That is a damn good question and one I find more and more difficult to answer optimistically.  I think there is a very good chance we are marching towards extinction.

There.  I said it out loud (or, in typeface).  Humanity is driving itself to extinction.  And it’s not just Tony Hayward or Dick Cheney or any of the other evil plutocrats people like me get our jollies demonizing.  The vegans, the environmentalists and the Buddhist monks will be going down along with the rest of the species.  To that I say, maybe it’s for the best.

Which isn’t to say I LIKE the idea of being fried by sun/drowned by the Charles/shot when the rampant looting for potable water begins.  Trust me — I enjoy this whole “being alive” thing as much as the next Joe/Josephine.  My brother and sister-in-law also just welcomed a daughter into the world and above all else I wish my new niece a long, happy and fulfilling life.  I just can’t help but wonder; if one segment of a species sees absolutely nothing wrong with poisoning our waters, clear-cutting our forests and belching toxins into the air we breathe and the other segment was complicit in allowing them to call all the shots and/or is now incapable of stopping it, isn’t it possible that this species is simply unfit for survival on this planet?

Ever since the agricultural revolution humanity has worked longer for ever diminishing returns, eaten more and more poorly, and managed to create a perfectly stratified society [Diamond, May 1987, "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race"].  We pollute, we run out of room to pollute, we conquer industrialize other nations so we can pollute over there, and the cycle begins again.  Bafflingly, despite our species’ capacity to learn, induce and deduce, we continue the same course of action.  We don’t alter our activity.  We deny and rationalize away the information that’s staring us in the face.  We concoct any sort of explanation we can think of, from sunspots to oil-eating microbes, in order to justify continuing our war on Earth.

The ones of us who don’t are too powerless, or too weak, or too busy, or too “reasonable” to stop it.  Or we simply don’t know how.

I sure as hell don’t.

If that is indeed the case why should we expect to have any preeminence over any other species on earth?  If we are indeed becoming unsuitable for our environment, maybe it’s our time.  Maybe we are no longer “fit,” from an evolutionary standpoint.

Maybe we just don’t have what it takes.

I want to believe we have a chance.  I really do.  I want to believe we’re better than our actions over the past thousand years or so (after all, a thousand years is not all that long in the history of homo sapiens).  But never have the actions of such a small number had such a catastrophic effect.  If there is a god I am positive that right now she or he is screaming “stop screwing it all up” over and over again. 

I’m not too afraid of sounding like a thundering loony right now, because the looniness is pretty self evident, at least to me.  In the past year we have had blankets of snow in the south and a hurricaine in the northeast.  We have had oil spills from Louisiana to Brazil to Siberia.  I am afraid of the world my nieces and nephews will be growing up in and regret my part in creating it.

For all I know there might be a god screaming “stop screwing it up” at the top of her or his heavenly lungs.  One thing I do now is that, at some point the earth will more than likely be flatly stating “you screwed it up.  Now the rent is due.”

Moreover, I had the luxury of being born and coming of age in the latter decades of the 20th century while the former chair of the RNC was born in a rather different time.  All that aside the act of coming out, even in these heady days of increased LGBT acceptance, is a genuine act of personal moral courage.  Even though it’s been over ten years since I’ve come out I still have a strong sense memory of what it’s like to hide a vital piece of myself and feel isolated and alone.

The difference is that when I was wrestling with my sexuality I was not heading the most socially conservative presidential reelection campaign in modern political history.  Ergo I did not have the ability to exorcise my demons at the expense of LGBT Americans.  Also ergo I do not have the financial wherewithal to buy a multi-million dollar Chelsea condo earned in part due to said exorcism of demons, but I digress.

Therefore I may forgive him, but I am certainly not forgetting until he has atoned the hell out of his prior actions.  One does not get to simply dismiss the successful assist of one of the most hateful and inept presidents of these United States as part of a “personal journey.”  Particularly when a significant portion of that assist involved the erosion of the right of LGBT Americans to be, in the words of Keith Olbermann, “a little less lonely.”

So, for now, I’m giving Mehlman the benefit of the doubt that he knows all this already and has to earn his soul back.  Get atoning, Kenny-boy.  You can start by publicly outing . . . well, I’m not going to name names so let’s call them Shmindsey Shram and Shmitch Shmconnell.  You can then follow by personally apologizing for the passage of like eight million anti-marriage equality amendments during the 2004 election season, as well as the “eep!  Gays!” narrative of the Bush campaign.  From there why don’t you perhaps propose and then dedicate a memorial to all of the LGBT teens who committed suicide due to the climate of hate and intolerance you in large part helped create?  From there you can let Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank punch you in the groin.  On CSPAN.

