I’m a horrible copyeditor (dyslexia and all that), but even I winced when I read:
The cops could have cared less. Las Vegas Police Sgt. Kevin Manning, who ran Pac’s murder probe, said Pac’s murder investigation dead-ended for the same reason most gang-on-gang inquiries dead-end, because cop-leery witnesses refused to cooperate.
in the Los Angeles Times.
(If you think I ought to have let this go, you have another think coming.)
Television is the reason that there is so much money in politics. The 1 percent has always influenced elections, but before television their efforts were confined to the smoke filled back rooms. We can argue whether or not the former is better than the latter, but we cannot argue that without television, there would be no Citizens United, there would be no billion dollar presidential campaigns and there would be no superpacs.
Television is a horrible personal addiction, a worse time suck than even Facebook, and at least you can get some help if you’re addicted to tobacco, drugs, alcohol or sex.
I am deeply troubled by the continued expansion of presidential powers because I cannot know who the next person will be who will sit int he oval office and wield those powers. I am further troubled by reports such as this discussion between Terry Gross and Jeremy Scahill, the national security correspondent for The Nation.
Scahill began reporting on the Middle East for The Nation in 2003. During the Bush the Younger years he wrote most famously about Blackwater (first changed to Xe Services and now re-branded again as Academi — what the feck is that supposed to mean) in 2005. He has continued his reporting to the present and this past week he sat down with Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air, to discuss what the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama is doing in our name in Yemen.
For those who believe that President Obama, on balance, has brought change, real change that affects everyone in our nation and makes us a better place, I encourage you to wisely invest 47 minutes in listening to the whole interview.
In my life I have cast presidential votes for three men that won their elections: President Jimmy Carter, 1976, President Bill Clinton, 1992 and President Barack Hussein Obama, 2008. That year I said that unless Barack Obama proved to be other than just another lame Democratic Party excuse for a national leader whose only legitimate positive attribute was that he wouldn’t be as bad as the Republican candidate, that I would be done with the Democratic Party forever.
For years I have resisted the characterization of the Democratic Party as the central wing of the Republican Party. No more.
Sadly, the party, and President Obama, have lost me. For good. I’m done.
I’m finally revolted enough.
“Poore men will have to to sell the hat off thare head to pay thare debts.” In fact, as state after state exempted specified amounts of land, personal property, mechanic’s tools and agricultural implements from seizure for debt (except claims for wages), the majority of small property holders, and some large ones as well, found themselves protected against losing their property to creditors. In the upcountry, debtor relief for a time remained “a strong card in the part of Reconstruction.” And blacks, few of whom benefited directly, supported the policy to strengthen the party. When Alonzo J. Ransier, campaigning for lieutenant governor in 1870, reminded an audience in South Carolina’s upcountry that yeomen no longer need fear “being driven out of doors” for debt, he did not fail to point out that the measure owned its passage to black votes–“colored men and legislation by colored men did it.” –page 374, Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner.
More than any other aspect of reading History, I appreciate the knowledge that change and stasis exist continuously in tension.
I have wrestled these last three weeks with a sense of guilt over the Federal arrests made here in Cuyahoga County. I know that some attempted to make the case that violence was not an appropriate response, but I regret that I was not able to effectively add my voice to that argument. More importantly, that I was not able to make the case and convince participants that the Federal Bureau of Investigation most certainly had (indeed, undoubtedly still has) informants and agent provocateurs embedded within the Occupy Cleveland organization and that the standard operating procedure for such agents of the federal government is to lead the gullible toward criminal acts of violence and destruction.
In my partial defense I will say that my limited participation and observation of Occupy Cleveland gatherings and discussions did not foster a sense of confidence that my message would be taken to heart or even heard in any real sense. That does not excuse me from making the effort.
Where now? I absolutely believe that the Occupy Movement, locally and nationally, has the focus of a high school Freshman in desperate need of a Ritalin fix. The migration to Chicago in response to the NATO summit is a perfect example. NATO? Really? NATO, like every other personal cause touted by the Occupy legions, is a symptom, not the cause, and as such, a distraction from where all our energies ought to be directed: toward the One Percent and their clients. As long as we fight brush fires and ignore the bastards playing at Zeus by hurling lightning bolts from on high, we will only accomplish our own exhaustion.
