval" Doctors are the sole decision makers for health care. NOBODY influences or delays their decisions, warns them of costs or prevents them from giving treatment for any reason.
6. "Government interference" The provincial government in each province PAYS for whatever services doctors provide. No questions asked. Unless the procedure is experimental, not medically necessary or unwarranted, doctors cannot deny basic care - by law.
7. "Health insurance lobby" There are NO insurance companies for basic care, only companies for providing insurance for travelers. No money to be made here.
8. "bureaucracy" When we visit a hospital or doctor's office, we walk in, get treated, walk out. No "applications", "registrations" or any other kind of paperwork is required. We NEVER have to talk to a single "government official" or wait for a "judgment".
9. "PRE-EXISTING CONDITION" This is such a foreign concept to us. A Canadian's usual reaction to the explanation of this term is astonishment.
I'm glad to see that a sane health care system is within reach in America. Fight for it. It's WORTH it.
File this under "Meet the Blogroll," but don't file it away. I knew "Pop Argot," the author of "Baby I've Been Thinking," back in college, and stumbled across his 'blog a few years ago. I don't remember exactly how.
Anyway. If you're a lover of pop music, or just music, you've got to check out his site. Nearly every day brings a new hit, or an obscure pop tune that deserves more exposure, or a list of great tunes from a certain era or on a theme -- all conveniently linked to recordings or videos so you can enjoy it all over again (or for the first time).
I'm consistently impressed by the breadth of his knowledge, and I love the trivia he brings to the site -- like an actually good FM DJ from the days (not so long ago) when a DJ had some leeway to put his or her stamp on a show. Check him out.
I highly recommend this post, "What Questions Can Science Answer?" on the Discover Magazine website. It's a great beginning at a more cogent popular understanding of the nature of science, and how, therefore, we might employ what it tells us in structuring our civic lives (the big kerfuffle these days). Here's a sample:
Alpha Centauri A is a G-type star a little over four light years away. Now pick some very particular moment one billion years ago, and zoom in to the precise center of the star. Protons and electrons are colliding with each other all the time. Consider the collision of two electrons nearest to that exact time and that precise point in space. Now let’s ask: was momentum conserved in that collision? ...
...The scientific answer to this question is: of course, the momentum was conserved. Conservation of momentum is a principle of science that has been tested to very high accuracy by all sorts of experiments, we have every reason to believe it held true in that particular collision, and absolutely no reason to doubt it; therefore, it’s perfectly reasonable to say that momentum was conserved.
A stickler might argue, well, you shouldn’t be so sure. You didn’t observe that particular event, after all, and more importantly there’s no conceivable way that you could collect data at the present time that would answer the question one way or the other. Science is an empirical endeavor, and should remain silent about things for which no empirical adjudication is possible.
But that’s completely crazy. That’s not how science works. Of course we can say that momentum was conserved. Indeed, if anyone were to take the logic of the previous paragraph seriously, science would be a completely worthless endeavor, because we could never make any statements about the future. Predictions would be impossible, because they haven’t happened yet, so we don’t have any data about them, so science would have to be silent.
The bloggist (this is a good post -- I think he rises above "blogger" status) has put his finger on the fulcrum around which all of our public debates about science (abortion, stem cells, environmental degradation, climate change, class action lawsuits based on pollution) turn. At every junction, conservatives demand absolute certainty as to each and every instance with empirical evidence from that instance to back it up. They demand not just a consistent history of "smoking guns," but the very gun used for the crime in question (and usually a few eyewitnesses as well -- preferable themselves).
If that is the standard -- as it has increasingly been -- then science always loses. This level of absolute determinism can only be found through religious certainty. Ironic, then, that so many who demand specific certainty from science -- which offers libraries of evidence -- adopt that absolute certainty regarding religion, which offers practically none.
Anyway, the article and the comments that follow are engagingly well-written (and by no means taken from the same sheet of music). Recommend.
What you are seeing today is a transition. The Republican Party has been plugging its ears and shouting "I won't hear you." Now, they are taking their fists out of their ears and putting them in your face and saying, "I won't let you speak."