Finally, in conclusion, you know how you said that there’s room in the GOP tent for LGBT Americans?  You explained that LGBT people, being people, can have differing opinions and value-sets.  This is true.  This is also an explanation for why I am a very, very liberal and progressive Democrat.  Unlike you, it is not in my best interest for the wealthy to have tax-breaks.  Unlike you, it is in my best interest to have widely available and affordable health care.  Unlike you, I do not believe this is the result of laziness on my part since I average five hours of sleep a night and work my ass off from sunup to sundown.

“Differing opinions and value-sets” also explains my reaction to your statement that you couldn’t understand why LGBT Americans wouldn’t support our efforts in the Middle-east due to the very homophobic regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.  My response?  The means our efforts are presently taking aren’t working. If anything, they’ve created an even greater cluster-f**k than before.  Maybe, just maybe, pausing to reassess and conduct a cost-benefit analysis might . . . oh I dunno . . . help? Besides, there’s something to be said for removing the plank from your own eye before seeing to the cinder in your neighbor’s.

So.  To conclude?  Get atoning.  Call me when DOMA’s repealed.

Did you also hear that, evidently, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich and basically every single news outlet owned by Newscorp (which basically means all of them) has an opinion about it?  That opinion, by the way, basically boils down to “obviously I can’t actually do anything about it because the congregation has every right to build the community center where Muslims will go swimming and maybe play racquetball if they just remember not to leave their equipment in the damn trunk this time Evil Victory Mosque of Doommy Terror.  Should they though?  Really?  Because it’s a slap in the face to the victims of 9/11 to allow what basically amounts to an Islamic YMCA where people can learn how to ballroom dance and then maybe pray toward Mecca afterward terrorists to have a nonstop 9/11 rave.”

I’m going to get what should be patently obvious out of the way first.  Assuming there is some remote chance that Palin, Gingrich, et al are actually being sincere, this is plain wrong.  If our society were to universally finger-point evangelical Christians after an abortion doctor were gunned down can you imagine the outcry, indignation and umbrage from the same people condemning Park51?  Why are non-Muslims evidently exempt from being equated with their most extreme members, not to mention the onus of constantly proving that they are discrete entities?

I get that out of the way because I highly doubt Palin, Gingrich, Beck et al sincerely believe what they say.  In fact, I am beginning to doubt they’re even capable of sincerity.  I believe they merely intend to activate the fight-or-flight instinct/fear-of-the-other aversion in the frightened and the lonely.  So let’s move on to what I really have to say.

How dare you.  How dare you insert yourself into what amounts to a zoning issue in a state you don’t have anything to do with.  If memory serves, Ms. Palin, you don’t even like New York.  You and your ilk have made it abundantly clear that it is part of a swath of land that has nothing whatsoever to do with “real America.”  New York, that bastion of non-WASPitude and gayness, only becomes relevant and worthy when it gets attacked.  Even in the wake of 9/11 it became “Jew York” again when — September 30th, tops?

So just shut up.  Stop this craven and hateful posturing.  You are poisoning America.  You are toxins.

Not least of all, you are pissing on the graves of Muslim Americans who died on 9/11.  These people were just as American as anyone in the “pro-America parts of this great nation.”  They were certainly more American than you — I don’t seem to recall them using fear and divisiveness for political gain.

So just shut up.  Shut up until you stop being useless political has-beens.  Shut up until you actually do something instead of selling yourselves, your integrity and your souls.  Shut up until you deal in something more than bigotry and anti-intellectualism.

Speaking of anti-intellectualism, you have the unmitigated gall to smear an entire region of the USA as anti-American and its denizens as “elitists?”  A region that, on the whole, puts in more than it takes out in terms of federal aid?  Unlike a certain state from which one can evidently stare “into the eyes of Putin?”

On second thought, there’s something else you can do instead of — or in addition to — shutting up.  You see yourself as “real Americans?”  You don’t want to have to deal with non-Christians or non-white people?  You don’t want LGBT rights “rammed down your throats” (Freudian much?)  You want to talk a big game about seceding?

Then be my guest.  Try and secede.

See how long you last without federal subsidies courtesy of the un-American commie fag taxpayers in “fake America.”  See how long it takes before your newly autonomous confederation devolves into a collection of banana republic city-states.  See how long until your urban centers and university towns become East Berlins, Pragues and Krakows breeding Bible Belt Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels.

