Letter to Republicans

To the Republican Party:

I am sick and tired of you people. I have held my nose and voted for you in the past for reasons of national security and because you promised fiscal restraint and efficiency; but not this time, you just tipped that precarious balance. First McCain, whom I thought was independent minded and might bring some rational middle-of-the-road thinking to your party, impulsively pulls Sarah Palin out of some hat to rub my nose in all that I abhor about your party’s social agenda, and then you fail miserably in the fiscal responsibility “area” you claim to be experts at. Mind you, it is not just that you probably pushed us into a ten year recession by failing to pass the “bailout”, hell, you ran the executive and legislative branches of the government for four years and made a complete hash of it; Nancy Pelosi is a most unpleasant woman, but she's right.

“It’s ‘ovah’ baby!" You can kiss my vote good-bye. I am pressing that big red “Democratic” button without even looking at who is running for what. I hate your social policies, you are pathetic financial managers; and as far as national security goes, hey if we get hit enough times, even the democrats will grow some balls.

Letter to The People

The County Election by George Caleb Bingham

People, do not be swayed by the politicians who are currently claiming to be on your side by bloviating about not passing the Paulson plan; they are not on your side, they are just running for re-election. These same politicians, now spouting the wonders of the free market[1] and how we should let it take care of our[2] financial crisis, were not only asleep at the wheel when it all started unraveling, but were instrumental in loosening the oversight conditions that might have helped us avoid this situation in the first place. And they did so by advocating for the same free market conditions they are pushing for now. Educate yourselves and throw the bums out.

[1] which does indeed have wonders; this not being one of those times in which one can marvel at them.
[2] and don’t be fooled into thinking this is not “our” financial crisis- read my “letter to the Congress”.

Letter to Congress

Look, there is no such thing as Wall Street separate from Main Street, they are just two sides of the same coin. If one side falls through the gutter grate, the other one does too, and you are left with no coin. We set up, with your help, an economy based on credit; and if the credit institutions we now depend on go under, it’s not as if we can just sit on terra firme and rejoice that “those crooks” are getting what they deserve; the floor will disappear from under us as well. If Wall Street goes, Mr. Main Street will no longer be able to borrow to buy a house, or buy a car, or start a landscaping business, or keep his plumbing business afloat, have a chicken farm, or start Microsoft. So Congresspeople, it’s time to help Mr. Main Street by helping Wall Street; the earthquake that will wipe out Wall Street is not about to spare Main Street; remember it’s all one town.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all historical facts appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” - Karl Marx

...and you Mr. Main Street, who did not have enough money to buy that house and still went ahead and did it anyway, this is your fault too, you were just as greedy as those so-called predators you seem to think preyed on you. Thanks for putting my retirement a little bit farther into the future than I had foreseen...

Palin People Allow Only Cameras

I am not sure what Palin’s people are doing, but I think that keeping the press from reporting on her while she is meeting with foreign leaders would seriously backfire as a plan. Maybe I am just weird, but this kind of action only goes to strengthen the conviction us skeptics out here have that she is not fit to govern at the high level she is slated to do if the Republican Party wins this November. After all, if she had something insightful to say, I would think her people would actually want to disseminate it, not keep it under wraps...

If It Smells Like It and Looks Like It

No, I am not referring to our current electoral season but to Andres Serrano’s latest work. Seeing an ad for his current show in the latest issue of Art Forum brought to mind a conversation I had with an acquaintance a while back. Said acquaintance was an art lover in the way that the average person who likes art likes it; not in the way that people who are familiar with the art world have had to understand it. Your average person would not ever have come in contact with Serrano’s work had the evangelicals who occasionally run the congress not seen to it that he become national news, thereby launching him into stardom, sending the price of his photographs sky high, and forever insuring his place in the anus, I mean, annals of art history.

