LORD OF THE FLIES ...

Presidente Obama mata LA MOSCA terríble!



Nope, it wasn't Jeff Goldblum or even Sarah Palin ... But PETA weighs in regardless: "He isn't the Buddha, he's a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act."

Buddha NO (?) ... NINJA SÍ !!!

Au revoir...

Just wanted to apologize for my absence, with the return of the wandering wife from another of her sojourns, and we leave for Quebec City this morning. See you all next week!

The Revolution in Iran IS BEING Televised and T-T-t-t-w …

TWITTERIZED!

The social networking site of much that is trivial and mundane on the internets has also become the most galvanizing tool of popular insurgencies and grass roots underground political movements EVER.

The reasons are clear: Twitter promotes the two “Ps” –- presence and participation -– as one blogger noted, like no other technological tool currently available to a networked population. It has enabled instant (and archived) communications, as the Iranian government shuts down the traditional means of communication, such as cell phone networks. Critical information tweets have continually fueled the organization and mobilization of the networked masses in anti-government protests.

Television, cell phone services, satellite communications -– yesterday’s technology -– are easier for the repressive Iranian regime to shut down, jam, censor, and control. But Iran’s traditional information blackout has had limited capacity to control the information flowing out of the country from tweets, Facebook, blogs, and YouTube postings. The ruling mullahs have been playing a losing whack-a-mole game with the protesters. No sooner do they suppress dissent in one area, that it pops up in another, and another, and another.

With the foreign media banned in Iran and ordered out of the country, and the local media, such as it is, acting as an instrument of state control and censorship, the message is getting out through thousands of citizen journalists. Young Iranians, educated university students, are at the forefront of this revolution. In this respect, at least, they are direct descendants of just about every revolutionary movement in history. The university in repressive societies has frequently been the town square, the focal point of revolution. But the advent of Twitter brings a new dimension to this common narrative of struggle. it's not so easy for repressive regimes to shut down the universities, identify the student leaders, and jail or make them "disappear."

In a remarkable admission of Twitter’s critical role as enabler of Iran’s popular revolt against its fixed election, the State Department requested that Twitter delay its scheduled maintenance until off hours in Iran, so that critical communications among insurgents would not be interrupted.

No one can predict with any certainty what will happen in Iran in the days, weeks, and months ahead. The Iranian ruling clerics have lost all legitimacy. Their options for state control are limited and point almost exclusively to a severe crackdown and dictatorial control of the population with the strong-arm backing of the Revolutionary Guard. The military, analysts note, are the real power behind the clerics and their puppet Ahmadinejad.

President Obama has taken the correct position. Expressing his concern over events in Iran, and his solidarity with the Iranian people, the President has studiously refused to take the bait of his strident, reactionary critics, Gramps "bomb-bomb Iran" McCain, Congressmen Cantor and Pence, and "Pal Joey" Lieberman. These imbeciles, and I do not lightly use this term, are criticizing the President for not standing with the protesters and against Iran's ruling clerics.

President Obama is absolutely correct in stating that the United States should not be "meddling" in Iran's elections. Considering our shared, chekered history, that's a no-brainer.

Anyone who knows the recent history of Iran, dating to the CIA-backed coup which deposed a democratically elected government and installed the Shah, would understand that for the United States to take sides in this delicate, evolving upheaval in Iran means THE KISS OF DEATH FOR THE PROTESTERS!

Nothing would restore Iranian legitimacy with its people more quickly than for the United States to once again inject itself in internal Iranian affairs. "See," the ruling mullahs will gleefully and with some justification tell their people, "the GREAT SATAN is behind these protests! Death to America!" (Yadayadayada ...)

Thanks for validating our vote, Gramps "bomb-bomb Iran" McCain. Time for your nap.

Racist Legislative Aide in Tennessee gets Tap on the Wrist

THEY JUST DON’T GET IT.

A legislative aide to Tennessee State Sen. DIANE BLACK (R-Gallatin) sent out the following graphic from her state email depicting the 44 presidents. Look at the lower right corner space reserved for President Obama.



The legislative aide, SHERRI GOFORTH, told a local news blog, Nashville is Talking, “I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button. I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.”