Then again, you happily turned around and lapped up the stimulus like a kitten with a saucer of warm milk.  So you obviously know how long you’d last on your own before the French (or at least the October) Revolution came on down to Georgia as people woke up to your lies, lies and more lies.

Hey — you dismiss my region as un-American and treacherous, I dismiss yours as an economic remora.  Quid pro quo.  But I get off topic.

Where was I?  Oh yes . . . the non-mosque.  To conclude, just shut up about the damn Cordoba center.  Plenty of New Yorkers who are in a much better position to weigh in seem to feel the same way.  The freaking mayor has said, twice, that it should be a non-issue.  Manhattan’s borough president certainly doesn’t think you’re helping.

The bottom line, however, isn’t public opinion or who agrees or doesn’t agree with a “cackle” of childish bullies and sore losers.  In the end it’s about simple religious freedom and the wonderful Orwellian “some animals are more equal than others” pirouette you are conducting over the rights of Muslims (and non-Muslims) to work out a few rooms away from a prayer room.  How can you not choke on your own hypocrisy?  How does your brain not explode from the titanic cognitive dissonance?  How do you look at yourself in the mirror without projectile vomiting?

Have I mentioned that I want you to shut up?

http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamas-middle-east-peace-plan.html

Unfortunately, this can go one of four ways:

1. Both sides can accept losses. Palestinians accept alternatives to the right of return, the acceptance of some settlements which, if they’re the ones I think are considered “large settlements”, are contigious to the Israeli border and will be annexed. Loss of air control (although I can see that being a negotiated point after a 2011 Palestinain state is developed). Israel has to accept that sections of East Jerusalem will not be under their control, offer amnesty to Palestinians and accept international forces.
2. Both sides hate the plan, rejecting it for some the above reasons.
3. Israel rejects the plan. This is hard for me to fathom, but I can understand Eastern Jerusalem and loss of absolute sovereignity to international forces can be seen as a sticking point.  This seems like madness to me, but Israel has been moving progressively further to the right, and has shown it’s willing to buck international opinion, which would condemn Israel for rejecting the plan.
4. Palestinians reject the plan. That breaks down further into two distinct possibilities.

•  Palestinian Authorities reject the plan.  This is possible but, like Israel, is unlikely.  More so in fact, since Palestinians can recognize they’re in a pretty crappy negotiating position.  Signing in early gives them a good negotiating position.
• Palestinians groups (Hamas, Al Aqsa Brigade) reject the plan.  This unfortunately is the most likely scenario.  This could be nasty, depending on how much support and coordination exist beween Israel, Palestinian forces and international forces.  Depsite that, it wouldn’t be a game breaker,a dn in some ways would be the closest to the example of Northern Ireland, which definitively rejected the return to violence, despite Republican attempts to re-engage.

Regardless, this administration hasn’t shied away from taking on large tasks.  The stimulus, health-care and now a definitive peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  They’ve weathered the first well, let’s wish them the same success on the next two.

Like pretty much every other member of the Kennedy clan, Teddy was a complicated individual.  For every spearheading of civil rights legislation and education reform there was an accidental drowning and hitting of the bottle.  For every blatant act of political nepotism emblematic of one of the Northeast’s preeminent dynasties, there was an unspeakably tragic event — nearly dying in a plane crash, having one of his brothers die in a plane crash, having both of his other brothers get shot in the head, etc, and etc.  His career in and of itself was complicated; he went from being a political runt (the “Forrest Gump” of the clan, in the words of scrahan) to “a master politician who altered the shape of American life more completely than any other member of his storied political family.”  He also, from the ashes of Chappaquiddick, delivered one of the most stirring orations in American political history, thereby prompting an amazing comeback.

For a Bay Stater, the death of the last male Kennedy is even more complicated.  It’s probably not all that much of an exaggeration to say that the Kennedys are to Massachusetts as the Bushes are to Texas.  Whether you love them or loathe them, their shadow hangs over you.  They’re either beyond reproach, or omnipotent, or a little from columns A and B.  Since moving to MA I have heard that Jack Kennedy never slept with Marilyn Monroe, or he did but only because she held a gun to his head and demanded he whip it out, or that Jack and Bobby had her killed, all with more or less equal levels of conviction.  While these legends display varying degrees of affection, they all speak to the sway and influence this family is seen as having — either as benevolent sovereigns or malevolent despots.