Finally. What ought to be our “one thing?” Many whom I respect disagree with me on this, but from my perspective it cannot be re-electing a man who would never invite the likes of the Occupy movement to the big house, let alone set a place for us at the table. It will be far better, I believe, to organize around the core message that the entire system/organization is corrupt by design. That, in memory of the ideals of President Thomas Jefferson, we are long overdue for another American revolution; a people’s revolution that loudly and firmly rejects our present paradigm of one-dollar-one-vote and demands a rapid reorientation to the standard of one-voter-one-vote. From that perspective, the last outcome we ought to desire in November is the re-election of President Barack Hussein Obama because the One Percent’s candidate, President Mitt Romney, will be a far better figure to organize the 99 percent around to break the back of our oligarchy. Would that be a bitter pill to swallow? Fuck yeah, but we don’t need another spoonful of sugar.
There are many histories of Cleveland. Not just one history of the city. No history that would tell us, “This is the way it was.”
There are many ways to report history. It could be from the view of different people. Different movements. Different economics. Different heroes. Different villains. Different reasons why the city went this way or that way.
Now, there is a new history examining this city through the eyes of what many people might see as odd or unusual.Daniel Kerr’s Derelict Paradise – Homelessness and urban development in Cleveland, Ohio, does this. It is a remarkable testament of how – through the city’s history – the poor (especially black poor) have been pushed aside to make way for what the wealth of the community deemed Progress.
It tests the matter of who enjoys Progress and who doesn’t.
As Cleveland media hail and promote casino gambling (isn’t it media disgusting) and a new convention center as the latest city comebacks, Kerr has some reminders that there are losers and winners. We pretty much can bet on which will be which in this contest.
Even with the Group Plan of the early 1900s, Kerr says, the demand for Progress came at a great cost to low income Clevelanders. “In 1899 Continue Reading »
…accept that we have no effective voice in the way we are governed. We must accept the hollowness of electoral politics, the futility of our political theater, and we must destroy the corporate structure itself.
I’ve done my best to avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup for years after spending a great deal of time in the sugar-is-sugar camp before the weight of scientific evidence convinced me that I was just wrong on the issue and that HFCS was not only unhealthy, this darling of the corn lobby is flat-out dangerous.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles campus add yet another nail in the sugar’s coffin.
A team of UCLA researchers have observed that high fructose corn syrup makes rats more forgetful, while omega-3 fatty acids—chemical compounds that research has shown can protect the brain’s synapses—seem to have the opposite effect.
The researchers, whose paper will be published this week in the peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology, trained a group of rats to navigate a maze. Then, they randomly divided the rats into four groups, and for six weeks, they fed each group a slightly different diet in addition to the usual rat chow: One group received HFCS in its water; another received omega-3 fatty acids. A third received both HFCS and omega-3s, and the fourth, a control group, received plain old rat chow.
At the end of the six weeks, the group that had been given omega-3 fatty acids but no HFCS was the speediest at remembering how to get out of the maze. The control group (no HFCS or omega-3s) was the second fastest, and the group that had received omega-3 fatty acids and HFCS came in third. The slowpokes of the lot were the group that had only received HFCS. The takeaway: HFCS seemed to impair rats’ memory, while omega-3 fatty acids seemed to help it.
In addition to the memory effects, the researchers also noticed changes in the rats’ metabolism. The groups that had been fed HFCS showed signs of insulin resistance, a condition that has been linked to diabetes and obesity.
And I’m certain that the corn lobby’s HFCS department has already kicked into high gear to smear the research in any way they can.
Chris Hedges writes:
Gamer and many others who study the nature of colonial rule offer the best insights into the functioning of our corporate state. We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. The mechanisms of control are familiar to those whom the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” including African-Americans. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability—keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits—ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.
The lesson we all ought to learn is:
Never trust a capitalist, never trust a CEO, and never, ever trust the 1 percent.
To improve my vocabulary (and my reading) I always keep a dictionary close at hand because I aspire to a Shakespearian vocabulary. Inspired by the new PBS Kids show Word Girl, I’ve decided to add My Words as an occasional feature here at Have Coffee Will Write. Today’s word is precocity.
