Tannishblog

There’s so much suffering these days. Every day one can find a new worthy cause begging for funds or for time, two of the most valuable commodities for most of us. There are almost as many groups trying to better the world, one issue at a time, as there are problems. Any person of average compassion can find a cause to call her own.

Even my hardened, black heart has an issue near-and-dear to me: The systematic, state-sanctioned murder of the Alaskan wolf population. The theory is that the wolves are over breeding in comparison to the natural prey in the area. The truth is that if any species is over populating, it is humans. Whose going to bring down our numbers by systematic slaughter? Oh, right, we’re doing that already. I digress…

Picture, if you will, a low flying small plane skimming the treetops in search of wolves. In the back are a couple of "hunters," barrels pointing out either side of the craft. Once found, the wolf is harassed into running by a near miss, then the pilot follows the fleeing canine until one of two things occur: the wolf staggers in exhaustion and is shot, or the wolf is shot while still running. How challenging is this for those "hunters"? Such behavior is both ignoble and cowardly, typical of the degeneration of human moral structures.

Some might argue this is sport. It is, after all, legal to "hunt" this way. This is no more sport than pumping quarters into a NASCAR simulator and testing the virtual asphalt. This is no more sport than blasting carnivorous aliens in the latest Half Life episode. Besides, it has all the moral qualities of intentionally shooting children in a war zone.

Please take a minute to sign a petition in defense of the wildlife. If you have a bit more time, consider writing a check for the good people trying to save one of the noblest species known to man. I say noble, because it’s a fair bet they wouldn’t choose to kill anything in such a craven manor as we do to them.

On Sundays’s post on Karmic convergence, I attempted a reasonable missive to conservative blogger of repute Jeff Goldstein, the recipient of a one-woman flame war gone overboard. I felt so good about myself that I left a link to my post on his message board. Unfortunately, my message was undermined by two hyper-liberal hyperbolic sentences I was fool enough not to delete. As result, I enjoyed some karmic backlash of my own. I deserved it.

One guy, calling him/herself Chaos, even left a message on a different post. It’s delicious:

And you wonder why progressives are stereotyped as immature, paranoid buffoons.

Hence the title of this posting.

Regarding the karma post, some interesting things were said in response. I’d like to thank the people who took the time and thought to leave their comments. I’ve been mulling them since Sunday night. Chaos piped in to inform me that "the vast majority of you clearly don’t know better." Thank you, but that is a ping pong ball. I can lob that at you and yours just as easily. No matter who says it, it is purely opinion and therefore improvable. Meanwhile, Pablo asked:

Why can’t it just be wrong? Why does condemnation have to go both ways regarding the clear wrongdoing of just one person? … Why isn’t it enough to note that one of yours is way off the rails?

This is why we never get anywhere.

He’s dead right: that is why we never get anywhere. He’s right to take me to task, I was foolish. I apologize. CosmicConservative also berated me calling me in my hypocritical stance.

But you had to put this sentence in there too: “No doubt her army of salivating lap-dog pit bulls are Googling the perp’s address…” and this: “To be sure, the right suffers from it’s share of whackjobs, but that’s their mystique. They benefit from that, feed on it as Ms. Malkin frequently demonstrates.”

And then you have this plea to Jeff Goldstein: “Please refrain from the very human tendency to generalize all progressives by her actions.”

Yeah. what you said. Please refrain from the very human tendency to generalize all conservatives by any one conservatives actions.

CC - I stand accused and I am guilty. He wasn’t finished, though:

Is it possible you don’t understand that when liberals get together to gush over the political hit-job movie “Fahrenheit 911″ that we view that as you “feeding on the mystique” of lies, exaggerations and intentional misrepresentations?

I am unaware of that happening. I’ve never seen the movie, and none of my friends have been known to "gush" over it (sounds dirty!) Lord of the Rings, maybe, but not F 9/11.

Cosmic also had another point to make, one I have noted before. (sic)

[I]t is amazaing how startingly similar the attitudes and condescenscion is on both sides. You could take a typical post on a right-wing website, replace “moonbat” with “wingnut”, replace “Kossack” with “Dittohead”, replace “traitor” with “baby-killer” and post that on a leftwing site and it would slide right into the thread as if it were born to be there.

It’s sad, really.

Quite.

Ahh, Zen and the Art of Paranoid Buffoonery… I learned something here: Stick my neck out, the hatchet will fall. All the faster when I deserve it.

The New York Times, often sited as mouthpiece of the Left, features two articles illuminating the ineptitude of our current leadership. One states, the Military Fails Some Widows Over Benefits ; pointing to poor record keeping in the military leading to denied or partial benefits received by young grieving military wives. At least, that’s the excuse the military is offering. Perhaps the fact that our country is near-bankrupt may have something to do with this?

Another article enumerated the ‘Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid from "scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles." Pretty much sums things up, no? Stupefying… I like that… Add to this the alleged $9 billion lost in Iraq due to "Severe inefficiencies and poor management", and an unmistakable pattern develops.

