Mon - February 14, 2005
It Figures
It doesn't surprise me when Yglesias tells me
that Bush's federal budgets will
likely blow up in 2009. Bush pulled the same number in Texas, passing
a couple of huge tax cuts in a state that's already low-tax/low-service, and
leaving the hapless Rick Perry (or Governor Goodhair as Molly Ivins calls him)
to flail around in the mess when the deficits started exploding in 2001. Texas
still hasn't recovered from their train wreck and likely won't for a good long
time. It beats me why Texans put up with it. I guess they really like being
Republicans down there.
But we'll all be Texans soon--broke-ass, poor, sick, polluted Texans. Bush of course won't give a shit, because, as it was in Texas, as it was with his businesses, it's all other people's money. Why do we continue to let him get away with it? I don't know. I guess he's a lot like Tom in The Great Gatsby who, along with Daisy, "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their vast carelessness...and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Tom always got away with it. No crime was too horrid for him to dodge.
Fitzgerald warned us about George W. Bush thirty years before the Shrub was born. Sadly, most people in this country don't read. In 2009 Bush will move away from us, like Tom, leaving no forwarding address. If it weren't for the nightmares he'll leave behind, I could almost welcome that.
But we'll all be Texans soon--broke-ass, poor, sick, polluted Texans. Bush of course won't give a shit, because, as it was in Texas, as it was with his businesses, it's all other people's money. Why do we continue to let him get away with it? I don't know. I guess he's a lot like Tom in The Great Gatsby who, along with Daisy, "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their vast carelessness...and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Tom always got away with it. No crime was too horrid for him to dodge.
Fitzgerald warned us about George W. Bush thirty years before the Shrub was born. Sadly, most people in this country don't read. In 2009 Bush will move away from us, like Tom, leaving no forwarding address. If it weren't for the nightmares he'll leave behind, I could almost welcome that.
Posted at 01:53 PM
Sun - February 13, 2005
Raider Wish Lists
The free agent signing period will begin in a
couple of weeks, and I want to spend just a moment on those players who might
draw Raider interest during this
period.
RB: Travis Henry (Buffalo), Lamont Jordan (New York Jets), Edgerrin James (Colts), Sean Alexander (Seahawks), Anthony Thomas (Bears)
The word is that the Colts will franchise James and that Buffalo will demand a lot for Henry, but Lamont Jordan looks great. He's got the size and strength to function in Norv Turner's system. (His system calls for a large, Stephen Davis-type back). It's possible, however, that Norv will zig rather than zag and pick up Sean Alexander from the Seahawks. A bargain choice out there might be Anthony "A-Train" Thomas, who could be a Tyrone Wheatley type.
WR: Jerry Porter (Raiders), Plaxico Burress (Steelers)
If Porter leaves, and it's possible he will, the Raiders will need a #1 receiver. Plaxico Burress has the size and speed to fit the bill, and if the Steelers decide against signing or franchising him, he could be an excellent vertical threat when combined with Ronald Curry and whoever among the current Raider WRs (Morant, Whitted, Francis) step up for the #3 spot.
LB: Julian Peterson (49ers), Ian Gold (Steelers), Kendrell Bell (Steelers), Morlon Greenwood (Miami)
This is a fairly thick class. It seems to me that the Raiders have good inside talent in Napoleon Harris and Danny Clark, but need more on the outside--Tyler Brayton really, really shouldn't play outside linebacker in a 3-4. While Sam Williams may be a good linebacker, he's never been healthy enough to show us more than a few flashes of brilliant play. Obviously, bagging Julian Peterson would be huge for the Raiders. He's young and preternaturally gifted, and he could make the Raider linebacking corps as dangerous as it was in the Ted Hendricks era. There is the possibility that the 49ers will franchise him, as they did a year ago, but for Peterson the question is pretty basic. Would he like to be on a team willing to spend the money it takes to win, or would he prefer to remain a big fish in a small, polluted pond? It doesn't necessarily follow that he'd jump across the bay to the Raiders, but it would tempt him to a change of scenery. Kendrell Bell hasn't fully developed yet, but could do well in Robb Ryan's system if given a chance, as could Morlon Greenwood. Ian Gold is another player who could work out well for us, and he'd have the added advantage of being a former high pick of the Denver Broncos.
DE: Zip
The Raiders will likely draft here, perhaps in the first round (assuming they get their RB target in free agency). The free agent market here is thin, especially now that the Jets have franchised John Abraham.
S: Adrian Wilson (Cardinals), Sammy Knight (Dolphins)
Fine players both, they could fill the hole left by Rod Woodson (though they could never replace him). Marques Anderson and Stuart Schweigert showed some playmaking skills, but leadership is needed back there, especially if Charles Woodson leaves and Nnamdi Asamougha has to take over one of the corner spots.
CB: Gary Baxter (Ravens), Charles Woodson (Raiders), Ken Lucas (Seahawks)
A move at corner would allow Nnamdi Asamougha to move to a more natural position as a free safety (the position he played in college). Charles Woodson may not be back next year. The Raiders are reportedly losing patience with him and feel his skills are declining. Gary Baxter would be an excellent substitute for Woodson if the Raiders could somehow pry him from the clutches of the Ravens. Ken Lucas is another playmaking possibility in this position. It is also possible that the Raiders will spend a first day pick here, looking for someone they can develop over the long term.
QB: Kerry Collins may not be the answer, but damned if I can think of a better solution than him right now. I'm sure Rich Gannon will retire and perhaps take the Raiders' QB coach position vacated when Sarsarkian moved back to USC. (He did a lot of that job last season.) Marques Tuiasosopo should get into the film room and the practice facility if he wants to beat out Collins in camp or pre-season next year. In many ways his position mirrors that of Matt Hasselbeck when he had to take the job from Trent Dilfer. He had to study and do the work off the field to succeed on it. There aren't any free agents out there who'll pop the Raiders' cork, and drafting a quarterback in the early rounds who won't start for a year or two makes very little sense when the Raiders have pressing needs elsewhere. I expect the Raiders to draft someone on the second day to fill the third quarterback slot.
RB: Travis Henry (Buffalo), Lamont Jordan (New York Jets), Edgerrin James (Colts), Sean Alexander (Seahawks), Anthony Thomas (Bears)
The word is that the Colts will franchise James and that Buffalo will demand a lot for Henry, but Lamont Jordan looks great. He's got the size and strength to function in Norv Turner's system. (His system calls for a large, Stephen Davis-type back). It's possible, however, that Norv will zig rather than zag and pick up Sean Alexander from the Seahawks. A bargain choice out there might be Anthony "A-Train" Thomas, who could be a Tyrone Wheatley type.
WR: Jerry Porter (Raiders), Plaxico Burress (Steelers)
If Porter leaves, and it's possible he will, the Raiders will need a #1 receiver. Plaxico Burress has the size and speed to fit the bill, and if the Steelers decide against signing or franchising him, he could be an excellent vertical threat when combined with Ronald Curry and whoever among the current Raider WRs (Morant, Whitted, Francis) step up for the #3 spot.
LB: Julian Peterson (49ers), Ian Gold (Steelers), Kendrell Bell (Steelers), Morlon Greenwood (Miami)
This is a fairly thick class. It seems to me that the Raiders have good inside talent in Napoleon Harris and Danny Clark, but need more on the outside--Tyler Brayton really, really shouldn't play outside linebacker in a 3-4. While Sam Williams may be a good linebacker, he's never been healthy enough to show us more than a few flashes of brilliant play. Obviously, bagging Julian Peterson would be huge for the Raiders. He's young and preternaturally gifted, and he could make the Raider linebacking corps as dangerous as it was in the Ted Hendricks era. There is the possibility that the 49ers will franchise him, as they did a year ago, but for Peterson the question is pretty basic. Would he like to be on a team willing to spend the money it takes to win, or would he prefer to remain a big fish in a small, polluted pond? It doesn't necessarily follow that he'd jump across the bay to the Raiders, but it would tempt him to a change of scenery. Kendrell Bell hasn't fully developed yet, but could do well in Robb Ryan's system if given a chance, as could Morlon Greenwood. Ian Gold is another player who could work out well for us, and he'd have the added advantage of being a former high pick of the Denver Broncos.
DE: Zip
The Raiders will likely draft here, perhaps in the first round (assuming they get their RB target in free agency). The free agent market here is thin, especially now that the Jets have franchised John Abraham.
S: Adrian Wilson (Cardinals), Sammy Knight (Dolphins)
Fine players both, they could fill the hole left by Rod Woodson (though they could never replace him). Marques Anderson and Stuart Schweigert showed some playmaking skills, but leadership is needed back there, especially if Charles Woodson leaves and Nnamdi Asamougha has to take over one of the corner spots.
CB: Gary Baxter (Ravens), Charles Woodson (Raiders), Ken Lucas (Seahawks)
A move at corner would allow Nnamdi Asamougha to move to a more natural position as a free safety (the position he played in college). Charles Woodson may not be back next year. The Raiders are reportedly losing patience with him and feel his skills are declining. Gary Baxter would be an excellent substitute for Woodson if the Raiders could somehow pry him from the clutches of the Ravens. Ken Lucas is another playmaking possibility in this position. It is also possible that the Raiders will spend a first day pick here, looking for someone they can develop over the long term.
