FIRST DRAFT

NOLA Notes: Mother's Day Shooting Follow Up

The good news is that they got the putrid gangbanger who opened fire on the second line in Treme. I should say alleged shooter but the case looks rock solid unless, that is, they blow it. Mayor Landrieu and Chief Serpas are spending way too much time boasting about it for my taste but that's what pols and po pos do.

NOLA blogger Deb (Big Red) Cotton is going to make it, but she's still in the hospital and faces a long and costly recovery. If you'd like to help defray her medical costs CLICK HERE.

Deb moderated the closing panel at Rising Tide 6, the one that Athenae attended. The panel included members of the TBC Brass Band who were at the second line on Mother's Day. Their gear got stomped on but otherwise they're okay. Here's the video of Deb's panel:

Rising Tide 6 - Brass Bands, New Orleans Music from Jason Berry on Vimeo.

 

Fuck Yeah Delaware!

*parties*

There are at least 11 states now contending for my coveted tourism dollars this year. I mean dollar. Coveted tourism dollar. 

A. 

Blessed Relief

I was working for a friend this week and wasn't able to blog as much as usual; the first instance of blessed relief for y'all.  I followed yesterday's events via live blog on the Guardian, which spared me the teevee hype although NBC did a good job last night. And Pete Williams rocked the media universe all week long with his calm and factual reporting.

I was struck by the way President Obama and Gov. Patrick approached the crisis in contrast to W and his minions with their fear mongering and colorful alarm charts and shit. No drama Obama and calm Deval didn't whip up hysteria or militarize the crisis, instead they let law enforcement do their job and they did it well. Remember when W and Vice President Duce mocked John Kerry for stating that terrorism was primarily a law enforcement issue? Big John was right and his views were vindicated in his home town this week.

I assume that little Lindsey, Walnuts, and the usual suspects will be on the Sunday shows frothing at the mouth and whinging about how the suspect should be tried by the military, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's past time to stand up to them and try the <sigh> American citizen who is in custody in Federal Court regardless of whether or not there are links to furrin bad guys. It worked quite well with Timothy McVeigh and a host of others, thank you very much.

I'm dreading the politics of fear entering into this. If the goal of the attack was to terrorize and cow the people of Boston, it did not work. They're battered and bruised but very much standing upright and proud. The wingnuts are the ones who get terrified by terrorism and arm themselves accordingly. They will, of course, whip up hysteria over changes to the immigration laws and, hopefully, it won't work but they thrive on shit stirring and fear mongering so we're in for it, alas. As for myself, I'm just hoping for some blessed relief:

 

The Children

I just finished reading David Halberstam's great 1999 book The Children for the first time. I'm not sure why it took me so long to read it since Halberstam is one of my heroes and I'm deeply interested in the history of the Civil Rights Movement but better late than never.

The timing is also somewhat fortuitous because the SNCC "children" of the title were responsible for the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Rides and the Selma March, a series of epic events that helped lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That is, in turn,a big story today because the Supremes took up an Alabama case that wants to rip out the heart of that act, Section 5. Discrimination? What discrimination? We have a black President, what more do *those* people want? Sorry, for channeling Justice Scalia but his "crazy wingnut uncle who watches Fox News all day" shtick is contagious, y'all.

Crazy Nino has stopped caring about his public image as a judge who believe in judicial restraint. If he were *actually* a true conservative, he'd defer to Congress instead of going off like Archie Bunker the first time he met George Jefferson, but Crazy Nino is too far gone for that. Here's hoping that at least one of the conservative Justices can read the election results instead of trying to dictate them, and the Court upholds this vital provision. 

Back to The Children. It's a must read. For me, reading (and re-reading) Halberstam is like hanging out with an old friend who writes long sentences and is obsessed with semi-colons. That may be contagious since I write some rather epic sentences and tend to be at least semi-high colonic as well. <rim shot> Anyway, nobody writes narrative non-fiction prose quite as well as Halberstam and his biographical snap shots of his "characters" are unsurpassable.

Dr. A and I saw Halberstam speak at the Louisiana Book Festival in Red Stick one year. It took place in the state house chamber and I halfway expected someone to offer me a bribe or to shake me down for one. As I said before, Halberstam was one of my idols so Dr. A suggested that I chat him up. I couldn't do it, I was afraid that I'd babble like an idiot a la Ralph Kramden going "humina humina." I wish that I'd given it the old college try but I did not.

