In response to my last post...

A friend of mine emailed me some alternative meanings for the acronym, TSA ("Therapeutic Sensual Assistants" is a fave), and it made me wonder: Since my wife and I are flying out of the Greatland for the Holidays, does this mean I can expect from TSA a "Christmas Goose?"

Not since...

University of Florida student Andrew Meyer uttered those famous words,
"Don't taze me bro!" inspiring rock groups The Clash and Devo to include the quote in their lyrics, and becoming part of the common currency of modern speech, has any one phrase perhaps so quickly entered the urban lexicon.

Until now. We have to thank software engineer, would-be airline passenger and privacy-of-private-parts freedom-fighter John Tyner for informing, on video, the TSA guy who was about to give him the full body-probe pat down:

"If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested."

Tyner's words may now eclipse the 3 year-old taze-phrase. Surely, given the state of today's rock lyrics, there's room for this.
~b

Democrats...

Need some balls, its sure. President Obama too, I'm afraid. If you want your Congressman to spine-up and deny tax cuts to the rich that, if not allowed to sunset, will cost us $700 Billion, call (202)224 - 3121 and ask for your representative or senator. I called Senator Mark Begich and left a message about the Bush tax cuts, and the U.S. Senate's idiotic filibuster rule. I would rather let the whole thing sunset and see my tax burden go up a couple of hundred than give more $$ to the very wealthy, particularly in view of the fact that we now have the greatest disparity of wealth in this country since the 1920s.
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Speaking of the former president, "W" has been on tour plugging his book "Decision Points." In one interview he both bragged about giving the order to water-board torture prisoners, a war crime, and actually blame Saddam Hussein for the Iraq War, because Saddam fooled Bush into thinking he had WMDs, when in fact he had none. 4000+ American lives, 100,000+ Iraqi lives, probably $2 Trillion in lost American treasure, all because George Bush was duped into invading the wrong country? Do you miss him yet?
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For all those Tea Party types who carry the signs quoting T. Jefferson about the "Tree of liberty" needing to be watered by the "blood of tyrants:" Jill Lepore (Bill's book of the month recommendation "The Whites of Their Eyes") writes that "aside from Jefferson,whose enthusiasm for revolution did not survive Robespierre [and the Terror] most everyone else [other Founders] came down in favor of order." The Teahadists still have it all wrong.

Alan Seeger...

Was an American poet who was born in 1888 and died on a WWI battlefield on July 4, 1916. Seeger was a Harvard educated elite, who became a bohemian who, as a bohemian might, joined the French Foreign Legion in 1914 in order to fight the "Hun." His brother Charles was the father of American folk singer Pete Seeger.

I always recite this, perhaps Seeger's most famous poem, to my U.S. History students, on or around Veteran's Day, formerly Armistice Day, commemorating the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. It was one of John Kennedy's favorites:

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air -
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It maybe he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath -
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill
When Spring comes round again this year
and the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged words am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

In college...

Midterms were never good to me either. And so it is for the Democrats, but there remain a few bright spots, particularly in the west, like Colorado and Washington, as well as "Left Coast" California, where the progressives more or less prevailed. And good riddance to the "Blue Dog" rubbish that was thrown out of office. These were conservative Dems who ran away from health care reform, Wall Street reform, and the stimulus, in order to save their own political hides in conservative districts, mostly in the mid-west and plains. Of 54 Blue Dogs in Congress, 24 were voted out. After all, if you're going to vote for a Republican, vote for a Republican, not a faux model. The "Progressive Caucus" did measurably better, losing 8 of 80 last Tuesday.
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Watching Jon Stewart interview Texas Governor Rick Perry on The Daily Show, I was immediately suspicious of what the governor - plugging his book, "Fed Up" - claimed about American history. What Perry was trying to sell to Stewart, was that the growth of federal government really began in 1913, with Progressivism and the coming of the 16th Amendment. This ushering in income taxes, which gave the federal government virtually limitless power over the states. Governor Perry is an unabashed "Tenther" who also advocates secession if needs be, for Texas. He also blamed a Democrat by name for this federal over-reach: President Woodrow Wilson. But wait - wasn't Teddy Roosevelt,a Republican, considered the 1st Progressive President? And Congress sent out the amendment proposal in 1910. Republican President William Howard Taft was in office then. Wilson's 1st term began in January of 1913, barely before the ink was dry on the Revenue Act of 1913, the trigger for federal income taxes, took effect.
Jon Stewart didn't catch it, but he's not a history teacher! BTW, Texas was the 9th state to ratify the 16th Amendment - in 1910.
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Book Recommendation for November: The Whites of Their Eyes, by Jill Lepore. An easy read from the professor of American History at Harvard, explaining how the Tea Partyers have tried to remold America's Founders, and the American Revolution into their own image. Good stuff.

