Biden — His Time? Delaware Senator Joseph Biden has formally announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. He has for months had a website up to promote his candidacy, so this is no surprise. My friend Joe in Belleville (a suburb on the northern border of my city, Newark, NJ, that should be annexed to Newark) has been very favorably disposed to Biden's candidacy, and has directed my attention to Biden's website a number of times. I have been unable to share Joe's enthusiasm.
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(I once saw Biden in a clubcar on a train from Washington headed for New York. He was drinking a glass of milk(!) on his way home, and got off in Wilmington. He apparently commutes between DC and Delaware rather than residing in Washington. Is that a good use of his time? Perhaps he can unwind on the train, and do some reading away from the pressurecooker.)
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Biden's main claim to distinction from other Democratic candidates for President is his plan for a federal Iraq. Alas, this is nothing like a new idea. I advocated such an approach here February 1st, 2005, and in that post, cite a paper by the conservative Heritage Foundation to the same effect from March 7, 2003. That paper is still online.
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I summarized my stance thus:

At end, Iraq needs a government that is virtually identical to that of the United States. Why the U.S. pattern? Because the United States was originally 13 separate countries, each of which saw itself as different, in greater or lesser measure, from every other, and was suspicious of all the others and afraid of being overwhelmed. So during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, each state voiced its concerns and addressed ways of reassuring everyone that they would not be bullied by other states. This is the "Great Compromise of 1787" that the Heritage Foundation article above refers to, which is also called the "Connecticut Compromise". * * *
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So good luck to the people of Iraq in this brave new world. It is really not necessary to reinvent the wheel to ride into the future. The basic work was done in Philadelphia in 1787. You just have to write the plan down in Arabic — and Kurdish.
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Iraqis deserve what we have. Maybe they can get it by organizing themselves as we did.

To the extent other Democrats do not advocate federalism for Iraq, Biden should be credited with some sense in that area. But what else does he have to offer?
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PBS's NewsHour today mentioned that Joe Biden has been in Congress for 34 years. A Google search for "biden act", to find legislation that his name applies to, turned up one: the Helms-Biden Act of 1999, which authorized the U.S. to withhold contributions from the United Nations, including for peacekeeping, to force reform in that organization. That measure did achieve some results, but the U.S. still pays much too much for the UN, as compared to other countries.
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What else has Biden accomplished in 34 years? Heck if I know.
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Conservatives, however, hate him, and tried to embarrass him with a silly, stupid, ridiculous attack on comments he made about Barack Obama as quoted by The New York Observer:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

ABC News summarizes the firestorm of make-believe indignation from the racist scum of the Radical Right thus:

Immediately the conservative media establishment — Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, bloggers — publicly pounced. At Townhall.com, Mary Katherine Ham wrote: "A clean black man? The first black guy on the American political scene who can both shower regularly and speak properly? Is that really what Biden thinks? If a Republican had said this, we'd have a national outpouring of grief over the residual ignorance and racial insensitivity in our country, and the guy would be in sensitivity training until around about the time John Kerry is elected president."

The Observer's current issue says of Biden:

Although he admits to a tendency to "bloviate," he thinks that an aggressive advocate with rough edges might be just what the party needs right now. "Democrats nominated the perfect blow-dried candidates in 2000 and 2004," he said, "and they couldn’t connect."

So what did this man who praises aggressive plain speaking do? He apologized for his remarks about Obama! What a wuss.
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What he should have said is something like this:

Oh, shut the fuck up, you racist, bullshit-artist hypocrites. I don't want to hear your garbage. Nobody wants to hear your crap but the neo-Nazi, Confederate slime who are your fan base. Everybody knows that when you shout "prejudiced" at me and other Liberals, you are just a thief shouting "Thief!" to distract people from your own sins. Go fuck yourselves. I don't give a rat's ass what you say about anything. The decent, intelligent people of this country are tired of your idiocy and slanders, and the horrendous mess you have made of this country and its foreign policy. You can't embarrass me. You only embarrass yourselves.

Would Biden say anything like that? Of course not. He had a chance on Comedy Central's Daily Show tonite, whose audience would love to hear him tell the Radical Right to go fuck itself. But he wussed out yet again.
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Joseph Biden doesn't have the guts to attack the Radical Right even in a friendly venue. How can he win the Presidency and defend this country from foreign dangers if he doesn't even have the guts to attack the Enemy Within with words? He does not have The Right Stuff to be President.
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Have another glass of milk, Senator, and leave the Presidency to tuf guys.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,084 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:39 PM

 
Posturing on the Border. The United States Government has made us a laughingstock among illegal aliens and drugrunners by pretending to defend the border with National Guard troops but instructing those troops to run like a dog with its tail between its legs if armed illegals attack. One particularly appalling incident occurred in the area of Sasabe in western Arizona, a quarter mile inside the U.S. border, on January 3rd. Not only did four Tennessee National Guardsmen not do anything except report the 'incursion' to the Border Patrol, which tracked the invaders back to the border but did not catch anybody, but the U.S. Government is actually honoring them today(!) for their refusal to defend the border!
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Dubya is astoundingly brazen in his duplicity, isn't he? What the hell is the point of putting National Guardsmen on the border if they do nothing but run when armed invaders challenge them?
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What exactly is our military for if it allows armed invasions across our borders in advancement of drug smuggling?
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The current borders of the United States do not serve our interests. Mexico is a thoroughly corrupt society that oppresses its people economically and socially, and impels millions to flee to the U.S. or enter criminal activity such as drug smuggling simply to survive. No half measures will suffice.
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Mexico must be brought into the Union, developed, cleansed of corruption and stripped of drug crops and drug cartels. Its people must be given education (in both Spanish and English), decent housing, electrification, sanitary water and sewage treatment systems, and jobs in their own area so they don't have to move to states farther north, where they cause displacement, a drop in wages across the board, affecting many industries, and cultural conflicts.
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Had we done this in 1847, when we controlled the whole country after the Mexican War, all of Mexico would today be prosperous, bilingual (or English-speaking) Sunbelt states where our seniors could retire safely and live comfortably in the sun on nothing more than Social Security. Instead, Mexico is a cancer that threatens our own national health.
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Guest-worker programs, tho a step in the right direction, are wholly inadequate to alter the misery that impels a vast human migration across a border that serves little rational purpose. Our peoples and cultures are gradually blending, and we are all better for that meld. It's time to move to the next stage in our integration: statehood for up to 10 states to be created from Mexico. The solution to the troubles at the border is to erase that border.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,080 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:19 PM