QB: Kerry Collins may not be the answer, but damned if I can think of a better solution than him right now. I'm sure Rich Gannon will retire and perhaps take the Raiders' QB coach position vacated when Sarsarkian moved back to USC. (He did a lot of that job last season.) Marques Tuiasosopo should get into the film room and the practice facility if he wants to beat out Collins in camp or pre-season next year. In many ways his position mirrors that of Matt Hasselbeck when he had to take the job from Trent Dilfer. He had to study and do the work off the field to succeed on it. There aren't any free agents out there who'll pop the Raiders' cork, and drafting a quarterback in the early rounds who won't start for a year or two makes very little sense when the Raiders have pressing needs elsewhere. I expect the Raiders to draft someone on the second day to fill the third quarterback slot.
Posted at 03:12 PM
Fri - February 4, 2005
Business Before Pleasure
Before I leave for a week in New Orleans
(blogging will be light-to-non-existent until February 12th), for Mardi Gras,
bead throwing and merry making, I have to bust on Nicholas Kristof just one more
time. (Nicholas Kristof, the speed bag of
New York Times
columnists). This week, he's abandoned the
South Asian sex trade and its discontents to scold
Democrats about their reaction to Bush's absurd Social Security
proposal (by which I mean his proposal to take our retirement money and hand it
over to people who will make fortunes off of it whether we gain or
lose).
Essentially, Kristof takes the view that the Democrats are acting irresponsibly because they won't haggle with George W. Bush over how to pay for Social Security over the next forty years. Never mind that attempts by Democrats to negotiate with George W. Bush in years past have produced Jack Squat thanks to Bush's patented "I will keep an open mind and listen to anyone with good ideas that happen to coincide with whatever I want to do" method of negotiation. (See the tax cuts, medicare, Iraq.) No Democrat with a lick of sense would bring any proposal to Bush's table because they know they'll get screwed by the administration and shunned by their own party. Ask Charlie Stenholm what helping Bush did for his career. (Just don't bother looking in his old office, which belongs to a Republican now.)
Also, agreeing to negotiate with Bush doesn't suggest that you think there may at some point be a problem paying for Social Security. It suggests that you agree there may be problem and that the solution to that problem involves borrowing trillions of dollars in hopes that the stock market will someday earn it all back. (And in hope that the rest of the world won't be spooked by the massive debt into calling in all those I.O.Us.) Only by agreeing to both propositions will any Democrat be allowed into the room. Bush doesn't want to save Social Security. He wants it dead. Is a Democrat supposed to go into the negotiating room and say, "Okay, we'll agree to kill it, but could we kill it just a little less dead?"
And Nicholas, we all hope our life expectancies will grow over the century. Really, really hope. But the gains in the last century were largely thanks to advances in treatments of childhood ailments. Life span remains where it's been for a long time, 85-95 years barring disease or injury. And so far we haven't seen any biotech devices that have been shown to extend life by one week. You're talking about biotech as if the breakthrough for longevity is just around the corner when, if you think of it in computer terms, they haven't even reached the vacuum tube stage yet. Science may lengthen our life spans over the next hundred years, but it may not. And if I were betting I'd bet on "not". If biotech devices come out, I suppose it means we'll be around long enough to think of real solutions to the problem. Until then, I don't think it's wise to base our financial calculations on the possible emergence of future technology, anymore than I think it's wise to worry about all those guys who've had themselves cryonically frozen suddenly thawing and demanding benefits. Let's worry about the problems we have, not the problems we might have.
Seeing as Social Security isn't projected to start manifesting problems until the 2040s or 2050s, I think the best strategy for the Democrats is to wait Bush out. He's only got four more years, and when he's done, we might be able to elect a President who makes sensible proposals about which people can quibble in good faith. But gainsaying George W. Bush's proposals isn't irresponsible, Nicholas. Given the past results of the Democrats' dealings with him, it's a moral imperative.
Update: You can read more about this from Kevin Drum.
Essentially, Kristof takes the view that the Democrats are acting irresponsibly because they won't haggle with George W. Bush over how to pay for Social Security over the next forty years. Never mind that attempts by Democrats to negotiate with George W. Bush in years past have produced Jack Squat thanks to Bush's patented "I will keep an open mind and listen to anyone with good ideas that happen to coincide with whatever I want to do" method of negotiation. (See the tax cuts, medicare, Iraq.) No Democrat with a lick of sense would bring any proposal to Bush's table because they know they'll get screwed by the administration and shunned by their own party. Ask Charlie Stenholm what helping Bush did for his career. (Just don't bother looking in his old office, which belongs to a Republican now.)
Also, agreeing to negotiate with Bush doesn't suggest that you think there may at some point be a problem paying for Social Security. It suggests that you agree there may be problem and that the solution to that problem involves borrowing trillions of dollars in hopes that the stock market will someday earn it all back. (And in hope that the rest of the world won't be spooked by the massive debt into calling in all those I.O.Us.) Only by agreeing to both propositions will any Democrat be allowed into the room. Bush doesn't want to save Social Security. He wants it dead. Is a Democrat supposed to go into the negotiating room and say, "Okay, we'll agree to kill it, but could we kill it just a little less dead?"
And Nicholas, we all hope our life expectancies will grow over the century. Really, really hope. But the gains in the last century were largely thanks to advances in treatments of childhood ailments. Life span remains where it's been for a long time, 85-95 years barring disease or injury. And so far we haven't seen any biotech devices that have been shown to extend life by one week. You're talking about biotech as if the breakthrough for longevity is just around the corner when, if you think of it in computer terms, they haven't even reached the vacuum tube stage yet. Science may lengthen our life spans over the next hundred years, but it may not. And if I were betting I'd bet on "not". If biotech devices come out, I suppose it means we'll be around long enough to think of real solutions to the problem. Until then, I don't think it's wise to base our financial calculations on the possible emergence of future technology, anymore than I think it's wise to worry about all those guys who've had themselves cryonically frozen suddenly thawing and demanding benefits. Let's worry about the problems we have, not the problems we might have.
Seeing as Social Security isn't projected to start manifesting problems until the 2040s or 2050s, I think the best strategy for the Democrats is to wait Bush out. He's only got four more years, and when he's done, we might be able to elect a President who makes sensible proposals about which people can quibble in good faith. But gainsaying George W. Bush's proposals isn't irresponsible, Nicholas. Given the past results of the Democrats' dealings with him, it's a moral imperative.
Update: You can read more about this from Kevin Drum.
Posted at 11:56 PM
Tue - February 1, 2005
Death's A Bummer--Donald Rumsfeld
I've said that I've tuned out the Bush
administration because I've reached my bullshit saturation threshold. (I'm
bracing for another tsunami of weapons grade bullshit tomorrow, gathering my
DVDs and thinking of other places I can be during the speech and the news
coverage that will follow.) It is occasionally useful, however, to go back and
remind ourselves just how much fatuous rhetoric the administration has slung at
us over the years. James
Wolcott has done us this service. Some of the
highlights:
Re: WMDs
Richard Perle: We don't know where to look for them and we never did know where to look for them. I hope this will take less than two hundred years.
Re: Mission Accomplished
G.W. Bush, in the flight suit, on the carrier: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on 11 September 2001.The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offence. We have not forgotten the victims of 11 September: the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.
Re: Dead Civilians
General Kimmitt: "There was no evidence of a wedding. There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."
Donald Rumsfeld: Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.
Yeah, Don, people are funny that way.
Re: WMDs
Richard Perle: We don't know where to look for them and we never did know where to look for them. I hope this will take less than two hundred years.
Re: Mission Accomplished
G.W. Bush, in the flight suit, on the carrier: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on 11 September 2001.The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offence. We have not forgotten the victims of 11 September: the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.
Re: Dead Civilians
General Kimmitt: "There was no evidence of a wedding. There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."
Donald Rumsfeld: Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.
Yeah, Don, people are funny that way.
Posted at 04:18 PM
Bravo Mr. Wallace
From the Detroit Free Press:
What will Rasheed Wallace and President
George W. Bush talk about when the Pistons visit the White House at 3 p.m.
today? Foreign policy? Defense strategy? Try nothing.
When asked what he would say to the
president, Wallace said: "I don't have (expletive) to say to him. I didn't vote
for him. It's just something we have to
do."
I may even become an NBA fan again.
I may even become an NBA fan again.
Posted at 04:01 PM
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Posted at 03:03 PM
Give me a head with hair. Long Beautiful Hair.
I guess that Kim Jong Il has finally come to
grips with the problem that inevitably bedevils a state where a group of vicious
autocrats take control of a nation in the name of seizing the mode of production
for the masses: long hair. Apparently
Kim wants every male in North Korea to get a Hank Hill style do, to
conform with what he calls the "socialist style". Yeah, tell it to
Marx:
Oddly, I don't remember Mao, Stalin, Castro, or Lenin proscribing hairstyles. According to the article, South Korea had similar restrictions on mop tops and other heinous styles during the 1970s. Maybe it's a Korean hang-up. Though I wonder if Kim Jong Il will destroy all the archive pictures of himself and his father when they sported longer hair styles--so as to suppress the notion that their long hair had weakened their brains for all those years.
I guess if shorter hair will make Kim Jong Il less belligerent, isolated, and weird, it's all to the good. Somehow, though, I don't think it will help.
