On another day it would make sense to write about the the economic injustice in Michigan, where newly elected Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has given his corporate buddies an 86% tax cut and is making it up with, I kid you not, a 31% middle class tax hike. You know, class warfare.
I wanted to write about the wussy National Rifle Association, who's Chief Executive, Wayne LaPierre, declined to meet with President Obama to discuss a sensible approach to gun control. He's probably a birther.
Then there's the news that the king of all LSD makers, Owsley Stanley, just died in an auto accident in Australia. Flashback while driving, perhaps?
Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and a fire at a fourth reactor spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.
...
They initially suggested that the damage was limited and that emergency operations aimed at cooling the nuclear fuel at three stricken reactors with seawater would continue. But industry executives said that in fact the situation had spiraled out of control and that all plant workers needed to leave the plant to avoid excessive exposure to radioactive leaks.
If all workers do in fact leave the plant, the nuclear fuel in all three reactors is likely to melt down, which would lead to wholesale releases of radioactive material — by far the largest accident of its kind since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.
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“It’s way past Three Mile Island already,” said Frank von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton. “The biggest risk now is that the core really melts down and you have a steam explosion.”
And expect that radiation to travel - around the world...to us:
We’re all exposed to a certain amount of radioactivity from natural background sources. Americans old enough to have lived during the era of atmospheric nuclear tests have some amount of radioactive residue from those tests. Today, tiny amounts of radioactivity from Chinese nuclear tests can still travel to the US on the wind.
“The question is not can it reach us. The question is, in what concentration,” says Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer in nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit that works to expose what it says are the dangers of nuclear power.
Prevailing winds in Japan blow west to east, notes Mr. Hirsch. Radioactive materials released by the current crisis would take about four days to reach Alaska and another day or so to reach the continental US.
“Guns and alcohol don’t mix; that’s the bottom line,” said Michael Drescher, a spokesman for Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, who vetoed the bill but was overridden by the legislature.
So far there's been one patron who shot himself in the foot while drinking. Can't wait for the shootouts!
According to the creators of the new SyFy show, Caprica, the premise of the series is that Caprica is beautiful and technologically advanced on the outside, but completely corrupt to the core on the inside.
Think maybe that might be a comment on our times?
I just watched The Daily Show report on how banks are jacking up credit card fees right and left, in advance of new regulations going into effect. They can even charge you for underutilizing your credit card -- charging you for not buying things!
Good luck to Obama attempts to reform Wall Street, which is clearly rotten on psychotic profiteering and won't change their ways without a deathmatch loss.
And I just watched the moron who made a name for himself by moronic behavior, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) repeating over and over again that we have the best health care system in the world, when that is demonstrably false. (Credit to Dylan Rattigan for calling him out.) Meanwhile the GOP is playing pouty games over the possibility that we actually get comprehensive reform, saying instead there should be either no real reform or, worse, piecemeal reform -- the kind that doesn't work because it doesn't address all the interrelated elements of the existing system.
Hey, but the health insurance companies are currently -- I kid you not -- exempt from anti-trust laws! So we must have the best system!
Then we've got red states going nuts expanding gun rights for nuts, playing on the fear that Obama will someone take their guns away -- even though he doesn't talk about the issue and has neither proposed nor offered support for any new gun restricting legislation. This, as more guns go off in Littleton, CO schools.
Per BAGnewsNotes, you just can't deal with these people. It's all about money, that and inability to synthesize new information and grow with it. It's a recipe for disaster for America's future, and that includes any Democratic enablers.
It'll leave us to continue rotting from the inside out.
I'm not exactly sure what to think about this story, except that it backs up my fear of guns in the home. A Pennsylvania mother who lost her handgun license for a period due to wearing it openly to a soccer game has been killed by her husband in an apparent murder-suicide:
Some neighbors told the Lebanon Daily News they heard or saw the children — a 10-year-old boy and girls ages 2 and 6 — running from the house and screaming “Daddy shot Mommy!” shortly before the 911 emergency center was alerted at 6:20 p.m.
Debbie Mise, who lives nearby, said she heard a strange sound followed by the screams of the children. “I heard something heavy drop or fall, and then right away I heard the kids screaming, but I thought they were playing,” Mise said. “It was loud. But it didn’t sound like a pop.”
The backstory:
Meleanie Hain was thrust into the national spotlight when she took a gun, in plain view and holstered on her hip, to a soccer game Sept. 11, 2008, at Optimist Park in Lebanon.
