Cheating Our Children

Laurie Abraham's long article, Teaching Good Sex, in the Nov 20th New York Times Sunday magazine is a powerful reminder of what we have lost to the right wing's pro-ignorance agenda.  Read the article and try to imagine if it described a typical American school.  Imagine the tangible results of fewer abortions, less sexually transmitted disease, and fewer teen pregnancies.  And, then think of the intangible results of a happier, confident, plain spoken, and less neurotic young men and women.

Instead, we have let conservative crazies have their way for years.

Reality -- for nearly everyone -- is sickeningly far from Friends Central School's normalcy.  Start with the obvious.  An openly gay teacher is a red flag to right wing America; and one who teaches human sexuality to teenagers would bring out the torches and pitchforks.  Principals would be forced to resign and school superintendents would recite profound apologies.  Then, there's the reality of Friends Central having small discussion classes led by a highly respected teacher when the rest of the country's schools endure increasing class sizes, narrowing curricula, and teacher union bashing.

Enough.  True education places critical thinking and intellectual rigor above all else.  To hell with worse-than-mediocre bland substitute that is given our children.  To hell with the sieves formed by standardized tests.  To hell with morons who rank religion above biology.  Creationism ain't science no matter how much lipstick you smear on a bible.  To hell with all censors and book burners.  If Twain's Huck Finn says, "Nigger," then nigger it be.

Cherchez Les Rapports Annuels

Thanks, once again, to Matt Taibbi  and to the Professional Left podcast for correcting Republican nonsense about the financial meltdown.

Taibbi took on New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg for repeating the lie that, "It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."  Not only is this a favorite Republican misdirection, but Taibbi points out that everyone on Wall Street knows it to be a big lie.

Driftglass and Bluegal slap down Congressman Joe Walsh for emitting the same blame-Congress nonsense.  Walsh deserves the reprimand even though he may not be smart enough, nor mentally balanced enough, to separate truth from Republican battle orders.  

Here's one more point.  Nearly all of the companies consumed by the mortgage-related conflagration were publicly traded.  The list includes Countrywide, Washington Mutual, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and on and on.  Business risks due to Congressional mandates should have been described in their annual reports to shareholders.  Yet, none of the reports from all of those publicly traded companies during the decade preceding the implosion mention those risks.  Not one damn word.  

The next time anyone does a Flip Wilson Congress-made-me-issue-those-bad-mortgages shtick, ask to see the risk assessments in the annual reports.  

Kate Smurthwaite

Kate Smurthwaite spoke truth to insanity on the beeb, and I just love the collective gasp.  She actually implied that people who believe in heaven are idiots.  Can you imagine?  And, she did the math on the Muslim's Jan and Dean heaven that promises two girls for every boy.  Where do all those extra women come from? 

The clip is great; see for yourself:



 As always, the arguments in favor of god are just piss weak.  There's the guy claiming that money doesn't really exist.  Where's a 16-ton sack of coins when you really need one?  His thinking is so polluted by religion that he can't distinguish different meanings of the word "faith."  Face it, bro.  Would you rather own Treasury bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, or just by the full faith in god? 

I also love the pompous boring old fart who pronounced Ms. Smurthwaite's comment rude.  OK?  Is that supposed to prove the existence of heaven?  If so, how?  Please explain in 250 polite words, or less. 

Envy

Time to again laugh at the right wing's worthless comments about OWS.  CNN set National Review's chump of the month against Matt Taibbi.  Shallow, unsubstantiated opinion against facts and research.

NR-Boy accuses the marchers of deadly sinfulness: they are motivated by envy.  The 99% want the 1%'s riches.  Outrage over illegal Wall Street deals does not resonate with the Boy; nor does money's de facto and de jure corruption of American politics.  Envy -- nasty green envy -- is the protesters' driving force.  He knows what OWS really wants because...  OK, he just knows. 

Imagine a group of people protesting because they want to rid their neighborhood of drug dealers.  The citizens are outraged.  Drug deals take place in the open.  Cops are paid off.  Politicians blame the protesters for not just moving away.  The dealers also shake down local businesses by demanding protection money.  Mom and Pop groceries go bust as long-time customers are frightened off.   And, on TV, the National Review's chump of the month sneers:  protesters, he says, envy the drug dealers' money.  Crime is secondary.  The rabble wants the fancy cars and fine clothes.  The Boy just knows it. 