Her boss, DIANE BLACK, interviewed by CNN, refused to say:

1) That this employee was, should, or would be FIRED; and
2) That the content of her employee’s email is RACIST.

Instead, she would only say that the email was “inappropriate,” and that her employee who has a “stellar 20-year record” of work for the state legislature was issued a “reprimand” per HR state policy for “improper use of email.”

EXCUSE ME?!

Exactly where does RACISM fall in the category of “improper use of email” to warrant IMMEDIATE TERMINATION from the state of Tennessee? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Tell us, Sen. Black, would this sanction be the same had your employee used state email to peddle pornography? Justice Potter Stewart’s famous reference, “I know it when I see it,” could just as easily apply to racism. But in Tennessee, racism apparently isn’t a serious offense. This is the state whose Repugnant (utterly and completely REPUGNANT) Party has a recent history of racist flyers and attack ads aimed at President Obama. There was the reference to his middle name, Hussein; there was the picture of Obama in African garb; and there was a flyer with Obama’s head on a crow. All were withdrawn. And now this.

Sen. Black’s constituents flocked to her support. “Get over it,” they told outraged critics. If Obama had been white, or if this was about W., they said, no one would raise an objection.

THEY JUST DON’T GET IT.

Did SHERRI GOFORTH really REGRET this, as her boss insists, or APOLOGIZE?

Here’s NIT’s Christian Grantham’s report of the GOFORTH interview:

I spoke with Sherri Goforth minutes ago to confirm she sent this email. She confirmed she had sent it and also said she had received a letter of reprimand from her superiors but said she will stay on the job.

When I asked her if she understood the controversial nature of the photo, Goforth would only say she felt very bad about accidentally sending it to the wrong list. When I gave her a second chance to address the controversial nature of the email, she again repeated that she only felt bad about sending it to the wrong list of people.

“I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button,” Goforth told NIT. “I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back."

The "wrong list"?! Who's on the RIGHT LIST, Sherri: Racists, bigots, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and xenophobic Repugnants? 



THEY JUST DON’T GET IT.


In the meantime, Sherri, consider handing the "RIGHT LIST" over to the FBI.

SHAME ON DIANE BLACK,SHERRI GOFORTH, THEIR SUPPORTERS, AND EVERY REPUBLICAN WHO DOES NOT IMMEDIATELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY CONDEMN THIS ACT OF RACISM.

You’re despicable beyond words.

Panetta Slams Cheney: Is the G-OLD-P Destined for Whigdom?

In an interview with the New Yorker, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the Bush regime's Dark Lord "smells blood in the water" on national security issues, with reckless statements that the Obama Administration has made our country less safe without producing a single shred of evidence to support his allegations. The evidence, of course, is classified, and will not be declassified at Cheney's behest (and he knows it) simply because His Lordship is suddenly BFF with the FOIA.

"It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics," said Panetta. "When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics." Which begs the question: If Cheney knows something the DCI -- whose job it is to know about such things -- doesn't, then perhaps he ought to share with Leon, don't-cha think?

Watching the shameless, sometimes diverting and bizarre sideshow of the Cheneys' BIG LIES tour, the question that comes to mind is, does their party really want to run with this? I mean, who the hell made Liz Cheney an expert on national security issues and foreign policy? Aside from holding a low level position in the disgraced Bush-Cheney State Department, her sole qualification for making the political chattering rounds seems to be a penchant for shameless, pathological lying. Unlike her father, though, she knows little beyond the Cheney family lies talking points, making her a genuine trash talker of the worst kind. The problem is, she will lie with impunity on "friendly" territory such as Faux News and Andrea Mitchell Reports, that will give her free rein without contesting her lies. There's a lag time before the truth squads on KO, Rachel Maddow, Huff Post, Media Matters, and others, debunk the latest Cheney lies with video evidence, timelines, and quotes. An annoyance, to be sure; still, most viewers can see through the lies. Preaching crapaganda to the choir won't get the Right much past 35%.


Oh, lest I forget ... Boss Limbaugh, who may be headed for a rehab center after blaming the health care crisis on sports injuries, speaks for the Cheney lunatic fringe which, having exiled Colin Powell, is now the Repugnant Party mainstream -- pasty white guys with pacemakers and SS/Medicare eligibility. If Liz Cheney and Sarah Palin are the best women "leaders" the grand old, old, old white party has to offer ... well ... they're in big trouble. As in destined for extinction, like the Whigs.