Viva Manuel Gonzalez!

According to whitepages.com, there are 2,879 Manuel Gonzales' in the U.S. I don't know how many more may be in the world, but at this moment, they should all be proud, for it was a Manuel Gonzalez who was the Chilean rescuer who was the 1st man down into the Copiapo Mine to the 33 trapped miners. He was also the last man up. Never mind the nerve and courage it took to go down 2050 feet into the bowels of the earth in a makeshift rescue capsule hooked to a pulley and cable. I'm not sure which was the more daunting, the trip down, or the lonely wait to be the very last one to the surface. Well done Manuel, truly an unsung hero. Gonzalez families across the globe, name your next son Manuel and your next daughter Manuela, in hopes that he or she will grow to be as brave as this man.

Just back from a four month haitus...

...and glad to be here, although I miss Oregon, where our condo, son and his family, and others did such a marvelous job keeping us happy, along with real summer temps and a swimming pool a full 30 second walk away. Heard we missed no Alaskan summer, as there apparently was none.

I moved to half-time teaching and my wife already says it's made me a more "live-with-able" man. So, I hope to devote more time and effort to things like the blog, which may be good or bad for my small band of readers.

Wife Genie just got off the phone with DNSC (Democratic National Senatorial Committee). When the poor young kid working the phones there got through his pitch to give $100 to keep the likes of Sharon Angle from defeating Harry Reid in Nevada, or defeating the "abstinent witch princess of Delaware, Genie let him have it. It seems neither Scott McAdams nor Alaska was mentioned in the kid's donation pitch, which really pissed her off. "Why, she asked, should I give $100 to save Harry Reid's lame ass (my interpretation), when we have a viable senate candidate right her in Alaska, whom the DNSC has written off?" She then went on to tell the poor phone schlub to "Tell somebody at the DNSC!"

Truth is, while the national punditry has guessed that "Lisa M." mounting a write-in campaign is good for McAdams, because it "splits the GOP vote" with the tea-bagger Joe Miller, I disagree. In fact I know of people who called themselves "Republicans for Scott McAdams" who now are going back to Lisa. Lisa, as you know, is busy spending her $1 million media war chest on the gamble. We'll see how it plays out, but for what it's worth, our $$ stays instate.

Speaking of Harry Reid, his decision to postpone a tax-cut-for-the-middle-class-and-not-the-rich has me pissed and perplexed. I can't think of a single legislative accomplishment by this Congress that can better benefit the Dems going into November, particularly since the GOP has poisoned the minds of so many Americans on health care reform. I only hope our milk toast Mormon from Nevada can grow a pair similar to Nancy Pelosi's. If he gets re-elected.

Don't you, as I do in darker moments, think that maybe six years of Joe Miller, Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell is what this country needs, in order to finally get it?

Forty days and forty nights...

Has the sickening, horrendous and seemingly unstoppable fountain of oil spewed forth from a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Of course BP is at fault, and criminally so. It may not matter, because if BP is found criminally negligent, as they have been before, not one will go to prison. No one ever does from these corporations.

Up here in Alaska a few years back some guy got drunk and angry, took his high-powered rifle and shot a hole in the Alaska Pipeline. The amount of oil is like a millionth of the oil now gushing from Deep Horizon. Plus, nobody died, yet our drunken Alaskan angry man went to jail. Alaska's Prince William Sound is still smarting from the Exxon Valdez spill, but BP is going to make Exxon look like amateurs before it's over.