One more thing about The Children. John Lewis is one of the central figures in the book. I didn't think it was possible for me to admire him more than I already did but it happened upon reading this book. I knew that he was a remarkable man but he is also genuinely humble as you may have noticed if you saw him with Rachel Maddow tonight. (When he told Rachel he was honored to be there, he meant it.) If I were him, I'd be a raging egomaniac but John Lewis remains the same modest kid who grew up in racist rural Alabama and became an American hero. Strike that. John Lewis is an American super hero.

'Be Courageous'

I already admired former Congreswoman Gabrielle Giffords but she is officially my new hero:

 

I don't cry very often but her guts and grace in speaking out so haltingly but eloquently made me cry a bloody river. What a broad. And her astronaut hubby is pretty awesome too.

For some odd reason, thinking about the Tucson shooting and its best known victim gave me an earworm. I know. I'm weird like that. It put Killer's Eyes by the Kinks in my head. Ray Davies was inspired to write this haunting song after seeing Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, on the news. Agca had creepy and disturbing eyes, just like Jared Loughner:

 

'That Is How I First Came to the Senate'

Photo credit.

John Kerry, delivering a blistering, fierce, loving, rambling, inspiring farewell address to the Senate today: 

I came to the National Mall in 1971 with fellow veterans who wanted only to talk to our leaders about the war. President Nixon tried to kick us off the Mall. We knocked on door after door on Capitol Hill, but too often couldn’t get an audience with our representatives. A precious few, including Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, came to where we were camped out and heard what we had to say. And I saw first-hand that our political process works only when leaders are willing to listen — to each other, but also to everyone else.

That is how I first came to the Senate — not with my vote, but with my voice.

This guy fought in the nastiest war the world had to offer at the time and, age 27, came home and took the immensely unpopular stand that this war was bullshit and had to end, and he acted on it. Nobody particularly liked that then.

Nobody particularly likes it now. Look at the way we treat the anti-war movement in this country. Look at the contempt with which we treat those who stand up to power in this country. Look at the way we justify others' suffering by using our own: I went through this, so why should you be spared it? I fought, so why shouldn't you fight? I killed, so why shouldn't you kill? I was wounded, so why shouldn't you bleed? 

How many times do we hear this? I got hurt, it toughened me up, so why are you being such a baby about it? I survived, so quit whining. I don't talk about my problems, so why should I listen to yours? You don't understand what I went through. Maybe you need to suffer some, so you do. How many times do we hear this? How many times do we say it? It poisons us day by day. 

Very, very rare is it said that I suffered, so that you shouldn't have to. I fought, not so that I could rest but so that you could. During his confirmation hearings Kerry talked about working with McCain, who had every reason to hate the Vietnamese, to normalize relations with Vietnam. He understands that the tests aren't when all things considered you could give a damn. They're when you loathe the prospect with every fiber of your being and lay down that loathing anyway. It's not a burden if it isn't heavy, but forgiveness isn't for others, it's for you, and learning that makes you a grown-up, and these men grew up together. 

Pierce today: 

We have an embassy in Vietnam right now because John Kerry (and, to be fair, John McCain) got the United States to look at Vietnam as a country, and not simply as a war. (If people had done that same thing in, say, 1965, neither Kerry nor McCain might be in the Senate right now, and millions of other people would still be alive.) 

And if we had elected him in 2004, if we had managed to be just a little bit less shit-stupid and scared, we'd have a better country now. I felt like 2004 was our chance to stop it; for all my joy in the good things Obama has done and in the prospect of further Democratic gains and more importantly progressive Democratic gains, I felt like 2004-2009 was a time when all the horrors got cemented and maybe some of them might not have been.

The late great Steve Gilliard put it best, in a piece I keep going back to whenever the "Kerry was a shitty candidate, blah blah blah" argument comes up: 

I do understand the frustration of liberals who wonder why they can't run a real liberal for the White House. Of course, these liberals miss the point that Kerry IS a liberal, a real, bona fide liberal with one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate's history to match. He's far more liberal than Bill Clinton. In fact, if a few of these people were less reflexsive and contemptuous, they might find that Kerry was to the left of Howard Dean on many issues over his career. 