Her permit to carry a gun was revoked by Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo on Sept. 20, 2008. DeLeo said Hain showed poor judgment in wearing her gun to the game. Hain’s permit was reinstated by Lebanon County Judge Robert Eby on Oct. 14, 2008, but the judge asked her to conceal it at soccer games. Hain said she would continue to carry it openly under the Second Amendment.
Hain then filed a lawsuit against DeLeo for $1 million in U.S. Middle District Court seeking reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and costs, emotional distress and lost wages.
This is, like, three types of crazy. First off, I don't care what anybody thinks about Second Amendment rights, there's no way I'd keep my kid at a game where a parent was openly armed, not unless Al Qaeda had invaded and we were all ironed up. Have you seen how pissed off some parents can get at these games? "That was no foul!" Bang! We've already had a parent killed by fists at a child hockey game, do we really want any of them packin' heat?
And what if some stupid kid grabs the gun, thinks its a toy, bang! That's a headline that come come from a blue state just as easily as a red.
Second type of crazy: a $1,000,000 lawsuit for twenty-four days without a gun permit? After bringing one to a game like that? Give me a break. She should have just gotten on the Teaparty gravy train and become a Glenn Beck star for a month, made those legal fees back in a jif and then some.
Then there's the crazy husband himself. Now, maybe this proves she needed to carry a gun, to protect against him, although I'd argue a concealed defense would work just as well. But to me this is a story about the tragedy of gun culture itself.
When such a family believes that guns can be relied upon to solve problems beyond, maybe, household defense in a high crime area, I don't want to be their neighbor. It's just not healthy thinking, it's caveman or reptile brain thinking. Sure, one can argue that the gun used in the murder-suicide "ended" things for Meleanie and Scott Hain, maybe the "ultimate solution" for their marital disagreements, but it sure has created a lifetime of problems for their poor orphaned children.
There are @ 30,000 gun-related deaths every year in America. Is that a number that should concern anyone? How about that @ 55% of these are suicides? (Assume that includes murder-suicides?)
I'm not for blanket U.S. gun elimination and stand with the President on Second Amendment rights. I do believe states should regulate as needed by localities. Most of all, I believe that domestic gun ownership should be treated by our culture as drunk driving has come to be treated: uncool and dangerous.
My father once said you have to be a little bit crazy to want to be President. You surely need a strong enough ego. And since Presidents all too often make targets (and not just for criticism, you do need some degree of courage.
But President Barack Obama must be the bravest President of all.
The ginning up of violence is well underway. Not that the most virulently racist element of American society, borne of slave owning, trading and abusing four hundred years ago, needs all that much prodding. They call it being anti-health reform, they call it fear of socialism, but when hysterical white folks are crying that the America they once knew is disappearing, that's simply code for non-white, non-straight, and even non-Christian, per Andrew Sullivan:
But the vicious anger from the far right, which is to say what is currently the right, seems totally out of proportion to these reforms.
Where does that come from? It comes from the same place as the tea-party protests. It's partisan, of course - most Republicans, including Glenn Reynolds, ignored the deficit under Bush, blamed Obama for it within minutes of his election, and never refer to the impact of the recession on deficits. But it is also surely cultural - an expression of the rage some in white America feel at the new social make-up of their country. I just sat through a PJTV segment on Sarah Palin, in which the host blithely referred to the heartland as "real America."
If that is what you really believe - that people in cities or suburbs, that minorities, that gays, that blacks and Hispanics are not part of "real America" - then of course, you are angry. You believe a fake America has taken over. You cannot understand this. So you start believing that we have a fascist/communist dictatorship, that there was some fraud allowing a non-citizen to become president, that the government is about to "take over" all healthcare provision ... and on and on. And no one is left in the GOP to challenge this, to calm it down, to present practical alternatives to the obvious crushing problems the country and the private sector have in paying for increasingly costly healthcare.
To me, this is a triumph of ideology. And conservatism is now an abstract anti-government ideology, fueled by cultural, racial and sexual resentment. This is a recipe for more violence, and more marginalization.
Even ABC News is noting the threat to the very first African American President -- and his family:
Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges.
The Secret Service is investigating a Maryland man who held a sign reading "Death to Obama" and "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids" outside a town hall meeting this week. And in New Hampshire, another man stood across the street from a Presidential town hall with his gun on full display.
