SubscribeJanuary 12th, 2012
American history_delightful passages
I’d never read the US Treaty with Tripoli, 1797 before today. My loss has now been rectified. Here’s my favourite passage:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
This was passed through Congress in 1797 by a unanimous vote. Imagine what would happen today!
ROTFLMAO
January 11th, 2012
the genealogical gambit
Do you remember when the conservative portion of the American political mind went out to Africa and made some not-tongue-in-cheek assertions about their President’s true status as a US citizen?
Howlingly funny. A very much a tongue-in-cheek reminder of that earlier event, Rick Santorum’s Italian family has been interviewed and found to be “Communist”.
But the elder Santorum matriarch doesn’t understand why he has diverged so far from the family’s longtime political stance. “In Riva del Garda his grandfather Pietro and uncles were ‘red communists’ to the core,” writes Oggi journalist Giuseppe Fumagalli, likening the family to “Peppone” after a famous fictional Italian communist mayor who fought against an ultraconservative priest known as Don Cammillo and about which a popular television series is based. “But on the other side of the ocean, it’s like his family here doesn’t exist. Instead he draws crowds as the head of the ultraconservative faction of the Republican party, against divorce, gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.”
There is a bit of good advice from the left-wing part of his family – “…if he wants to make it, he will have to soften some of his positions. To take a stand against homosexuality or to oppose divorce is harmful. Principles count, but in politics one must have the capacity to be open-minded.”
Santorum seems to have missed that lesson at his familial knee. Still, the family seems to be largely forgiving of his crass move to the right and there may be some expectations of a Santorum presidency.
According to Oggi, the general sentiment is that the Italian Santorums will forgive their American cousin if his bid is successful. “When he wins, he will send the American presidential airplane and take all the Santorums to the White House,” Bruno Santorum told the magazine.
But after Santorum’s loss in New Hampshire and his recent slump in the polls, the question of whether he would bring his communist cousins to his ultraconservative White House may never be tested.
Howl.
January 8th, 2012
Santorum and what we know in our hearts
Boston (dot) com reported on Santorum’s “arguments” against gay marriage as a part of a recent essay covering New Hampshire political campaigning.
Santorum grew impassioned while discussing his opposition to gay marriage, saying that it was harmful to families because it could mean that children grow up without both a mother and a father.
“You’re robbing children of something they need, they deserve, they have a right to!” Santorum said after the first question. “They have a right to know and be loved by their dad and their mom. And that’s what marriage is about. It’s not about two people loving each other. There’s lots of people who love each other that we don’t give a privilege to and call it marriage.”
“Not that those relationships aren’t important — of course they’re important,” he added. “We honor them and we respect them, but we don’t give them this unique privilege.”
He also suggested that those who disagree aren’t being honest with themselves.
“You may convince yourself that it’s not — you may rationalize that that isn’t true,” he said. “But in your own life and in your own heart you know it’s true.”
There is, of course, the issue of who gets to define the reach and distribution of “privileges”, which, as far as I know, Santorum has not made clear. I suspect that such power of definition is to be led by his thinking organ – the heart.
There might be a problem with that, as any student of anthropology, psychology — any of the “ologies” really — would be able to discern.
Here’s an example with the idea that children deserve a two-parent family, and making constitutional amendments to enforce such a “heart” decision.
So, a woman (or man) dies in the war leaving behind a spouse and children. The remaining family is now a single-parent family. Under a law defining family as one with a man and a woman married, then this is no longer a family and should not receive benefits designed for families.
Outrageous, but if follows on Santorum’s “heart” knowledge.
(Note: this is why it is probably best if the head also takes a role in decision making.)
What a dweeb that man is. I know he has a couple of degrees but — what? — he slept through his critical thinking class?
December 31st, 2011
the first act under the NDAA should be…
IN his inaugural address, President Obama called on us to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” We agree. Now, to protect both, he must veto the National Defense Authorization Act that Congress is expected to pass this week. (Times article Dec 12)
Agreed. But if NDAA does pass Congress and Obama doesn’t veto, then here’s one thing he could do. Have a military unit ready as he signs the Act into law. March over to Congress and detain Speaker Boehner under suspicion of supporting Osama bin Laden’s larger goals. I suspect that could be easily proven. But hey! Under NDAA Obama wouldn’t actually have to prove anything. So NDAA could be useful.
Great opinion piece by the Generals (retired).
December 29th, 2011
wording and communication
I love looking in over at Ursula K. Le Guin’s blog. She writes an interesting mix of things – literature of course, politics, commentary on things like the Chilean miners and their ordeal last Fall. She’s no daily blogger but everything she does post is well thought out, fun to read.
Here is one thing that really caught my eye today:
Post 40: She talks about the Top 5 FOX Myths post from November 22. Compare the wording.
Le Guin’s post of Myth #1:
MYTH #1: The congressional Super Committee failed because both sides refused to compromise.
REALITY: It failed because the Republicans in Congress, following the Party Line, now refuse ANY compromise on ANY issue offered by the Democrats.
Reaganist Republicanism has become a rigid ideology, as Stalinism was.
To be a Republican politician now, you must be, literally, politically correct.
If you don’t correctly parrot the Party Line, you will be exiled to (shudder!) Liberal Siberia.
MoveOn’s post
MYTH #1: The congressional Super Committee failed because both sides refuse to compromise.
REALITY: The Super Committee failed because Republicans’ number one, non-negotiable priority is to protect millionaires and billionaires from paying even one more penny in taxes. Democrats repeatedly offered deep spending cuts (far deeper than most progressives would like) in exchange for raising taxes on the wealthy and closing corporate loopholes, only to be refused again and again. So even though the vast majority of Americans say they want to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits, and raise taxes on the rich and corporations, that won’t happen until Republicans put aside their extremist stance
Of the last part MoveOn says “until Republicans put aside their extremist stance”.