 
Perpetual Foreigners. This year's White House Correspondents Association Dinner will be hosted by comic/impersonator Rich Little. Rich Little is CANADIAN. He has lived in this country for DECADES but REFUSES U.S. CITIZENSHIP. Far from being honored with the distinction of being the featured performer at a dinner in this Nation's capital at which the President of the United States is 'roasted', Rich Little should be DEPORTED, as should all foreigners who live here, make LOTS of money here, but absolutely refuse our citizenship. Deport them all, every last one, starting with Rich Little — before the correspondents' dinner April 21st.
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It's bad enuf that we allow millions of illegals to work in this country, taking jobs not all of which, by any stretch of the imagination, Americans wouldn't take. Mexicans and other illegals have produced depressed wages in the construction industry, among others, which used to provide very good jobs to Americans. But when the very best jobs in this country are also taken by foreigners, what's left for Americans?
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This is our country, but we seem to have no pride in our citizenship. We let just anyone march in and take jobs away from us, then refuse our citizenship because tho our money is good enuf, our citizenship is not. The hell with that, and the hell with them.
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We need to get tuf on immigration. It's one thing to allow people to come here and make a new life. It's quite another to do nothing when they refuse to heed the requirements of our laws but just march across the border as of right, and live here for decades without taking citizenship.
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The United States is an "immigration society", unlike most countries. Altho I see a claim online that Germany is in actuality an immigration country, because 10.4% of its population (at any given time) is foreign-born (as compared to only 11.7% for the U.S. — but one wonders if that correctly figures in illegals), the German statistics apparently include people of German ancestry who were expelled from other parts of Europe to Germany after World War II. Moreover,

Foreigners do not stay permanently in Germany. There is quite a bit of outmigration to their former home countries. Thus, in the boom year 2000, immigration was at gross 841 000, whereas gross emigration ran at 674 000 so that net immigration was 167 000. Net immigration in the period 1995-2002 was 211 000 annually; this is 2.5 persons per thousand of the population.3 The average duration of stay in Germany is 15.6 years (end of 2002). This means that in contrast to a traditional immigration country like the United States or Australia part of the immigrants return to their home countries.

Germany revised its law on citizenship only in the year 2000 to permit the children of foreigners who are born in Germany to have German citizenship. Before then, it was difficult or impossible for foreigners to become naturalized citizens of Germany, because that right was restricted to people of German ethnicity. A Turk born in Germany was still regarded as a Turk. Many other countries have now or have in the past had similar laws based on "jus sanguinis", Latin for "right of blood".
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The U.S., by contrast, provided in the original Constitution, in 1787, for naturalization of foreigners. Our laws have always been generous, as compared to the rest of the world. But there's a difference between being generous and being played for a sap. What we did not do in 1787, so need to do now, is tell immigrants that if they want to stay here long-term, they must become citizens, or they will be expelled after some reasonable period.
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What would be reasonable? Immigrants can apply for citizenship after 5 years' residence. If they have not done so within 6 years, they should be notified that they will be expelled, permanently, if they do not apply for citizenship within 1 more year and pass all the requirements within 1 additional year. That would allow them to be here a maximum of 8 years without taking U.S. citizenship. That is more than generous.
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Once expelled, foreigners who refuse U.S. citizenship should be barred even from visiting this country, for life. I don't care if they want to visit a dying relative, they can't. Get in or get out. And stay out.
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Reside in Canada if you want to be Canadian, Mr. Little — and all you other resident Canadians. We'll let you visit for a couple of months in the dead of winter, sure. But if you want to live here year-round, become a citizen. If you're so proud of being Canadian, live in your beloved Canada. If you actually prefer to live in the United States, take our citizenship. Either/or. Not both.
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Canadians are not the only gross offenders. There are hundreds of thousands of other foreigners who live here for decades but refuse our citizenship without end. Deport them all. Every single one.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,075 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:48 PM

 
Odd Man Out, Good Man In, Odd Man In; Killing "Shovvez". The unspeakable bore John Kerry has dropped out of active pursuit of the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. Good. He stood almost no chance of winning either the nomination or the office anyway.
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Bill Richardson, the half-Hispanic Governor of New Mexico with the Anglo name, has announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination, and rightly touts his remarkable "CV" (curriculum vitae; that's résumé ('rezzumay') to you and me). Now, if only he were from the North rather than West, I could easily support him. But, tho he attended school in the North, he is still from the West, and we have had too many Western (and Southern) Presidents of late. It's time for a Northern perspective to control the White House. Of the present Democratic contenders, Barack Obama is the only acceptable Northerner to me. I have no use for Hillary Clinton, a woman who can't be trusted because she is suddenly pretending to be what she has never been seen to be, a moderate conservative.
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On AOL today, I saw a banner ad for an organizing committee for the oddest man in major American politics, the lunatic John McCain. I don't know if he was insane before he was taken prisoner by the Communists of North Vietnam, and confined to the Hanoi Hilton for years of misery and brainwashing. But he's clearly just plain nuts today, and must never be permitted near The Button that could launch World War III. His politics are all over the map, and tho he is affable, an affable loon with no discernible consistency on principles, who takes mutually contradictory stands on issues and leaders, is utterly unworthy of public respect or support.
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Now, you may be thinking that World War III is no longer a real possibility, since the Soviet Empire fell. You'd be wrong. Communist China — and it is still "Communist China", not simply "China" — very recently conducted a successful test of a satellite-destroying missile. There is no other explanation for such an adventure than that Communist China is preparing to make war upon the United States. Destroying U.S. reconnaissance and communications satellites is essential for a successful war against the United States, be it a full-scale (world-spanning) military war or a limited war against the technological infrastructure that powers our economy, preparatory to a major ground war to carve out a sphere of Chinese dominance over Asia that will be perpetually free from U.S. interference.
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I am not privy to the minds of China's leaders, so do not know how far China's ambitions go. Do the Chinese aspire only to hegemony over East Asia and the Pacific to, say, Hawaii? All of Asia? The Middle East and Africa too? The world? I don't know. Perhaps they will start with one, relatively modest objective and, if resistance is lite, move up a step or two, or four or seven, and drive for total world domination. What I do know is that the United States does indeed face military war against Communist China within at most 20 years, and probably as little as a decade — and we are paying for China's military buildup against us with our massive transfer of wealth from the pockets of consumers to the war chest of the People's Liberation Army.
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Closer to home, Venezuela's nutjob President, Hugo Chavez, is about to become the first new dictator in Latin America in decades — if we let him.
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That's CHOV-veS, not SHOV-veZ, as so many stupid, stupid people in media say. How can so many people in a country bombarded by Spanish every day, and in which Hispanics are the largest minority, not know that Spanish says CH the way English says it? Why do so many morons insist on pronouncing every damned foreign language as tho it were French? BaeZHing. Chinese is French, you know. SHovezz. Spanish is French, you know (except of course if "Chavez" were French, the Z would be silent!). FaluZHah. Arabic is French, you know. Every language on Earth but English is French!
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Oh, no, that's wrong. Only French is French.
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When we write a non-romanic language (a language that does not write itself in the Roman alphabet) in English, we use the conventions of English pronunciation. Thus, the J in "Beijing" (which should be written "Bayjing") is pronounced like English-J, not French-J. The J in Falujah is the English-J, not French-J.
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Spanish is written in the same alphabet as English, but has its own sounds, not those of French. By coincidence, the CH in Spanish is the same as the CH in English ("church"), not the same as the French CH in "chercher" ('shairshay'). But stupid people in this country can't be bothered to learn multiple sound systems for multiple foreign languages. It is so much easier just to apply the sound system of one, French (as tho they know that one), to all foreign languages! Morons.
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Anyway, Hugo Chavez aspires to become absolute dictator over Venezuela. His supporters seem about to give him that power. The United States should, today, say very forthritely that we won't allow that: "The day of dictators in Latin America is over, and we will kill any dictator that rises anywhere in our Hemisphere."
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We won't have to invade. We need just commence a "Shock and Awe" campaign against Venezuela, bombing and destroying every place he might conceivably be until he is dead, whether it takes one sortie or 600. We will kill him. And if a few thousand Venezuelan supporters of his dictatorship happen to die with him, so much the better.
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There is one thing democracy cannot do: end democracy. If Venezuela's elected representatives are weary of democracy, they should resign, and let people who will preserve democracy take their place, not turn over their powers to a dictator. Of course, if they are dead, there will need to be new elections to replace them, won't there? Huge CHavez should be on notice: if you accept dictatorial powers, it will be the last thing you ever do.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,065 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:25 PM