Is George W.Bush the 21st Century's Millard Fillmore?

I'm with Dave

Palins, keep on talking and saying stupid things.

Memo to Todd and Sarah:

Do you think Letterman keeps track of your travel plans? That he knows which of your kids was with you?

Sarah, you and Todd are the worst parents in the country without a reality show. You knew your CHILD was pregnant and you let your ambition run wild. YOU decided to expose your child to the national media. YOU were the object of the joke, and A-Rod, NOT your other young daughter.

As a parent I am ashamed. As a Democrat I'm THRILLED!

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: Carrie Prejean, You're FIRED!

Was it all just a BAD DREAM? ... a NIGHTMARE caused by watching too many APPRENTICE reruns? Carrie Prejean's benefactor, The Donald, came to her in a FRIGHTFUL VISION:

Carrie Prejean, Miss California NO MORE ... You're Fired ... FiReD ... FIRED ....

No, my dear, this is NOT a Bad Dream ... You're REALLY FIRED!

Let's get this off now, SHALL WE? Yes, I have your BEST
interests at Heart. Looking forward to your Playboy spread!

Caribou Barbie, Ph.D

Why does Sarah Palin insist on opening her yap?

The woman has been a terrible mayor, governor, vice-presidential candidate, and most importantly, a nightmarish mother. But for some reason, this miserable person keeps on talking.

She stated that the the president's economic program "defies any sensible economic policy that any of us ever learned through college."

Well, Sarah, you would certainly know about college, since you went to so many of them, but apparently you didn't study history at any of those stops. Sarah, honey, did you ever hear of the name of one of the great Keynesian spenders of all time? Massive deficit spending that actually did help the country improve its economic condition from that under the previous administration. You know...RONALD REAGAN?

Keep talkin', Sarah.

Remembering Bobby Kennedy

Forty-one years ago -- June 6, 1968 -- Bobby Kennedy was felled by an assassin’s bullet. It’s still hard to put into words what Bobby meant to me and to millions of people around the world. In a time of turmoil and war, hatred and division, like no other this country had experienced since the Civil War, Bobby stepped forward out of a sense of profound duty and love of country.




It was an excruciatingly difficult decision for him. He wasn’t just any backbencher, like Senator McCarthy, with little left to lose. He was the leader of the Democratic Party’s growing opposition to the war in Vietnam, waged by an increasingly isolated and unpopular president. Most of his advisers urged him not run that year, not to challenge a sitting president, to wait until 1972. Only the young turks in his staff, Adam Walinsky and Jeff Greenfield, pressed Bobby to challenge President Johnson.

When Bobby finally made the decision to enter the race, after Senator McCarthy had come close to beating Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, he was skewered by purists on the Left, many of whom had thrown their lot in with McCarthy, and by a cynical media as an “opportunist” and worse.

He said: “I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all that I can.”




RFK: Pop Culture Hero by Roy Lichtenstein

In retrospect, the criticism leveled against Bobby seems almost obscene. Bobby entered the presidential race with eyes wide open. Personal ambition never informed his calculations. How could it? He was fully aware of the terrible danger stalking him that would ultimately claim his life. He was fatalistic about it. He had accepted the personal risk as a given. It was the moral courage to do what in his heart he knew to be the right thing that tormented Bobby.

Politically, he knew there was a very great risk that his candidacy could tear the country apart, divide the Democratic Party, and hand Nixon the election. Most of all, he feared that negative perceptions of his motivation as a ruthless opportunist would drown out his message of change -- yes, change -- hope, and restoring America’s values.

One of Bobby’s most beautiful and inspiring speeches, delivered two years earlier to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation, must have weighed heavily on his mind. In it he said:

“Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.”

In the end, Bobby made a gut check decision. His own words reached into his heart and beckoned him to stand up and be counted. It was that simple. How could Bobby not do his part when our young people were dying by the thousands in Vietnam, our cities were burning, and the nation seemed to be teetering on the verge of anarchy?

