Beyond the Palin
In a long overdue reversal, Barbara Hogan, the new Health Minister in South Africa, has broken with a decades old government position which denied HIV was the cause AIDS. Bravo! It’s hard to believe something taken for granted by scientists the world over since 1983 is just now coming into acceptance by this modern African state. Particular blame for this odious and tragic legacy of denial can be place at the feet of Thabo Mbeki and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who rejected science in favor of witch doctor remedies like eating garlic and beetroot. While laughable on its face, the results are deadly serious; hundreds of thousands of deaths and new infections. In South Africa, where 5.4 million people – the highest number in the world – are infected with HIV, the unmitigated suffering that is a legacy of this negligence is draining resources, taxing hospitals and, not surprisingly, threatening the very future of this nascent African democracy.Yet, while never providing a shred of evidence (as surely none exists) to bolster her belief, Tshabalala-Msimang was never hesitant to spread her virulent misinformation as emphatically as any deranged evangelist, “Shall I repeat garlic, shall I talk about beetroot, shall I talk about lemon… these delay the development of HIV to Aids-defining conditions, and that’s the truth”. Shall you just shut up and go away! Or, maybe, she should open a Jamba Juice.
Other than being utterly reprehensible, what’s intriguing and terrifying about her behavior is that a similar strain of anti-intellectual posturing is manifest, often with similar pride, in some American politicians. Not as it relates to HIV per se, but in other areas where science and scientific consensus is involved. At a time when human knowledge is growing exponentially there seems to be a concomittant growth of atavistic resistance to it. The underlying psychology behind this blowback is hard to pinpoint, but I suspect it has something to do with too much information overwhelming the minds of simple people and compelling them to retreat to fantasy worlds of faith and the putative wisdom of old knowledge. If that sounds arrogant so be it. I cannot sit on my hands while the most technologically advanced nation on the planet finds itself caught in a riptide between the future and the desperate, clinging past.
To wit Sarah Palin. Others can write about her politics, abuse of power or lack of experience and blatant ignorance. I, for one, am more concerned about her anti-scientific positions vis a vis her religious beliefs. See, not unlike Tshabalala-Msimang, Sarah Palin seems rooted to ideas that are long since discredited. She believes that the earth is 6000 years old. She believes man ran amongst the dinosaurs. She denies global warming and evolution. And she wants to be President of the United States.
One need only consider the lamentable years of stem cell research lost to George Bush and his opposition to “destroying life” as a sort of “American Template” for this kind of bankrupt thought. Life, as he defines it, is a sixteen cell blastocyst. Really? Sixteen cells?
Sixteen cells, no matter their origin or their potential, do not equal a human life. It is an insult to humans everywhere to suggest anything different. Equating living humans to a sixteen cell stage we all went through is a form of resolute and self-imposed blindness. This is obvious on its face, unless you believe that life is inherently sacred; a product of God and not the copulation of two people of opposite sexes.
The truth is, life gains value as it is lived. If shipwrecked on a desert island with a man who was an experienced survivalist and an infant, which of these two would be more expendable if expending be needed? Toss the baby in the sea. It may be regrettable, but it is the smart and right thing to do. The baby can’t help, it is a hindrance. Therefore, it’s life is less valuable than the experienced adult. This is logical, humane and moral. Save the most with the least. God would surely approve. And you would too, if actually faced with this predicament. Now, if the biological entity is a sixteen cell packet of undifferentiated cells, the choice becomes a no-brainer.
No-brainer that is, unless you’ve stopped thinking and turned your rational mind over to an absent God or the teachings of those who clung to this God when the world was a dark and ignorant place. Alas, treatments that could be headed to patients have been stymied precisely because of a favoring in the political leadership of the irrational over the scientific.