Le Guin says “you will be exiled to (shudder!) Liberal Siberia”.
By using “Siberia” Le Guin gives us an image which by which we can understand current political behaviour in the US by referencing our own knowledge of USSR totalitarianism and human rights abuses that came under the guise of politics. It’s so much better than the “extremist stance” thing.
December 28th, 2011
Christa Wolf and what comes to be known as a mistake
I came across the announcement that Christa Wolf died recently.
I read her book Cassandra and think it one of the best recountings of that story that has ever been written. Certainly the exchange between the story of Cassandra and the various narratives about the genesis of Wolf’s version of the story that end the volume illuminates the contemporary difficulty we have in assessing what is happening to us politically, socially and ethically.
Cassandra lived in a complex, bitter, dangerous and rapidly changing world. As do we. As did Wolf.
Although widely praised for her contributions to German literature, Wolf’s public image was damaged for not being critical enough of the former communist regime. It took another hit in the early 1990s when it was revealed that, for a period of nearly three years during the 1950s and 1960s, she had served as an informant to East Germany’s feared secret police, the Stasi.
Oh so easy to criticize in hindsight.
Wolf released this information herself, by the way. Was this a mistake? Was working for the Stasi a mistake? Was it a mistake to become a target of theirs in return? I’m not sure how helpful such questions are really. All they do is dice up a person’s life into convenient morsels for the later hawking up of blind judgement.
Speaking to SPIEGEL in June 2010, Wolf said, “what bothered me, and actually made me angry, was that people focused on this single point and that they didn’t see my development and that they didn’t even think it necessary to find out what other files there were.”
What she wanted was to “create a truly democratic society.” That was a consistent thread in all her political activities. She believed in East Germany and in the people there. Surely this was not a mistake – to believe in her world, her people?
I think this blame game outrages me so partly because it is so ridiculous. What person could withstand the assessment of hindsight? What human being should be judged by another’s piecemeal approach, and deeply unexamined, complex history?
I mean, I’ve given to Salvation Army in the past. Now that I know about their tendency to anti-gay thinking, I’ll not give again. Which of those two actions is the mistake? Bah….
Stupid way to think about a living history.
December 26th, 2011
Gingrich howler
Leading Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has failed to meet the requirements to be in the presidential primary election in Virginia, where he resides, the state’s Republican Party said.
That’s funny enough as it stands but the article goes on. I guess he didn’t organize his campaign well enough to meet the basic legal obligations to get himself into the primary.
After Gingrich staged two campaign events in the state last week, his campaign had been confident that he had made the ballot even as his last-minute scramble raised concerns about Gingrich’s abilities to run a national campaign.
It’s that last bit that had me howling with laughter. “Concerns about Gingrich’s abilities to run a national campaign”? How about his abilities to run a frakking country?
Still sniggering.
December 15th, 2011
Mitt Romney supports a return of legal ban on interracial marriages citing the Constitution as his source.
Well, not exactly, but…
time/1:55_”I think at the time of the Constitution was written it was pretty clear that marriage was between a man and a woman and I don’t believe the Supreme Court has changed that.”
Really? You’re going with that Mitt? Really? So you’ll be OK with it if the Supreme Court rules that a ban on marriage between two persons of the same gender/sex is unconstitutional?
The Constitution was adopted in 1787. The Bill of Rights came into effect as Constitutional Amendments in 1791. These “rights” excluded African American persons and all women. There was a long history of the framers’ of the constitution having limited ideas about human rights. The fist law criminalizing marriage between white persons and indentured or enslaved mulatto or black persons came into effect in 1664 (Maryland). Virginia has the distinction of broadening that ban to include marriage between free blacks and whites (1691). The Supreme Court didn’t rule that garbage as unconstitutional until 1967.
What I’d like to know is if the Supreme Court hadn’t made that declaration in 1967 would Mr Romney be unable to see that such a ban on interracial marriage is unjust? In that circumstance, would he support a clause in the marriage act that defines marriage as between a man and a woman of the same race?
Because that’s what his logic would lead me to believe.
And if not, then all he really objects to with the idea of a marriage between two persons of the same sex is that the Supreme Court hasn’t yet spoken up and said that it’s OK? Well that’s easy – we just need the gay case equivalent of Loving v. Virginia! He’ll stand behind that right?
December 9th, 2011
oh I so hope this is true
Visit Generation WE and see what you think.
Also known as the millenials, this generation will inherit what we’ve done here. Just as I inherited what my parents did. Bleh.
Still, that is what is. What I would love to know is how the linking possibilities of the internet will change the perceptions of those that will start controlling things in the very near future. TV and broadcast media more or less established the mind set of my generation. TV, ads, movies – all the concentration on war, disaster, false images of love and piety, that’s what was aimed at my mind. But today it’s youtube, reddit, politics through humour tv, online education is blooming. So we now get all kinds of different things aimed at our heads – and unlike previous media, we have far, far more control and are the producers of those images and text – and we only watch the ads we want to 
It’s that control, the channel-less structure of the net, the peer-to-peer knowledge sharing methodologies – that’s going to translate to life/political/economic ways of doing things – just like the cold war translated to political standoffs in the current ruling parties in the US and other places.
In some really important ways, art doesn’t imitate life, it becomes life.
December 8th, 2011
want to push mad-hatter presidential candidates even further out into right-field?
send a little bit of money ($6) to one of the Dem candidates running for the Senate or Congress. Elizabeth Warren would be a good choice to show your displeasure of unregulated Wall Street sanctioned thieves.