Los Angeles police officers apprehended a man Thursday after a standoff with him inside a red Volkswagen Bug car in Westwood, CA [outside the Federal Building] – the latest disturbing case even though officials said the man had mental problems.
Ginned up by the usual suspects, including the most influential Republican:
Garrett said statements like one recently made by controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh comparing a logo for the White House plan to a Nazi symbol "legitimizes people who are on the edge to go do something or say something."
"And if you go and take a look at this, you will find that the Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo," Limbaugh said.
Later, someone painted a swastika outside the office of Congressman David Scott of Georgia, one of Obama's supporters.
The Secret Service is investigating a man who authorities said held a sign reading "Death to Obama" outside a town hall meeting on health-care reform in western Maryland.
The sign also read, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids," referring to the first name of President Barack Obama's wife, said Washington County Sheriff's Capt. Peter Lazich.
Lazich said deputies detained the unidentified, 51-year-old man near the entrance to Hagerstown Community College about 1 p.m. Wednesday after getting calls from a number of people attending the meeting held by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. Obama was not at the meeting.
The sheriff's office turned the man over to the Secret Service, Lazich said.
Paul Krugman calls the current GOP alliance with the reactionary crazies over "death panels" lies a Republican Death Trip, and he's right. Just like the Nazi's they claim to hate and try to pin on a pro-health insurance reform left, they use fearsome imagery of death, essentially more classic KKK-style hate porn, to roil the blood and make reality recede through fiery eyes.
While there's a prairie fire of racist violence always ready to spark in America, hopefully burning out by the end of our lifetimes, those with the matches feign innocence when they're earning off the very target lists they create. Just ask mass murderer -- in a Knoxville church -- Jim David Adkisson:
This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.
Rachel Maddow exposed it all last night, and everyone needs to watch, listen, and beware:
Lest we forget, the very first U.S. President to be felled by assassination was killed by a Confederate racist.
One was the very fine leading man who could actually anchor a movie and used his power to get Orson Welles' last Hollywood directing job (Touch of Evil), as well as anchoring the brilliant Planet of the Apes and iconic 1970's science fiction pictures Soylent Green and The Omega Man.
Then there was the parody of Heston, sometimes seeming self-parody, of his rock-jawed line delivery and toga-esque performances.
Finally, there was the National Rifle Association Heston where, as President of that organization, he seemed bizarrely tone-deaf to the gun-fueled slaughter of Columbine high school students, a hero to the callous, the selfish, the brutes.
Of the first Heston, let it be said that he had the chops and held the screen. It seems that Australia is minting this sort of leading man these days. Can an urban kid do it, or does it have to be someone closer to the land, a Midwesterner like Heston or Brad Pitt? And Heston had excellent taste, a huge fan of both Welles and Laurence Olivier, even turning down a big role with Marilyn Monroe to do an Olivier play, and doing less successful pictures in his later years because he liked them, including his personal favorite, Will Penny.
The second Heston, the hammy guy, we loved him, too. Thank him for giving something to parody. And he seemed very smart about this as well, going against it brilliantly as Cardinal Richelieu in the Richard Lester versions of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. Heston played the evil Cardinal like a leading man, without gimmicks, and with great intelligence and grace. And if you really hate ham, then you're denying yourself one of the greatest final scenes ever, on the beach in front of the Statue of Liberty, in a world ruled by simians.
As for the political Heston, it's nice to see obits reminding us that he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King before it became fashionable, also lending his voice to an important civil rights documentary. Although I was very unhappy about his role with the NRA, I was also embarrassed by Michael Moore's ambush of Heston at his home, which made the aged actor seem the gracious one, and Moore the opportunist, desperate to score points with which to buttress attention to his otherwise salient documentary, Bowling for Columbine.
It's interesting that the other dominant rightwing actor who was once a liberal Democrat, Ronald Reagan, also suffered from Alzheimer's Disease towards the end of his life. One wonders if such a political shift might someday be revealed as a very early stage indicator of the disease. After all, scientist have already proven that liberal brains and conservative brains respond differently to the same set of stimuli.
It's also nice to find out that Heston's original name, John Carter, had to be changed for being too close to that of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of his Mars series (starting with A Princess of Mars). It's actually hard to imagine a better actor to cast in that role, although it appears Heston never had the opportunity to play Carter.
So give the man his conservative flaws. As an actor, he contributed liberally to the opening of the imagination.