I live in fear of the kinds of mindless decisions that would come from above with Sarah Palin in charge. She makes George Bush look like Richard Dawkins by comparison. And yet, I hear very little among the chattering classes that take her or anyone like her to taskfor their beliefs. Why not? With that voodoo ritual she stars in on YouTube you have to accept that she is fringe. She is Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Take two garlics and call me in the morning. She represents perpetual suffering for the innocents who stand within a hair’s breadth of medical rescue and on a global scale she represents the worst kind of remedy for mankind to come along since the influenza epidemic of 1918. We cannot allow a world where superstition, religion or tribal folklore come to dominate, otherwise we might actually be in the end times.
Day 177 – Monica Badling
Monica Goodling is immoral, unethical and indicative of the systemic rot and disregard for precedent that seems to be a Bush contagion. For those of you who don’t know, Monica Goodling was at the center of a firing scandal at the Department of Justice ( that would be the department that enforces the laws of The United States of America) which saw perfectly capable and conscientious federal prosecutors fired for reasons not professional, but political. It’s all very amusing when you consider these attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and, therefore, can be removed by fiat, because the scandal only came to light as a result of the negative performance reviews cited as justification for the firings. Had they been sent packing with letters of recommendation the passel of fired prosecutors would no doubt have gone quietly into that good night and this scandal would have gone unnoticed.
This brings up an important question. Why the need to sully their reputations? I have a theory. Guilt. The perpetrators, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling knew the firings were unjustifiable. Even worse, they knew they were illegal. It has come to light that the real reason most were fired was because they were deemed not partisan enough in their prosecutions, not coddling enough of Republican Senators or, and this is the real kicker, not straight enough in their sexuality. You see, Monica is a good Christian. Not just a good one, a great one. She even went to Regent Law School. This is a law school run by Pat Robertson whose paltry student body is heavily represented in the administration. Their stated mission is to break down the barriers between church and state. They want to make their religion law. Who needs the constitution when you’ve got God’s will to lead to you?
So, they concocted lies about the attorneys not as a justification for the firings, but to make themselves feel better about their dirty deed, to assuage their dirty Christian guilt. How am I so sure? They had no need to badmouth the attorneys. Firing them was fully within their right and was not an uncommon practice historically speaking. But, as good Christians, they new what they were doing was wrong and illegal so to obliterate this simple fact in their mind, they thought to trash these attorneys and make them into bad people so removing them would not only be a just course of action, it would be acting in the interest of all that is holy. This must have been particularly true for those attorneys supposed to be gay. It came out yesterday that Monica had performed searches related to the firings that involved words like “gay” and “homosexual”. I guess gays were in her radar. Fags and dykes are very unchristian, you know? Forget that we are all God’s creatures. That’s only true for good Christians of the born again variety.
This is the odious outcome of George Bush and his close ties to the Christian right. This is the danger of mixing religion and politics. What we’ve learned is that Christians are corrupt, unjust, manipulative liars and when given a shot a power they are just as scary as Fascists, Islamists, Communists and Oligarchs. Give me a pervert any day.
Day 182 – Follow The (Next)Leader
I’m not a conspiratorialist, but I’m beginning to think I should be. It was recorded a couple of weeks ago in the mainstream media that the Bush administration was changing course in Iraq and contemplating drawing down troops and shipping them off to Afghanistan. At the time, keen observers noted how this change in strategy mirrored the stated intent of Barack Obama. How ironic. Some went on to posit this could hamper John McCain ‘s campaign for president as it seemed to fly in the face of his Iraq policy at the exact time he was claiming to have more foreign policy experience.
Having destroyed the Republican party from the top down could it be that Georgie had one final coup de grace up his sleeve that would remove any hope of his party retaining the White House? At first blush the answer appeared to be yes. But subsequently, in the last two weeks, Georgie has gone on to ape additional positions held by the democratic contender. First, he sent a representative to talk directly with the Iranians regarding their nuclear ambitions. Second, he signed the Democrat sponsored mortgage relief bill he had threatened to veto. That’s three policy changes in the last two weeks and three of anything suggests a trend.
