LAURAL'S DISH
Laural is our dog, my dog. Everyone else heads off to school, "people like me and Laural" stay home. He's a fine companion, but you have to understand. If he's having a really good time he tries to bite you, me, anyone. Not hard, just…similarly, if you're scratching his belly real good, but then shift to his (apparently less preferable) ears, he'll growl at you. The irregular spelling of his name results from the time that Alexandra and I were mulling the possibilities, in a tunnel in Newton Abbot, when we came across the graffiti: Laura L is a dog.
Laural loves to eat more than any living being ever created, and he will eat absolutely anything. We've weaned him from rocks but he once tried to eat an unopened can of Carlsberg Export. surprise! So his dish frequently has unusual things in it, bits of this or that, absolute treasures that others might consider slightly unfit for human consumption, for whatever stupid reasons.
Beneath please find my literary reflection of Laural's Dish:
Laural's Dish comes out on Fridays, before lunch, usually.
28 January 2011
On this day-the last Friday of January-twenty years ago, somewhere before midnight I put my quarter on a pool table in the Ocean Beach, California bar Dream Street, to play winner. Some confusion ensued over whose game was next, between me and a Deadhead girl. I was right. Discussion got heated, at which point she suggested we play doubles. I thought about it. "Ok," I said pointing at her friend, "as long as I get her on my team." Her is Theresa Trapp. How she's put up with me for these twenty years is one of the wonders of the ages, but I love her more for it every day.
I'm not going to write as much this week. But what I write is important, and it's true. The secret to a long relationship, and a happy life, is to be madly in love with each other.
21 January 2011
this week Laural's Dish features pictures of things I see on my walk to pick up Myles at the train station, three times a week. All except one....can you guess which one it is?
Surely it must realize that an unregistered animagus can receive a lifetime sentence to Azkaban...
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
The largest voting bloc in every presidential election since anyone has kept track of such things has been the same one. Those who choose not to vote make up-overwhelmingly-the largest portion of the electorate. They beat Obama by nearly 15% last election, they beat Ronald Reagan in 1984 (the biggest landslide in memory) by more than 10 percentage points, John F. Kennedy was more than 5 points behind "didn't bother" in the celebrated election of 1960...
Kennedy and Obama were elected in large part by bringing in voters out of the "didn't bother" voting bloc: JFK's election as the first Catholic president saw the greatest turnout in recorded history, and Obama was successful by increasing the 2000 electorate by nearly one-third and more than 10 million more voters over the previous presidential election.
The basic math is: half the people vote, and you get elected by getting more than half the rest. In other words, it takes a little more than 25% of the possible votes to get elected President of the United States of America.
In a two-way race.
Conventional wisdom on the 2012 Presidential Election is....as of this minute...that although President Obama is dramatically less popular now than when he took office, he is likely to be re-elected because the Reagan coalition in the Republican party is showing signs of irrevocable collapse: the corporate wing and the Tea Party will have a showdown that's more like a civil war, and will leave them in no shape to wage a general election campaign. If Mitt Romney wins, the Tea Party won't support him; if Ron Paul or Sarah Palin is the nominee, not only won't the corporatos support the nominee, they'll dig deep into very deep pockets to re-elect Obama.
If the Tea Party doesn't win, it may even be a safe bet that they'll run a third-party candidate. They are a party-splinter of ideals, and those ideals don't include kissing the ass of big business (the only consistency in Romney's career). Which makes it even easier for Obama, with the Tea Party candidate siphoning votes from Romney everywhere, and maybe even winning a few states somewhere in the midlands.
Obama has nearly absolute control of the Democratic party machine, but his star shine is gone. He will receive-without question, or need for further thought or discussion-the vote of Democratic loyalists who always vote. I would also expect the president to largely sustain the influx of new Black voters he brought to the 2008 election: Blacks are the single most loyal voting block in America and, like everyone else, they can easily look to Obama and see that he's capable of doing better. The bulk of those 10 million "enthusiasm votes," though, have long since left the president to return to the "don't care" pile.
Which leaves Obama with fewer votes than he got last time. Instead of his strength being his own enthusiastic support and the magnetism that appealed to the "don't care" pile-as in 2008-Obama's strength this time will be dissension among his opponents.
The Republican Civil War is on, make no mistake. The corporate wing that has been dominant and in continual ascension since the defeat of Goldwater in '64 will back Mitt Romney, as a first course of business. They harbor few personal loyalties-it is after all business-and will be willing to turn elsewhere. They will not, however, be willing to rally around Sarah Palin (who they consider far too incompetent for the job) or Ron Paul (who they consider far too unpredictable, or even worse too predictably in the corner of the people they need to exploit in order to maintain profit margins).
