Walll Street Journal displays class prejudice

In the run up to the almost assured confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor as justice of the Supreme Court, there's been a lot of conservative barking and moaning and sobs. The right is very uncomfortable about her ethnicity, her liberalism, and her gender. One of the profound thinkers at Fox compared her to the Ku Klux Klan. These deep Solonic insights and pronouncements notwithstanding, most agree Ms. Sotomayor's chances of being confirmed in the Senate are virtually certain. At this point it's just a case of going through the motions of collecting the answers to questionnaires, submitting to some geriatric grunting and harrumphing from the Senators, and then counting the vote. Absent some forgotten or undiscovered skeleton in the closet (and it would have to be huge-- sex change? deserted children? religious extremism?), Sonya's safe to start shopping for black robes.

My thinking was about there yesterday-- that we were going to have a female Hispanic supreme court judge, and it didn't seem like a bad thing. And then I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal, written by someone named Peter A. Brown, which came as close as I've heard to raising a class objection to Ms. Sotomayor's nomination. A CLASS objection! Mr. Brown, it's 2009 for fucks sake!

The objection raised by Mr. Brown-- and by extension by the Wall Streeet Journal-- in a nutshell is she may be unqualified because she's not richer! The fact that Ms. Sotomayor has and does hold high-visibility posts on the boards of more than one organization that effects community empowerment, outreach, and support seems not to hold much sway among the plutocrats. Law degrees from not one but two Ivy League universities aren't enough! What irks Mr. Brown is she didn't become a millionaire when she was a partner in a powerful New York law firm. Instead of squirrelling away every nickel of her substantial (and guaranteed lifelong) salary into investments in the likes of privatized prisons and Blackwater, Inc. and Chevron Oil, this poor deluded woman seems to have squandered it all on nice clothing and dental bills, paying her mortgage, donating to community causes, and supporting her Mom. She probably tips well. And the article all but comes out and says this reprehensible behavior should disqualify her from ruling on cases involving corporations and business in general, and hence from serving on the Supreme Court at all. How can someone who shows no obvious signs of rapacious greed and avarice be qualified to fairly handle the delicate affairs of litigants whose only reason for existence is greed?

Folks, this is the face of the class war. Take whichever side you like. But please don't just sit by and accept it. This article is repulsive, and wrong.

Is it just my myopic view?

Is it just my myopic view, or is the Republican Party coming apart? Doesn't it look like Republican Senators are showing their hypocricy and inability to adhere to their own standards? And now their poster child in the feminine gender, the Barracuda from Wasilla, is dropping her sole position of responsibility. There's tongue-wagging going on at the New York Times (and elsewhere) that she's doing it in a Nixon-esque attempt to step out of the spotlight in order to work on her assault on the Presidency in 2012.

I might explain her move another way. This week in Vanity Fair there was an article that came from sources pretty close to the McCain campaign, which pointed out the political functionaries' views that Ms. Palin is incompetent, inexperienced, and kind of a basket case in tough political situations. Add to that her working class abrasiveness and reluctance to back down from even a losing fight (like the recent name-calling spat with David Letterman), and it's obvious the GOP can't wash their hands of her quickly enough. And when she turns to her heroes in the GOP Social Conservative camp to see who'll defend her honor, she finds she's only got the likes of Newt "Sotomayor is the KKK" Gingrich, Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, Alan "Hiking the Appalachian Trail to Argentina" Sanford, and "Promise Keepers" Ensign, and the afore-mentioned McCain camp, who have already sold her out and thrown her to the sharks.

Didn't McCain promise to defend her last year after the "lipstick on a pig" remark from the Obama campaign? I believe Ms. Palin is planning to disappear into the obscurity of small-town Alaska politics, or maybe just disappear from the public eye altogether, because she's seen the corruption, veniality, and empty-headed sanctimony of her "tribe' and realizes she doesn't want anything to do with those opportunistic dweebs. They ditched her at the prom! You almost have to feel bad for her. Except that she'll probably make a lot of money writing and lecturing. I hope she tells the truth about her foray into mainstream Republicanism, because it could bring about the end of the GOP as we know it. They're done for. And they should watch out for Todd, who hunts.