Once he had made the decision to run, Bobby confided to friends that he felt liberated, free, as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

At first, Bobby was haunted by the long shadow cast by his brother. The crowds were there for President Kennedy, not him, he told his aides. And then he found his voice. Bobby lacked the smooth, lofty oratory of President Kennedy, but he had a rare gift for connecting with people in a visceral way that is hard to quantify or even fully understand.

I believe the tragedy of his brother’s assassination changed him profoundly. People instinctively understood that. When Cesar Chavez, the legendary union leader of the migrant workers, broke his fast Bobby was there to commune with him in silence. At that moment Bobby had the Latino vote without even saying a word.

Everywhere Bobby went children gathered. They were drawn to him and he to them. A friend remarked that Bobby, himself the father of ten children, did not kiss children as was customary for politicians. Instead, “he would brush a child’s face with his fingers, or touch them gently on their head, as if trying to feel their thoughts.” A political button of the period would mock this special relationship with the slogan: “Lower the voting age to 10.” Freckles, Bobby’s black and white Springer spaniel, went unleashed on the campaign trail with Bobby and gained a following of his own.



Bobby and Freckles Napping Between Campaign Stops

For those of us jaded by modern political campaigns, Bobby’s campaign would have seemed utterly surreal by comparison. There was no choreographed candidate surrounded by handlers telling him to stick to talking points and stay “on message” for the daily media fix. Managed largely by the candidate himself, Bobby’s campaign was described at the time as “a huge, joyous adventure.”

Today, Bobby might be described as a person who is genuine and shows much maligned empathy for his fellow human beings. He could risk damaging his brand, the pundits would caution gravely (as they did about President Obama), if Bobby took this position or that on any given issue. But this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Bobby had the habit of telling “inconvenient truths” decades before the term gained the currency it has today.

He would frequently challenge his audiences by telling them what they did not want to hear. When he spoke to an audience of medical students -- privileged, overwhelmingly white, middle and upper class kids -- who challenged him on who would pay for his proposals to extend health care to the poor, he pointed to a student holding a Reagan balloon and said: “You!” Then he pointed around the room and repeated, “You! You! You!” He continued, “I look around the audience and I don’t see very many black faces of men who are going to become doctors. The fact is the poor have a very difficult time even entering your profession.”

Bobby challenged the moral assumptions of these students, many (I would say, most) who opposed the war in Vietnam for self-serving reasons: they did not want their draft deferments lifted. Kennedy said they had a responsibility to help the poor in our society, reminding them, “it’s the black people who carry the major burden of the struggle in Vietnam.” After the rally he noted ruefully that he wouldn’t get too many votes in that crowd. “They were so comfortable, so comfortable,” he said, shaking his head.

Forty years later, we are still the only developed country that does not provide health care for all our citizens. Ironically, one of the methods being debated for extending universal health care this year is to tax the so-called “Cadillac” health plans of the wealthier citizens to pay for providing health care to the poor.

It’s difficult today to imagine the divisions that threatened to tear this country apart in 1968. Racial tensions were at a boiling point. Martin Luther King’s assassination sparked nationwide riots in the urban ghettos of America that threatened to metastasize into a wider conflict. The National Guard were mobilized to contain the riots.

No white politician dared venture into the inner cities -- except Bobby.

Surrounded only by a small group of hearty aides that included bodyguards Bill Barry and former Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, Bobby plunged into enthusiastic crowds in poor black and Latino neighborhoods. The Black Panthers provided security, splitting the surging crowds as they yelled “make way for the blue-eyed soul brother!”

On the night King was assassinated, Bobby was to attend a rally in a poor black neighborhood of Indianapolis. Bobby was urged to cancel as riots erupted in inner cities across the land. He refused. He went without a police escort. Most in the crowd had not heard the news. Those that did shouted, “what are you doing here, whitey?” and “get out of here, you white son of a bitch!” The danger was real and palpable.

Bobby broke the news to the crowd. Speaking softly, from the heart, he validated their pain and respected their grief. For the first time he spoke in public of his brother’s assassination “by a white man.” He said the choice was between hatred, violence, and division or “love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.” He quoted his favorite poet, Aeschylus:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
Until, in our own despair,
Against our will,
Comes wisdom
Through the awful grace of God.