The Tea Party will not accept Romney for a number of minor reasons including his record and religion; and a major one which is his lack of core beliefs that align in any substantial way with their own, and the fact that he's a nerd. The Tea Party doesn't like nerds who don't believe the same things they do, passionately.
And passion is the key to understanding the Tea Party. They will be so passionate in their disdain for Romney once they get a good look at him, or whoever else Corporato trots out, that they will run a third party candidate if they can't get the Republican nomination for one of their own. It is all but inevitable that-by this time-some Tea Party darling (or several) will have taken a page out of Ronald Reagan's incredibly successful "how to get people to work together" approach by creating a scapegoat: and that scapegoat will be Corporato.
So one of two things happen: (1) either a Romney-type gets the Republican nomination, in which case the Tea Party runs a powerful third party candidate, or (2) the Tea Party candidate wins the Republican nomination, and Corporato shifts its support to Obama (or, more accurately, leaves it there, as they didn't particularly support McCain either).
A fairly clear path to re-election for the President, no?
http://www.truth-out.org/poll-obama-rebounding-would-beat-gop-rivals-crush-palin66836
"maybe it's Obama"
--Neil Young, "Lookin' For a Leader"
Yup. An' maybe it ain't.
So what we have here is a voting electorate deflated to its 2004 size. In incidence (1), above, split three ways: Obama maybe 35%, Paul or Palin 25%, Romney-type 25%, and maybe 15% of us who insist on voting no matter what, but can't stomach any of 'em. A clear road to re-election for the president, no? In incidence (2) more along the lines of Obama 35%, Tea Party 25%, wishing something else would happen 40%. Either way, pretty safe for the president, no?
Definitely not. Obama's support was passionate, enthusiastic and immovable in 2008. There's nothing like that now. The only support that he can definitely rely on is the people who tick the Democratic box no matter what. In other words, the bottom baseline of support for Obama is lower than it was for Mondale in 1984 (there were more such Democrats then; before Reagan, Clinton, and Obama). Mondale, as we all remember, carried one state.
Let's just say that someone decided to challenge Obama from the left (an absurdly simplistic term, but it does vaguely mean something along the lines of people being more important than cash, increased civil liberties, stopping wars, and developing more environmental energy sources-please note that at least two of these are Tea Party positions, and none anathema). Who might that be, and what could they pull in a four-way race?
The most likely name in congress to pull such a stunt is Dennis Kucinich. He's run for president a few times, garnering little support (I did support him in '04, as did new king-maker Willie Nelson). But probably not. The senator who's best articulated the "fourth way" is probably Bernie Sanders, but he's a professed socialist and to a lot of people that would be like voting like the devil. No. The smartest person in the House is probably Jesse Jackson, Jr., and while his name wouldn't be burdensome in a four-way race with much of the right half already blocked out, his marital problems could distract even more in a campaign bound to be full of distractions and it's difficult to peg what you gain electorally by running against a sitting president with another Black male Democrat from inner-city Chicago. I'd vote for any of these guys-and I suspect that any of them could pull the 5% needed to get Federal matching funds for 2016-but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about pulling ten million voters out of the "don't care" pile, and adding up the numbers again after that.
So if it's not Obama...who is it? Who can tap into that colossal voting bloc of non-voters and give them a reason to vote? Who brings a sizeable enough support base with them, that kind of enthusiasm that's needed to torpedo a sitting president (like RFK did LBJ, and Reagan to Carter) and the machine of Corporato (like...well yeah, that's who we're waiting on)?
I'm not sure, but the opportunity is certainly there. Maybe it's George Clooney or Bruce Springsteen.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110117/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_wikileaks
Wikileaks continues to be the most interesting story of the year. Ok, so who thinks that the corporate oligarchs are going to use this opportunity to ramp up government secrecy laws (new draconian penalties for exposing petty emails!) regarding how they're served, and limit the spectrum of perspectives permitted in the corporate media until it‘s all dumbed down near the level of FOX?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110118/pl_nm/us_obama_regulations
That strikes me as entirely reasonable-overdue even, but what about the regulations that saw corporations including General Electric and Exxon pay $0 U. S. taxes in 2009 and realize "tax benefits" measurable in $billions??!!!!!