Could it be that Georgie has seen the light and its name is Barack? There is a narrative device I call the magic negro that crops up in movies and literature with unerring frequency. This usually involves a hideous or scary big black man who lurks in the background only to make some special insight or reveal some special power at a critical juncture in the story (usually to save ignorant white people). Perhaps, in the personage of Mr. Obama, Georgie finds himself held in the thrall of a real life, archetypal magic negro. For that matter, maybe the entire country, even the world is being held in such a thrall. To judge by the reception Obama received in Germany today you would have thought they were witnessing the second coming. Jesus was a black man, right?
So there it is. That’s the test. If Georgie follows suit and heads off to Europe offering mea culpas and begging forgiveness we will have our proof that he is an Obama acolyte. A new disciple in the Church of the Obamanation.
Or, on the other hand, perhaps something more sinister is at work. Perhaps Georgie and his oily ilk have decided that the only way to defeat Obama is to embrace everything Obama preaches, then make a mockery of it the way their every misstep has made a mockery of their own administration. In a sense, discrediting Obama by embracing his ideas and mucking them up. Like I said, I’m not a conspiratorialist, but all this following of Obama’s lead has got me wondering.
Day 183 – Fool’s Gold
The great thing about George Bush is the way he sticks his foot in his mouth as if it were an autonomic reaction to breathing. These are truly halcyon days for people who make their livings as comedians. The only problem is, it’s hard to laugh at George because of the heinous effects of his misguided leadership. It reminds me of that bloviating cad played by Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors who claims that comedy equals tragedy plus time. In ten years time perhaps I’ll look back on the Bush administration and howl like an old Marx Bros. comedy. As for now…
George’s latest proudly insensitive remark is of the self reflexive variety. He explained to a group of Republican donors in Houston that the current financial crisis resulted because, “Wall Street got drunk”. He went on to elaborate, “It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.” For once, he speaks of something he knows. Pity he didn’t diagnose the problem while the inebriate was still standing at the bar. Having been a drunk himself he should have been adept at spotting them. He would have known what any good bartender knows – when to cut someone off.
But In the case of the financial markets, cutting someone off requires government regulation. We know how George feels about that. He doesn’t think government works and he’s out to prove himself right by reducing it to an ineffectual muddle. What an insidious fool we gave the reigns to. It’s repugnant to watch him spit out his latest observation like a swiney pearl, all smug confidence. Just once, George, it would have been nice if you could have seen the train coming and gotten out of its way. Instead, you are steadfastly a fountain of misery. Hence, you will continue to be a goldmine to comedians and a cesspool to the rest of us.
Day 185 – Snow Job
Yet another encomium for yet another newsman…
It seems like only yesterday we were witness to the deification of Tim Russert as the physical embodiment of all that is or can be virtuous in the arena of big league network news. A heart attack cut him down at the tender age of 58. He left a wife, a son and five job openings at NBC.
How then to assess the life and professional achievements of that less regarded underachiever, Tony Snow? Tony, a newsman before he became Bush Press Secretary III, passed away from a recurrence of the colon cancer that first appeared in 2005. It’s one of those long, horrible deaths that provides ample time to reflect/dwell on one’s life; all the missed opportunities, all the slights visited upon others, and all the disillusionment that comes with believing and dedicating your life to a bankrupt set of beliefs and people. All this in addition to the standard issue, maudlin sentiments which go without saying; it’s a lot to endure.
I suppose one can start by trying to empathize with Mr. Snow who, while standing under the sword of Damocles in his personal life, performed the equally treacherous task of standing up for the Bush administration as their mouthpiece and public face. No easy task, indeed. I assume that every press secretary knows the president and his administration are often wanton prevaricators. Their special skill comes from being able to couch the administration’s lies in such language that it expresses the lie without being, in fact, a lie.
This is easier in some administrations and harder in others. As for the Bush administration, it constitutes the Iron Chef challenge for prevaricators of Mr. Snow’s ilk. That’s why I was curious to learn from Mr. Snow’s predecessor, Scott McClellen, that he came to believe only after the fact he had been misled by Cheney and Libby regarding Valerie Plame. How could he not have known or at least have had an inkling which he assuaged with a raised eyebrow and misplaced sense of loyalty? See, even for retired, former flacks, the old instincts to lie die hard.