 
Enjoying Canadian Independence. Starting tomorrow, the United States Government is going to bolster Canadian independence, by treating Canadians (and Mexicans and Bermudans) like every other foreigner. They will have to show a passport to enter the United States by air. Within a few months, they may also be required to show a passport to enter by car, bus, truck, or rail as well. Isn't having a border between us fun?!
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Canadians supposedly want the border there, so let them show their passport every time they cross. If that means that lines at the border are twice or three times as long as they have been, or that truckers lose an extra hour or two per trip, so what? Surely the splendor of Canadian independence is worth a little hassle and delay at the border. Americans will also have to show a passport. If you don't have one, don't worry. Just spend $97 and you can get one valid for ten years. Don't see why you should have to spend $97 just to see the other side of Niagara Falls? Well, then, just stay on the New York side. There's plenty to see in each country. Tourists don't have to cross the border. Shippers? Well, they do have to cross, but delay and searches are just part of the price of doing business internationally.
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Hey, while you're at it, Border Patrol, why don't you inspect every few Canadian vehicles for pot? Canadians are notoriously soft on marijuana. An attempt to completely decriminalize its growth, sale, and use, was defeated in 2003, but there is a powerful movement now to legalize, not just decriminalize, that drug, and there is a huge pot-growing industry in Canada, much of it directed to Americans.

Some 85% of marijuana grown in BC is estimated to be exported into the US[.]

14.1% of Canadians have used marijuana in the past year (as against 10.6% of Americans). So 14% of Canadians and 10% of Americans crossing the border should be searched for marijuana. That means every 7th car carrying a sole Canadian occupant; every 3rd carrying two; etc. Naturally, every single bus and railcar carrying 7 or more Canadians would have to be searched. Similarly, every 10th American coming back into the U.S. should be searched for marijuana, lest pot-tourists bring their stash back with them. What's the point of having a border if we can't use border-crossing procedures to intercept illegal drugs?
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Canadians often complain they don't get much attention from the U.S. They're about to get a lot more Governmental attention. How wonderful for them.
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You want a separate country? Pay the price. If it takes two hours to cross the border, and you're treated like a criminal for wanting to come into this country, so what? Be glad that the border is there to protect your proud nationalism. We'll make you feel very Canadian indeed.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,056 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:36 PM

