Author: jameswagner

“They want the war”

For the crew in Washington, war is the end, not the means, according to an argument which would have been familiar to Thomas Merton.

They want war. It’s not that they want peace and a better way of life for the Iraqi people blah, blah. It’s not that they want security and freedom for us. They want the war. As if they have a chip, not on their shoulder but in their brains and it is programmed for war.
Thomas Merton believed what the rest of the world is trying to tell Bush, Cheney and their tapestry of advisers: war will exacerbate all problems – it will bury the chip deeper in some and release it in others but war will only make more war – more violence – more anger – and more of what war has always given us.
War is not, as Rumsfeld told a sea of soldiers in camouflage, a difficult means to a positive end. Thomas Merton believed that for the likes of Rumsfeld, war is the end.
….
A clueless cabal agitates and sells their nobility as they lay the groundwork for war and tolerate the objections. They “understand” the natural apprehensions of informed and learned people of good will but they are further along in the decision-making and they may or may not wait for the rest of the world to “catch up.”

one god, under the nation

This nation has become a theocracy, as proven by the absolute astonishment of the overwhelming majority, and their extraordinary virulence, when they hear that anyone might object to the state imposition of their particular cult. I hugely admire those who work to bring it in line with the principles of its fundamental document, and this particular citizen seems to be able to move mountains.

The California atheist who sued to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance now wants to kick the House and Senate chaplains out of Congress.
Michael A. Newdow, a lawyer and emergency room doctor, this week filed suit in federal district court in Washington contending that it is unconstitutional for taxpayer-funded chaplains to pray in Congress and minister to lawmakers. He wants the court to prohibit the House and Senate from employing spiritual chaplains, who are paid by Congress to lead prayers, counsel members and perform other religious tasks. Chaplains make as much as $147,000 per year.
“If congressmen want to go to church, [then] walk down the block like other Americans do and go to church,” Newdow said in an interview yesterday. “Don’t get my government engaged in it. There are some people who don’t love God Almighty. That’s why we have an Establishment Clause,” the constitutional ban on government establishment of an official religion .

Trent Lott doesn’t quite get it.

“The Capitol is the people’s house,” Lott said, “and I believe the overwhelming majority of Americans who send their senators and members of Congress to Washington to represent them, are comforted by the fact that our chaplains lead us in seeking guidance from a superior power, as we are called upon to make decisions. We should not look upon this as a frivolous case but as another attack on religious liberty.”

The plucky plaintiff does not lack confidence in the ultimate success of his case. He points out that the Supreme Court issued a ruling in 2000 which concluded that “the religious liberty protected by the Constitution is abridged when the State affirmatively sponsors the particular religious practice of prayer.”

Newdow, who says he “absolutely denies the existence of any Supreme Being,” claims he applied for the jobs of House and Senate chaplains, and was passed over.

Wish us luck.

rejecting freedom of speech (cont’d)

Alright, I’m back. I’ve recovered just a little from the impact of the item I posted below.
Still I can make only a very few observations for now. Just how much free speech is “too much” free speech?
Even more to the point, whose speech will say my speech is too free speech?
And finally, this is a citizenry which has decided that the huge corporate payoffs which determine the choice of all of our presidents, legislators, governors and even the composition of our courts, supreme or otherwise, is and must remain free speech, yet half of those same citizens think there is too much freedom of real speech, meaning yours and mine and also that of the press from whom they get all of their information.
How do people like this get through even an ordinary day?

rejecting the only thing distinguishing our system

I just don’t know how to tackle this one. It’s simply beyond my comprehension, but it tells me that we really are doomed.
Roughly half of Americans think the constitutional freedom of speech guarantees of the First Amendment go too far.

“Many Americans view these fundamental freedoms as possible obstacles in the war on terrorism,” said Ken Paulson, executive director of the First Amendment Center, based in Arlington, Va., which commissioned the survey. Almost half also said the media has been too aggressive in asking the government questions about the war on terrorism.

Unrestricted constitutional freedom of speech is the one civil rights element of our system which stands out above that of every other nation on earth, and half of us want to chuck it.

our hero

There are all kinds of cultural heroes, and Fred Plotkin belongs in their rank.

Mr. Plotkin, 46, is one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy. He is the author of “Opera 101,” an operaphilic perennial since it was published in 1994, as well as five cookbooks-cum-social histories about Italy.

He is a very hands-on legend, and one of his best anecdotes involves a cellphone story which is hard to top.

The New York Philharmonic was playing energetically, but the gentleman on the aisle in Row M of Avery Fisher Hall was bored. He wasn’t that much of a gentleman, either, for he actually pulled out his cellphone and began talking. “Hi, how are you?” he announced in a Texas drawl. “What’s going on?”
Here is what was going on: Kurt Masur was conducting the Brahms Second Symphony in front of a hushed full house, and Fred Plotkin wanted to listen.
“I was incensed,” recalled Mr. Plotkin, a onetime performance manager of the Metropolitan Opera who was also seated in Row M. Mr. Plotkin sprang from his seat and snatched the cellphone from the yapper’s hand, turned it off and pocketed it. He returned it only at intermission. Our hero.

But wait, there’s more.

There was the night he politely, but firmly, asked Imelda Marcos to leave a 1986 “Tosca.” (“After she was seated in Row H, she began offering patrons $1,000 in cash to buy extra tickets for her entourage, and I ejected her for scalping,” he said.) Then there was the time Mr. Plotkin barred a tardy Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at a 1983 “La Boheme” until she could be seated at intermission with her eight security guards. (“Nobody is above the law,” he said.)