So it is with all of these folks, including Tony Snow. He was a professional liar. At that, I found him to be personable and gracious. He was from North Carolina and that demeanor is common among North Carolinians even if no less disingenuous than a crocodile’s tears. What strikes me about Tony, and where my heart goes belatedly out to him, is he was no doubt a decent man and a loving father, who, like the undertaker in the Godfather, finds himself having to perform a noble task for undeserving scum.
Most people in this position live in denial and/or develop intricate schemes of rationalization. I suspect Tony did this at one time during his professional apex but, faced with certain death, much time to contemplate, and McClellan’s book peering over his shoulder like a test cheater, he had to have come to the abject realization that the last few years of his public life were a fraud.
Adding salt to the wound is to realize that the same people who would be turned to for quotes regarding his loyalty and service to America were the very same people he fronted for; liars so discredited at this point they can’t even be trusted to take out the garbage. Hence, when George “Heck of a job, Brownie” Bush tells the world, “Tony was a smart and capable man”, “an honest guy”, who is going to believe him? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to see it, does it make a sound? Or, even more onerous and damaging to Mr. Snow’s legacy, Dick Cheney asserting “I’ve known or worked with a lot of press secretaries, White House press secretaries, in my 40 years in Washington, and I have to say that Tony’s the best”. That’s some endorsement. Thanks for nothing, Dick. Think about it. If it’s true, it’s even more damning obloquy than if it’s a bold face lie.
This is not intended to be an obliteration of Tony Snow. His colleagues have already taken care of that. Tony chose to be part of that club, that’s all I’m saying. In fact, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt by supposing his death bed regrets were similar to those sheepishly revealed by Mr. McClellen, if not voiced quite so publicly.
Poor Tony, he couldn’t win. What irony. What tragedy. That which he did to make himself great is that which will render him less than great in the eyes of history. Is this what was going through his 53 year old mind as the morphine checked his pain? Or was he thinking about his family? Or why it was he instead Heart Attack Cheney who was next in line at the end of the road.
Day 186 – Mission Accomplished, The Redux
How are they going to spin this? Let me tell you. Today, Joint Chiefs Chairman, Adm. Michael Mullen, just back from Iraq and Afghanistan, has declared that the “troop surge” implemented 17 months ago has shown stunning results. Iraq is now safer than it has been in three years and while he wouldn’t say “we’ve reached a tipping point or it is irreversible” he has concluded that things are “remarkably better”. Viola! The troop surge worked. Good. I was an advocate of a large troop presence before the outset of this conflict. When General Shalikashvili went before Congress and advised an invasion army of 250,000 I thought that sounded conservative. Back in Gulf War I we went in with a coalition of 500,000 and that force wasn’t charged with occupying Iraq. A cornerstone of the Powell Doctrine was that the U.S. should attack only with overwhelming force. This is hardly original thinking, it can be traced back to Sun Tzu. Any reasoned and thoughtful military mind would have concluded that taking Iraq with 150,000 troops was foolish at best and reckless in the least. Oh well, stuff happens.
It was Don Rumsfeld who deemed a large force unnecessary. He wanted to fight the war quicker, cheaper. Instead of planning for the worst, which is the professional and moral obligation of any man empowered to send soldiers to their death, he was convinced we would be greeted as liberators and that Iraq, a country that had been ruled by a tyrannical despot for thirty years, would rebound and instantly blossom into a thriving democracy. On its face, this is sheer stupidity and reality has borne this out. But George Bush, not knowing any better or caring to educate himself on the realities of invading a sovereign country, went along with this plan. This constitutes failure on a massive and tragic scale. When you count bodies, the money and the time wasted on this misbegotten war, it screams for accountability and the buck stops at the president’s desk.
