Less cowardly, more awesome.

I know. I voted for the guy. I got excited. Now: bleh.

I’ll say this: I wish our President was more like Brock Sampson than the Cowardly Lion these days.

Seriously.

(In very deep voice) “No, BONER, I’ll give my speech whenever the fuck I want to.  And now it’s OUR turn not to budge.  Also, I just made it with your (insert female relation here). She told me about all that cryin’ you do and that thing with the electric trains.  You’re a sick dick, bub.”

I think I piss myself more than most people who can grow a beard this fully and quickly.  And I feel like even I have more guts than our President — at least this week.  I would have hoped that Barry would have learned from John Kerry that being smart isn’t good enough.

McCain and Obama, boths fans of Hemingway?


How did I miss this from 2008?

Barack Obama and John McCain may differ on everything from U.S. policy in Iraq to how many town hall debates they should schedule but — who would have thought? — they share reading tastes.

The novel For Whom the Bells Toll [sic] by Ernest Hemingway is a shared favorite for both Barack Obama and John McCain McCain long has pinpointed Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” [sic] as his favorite book (for more on the presumptive Republican nominee’s favorite things, see this profile).

Obama, in a just-published interview with Rolling Stone co-founder and publisher Jann Wenner, names “For Whom the Bell Tolls” [sic] as one of the three books that have inspired him.

(Read more.)

I  know that Comrade Castro also has a photo of Papa hanging in his office.  I’m not taking a side on this; I just think it’s funny that so many people claim kinship with Papa, or, at least, admiration.

Spill, Baby, Spill!


Riding the bus the other morning, I joked that Michael Moore is probably working on one of his signature documentaries about BP’s infuckingsane oil spill, our country’s dependence on oil and how certain political factions and certain oil companies (perhaps the industry itself) seem to be so close as to require lube and common-law legal sanction (what?).  I suggested that he must be calling it Spill, Baby, Spill! after the mindless and heartless chant among, well, morons two years ago.

I don’t recall what I’d consider sufficient fanfare when BP closed it’s alternative energy HQ last year, proving that anything “beyond petroleum” must mean either money or, how I’d like to refer to them, as BEYOND THE PIPELINE (and forgive me if greater minds have already made this pun).  By insufficient fanfare, I mean that even people I know without their heads completely up their collective butt[s] (which is to say only half, which is the best that most of us achieve) didn’t know about it.

Anyway, I’m hoping that Michael Moore checks WordPress tags because, if he’s not going to make a film with this title, he should.  Please do.  I’m interested in what choice of music we could look forward to and hearing certain political factions blubber when they have to answer questions they’re not prepared for, when they’re not chanting like Nazi’s or war protesters who don’t really believe what they’re saying.

I know I’m not the only one who’s disappointed in what appears to be a lack of action from President Obama.  What more can he do?  Well, I want to see a video going around YouTube featuring text that runs something like this.

Now I’m calling on all Americans to not only boycott BP [pause] but also to try and [pause] live a little differently [pause] because this oil spill is the fault of BP, yes [pause] we know that.  We know that this company is run by greedy white men who are backed by greedy white politicians.  [pause]  But do you know who really caused this oil spill, America?

[really big pause]

You did.

[big pause]

You brought this on us, you selfish, lazy motherfuckers.  [pause]  Your insistence on driving yourselves all over the place in your big fucking cars and trucks and SUVs.  [pause]  You short-sighted pieces of shit who complain that you “need” your fucking cars instead of using your imaginations and arranging your life, your location, your activities a little differently.  [pause]  Because when you say that you “need” your cars, you’re saying that you are unwilling to change anything about your life but instead insist that the oil industry, the auto industry, the basics of chemistry and physics through which you are killing our motherfucking planet –  [pause]  You’re insisting that these things all change so that you don’t have to.  [pause]  That, or you’re so fucking stupid and sheepish that you’re willing to believe that climate change is not real, that our fat fucking lazy stupid asses aren’t killing the planet on which we live.  [pause]  In which case, well, goddam.  What good are ya?  Reason won’t get at ya.