Oh, and we’ll definitely vouch for his understanding of Italy and Italian food.

what happened to public transportation?

The question is for America only, for Europe and the remainder of the world have maintained their responsibilities, in many cases with very advanced systems. Americans however have so confounded their own real interests that here virtually any form of public transportation is looked upon as something only the poorest of the poor have to resort to.
Actually, we was robbed.

The major answer to this question is the long-standing opposition of The Highway Lobby — the auto, oil, tire and cement industries. You don’t hear much these days about “The Highway Lobby” as such. The reason is that it has done its destructive job which is to make America an occasion for ribbons of crowded highways carrying millions of motor vehicles as the only “practical and direct” way to get around on the ground.
At times the lobby has to resort to crime to achieve its assaults on public transit, while at other periods, it just used its money, muscle and propaganda with state and Washington lawmakers. Twenty eight crimes were committed by General Motors and its oil and tire company co-conspirators in the Thirties and Forties leading to their convictions in federal district court in Chicago during the late Forties. The U.S. Justice Department’s charge, upheld in court, was that these large companies, inorder to eliminate their major rivals — the trolley industry — bought up these firms, tore up the tracks in and around 28 major cities in the U.S., including the biggest one in Los Angeles, and lobbied legislators to build more and more highways to sell more and more vehicles, gasoline and tires. Earlier, GM tried to pressure banks to reduce credit to these trolley companies and when that did not succeed sufficiently, the conspiracy to buy out their competitors and shut them down was hatched.
This is more than corporate crime history. Everyday, today, tomorrow and the next day, millions of Americans find themselves on clogged, bumper to bumper commutes because there is no convenient mass transit or no mass transit at all where they live and work.

“the world’s worst leaders”

Appearing to be railing against himself, the Shrub was back on the campign trail today.

“We must not allow the world’s worst leaders to develop and harbor the world’s worst weapons,” Bush said at a fund-raising speech [on thursday]. The remark is his standard stump-speech line generally regarded as referring to Saddam. [but at least as appropriate for a description of George W. Bush and the rest of the White House crew]

Meanwhile, in San Antonio, his (sorta vice-)president, Cheney, was once again beating his own little drum for the same absurd obsession.

Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday hammered home the U.S. case for pre-emptive action against Iraq, brushing off a groundswell of unease among European allies, Muslim states and broader world public opinion.

So, I guess that’s settled; the ayes have it.

Cheney used a gathering of Korean War veterans to repeat an earlier indictment of Saddam Hussein, charging the Iraqi leader with acquiring weapons of mass destruction and posing a “mortal threat” to the United States.

tit for tat

[This is not going to be the biggest issue any of us have to deal with today, but, what the heck, we can’t do important stuff all the time.]
I did not know until this morning that this was the reason I normally have no interest in tennis, but does the story surprise me? Uhuh.

Tommy Haas simply took the dare to bare. If Anna Kournikova could expose her tan hipbones in a low-ride skirt, if Serena Williams could pack her dangerous curves into a Lycra cat suit, Haas saw no reason he could not follow the skin-is-in trend at the United States Open by showing a little . . . biceps.
His sleeveless shirt was breathable and built for range of motion but completely illegal in the discriminating eye of Brian Earley, the tournament referee. In Earley’s opinion, Haas’s attempt yesterday to inject a little zing into the moribund ATP Tour, to employ the same sex-appeal strategy the women have used so well, was out of step with Earley’s interpretation of the rules for customary attire.

Yikes! Are these guys real? I don’t know where to begin to address this stupidity, but let’s just say that not all of us out there thinks this is equivalent to this. And why would anyone want to see these gentlemen work in more comfortable attire, even if it meant we had to be exposed to a little more of their physical beauty?
Ah, much better.

a guilty admission of innocence

The Israeli government issued a statement thursday admitting its forces killed innocent civilians in Gaza. [four dead, eight wounded]
But anyone who sees what is being done to every Palestinian under illegal Israeli control would long ago have had to assume that, for the Israeli government, there were no innocent Palestinians.
Is this a moral breakthrough, or a momentary absence of mind?
For more, see Bloggy.

the man has no shame, thank you

He was arrested at 81 for soliciting sex from a professional (actually a police officer in professional disguise), and not for the first time, and he’s neither ashamed nor hesitant about talking about it. He answers the reporter’s question, no, he doesn’t need viagra. He’s Italian. He says he doesn’t see why he has to sneak around for satisfaction.

“I just felt like, you know, having a feeling — being close to someone,” [Dominick] Salerno told the Daily News when asked about his second arrest for being a john in less than eight months. “It happens.”
Salerno’s rap sheet shows he has been looking for love in all the wrong places since he was 71, when he was first charged with soliciting a prostitute.
“As long as the girls are clean and checked medically, [prostitution] should be legal,” he contended.
The spry senior from Ridge, L.I., said he was cruising for a quickie Monday night when a young streetwalker in tight black pants and a white blouse caught his eye.
“I made the proposition, $20 for oral sex,” Salerno said candidly. “But I felt something was wrong and drove away.”
But faster than he could say early bird special, “two cop cars pulled me over.”

The unenlightened Daily News website displays this new story in its “Crime File” drawer. I could think of any number of more suitable labels, even though their beknighted subscribers are not yet offered “Activism” as a story category. PONY (Prostitutes of New York) should grab him fast–no, I mean as a poster boy!