This is why it will be so galling when Georgie stands up in front of America to claim success in Iraq. No doubt by the time George leaves office we will have started drawing down our troop presence and handing over control of security operations to the Iraqis. This is certainly a hoped for and well deserved outcome. No doubt the Bush Administration will tout this as a great success; a prime example of the “mission accomplished” variety. But I, for one, will not allow this recasting of history to take hold. Any attempt to credit the “surge” for our putative success in Iraq must viewed in light of a critical and dunderheaded choice made by the president before a single boot had landed in Iraq: the undercommitment of U.S. forces and the stranding of them for three and a half years in a slow and bloody attrition because of an unwillingness to admit his own miscalculation. Does anybody remember “standing firm”?
We have all witnessed the fallout, the barbarism of jihadis seeking opportunity in the vacuum created by us, the disgraceful behavior at Abu Ghraib that will forever stain the image of America, the countless unnecessary casualties that resulted from failing to properly prepare for and execute the invasion.
These men should be in a docket. They should be held accountable for their failures and if found guilty, properly punished. Their names are, George Walker Bush, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
I only wish there was a hell, because then at least, we could all be assured that justice would eventually prevail.
Iraq will be a better place one day because of us, but it could have been better, faster, cheaper.
187 days left – Golden Gates
It’s something of a miracle this has never happened before. San Francisco city employee, Terry Childs, a technology engineer with a six figure salary has effectively shut down the city’s new FiberWAN system by installing a password granting himself exclusive access to the network. The city has yet to discover the password and Childs isn’t talking despite being arrested and charged with four felonies related to his activities. It has been postulated that someone on the outside knows his password and will unleash cyber gotterdammerung , destroying millions of city records if Terry’s heretofore secret demands are not met. A city is being held hostage by a highly paid white collar worker in a fit of pique over the prospective loss of his job. The effects of such an attack would be a terabyte scale version of losing your wallet. And all of this because Mr. Childs’ snooping at inter-office email revealed he was being targeted for firing. Still think you have any privacy?
I suppose we should be thankful he didn’t show up to work with a Glock and play out the familiar video game scenario that is the lifeblood of cable news. But his action brings up an almost more frightening scenario. Arthur C. Clarke posited (I’m paraphrasing here) that in the future the world would be run by technicians because no one else would understand how it worked. Well, that future is now. I suspect many more of these cyber Columbines in our future. And not just from the Chinese and Al Queda, but from homegrown nerds and thugs and organized criminals. It has all the necessary ingredients, money, fame, and the opportunity to strike on a grand scale at a faceless giant, that titillate a certain subset of social outcast. That same subset who, by their very nature, are often inclined to possess the exact skills required to pull off attacks like these, are out their like a ghost army primed to attack.
Call them the geek squad now, but our days are numbered and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Who are you gonna call, Ghostbusters? Even the impersonal nature of attacks such as these seem tailor made for this kind of individual. And now the finger is out of the dike. Somewhere, right now, there’s an IT guy or gal feeling disrespected or vulnerable and Terry Childs has shown them the way. Only, Terry’s act was child’s play. They’re going to outdo him. And when they do, I suspect we’ll all take shrapnel.
How does this relate to George Bush’s final days in office? He’s a guy who talks about threats to America, yet I’ve never heard him mention this one. That doesn’t mean people in the government are aware of the potential for trouble, it just means they’re not sharing it with us. They’re probably discussing it amongst themselves, creating lists of potential trouble makers, and sharing it all on inter-office email
That’s the truth of the world today, we’re just one man-made Y2K away from total ruin.
188 days left: Armageddon Tired of Waiting
If you need yet another reason to believe the end is near, and by the end I mean the end of everything including that cheerful cockroach in Wall-E, look no further than George W. Bush’s press conference of this morning. That a mendacious idiot could ascend to the most powerful position in the world has got to be proof of something more than the salient vision of Mike Judge. The end is near. Run for the hills. Oh, why bother?