[pause]

Needing cheap oil is needing something we can’t always have.  Needing your car to live is not something you can always do.

[pause]

And the rest of you non-car-owning, self-righteous fucking elitists (yes, Johnny, I’m talking to you in Baltimore), think of all the plastic you use, all the gas it takes to get your hemp wallet to you in the UPS truck.  [pause]  You couldn’t live the way you live without cars, either, you goddam hippies.

[big pause]

So, my fellow Americans.  [pause]  Blame yourselves for this bullshit.  But still [pause], don’t fucking buy gas from BP with which to,  you know [pause], drive your fat asses around.

[big pause]

Thank you, and goodnight.

I want to hear nothing but family values types shouting for his impeachment for his angry and violent speech at people who might actually deserve pipes pumping oil into various of their orifices but who, in the land of the free, only get yelled at a lot by the President, himself a mighty speech-maker.  Then I will be happy.

Because I am living proof that, if you can’t actually do anything (or are unwilling to), you can just rant and cuss.  And you will feel better.

Food for thought.

Is the current health bill really that revolutionary?

Human rights standards do not tolerate the inequities inevitably linked to a reliance on market competition to meet human needs. Yet this legislation also contains some important improvements to health care access for poor people.

More.

Wanna stop killing the planet from eating too much manufactured meat?

In recent years vegetarians and vegans have upped their attack on the consumption of animal flesh, pointing out not only that it’s disgusting (read Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book) but also a major cause of climate change. The numbers range from 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to—in one recent study that was quickly discredited—51 percent. Whatever the exact figure, suffice it to say it’s high: there’s the carbon that comes from cutting down the forest to start the farm, and from the fertilizer and diesel fuel it takes to grow the corn, there’s the truck exhaust from shipping cows hither and yon, and most of all the methane that emanates from the cows themselves (95 percent of it from the front end, not the hind, and these millions of feedlot cows would prefer if you used the word eructate in place of belch).

More.

And, Mr. Obama decides that the Chesapeake Bay would be better with oil in it — because money is better than not destroying the planet — even to Mr. O.

Maryland’s senators and environmental activists are vowing to oppose President Barack Obama’s move to expand oil and gas exploration off the state’s Atlantic coast, warning that it could hurt tourism in Ocean City, threaten fish and wildlife along relatively unspoiled Assateague Island and foul the Chesapeake Bay.

More.

What to do: Rally against rallies?

There are tea-parties wherein critics of the Democratic healthcare plan demonstrate, like liberals like to do — but also like liberals get upset over when anyone who is not a liberal does it.  (Wew!)  Then there are ill-informed rallies composed of people stepping like sheep because some pundit who fosters their fears told them a bunch of lies that these pundits are certainly not foolish enough to believe on their own (say what you want about Rush and Glenn; they’re not unintelligent men).

Now, as Harrison Price reports from the Washington Post, liberals are stepping down into the mire and using the same fear tactics, the same “with us or against us” tactics, the same logical fallacies employed by the Bush administration that run something like, “If you’re not with us, you think puppies are evil and should be fed to Nazis in the their soup!”

So, regardless on where you stand on healthcare reform, the situation is that the Right is holding rallies, and the Left wants to respond with rallies, all the while urging a civil conversation, or debate at best.

What do we do?

One could argue that our goal is healthcare reform, not to try to bridge the chasm between the parties.  That we should pull out all the stops like “they” do.  That, frankly, a lot of the people (certainly not all of them) at these rallies are acting on fear and anger and prejudice and a number of other factors that not reasoned thought.  That there’s no use in trying to talk to or reason with such people.  That we should harness their rage and turn it against our enemies.  That “they” started it.  That we can do a lot without stooping below “them”. (Not to mention some increasingly typical elitist liberal bullshit that makes me ashamed of my frequently Leftish leanings when I hear it.)