My acquaintance broached the subject of Piss Christ and told me how he hated it and how offensive it was to him. In vain I tried to explain what a lovely photograph it was. But to see it as lovely one of course has to forget that it is the picture of a crucifix floating in piss, and my friend could not see past subject to form. I then tried to embody the voice of Eleanor Heartney and launched into a lame explanation of its content (as opposed to contents) by evoking the significance of body fluids in the Catholic religion. Even I couldn’t get past the nonsense I was spouting.

This season Mr. Serrano asks us to contemplate big beautiful pictures of piles of shit; this time with no little crucifix atop a mound[1] like a mini Corcovado. The medium is the message best describes Serrano’s work. His photographs are big, glossy, well printed, and chromatically pleasing; in essence, they are nice big pictures whose prettiness overshadows any content, if content there really is. In the end, after you pay your ten thou and take one of these home, “whatchu got” is just one more pile o’ shit.

[1] though at least that might actually bring Jesse Helms back from the grave so that we could again have a rollicking good time of “us” versus “them”.

How Different is Alaska Really

Ted Stevens, having been in the senate for 40 years, is running for office again while on trial for fraud and corruption, and probably will be re-elected.... Hmmmm I guess it's not all that different up there...

one more monday and another phone pic

It ain't the only thing's broke...

Inference: Faulty Reasoning at the Best of Times

Having received the following forwarded message with no explanation to its contents, I had to ask myself what exactly was its significance...

I am 42 years old,
I love the outdoors,
I hunt,
I am a Republican reformer,
I have taken on the Republican Party establishment,
I have five children,
I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor's office.
Did you guess?

space space space ...Tah dah!

I am Teddy Roosevelt in 1900

... Knowing that the sender always sends me fun things and puzzles, my inquiry dealt with trying to surmise the intent of the author of this missive in releasing such a string of meaningless words to the world at large, at this time, and in this place. Although the above facts could refer to Teddy Roosevelt, it is not a very complete list about him or of his accomplishments. In fact it is designed to mislead and to coral one into thinking of someone else whose life would sound exactly the same were we to de-contextualize it in this same fashion. So what is one to think...

I am 42 years old.
I love the outdoors; so much so, that I set aside huge swatches of it as national parks where nobody can drill for oil EVER.
I hunt.
I am a Republican reformer from the time before Reagan made a pact with the devil to include religious ideologues into the party.
I have taken on the Republican Party establishment.
I have five children, none of them pregnant out of wedlock.
I attended Harvard and graduated Magna cum Laude.
I wrote several books (one about an artist).
I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor's office;
But before that I had several jobs, including being President of the Board of Police Commissioners in the biggest city in the nation, where I instituted meaningful reforms.
Oh, and I also was secretary of the navy; but whose counting.
Did you guess?

space space space Tah-dah:

I am not Sarah Palin in 2008!

phone pic of the week

Reading material at doctor's office
--- hmmmm, what to read...

Cereus Slide Show

Summer's End

go to:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ktmrchn/Cereus02#
and press slideshow to view

Black Monday

Given an hour, this http://www.q-and-a.org/Program/?ProgramID=1197 is worth watching. It gives one a good insight in the Freddie and Fannie debacle. Also gives a clear picture of the shenanigans engaged in by our illustrious congress. Washington is a culture I don’t think anybody can change; it’s a black hole of a sewer whose gravitational pull ensnares anyone near it. McCain says he is going to change it; but he’s been in there for about 3 decades, and despite making some noise, he hasn’t done it. Obama speaks like he has been drinking from that tit for 30 years himself. ... May there just be light after black Monday...

DFW Hangs Himself Leaving One More Lacuna

Woke up too early this morning, turned on the radio and was shocked by the news that David Foster Wallace had hung himself. I only knew and, yes, loved David Foster Wallace through his writing, so my pain from this loss is at best very abstract. However it comes on the heels of another loss by hanging which was a lot less abstract and much more personal; and around which I’m still trying to wrap my head. Wallaces death ain’t helpin’ any.