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Tax/ge-exxon-paid-us-income-taxes-09/story?id=10300167
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110117/wl_asia_afp/japansciencemammoth_20110117104445
Wow.
Ohmigoodness it'sastrangeandstressfulworld outthere (and someone lost their shoe!)! So how about some relief from the TOP TEN RELAXING ALBUMS
14 January 2011
http://www.truth-out.org/shooting-jewish-congresswoman-giffords-not-just-a-tragedy66685
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20110112/tpl-palin-slams-blood-libel-takes-no-bla-10170b4.html
I just want to say this: I don't consider Sarah Palin or any other right wing figure or commentator any more responsible for Jared Loughner's murderous rampage than the Beatles were for the Manson Family's. There's a lot of dot connecting going on, but I think it's by people who find that easier than painting the real picture.
Yes Sarah Palin drew up an ill-conceived and in entirely poor taste electoral map with cross-hairs over the ones she thought should be removed from congress. Yes, Gabrielle Giffords was one of them. But of course the ones with red marks beneath the cross-hairs were retiring, not executed. The intent was clear I believe, and it was not assassination. Yes Sarah Palin's the darling of gun nuts, partly because she is, as candidate Obama commented, "a moose shooter." Yes gun nuts collectively harbor a lot of weird thoughts like that we're safer the more guns there are, that we won the Second World War because homes on the Atlantic Seaboard had guns in them, and that the day is bound to come when they have to fend off a jack-booted NATO invasion force in black helicopters with sawed-off shotguns and pitchforks...but it does get a little bit slippery when you come up with collective beliefs and start attributing them individually and universally, doesn't it?
I mean, similarly, Charles Manson went into great detail to his own murderous followers about how the Beatles had written a whole album assuring them what a splendid idea it would be to murder Sharon Tate. Manson's intentions were, clearly, malevolent; the Beatles', just as clearly, were not.
I believe that it's equally clear that Loughner's intentions-and probably those of a few people around him-were murderous, but that it's creating unnecessary fights in the name of the ridiculous to blame the killing in Tucson on Governor Palin or the Tea Party. As liberals seeking simplistic answers jump up and down screaming about millions of co-conspirators, the gun lobby's position on the situation would not have changed before, during or after: nuts like Loughlan and Manson are the reason that good people like Griffiths need to be able to arm themselves. Guns-to proponents of arming yourself-are symbols of protection, and not of wanton violence.
Maybe, but only kind of. The "gun nut" mantra that "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns" is hardly without substance, but having lived for several decades in the United States (where the "right" to be armed is recognized), and more than a decade in the United Kingdom (where it is not), several simple truths have emerged: (1) there's much, much, much less gun crime in the UK, (2) there is crime in the UK, and even some gun crime, and (3) the main difference for most folk, so far as I can tell, is that the cops in the UK are more laid back, probably in some part because they aren't going into armed situations on a daily basis.
There are, obviously, a lot more differences between the UK and USA than that, and so gun ownership is far from the only variable that leads to higher crime statistics in the USA, and astronomically higher gun crime. The poorest of the poor-to note one fairly obvious and major reason-are better cared for in Britain than in the United States, class system vestiges notwithstanding. Social conformity is even more highly valued in the UK, for better and worse. Beyond captains of industry and the corporate machines, the American ideal is rugged individualism. The British consider that all a bit unsettling and-that's right-dangerous.
It's also true that, as liberal columnist William Raspberry wrote some decades ago (and I approximate from memory), "gun control in America would have been a great idea...in the late 19th century." It is too late, for better or worse the genie is out of the bag. This doesn't mean that we should make it easier to obtain guns, or refuse to regulate them at all, but it does mean that guns-like drugs and abortions-are going to be easy enough to obtain in the United States for the foreseeable future, no matter what the government says or does.
Politicians, commentators, novelists, comedians, longshoremen and everyone else regularly overstates whatever point they're trying to make. It's been a part of the human condition forever(!), it's conduct born of anger, or a sense of humor, or frustration or confusion or to entertain or amuse or inspire or most anything else. Jared Loughner did not kill because he saw a weird map on a website, or confused an absurd political commentator with a visionary prophet. I don't believe so. He killed because he is a very disturbed young man. If he had not seen Palin or heard Glenn Beck maybe...maybe, it's very hard to tell, but it seems likely to me...he might not have attacked Rep. Giffords, but instead his own mother, or the local pastor, or a random ethnic minority in a supermarket. That hardly strikes me as any sort of solution.
