Tannishblog

There’s a bit of buzz going around about Richard Dawkins’ interview in Salon. His are tough shoes to fill, being the Public Enemy Number 1 of insular, inbred, inebriated bible-belters everywhere. It is refreshing to hear someone speak out against the most harmful meme in history: Religion.

As I have always said, “More turkeys and baby evergreens have been murdered for Christmas than for any other reason.”

A fundamental change is occurring in the evolution of society. I smell it in the wind. People and their ideas don’t die without a fight, and the which the religious and political fundamentalists are attacking their detractors is reminiscent of the desperation of death throes. For some reason Bob Dylan lyrics are echoing in my head:

“A hard rain is gonna fall…”
“The times they are a-changin’…”

But I’m being optimistic again…

Jan Schakowsky voted against the budget. I feel she’s not at the Capitol to make friends. Maybe she’s there to work for her constituents. What a novel approach to 21st Century Government! While the boistrous Texans are trying to shred this thing we call The Constitution, there is someone in the background trying to duct tape the thing back together again.

Go, Jan!

A quick click over to Badtux brought this to my unbelieving eyes. If the name of the link doesn’t raise your bile, click on it - the contents will induce vomiting and/or siezures.

The Correction and Salvation of Children

OK, I’m convinced. The world has gone mad. If I was a Christian I would say this: The Rapture has already happened, all the good people are gone, and we are living in the land of the DAMDED!!!!!

As a Buddhist, I should perhaps go offline now and meditate on the inherent goodness of people. There’s nothing like a challenge with which to end one’s day.

Now that our Favorite Shrubbery’s 60-day reverse-hype-apolooza tour is almost over, the Senate Finance Committee is sharpening pencils, rhetoric, and any other sharp objects to hand in preparation of debating the “Privatizing of the American Future.”(tm)

So far, I find a favorite quote from SFC Republican chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa:

“I’d rather bring something up in the committee and fail than tell my grandchildren I wasn’t concerned at all about their Social Security benefits.”

It sounds to me that he has “issues of conscience.” It’s good to note not all Republicans have undergone a conscience-ectomy.

In other news, the Great State Of Texas is affirming its Independence again by defying provisions set by No Child Left Behind - the only thing our Favorite Shrubbery has accomplished besides killing foreigners - by failing to limit the number of students with learning disabilities who can be exempted from regular standardized tests.

Last year, Washington said that only 1 percent of disabled students could be given easier alternative tests, but Texas officials allowed schools to administer the alternative examination to about 9 percent of its students.

As a result, hundreds of Texas schools’ standardized test scores were higher last year than they would have otherwise been, allowing the schools to meet the federal achievement benchmark known as adequate yearly progress.

Ms. Spellings has not yet announced what sanction, if any, Texas will face for defying the federal law.

That law requires states to identify which schools have met its achievement benchmarks before the opening of fall classes each year, which in Texas last year occurred in mid-August.

But because of the dispute with Washington over the testing of disabled students, Texas did not identify the schools until September.

I would insert some snark about the water or air in Texas, but for this final tidbit from the Other Shrubbery in far-south Florida:

Now all good Floridians can “Stand your Ground” and use guns and other deadly force to defend yourselves in public places, thanks to a bill signed by Gov. Jeb Bush on Tuesday. I guess using Tasers on children was just a momentary sport, now - in an effort to compete with Disneyworld - citizens can now re-enact a real wild west shootout in any mall parking lot and interstate. This should be great for tourism!

Floridians already had the right to defend themselves against home intruders under what is known as the castle doctrine, but until now, they could not do so in public.

The National Rifle Association lobbied hard for the bill’s passage, and Wayne LaPierre, the group’s executive vice president, said it would use the victory to push for similar measures elsewhere. The bill’s sponsor, Representative Dennis K. Baxley of Ocala, said it would curb violent crime and make citizens feel safer.

“It’s a clear position that we will stand with victims of violent attacks when the law is in their favor,” said Mr. Baxley, a Republican. “People want to know we stand on the side of victims of crime instead of the side of criminals.”

Governor Bush, a Republican, said he supported the measure because when people faced life-threatening situations, “to have to retreat and put yourself in a very precarious position defies common sense.”

I haven’t been to Florida since the seventies - it must be really rough down there. I hear the snowbirds are an especially viscous waterfowl. Maybe those automobile make-over shops should open up franchises in the swamps and specialize in “Mad Max” type refinements for the well-to-do Floridian commuters - should save them all time.

Tonight I wanted to write something about politics. I wanted to be able to write something thoughtful and unique about how the Republican House and Senate leaders are abusing power and restructuring our system of government for their needs. Tonight, above all, I wanted to provide some insight to these nervous times.

But I can’t. Instead I lean back in awed disbelief at the audacity of a vocal few, the barely suppressed hatred that is motivating powerful people, and the escalating volatility inherent in extreme political disposition. And our Administration is nothing if not extreme.