Oddly, I don't remember Mao, Stalin, Castro, or Lenin proscribing hairstyles. According to the article, South Korea had similar restrictions on mop tops and other heinous styles during the 1970s. Maybe it's a Korean hang-up. Though I wonder if Kim Jong Il will destroy all the archive pictures of himself and his father when they sported longer hair styles--so as to suppress the notion that their long hair had weakened their brains for all those years.
I guess if shorter hair will make Kim Jong Il less belligerent, isolated, and weird, it's all to the good. Somehow, though, I don't think it will help.
Posted at 02:48 PM
Sun - January 30, 2005
Briefly on the Iraq Elections
I don't have much to add to what Juan Cole says
here.
The key questions for me remain. Can the new government, which will probably
look a lot like the old one, even begin to provide security without a continuing
U.S. presence? (This election required extraordinary security measures which
cannot be sustained indefinitely. The bombers will be back, and will find fresh
recruits among Sunnis who are bound to be disappointed in the election's
outcome.) Will the U.S., or the new government, or anyone else, ever bring
electricity and basic services back? While the new Iraqi government will
undoubtedly assert the right to ask the U.S. to leave, would they ever do that,
seeing as we're the source of their power and their only, admittedly weak,
protection against the insurgents? And assuming that we do leave, how long do we
really expect this state, carved among three ethnic groups who have little use
for one another, to last before it breaks into various factions seeking
sovereignty?
Iraq was an artificial state from the beginning, held together to this point by those ruthless and violent enough to suppress tribal, religious, and ethnic ambitions. As we saw from the quick disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, these ambitions can be checked, but can never be truly quelled. We are currently holding this country together through massive applications of violence against the local population (particularly the Sunnis). Our presence also gives Iraqis unity insofar as they dislike us even more than they dislike one another. My biggest question is whether a state that must be held together in this way should be held together at all, because right now it doesn't seem like a political arrangement that's doing the Shiites, Sunnis, or Kurds a damn bit of good (well, maybe the Kurds, but only because they reserve the right to ignore everyone else and claim a sort of quasi-sovereignty anyway).
Hmm, I guess I had more to add than I thought. Anyway, to the people of Iraq, best of luck. You're going to need it.
Iraq was an artificial state from the beginning, held together to this point by those ruthless and violent enough to suppress tribal, religious, and ethnic ambitions. As we saw from the quick disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, these ambitions can be checked, but can never be truly quelled. We are currently holding this country together through massive applications of violence against the local population (particularly the Sunnis). Our presence also gives Iraqis unity insofar as they dislike us even more than they dislike one another. My biggest question is whether a state that must be held together in this way should be held together at all, because right now it doesn't seem like a political arrangement that's doing the Shiites, Sunnis, or Kurds a damn bit of good (well, maybe the Kurds, but only because they reserve the right to ignore everyone else and claim a sort of quasi-sovereignty anyway).
Hmm, I guess I had more to add than I thought. Anyway, to the people of Iraq, best of luck. You're going to need it.
Posted at 01:59 PM
Sat - January 29, 2005
Million Dollar Baby
One of the reasons that I love Eastwood's
directorial work is that I never feel as though he extorts emotions from me. He
gives his characters the space they need to tell their stories in their own
ways. I love that he allows his characters to behave questionably, to make
mistakes and wrong decisions, to be at one moment brilliant and in the next
perverse. His movies are too busy contemplating their characters' natures to use
them to score cheap authorial points. It was this that I loved about
Million Dollar
Baby. I don't know whether I agree with the
decisions the characters make in this film. (I won't spoil things. If you've
seen the movie and want to talk to me about it, you can email me at
jimmy1071@yahoo.com. And Roger Ebert has an essay about it at his site that I'll
be talking about in just a second.) But I will say that these decisions flow
naturally from who these characters are, the wounds that shaped their
characters, and their desire to negotiate the yearning for peace and the
responsibilities of friendship.
Watch the movie. It'll stay with you.
Of course, not everyone appreciates this kind of filmmaking. Some don't want to contemplate how the characters' pasts shaped their decisions in the present. They want the characters to do what they would do, or even better, what Jesus would do. Michael Medved, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson are, according to Ebert, deliberately spoiling the ending of Million Dollar Baby in a naked attempt to harm its box office performance. Apparently forgetting Reagan's 11th commandment--thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican--these boys are doing, well, Ebert tells it nicely:
The decision of Maggie and her trainer is not a surprise to the readers or listeners of two right-wing commentators, Michael Medved and Rush Limbaugh. They have revealed every secret of the plot. Limbaugh even chortled as he "apologized" for an earlier broadcast. Just as the movie was opening, Medved appeared on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" to describe the plot in great detail. The outcome of the movie does not match their beliefs. They object to it. That is their right. To engage in a campaign to harm the movie for those who may not agree with them is another matter.
I've lacked patience with fundies ever since I was an editor of my high school literary magazine and my teacher told me that publishing science fiction or fantasy would get me in trouble with the local clergy. I and my co-editors replied "So? And they will do what exactly?" (Actually, they'd been very successful in keeping KCPQ, the local Fox affiliate, off our cable system, even though it was in every neighboring town, because it showed "The Tracey Ullman Show" and "Star Trek".) We went on and published what we wanted to, and never heard a peep--probably because we never found our way onto the fundie radar screen. Still, the threat always pissed me off. I wondered why the hell turning the channel, or putting the magazine down, wasn't good enough for these people.
The fundies have their own TV stations. They have their own publishing companies producing both fiction and non-fiction. They have record labels and concert tours and all that assorted crap. Hell, they produced their own movie a few years ago: The Omega Code. I hear it sucked, but they produced it. They can be Ned Flanders singing "Bringing in the Sheep" 24-7. Nobody's stopping them. What's up with spoiling everyone else's enjoyment?
I guess that's what it comes down to, really, spoiling things for others. Their ideology compels them to ruin other peoples' good times; it is here that the fundies find both their mission and their pleasure. That's why Limbaugh "chortled" when he revealed Million Dollar Baby's ending. It gave him all the fun such a person could derive from standing outside a movie theater saying "the butler did it" without the risk of patrons taking turns punching him in the mouth. There may be some envy at work here as well. All the fundie movies, all those direct-to-video monstrosities starring Kirk Cameron and Casper Van Dien have the same ending, run through the same by-the-numbers-Syd-Field-with-a-crucifix-it's-in-Revelations-people plot, give us the same characters making the same decisions and arriving at the same points. It's stuff too formulaic even for Jerry Bruckheimer, but that's what they've got. We've got something better, and deep down in their miserable, benighted hearts they know it, so like spoiled children they attack what they want but can't have. They're a bunch of motherfuckers.
So, in addition to the aesthetic pleasure you will derive from watching Million Dollar Baby, go see it because it'll piss off Michael Medved. Then write Medved an e-mail every hour telling him how much you loved the movie and how you told ten friends to watch it. Then, just for good measure, tell him the ending of the next Christian film--"Satan did it."
It'll kill him.
Watch the movie. It'll stay with you.
Of course, not everyone appreciates this kind of filmmaking. Some don't want to contemplate how the characters' pasts shaped their decisions in the present. They want the characters to do what they would do, or even better, what Jesus would do. Michael Medved, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson are, according to Ebert, deliberately spoiling the ending of Million Dollar Baby in a naked attempt to harm its box office performance. Apparently forgetting Reagan's 11th commandment--thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican--these boys are doing, well, Ebert tells it nicely:
The decision of Maggie and her trainer is not a surprise to the readers or listeners of two right-wing commentators, Michael Medved and Rush Limbaugh. They have revealed every secret of the plot. Limbaugh even chortled as he "apologized" for an earlier broadcast. Just as the movie was opening, Medved appeared on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" to describe the plot in great detail. The outcome of the movie does not match their beliefs. They object to it. That is their right. To engage in a campaign to harm the movie for those who may not agree with them is another matter.
I've lacked patience with fundies ever since I was an editor of my high school literary magazine and my teacher told me that publishing science fiction or fantasy would get me in trouble with the local clergy. I and my co-editors replied "So? And they will do what exactly?" (Actually, they'd been very successful in keeping KCPQ, the local Fox affiliate, off our cable system, even though it was in every neighboring town, because it showed "The Tracey Ullman Show" and "Star Trek".) We went on and published what we wanted to, and never heard a peep--probably because we never found our way onto the fundie radar screen. Still, the threat always pissed me off. I wondered why the hell turning the channel, or putting the magazine down, wasn't good enough for these people.
The fundies have their own TV stations. They have their own publishing companies producing both fiction and non-fiction. They have record labels and concert tours and all that assorted crap. Hell, they produced their own movie a few years ago: The Omega Code. I hear it sucked, but they produced it. They can be Ned Flanders singing "Bringing in the Sheep" 24-7. Nobody's stopping them. What's up with spoiling everyone else's enjoyment?