We have to tackle the big problems, and to me the ones raised by this tragedy are:
Everything else is band-aids and/or, worse, a diversion from the real problems that we have to face.
Sarah Palin's problem is not that she put a cartoon map on her website. It's that she lacks the intellectual frame of reference to lead anything nearly as grand as the United States, she's probably not that bright anyway, and her views too frequently veer between self-contradiction and not making sense at all.
To tell the truth, I'm much more horrified at Ms. Palin's response to the tragedy than any tenuous connection she might have had to the event itself. It was obvious that after the map, and the murder, various enemies and commentators were going to try and connect the dots. It was a situation that desperately called for her-aesthetically and politically-to keep her mouth shut, and take her slight and probably temporary hit in the polls. She had already stated her horror at the situation, and her disgust with the attacker. If she absolutely felt like she had to say something else it need not-and for her own political sake, couldn't-have been more than "I don't think anyone with a brain in their head can look at this situation and think that I encouraged or approved of this attack. I've already expressed my horror, and condolences. If any of my political advertising, or any other actions, has in any way increased the pain of the victims or their families, I am truly sorry for that." And that's it.
Instead she threw away the moral high ground in launching a spectacularly bizarre attack accusing the media of "blood libel," a term more generally used to describe an ancient and absurd anti-Semitic tenet involving Jews eating Christian babies. And this in describing how a barbaric attack that's left a Jewish member of congress fighting for her life, and did kill a number of innocent people...somehow leaves her-Sarah Palin-as the ultimate victim.
If her enemies were trying to portray her as self-centered, insensitive, stupid and completely out of touch, she made their argument in a way they couldn't have dreamed of. She's fanning the flames, throwing herself into and adding new dimensions to an argument that she could never have won. Unbelievable.
The Tea Party's problem is not that some of its leaders get excited and say things that are stupid or in bad taste, but that it has to develop in an approach that allows it to become something more than a knee-jerk reaction on red meat issues, including immigration and gun control. Its challenge is to develop meaningful positions on those issues that don't pander to the minority of its own extremists.
Whether Ms. Palin can overcome the obstacles that keep her from being a constructive political leader appears increasingly unlikely, but a more open question is whether the Tea Party becomes an instrument for devolution of political power from corporate boardrooms to community halls (and then, able to meet that challenge constructively), or descends into a cartoon of beer-bellied racist gun nuts and the illiterati playing carnival politics...but those issues do remain open, and that someone somewhere said or did something stupid and then a lunatic took it to mean something entirely different should not seal their fate.
Regulating advertising and telling politicians to act nice ain't gonna solve diddly. We need more transparency and expression to see who these people really are, not less.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110110/wl_nm/us_spain_eta
The biggest political changes of the past thirty years have all been peaceful, and occurred electorally or at least from within: corporate expansion of its international economic hegemony, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of egalitarian regimes in South America...
Baader-Meinhof, IRA/INLA, ETA, Weatherman...all evidence that the time for violent revolution in the West has long passed. The IRA is a particularly great example, however right or wrong you consider their cause. Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams have accomplished far more for their people, ultimately, by laying down their arms than even in establishing Free Derry. A united Ireland may be coming too slow for many, but it is finally, inexorably, on its way. And it's coming way faster than it would be if The Troubles had continued.
If we have not yet individually evolved beyond violence, we have in some ways collectively evolved beyond institutionalized mass violence. In some ways...
http://www.truth-out.org/ray-mcgovern-obama-should-read-wikileaks-docs66524
Speaking of institutionalized murderous rampages that are entirely counterproductive (blow up a vegetable market or wedding party! recruit for al-Qaeda!!) and can only lead to more murder feeding on murder, and that we can actually do something against...
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_census_poverty
http://www.truth-out.org/will-our-economy-ever-recover-from-greatest-recovery66628
http://www.truth-out.org/obamas-new-chief-staff-sought-loosen-post-enron-corporate-reforms66649
Candidate Obama was an aggressive environmentalist. We apparently have enough cash sitting around for the government to subsidize corporate bonuses for CEOs whose primary function is to fire people...and so now we need to create jobs...how are those recharging stations for electric cars (and tax breaks for making and buy them) coming along?
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...and then there are the final reverberations of Christmas...
TOP TEN BOOKS THAT HAVE TAUGHT ME SOMETHING ABOUT POLITICS
7 January 2011
Ok, a couple simple batting practice ones to get the new year going...