I ponder whether the Democratic position has not been extreme enough in the recent past to reap enough emotion from their backers. Even I, a firm proponent of social reform, feel they have been pedestrian in their position, churlish in their choler. Perhaps the time to play safe has ended.

Our self-righteous right-wing enjoys the passion of wrath. Perhaps it is this wrath which is the glue binding the extremists to the masses. Never underestimate hatred, it is a galvanizing force. Righteous hatred is worse, as it is fueled by willful blindness.

I ponder whether the Democratic party can wield such tools as deftly as the Religious Right. In contrast to the usual toolkit of reason and foresight, both are cold chisels to the pneumatic hammers of dogmatic self-righteousness. The crafting of an improved nation must be accomplished in less time, and the Political Left needs to upgrade their tools.

I know the Democratic Left to be right, just as I know in my heart the Republican Right is wrong. Tonight, however, I cannot put voice to my growing fears. I’m too shocked at our selfish leaders, too awed by their unmitigated audacity. Tonight, I just scratch my graying head and wonder.

This weekend marks a major holiday for our friends of Jewish Faith in America - Passover. During this week the Jewish people celebrate liberation from slavery at the hands of the Pharos, and the intercession by their God that formed the foundation of their religion. Yet the American media is silent. I compare this with the gratuitous greetings of wishing Jews a Happy Channukah during the Christian holy season. By contrast, Channukah is a celebration of a military history, and by the accounts of most of the Jew I know, a minor holiday. Passover is the real thing, yet our Christian culture doesn’t even acknowledge this. We’re still stuck onto the new popery and beating that story to death, although papal succession is something that happens every few decades. Freeing a people from slavery happens quite infrequently. It’s a big deal.

So what are the media talking about today? Popes, Iraq, Elian Gonzales, Star Wars fans… the usual drivel. Our Christian brethren don’t want to validate any other belief system by wishing friends and neighbors a happy holiday. Not publicly. Better they publicly snub the Jews than remember that Jesus was Jewish, remember that their faith and their holiest tome are inescapably Jewish in origin. If it wasn’t for Judaism, perhaps Jesus never would have been, perhaps the Christian concept of God would never have been. Perhaps the fundamentalists would be worshiping the storm gods instead.

Happy Passover to all my Jewish friends!

Fred Wilson at A VC initiates a discussion on a problem that I think will scale to endemic proportions: Rudeness - on the ‘net and at a blog near you. Tris Hussley ponders this and expands with citations of further offences. The question: Why is the blogocube becoming less civil. I find the answer in one of Tris’ examples from a comment section at Red Couch:

If the bloatosphere starts filling up with such uncreative, worthless, idiotic garbage as this “talking moose” blog, I’m leaving the Commodity Internet and moving over to Internet 2.

This is a new low in unimaginative, non-strategic pseudo-blogging.

So much for a company being candid and forming intimate conversations with an audience. Goodbye to Al Ries, Rosser Reeves, David Ogilvy, Seth Godin, Christopher Locke, and common sense.

Hello to insipid ghost blogging and a thick wall of darkeness separating company and customer, in the guise of a “talking moose”.

Next time try a talking butt hole.

A later post by the same author:

Good comment orcmid. You still have some brains. God, the bloatosphere is starting to anger me, it’s turning idiotic overnight.

It figures. Same thing happened to postal mail (junk mail), telephone (telemarketing), television (infomercials, soap operas, most sitcoms), electro-mail (spam)…see why I issue warnings?

These quotes, taken out of context, have no relevance. What emerges is the attitude. The context is a perceived lessening of the blog community, a fact made ironic by the complainer, who is himself guilty of lowering standards by posting with such attitude. What happened to the post, telephones, and the other medium mentioned above is a change in the medium caused by mass acceptance and integration into the mainstream. The net effect of doing such is “letting in the riffraff.” As noted in another post of mine from today:

Any dolt with a working computer and an Internet connection can become a blog publisher in the 10 minutes it takes to sign up.

This gem was uttered from an article at Business Week. I cited this as condescension, but it appears there is some truth here. The dolts are getting bloggy, and there’s nothing we can do to tame them or teach them manners. What happened to other medium is happening here: popularity is lowering the threshold, lowering standards of behavior as the “unwashed masses” fill the virtual spaces with their stink.

Bottom line: Americans are rude. They learn this from their TV’s and they learn this from their experiences in consumerism, and - I say this with regret - they learn this from their parents. It’s only to be expected that as the blogocube expands that civility will inevitably recede. Those few of us who have a common respect of the medium we share and respect of other blogsters are being overwhelmed by a mass market culture that doesn’t give a damn about any of that.

This is Democracy in action.

I’ve been out of town on business this week, hence the lack of postings. And last night Blogger was in the bathroom for the entire time I had to post, so… nothing!