Which brings us to job of President Obama in regards to the Gulf spill: Has he done enough to bring BP to heel and to bring the might that is the U.S. Government into the action? I give him a qualified yes on both of these. BP lied to Obama as well as the American people about the seriousness of Deep Horizon's mile-down blowout, and even if he was utterly naive to trust them, he, like everyone else in America, had no good reason to think that the huge oil conglomerate did NOT have the expertise to handle such a contingency. As far using his power of the presidency, what do people like LA Governor Jindal, or Southern pundit James Carville (who really put on an embarrassing performance on TV) think he can do about this? Should he send up the "Bat Signal?" Call in The A team? And is Obama the Hand-holder-in-chief of the United States? Should he forget about Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, the economy and the other 100 crises going on at the moment?

A SOLUTION:
Colin Powell made an appearance on ABC's This Week this morning, and he was asked if there was a "military" solution to the gulf oil spill. Colin responded by talking about military operations, chain-of-command, logistics, and he appeared to think that the military could help, but he wasn't quite sure how.

I have a suggestion for General Powell to take to the president, and it's a military solution. In fact it's one the military has practiced for since the 1950s. Why not lower a low yield (5 - 10 Kiloton range) nuclear device down to the spill's source and detonate it? Now don't tell me someone in an advisory capacity to Obama hasn't at least thought of it. The nuclear explosion would make a large glass bowl out of that immediate area, ignite and consume all the oil in the area, and probably wouldn't kill anything that's not dead already. Yes, radiation would be a problem for a couple of weeks, but we're not looking at anything as bad as Godzilla or giant glowing gulf shrimp devouring New Orleans. And it's not like we've never done undewater nuclear testing. This something President Obama can, and should consider. How many months or years of this ecological nightmare are we willing to abide?

Riposting...

Former President Clinton’s fellow Arkansan and syndicated opinion writer Paul Greenberg either misunderstands or misrepresents Clinton’s words of warning about the current lack of civility in political discourse.
Greenberg misses the obvious point that Clinton has not warned us against peaceful protest (that’s “civil,” right?), but against the incitement to violence that we currently see among the various militia types, 2nd Amendment monomaniacs and secessionists. The same sort of wing nuts Clinton himself had to deal with in the 1990s.
Neither can Greenberg credibly equate the hate and vitriol that President Obama has experienced, from the day he took office, with the protests against President Bush. Anti-Bush protests really only began after Bush and Cheney lied us into a war on Iraq, a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, thereby wasting thousands of American lives, 100,000+ Iraqi lives, and perhaps $3 trillion before all is finally, and sadly, said and done.

Cathing up with the local paper...

“Health insurance at the price of freedom? No.” - Governor Sean Parnell (April 21, Anchorage Daily News).
Such a champion of liberty is our governor, that he’s willing to pursue an expensive lawsuit of no judicial merit against the federal government, in order to deny 100,000 Alaskans access to decent, affordable health care. All this so he can offer those 100,000 Alaskans his peculiar and crass concept of “freedom.” And that would be the freedom to die an early death for lack of health care.
Dang, but it makes one proud to be an Alaskan – doesn’t it?

Former lite-gov. and legislator Loren Leman (“Thanks but no thanks,” Anchorage Daily News, 4/19/10) has a “Cadillac” health insurance plan, by virtue of his years of service as a government official. So why does he chide President Obama, for helping to give thousands of other Alaskans the opportunity to have the same sort of health care that Mr. Leman takes for granted?
Why does Leman insist that Obama has loaded debt on our children, when Bush’s war-of-choice in Iraq will end up costing us $3 Trillion. Why does he complain about the president’s international policies, when those policies, and Obama’s thoughtful, internationalist style has put America in higher regard by other countries than any president in recent memory. Why does Leman think allowing openly gay Americans to serve in the military is so awful, when the nation’s top generals think that it’s about time they did? Why does he say that Obama is anti-resource development after the president endorsed off-shore drilling? Why accuse Obama of a “radical agenda?”

Honestly. Why do people like Lori Bond (Anchorage Daily News) insist on calling the all-too timid attempt at health reform moving through Congress “Obamacare? ” Bring in Sen. Begich if you want to, but this half-a-loaf legislation is clearly a creature of Congress, and only Congress. Progressives like me just wish President Obama had taken more ownership of health care reform – perhaps then we’d get at least a public option, if not a single payer system.
Decriers of “Obamacare” such as Bond and others sound so much like the Birthers and Tea-baggers who scream, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” and insist on the debunked notion that ACORN stole 7 ½ million votes for Obama in 2008. They will say anything in the attempt to harm this presidency. It is further proof that far too many conservatives are more interested in seeing the president fail, than seeing the country succeed in offering what every other advanced nation already has: health care for all.