Theism is a drug

It occurs to me that theism is a dangerous and very addictive drug that afflicts a huge number of people, has done so for centuries, and wreaks havoc on lives, families, communities, cultures, and civilization. A major portion of the truly evil acts that have been perpetrated by people throughout history were religiously motivated. And that situation is not getting better-- it's getting worse.

Like a drug addict, the theist can not be trusted, cannot be relied upon, and basically can't return to rationality. Once they've posited an all-knowing, all-powerful entity who created and inhabits and controls all of the universe there's no way to retrieve their mind to useful constructive patterns. Once you've crossed the line and allowed the first supernatural belief, the rest come easier. Three steps away from the awe inspired by a starry night, lies the murder of gynecologists, invasion of Iraq, beatings, and burnings, and beheadings, and eventually, I assume, the end of the world-- because when some idiot in the White House or elsewhere finally pushes the doomsday button, they will be motivated to that insanity by some other-worldly, supernatural, and apocalyptic idea that to end all civilization is better than to live under the "wrong" brand of God. Theism destroys because irrationality destroys.

It's all ridiculously stupid, and it can be avoided. We need 12 step programs to wean people away from the easy abdication of reason to theism. We need to stop allowing our society's institutions to enable them-- no more religion on TV, no more tax exemption for churches, no more sanctimonious religious observances to accompany official public ceremonies. No more "in god we trust," because the very appearance of the name of god should be an indicator of ignorance and irrationality. Religiously motivated crime should be doubly punished, just as a crime committed in the process of feeding a drug habit is doubly punished. Unfrock the pushers of irrationality wherever they speak. I'm serious here.

Oh, the poor thing...

Mrs. Madoff has had to relinquish her loot! Poor dear! They only left her with two and a half million dollars in cash to eke out her meager existence. Maybe her sons will be able to help her out, with bus fare and such. Maybe she can appeal to others to help her out...

Cookie Dough is a bunch of S**T!

Ladies and gentlemen, I heard about a recent outbreak of E. Coli infections in the USA that has been traced to Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough, which is alarming! The company has started a voluntary recall to try and protect the public, i.e. their customers.

Well I have two thoughts about this. One is that E. Coli is a bacteria that comes from inside the intestines of warm-blooded creatures (yummah!). You can get it from eating raw animal (or human) crap. It's often passed in meat-packing plants that aren't kept scrupulously clean, such that a surface where intestines were lying then becomes a surface where meat is laid before it's ground up. The meat sort of wipes up the little bacteria, then it's all together-- wheeee-- pushed through the meat-grinder (which is much too coarse to do much damage to the little E. Coli critters), and then it's all mixed up into a raw-meat cauldron whence it's slapped into patties, frozen, and shipped to supermarkets everywhere. But wait a minute, what is that doing in cookie dough? Are there really industrial processes involved in making cookie dough that are that close to mammalian intestines that they can get fouled? How? Why? Maybe raw eggs, if they're not washed and they don't remove the shells? I hesitate to speculate further...

Whatever, the process is a superb advertisement for not buying processed food. It's easy to make safe cookie dough in your kitchen with almost zero risk of it getting contaminated by fecal material or the intestinal linings of warm blooded animals. How many other "wholesome" foodstuffs are we going to find in our supermarkets full of industrial by-products that are just a little too close to the back ends of animals for our own good?

Oh, and another point is worth making-- baking the cookies according to the instructions is almost guaranteed to kill the offending bacteria and make the product "harmless" to humans (well, as harmless as eggs, butter, sugars and various tropical oils and chocolate chips and chemical preservatives and dough conditioners and food coloring chemicals can be).

So these products are contaminated with poo... and some people eat them raw! That's not good. I'm just saying.

Science coverage-- Rats develop new skills

After thirty years of "Reaganomics," it has been shown that scum sucking pond rats have evolved a new way of existing, by stealing and digesting the savings of an entire generation of America's retired people. I chanced to find and read a lot of the Victim Impact statement that was gathered and released ahead of the sentencing of Bernie Madoff this week. The stories, mostly one page emails or letters, are profoundly sad and upsetting. And they made me think about how, over the course of the last couple of decades, the Reagan-era mantra of de-regulation (of banks and financial institutions) has allowed the evolution of a new species of rat that targets the life savings of hard-working middle class-- and working class-- Americans. Look at the recent bank collapse to see how working Americans' 401K's were decimated-- by as much as 50% and more. And the Madoff Ponzi scheme which grew and thrived right under the noses of the SEC who investigated the operation several times-- atrocious.