Would escalating the situation fix it?  Because, you know.  History shows us.  This.  When people are angry, if you make them more angry, the situation never gets worse, never explodes, always gets better.  Wait….

But would a rational conversation (insofar as anyone can have a rational conversation about healthcare anymore) work on anyone who is driven by fear and Limbaugh/Beck or by anger against the Left?  I mean, if you bracket moral/ethical concerns or even rhetorical devices like not stooping quite as lowly as your opponent does (yes, I think it can be a rhetorical device, and I’m guilty of using it), should the Left be more concerned with what works and what gets their position into minds and hearts and less about taking whatever moral highground they’re supposed to occupy if they’re civil?  I’ve chided Mr. Obama in private for being so danged concerned with not making enemies and getting everyone to agree that nothing is happening after eight months in office.  Is being civil worth it? When yelling and manipulation get the job done, should the Left do as the Right has occasionally done (and as the Left has occasionally done, too; make no mistake) and just go all out?

Or is being civil and rational and trying to get “both sides” to work together and probably not really getting anything done right away the way to go?  Sure, we might not pass any healthcare reform this year.  But if we stay civil, might we evolve a little and work together more and start getting at the fundamental problems with our government?  Besides, nothing’s exactly getting done in the currect agitated state of affairs, is it?

Here’s a question for the folks who are frequently on the same side as I am: Do ya’ll really think that fostering anger and fear just because the Right is doing it is going to fix the situation and not just make it a million times worse?

Obama sure is evil for talking to kids.

Geezleweez, President Obama sure is evil. Talking to kids. Man, that’s some nerve. He didn’t read them a story through a national disaster, but Okay, I guess talking to them with your own words is a big deal. Huh. Clearly, urging students to take responsibility for their futures is pinko rhetoric and a false diagnosis of how education works. If we taught Creationism and had good, religiously devout teachers in every public school, kids would learn without any effort, right? I think this says it best and without overly politicizing it:

Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt told KDKA Radio: “If the president wants to speak to the students of America and talk about the importance of academic achievement and working hard, that is a wonderful thing and ought not to be the subject of debate.” (Source.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not worshiping the guy. I wish he had gotten off his ass to so something in the gay rights arena by now (or a few months ago, really), and I’m saddened by the lack of cojones in “the party” on healthcare reform — which is probably more aptly called revision than reform with the way things are going.

Why the hell is the White House not responding more to this minority of crazy far-righties? Are we supposed to be above criticizing other people’s criticism (if you want to call these attacks criticism)? Screw the moral high road. We’re not using guns and bombs but words and legislation. Take the gloves off, man! Mr. Obama is intellectually and rhetorically capable of smashing these goons. I can understand the desire for composure and not becoming the monsters you fight. I do. But where did all the brash liberals go? Have they been they busy helping with Michael Moore’s new film?  (Kidding, kidding; they’re around.)

Me, I’m not brash. And, depending who you talk to, too leftist to be liberal or too middle to be liberal. I do have a lot of anarchist and socialist leanings (no, they are not the same thing).

A Pro-Life protestor speaks.

I love all life.
I love it enough to define it.
I love it enough to portray grisly images of aborted fetuses and bloody baby dolls.
I love it enough to force it on people who might not be ready or capable of making it not just A life, but a GOOD life.
I love life enough to know what’s best for everyone.
A book told me so.
(Wait, no it didn’t.)

I also love life enough to spend my energy helping the poor and disadvantaged.
I spend my time and energy working on educational efforts to help eradicate unwanted pregnancies.
I help with adoption efforts.
I want all kids to live in loving environments, even with same-sex couples.
I do everything I can to prevent the situations in which abortion is a desirable option.
I think sexual education and birth-control can help.
Wait, no I don’t.
(I don’t do any of that.)