Over Two Months Now And...

I'm finally getting around to blogging. I chalk it up to Obama disappointment depression followed by the Obama satisfaction elation that came after the HCR bill(s) passed.

If you haven't ever read the conservative writings of Jonah Goldberg, you can easily Google his missive that matches up to this letter from me to the Anchorage Daily News:

How does someone get to be a “fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute (Opinion: Jonah Goldberg, March 22) and not know that it was Republican President Warren G. Harding that first and most famously uttered the words: “Return to Normalcy,” not Franklin Roosevelt.
How does Goldberg get away with saying that, “The 1920s was a decade of roaring economic growth,” while failing to add that the false economic growth he cites rested on the backs of the working class. Laborers, farmers and the emergent middle class saw little or no improvement in their condition. Predatory lenders only made them think they were “getting ahead.” Indeed, the disparity of wealth in America in 1928 is only rivaled by the disparity of wealth in 2008, just before the current recession.
And how funny is it that the Daily News continues to publish right-wing pundits like Jonah Goldberg? Pretty funny, given the apparently purposeful ineptitude of conservative research and fact check departments.

Also worth a Google search:

Bill Maher: "New Rule: You Can't Use "There Will Be No Cooperation for the Rest of the Year" as a Threat If There Was No Cooperation in the First Half of the Year" Courtesy of HuffPo, and

Charles M. Blow's "Who's Country is this?" from the NYT.

And if anyone's interested...
My next book to get: "The History of White People," by Nell Painter (I always wondered about us white folk).

My current read: "Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State" by Garry Wills

Some reasons for the Mass. Dem Debacle...

Are:
1. A lousy candidate. I'm sure Martha Coakley is a good A.G. but...
2. Democratic party laxity. Were the Dems thinking this was Animal House? "They have to take me - I'm a legacy!"
3. No youth vote. The kids won't come out for bland middle-aged white ladies.
4. No Kennedys. The Dynasty looks to have run its course, leaving a political vacuum.
5. Mass. already has a great health care system. Why should they pay for others?
6. Mass. voters not as progressive as thought. Remember the "Southies" stoning buses of black students during the forced integration of Boston schools?
7. Mass. is a "donor" state, giving more tax revenue to the federal government than they get back. Why add health care?
8. Shay's Rebellion in a tea bag.
9. Photogenic former Cosmo male nude fold-out w/photogenic wife, "available" daughters.
10. [Enter your reason here_______________________________________].
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Some have been commenting on the way the U.S. Senate does its business with the automatic "filibuster" of 41 against any legislation. A rule that takes 67/100 votes to change, painting the Senate into its own corner. The only other option is to go "constitutional" (read: "nuclear")if Joe Biden were bidden to do so. As it is now, 41 beats 59. The Constitution allows the Senate to make its own rules, but called for super-majorities only for certain high-level appointments and treaties. I would like to believe that if some senator, or the Democratic Party brought suit, it would not survive a SCOTUS ruling. But after the Taney Court-like decision that opens the corporate $$ floodgates, Plutocracy now trumps democracy. American expatriates have good reason to feel vindicated and guiltless for giving up on the republic.

And another response...

To an Anchorage Daily News letter went like this:

Honestly. Why do people like Lori Bond (Letters, Jan. 2) insist on calling the all-too timid attempt at health reform moving through Congress “Obamacare? ” Bring in Sen. Begich if you want to, but this half-a-loaf legislation is clearly a creature of Congress, and only Congress. Progressives like me just wish President Obama had taken more ownership of health care reform – perhaps then we’d get at least a public option, if not a single payer system.
Decriers of “Obamacare” such as Bond and others sound so much like the Birthers and Tea-baggers who scream, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” and insist on the debunked notion that ACORN stole 7 ½ million votes for Obama in 2008. They will say anything in the attempt to harm this presidency. It is further proof that far too many conservatives are more interested in seeing the president fail, than seeing the country succeed in offering what every other advanced nation already has: health care for all.
True...?