It's important to know these victims aren't Hollywood celebrities and fast-talking high-rollers who lost their easy bucks to a shyster. These are parents and grand parents and retired doctors, and even a school teacher married to a retired prison guard-- who lost their $200,000-300,000 retirement fund. And all those billlions of dollars went to finance the lifestyles of several generations of Madoffs, with mansions, palatial New York apartments, private schools, nannies, massage parlors, and all. The bank and insurance CEO's have their own disgusting lifestyles. These captains of finance managed to identify one of the largest American asset pools-- the savings of the baby boomers and their children-- and harvested as much of it as they could, leaving the victims destitute and too old and sick to fight back.

Deregulation is the tool of the princes of kleptocracy. Anyone who says different is expecting to enrich himself by the lack of regulation. I'd love to see the SEC and the FED empowered to effectively regulate the markets they're supposed to. And Bernie Madoff will likely evade the punishement he deserves-- to have his entrails run up the flag pole at the New York stock exchange, preferably while he watches.

What do we do? Someone was murdered by a White Supremacist!

Much of the American press is wringing their hands and asking, "What can we do about hate groups?" Anyone who reads this blog knows I think we need new laws about as much as I need pair of tits and some high-heeled alligator pumps-- i.e. we don't! We already have way too many laws.

But think about it this way-- what are the odds an African American or a person of Jewish extraction will be killed by a hate-spewing extremist, as opposed to, say a drunk driver? Or a stray bullet in a street shoot-out? Or an estranged spouse or family member? Or a jittery policeman at a traffic stop? Or a bolt of lightning? Or a terrorist set free from Guantanamo? I am guessing all of these reasons are at least an order or magnitude more likely to kill someone than the occasional addled and senile extremist packing heat.

If you think about this a bit, you'll see-- it's OK to be outraged, and it's OK to be sad and depressed, and it's OK to tell yourself you're not going to listen to racial or religious slurs without speaking out from now on. But passing laws that will allow more surreptitious government and police presence in our society is not an improvement, and will never reduce the death toll. Not by one death! Why not pass a law against lightning?

Calm down, go to the funeral, tell your racist uncle he's a freak and not welcome at family gatherings anymore. But don't pester your legislators to pass any more laws! We have too many already (legislators and laws).

America still competitive

Watchers around the world have heaved a collective sigh of relief that the United States of America has proven once again it's still competitive in the international marketplace of inbreeding homicidal nutjobs.

After the fall of Bush/Cheney there was some doubt, but with the recent murder of Dr. Tillman, the gynecologist from Kansas, and now the murder of the secutity guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., doubters can feel some relief that America is still unvanquished in the nutjob category. Amen...

This is how "cool" happens

This is lovely video about the way something becomes "cool." It doesn't start that way, and it doesn't end up the same, but it's all wonderful. The song is by (I think) a band called Santigold. For everyone whose ever felt like an outcast or a doofus--Enjoy...

Maine Legislature sells out its constituents

In a single stroke of stunning cynicism the Maine legislature has passed a "revenue neutral" bill that moves 25-40 million dollars of taxes from the middle class into the pockets of the highest income earners in the state. Or, to state it differently, the Maine legislature has added a new 6 percent tax to movie tickets, ski lift tickets, and restaurant dining in order to reduce by 2 percent the maximum income tax assessment of Maine's richest residents. I don't know who was doing the horse trading to convince the legislators this was a good idea, and I don't know what they got in exchange, but substituting a flat tax for a progressive tax is always unfair and functions to move money up the income ladder. For shame! Think about this the next time you take your family of four to the movies, that you're paying more than three bucks extra for your night out in order that Daddy Warbucks can have his income tax reduced by 20 - 30 thousand dollars next year. Revenue neutral? Riiiiggggghhhhhttttttt!!!!!

We're all so concerned by the effects of the dreadful economy that it's easy to feel relief that it hasn't hit harder in our own pockets, but this has to stop. Let your legislator know-- this law has to go, or the elected officials have to go, to be replaced with someone with some spine and sense of justice. Substituting a regressive tax for a progressive tax, even if the trade off is dollar for dollar, is not the answer. Unless the goal is to move the rest of the money up to the top of the food chain. Shame!