I wonder where the family goes from here.  Has the torch been passed beyond them?  Is this the Kennedy women’s hour?  What implications does this have for the obvious question of Kennedy’s lifelong health-care crusade (by now, virtually anything I could say has already been said)?  Perhaps I should just bring things back to the man in question.  Senator, for all your obvious flaws — and they were legion — you clearly did everything in your power to atone; definitely meant well; and made the absolute most of your privilege, intelligence, and talent.  You both acted and were treated horribly unfairly.  In every sense of the word (positive and negative) your cliched nickname, the “lion of the senate,” was justly earned.  It has been an honor being your constituent, however briefly.

Pay no attention at all to race and class based buzzwords like “personal responsibility” or “this is not the America I’m used to.”  Ignore the swastikas being drawn on a congressman’s officeplate.  Bigotry and prejudice has nothing whatsoever to do with the teabagging astroturf protests.

What’s that?  You swear that protestor just defaced a picture of Rosa Parks?  While people cheered?  No!  That was . . . um . . . an allegorical picture of socialism!  Which looks a lot like Rosa Parks!  Who wants to euthanize grandma!  Yeah, that’s it.  Not an act of racism at all.

The soundbytes promptly began being generated.

Judges must be “guided and controlled not by subjective empathy . . . but by objective law . . . .” claimed Orrin Hatch of Utah.  John Kerry of Massachusetts countered with “I believe she is someone with whom our rights and freedoms are safe.”  Minority leader Mitch McConnell resurrected Obama’s “empathy” standard yet again when he asserted that non-”preferred groups” who stood before the New York judge ” . . . often found that they ended up on the short end of the empathy standard.”  The Turbin award for quotable grit and moxie definitely goes to Patrick Leahy of Vermont, however: ”If President Obama had nominated Moses the Lawgiver, they would have voted no.”  Score one for Yankee tartness.

It most definitely goes without saying that this is an historic conformation of an eminently qualified jurist.  Third woman; first latina; and unreproachable aptitude, intelligence and jurisprudence.  Still and all, underneath all the excitement and “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” drama, was this perhaps the slightest bit chimeric?

Sotomayor replaces the retiring David Souter, a reliable voter with SCOTUS’ “liberal bloc,” so she’s not very likely to affect court’s makeup overmuch.  Furthermore, she might even be more conservative than he is in certain instances (e.g. law enforcement).  There is also the question of how likely she is to sway the high court’s more conservative members (particularly Kennedy, the current “swing voter”) in cases such as, say, the campaign finance one the Supremes have decided to re-hear. 

Sotomayor’s first case will likely involve whether Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, voilated McCain-Feingold by releasing an anti-Hillary movie on the eve of the 2008 primary season — as well as the more abstract-yet-salient issue of campaign finance law vs. “free speech.”  Does the newest justice bring expertise to this case?  Definitely.  She was a founding member of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, where she served from 1988 to 1992.  Is she likely to sway conservatives?  “I doubt it,” muses Rick Hasen of Loyola Law School in LA.

Time will tell.  One must not forget, however, the junior justice’s most important, exacting, some-might-say Herculean duty.

Also, she’s just so damn excited to be back.

SPRING BREEEEEEAAAKKK!!!!

All kidding aside, this is a trip with many an implication at an inordinately strategic time.  The fact that she is taking this trip so early, not to mention right on the heels of Obama’s visit to Ghana, underscores the priority the administration is placing on Africa (the State Department, in the words of the BBC, is ”keen” to point out the above fact that it’s the earliest trip undertaken by a sitting Secretary).  It’s also a good way to demonstrate that the administration will not be coasting on Obama’s 87% approval rating in Sub-Saharan Africa).

Furthermore, the issues taken up are incredibly pressing from the standpoint of international development.  In Kenya she’ll be focusing on the post-election, as well as meeting with Somali president Sharif Sheikh Amad.  In South Africa she’ll seek to normalize relations by appealing to President Jacob Zuma.  In Congo she will urge the government to put a higher premium on prosecuting sex and gender-based voilence.  Another conflict zone will be Nigeria, where at least 700 people have been killed by Islamic militants.  Some visits of note deserving of special mention are Liberia, the lone African nation presided over by a female president (because, I guess, that’s what presidents do) as well as the Cape Verde islands, a classy move highlighting a nation devoid of natural resources but an exemplar of good governance.  Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies claims that this trip is not a “cakewalk.” 