Here’s a guy who would have you believe, if we’d only listened to him seven years ago, we’d be slurping up our abundant coastal dino juice and rolling around in guilt-free Hummers. His smirky I told you so was reminiscent of one of those apartment Janitors that peopled 70′s sitcoms. The only difference is you could tune those guys out and they actually would go away. Newsflash George: Drilling for oil takes years, it’s expensive, and, when you took office oil was $37 a barrel. There was no incentive to drill and no push from you or your pals to do so save for ANWAR, and that’s more of a conservative cri de couer than a shot at oil independence because the quantities there (15 billion barrels on the high end) wouldn’t last long. We consume 21 million barrels a day in this country. Want to talk about fuzzy math? That’s a whopping 750 days worth of oil. Two whole years!
Here’s another newsflash: George is a proponent of nuclear power. Why not? It’s clean. At least until you have to dispose of the waste and Nevada calls up its National Guard and plants hookers in suicide vests at the mouth of Yucca Mountain. George is dumb. At this point that is one of the few things in the world that can be deemed obvious.
He either wants to pump oil which generates CO2 when it burns or provide Al Queda with dirty bomb components. See, the end is near.
How hard would it have been, seven years ago, to dedicate national resources to a genuine effort at solving our energy dependence by funding, through the kind of corporate tax breaks that George and his ilk so dearly love, a real effort at renewable energy sources? First, it would have taken vision. It would have required a leader who plans ahead and believes in the power of science and technology to solve problems. Second; It would have required a Kennedy moment, a blue sky gambit … “let’s send a man to the moon”… “let’s develop renewable alternatives to oil”. You can’t fault the man for not coming to office with such a proposal in mind, but after 9/11, it should have been part of the defense of America to see to it that we are no longer under the sway of Gulf States and Hugo Chavez. Oh, the vision thing…
Grousing is easy vision is hard. There’s the half-empty glass, the half-emptied bank account and that giant mountain of shit that looms just over the horizon with its suffocating inevitability. It’s the nature of man since recorded history, and no doubt before, to think fatalistically. Humans are hard wired to see gloom and doom. It improves our chances of survival to live in fear of the unknown. It keeps us vigilant. Quoting from Donald Rumsfeld, “There are known knowns and there are known unknowns”. It is the known unknowns that are the problem. Living in fear of the wrong unknown leaves us unprepared for the unknown unknown that is the real enemy. Given this, apocalyptic thinking is inevitable. Hence, every culture has its end of days scenario, the logical extension of the knowledge of impending death. And in a few billion years, it will come to pass. But, a few billion years is a long time.
Georgie, you failed to identify the the right known unknowns. At a critical juncture in human history you came up a dollar short and a day late with such frequency that you’ve single handedly revived the Armageddon business into a thriving cottage industry. Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the pocket nuke, the economic collapse. There are evangelical yokels in Texas trying to breed the prophesied red bull and ship him to Israel for the second coming. I hope they succeed. And I hope he makes a mighty tasty steak.
Let’s hope the next guy to come along has the bearing of a real president. We can’t wait for the resurrection. We need a guy like Ronald Reagan, not for his ideology, but because Reagan had the ability to instill confidence. People thought of him as a grandfather and this was reassuring to us and the rest of the free world. Now we need an Uncle. A really smart, motivated, tireless uncle who can instill confidence. And, if that uncle’s name turns out to be Barack Obama, let’s all hope some yokel doesn’t put a bullet in him.
188 days left: Bush Lifts Ban on U.S. Offshore Oil, Gas Drilling
By Daniel Whitten and Catherine Dodge
July 14 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush said today he’s lifting a presidential ban on drilling for oil and natural gas on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, setting up a showdown with Congress over a separate ban it put in place in the 1980s.
“Today I’ve taken every step within my power to allow offshore exploration of the OCS,” Bush said in a statement at the White House. “This means the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action by the U.S. Congress.”
Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress rejected the president’s call, saying the move to end the moratorium would have no effect on prices and better options are available.
Pressure to permit drilling off the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean coastlines and in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico has been building as oil and gasoline prices have surged to records.