I understand wanting to be no more, but the step between here and there is something most of us can’t begin to comprehend[1]. And ever since I heard that Jerzy Kozinski killed himself by placing a plastic bag over his head and taping it shut at the neck I’ve wondered at the strength of will necessary to in fact take that step. I understand pain and I’ve seen desperation, and yet that explains nothing, for it is hard to understand how a person can feel so much pain without understanding the pain that taking one’s life might cause in others[2]. Obviously at that moment, nothing else exists but the self and the act.

Ah well, people I admire are gone, and I remain, left to wonder if Wallace left a note, and if he did, did it contain one of his wondrous footnotes.

[1] Even though suicide seems to be the leading cause of death in the world: one million deaths by suicide per year. That being said, in an often crappy world such as this, that still means most of us trudge on, don’t commit it, and still can’t comprehend it.

[2] for “soul pain", the kind that must lead one to commit suicide, implies empathy.

In France Pope Decries Secular Power-hungry Materialist Culture

...This from the man that wears Prada shoes and lives in the Vatican (the seat of the all-powerful Holy Roman Empire, remember, the one that amasses vast amounts of wealth)...

Bikinis: not just for looks

A few weeks ago, during the Olympics, I just couldn’t believe the amount of infantile media coverage (no pun intended) about the women's beach volleyball team’s choice of attire. I finally had enough after one more story about it on NPR and wrote them the letter that follows. They actually read an edited version of it in their “letters” segment!

Dear ATC,

Why Is America all hung up about the use of bikinis in the women’s beach volleyball competition? I grew up in Brazil, where the bikini is a national uniform and going to the beach the national pastime; bikinis are truly the most comfortable attire for sandy beaches. Why does this country have to be so sophomoric about their, in this case, practical use. Seriously, this country does nothing but sell sex and sexual innuendo in all shapes and forms through all types of media all the time; and now the public is getting giggly and hung up about athletes wearing bikinis for practical reasons!? There is not one night that I can’t find a lap dancer in some show or another on prime-time television; why is nobody giggling about that... Gimme a break, grow up America!

Sarah Palin is no feminist

Why have people had such a hard time articulating what is wrong with Sarah Palin from a feminist context? Maybe it’s because the feminism card is even more guilt inducing and harder to play than the race card. That can only be a good thing because it means that the rights fought for by true feminists, which Sarah Palin is most definitely not, are finally ingrained in our social consciousness.

The definition of feminism can sometimes be hard to pin down due to its long history and the mutations it undergoes as it radiates around the world to serve women of different ethnic backgrounds. I do not want to denigrate its function as a tool of emancipation for women all over the world; but when some of us say that Sarah Palin is not a feminist, it has nothing to do with how feminism can function to help women in, let’s say, Chad. When we put the words “Sarah Palin” and “Feminism” together, we are referring to the garden variety type of western feminism developed in America and Europe. The kind of feminism that calls for voting rights, the rights to contract, property rights, and the right to wade in the sewer of party politics, as well as, a woman’s right to bodily integrity and autonomy. That is, feminism does not only call for women to have the same rights men have in the market place and at home; but due to our different physiology, it also calls for the right to safe and legal abortions and the right to contraception, which can only come about with comprehensive education in what that means.

Sarah Palin has indeed functioned within the system that feminists have helped to create, after all she has used it to float up to the top of the big digestive system that is our current political scene; but she has eschewed the part of feminism that calls for bodily integrity and autonomy for all. Her views on that come from a paradigm that is anathema to feminist ideals. Dick Morris, advisor to Bill Clinton and now conservative political commentator (I suppose working for the Clintons might turn anyone into a conservative), lauds Palin’s personal reproductive choices, and so do I, in as much as they are her choices, a word that comes into play only when there is more than one option.

Palin has not been in office long enough to legislate in the matter of reproductive choice; but her views on the subject make it clear which way she will go given the time; she will curtail women’s choices, just as she curtailed those of her 17 year old child. She is no feminist, and nobody should have a hard time saying that, regardless of her strengths as a woman.