 
"I'm In"? No, You're In-Sane. Hillary Clinton, perceived superbitch with principles of convenience, has announced that she is definitely running for President in 2008. She joins Barack Obama and John Edwards as the Democrats' first-announced candidates for the next election (other than the loser John Kerry, who seems to think this time will be different). Have the Democrats lost their minds, or are they just a shill for the Republican Party?
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The chance that Hillary Clinton, who is widely despised on all sides of politics, could be elected President is about one in 16 billion. That is, an alien from a planet far, far away has a better chance of being elected President than she has. Oh, I'm not saying it's impossible, any more than it is impossible to go faster than the speed of lite. We love the idea of the impossible being possible. So, I could be wrong. I have been wrong on isolated occasions before. Twice, I think. (Once, I thought I had made a mistake, but I hadn't. (Oldie but goodie.) I can't remember what the other occasion might have been.)
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Barack Obama seems a nice man, whose heart is in the right place. But he's black, young, inexperienced, and hopelessly naive and uninformed. He bleeds for AIDS patients but knows nothing about AIDS. Rather, he believes every single syllable, not just word, that the Republicans who invented AIDS as a sexually transmitted 'disease' say about that obvious drug injury. He won't listen to the President of South Africa, a country that supposedly has a serious AIDS problem, who disbelieves that AIDS has anything whatsoever to do with HIV. South Africa is outside the "AIDS Belt" asserted in the 1980s, and even outside the secondary AIDS Belt posited in the 1990s. Poor South Africans are dying young from the same diseases that have always killed them young, but those deaths are now called "AIDS", a new name for a random, haphazard collection of unrelated maladies that result only from the horrendous health conditions of the Third World.
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John Edwards seems a fine man, but he's from the South, and the Nation is sick of Southerners running everything. At least Obama and (Mrs.) Clinton are Northerners. Alas, that's the only thing they have to recommend them.
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Democrats are so completely out of touch with the people of this country that they actually think we want to turn society on its head and have women controlling men. But this is NOT a Radical Feminist society. We DEFEATED the so-called "Equal Rights Amendment", and the bulk of American women, who are not lesbian-feminists, were key to that defeat. Who in his (or her) right mind could believe that a country that rejected Al Gore and John Kerry will accept Hillary Clinton? It's sheer madness, delusional thinking from a party that should seek professional help.
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Are we ready to elect a black man President? Yes, I think we are beyond ruling out a candidate just because of race. But is Barack Obama that black man? (Well, Obama is interracial, actually. And that's a problem, because the great preponderance of blacks resent interracial sex and marriage fully as much as do the great preponderance of whites.) I seriously doubt that a very young and very inexperienced black man will be accepted as qualified to be President just because he's black. And frankly, that is about as much as he has to recommend him. And what if the Republicans run Colin Powell against Barack Obama? In such a (lite-skinned) black-vs.-black contest, who would win? I wouldn't get one thin dime on Obama.
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Are we ready to make a woman Commander in Chief of the Nation's armed forces, and give a woman supreme power over men? Hell, no we are not.
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The history of political dominatrixes in recent decades of world history is dismal. Golda Meir was a monster, a murderess who killed without mercy in unending atrocities against Arabs. Margaret Thatcher — the "Iron Lady" (tho there is little ladylike about the bitch but her hairdo), "Attila the Hen" — was a murderess too, who declared a naval exclusion zone of 200 miles around the "Falkland" Islands (the Malvinas), then perfidiously sank an Argentine warship outside that zone, murdering 323 men. Women presidents/prime ministers in Sri Lanka have been not one whit better than men in bringing peace to that violent island, and women like Margaret Thatcher have done nothing to promote social equality but on the contrary have worsened economic and social disparities among classes. The sole successful woman President of any major country that I can think of in the past 30 years is Corazon Aquino, a U.S.-educated Filipina who led a "People Power" revolt that overthrew a dictator but accomplished absolutely nothing for the poor who constitute the great majority of the people of that wretched archipelago that we abandoned rather than offered statehood. Not good enuf. The Philippines now has a second woman President, who has also achieved NOTHING.
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Hillary Clinton put forward a universal healthcare plan that was universally denounced as preposterously too complicated to work. Mind you, it was probably not any worse than George Bush's Medicare prescription plan, but we don't really know, because both the Republicans and her own party disowned the plan six minutes after it was announced.
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Trying to make herself presentable to women who like being women, mothers, and wives, Hillary Clinton — oh, sorry: Hillary RODHAM Clinton; never forget her lesbian-feminist inclusion of her maiden name (which, however, is not her mother's name, but her father's! so much for the sanity of women's retaining their maiden names as a blow for feminism!) — has recently made conservative noises about abortion. No one on Earth believes her. Everyone on the planet believes she is for abortion on demand, at any time — first trimester, third trimester, as the baby is coming out of the womb makes no difference to her as far as anyone can see. She claims to want to make abortion (on demand) legal but rare. What a bunch of bullshit. She actually wants "day after" abortifacient drugs to be available in candy stores and newsstands, the baby-slaughtering bitch. And everybody knows it. She's not fooling one voter. Not one.
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Who's left? Bore? Not the chance of a snowball in hell. Oh, I suppose I should clarify whom I mean by "Bore". That's AL Bore, not John Bore Kerry. (Good nite, John Bore.)
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I wish I had $20 million to run for President. Hey, (Saudi) Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, wouldn't you like to see a pro-Arab and anti-Zionist President in the United States? Well, you're not going to get one from the current crop of Radical Zionist scum who rule both major parties of the United States, but you would with me. And how about you, Sultan of Brunei (that's "Kebawah Duli Yang Maha Mulia Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Al-Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Almarhum Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Sa'adul Khairi Waddien" to you, commoner!), surely you can spare 20 million bucks. Hey, you can go halvsies with the Saudi Prince, so it will only cost you 10 million bucks to get a pro-Moslem candidate into the national spotlite.
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You may not be able to make a campaign contribution as such — tho why the hell not? You think the transnational corporations that contribute to U.S. candidates are American? Be not naive. — but you can certainly make a personal gift to me to be used as ever I see fit. I'm 62 years old and slitely handicapped. What else but a run for President am I going to use $20 million for?
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A candidate for a major-party nomination needs $60 million. I can do the job with 1/3 the money. First, I can offer myself as a candidate for the Democrats, who need somebody brilliant and strikingly different. If that doesn't work out, 20 million bucks would empower me to get signatures enuf to put my name on the ballot in every state of the Union as the candidate of the Expansionist Party. I'd run on a platform to enlarge the Nation geographically, as to incorporate our present colonies (PR, USVI, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Marianas) as states or parts of existing states, and annex Canada as several States of the Union, whose votes in Congress would automatically empower us to enact universal healthcare, withdraw from Iraq, break the back of the Zionist lobby, and pursue further annexations, as of Britain, Ireland, Mexico, the Philippines, Guyana, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, and bunches of other places in a gradual, organic outward movement to eventually consolidate all of this benited planet under a single, federal government, in which everyone contributes to the vital decisionmaking of the center but in which as well each state retains substantial local autonomy in matters like criminal law, as empowers everyone to get along within the Nation and impose a restraining hand on crimes against humanity outside the Nation (e.g., Darfur, about which our brave Democrats and Republicans DO NOTHING).
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The Democrats are a miserable excuse for an opposition party. They bewail Bush Administration moves to escalate the war in Iraq that the people said in November they want ended. Dems say lame, cowardly things like, 'They know we won't cut off funding for our troops in Iraq, so they rush to send more troops into harm's way to force us to fund an escalation of the war.'
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Any opposition party worth its salt would simply shout, in a rage,

"NO! We WON'T fund your war! NO, we WON'T fund our troops in harm's way. NO! We'll give you ONLY as much money as it takes to EVACUATE the troops from Iraq, not keep them there, in harm's way. GET OUT OF IRAQ or we will cut off all funding for all programs in all departments. We will SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN if you try to escalate the war that the American people told you to get out of! Not one cent will go to your war, nor to anything else in your government until you get the hell out of Iraq! Not one damned cent!"