This is kind of fun, and I'm glad that he's seen the light, but I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Despite what some people are saying he said, Mr. Robertson neither said that pot should be legal nor that you bad boys in the corner aren't going to hell for smoking it.
He merely pointed out the absurdity-in terms of lives, and pain, and dollars-of the legal system's weed prohibition efforts. It's good that he noticed. I wonder how long until he and fellow evangelicals catch on to that there might be some moral issue involved in the corporate world's 30-year-long war on the poor?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_wikileaks_japan_whaling
Ah, meet the new pro-environment administration and admire their lightness of foot: "Ok, the whole world is against whale-murder. We're against it, too. But we like doing business with Japan, the whale murderers. And the Sea Shepherds, who really don't like whale murder, aren't very good at doing business. So....I KNOW!!!!! We'll back the whale murderers on the whale murder issue! That's it, oh it was so easy!!"
One of those Sea Shepherd boats docked in Friday Harbor for the winter of 1999-2000, when I commuted there from Orcas Island. It was very cool, and the people living on it were very nice and showed me around. Way nicer than those guys in the Japanese whaling industry, who slobber beluga blubber from their pointy incisors every time their eyes light up and they start telling you (please note: the Obama Administration has apparently fallen for this, or is at least trying to) that they're going to save the whales by spiking them all to death.
I like Hugo, not only better than most of the foreign leaders ours snuggle up with, but better than most of ours as well. This does give me some pause, but not enough that I'm going to unleash an attack or apologia so early in the season...
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[the following was held back over the holidays in accordance with my unilateral Christmas ceasefire]
http://www.theworldlink.com/news/local/article_a8f8453a-0a7f-11e0-a5e1-001cc4c002e0.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_usa_taxes_poll
"We are here with some good news for the American people this holiday season."
"This is progress and that's what they sent us here to achieve."
Obama called for maintaining the spirit of cooperation, declaring he was hopeful "that we might refresh the American people's faith in the capability of their leaders to govern in challenging times."
Um....NO, Mr. President. I am absolutely positive that NO ONE voted for you because they wanted Republicans dictating economic policy, NOR because they thought you would be gloating over a bill that has as its centerpiece even more tax cuts for the people who have already been given the most....at the expense-obviously and as usual-of those who are most desperate.
I mean, honestly, what could possibly be more embarrassing for the president than his own quotes, above?
I'm so fucking sick of the Obama modus operendi: (1) make a brilliant speech identifying a major problem and declaring a bold solution, (2) turn tail at the first hint of opposition, and get a compromise that is more like a surrender that institutionalizes the problem, (3) declare absolute victory, grandstanding as if he accomplished anything vaguely like what he said he was going to do.
Mr. President, I made much-during the campaign-of your comment "We're from Chicago, we don't play"-believing that you were a tough sumbitch who would go to the mat for our core beliefs. I've known people from Chicago, who don't play. What you meant, apparently, was "We're from Chicago, we're not players," in which case you have underestimated and insulted the residents of one of America's great cities. I've never seen such a wimp from Chicago, maybe you really were born and raised by ostriches in a nest outside a vacuum dealership in Guadeloupe or something...
Fight for your core beliefs? I can't even identify one. Self-aggrandizement, maybe? Sustaining corporate economic hegemony? Those aren't fights, man, those are butt kisses.
I am now at the point that I don't believe that I'll consider voting for you, no matter who your opponent is in 2012. I don't think that I want to write in Guns N' Roses like I did in the 1992 presidential election though, not without Slash and Duff. Are the White Stripes still a band? Where the hell is Richard Pryor when you need him most?
Ok, been watching lots of movies over the break. Mainly Newfin movies. How about in order of....how likely it is that I'll ever see them again, be it because I really enjoyed it, or vaguely impending grandkids might, or I might have missed something or it's just so silly popular that someone's bound to make me watch it, or there's just something about it, or I figure it'll get lucky, etc....
I was sorry to hear that Gerry Rafferty has, as the Native Americans say, "gone to spirit." Early sixties is very young these days. I was never into his stuff as much as some people, but consider "he's got a dream about buyin' some land, gonna/give up the booze...and the one night stands..." one of the all-time perfect pop lyrics. That being so, here are the TOP 10 PERFECT POP SONGS FROM 1978 THAT JUMP MOST IMMEDIATELY TO MIND (including after looking it up a little bit, yep that's right- pop music used to be so great that they'd have more than ten perfect pop songs the same year ):
Archive
2009
Dish empty ! Now go home