I guess that's what it comes down to, really, spoiling things for others. Their ideology compels them to ruin other peoples' good times; it is here that the fundies find both their mission and their pleasure. That's why Limbaugh "chortled" when he revealed Million Dollar Baby's ending. It gave him all the fun such a person could derive from standing outside a movie theater saying "the butler did it" without the risk of patrons taking turns punching him in the mouth. There may be some envy at work here as well. All the fundie movies, all those direct-to-video monstrosities starring Kirk Cameron and Casper Van Dien have the same ending, run through the same by-the-numbers-Syd-Field-with-a-crucifix-it's-in-Revelations-people plot, give us the same characters making the same decisions and arriving at the same points. It's stuff too formulaic even for Jerry Bruckheimer, but that's what they've got. We've got something better, and deep down in their miserable, benighted hearts they know it, so like spoiled children they attack what they want but can't have. They're a bunch of motherfuckers.
So, in addition to the aesthetic pleasure you will derive from watching Million Dollar Baby, go see it because it'll piss off Michael Medved. Then write Medved an e-mail every hour telling him how much you loved the movie and how you told ten friends to watch it. Then, just for good measure, tell him the ending of the next Christian film--"Satan did it."
It'll kill him.
Posted at 04:47 PM
Dick Cheney in '08! He's Grim, Pasty, and Ready!
Matt
Yglesias wonders why people think Cheney is too old to run for
President when they didn't think the same about Ronald Reagan. (Actually, I do
remember people talking about Reagan's age in the '80s, talk which got louder
when he flubbed the first debate with Walter Mondale.) Well, if we buy into the
saying "You're as old as you feel", Dick Cheney must be about Yoda's age by now.
He's always had that pallor, as if his nature will not permit him to sit out in
daylight. His countenance suggests Mr. Burns crossed with Ebeneezer Scrooge
crossed with severe colonic spasms (with a demeanor to match). He's the kind of
guy who, when he saw that picture of Nixon stalking the beach in his suit and
wing tips, wondered how he could copy that look.
Reagan always managed to evoke Grandpa, a slightly bewildered buy largely amiable soul who'd pull quarters from behind your ears. (He wasn't really like that, by most reliable accounts, but that's how he appeared to white people who didn't know him.) Cheney brings to mind that miserable son of a bitch at every Rotary meeting who grabs the boy of the month by his arm and orders him to get a haircut. He's the old bastard that kids are afraid of because he'll sick his dog on them if they try to retrieve their frisbees from his lawn. When people hear how old he really is, they think, my God, what must that man have done to himself? My father appears younger than Dick Cheney, and he'll be 85 next month.
This:
is an old, old man.
Reagan always managed to evoke Grandpa, a slightly bewildered buy largely amiable soul who'd pull quarters from behind your ears. (He wasn't really like that, by most reliable accounts, but that's how he appeared to white people who didn't know him.) Cheney brings to mind that miserable son of a bitch at every Rotary meeting who grabs the boy of the month by his arm and orders him to get a haircut. He's the old bastard that kids are afraid of because he'll sick his dog on them if they try to retrieve their frisbees from his lawn. When people hear how old he really is, they think, my God, what must that man have done to himself? My father appears younger than Dick Cheney, and he'll be 85 next month.
This:
is an old, old man.
Posted at 03:37 PM
Thu - January 27, 2005
Good Takedown, but did you really need to go that far?
Soundbitten
rakes Payola #2 Maggie Gallagher over the coals, then turns her on the spit,
then sticks her in the microwave, and in all other ways, manners, and forms,
cooks her for taking money from the Bush administration to have opinions. (Dear
Leader has now told his administration to stop giving payola to pundits, which
means that the administration will now donate its payola money to foundations
who will see that it is disbursed to pundits.) I do think Soundbitten went too
far with this:
Ah, well, perhaps if I were married instead of single, I wouldn't get so depressed over such shenanigans. And, frankly, you have to give credit where credit is due. It seems that marriage has done everything for Maggie Gallagher that she says it's capable of doing. She looks happy. She looks healthy. She's certainly seems to be making lots of money. And while I’m sitting here, unmarried and alone, getting poorer and sicker by the minute, Gallagher and the mysterious Mr. Gallagher are probably romping on fluffy piles of foundation cash, giggling and moaning and screaming in ecstasy as they drive each other toward the kind of sheet-soaking simultaneous orgasms which, as all the research has shown, wealthy married people enjoy far more often - and far more intensely! - than their doomed single counterparts. [bold is mine}
Arrrh, that'll be replacing the white whale in me nightmares.
Ah, well, perhaps if I were married instead of single, I wouldn't get so depressed over such shenanigans. And, frankly, you have to give credit where credit is due. It seems that marriage has done everything for Maggie Gallagher that she says it's capable of doing. She looks happy. She looks healthy. She's certainly seems to be making lots of money. And while I’m sitting here, unmarried and alone, getting poorer and sicker by the minute, Gallagher and the mysterious Mr. Gallagher are probably romping on fluffy piles of foundation cash, giggling and moaning and screaming in ecstasy as they drive each other toward the kind of sheet-soaking simultaneous orgasms which, as all the research has shown, wealthy married people enjoy far more often - and far more intensely! - than their doomed single counterparts. [bold is mine}
Arrrh, that'll be replacing the white whale in me nightmares.
Posted at 12:37 PM
Wed - January 26, 2005
O'Reilly Yet Again
Atrios's headline for this story in Media
Matters (where they catch O'Reilly lying about calling Senator Barbara
Boxer a nut) is "Bill
O'Reilly Lies Again". I'm not sure this is all that great a headline.
How, really, is it different from any other day? I think back to that moment in
Outfoxed
where Al Franken explains why that guy who slandered the son of the 9/11 victim
won't be able to sue. O'Reilly lies so often, Franken says, so pathologically,
about so many things, that proving that he lied maliciously in any given
circumstance is impossible.
I just operate on the assumption that everything O'Reilly, or George W. Bush for that matter, tells me is a complete lie, lacking any basis in fact. When Bill O'Reilly identifies himself as "Bill O'Reilly" on his show, my first thought is "Okay, Mr. O'Reilly, if that is your real name. I'm going to need three pieces of identification, blood and tissue samples, and access to your family tree to run appropriate DNA comparisons. In 6-8 weeks we'll be able to determine whether you are who you claim to be, and then we'll go from there." I feel no more need to fact-check these guys anymore than I feel the need to fact-check some guy on the street who insists that demon monkeys live in his hair. If they're talking, they're lying. My catchall response to them is the same one Joe Pesci used to rebut the prosecutor's opening statement in My Cousin Vinny: "Yeah, everything that guy just said is bullshit. Thank you."
I just operate on the assumption that everything O'Reilly, or George W. Bush for that matter, tells me is a complete lie, lacking any basis in fact. When Bill O'Reilly identifies himself as "Bill O'Reilly" on his show, my first thought is "Okay, Mr. O'Reilly, if that is your real name. I'm going to need three pieces of identification, blood and tissue samples, and access to your family tree to run appropriate DNA comparisons. In 6-8 weeks we'll be able to determine whether you are who you claim to be, and then we'll go from there." I feel no more need to fact-check these guys anymore than I feel the need to fact-check some guy on the street who insists that demon monkeys live in his hair. If they're talking, they're lying. My catchall response to them is the same one Joe Pesci used to rebut the prosecutor's opening statement in My Cousin Vinny: "Yeah, everything that guy just said is bullshit. Thank you."
Posted at 02:57 PM
Tue - January 25, 2005
How Dare You Present Homosexuality To My Children Before I Could Teach Them to Hate and Fear Them!
Margaret Spellings, the incoming Secretary of
Education, has decided that her first act as chief educator should be to censor
an animated kid's show that presents homosexual characters. The lede from AP:
The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.
Well, many parents would object to their children being exposed to toxic waste, but the Bush administration doesn't seem shy about allowing industry to dump that on them. Okay, cheap shot. Here's a more expensive one. By omitting homosexuality from kid's programs (not the presentation of sexual acts, but the mere fact of its existence), Ms. Spellings endorses a description of homosexuality as alien, a thing not to be discussed among nice people. This perpetuates homophobia among young people and deprives those kids who will grow up gay a chance to see themselves reflected in culture, thus alienating them.
It's easy to overlook how important it is for minority groups to see themselves portrayed positively on TV. Whoopi Goldberg once called Star Trek one of her favorite shows because Nichelle Nichols's presence assured her that there would be black people in the future. (Nichols was the first African American woman in science fiction television--and her role was one of a professional woman). "Will and Grace" doesn't mean a lot to me, but apparently it carries considerable significance among gay people, because it's the first sitcom with openly gay characters in lead roles. These things matter. And while I'm sure that executives at NBC worried in both 1966 and 199--well, whenever "Will and Grace" started--about how middle America would take these characters, viewers ended up watching just the same.
Those who object to having gay characters on children's shows will either adjust and get over it, or they'll change the station. I don't give a damn what they do, because to me it's more important that homosexuals, both young and old, see people like them on television and feel welcome in society as a result, than it is for a few narrow minded zealots to keep strict control over channels they'd just as soon defund in any case.
The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.
Well, many parents would object to their children being exposed to toxic waste, but the Bush administration doesn't seem shy about allowing industry to dump that on them. Okay, cheap shot. Here's a more expensive one. By omitting homosexuality from kid's programs (not the presentation of sexual acts, but the mere fact of its existence), Ms. Spellings endorses a description of homosexuality as alien, a thing not to be discussed among nice people. This perpetuates homophobia among young people and deprives those kids who will grow up gay a chance to see themselves reflected in culture, thus alienating them.