That is what a legitimate opposition party would do. If the Democrats won't do it, it's time to replace the Democrats with a party that will do what the people want done. If that's the Expansionist Party of the United States, let the Democrats vanish into history like the Whigs.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,047 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:10 PM

 
Cheating Black Actors. Eddie Murphy is up to his old tricks again, stealing roles from other black actors by playing multiple roles himself. His new comedy, Norbit, stars Eddie Murphy as the male lead and Eddie Murphy as the female lead. Why?
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What is his problem that he can't share?
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Are there so many roles for black actors and actresses (yes, you heard it: I used the forbidden word "actress"; and I'll do it again!) that it makes no difference if one gloryhound egotist plays multiple roles in several films? What is Murphy's problem?
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Is he perhaps acting out a low-level multiple-personality disorder? Does he need to flesh out (well, foam-rubber out) his "feminine side"? Well, he has also played a white, Jewish character. Does he need to feel white or Jewish?
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I don't "get it", and won't see any film in which Eddie Murphy steals plum roles from other black actors/actresses (ohmigod he said "actress" again!).
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Are we supposed to be blown away by the massive, monumental eg... talent of the man? I'm not impressed. Acting is not, after all, rocket science or high art. George Burns (a white, Jewish actor who himself played a double role on occasion, but not in a dress) once said, "The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Fake sincerity is not unique to acting. Car salesmen and con artists are expért at it.
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If Eddie Murphy is so desperate to impress, why doesn't he do Shakespeare? Oh, wait, IMDB.com says he has a Shakespearean (semi-Shakespearean? pseudo-Shakespearean?) project in the works, a retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story from the point of view of the parents. Hm. No, he needs to do something heavy, like Othello (never mind that Moors were for the most part not black but white North Africans). How about giving some serious black actors and, yes, actresses (oh no! not again!) a chance to strut their stuff too, in an all-black rendition of Hamlet or King Lear? No British accents, however, please. Hamlet was Danish, not English, and King Lear is based on a man from pre-Roman, and thus pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain. There was no English language and thus no British accent in Britain before the Romans arrived, and the Romans arrived before the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes who contributed to modern English.
+
Share the wealth, Murphy. Give some other black actor, or (no! he wouldn't dare say it again!) actress (JEEZ!) a chance.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,024 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:56 PM

 
'Stockholm Syndrome' Your* Ass! Major media, puzzled beyond belief by the fact that Shawn Hornbeck, a 15-year-old boy who was (supposedly) abducted 4½ years ago and 'rescued' last Friday, apparently never tried to escape his "abductor". He had more than ample opportunity to do so, including three — count 'em, THREE — occasions when he was in the extended presence of police but didn't say a word:

Tony Douglas [the 'abducted' child's best friend in his new home] previously told Fox News that on three occasions, police stopped Tony and Shawn for being out beyond curfew. Officers gave the boys a lift home, unaware of Shawn's real identity, Tony said.

Shawn himself has said NOTHING. We don't in fact know if he was abducted at all, or just ran away from home, found a kindly stranger who offered him a place to stay and an escape from an unhappy home situation, and the kid took him up on that offer. But that's not juicy enuf.
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No, media want to believe that this kid was so terrified of his 'captor' that he mindlessly gave up his freedom, took his "abductor's" last name, and stayed quiet about his 'terrible secret'. These commentators, who have absolutely no basis for their assertions, have rushed to call his behavior a perfect example of "Stockholm Syndrome", in which a kidnap victim comes to identify with his/her abductor. There's a far simpler explanation: an unhappy kid who hated his home situation (with a stepfather), escaped it, and did not want to go back.
+
Today, ABC World News Tonight cited statistics that 797,500 children are reported as missing each year. They then backtracked a bit, to say that "most" of these children return home at some point, but the figure the audience is left with is 797,500 children are reported missing each year. This is a wickedly misleading statement that grotesquely misrepresents the reality. It is part of a larger set of statistics promoted by the vile National Center for Missing and Exploited Children ("NCMEC"), a rich organization that promotes preposterously excessive concern about 'our children' vanishing into the nite. Its website contains this summary of 'statistics'. Note that tho it is eager to say how many kids are reported missing, it doesn't trouble to tell you how many return home or are happily living with a noncustodial parent (usually their father) who loves them and takes terrific care of them!

The U.S. Department of Justice reports

797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
58,200 children were the victims of non-family abductions.
115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.)

So the real statistic of concern is not 797,500 but 115!
+
Why does NCMEC act so irresponsibly?

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) receives over $35 million [taxpayer] dollars per year to assist with missing children cases.

Plainly it is in the interest of this rich organization to worry as many taxpayers as possible to keep tax moneys more than just private contributions rolling into their bank accounts. It is not, however, in the interest of society to keep promoting the insane idea that the children of the United States are disappearing at a rate of 800,000 a year! The total population of children (people under age 18) in this country is only 73 million. We are supposed to believe that 1% of our children disappear each year, and nobody notices!
+
Actually, one report linked to from NCMEC claims that 1,315,600 children vanish each year from the home of their legal caretaker. So over the course of ten years, 13 million of our children have disappeared! Of course they have.
+
If you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
+
Why is it so hard for people in this country to accept that kids run away? It's practically a rite of passage. Almost all return home. But some become self-emancipated and never go back to a 'home' they couldn't stand.
+
One commentator on Shawn Hornbeck observed that he had a pierced eyebrow, then remarked that that showed he had 'self-destructive tendencies' that proved he had been traumatized by his captivity! So all those people I see on the subway every day with pierced eyebrows or lips or tongues or noses have been kidnapped? My God! 35 million taxpayer dollars a year isn't enuf. We've got to send the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at least a billion dollars a year or the Nation is doomed!
____________________

* Take your pick of many media fools who have asserted, as tho they know, that the kid was suffering "Stockholm Syndrome". My pick would be Sean Hannity, the rightwing half of Fox News Channel's appalling program Hannity & Colmes.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,020 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Insane Divorce Laws. This country has lost its mind when it comes to extreme overpayment to ex-wives. AOL today hilites a story about a divorce ruling in my city, Newark, NJ:

New York Giants star Michael Strahan was ordered to pay his ex-wife $15.3 million — more than half his net worth — in keeping with the couple's prenuptial agreement.

Under the agreement, Jean Strahan was entitled to 50 percent of their joint marital assets and 20 percent of his yearly income from each year they were married. * * *

In addition to the $15.3 million, [the Judge] awarded Jean Strahan hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support.