Remembrances of things past

In space-time it is 2 miles and 40 years from Occupy Wall Street and I am a junior in high school and Nixon has invaded Cambodia and college kids are dead in Ohio and Mississippi and there is a big protest in Union Square and the crowd near me is shaped by cyclone fencing and vertical 4 x 8 sheets of plywood because the streets are torn up for a big subway renovation and a man who looks my father's age but is in blue jeans and a work shirt steps onto the podium as he is introduced.  Joseph Heller.  I need to tell my friends that Heller is the author of "Catch-22," even though most of them claim to have read the novel.  Heller mostly says expected things about Vietnam and Nixon.  None of it survives in my memory until he refers to South Vietnam's leaders as, "Those bastards, Thieu and Ky."  The word was a surprise.  "Bastards" was, in 1970, hard unexpected language to utter in prepared public speech by a middle-aged man of letters no matter his attire nor the content of his great novel.

Then, the follow-up that anchors the strong memory bridge across these 40 years where the crowd images and tone of voice and Heller's head turning toward his right are forever alive, "I call them bastards," he added, "Not because I hate them, but because they are illegitimate." 


I am not donating money for pizza today.  Instead, this is my gift to the brave ones in lower Manhattan.  Think Martin Luther King, jr.  Think Gandhi.  Non-violence is the only effective path to change.  But, you can still call the opposition, "Bastards."  Not out of hate, but because they are illegitimate.

Mississippi Squirming

Mississippi is the 49th or 50th state in damn near every quality of life statistic.  Now, a band of freaks -- long on religion and short on common sense -- wants to create one more datum anchoring the Magnolia state to the national cellar.  They are campaigning to amend the state constitution:

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

Don't these people know anything about female icky bits?  At least 50% of fertilized human eggs fail to implant in the uterus.  Those eggs have, typically, divided several times to form a hollow ball of about 150 cells called a blastocyst that is between 0.1 and 0.2 mm in diameter.  Or, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

Obvious segue:  all of those loser, non-implanted blastocysts become part of the woman's menstrual flow.  If Mississippi's nutcases get their amendment, the outflowing blastocysts are legally stillborn babies.  Deaths must be recorded, micro-corpses buried or cremated, and death certificates issued.  It gets ickier.  Lots ickier.  Every tampon and sanitary napkin used by every fertile, sexually active woman in Mississippi will need to be examined for dead blastocysts.  After all, you can't allow women to toss 'persons' in the trash or flush them down the toilet.  The old needle-in-a-haystack metaphor will be replaced by something like finding-a-period-in-a-period. 

Mississippi morons may say they can implement personhoodness without, "requir[ing] any additional revenue for implementation."   Right.  Funding the Mississippi Tampon Police (MISSTAMPOL) and the testing laboratories is gonna cost a bundle.  Maybe the new agency will be paid by a tax on feminine hygiene products which will, in turn, create a black market as entrepreneurs truck in cheaper products from neighboring states.  More work for law enforcement in a state that can barely afford its public servants.

Can these zealots think at all? 

Never happy

Nothing makes me happy.  Last week I complained because mainstream news outlets were not covering the Wall Street protests.  Yahoo blocked email messages about the event.  Searching "Wall Street protest" on the New York Times web site turns up four entries in the newspaper's City Room blog.  Rupert Murdoch's NY Post dismissed the first day of the rally as a "fizzle," then followed up with a small photo gallery.

Today, I'm annoyed because the NY Times is finally covering the protest.   The article emphasizes the protester's lack of knowledge about the system they oppose.  The demonstrators are better at street theater than history or economics.  And, that's why I'm pissed off.  The article is, I suspect, correct.  I was hoping for Abbie Hoffman or Tom Hadyn; lower Manhattan, instead, got Wavy Gravy.

Too bad that Ms. Ballafante didn't make the obvious connection:  the protesters despite their shortcomings all sound like fucking geniuses compared with the participants in last week's Republican presidential debate.