It's easy to overlook how important it is for minority groups to see themselves portrayed positively on TV. Whoopi Goldberg once called Star Trek one of her favorite shows because Nichelle Nichols's presence assured her that there would be black people in the future. (Nichols was the first African American woman in science fiction television--and her role was one of a professional woman). "Will and Grace" doesn't mean a lot to me, but apparently it carries considerable significance among gay people, because it's the first sitcom with openly gay characters in lead roles. These things matter. And while I'm sure that executives at NBC worried in both 1966 and 199--well, whenever "Will and Grace" started--about how middle America would take these characters, viewers ended up watching just the same.
Those who object to having gay characters on children's shows will either adjust and get over it, or they'll change the station. I don't give a damn what they do, because to me it's more important that homosexuals, both young and old, see people like them on television and feel welcome in society as a result, than it is for a few narrow minded zealots to keep strict control over channels they'd just as soon defund in any case.
Posted at 09:53 PM
Sun - January 23, 2005
BAD Politics
Majikthise
hasn't only pointed me to some weird sexual notions, but some weird
political ones as well. Rather than recapitulate those she's already quoted, I
want to go point-by-point
here.
1. Family Wage Supports. First and foremost, we favor a program of automatic wage subsidies – modeled on Ronald Reagan’s earned-income tax-credit – to insure that every working American shares in the prosperity made possible by free trade in the new global economy. If our country is going to reap the rewards of doing business with low-wage goliaths like China and India, it essential to cut the American wage-earner in on the deal. Wages have been falling in America for 30 years now. How long is the ordinary wage-earner supposed to watch his share of the nation’s rapidly expanding economic pie grow smaller – not just relatively smaller, but absolutely smaller? Economic theory and commonsense agree on what needs to be done: To make free trade work for everybody, and not just a favored few, we’ve got to divvy up the gains of trade.
A somewhat useful idea, I suppose. Although speaking as one who has used the EIC over the years, it's not a whole hell of a lot of money. The real work would be to open retailers and other service industries to union representation, and making the right to organize a part of trade agreements with places like China, India, and Pakistan. Unions have been shut out of the globalization discussion. It's time to let them in. If we can open Wal Mart, the hospitality industry, and other jobs not vulnerable to outsourcing to union representation, we'll do a lot more for workers than this scheme will. That way, workers can negotiate their own share of the world trade goodies, and not leave themselves up to the mercy of Congress.
2. Immigration Moratorium. We support a time-out in immigration, to give this country a chance to assimilate the 30 million foreign-born citizens we already have. Mass immigration hurts working families’ wages, falling hardest on the least-skilled and most vulnerable among us, Hispanics and African-Americans above all. Most Americans know this already; it is a simple matter of supply and demand. What they don’t know is that mass immigration also hurts the poor countries from which most immigrants come, siphoning off their most ambitious and energetic members. Mexico is a good illustration. Living standards there were rising rapidly in the decades following World War II, just like in the United States. They kept on rising until the U.S. border unexpectedly opened up following passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 – after which millions of Mexicans started migrating north. It was only then that Mexico’s per capita GDP suddenly hit a plateau, and it hasn’t risen since.
Given these facts, is there any reason why an immigration moratorium is not already high on the agenda of the Democratic Party? We plan to put it there.
Immigration in Republican parlance, and in BADs as well it appears, is French for Brown People. I doubt Mexico's economy tanked simply because a portion of their population chose to emigrate. I expect the biggest problem was decades of repressive, corrupt PRI kleptocracy. Further, the most ambitious and energetic immigrants tend to be those who jump through all the hoops to get into US Colleges. Is it BAD's position that ambitious and energetic students should be denied higher education? Not that they couldn't go to Universities in the EU, allowing the EU to gain the benefit of their ambition, intelligence and talent. But, hey, based on the results of the last election, would we know what to do with talent if we had it?
I'm not an immigration expert, so I don't know exactly how to best discourage illegal immigration while simultaneously encouraging legal immigration. But I don't think turning the US into a gated community would be useful even if it could succeed in keeping illegals out. Saying to the world "I'm all right, Jack" won't do much to endear us to people around the world (especially given our notorious stinginess with foreign aid). If we want to retain our position in the world, we'll have to start sharing the toys, either by letting people in to play with them or by sending more of them out.
3. National ID. We support a fool-proof form of national identification, without which a person cannot cash a check, use a credit card, sign a lease, take a job, get a driver’s license, open a bank account, enroll in school, or otherwise function in our society. The American public understands perfectly well that a national ID card is the only practical and efficient way to control illegal immigration. It also happens to be the best way to keep terrorists and wanted criminals from operating freely inside our borders. Concerns about civil rights in this context seem misplaced and overblown. The ACLU needs to grow up.
Yeah, no one could forge one of those. Also, I'm suspicious of arguments that begin "The American public understands..." The American public also understands (or large percentages do anyway) that there were WMDs in Iraq, that angels follow us around, and that the Earth is 10,000 years old.
Fool-proof. Every James Bond villain's plan is fool-proof. They're 0-20 now.
4. Marriage Amendment. We favor an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as the union between “one man and one woman.” Such a definition of marriage would be useful, not only in dealing with the legally anomalous issue of gay marriage, but to head off the challenge of polygamy, sure to be posed by the several million Muslim immigrants in this countr, for whom it is a religiously-sanctioned cultural norm. Gay marriage ignores the very purpose of the age-old institution of marriage, which is to establish a culturally stable form of the family for the pro-creation and rearing of the next generation. As for polygamy, it is simply incompatible with social and sexual equality in a liberal republic. So in these two instances, at least, multi-culturalism be damned!
A non-starter with me. The Muslim bit is a red-herring. Very few Muslims would push all that hard for polygamy, because Islam requires the polygamous man to fully provide for the welfare of every wife he has--something few Muslims can manage. Even Mormons in Utah aren't big fans, largely because those who practice polygamy in Utah place tremendous burdens on the state welfare system and perpetuate a stigma they've been anxious to shed for some time.
As for the purpose of marriage in history, it had less to do with maintaining a culturally stable family than with providing for inheritance of property. Marriages in Ancient Athens or Sparta are hardly the sort that we would recognize or endorse. Marriages in many cultures have had less to do with love than profit, with dowries and family social ambitions determining matches. In Ancient Athens, women were little better than slaves. In Ancient Rome, women could be property owners and get divorces. Marriage as it is practiced in the US today is not, and has not been for some time, a traditional affair. It is the product of a conversation about rights, motives, and privileges that has been going on for thousands of years in hundreds of cultures. The notion of gay marriage is simply another voice in that conversation, one that has been silent for a long time, and one that I'd like to hear--reactionary parochialism be damned!
Time out here for a second. I hate the Patriots. I hate the miserable fucking Patriots those smug scumsucking bastards I want them all dead! Time in.
5. End to Racial Preferences. We support a Constitutional ban on all forms of racial discrimination by government, and by all private institutions that receive government support. Officially sanctioned racial preferences – even when euphemistically described as “affirmative action” – destroy the unity of the nation, and are incompatible with the principle of equality before the law. Henceforth let there be no legal minorities in America, only Americans. We believe this is the surest way to speed the process of assimilation and reduce ethnic strife in the decades ahead. E Pluribus Unum!
I've always thought Chris Rock gave a good defense of affirmative action when he compared it to the baseball rule that says the tie goes to the runner. In baseball, the reasoning is that because the offensive player is alone against nine guys who are trying to get him out, in the event that the ball and the runner arrive a the plate simultaneously, the runner is considered safe. Affirmative action works the same way. We all operate on the basis of a certain racial preference. The dominant one in this country is white and male. It still controls most of the access points and has most of the inherent advantages. Now if white people were naturally inclined toward perfect fairness in hiring and promotion, we wouldn't need laws like affirmative action. But the evidence suggests that we aren't there yet, and may not be there for some time. White men tend to hire white men, all factors being equal. Conscious racism has little to do with it. It's a cultural tendency. Thus, as in baseball, the tie needs to go to the runner--the black person, the hispanic person, the woman--if we're to keep the game fair.
6. Community Standards. We support a re-interpretation of the First Amendment to exclude the protection of sexually graphic images and obscene language. The purpose of freedom of speech and of the press is to allow open debate of controversial ideas, such as we are engaging in right here. It was never intended to abolish small-town standards of decency and public decorum, let alone enable profit-making entities to pump hardcore pornography into every home and library in America. Let the local majorities decide! A place for everything, but everything in its place!
Considering that the nation's rural and culturally conservative areas are among the largest consumers of porn, this seems an odd way to try to win them over. That aside, I don't want the majority of citizens anywhere to have the right to tell me what I can read, watch, listen to, or perform onstage, much less some middle-aged white Pecksniff who gets off accusing others of immorality while he claims the right to fuck his wife whether she likes it or not.
7. The Pledge of Allegiance. We support the language of the pledge, “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” The phrase “under God” should be understood quite simply as a historical reference to the religious traditions under which this nation was founded, according to which there is a moral law, existing prior to, and independent of, the state, which is the true foundation of our rights and liberties. We also favor taking the word “indivisible” out of the pledge, as being redundant, infelicitous, and well-understood.