PRECOCIOUS. 1: exceptionally early in development or occurrence (precocious puberty), 2: exhibiting mature qualities at an unusually early age (a precocious child) — pre·co·cious·ly adverb, — pre·co·cious·ness noun,— pre·coc·i·ty noun.
Many of the black community’s new political leaders were remarkable for their precocity. –Foner, page 358.
I’ve known the word precocious since a very young age, but I’ve never come across the noun form precocity before. As I consider Foner’s use here, I find myself wondering if he used it advisedly. What do you think?
Now why do you suppose so many people looked up the dictionary definition of marriage?
I haven’t been on my bike the last couple of weeks (really not since, 19 April, but who’s counting) mostly because I’ve been wickedly busy with students — 12-hour days for much of April and May — but I decided that enough was enough and altered my schedule this morning, giving up an hour of writing time, to get on my bike at 0530.
Thankfully it is now light enough to ride that early (we morning people really do hate Daylight Savings Time) and I cranked out my standard 5.05 circuit around Cumberland and Forest Hills parks in 28 minutes and 54 seconds at an average 10.4 mph. I now have 865.8 miles yet to ride in 2012 to reach my 1,000 mile goal.
On a related note, I weighed 194.4 pounds — a Body Mass Index of 26.4 — this morning. I’m now only 3.1 pounds away from no longer being overweight (a BMI of 25.9) and a piddling 6.5 pounds away from my goal weight of 187.9 at a BMI of 25.5.
The Briticism, shall I be mother? offered before the pouring of tea, confounded me upon my first reading. After consideration, however, I understood: lacking a mother to serve, another must do.
Since Mid-November I’ve dropped more than 70 pounds by avoiding foods I don’t fix. I grocery shop two or three times weekly; and cook three meals and three snacks daily. I enjoy cooking. I lack, however, the time or energy to produce whole meals in a single continuous motion. I do have moments, sparse minutes for mini-tasks: assembling the dry ingredients for oatmeal, measuring the components for soup or rice, chopping vegetables, poaching pre-cut chicken breasts; placing each into individual containers for the future me to pop open and add to pot, skillet or grill.
Such is my mindfulness practice. In these moments – time intervals we think too small for practical use – I Become Mother and dash off a bit of cookery; sustaining bits that together, accumulated sometimes across days, become real meals. I no longer drive home vacillating between pizza or lo-mien. Instead I cross my threshold to turn the heat on to boil an already-filled pot of water, rinse and add the pre-measured rice at the boil then set the timer while I meditate. My bell rings. I rise, fluff the rice, steam the broccoli with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, add diced chicken, pour wine and sit for dinner compliments of Mother.
I am vulnerable to take-away foods and binging after dinner, but Mother completes most of the work by noon or so, and lessens my temptation to stray. June Cleaver is my goddess, her white apron my surplice.
To improve my vocabulary (and my reading) I always keep a dictionary close at hand because I aspire to a Shakespearean vocabulary. Inspired by the new PBS Kids show Word Girl, I’ve decided to add My Words as an occasional feature here at Have Coffee Will Write. Today’s word is Confect: To put together, to prepare, to preserve.
Still tantalized by the prospect of confecting a Republican majority from a program of debtor relief, economic development and white supremacy, party leaders advised freedmen to abandon politics (except for casting Republican ballots) and concentrate on “earn[ing] an honest subsistence.” — from Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner.
The Plain Dealer deserves credit for its handling of the five alleged terrorists caught (if not provoked) by the FBI. At least so far.
The paper handled this episode responsibly. Some restraint.
It made the effort to put the attempt by five people to bomb a local bridge into proper perspective without hysterics.
Of course, it also published the usual bullshit of Kevin O’Brien. It was the one aspect to mar the otherwise responsible journalism.
The front page article by well-regarded James McCarty specifically quotes Steven Dettlebach, U. S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, saying that the five suspects acted alone.
He quotes Dettlebach: “Let me be clear. The FBI and Department of Justice are not conducting an investigation of any specific group.”
That, in this context, has to mean the Occupy Cleveland movement. Not guilty.
But the infiltration and lead-on of the shaky five follows an old FBI Continue Reading »
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