Bobby concluded with a timeless plea:

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

It was one of the great speeches in American history, completely extemporaneous and, one aide remarked, “pure Bob Kennedy.” On that night, as riots erupted throughout the country, Indianapolis was quiet. One black militant said: “We went there for trouble; after he spoke we couldn’t get nowhere.”

The Last Campaign: Making a Difference

A journalist once pegged Bobby “the tribune of the underclass.” Bobby would have been proud of this appellation. When he visited an Indian reservation, whose deplorable conditions have hardly changed to this day, Bobby said without a hint of irony that he wished he had been born an Indian. He expressed admiration for Che Guevara, not for ideological reasons, but for eschewing the comfortable life of an asthmatic doctor to stand up for what he believed in.

On a visit to Chile, Bobby was spat upon by communist students. Yet while touring a copper mine, before officials could stop him, he jumped into a cart going into its bowels to witness working conditions first hand. Bobby emerged saying that if he had to work under such conditions he’d be a communist too.

On the night of his greatest political triumph, after winning the California primary, Bobby Kennedy was poised to capture the Democratic nomination. Observers marveled at how relaxed and comfortable he was, how he had finally cast off the long shadow of his slain brother. He looked every bit a president-to-be.

McCarthy was defeated even as he doggedly persisted. Kennedy had already set his sights on President Johnson’s and the Democratic Party bosses’ anointed candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. In the rough and tumble of inside politics, Bobby could be as ruthless as his rep, earned running his brother’s 1960 presidential campaign. Humphrey’s absurdly dissonant slogan, “the politics of joy and happiness,” drew an acid retort from Kennedy who would recite a litany of the nation’s ills, saying there was nothing joyful or happy about them. Bobby’s ace in the hole was Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, the current mayor’s deceased father, who all but assured Kennedy of his support when the time came to put him over the top.

I am convinced that Bobby would have captured the Democratic nomination, united the Democratic Party, and then gone on to defeat Nixon in the fall. For those who loved and admired him, the question that will forever haunt us is how much different would our country be today had Bobby been elected president in 1968?

Playing What if? scenarios is an interesting but ultimately frustrating exercise. No one can be certain that the currents of history will yield the desired results. My favorite quote of Bobby’s is from his speech to the youth of South Africa. In it, he defined the moral challenge for us:

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

I believe Bobby Kennedy had the greatness to “bend history itself.” He would have been one of the great presidents, at a crucial juncture in our history. Consider the possibilities:

Bobby would have ended the Vietnam war swiftly and honorably, sparing the nation the Nixon-Ford-Kissinger debacle, which left a festering wound, and sparing thousands and thousands of needlessly lost lives. Speaking of the “indecency” of the war, Bobby said:

“While the sun shines in our sky, men are dying on the other side of the Earth. Which of them could have come home and written a great symphony? Which of them could have come home to cure cancer? Which of them might have played in a World Series or given us the gift of laughter from the stage?”

Imagine an America without Nixon, without Watergate, and without the rise of the radical Right. In the absence of these tectonic shifts in American politics, the political pendulum would not have swung back, lost decades later, to the rational center of consensus-building politics only at a time of extreme national crisis –- an economic catastrophe that would likely have been averted.

Imagine an America in which racial reconciliation had occurred generations earlier. Imagine how much healthier our environment and planet would be without the predatory environmental policies of the last three Republican administrations. (To his credit, Nixon had a decent environmental record; the Clean Air Act was passed under his administration.)

Imagine the possibilities. Bobby Kennedy’s bitter rival, Senator Eugene McCarthy, said Bobby’s campaign was “what his life had been about all along. For those few weeks at least, Bobby became a very great man, transcending his own nature and even some of our quibbles with it.”

But it was not to be. And yet, in his painfully brief but magnificent life on this Earth, Bobby Kennedy left us an enduring legacy of hope and idealism. Millions of people were inspired by his example and his words to become active in their communities and live, in some small or large measure, for the greater good –- Bobby’s “tiny ripples of hope” –- a quintessentially American idea.