Arguments over this one quickly become shrill and boring. God shouldn't be there, but I'm not willing to make a fuss over it (friendly, non-confrontational atheist that I tend to be--except when discussing how much I HATE THE PATRIOTS). I have no real problem with the word "indivisible" either, because if things get bad I qualify to emigrate to Canada.
8. Bible in the Schools. We favor not just allowing but requiring the Bible to be studied in our public schools as an integral part of the history curriculum. We justify this on the grounds that the Bible is itself a history book, and a primary document of Western culture and civilization; it is from the pages of the Bible that our secular ideals of freedom, justice, and equality are historically derived. This book is the source of the Western idea of human progress, and of the faith that enabled our ancestors – at terrible sacrifice – to build a civilization like none ever seen before. These are things all children need to learn in school. The Supreme Court has already ruled that such an approach would be constitutional, and we need to take them up on it.
A seminal work of literature the Bible may be, but you rely on it as a history text at your peril. Amile Kuhrt puts it well: "Like many accounts of the past, it [the Bible] was not intended to provide a critical historical study; rather it contained stories detailing the interaction of a people, Israel, with their god, Yahweh, who had chosen them to work out his divine plan. It is a complex, ideologically driven compilaiton, within which stories were refashioned to drive home particular lessons of the past."
Archaeological evidence backing up the Bible is sketchy at best and absent at worst. I will grant that it is slightly better on history than it is on biology, but who's it going to brag to about that? As for BADs claim that the Bible allowed us to build a civilization "like none ever seen" that's true only to a point. Human beings had been building fabulous civilizations without the Bible's input for centuries, and continued doing so after the Bible became widely disseminated. The Chinese, Japanese, Nubians, Egyptians, Mayas, Incas, Aztecs, Olmecs, Anasazis, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians built spectacular civilizations and wonders without the Bible's influence. And as for Christianity as a force for cultural preservation and progress, let the record show that for a thousand years it was the Muslims who preserved "Western" culture, particularly in mathematics and science, while Christians busied themselves with the angels and pinheads problem. And a good deal of contemporary scientific work (in biology particularly) has advanced in spite of religion, not because of it. Would humanity have developed, in the last 2,000 years, technologies for improved farming, communications, and transport without the Bible? Almost certainly. The Greeks articulated the beginnings of the scientific method, and they spread their work widely enough that it would have been hard to destroy. Many in the Near East, China, and the Americas were doing sophisticated work in rocketry, metallurgy, and astronomy during this period without bothering much about Jesus. Would humanity have developed democracy without the Bible? Yes. Our democracy is not founded on anything said in the Bible but on the checks and balances arrangements seen in the Roman Republic. Our civilization is what it is for many reasons. The Bible is one, but it is not the only one. If it hadn't existed, different people would be claiming that a different holy book is the foundation of a wholly different civilization the likes of which no one has ever seen.
The Bible is useful to study as a work of literature, and a familiarity with its stories and aphorisms will help students understand everything from the Crusades, to King James's arguments for Absolutism, to the Pilgrims, to arguments for and against slavery, to the Scopes Trial. It is woven into American and World History in this way--as a point of reference for statesmen, moralists, and philosphers. It should not, however, be used as a substitute for a critical historical text, and should ideally be discussed with reference to the literature of neighboring cultures--such as Sumeria, Babylon, and Greece, from which many of its stories and motifs sprang.
9. Equitable Tax Enforcement. We support – indeed, demand – giving the IRS the tools it needs to fully enforce our tax laws on all our citizens, rich and poor alike. Currently it lacks the resources to audit the returns of the wealthiest group in America: people whose incomes derive from their ownership of businesses, stocks, bonds, and real estate. As a result it fails to collect an estimated $300 billion a year in taxes (roughly a thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child) most of it owed by a just a few thousand of the wealthiest families in America (with fortunes in excess of $50 million) who hide their incomes in secret off-shore bank accounts, using shell corporations and other devious devices. To make up for this shortfall, virtually every other taxpayer in America – including doctors, lawyers, and highly-salaried corporate managers of every description – pays a third more in taxes than he otherwise would. For details on this outrage see Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston’s new book, Perfectly Legal.
Didn't Dukakis flog this in 1988? (His number was $100 billion.) I'm all for doing that in principle, but lets acknowledge that we'll never get all of that $300 billion. The IRS would have to hire armies of accountants and lawyers to track down secret money through these shell companies, Swiss and Bahamian accounts, and assorted dodges, while the wealthiest families in America use their own lawyers and accountants to throw every possible downfield block for them. It may be a very expensive proposition to get a hold of this money, which may explain why the IRS prefers to attack poor people, like me, who can't defend themselves. I may not have much, but compared to Bill Gates, I'm a soft target. All my money's in one place. It's easy to put a lien on it. The only thing saving my neck is that my Mom happens to be a tax lawyer. So, nice idea, but I have doubts about how feasible it really is.
10. Financial Sunshine Laws. To end this abuse of the taxpaying public, we favor cooperating with our allies to close down all secret bank accounts and off-shore tax havens around the world. We propose outlawing shell corporations and other phony legal devices, and holding those law firms and accounting partnerships that create them fully responsible, which we can do by taking away the grants of limited liability that Congress gave them a few years back. (While we’re at it we might also take away Congress’s authority to sneak special tax breaks into law for its friends in the middle of the night.) And lastly, we support making every citizen’s tax returns a matter of public record, as was originally the case; this is justified on the principle that the citizen’s right to financial privacy ends where the public welfare begins. These reforms, taken together, would not only put an end to tax cheating on a grand scale, but would shut down the financial networks that support terrorism and the international drug cartels.
But they'd just find new ones. Ironclad laws are impossible to write. People with sufficient resources will find a way around them. That's what they pay their lawyers for, and their lawyers are exceedingly efficient. Also, how the hell are we going to shut down secret accounts in other countries? Did George Bush or Tom Delay get some new powers I'm not aware of? We can't get the Chinese to stop people from illegally copying Minority Report for fuck's sake!
Unless you plan to stop all money from moving, people are going to find ways to move it so that the government can't get at it or find it. That's what we call in the business, life.
11. Progressive Consumption Tax. To make these reforms palatable to the rich, we favor replacing the income tax with a progressive consumption tax, as was proposed by Senators Nunn and Domenici in their USA Tax of 1995. Their USA Tax was like our graduated income tax, but with savings tax exempt; it is what we would have now if individuals were allowed to make unlimited contributions to their IRA accounts, and there were no penalties for early withdrawals. Henceforward all personal bank and brokerage accounts would be treated like IRA accounts. People would be penalized, not for what they put into the common pot, but for what they take out, and persons who consume extravagantly would be taxed at a higher rate than those who are more moderate in their habits of expenditure. To the wealthiest families in America we say, agree to this tax on principle, and we might scrap the inheritance tax and the corporate income tax altogether as no longer needful. Let’s commit the republic to class comity, not class war.
Dumb idea that helps the rich more than it hurts them. A person making $20,000 per year has to spend nearly all of it if he wants to stay alive. A person making $200,000 will spend all of that money some years, but only some of that money most years (and there's no guarantee that the wealthier person will drop his disposable income in the US). The rest goes into savings or offshore accounts or the stock market or wherever. This means that, with a consumption tax scheme, a percentage of the wealthier person's income goes untaxed, while all of the poorer person's money is subject to taxation. And of course you realize that should the government ever come up short, they'll hit the guy making $20,000 first.
12. New Homestead Act. Finally, for those who desire it, we support a six hour day and a four day week, plus federal assistance in moving into new developments in exurbia. There, a new three-generation form of the family might take shape – not under one roof necessarily, but maybe under two, at opposite ends of the garden. Parents would have time to be with their children, to cook and eat at home, do home improvement projects, even raise a few vegetables. Grandparents would be available to help look after the infants and toddlers; and later on, when they’re no longer able to care for themselves, their children and grandchildren could help look after them. No more daycare! No more nursing homes! And no longer the ridiculous need to retire when decades of life still remain to be lived!
Those are big claims, and they require people to lead circumscribed lives. Nobody ever moves once they get to this homestead? If they do, do that have to drag three generations with them? What kind of work would these people be doing? What about the people who do need to retire because the work they've been doing is physically taxing. What about the families whose elderly members require nursing care--Alzheimers patients, cancer patients, and the like? Are the families forced to bear the full burden or can they get some help? Suppose you're not interested in gardening or home improvement? Where's your twenty-four hour a week job then? Do I have to work forty hours, or fifty, to support people doing this? Why? What do I get out of it? This sounds like a utopian fantasy. Yes, I think people should work fewer hours and get more time off, and we already have a model for that. Germany. And what they've got sounds a damn sight better than this.
That's all. Peace out.
1. Family Wage Supports. First and foremost, we favor a program of automatic wage subsidies – modeled on Ronald Reagan’s earned-income tax-credit – to insure that every working American shares in the prosperity made possible by free trade in the new global economy. If our country is going to reap the rewards of doing business with low-wage goliaths like China and India, it essential to cut the American wage-earner in on the deal. Wages have been falling in America for 30 years now. How long is the ordinary wage-earner supposed to watch his share of the nation’s rapidly expanding economic pie grow smaller – not just relatively smaller, but absolutely smaller? Economic theory and commonsense agree on what needs to be done: To make free trade work for everybody, and not just a favored few, we’ve got to divvy up the gains of trade.