Today I get an email from one of my favorite people I have never met - a politician! I voted for her and will do so again. Jan Schakowski, US Representative of Illinois’ 9th District, is one tough lady, and I like that! Today she tells me how she is upholding my interests by voting down the Republican Polutocrat’s pork-fest energy bill. She tells it straight, unlike most Democrats; the rest of my party-of-choice should show the same backbone she does.

I’m tired of the same, tired, loosing tactics the donkey brigade brays about. The single factor that got the elephant stampede started was unity. We need to find someone who is not afraid to take a stand, like Jan does, and propel that person forward by uniting behind him/her. This person doesn’t have to be perfect - has any president been perfect? What this person needs is support; we gave Bill our support and he won two terms, we didn’t unite against either Al or John and it shows.

I’m not saying Jan is this as-yet fictional figurehead: I’m saying that we need to see what she does right and adopt it for the entire Democratic party. Take a stand, make a stand and don’t back down. Show America we mean what we say and that we really believe it, then follow through with appropriate action.

God knows if we leave our nation in the hands of the sanctimonious and self-righteous, American herself will suffer for it.

Remember the Bay of Pigs disaster? April 17, 1961; I was only two at the time, so I learned of this later. I bet most US schools don’t teach kids about this. On that day, CIA backed Cuban “rebels” failed an attempt at ousting Fidel Castro’s government. almost 1500 people were sacrificed toward this effort. What a waste.

Worse, exactly fourteen years later, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and began the systematic murder of almost 25% of the population. The NY Times has a guest-editorial from a survivor of the Khmer Rouge. Every American should read this as a real “reality-check.”

Another interesting Op-ed piece comes from Nicholas D. Kristof, also of the NY Times. His point: that America has a long, glorious history of looking the other way as other counrties commit genocide.

Can this be human nature to turn ones back on attrocities whenever possible? As long as such mass crimes doesn’t happen “in my back yard” can we continue to turn the volume up on the TV and ignore it? Thanks to a few pioneers like MTV, such willful ignorance is getting harder to do. Thanks to the democratization of information enabled by the internet, humanity is being forced to recognize the unalterable fact that it matters all to people what other countries do to their populations. We are all on this planet together, anything that happens on this earth happens “in my back yard.”

Meanwhile, our Favorite Shrubbery and his cronies are busy suppressing information that may be “misconstrued” as providing a negative report card on the administration’s policies regarding global terrorism. The State Department has decided to stop publishing its annual report on terrorism. Last year, interestingly enough, the number of terrorism reports were “undercounted” in the State Departments report. Hmm - I guess that wasn’t enough, so this year the whole thing is being scrapped.

This won’t work, of course. Many university-level Political Science departments and private institutions will amass their own data, and the internet will distribute it. The information is out there where anyone can find it. The era when governments can hide their closets full of skeletons is over. The people are connected, they are concerned, they are increasingly empowered by the internet to make their own decisions independent of the old-school media and its attendant, tightly controlled government spin. To try at this point to segregate informaion channels in an effort to control the internet is to hobble all institutions that rely on the internet as integral to their operations - can you think of just one organization that does not? The veil is lifted, the secrets are exposed; it’s now time for our governments to become the honorable vehicles of public welfare that they were intended to be. The masses of internet users, the global interconnectivity of humanity will hold them accountable, forcing change at the speed of electrons.

Any politician that disregards the emerging voice of outrage that is facilitated by the ‘net, strengthened by the online community, and aggregated into a new, global voice, does so at his/her own peril.

Whoever this Atrios is, Blogstreet rates him number 1 on the 100 Most Important Blogs listing. Who knows how they figure that, but I’ll agree. I’m beginning to have a real appreciation of the time involved in being a major warblogger. All this for the love of the sport - as we all know, there’s almost no money in this.

Now there’s an idea! Let’s organize the Blogging Olympics. Line up sponsors from optical media companies, storage tech manufacturers, and ergonomic wireless keyboard companies. Events could be marathon posting (continual updating on a single post), a triathalon of research, self-editing, and word coinage, or a 50- 100- 200- and 400- word dashes. Track and field events would be replaced with mouse and cursor trials. I can just see the officials tossing a political stance in the air and 500 bloggers clambering to shoot hole in it with the highest accuracy. Judging would require the most advanced technology we can bring to bear.

And the after market endorsements - Andrew Sullivan as poster child for carpal tunnel creams, Jeff Jarvis and his amazing Post Editor, even Kos’ InKredible Elephant Slayer (patent pending).
My feeble imagination can’t do justice to the possibilities.

An olympic mind-set is just what we need to instill credability to this still-understood medium. Imagine the surprise on the faces of the MSM outsiders when the lists fill up with the miriad non-white-male bloggers that are out there; the asians, the black Americans, the women…

A picture is worth a thousand words; perhaps a few million words are worth a few pictures.