Hoping to capture lightning in a bottle, many Democratic candidates for president sought to emulate Bobby, with embarrassing results. Jimmy Carter faltered and probably lost his presidency the moment he addressed the nation with his infamous “malaise speech,” to say the country was suffering a “national crisis of confidence.” Carter never used the word, but the speech seems to have been plucked right out of Bobby’s kickoff campaign address to KSU students, which prompted one aide to say, “we’re going all the way!” Bobby said the country was “deep in a malaise of the spirit” and suffering from “a deep crisis of confidence.” He was a different messenger with a different message for a different time.

Bill Clinton was rightfully mocked for his “I feel your pain” remark. Bobby Kennedy never said it, but no one who witnessed it ever doubted he felt the pain of the suffering, especially children, intensely. John Edwards’ campaign theme of “the two Americas,” one for the rich and one for the poor, was never credited to Bobby but it should have been. In that same KSU speech, Kennedy said, “I have seen these other Americans –- I have seen children in Mississippi starving, I don’t think that’s acceptable in the United States of America. If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must end the disgrace of this other America.”

Thirty-seven years later, Americans looked on in horror as New Orleans drowned and the federal government’s response was less adequate than relief efforts for third world countries. The President’s response amounted to a flyover, a quick photo-op, and his infamous “hell of a job, Brownie” to the incompetent director of the administration’s gutted Federal Emergency Management Agency. As Congressman John Lewis, veteran of the civil rights struggles and Bobby’s campaign often said, “what would Bobby do?”

Barack Obama, the most gifted politician of this generation, truly got it. He credited Bobby with having inspired him. He could quote passages from Bobby’s speeches. One of his favorites was how our GNP failed to measure the things that made life worthwhile:

“Our gross national product counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Once during the campaign, when Obama seemed to falter and trip on his message, I told a friend that he should be more like Bobby; reach into himself and speak from the heart. Obama-Be-Bobby, I said. Sí se puede. John Nolan, Bobby’s scheduler, said what Bobby did “was not really that mystical. All it requires is someone who knows himself and has some courage.” He could have been describing Barack Obama’s campaign.

Bobby: The Final Journey, The Last Goodbye

When the funeral train that was to carry Robert Kennedy’s remains to his final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C. left New York City, an amazing thing happened. People, common people, representing a cultural cross-section of America -– young, old, black, white, Latino, Asian, rich and poor -– lined the railroad tracks, two million strong, to say their solemn goodbyes. Only then, said Theodore White, the presidential historian, “one could grasp what kind of a man he was and what he meant to Americans.”

Ted Kennedy's Eulogy

In his beautiful eulogy for Bobby, Ted Kennedy said:

“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

There is no higher purpose for any man or woman than to lead a good and decent life. This is the gift Bobby left us.



Rest in Peace, Bobby. We Will Never Forget You.
[Photographs by Bill Eppridge from his book, A Time it Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties]

I never knew he was Korean?

This just struck me as funny. We were walking around the University of Illinois campus downstate for my son's registration when I saw this church sign:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court...

If I hear one more bloviating talking head say that the function of the judiciary is to "interpret" the law rather than to "make" law, I am going to scream.

You will notice that no such language is found in Article III. The constitution refers to the judicial power. While it does not define the term, the framers were conversant with and quite reasonably established a COMMON LAW country. In a common law system, judges make law EVERY DAY. Period.

Because we can't see this picture enough

Because abortion is always simple

During the 2004 Presidential Debates, the giggling murderer replied to a question about abortion by saying that it was a simple issue, and that it was always wrong. In 2008, John McCain made a joke out of people who consider the health of the mother to be a serious consideration during pregnancy. The murder of Dr. Tiller and the right-wing cabal of crazy that instigated it seem to cling to this childish worldview, and it's impossible for anyone with a brain to see the world in that simplistic a way.

I'd imagine there are a lot of stories out there from real people who've dealt with this real issue. Last summer, when my wife was pregnant with our son, we were apprehensive. We'd already been through a miscarriage, and I'm a worrier by nature. More than 6 weeks before the due date, she became concerned about a very high blood pressure reading, and we ended up in the hospital at midnight one evening. That night, she was diagnosed as being preeclampsic, and the only cure for preeclampsia is delivering the fetus. The situation was pretty clear to me - the pregnancy had to end or my wife would likely die. I can't imagine a world in which I would be forced to write off my wife's health as an irrelevant part of that discussion. We were fortunate in that our son was developing well within his womb, and that the hospital we were at had a fantastic NICU. He's doing great (you wouldn't know he was premature), and it all worked out in the end, but the fear remains for possible future pregnancies.