A somewhat useful idea, I suppose. Although speaking as one who has used the EIC over the years, it's not a whole hell of a lot of money. The real work would be to open retailers and other service industries to union representation, and making the right to organize a part of trade agreements with places like China, India, and Pakistan. Unions have been shut out of the globalization discussion. It's time to let them in. If we can open Wal Mart, the hospitality industry, and other jobs not vulnerable to outsourcing to union representation, we'll do a lot more for workers than this scheme will. That way, workers can negotiate their own share of the world trade goodies, and not leave themselves up to the mercy of Congress.
2. Immigration Moratorium. We support a time-out in immigration, to give this country a chance to assimilate the 30 million foreign-born citizens we already have. Mass immigration hurts working families’ wages, falling hardest on the least-skilled and most vulnerable among us, Hispanics and African-Americans above all. Most Americans know this already; it is a simple matter of supply and demand. What they don’t know is that mass immigration also hurts the poor countries from which most immigrants come, siphoning off their most ambitious and energetic members. Mexico is a good illustration. Living standards there were rising rapidly in the decades following World War II, just like in the United States. They kept on rising until the U.S. border unexpectedly opened up following passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 – after which millions of Mexicans started migrating north. It was only then that Mexico’s per capita GDP suddenly hit a plateau, and it hasn’t risen since.
Given these facts, is there any reason why an immigration moratorium is not already high on the agenda of the Democratic Party? We plan to put it there.
Immigration in Republican parlance, and in BADs as well it appears, is French for Brown People. I doubt Mexico's economy tanked simply because a portion of their population chose to emigrate. I expect the biggest problem was decades of repressive, corrupt PRI kleptocracy. Further, the most ambitious and energetic immigrants tend to be those who jump through all the hoops to get into US Colleges. Is it BAD's position that ambitious and energetic students should be denied higher education? Not that they couldn't go to Universities in the EU, allowing the EU to gain the benefit of their ambition, intelligence and talent. But, hey, based on the results of the last election, would we know what to do with talent if we had it?
I'm not an immigration expert, so I don't know exactly how to best discourage illegal immigration while simultaneously encouraging legal immigration. But I don't think turning the US into a gated community would be useful even if it could succeed in keeping illegals out. Saying to the world "I'm all right, Jack" won't do much to endear us to people around the world (especially given our notorious stinginess with foreign aid). If we want to retain our position in the world, we'll have to start sharing the toys, either by letting people in to play with them or by sending more of them out.
3. National ID. We support a fool-proof form of national identification, without which a person cannot cash a check, use a credit card, sign a lease, take a job, get a driver’s license, open a bank account, enroll in school, or otherwise function in our society. The American public understands perfectly well that a national ID card is the only practical and efficient way to control illegal immigration. It also happens to be the best way to keep terrorists and wanted criminals from operating freely inside our borders. Concerns about civil rights in this context seem misplaced and overblown. The ACLU needs to grow up.
Yeah, no one could forge one of those. Also, I'm suspicious of arguments that begin "The American public understands..." The American public also understands (or large percentages do anyway) that there were WMDs in Iraq, that angels follow us around, and that the Earth is 10,000 years old.
Fool-proof. Every James Bond villain's plan is fool-proof. They're 0-20 now.
4. Marriage Amendment. We favor an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as the union between “one man and one woman.” Such a definition of marriage would be useful, not only in dealing with the legally anomalous issue of gay marriage, but to head off the challenge of polygamy, sure to be posed by the several million Muslim immigrants in this countr, for whom it is a religiously-sanctioned cultural norm. Gay marriage ignores the very purpose of the age-old institution of marriage, which is to establish a culturally stable form of the family for the pro-creation and rearing of the next generation. As for polygamy, it is simply incompatible with social and sexual equality in a liberal republic. So in these two instances, at least, multi-culturalism be damned!
A non-starter with me. The Muslim bit is a red-herring. Very few Muslims would push all that hard for polygamy, because Islam requires the polygamous man to fully provide for the welfare of every wife he has--something few Muslims can manage. Even Mormons in Utah aren't big fans, largely because those who practice polygamy in Utah place tremendous burdens on the state welfare system and perpetuate a stigma they've been anxious to shed for some time.
As for the purpose of marriage in history, it had less to do with maintaining a culturally stable family than with providing for inheritance of property. Marriages in Ancient Athens or Sparta are hardly the sort that we would recognize or endorse. Marriages in many cultures have had less to do with love than profit, with dowries and family social ambitions determining matches. In Ancient Athens, women were little better than slaves. In Ancient Rome, women could be property owners and get divorces. Marriage as it is practiced in the US today is not, and has not been for some time, a traditional affair. It is the product of a conversation about rights, motives, and privileges that has been going on for thousands of years in hundreds of cultures. The notion of gay marriage is simply another voice in that conversation, one that has been silent for a long time, and one that I'd like to hear--reactionary parochialism be damned!
Time out here for a second. I hate the Patriots. I hate the miserable fucking Patriots those smug scumsucking bastards I want them all dead! Time in.
5. End to Racial Preferences. We support a Constitutional ban on all forms of racial discrimination by government, and by all private institutions that receive government support. Officially sanctioned racial preferences – even when euphemistically described as “affirmative action” – destroy the unity of the nation, and are incompatible with the principle of equality before the law. Henceforth let there be no legal minorities in America, only Americans. We believe this is the surest way to speed the process of assimilation and reduce ethnic strife in the decades ahead. E Pluribus Unum!
I've always thought Chris Rock gave a good defense of affirmative action when he compared it to the baseball rule that says the tie goes to the runner. In baseball, the reasoning is that because the offensive player is alone against nine guys who are trying to get him out, in the event that the ball and the runner arrive a the plate simultaneously, the runner is considered safe. Affirmative action works the same way. We all operate on the basis of a certain racial preference. The dominant one in this country is white and male. It still controls most of the access points and has most of the inherent advantages. Now if white people were naturally inclined toward perfect fairness in hiring and promotion, we wouldn't need laws like affirmative action. But the evidence suggests that we aren't there yet, and may not be there for some time. White men tend to hire white men, all factors being equal. Conscious racism has little to do with it. It's a cultural tendency. Thus, as in baseball, the tie needs to go to the runner--the black person, the hispanic person, the woman--if we're to keep the game fair.
6. Community Standards. We support a re-interpretation of the First Amendment to exclude the protection of sexually graphic images and obscene language. The purpose of freedom of speech and of the press is to allow open debate of controversial ideas, such as we are engaging in right here. It was never intended to abolish small-town standards of decency and public decorum, let alone enable profit-making entities to pump hardcore pornography into every home and library in America. Let the local majorities decide! A place for everything, but everything in its place!
Considering that the nation's rural and culturally conservative areas are among the largest consumers of porn, this seems an odd way to try to win them over. That aside, I don't want the majority of citizens anywhere to have the right to tell me what I can read, watch, listen to, or perform onstage, much less some middle-aged white Pecksniff who gets off accusing others of immorality while he claims the right to fuck his wife whether she likes it or not.
7. The Pledge of Allegiance. We support the language of the pledge, “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” The phrase “under God” should be understood quite simply as a historical reference to the religious traditions under which this nation was founded, according to which there is a moral law, existing prior to, and independent of, the state, which is the true foundation of our rights and liberties. We also favor taking the word “indivisible” out of the pledge, as being redundant, infelicitous, and well-understood.
Arguments over this one quickly become shrill and boring. God shouldn't be there, but I'm not willing to make a fuss over it (friendly, non-confrontational atheist that I tend to be--except when discussing how much I HATE THE PATRIOTS). I have no real problem with the word "indivisible" either, because if things get bad I qualify to emigrate to Canada.
8. Bible in the Schools. We favor not just allowing but requiring the Bible to be studied in our public schools as an integral part of the history curriculum. We justify this on the grounds that the Bible is itself a history book, and a primary document of Western culture and civilization; it is from the pages of the Bible that our secular ideals of freedom, justice, and equality are historically derived. This book is the source of the Western idea of human progress, and of the faith that enabled our ancestors – at terrible sacrifice – to build a civilization like none ever seen before. These are things all children need to learn in school. The Supreme Court has already ruled that such an approach would be constitutional, and we need to take them up on it.
A seminal work of literature the Bible may be, but you rely on it as a history text at your peril. Amile Kuhrt puts it well: "Like many accounts of the past, it [the Bible] was not intended to provide a critical historical study; rather it contained stories detailing the interaction of a people, Israel, with their god, Yahweh, who had chosen them to work out his divine plan. It is a complex, ideologically driven compilaiton, within which stories were refashioned to drive home particular lessons of the past."