While the Lefty newspapers are selling papers on stories of our administration’s inability to administer, What does the right have to say? The Washington Post doesn’t cover these stories today. they’re still bolstering Cheney’s comments on surveillance policies with Mr. Bush piping in on the subject. The Post also has an article dubiously entitled: Changes in the Womb Tied to Homosexuality In Boys With Brothers. So much for the public interest. When will the Righties ‘fess up to the mess we’re in?

Okay: that last one was rhetorical…

This weekends hype is the "Terror Plot Targeting Sears Tower." Yesterday regurgitations of this so-called story was splashed over front pages nation wide. Here in Chicagoland, one cant turn one’s head in the newsstand without images of the city’s tallest structure in view. Subliminal message: the word "terror" in combination with high-rise buildings.

Never mind the family’s statements of the seven men - "They’re not terrorists;" forget the details of the "case" - that the group, headed by Narseal Batiste, a Chicago native, had no weapons, money, explosives, nor that they were four states removed from the scene of the not-yet-a-crime. Pay no attention to official comments from the family of Stanley Grant Phanor pointing out that he is a practicing Roman Catholic - not a Muslim. Ignore the FBI’s own assessment that the operation was more "aspirational than operational". We’re not supposed to notice these pesky details.

Besides the press and the established party know full well that most Americans don’t like to read, don’t have the patience to peruse small print. Instead, Americans rely on the sound bites and flashed images from TV to get their "information." The heavy editing as delivered through that medium tends to leave the facts on the proverbial cutting room floor.

The message is clear: Terror + High-rises = FEAR. It’s an election year, so we are to fear as much as we can. We should fear terrorists, gays, Muslims, Liberals, or anyone bold enough to question the verbal vomit of the likes of  "conservative commentators" (Rush Limbaugh comes to mind…) If we fulfill our role sufficiently, the Republicans retain their majority. If we cast aside our fears and look the at issues closely, we will see how we are manipulated, how baseless is our fear, how manufactured. Then perhaps, the crumbling foundation of Neo-con power can be challenged.

That is - if the Democrats can provide a unified front. But that’s a rant for another day.

Someday I hope to be half as eloquent as Frank Rich of the NY Times. In today’s editorial he bombasts the government with one of the strongest arguments I’ve recently heard for bringing the troops home.

Enumerating our failed war policy is easy. To do so with as few words as possible is the trick. Frank delivers. Regarding the false claim of “Standing down,” he counters with:

So let’s do the math. According to our own government, more Iraqis are standing up — some 263,000 at latest count. But we are not standing down. We are, instead, sending in more American troops. Where have we seen this shell game before

More great writing is evident, but the most poignant paragraph refers to the latest round of gay bashing legislation making the rounds in congress:

The marriage-amendment campaign will be kicked off tomorrow with a Rose Garden benediction by the president. Though the amendment has no chance of passing, Mr. Bush apparently still thinks, as he did in 2004, that gay-baiting remains just the diversion to distract from a war gone south.

When is enough more than enough? I can’t ask this rhetorically anymore. We must pull out. NOW!

Two things puzzle me: First, what political expediency drives the new emphasis on immigration? Prince George the Unready has hinted at border policy for years. Now, it’s paramount to wave his magic stick and make the problem go away. Except I’ve noticed that his stick needs recharging – Harry Potter he’s not. Perhaps I’ve become overly skeptical of our poor excuse for leadership, a hyper-jaded paranoia tells me to seek the unspoken catalyst of this sudden change in focus. My Spidey-sense tingles at the news that Our Favorite Shrubbery is looking to compromise on this issue, or any issue; this is plainly out of character.

Second, is our renewed group hugs with Moammar Gaddafi. Never mind his alleged mellowing in his old age, Libya holds the eighth largest oil field on the planet, as well as the dubious distinction of having one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, according to Freedom House. Obviously, our administrations focus on spreading Democracy is waning.

This is a telling shift from a group characterized by dogmatic narrow mindedness. It truly gives a progressive like me hope (careful there…) to see the “Bring ’em on” boys grasping at straws like this. Or are they watching as their political raft sheds timber? One can only hope.

There I go again…

I tried to compile a comprehensive list in service to the title of this entry, but there are only two things one needs to do:

Think for ones self.

Express those thought in a public manner.

That’s it! In the convoluted reasoning of the Conservative mind (is that an oxymoron?), comma, anyone not agreeable to the Republican agenda should either (a) become a political activist, or (b) forget the whole thing!

Now, I agree with the A-part. One should get out and canvas – that is if one wants to forgo responsibilities necessary to keeping one’s house, one’s kids in school, one’s job. The nasty thing is that the system we live in is skewed against the average person actively taking part in politics. Especially if that person has come into the whole political-awareness thingy later in life, has made some important and irrevocable decisions which affect how limited resources such as time and money are allocated. If every Joe would be able to affect politics directly, we would have no use for a professional political caste. Indeed, we might actually have a real democracy, which does not favor the incumbent party one bit: they’re not called “Republicans” for nothing…

But I digress.