Prenuptial agreements should be ruled absolutely and invariably illegal, for attempting to void the state-mandated standards for division of assets in divorce. A prenup is a form of personal nullification of state law. Marriage is a governmental contract — as all the concern nowadays about gay marriage shows — and the terms of that contract are set out in state law. It is not for any individual or couple to say, "We don't care what the law is. Our private preferences trump the law." No, they really don't.
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The law sets out what people owe upon divorce. It is not for private parties to defy the law.
+
But even aside from that, the idea that a woman who has just been granted $15.3 million needs to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support too is just inexcusably absurd! The judge who granted such a preposterous demand should be dragged from the courthouse, tied to a lite stanchion, and flogged to death.
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The divorce laws of this country are inexcusably unfair to men, and must be changed. In the alternative, men should seriously consider whether (a) they should ever get married or should only enter into relationships that have a written contract that says that upon termination of the relationship, each party goes his or her own way with no legal nor financial claim of any kind against the other except for the return of personal property brought into the relationship and equitable distribution of property acquired during the relationship; and (b) if they do get married and prenuptial agreements are permitted, ALL men should write strong prenups with exactly those terms: you stay with me or get nothing but what you had before you met me.
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That's what gay men do. We form a relationship, and if it ends, it ends. We don't try to take each other to the cleaners. We just take our own things, move out, and move on.
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Straight men who have children should demand a total change of laws such that whoever pays for the children gets to say where they live and how. If women want the kids, then women have to pay for them. You get to control their lives and their attitudes toward their father? Then you pay for them. You don't want that responsibility? Let the father have them. It makes no more sense for a father robbed of his children to have to continue to pay for them, all the while they are being poisoned against him by a bitter ex-wife, than for a father to be robbed of his house, but still have to make the mortgage payments, or for a person whose car has been stolen (by a stranger) to have to continue making his auto-loan payments!
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The castrated losers who wrote the present divorce laws of the United States have produced horrendous problems of instability, bitterness, and recrimination between ex-partners. Now and then we hear of an aggrieved husband who comes to the perfectly logical conclusion that it makes better sense to have his wife killed than let her destroy him thru divorce. We may soon have widespread murder-for-hire as the solution to our unjust divorce laws, an American version of the old Italian movie, Divorce, Italian Style. Perhaps, someday soon, "Divorce, American Style" will mean the mysterious death of a wife who wanted to use the antimale divorce laws of this castrated country to ruin her husband.
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Perhaps this violent society will see change in its vicious and catastrophically destructive divorce laws only if large numbers of women start dying shortly before they would have filed for divorce, or during bitter divorce proceedings. With all the unsolved murders in this country (about 1/3 of all murders are never solved), a careful killer has a good chance of getting away with it.
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Any man afraid of being entrapped by cops posing as hitmen can find thousands of mystery novels and TV shows to teach him how to do the job himself (or with his new girlfriend) and what mistakes to watch out for in order not to get caught. Hell, O.J. was caught but still got away with it.
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This country has a long history of vigilantism. When you can get no justice from the courts, you just have to do it yourself. And when the laws are unjust, you don't obey them but strike back at the tyrants who passed oppressive laws. If that means that men need to kill judges and legislators in large enuf numbers that the laws are rewritten, that's one way to go. If it means that men must fite for their rights by killing women who would rob them, that's another way to go. After all, what's the difference between shooting a mugger and shooting an ex-wife who tries to rob you? In dollar figures, shooting the mugger is less justified, because he's likely to take only what you have on hand, say, $100 and your watch. But a wife could take half of everything you own, and more. So which one should be shot for attempted robbery?
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At end, the human race is a violent species, and prefers a quick, violent solution that seems just, over a long nitemare of suffering at the hands of immovable injustice.
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If divorce cannot be made fair and equitable, maybe we should just abolish it and make the words "Till death us do part" mean something. Or maybe we should just abolish the institution of state-controlled marriage altogether and let people work out their own private contracts for division of assets upon the dissolution of relationships, without any interference from the state whatsoever. After all, that's what gay men and lesbian women have to do, and manage to do quite nicely. If marriage becomes more destructive than remaining unmarried, and some people are denied the rights of marriage, perhaps it makes sense to abolish the institution altogether.
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Marriage for all, with equitable divorce, or marriage for none. No human institution is sacrosanct, and when almost half of all marriages end in (bitter) divorce, maybe it's time just to throw in the towel and get rid of the institution altogether.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,017 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:58 PM

 
Still Pushing for War on Iran. The Bush Administration, not content with having two disastrous wars in the Middle East, is making noises about Iran infiltrating Improvised Explosive Devices into Iraq, claiming, indeed, that the most destructive IED's are made in Iran! Tony Snow, the White House's mouthpiece to media, claims that the perception that the Bush Administration is trying to prepare the American people for another war, against Iran, is an "urban legend".
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But there is no other interpretation possible for anyone with so much as half a brain.
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"For now ... U.S. troops will stop at the Iran border", said Andrea Mitchell of NBC News today. But what about airplanes? Cruise missiles? Other forms of military attack? Would a "Shock and Awe" campaign against Iran be acceptable to the American people who just voted to withdraw from the Middle East as soon as possible? Or do we have to have riots in the streets to stop this runaway-train of an Administration?
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"Vietnam" is more and more heard across the Nation, and the U.S. was forced out of Vietnam not by Ho Chi Minh and General Giap but by literal riots in the streets across the United States. I guess the Bushies don't believe Americans today are capable of organizing mass demonstrations and even riots to stop the neocon bulldozer now crushing the life out of American democracy.
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I sure hope they're wrong.

*

I have been severely overstretched of late, so have been unable to post to this blog as often as I'd like. Besides, I get greater satisfaction from my other blog, which I update daily. It's a fotoblog about my rebounding city, Newark, New Jersey, on which I post at least one foto for every day, and often many more. In my job (for money), I deal with words and word processing. In my blogs and the websites for which I serve as webmaster* I deal mainly with words and word processing. Too much of the same.
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My fotoblog affords me a different creative outlet, and I enjoy it more. The topic, the revitalization of the entire Newark metropolitan area (over 2 million people), is also more upbeat than the things this blog needs to deal with. And I get much more feedback from readers. I have actually met four or five readers in person and received encouraging and appreciative emails from others. So I feel I have an impact in some minor measure. By contrast, so much is so wrong with the national and world matters I address here, and so few people pay attention to or do anything with the ideas I present, that it seems nearly pointless to write.
+
But as Walt Whitman observed:

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself;
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near—for I knew I could not;
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away—and I have placed it in sight in my room;
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them;)
Yet it remains to me a curious token—it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near,
I know very well I could not.