And if I did, I would certainly be the exception to the usual old biddy standing outside the hospital with a picture of death when I want you to love life.

I’d rather protest things which are legally sanctioned and none of my business and make people who share my point of view all look crazy, cold-hearted and backward than actually help anyone.

As someone who doesn’t go to, teach at, work at or give money to a Catholic university, I know what’s best for it.  God forbid people in the faith whose name means UNIVERSAL be tolerant of anything.

Saw Obama.

obama01091
I made it to see Obama Saturday. It was amazing.

We bundled up, mounted our bikes and met a co-worker and fellow Nation Service member and walked down. We waited in line for about an hour or an hour and a half and then made it to the metal detectors. Everything went very smoothly, save me having to get wand-ed, even after removing all my metal and AmeriCorps pins. We got some Donna’s hot chocolate and found good spots, maybe a third of the way from the front. Considering that we didn’t get to the event area until nearly noon, I thought that was pretty good. I was mildly afraid that we weren’t going to get in.

At any big public event, a lot of folks are rude and butt in front of one another and hold their cameras up in front of people’s faces, etc. I think this was less widespread that day, or, at least, people weren’t so militant about it. (One note though: owning an SLR does not make you a Photographer and does not mean you can be a jerk. The dudes next to me were screwing over the people behind them during the whole speech holding multiple large cameras over their heads, and all their photos were poorly composed and blurry from what I could see on their LCD. Wankers. All that gear, and you still can’t take good pictures.)

But. Yeah. OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There were people there from all over. I was afraid it would be the Roland Park crowd or just students, etc. But no. The mix of people was fantastic and, frankly, unusual for a sometimes-self-segregated Southern city like Baltimore. In itself, it was worth the cold and lack of coffee.

Anything would have been worth standing in a crowd of Baltimoreans and hearing Barack Obama stand up and shout, “Hello, Baltimore!” I get chills and tear-up a little thinking about it. I’m listening to the Inaugural events on NPR right now, and I’m still thinking about seeing Obama in my city this past weekend.

There were a lot of bikes around, but mine was in my office. I wished I’d brought it closer to brag about riding in the cold. But I think anyone who was outside deserved credit and could brag about the chill we all braved Saturday. But it was so worth it, I think it was more about the benefit and less about bravery.

I am wearing a blue and white flannel under a red sweater today. Rode in the snow to get to work. It’s a good day.

Photo Friday: Iconic.

Obama in Baltimore, Saturday!

obama0109
I am pissing myself with excitement over Obama stopping in Baltimore Saturday.  Transportation and anxiety are keeping me from the Inauguration, even though I wanted to cycle down  there badly.  I was beginning to feel badly about missing out.

But in Baltimore City?  I would not be able to live with myself if I missed it, pending a real and serious and dire emergency.  I am willing to walk if I have to.  I’ve walked downtown from North Baltimore before.  It’s a fun walk.  But I’ll likely ride my bike with Mrs. P to UB where my office is and leave my bike there and walk the rest of the way.  (I imagine bikes locked near the event or the train station will be frowned upon.)  But if UB is locked up because of its proximity to Penn Station, well, like I said.  I’ll walk.

I’m going to weep like a pinched baby Saturday, too.  I can’t help it.

My brother and a friend of mine are going nuts because they work in transportation and supply for the National Guard, who are all on call already this weekend for the Inauguration and then Saturday on top of it.  I don’t envy their stress, but I’m glad that very competent people are working to protect Obama and to protect all of us.  Okay, fear mongering over.

I’m not scared; I’m excited.

Hate crimes on the rise.

Since Obama was elected, stupid racist people are getting a little more…active.  Read more.  Schoolchildren shout “Assassinate Obama!”  Okay, so kids are being taught by someone to be so full of ignorant hate as to call for the murder of a President-elect.  If they still yell that after he’s in, should that be, something you get arrested for? I mean, you can’t go to jail and stay there for something you say.  I would never want that.  But is it to be construed as a threat worth of at least a look?

