Archive for June, 2009

Republican Dingbat Award

Monday, June 29th, 2009

It is time for another in a series of awards for stupid comments made by our friends on the right.

As everyone knows by now, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) cheated on his wife, betrayed his family, and left the state incommunicado for five days to fly off to Argentina to carry on his affair with an Argentinean reporter.

Last week, Rush Limbaugh blamed Sanford’s indiscretions on President Obama.

“This is almost like, ‘I don’t give a damn, the country’s going to Hell in a handbasket, I just want out of here,’” Limbaugh said. “[Sanford] had just tried to fight the stimulus money coming to South Carolina. He didn’t want any part of it; he lost the battle. He said, ‘What the hell. I mean, the federal government’s taking over — what the hell, I want to enjoy life.’”

Now, Sanford’s affair has been going on for quite some time. Obama’s powers are great but I didn’t know he could reverse causality. I bet Obama is responsible for Rush’s drug addiction as well.

I think I liked conservatives better when they were claiming everyone is responsible for their own behavior.

Not to be outdone by Rush, Michele Bachman (R-Minn) enhanced her reputation as chief nutjob by claiming that she would refuse to cooperate with the 2010 census because:

“If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.” […]  “I’m not saying that that’s what the administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.”

Ali Frick fact-checks Bachmann’s claims here:

Most importantly, the questions that Bachmann is so concerned about — questions she suggests might somehow lead to internment — are not new questions (not to mention they frequently overlap with information given to the IRS every year). Census questions on race have been asked since 1790; home language since 1890; rent since 1880; and income since 1940. The Census has asked what kind of heating fuel heats Americans’ homes since 1940

Does Bachmann know it is illegal to refuse to participate in the census?

Actually, I think it would be a good thing if right wingers don’t participate in the census. Democrats could pick up lots of house seats.

And wouldn’t most conservatives have supported Japanese interment during WW II?

I think I liked conservatives better when they were law-abiding, authoritarian prigs instead of paranoid, criminally-insane anarchists.

Palin/Bachman 2012 will make every woman proud.

 

Update: What’s Going on in Iran?

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

I have no idea.

So I will let the expert speak. Here is Juan Cole’s weekend take on the politics.

At his Friday prayers sermon on Friday, hard line cleric Ahmad Khatami (no relation to former president and liberal Mohammad Khatami) called for capital punishment for leaders of the popular demonstrations against the outcome of the election. […]

Iran’s opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi vowed to continue his campaign for a reexamination of the results of the recent presidential election, which he and his followers argued was marred by fraud […]

Although the regime has found means of stopping big street protests for the moment, the Iranian elite is still deeply divided over the legitimacy of the election process, and as long as no consensus or compromise is reached, the crisis will continue on some level. […]

Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi weighed in on the crisis on Thursday, urging national conciliation and rejecting any purely cosmetic solutions. This statement is significant because it constitutes a clear rejection of the stance of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has declared the issue settled. You would not need practical reconciliation if the issue was settled.

All sorts of solutions are being floated by various influential figures, including actually holding a run-off between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi; or having Ahmadinejad resign without requiring a confession of fraud; or having the Expediency Council resolve the dispute (it is headed by Mousavi ally Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; or even removing Khamenei and replacing him with a council of high clergymen. Most of these suggestions are highly unlikely to come to pass. The most likely outcome is that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad will crush their critics. Whether this repression can work in the short, medium or long term is not clear.

The phase of mass protest in the aftermath of the controversial election results of June 12 has drawn to a close for the moment. Movement activists can no longer put tens of thousands of protesters in the street because the security forces are too well organized and too loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to allow it. Opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi has been increasingly indecisive on tactics even if he has been steadfast in demanding a rematch with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The bad news. Rafsanjani throws Moussevi under the bus:

In a bad sign for Mousavi, his ally former president Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani appeared to desert him on Sunday. [...]  Rafsanjani referred to the recent incidents after the results of the presidential elections, saying: “The incidents were the results of complicated plots by obscure sources with the aim of creating separation and differences between the people and the system. And with the aim of making the people distrust the Islamic system.”
He said Ayatollah Khamene’i’s expedience in extending the deadline by the Guardian Council for a better study of the issues and providing convincing explanations and clearing any doubts was a very valuable measure. He added: “In my opinion, the recent order by the leadership was one of the very valuable decisions he made. That is he asked the Guardian Council to extend the legal time, which was over, to study the complaints. And a group was appointed to help the Guardian Council with this regard.”

and on the events:

CNN is reporting that 5,000 dissidents marched silently on Shariati street near a major mosque in downtown Tehran, ostensibly in honor of cleric Mohammad Beheshti, who was killed in a bombing by the terrorist organization Mojahedin-e Khalq (Holy Warriors of the People) in 1981. But in fact they were protesting the stealing of the recent presidential election and the betrayal of the ideals for which Beheshti died. By casting their march in the terms of a commemoration of a martyr to the revolution at the hands of a despised dissident group, the crowd cleverly made it difficult for hard liners to depict them as agents of a foreign power or revolutionaries seeking an overturn of the government. CNN says that they walked slowly as part of their protest, despite attempts of government security forces to move them along.
The resort to licensed, legal demonstrations is a way for the movement to keep making news and coming in public, something the regime refuses to allow in the case of unlicensed protests. Opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi is alleged to have promoted today’s event via Facebook.

 

Viva La Facebook!

 

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The Chameleon RIP

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Michael Jackson’s Thriller album (and associated music videos) my be the finest pop album of all time. He certainly deserves the title “King of Pop”.

His music combined the rhythmic complexity of jazz, the urbane, hip sophistication of soul, and the urgency and sonic innovation of rock.

This ability to occupy multiple, musical identities made his music great; but his ability to disrupt the binary oppositions that constitute our social identities riveted our attention to him long after the musical inspiration waned.

He was male and female, black and white, man and child, celebrity and recluse. Who was he “really”. I suppose people who knew him might be able to answer that question, but I doubt that it really has an answer.

It can’t be said that he moved among these identities effortlessly. Perhaps his life was a train wreck because a good life requires commitment and purpose and such an abused and damaged soul was not up to finding purpose within the crosscurrents of such complexity.

I think celebrities (if they are thoughtful) have a terrible burden. They must inevitably ask questions like “am I really who people think I am?” and “do I deserve my acclaim?” A yes or no answer to either question might destroy the personality.

At any rate, we are poorer for his loss.