Archaeological evidence backing up the Bible is sketchy at best and absent at worst. I will grant that it is slightly better on history than it is on biology, but who's it going to brag to about that? As for BADs claim that the Bible allowed us to build a civilization "like none ever seen" that's true only to a point. Human beings had been building fabulous civilizations without the Bible's input for centuries, and continued doing so after the Bible became widely disseminated. The Chinese, Japanese, Nubians, Egyptians, Mayas, Incas, Aztecs, Olmecs, Anasazis, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians built spectacular civilizations and wonders without the Bible's influence. And as for Christianity as a force for cultural preservation and progress, let the record show that for a thousand years it was the Muslims who preserved "Western" culture, particularly in mathematics and science, while Christians busied themselves with the angels and pinheads problem. And a good deal of contemporary scientific work (in biology particularly) has advanced in spite of religion, not because of it. Would humanity have developed, in the last 2,000 years, technologies for improved farming, communications, and transport without the Bible? Almost certainly. The Greeks articulated the beginnings of the scientific method, and they spread their work widely enough that it would have been hard to destroy. Many in the Near East, China, and the Americas were doing sophisticated work in rocketry, metallurgy, and astronomy during this period without bothering much about Jesus. Would humanity have developed democracy without the Bible? Yes. Our democracy is not founded on anything said in the Bible but on the checks and balances arrangements seen in the Roman Republic. Our civilization is what it is for many reasons. The Bible is one, but it is not the only one. If it hadn't existed, different people would be claiming that a different holy book is the foundation of a wholly different civilization the likes of which no one has ever seen.
The Bible is useful to study as a work of literature, and a familiarity with its stories and aphorisms will help students understand everything from the Crusades, to King James's arguments for Absolutism, to the Pilgrims, to arguments for and against slavery, to the Scopes Trial. It is woven into American and World History in this way--as a point of reference for statesmen, moralists, and philosphers. It should not, however, be used as a substitute for a critical historical text, and should ideally be discussed with reference to the literature of neighboring cultures--such as Sumeria, Babylon, and Greece, from which many of its stories and motifs sprang.
9. Equitable Tax Enforcement. We support – indeed, demand – giving the IRS the tools it needs to fully enforce our tax laws on all our citizens, rich and poor alike. Currently it lacks the resources to audit the returns of the wealthiest group in America: people whose incomes derive from their ownership of businesses, stocks, bonds, and real estate. As a result it fails to collect an estimated $300 billion a year in taxes (roughly a thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child) most of it owed by a just a few thousand of the wealthiest families in America (with fortunes in excess of $50 million) who hide their incomes in secret off-shore bank accounts, using shell corporations and other devious devices. To make up for this shortfall, virtually every other taxpayer in America – including doctors, lawyers, and highly-salaried corporate managers of every description – pays a third more in taxes than he otherwise would. For details on this outrage see Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston’s new book, Perfectly Legal.
Didn't Dukakis flog this in 1988? (His number was $100 billion.) I'm all for doing that in principle, but lets acknowledge that we'll never get all of that $300 billion. The IRS would have to hire armies of accountants and lawyers to track down secret money through these shell companies, Swiss and Bahamian accounts, and assorted dodges, while the wealthiest families in America use their own lawyers and accountants to throw every possible downfield block for them. It may be a very expensive proposition to get a hold of this money, which may explain why the IRS prefers to attack poor people, like me, who can't defend themselves. I may not have much, but compared to Bill Gates, I'm a soft target. All my money's in one place. It's easy to put a lien on it. The only thing saving my neck is that my Mom happens to be a tax lawyer. So, nice idea, but I have doubts about how feasible it really is.
10. Financial Sunshine Laws. To end this abuse of the taxpaying public, we favor cooperating with our allies to close down all secret bank accounts and off-shore tax havens around the world. We propose outlawing shell corporations and other phony legal devices, and holding those law firms and accounting partnerships that create them fully responsible, which we can do by taking away the grants of limited liability that Congress gave them a few years back. (While we’re at it we might also take away Congress’s authority to sneak special tax breaks into law for its friends in the middle of the night.) And lastly, we support making every citizen’s tax returns a matter of public record, as was originally the case; this is justified on the principle that the citizen’s right to financial privacy ends where the public welfare begins. These reforms, taken together, would not only put an end to tax cheating on a grand scale, but would shut down the financial networks that support terrorism and the international drug cartels.
But they'd just find new ones. Ironclad laws are impossible to write. People with sufficient resources will find a way around them. That's what they pay their lawyers for, and their lawyers are exceedingly efficient. Also, how the hell are we going to shut down secret accounts in other countries? Did George Bush or Tom Delay get some new powers I'm not aware of? We can't get the Chinese to stop people from illegally copying Minority Report for fuck's sake!
Unless you plan to stop all money from moving, people are going to find ways to move it so that the government can't get at it or find it. That's what we call in the business, life.
11. Progressive Consumption Tax. To make these reforms palatable to the rich, we favor replacing the income tax with a progressive consumption tax, as was proposed by Senators Nunn and Domenici in their USA Tax of 1995. Their USA Tax was like our graduated income tax, but with savings tax exempt; it is what we would have now if individuals were allowed to make unlimited contributions to their IRA accounts, and there were no penalties for early withdrawals. Henceforward all personal bank and brokerage accounts would be treated like IRA accounts. People would be penalized, not for what they put into the common pot, but for what they take out, and persons who consume extravagantly would be taxed at a higher rate than those who are more moderate in their habits of expenditure. To the wealthiest families in America we say, agree to this tax on principle, and we might scrap the inheritance tax and the corporate income tax altogether as no longer needful. Let’s commit the republic to class comity, not class war.
Dumb idea that helps the rich more than it hurts them. A person making $20,000 per year has to spend nearly all of it if he wants to stay alive. A person making $200,000 will spend all of that money some years, but only some of that money most years (and there's no guarantee that the wealthier person will drop his disposable income in the US). The rest goes into savings or offshore accounts or the stock market or wherever. This means that, with a consumption tax scheme, a percentage of the wealthier person's income goes untaxed, while all of the poorer person's money is subject to taxation. And of course you realize that should the government ever come up short, they'll hit the guy making $20,000 first.
12. New Homestead Act. Finally, for those who desire it, we support a six hour day and a four day week, plus federal assistance in moving into new developments in exurbia. There, a new three-generation form of the family might take shape – not under one roof necessarily, but maybe under two, at opposite ends of the garden. Parents would have time to be with their children, to cook and eat at home, do home improvement projects, even raise a few vegetables. Grandparents would be available to help look after the infants and toddlers; and later on, when they’re no longer able to care for themselves, their children and grandchildren could help look after them. No more daycare! No more nursing homes! And no longer the ridiculous need to retire when decades of life still remain to be lived!
Those are big claims, and they require people to lead circumscribed lives. Nobody ever moves once they get to this homestead? If they do, do that have to drag three generations with them? What kind of work would these people be doing? What about the people who do need to retire because the work they've been doing is physically taxing. What about the families whose elderly members require nursing care--Alzheimers patients, cancer patients, and the like? Are the families forced to bear the full burden or can they get some help? Suppose you're not interested in gardening or home improvement? Where's your twenty-four hour a week job then? Do I have to work forty hours, or fifty, to support people doing this? Why? What do I get out of it? This sounds like a utopian fantasy. Yes, I think people should work fewer hours and get more time off, and we already have a model for that. Germany. And what they've got sounds a damn sight better than this.
That's all. Peace out.
Posted at 06:27 PM
Fri - January 21, 2005
Great Interview with Terry Jones in Salon
Key quote for me (Read the
whole thing here):
It was the Archbishop of Arundel who was the real mastermind behind this, the Henry Kissinger of his day. He did exactly what is happening now. He put this illegitimate, illegal regime in power and he lied and cheated to get power himself. Then he neutralized the opposition by declaring a war on heresy. A war on heresy suited his purposes because it was open-ended, he could define heresy how he liked. And he defined it as "you're either with us or you're a heretic." If you criticized the church, you were criticizing the king. It was all the same thing. You saw people using the same mechanisms and tools of power in the 14th century that are used in the war on terror today.
Terry Jones says elsewhere in the interview that he can't be funny writing about George W. Bush. I understand that. It is hard to tell a joke when you are living inside a joke. Knowing that people as ridiculous as Bush and his coterie of nimrods could decide whether you live or die today is comic, but it isn't funny. Comedy of this sort requires Kundera or Kafka. We need The Unbearable Lightness of Dubya, or The Book of Enron and Forgetting. Bush could fit comfortably into Kundera's chapters on Stalin's son and kitsch. Tony Blair would make an admirable substitute for Dubcek.
It was the Archbishop of Arundel who was the real mastermind behind this, the Henry Kissinger of his day. He did exactly what is happening now. He put this illegitimate, illegal regime in power and he lied and cheated to get power himself. Then he neutralized the opposition by declaring a war on heresy. A war on heresy suited his purposes because it was open-ended, he could define heresy how he liked. And he defined it as "you're either with us or you're a heretic." If you criticized the church, you were criticizing the king. It was all the same thing. You saw people using the same mechanisms and tools of power in the 14th century that are used in the war on terror today.
Terry Jones says elsewhere in the interview that he can't be funny writing about George W. Bush. I understand that. It is hard to tell a joke when you are living inside a joke. Knowing that people as ridiculous as Bush and his coterie of nimrods could decide whether you live or die today is comic, but it isn't funny. Comedy of this sort requires Kundera or Kafka. We need The Unbearable Lightness of Dubya, or The Book of Enron and Forgetting. Bush could fit comfortably into Kundera's chapters on Stalin's son and kitsch. Tony Blair would make an admirable substitute for Dubcek.
Posted at 03:27 PM
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Published On: Feb 14, 2005 01:53 PM
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Published On: Feb 14, 2005 01:53 PM