Maybe I sound like an advocate of the Patriot Act or something.  But come on.  Will we really tolerate kids yelling that? I may just be speaking out of an unspoken fear that one of these racist assholes will actually act on their hate.

If black kids in New Orleans in 2005 yelled “Assassinate Bush,” that would not have been tolerated, even if it wasn’t necessarily and entirely racially motivated.

If the kids are not being taught to be so hateful by someone else and are in fact that bad on their own, this is doubly true — we can’t tolerate this.  We can’t control someone’s heart and their hate, but we can discourage the expression of it.  Can’t we?  Should we?

What will activism mean now?


Now that we have a President that a lot of folks who are activism-oriented seem to like (at least from what I’ve read), what will activism mean?

I was at Red Emma’s Monday having lunch with a co-worker, and I wondered what things might start to look like among activists.  Will folks continue to rail and rally against The State because certainly beaurocracy will block a lot of Obama’s plans, or even because some folks really just want The State to go away on principle?  I found anarchism attractive while Bush was in office, especially the first time.  Most of the people in the country didn’t want him for a President, but there he was.  Obama has so many people inspired and seems so inspired himself that I have to wonder what we can get done in the next four or eight years without the help of The State?  I don’t really know enough about anarchism to be able to answer that.

Will activism mean working with the Obama administration, against other parts of The Machine in order to change things?  Will activism mean working with The Man?  Or is it a misunderstanding of activism to suggest that working with the government is unusual or somehow makes something not activism anymore?

Community organizing, national service and working with government groups to get things done are all activism, no?

In my [first?] year of national service, I find the election of Obama inspiring, in that maybe some of the hurdles that hinder the kind of work we do may shrink or disappear with the new administration, that we will have more help in fighting the good fight, in addition to less resistance.

Maybe what we think of as activism can instead become known merely as participation?  But that requires more than a new man in the White House.  If we can continue the act of getting off our collective asses the way some of us have started to, with the huge voter turn-out this year, might we just begin to participate in our own democracy again to such a common extent that the concept of activism becomes obsolete?

Obama is a muslim and not a citizen.

What?  You know how we keep hearing about these crazies who repeat what other crazies say and maybe actually believe this bullshit?  I mean, I keep thinking to myself, “Good thing I don’t live near these backward inbreeders.”  I never thought I’d ever meet someone like that.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know and care a great deal about several people who are Republicans, conservatives, libertarians (small L), etc.  It’s not like anyone could say I only surround myself with people who think like I think.  Not that anyone actually accuses me of that very often.

I was talking to a non-liberal today who says he disagrees with Obama’s policies.  Okay.  I mean, if you’re not going to vote for a man, that’s pretty much the best reason not to vote for him and to vote for someone else.  That’s something where, if you’re in the mood and have the time, you can talk, discuss, maybe both come away a little better off.

But I was talking to another guy tonight who commented that we’d have the most “Islamic” country in the world if Obama gets elected.  Okay, more “Islamic” than actual Islamic countries I guess?  I calmly informed him that Obama is not, in fact, Muslim, ignoring the fact that it wouldn’t matter to me either way.  Then he went on to inform me that Obama is not a US citizen, that he made it to the United States Senate without ever having to prove this to anyone, all the way up to top Presidential candidate.  I mean, I guess there’s some pro-Muslim conspiracy at work here, to get this to happen.

I let him keep ranting.  He was getting upset.

Then he said that Obama was “only” leading by two points in the poll this morning.  I corrected him that it was in the double digits last time I checked, that, in fact, Obama was really winning.  “But see who bothers to vote,” I offered, in the way of consolation.

He got even more upset.  Started saying that you can’t trust Obama, that the answers are all out there.  On the internet, where, you know, all the reliable information is.  “You should look this up on the internet, boy.”

Ouch.  Yes.  I’m 29, married, bearded and all.  I don’t like to throw my education around, but I’m almost a frikkin doctor.