I bring this up because of a NY Times article where patients recall their experiences with Dr. Tiller. These are oft-times heart-wrenching stories of women and families making extremely hard decisions regarding pregnancies that had gone wrong for any number of reasons. This isn't cold-blooded murder, or casual disposal of complications from unprotected sex. This is hard stuff, people, and anyone who's gone through anything remotely like what these women went through couldn't pretend that abortion is simple or trivial. There are stories here that will hit home for lots of people, whether they happened to you, happened to someone you know, or just live in your fears. There are entirely too many people on both sides of the "debate" who have made caricatures of themselves and of humanity, and this time it lead to murder. Congratulations, idiots.

Twenty Years

We were watching TV
In Tiananmen Square
Lost my baby there
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes
She was a short order pastry chef
In a Dim Sum dive on the Yangtze tideway
She had a shiny hair
She was a daughter of an engineer
Won't you shed a tear
For my yellow rose
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes
She had a perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs
She was a student of philosophy
Won't you grieve with me
For my yellow rose
Shed a tear
For her bloodstained clothes
She had shiny hair
She had perfect breasts
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs
She was a daughter of an engineer
So get out your pistols
Get out your stones
Get out your knives
Cut them to the bone
They are the lackeys of the grocer's machine
They built the dark satanic mills
That manufacture hell on earth
They bought the front row seats on Calvary
They are irrelevant to me
And I grieve for my sister
People of China
Do not forget do not forget
The children who died for you
Long live the Republic
Did we do anything after this
I've feeling we did
We were watching TV
Watching TV
We were watching TV
Watching TV
She wore a white bandanna that said
Freedom now
She thought the Great Wall of China
Would come tumbling down
She was a student
Her father was an engineer
Won't you shed a tear
For my yellow rose
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes
Her grandpa fought old Chiang Kai-shek
That no-good low-down dirty rat
Who used to order his troops
To fire on women and children
Imagine that imagine that
And in the spring of'48
Mao Tse-tung got quite irate
And he kicked that old dictator Chiang
Out of the state of China
Chiang Kai-shek came down in Formosa
And they armed the island of Quemoy
And the shells were flying across the China Sea
And they turned Formosa into a shoe factory
Called Taiwan
And she is different from Cro-Magnon man
She's different from Anne Boleyn
She is different from the Rosenbergs
And from the unknown Jew
She is different from the unknown Nicaraguan
Half superstar half victim
She's a victor star conceptually new
And she is different from the Dodo
And from the Kankabono
She is different from the Aztec
And from the Cherokee
She's everybody's sister
She's a symbolic of our failure
She's the one in fifty million
Who can help us to be free
Because she died on TV
And I grieve for my sister

- Roger Waters

Was Air France Flight 447 Brought Down by Turbulence?

From the Christian Science Monitor comes a fascinating report on meteorological analysis of the stricken airliner's flight path. The link to Tim Vasquez's blog, below, with his analysis of the weather conditions that may have caused the accident is technical but worthwhile reading.

Was Air France flight 447 brought down by a 100 m.p.h. updraft?

Or were its two jet engines snuffed out by hail or heavy rains?
In the absence of a black box, the leading theory now is that the Airbus 330-200 was brought down by a 300-mile-wide band of tropical thunderstorms that it could fly neither around nor over.

Brazil’s defense minister confirmed Tuesday afternoon that military planes found a three-mile path of wreckage in the Atlantic, hundreds of miles from Fernando de Noronha, a Brazilian archipelago.

Professional pilots and meteorologists are digging through the available data – flight routes, satellite images, aircraft specifications, and weather reports – and spinning out several likely causes.

One of the most detailed and cogent pieces of analysis of Flight 447’s last minutes – winning the praise of pilots around the world – is a blog by Tim Vasquez.

Here's one of Mr. Vasquez's more intriguing speculations:

Due to the high cloud tops and freezing level at 16,000 ft, there was extensive precipitation by cold rain process and it is likely the MCS was electrified. Lightning of course being considered with good reason since the A330 is one of the most computerized and automated airliners in service.