She will also be visiting Angola, the primary energy producer in Sub-Saharan Africa (and a major exporter of oil to the US).  Jennifer Cooke of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that the Angolan government, which has significant investments from China, is likely looking to diversify its interests.  Me, I have mixed feelings about this.  Chinese neocolonialism has, at best, been a mixed bag for the Angolans.  On the one hand, China seems to be taking a more “pragmatic” view of suzereinity than the Western World (as said by a commentator to the BBC).  On the other hand, the gap between the nations richest and absolute poorest is higher than its ever been.  I’ll be interested to see whether or not Clinton addresses that.

The other quibble I have is that the nation of Burkina-Faso is not on the secretary’s agenda.  Burkina-Faso, despite having the lowest literacy rate in the world, has become one of the most peaceful nations on the continent.  It also has virtually no national or political history of corruption on either the national or local level, and is — on the whole — a successful socialist state.  The name itself means “the Land of Upright Men.”  It also has the coolest capital city name on Earth.

As for the criticism leveled at her?  Commentators on right-wing websites rebuke her for kow-towing to the “terrorist” Nelson Mandela while mourning the loss of “Suid Afrika” (apartheid aside, I hope?) among other viciously racist and homophobic tripe.  On the cite linked to, note the stark absence of the Johnson-Sirleaf visit.  

Then again, I did post that ’97 photo of her.  I’m probably no better.

So.  What is going on here?  Is McCain standing on principle, which he was occasionally known to do prior to turning into a parody of a crazy old man before our very eyes?

Is he making a stab at relevance by ensuring he’ll be able to say “I told you so” when Sotomayor and Ginsburg personally bludgeon Roberts and ScaThomas to death with their gavels, declare the USA the People’s Republic of Feminazia, and mandate 72nd term abortions for all as well as perpetual stimulus packages every time a dollar vanishes from petty cash somewhere?

Is he just being a vindictive sore loser?  Or is he just falling in line with many of his fellow Republicans, including other Republican Senators from states with high Latino populations (including Cornyn, Hutchinson, Coburn and Hatch)?

Thoughts?

Deep Throat: No, heh, but it’s touching. Forget the myths the media’s created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
Bob Woodward: Hunt’s come in from the cold. Supposedly he’s got a lawyer with $25,000 in a brown paper bag.
Deep Throat: Follow the money.
Bob Woodward: What do you mean? Where?
Deep Throat: Oh, I can’t tell you that.

Woodward must of been thinking, “How’d you like a brown paper bag over your head Mr. Almighty Deep Throat?”

Though Woodward eventually traced all those brown paper bags back to Tricky Dick, this clip shows his initial, cumbersome, but unbelievably lucky, attempts to piece together the tangled web that was CREEP (the Committee to Re-elect the President).

Unfortunately, the “brown paper bag”-esque relationships that these days come in the form of speaking fees, PAC contributions, and close lobbyist ties, can still be a tough puzzle to snap together. Yes, the immediate post-Watergate period led to the creation of the FEC and there now exists a plethora of disclosure documents that detail these relationships Many of these documents have been aggregated and re-aggregated on mirror sites for years.

But let’s face it, those sites are limited in their scope. Unattractive site themes and archaic site architectures combine with links to unreadable .pdf documents to recreate a quasi “bookshelf crushing the body”-like experience.  Now comes along a site that makes tracking public officials and the ties that bind them more pretty and fun.

Recently, I started contributing to a site (managed by a friend of mine) called LittleSis. It’s a project of the Public Accountability Initiative and the Sunlight Foundation (the folks who recently put together a detailed – and somewhat depressing – map of the ties that Sen. Finance Chairman Max Baucus has to the DC health care lobbyist cabal). LittleSis tracks all these brown paper bag  connections by aggregating the personal, business, and educational relationships of well-known individuals and organizations. It really is an “involuntary Facebook” as stated on its homepage, but to a nerd like me finding out Hillary took $10K from the Goldman Sachs PAC and then posting it for the world is a tad more fun than the more hedonistic Facebook posts we all have come to know all too well.

You don’t want to get too obscure though – for instance I own Cisco Systems stock (yes, really), the CEO of Cisco is John Chambers, and he gave a ton of money (bag-free) to John McCain, that crazy Alaskan moose huntress (What was her name again? Tina something), et al. last year. Though this is technically a relationship of a mere three degrees, would I really be invited to some Cisco event to scarf down caviar and to casually salivate over the coming GOP resurgence being trumped at like de Gaulle’s triumphant return to Paris? No, never, no way, yuck. I’d probably be requiring my own brown paper bag for alternative uses.

Enjoy LittleSis and good luck with finding your very own Deep Throat….