“Boy.”  Ouch again.

Well, he got himself so upset that he didn’t do something he said he’d do before he left, and I wasn’t shy about telling why.

He also asked me, two weeks ago, if a cop in a certain undesirable situation was black.  “No, actually he was white.  They all were,” was what I was only too glad to tell him.

You can’t argue with people like that.  Yes, I’m told, he’s from a different generation.  So what?  There weren’t any non-racist white people in Southern states until the last few decades?  That can explain a lot of things pretty well to me.  But not repeating the bullshit this guy repeated.  And, for the record, my uncle who passed away last month was completely different that he saw through bullshit and didn’t propound racist attitudes.  And he was the same age and fought in the same war.

I’m tired of all the reasons other people like to offer for why people that they like say fucked up things.  “He’s not like that.”  “She’s a Christian.”  “It’s her background.”  “He doesn’t have the education you have.”  Cuz, you know, education: that‘s the way to erase racism and bullshit spreading.

And why, FUCK ME, why would you, knowing that my wife is black, say these kinds of fucking things to me?  I’m serious.  Why?

That one.

I was going to make a “that one” joke, but I’ve heard quite a few good ones that were much better than what I had in mind. And I don’t know if I want to make light of the disregard displayed (all that dis-ing!) publicly toward one Presidential candidate from another. I’m not naive enough to believe that Obama likes McCain any more than John likes Barack. But he does a better job of hiding it, at least in public when the man’s standing/sitting right there. And people call him elitist!  Standing while Obama was talking was minorly disrespectful.  But on the other hand, I don’t  know.  I’m not making fun of him, but that stool looked uncomfortable for Senator McCain to maintain a posture in.  I don’t think I would have been comfortable in that chair, having short legs also.  Maybe his legs hurt, and he needed to stand a bit.  Like I said, I don’t know.  But pacing while Obama was talking at the end –  I mean, geez.  Even “elitists” like Obama don’t do that.  Not so openly.  That kind of “I’m right, and you just don’t understand” posturing stands in contrast to the “maverick” reaching across the aisle they both brag a lot about.

Sarah Palin’s Achilles Heel.

I guess she doesn’t have one? Among the many questions she dodged last night, this was the most artless. Avoiding questions you don’t want to answer might make for a “good” debater. But after as many as she did, it sounded like she was overly-coached, ignorant, evasive or just plain rude. When asked what her Achilles Heal was, she listed her…strengths. Which leads me to ask: Sarah Palin, do you know what “Achilles Heel” means? After some of the things that came out of her mouth, I think she might not really understand the concept. Among many others.

Watching these Republican speeches.

It confuses me.  Are people really fooled by this stuff? Sarah Palin is not a good speaker.  I’m sorry.  I know; not everyone can be Obama.  But she sounds like Louise on that “Family Guy” episode where she got elected by saying, “Nine eleven,” a lot.  I found myself thankful last week, when McCain announced his choice.  But people in the crowd seemed to be eating that shit up. Ah, ahem, all those ugly white people. Giuliani, your glasses don’t fit, sir.  And that you would call out Obama for “changing his mind” when he’s running against frikkin McCain is laughable, and it only makes you look funny.  But people still ate that shit up.  What is wrong with people? Cindy McCain, lime frikkin green is out this year, hon.  And every year.  You’re not a synchronized swimmer, hon.  Geez.

Everything is so close in the poles but so different in standing that it seems like, no matter what side you’re on and who you think is right, about half of our country is either crazy or stupid.  (I can’t help but think that way when I see people cheer for some of the drivel that they cheer for.)

Or, if you’re watching from the middle or the outside, everyone is crazy or stupid.  Which I somehow find a much more attractive and comforting alternative.

McCain did it.

Now we’re all distracted by Sarah Palin and her drama.  Few people are talking about his…flaws right now.  Maybe he’s smarter than we think?