From my neophyte's perch observing weather patterns, it seems they've become more severe and unpredictable partly as a result of global warming. Are modern airliners like the Airbus A330 at a disadvantage under such conditions because the advanced computerized and automated avionics might be susceptible to lightning?

Perhaps we should bring the reliable old DC-3's back into commercial service.

Operation Rescue Connection Found to Dr. Tiller Assassin

Kansas City, MO KKMBC reports that Dr. Tiller's murder suspect Scott Roeder had a handwritten phone number on his dashboard to Operation Rescue senior policy advisor Cheryl Sullenger, who was convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in 1988. Sullenger contends Roeder is "you know, somebody who's been around" and that he hasn't called her "recently."

More here via Daily Kos.

Tea (and death) for the Tiller-man

I'm sure you have all heard about the shocking murder of Dr. Tiller IN CHURCH.

The silence from the right is deafening.

There is little that I can add to the philosophical, ethical and moral debate on this question. Shall we first of all observe, however, that Dr. Tiller was practicing medicine in accordance with the law? And that he was IN CHURCH?

I had a conversation about this case with a friend of mine, a tenured history professor at a local college (I.e., no knuckle-dragging neanderthal here), and his response was stunning. He found the murder in church to be reprehensible (thank heaven for small favors) but said without a second thought that if the killer had broken into the clinic operating room and killed the doctor during a procedure, his conduct should be lauded and celebrated, not prosecuted.

THAT is what happens when people buy into the assumption that a zygote/embryo/fetus is a "human being." You cannot discuss things with these people because they are walking definitions of the "begging the question" logical fallacy (when a given argument depends on what it is trying to support) buts rotsa ruck there.

HELLO: Shout-Out to the 44% of Women Who Didn't Vote Obama

Have you heard what the white males in your party/paranoiac ideology of choice have been saying about Sonia Sotomayor, the distinguished judge nominated by President Obama to the Supreme Court? Parenthetically, she’s a woman and happens to be a Latina -– should that matter? Anyway, these troglodytes opposed Judge Sotomayor on no issues of substance. Instead, they’ve resorted to juvenile name-calling:

- racist

- reverse racist (presumably flashier, sort of like a reverse layup)

- bigot (projection, projection)

- lacks intellectual heft (never mind that she graduated with honors from Princeton, SECOND in her class!)

- name is too hard to pronounce (excuse me??)

- choice of food may influence her decisions (EXCUSE ME?!?)

- is temperamental (would that be once a month?)

- is Obama’s Harriet Miers (yeah, right … )

- activist judge (Ooo, look out white hoodsters, here comes the wild-eyed “activist” Latina judge!)

- has empathy (OMG!! Um, “Poppy” Bush sold Thomas as someone with “empathy”…)

No shit. This is all true, it’s been said by wingers gone wild in the last few days about Judge Sotomayor since her nomination to the Supreme Court. Precious little has been said about her actual record, mostly by progressives (trans: adults) somewhat concerned about her position on Roe.

It’s worth repeating here, that one of the benefits Barack Obama’s election has had is to expose the true colors, the dark, depraved, decadent underbelly of right wing opposition arrayed against him and us. These people don’t represent America any more than Hitler represents Germany or the Ku Klux Klan is a social club.

Remember, ladies, all 44% of you misguided souls who did not vote for President Obama: Judge Sotomayor has done all of you a HUGE favor; she’s become a foil for conservative white male frustrations boiling over ... and boil over, they have!

PssT … if you have an independent mind, this is what your first dudes, your SOs, really. Think. About. YOU.

Is she pro-choice? Is she not?

Already this is circulating because Judge Sotomayor has not written an abortion opinion. Guess what? In a Roe v. Wade world, there aren't many questions on this that come up! The proper question is not how would you rule on an abortion case but how do you view stare decisis, i.e., court precedent? It takes a fundamental sea change a la Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but "equal") for a sitting court to overturn long-settled precedent.

The Supremes

I have read many of Sonia Sotomayor's opinions. While she is not a "knock your socks off, wow that is brilliant" jurist, she is more than competent and capable. Her opinions, at least in my area (securities) have been well-reasoned and consistent. She is clearly qualified with an admirable record of public service.

Take her on, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. I dare you.