As a tree cannot but issue leaves, I cannot but try to affect events. A solitary tree can't accomplish much. But a forest can transform a region. The live-oak issues not just leaves, but seeds. Many of its acorns provide sustenance to forest animals. Most of the rest rot on the ground. But they also serve that nourish the soil. A few, however, — so very, very few — become new live-oaks. And the seeds of one, actually planted with care, not just left to fall to the ground and germinate or rot as ever happens, can indeed produce a forest.
____________________

* The websites, as distinct from blogs, that I manage include Simpler Spelling Word of the Day (updated daily), Resurgence City: Newark USA, Expansionist Party of the United States, United States International, Fanetik (reformed spelling at least for teaching), and Mr. Gay Pride.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,017 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:37 PM

 
'That Poor, Pathetic Man'. Barbara Walters referred to Donald Trump in those words on January 11th. She could as easily be describing Dubya.
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Hey, George, before you try to install democracy in Iraq, how about heeding it in the United States? The people repudiated your Iraq policy on election day, plainly stating their intent that the United States remove its forces from that sad country. But you want to do the exact opposite of what the people told you, clear as a bell, to do. Instead of getting out, you want to go deeper in. And the Democrats, a miserable excuse for a major party, do nothing but mouth pro-forma 'support for the troops' rhetoric that does nothing to stop this defiance of the people's will.
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The Democrats pretend they can do nothing if Bush wants to send 20,000 — or 100,000 or 16 million — men into Iraq. After all, we had 16 million men under arms in World War II, and the Iraq war has already dragged on longer than that conflict. If they really can't stop him, the Democrats in Congress should just all resign from office and commit hara-kiri, which is what some members of the Japanese general staff who could not change the Emperor's decision to surrender did. In that, would be honor, of sorts. In endlessly proclaiming their adoration of our 'heroes' in Iraq and steadfastly insisting they will do everything necessary to protect our soldiers in Iraq, and approve all funding requests to keep them 'safe', the Democrats are consigning an unknowable number of 'our boys' to DIE in Iraq. They are as well consigning unknowable tens of thousands of Iraqis to death in the insane adventure launched by the neocons who control the Bush Administration.
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No, Dems. You don't "support our troops" IN Iraq. You support them by getting them the hell OUT of Iraq — you worthless, piece-of-sh*t morons!
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What kind of "democracy" do we have, that the President can defy the voters, and the Loyal Opposition that the people put into the majority to stop the President will not actually do anything to stop him? If the Republican Party says "Sh*t on the voters" and the Democrats say "Our hands are tied", then we need a new major party to displace both.
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There already exists an ideological framework for such a new party, the Expansionist Party of the United States. If we have to invade any area of the world whatsoever to be safe, then let's just take it over and incorporate it into our territory and civilization by the historic right of conquest. Who is going to make war on us if the consequence of defeat is occupation and annexation? And wouldn't the people of Iraq be hugely better off as our 51st State, an important, oil-rich part of a prosperous, tolerant, progressive United States than as an artificially impoverished, intolerant, and regressive country to themselves?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,017 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Oprah to the Rescue? A few days ago, Oprah Winfrey's TV talk show addressed the issue of "Class in America". It hit hard on the statistics that the top 1% of people in income control 40% of the Nation's private wealth and that that 1% makes more than the lowest 50% of all Americans. That is an obscenity produced by the Plutocratic Revolution of 1986, also known as the Tax Reform Act of 1986 or "Reagan Revolution". Before then, progressive taxation kept the disparity between rich and poor within manageable bounds, consistent with a democracy. But the plutocrats were not content with being much richer than everyone else. They wanted to be not just hugely rich but obscenely rich, so they changed the tax code to shift more of the burdens of society onto the poor and middle class, not just in the form of relatively higher income tax rates for the nonrich but also in the form of property taxes, excise taxes, sales taxes, and all the other charges that constitute a much higher proportion of the costs of the poor and middle class than of the rich.
+
The consequence has been, as Oprah reported, a shrinking middle class and the growth of poverty and desperation in the Nation.
+
We have known this for a long time, and every year that Democrats consent to allow Republicans to shaft the poor and middle class it gets worse. No one in politics has addressed the issue powerfully. Maybe Oprah's voice can shake the Nation awake, from its deepening carbon-monoxide lethargy.
+
Maybe not.
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If we cannot restore progressive taxation, we will see the success of what CNN's Lou Dobbs calls "The War on the Middle Class", and suffer the horrendous consequences of the impoverishment of the mass to cater to the very few. The end of that road is violent revolution and the mass eradication of the rich. While that would be a good thing for the angry poor and downwardly mobile members of the hard-pressed middle class to see, it would not be good for our civilization. The rich have got to be made to understand that there is only one end to the road they have set us upon: the slaughter of the rich.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,014 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:14 PM

 
Puritan Bigotry Resurgent? And, What's in a Word? The legislature of the State of Massachusetts, in a confused melee of irresponsibility, voted yesterday to submit to the voters a measure to ban gay marriage. Don't be misled. The great majority of the 200-member legislature opposed such a submission, but under state law, only 60 votes are needed to send a measure to referendum at general election.
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First 61 voted for it. Then the legislature voted to reconsider that vote. Then 61 voted for it again! If the legislature does the same thing next session, the electorate gets the issue in 2008. Will the voters of Massachusetts vote to undo a huge advance for human rights that made Massachusetts a model for the Nation? Maybe not. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Massachusetts since 2004. 8,000 couples have married. Massachusetts has not been plunged into the sea — which, remember, is right nearby — nor have fire and brimstone rained down upon Boston, Springfield — or Salem.

From June through September of 1692, nineteen men and women, all having been convicted of witchcraft, were carted to Gallows Hill, a barren slope near Salem Village, for hanging. Another man of over eighty years was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft; dozens languished in jail for months without trials until the hysteria that swept through Puritan Massachusetts subsided.

Ah, makes you proud, doesn't it? The good old days. That's the kind of tradition we should honor and revive! That's what conservatism is all about, right?
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No, actually that's completely wrong. The Puritans, who founded my city (Newark, NJ), not just Massachusetts, were monsters of intolerance of whom all decent Americans are properly ashamed. They left England to escape intolerance, then promptly established 'reverse intolerance' in "New England", intruding the bigotries of the Old World into the New. That was the British era, a time when what is now the United States was divided among various European and native sovereignties. My people, the Dutch, controlled much of what is now New York and New Jersey, and established here a tolerant, even indulgent civilization ("New Netherland", with its capital, "New Amsterdam") whose character even today reflects that early influence. Sweden occupied parts of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and, again, New Jersey, in its colony of "New Sweden". "New Spain" controlled large parts of our present Southwest and all of Florida. "New France" occupied much of our midsection. And of course there were some 600 Amerindian "nations" throughout.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)['] responsibility is the administration and management of 55.7 million acres of land [87,031 square miles, slitely larger than the State of Minnesota] held in trust by the United States for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. There are 561 federal recognized tribal governments in the United States.