The other choice, offered to me-and-mine by a good friend (who apparently hates my bloggings), is to emulate an ostrich. Wouldn’t that be convenient for the many-tiered aggregation of chicken-hawkishness who so favor the elimination of all independent thought: Just go away! Give up without a fight, without a voice; allow the unholy war to swallow your children and spit them out into black plastic bags (my greatest fear is for our misguided leadership to start another war – say, in Iran – and decide to reinstitute the draft just in time for my high-school-aged daughter to be swept up in the insanity and destroyed); forget entirely that the single thing that once made this country great – open political dialogue – is being stifled by the Archie Bunker clones of the neo-conservative, warhappy movement. And most of them are as guilty of armchair, couch-potato politics as I am.

To my good friend, Leucanthemum: I truly grieve that our polarity is influencing our hard-won friendship. However, I’ll be damned if your insistence on my getting some therapy will impress me in any other way than to incite my muse. Thank you for that.

Confident, cocky, lazy, dead.

This is a term I gleaned from a science fiction series from one of my my favorite authors, Tad Williams. In the novels this was the mantra, if you will, of the baddie. As an expression of a natural progression of human thought, I find it concise and lucid in its simplicity.

This phrase comes to mind as I read an article in the Washington Post regarding the Democrats current air of confidence and their alleged plans if they win back their majority. Seeing as this is the Post, the article is probably a subliminal call to arms for its Republican readership, as in: “Bad things are going to happen if you don’t turn out en masse next November.”

A couple grains of salt may be needed here. First, I am not all sure how confident my party-of-choice is, although I have no illusions about the propensity of some members to talk stupid, tough talk. Second, I am not sure that if the Dems win their prize, I doubt they are cohesive enough to affect any change, given their predilection toward infighting. As for immediate sweeping rollbacks of the Republican agenda – in their collective dreams!

As the leading phrase illustrates: confidence leads to cockiness; cockiness give way to laziness; laziness, in the context of dangerous situations – as this upcoming election surely is to many career politicians of both camps - will lead to death. If I might pretend that anyone in congress would listen to a puny blogger like me, I would give words of advice:

Tread Cautiously…

Illinois is getting on the impeachment bandwagon! State Rep. Karen Yarbrough has, per rules outlined by Thomas Jefferson that allow a state legislature to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president, submitted such a bill to the Illinois Legislature - HJR0125. 17 State Reps are now co-sponsors.

Read the full text.

If you live in Illinois, why not lend your name to this petition sponsored by Illinois coalition for Peace & Justice calling to impeachment. Or maybe write to you stale Senator or Representative urging them to get with the program. If you don’t know them, find out at Project Vote Smart. If you live elsewhere, perhaps you could nudge your state legislature to start their own impeachment vote. Let’s get this wagon rolling!

According to a Washington Post article, certain scientist as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are experiencing attempts at censoring their findings about climate change and its full affects. Typical to the regressionist mindset of our current out-of-touch non-leaders, officials in Washington are trying to use soviet-era tactics of stifling certain scientists from disclosing what US taxpayer dollars are spent to discover.

Lip service during State of the Union Addresses leads the gullible public to believe that our President cares about humanity’s impact on the planet. Intimidation tactics in the halls of science speaks volumes about how he doesn’t give a damn. Here’s the excuse

Administration officials said they are following long-standing policies that were not enforced in the past. Kent Laborde, a NOAA public affairs officer who flew to Boulder last month to monitor an interview Tans did with a film crew from the BBC, said he was helping facilitate meetings between scientists and journalists.

“We’ve always had the policy, it just hasn’t been enforced,” Laborde said. “It’s important that the leadership knows something is coming out in the media, because it has a huge impact. The leadership needs to know the tenor or the tone of what we expect to be printed or broadcast.”

Here is the reality:

NOAA scientists, however, cite repeated instances in which the administration played down the threat of climate change in their documents and news releases. Although Bush and his top advisers have said that Earth is warming and human activity has contributed to this, they have questioned some predictions and caution that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide could damage the nation’s economy.

The American Economy is today’s Holy Grail. Everything that Washington does that does not involve the threat of terrorism is linked to the nebulous construct of the US economy. We are selling the planet and the air and water our children’s children will need to bolster the economic growth of the world’s richest nation. Sell tomorrow for today’s profit. Censor the doomsayers of science, for the economic foundation that our nation stands upon is a weak, crumbling structure supported by polutocratic policies and erosion of oil assets. Peak oil is past us now. We need something better, but our policy-makers cringe at taking the necessary steps because it might damage an economy destined to crash unless its dependence on oil for energy is replaces.

Will such changes cause economic upheaval? Yes. It is inevitable that such widespread changes will hurt our society in the short term, but to ignore the obvious truth of our need to restructure our economic infrastructure is to guarantee devastation in the long term. If we try, we might fail, but if we don’t try we sill surely fail. Yet not trying to revamp our industrial processes is exactly what our government is doing.

We are destined to fall due to shortsighted, fearful mismanagement as exemplified by our administration’s paltry attempts at muzzling insurmountable scientific evidence. To be a global leader again, the United States should pick up the mantle of renewable resources and alternate energy, despite the difficulties, and show the world our latent can-do abilities. We used to know how to get things done. Perhaps we can yet find a way.