Tho it is common today to discount all these other elements of our past but the British colonies, and to see ourselves as so changed from those origins that they don't count, the reality is that in some measure the past livs on in each of the many places that comprise the Nation. Thus, the impulse to impose conformity that produced ducking and the pillory in British Massachusetts is still present in American Massachusetts, and every now and then pokes its ugly head up to cause trouble.
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The Puritans among us are on the defensive, as the American Revolution continues to make progress, against dogged resistance, toward a society in which everyone is indeed entitled to "the Pursuit of Happiness". But they have apparently concluded that their best defense is a good offense, and they see in gay "marriage" a chance to win back lost ground.
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They cannot hope to triumph in their extreme program, as to hang "faggots" or burn them at the stake. No, they have to pose as moderates, simple "traditionalists" who wish to preserve some modicum of respect for the past into the future. They do not demand that gay couples be denied the same rights as straights. All they ask — and it's so moderate, so little to ask, isn't it? — is that the word "marriage" be reserved to the legal union of one man with one woman. (Of course, it's not just one word but every related word, like "matrimony" and "matrimonial", "husband" and "wife".) Is that too much to ask?
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Yes, it is.
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In the United States, we must often pose issues in racial terms to make things clear. Our struggle with questions of equality must always be seen thru the prism of race. So let's view the "marriage" issue thru that prism.
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Would blacks, Orientals, and people of mixed blood consent to be given absolute legal equality in every way but one: the word "human" is reserved to whites? "You can call yourselves 'people', 'persons' — anything you like except 'human'."
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Would reserving the word "human" (and related words like "humanity", "humankind" and "humane") to whites alone be merely a moderate, sensible, reasonable doffing of the cap to tradition? Or would it be an act of unspeakable bigotry? You decide.
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Mitt Romney, a 'moderate'-conservative Republican who somehow managed to be elected Governor of Massachusetts and now dares to aspire to be President, is leading the charge to strip gay unions of the word "marriage". He is a contemptible piece of garbage who should be charged openly with the concealed bigotry of which he is eminently guilty.
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Would any legislature, any governor, in any state, work to remove the word "human" from blacks, Orientals, or people of mixed race? Or would they be so afraid of being killed by militants with guns or mobs with ropes that they would never dare such an act of open bigotry?
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Homosexuality is ennobling. Gay men are for the most part profoundly nonviolent, and our movement for respect and equality in society has been marked by anger only against property, in the Stonewall Riots and a very few other such incidents of small scale. Perhaps that's the problem. If we got out guns and threatened to shoot Mitt Romney thru the heart — tho one would have to be a really good shot to hit such a tiny target — would Romney stand courageously for "tradition"? Or would he shut the hell up and let progress extend the benefits of our Revolution to all?
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I do not for an instant think that that little nothing Mitt Romney has so much courage in his convictions as to risk death for them. Nor has any of the other bigots in the Massachusetts legislature who voted to send this issue to the electorate. They're just bullies, picking on people who don't fite back with the only force Republicans respect: (para)military force. But when you give people something and then snatch it away, can you really expect them to accept that humiliation without violence?
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"Traditionalists" really do believe that they can do anything to gay men and get away with it. Not one of the 61 bigots in Massachusetts would have voted for a ballot measure if they believed for an instant that gay men would wait for them outside their house in the dead of nite and shoot them dead thru a window.
+
Fear of violence has been a prime element in the U.S. handling of the race issue. In the 60s, someone (H. Rapp Brown?), scared the sh*t out of moderate white Americans in saying, all too ritely, "Violence is as American as apple pie." Large swaths of our major cities (including mine, but not even nearly uniquely) have been burned to the ground in race riots, with substantial loss of life.
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We like to pretend that it is the nonviolent tactics of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rest of the mainstream civil-rights leaders that produced the Nation's racial progress. But the appeal to our best instincts was never more than the carrot. The stick was fear, deep-seated, stark fear that if we did not do justice to blacks, we would have mass death and destruction all over the Nation.
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There is no such fear of gay men (nor lesbian women). That's why appeals to our best instincts have achieved so little after many decades of activism. Tho most people think the gay-rights movement dates back only to the Stonewall Riots, those riots could not have produced change had it not been for the preexistence of the Mattachine Society and other pre-Stonewall organizations, which were ready to step into a temporary outburst of rage and create it into a newly energized movement.
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Gay-rights movements date back to before 1860 in Europe and around 1945, 62 years ago, in the United States. The Stonewall Riots in June 1969 were nearly 38 years ago! The progress we made in making society aware of gay people (not least with my coinage, "Gay Pride" as it is used now) has been much too slow for those of us who have had to wait, but seems much too fast to those who don't want any progress at all toward removing the special, privileged status of heterosexuality. Many of my peers in the Movement of the 60s, especially the older ones then, are dead now, having died without full rights despite decades of struggle. I'm 62 and have never had full rights in a society that aspires to "Liberty and justice for all". How much longer can I wait? How much longer do I have, to wait?
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Doesn't any gay man in Massachusetts own a gun?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is ,3004 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:04 PM

 
Good News in the Horn of Africa. The Associated Press reports:

For the first time in more than a decade, an internationally recognized government is operating in Mogadishu after driving out the Islamic courts movement that wanted to rule Somalia by the Quran. Although trouble is always lurking in this violent, gun-infested country, the reign of the widely feared Islamic courts appears to be over.

The group had imposed its strict interpretation of Islam on Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia since it took power in June, banning movies and Western music and terrifying residents into submission with the threat of floggings and public executions.

Not all is rosy.

Gunshots ring out daily on city streets, and three warlords who once ruled the capital are back now that the Islamists are gone. Many fear the warlords are gathering their forces and might challenge the government.

Perhaps the most insidious threat is from an Iraq-style guerrilla war, which the Islamic group says it's planning with fighters it claims are hiding in Mogadishu.

This great move toward civilization and away from barbarism came via intervention from feeble Ethiopia, a half-Moslem, half-Christian country nextdoor that allied with the Somali government to restore governmental authority. Little, starving Ethiopia did what the great big United States could not do: restore order to Somalia. How long that order continues, remains to be seen.
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For now, the hopeful lesson is that local, willing alliances of people interested in regional stability because it is their region, are likely to be far more effective than an intervention from a distant and perceived-alien invader. Let the Arab world unite to replace the United States in Iraq, and Iraq too might expel its extremists. Not only is it worth the try, but it may be the only alternative to chaos.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,003 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:48 PM