I'm also tired of the lesser of two evils crap. Kerry isn't evil, he isn't a crook, he doesn't bang interns in his office. He's stood for most of what the left wing of the Democratic Party has stood for since 1972. Unlike many rich people, he didn't stick his money in his pocket and walk away. 

Now we have four years of him as Secretary of State. And after that? I still have my Kerry-Edwards sign. Just saying. 

A. 

Liveblogging the Kerry Confirmation Hearing

So John Kerry got five hours of questions this morning, most of which were tongue-baths, some of which were interesting, two of which were so mind-bendingly stupid that even were I not convinced Kerry should be Secretary of Everything, his restraint in not throwing a head of cabbage at the questioners would have assured me of his diplomatic skills.

Much in the way Tena and I used to liveblog the debates back when it was Kerry’s job to own Bush in person, I kept a running list of commentary, so here you go:

9 a.m. THERESA HEINZ KERRY IN THE HOUSE! Her hair is CRAZY today. Oh God, no disrespect to Michelle, but Theresa would have been the most awesome First Lady EVER. Sometimes I miss 2004 so much it hurts. I was thinner then. Paradoxically, I could drink more.

9:01: Soon-to-be-senior Sen. Elizabeth Warren talking to McCain. I wonder if she's telling him how thoroughly she's gonna kick his ass if he messes with her Masshole buddy.

Republicans seem to be convening in a corner to discuss how much of their dickwad reserve is left after yesterday. Dig deep, boys.

9:06: Kerry and Clinton are here and the noise I made was NOT HUMAN. Everybody's getting their picture taken with Hillary and she's all, SUP MOTHERFUCKAS, that all you got? Kerry's standing there awkwardly, looking like somebody bought him a suit on the way to the hearing and it kind of itches. Which is how he always looks. Which is one of the most charming things about him.

9:08 GAVEL!

Sen. Menedez is already acting like this is a party and he's in charge of handing out cupcakes. "Honored to welcome you as the president's nominee."

Mentioning when Kerry testified before the committee in 1971 "as a young war hero." And I'm already crying.

Bernie Kosar and the Long Road Back

The first time I really remember seeing him, Bernie Kosar was about to be on the wrong side of history. As a kid, I had watched the 1984 Orange Bowl, but I didn’t really know who the QB was. It seemed to be more team on team than man on man.

When I saw the lithe 6-foot-5 man taking on the 5-foot-9 elf from Boston College on the day after Thanksgiving, the midget in me pulled for Doug Flutie.

I watched practically weeping as they showed Kosar on the sideline smiling and accepting congratulations from guys with bad mustaches and Jheri Curls.

“I want the short guy to win,” I wailed to my father. “Not this Bernie guy.”

My father tried to explain reality to me and how six seconds wasn’t enough time to do anything and so forth and so on…

You know how that one played out.

For the next 30 years of my life, I pulled for that short guy but also for the tall one. Kosar found a way to finagle his passage to his hometown Cleveland Browns. I had loved the team for years, for reasons that still escape my family, and I watched him grow the team from weak roots to playoff promise.

I remember that cold-as-shit weekend in 1987 where he whipped the ball through an icy wind on the banks of Lake Erie for 489 yards, bringing his team back against the Jets for a 23-20 double OT win. He was down 10 with less than three minutes to go and he managed to make it happen for the Browns.

I also remember suffering with him as John Elway made the Browns his personal bitch. The Drive. The Drive II. The Fumble. Every year, Kosar would pull them to within an inch of the Super Bowl. Every year Elway would keep them an inch away.

It also seemed like every year, Kosar arrived in the playoffs made of nothing but duct tape and glue. He would be beaten, battered and nearly crippled.

He had the mobility of your average Greek statue and the escape ability of the passengers on the Titanic. In the days of Mark Gastineau, Lawrence Taylor, Mike Singletary and other rabid defenders, Kosar essentially wore a “Sack Me” sign every Sunday. Over 16 weeks, they would crush him repeatedly and mercilessly.

During one playoff game, I remember seeing a sideline report on Kosar’s hand. Turns out he had torn a tendon or something in the index finger of his throwing hand. To make sure he could play, the trainer built this thing out of a rubber band and epoxy.

They lost anyway.

Finally, I remember that one horrible fall in 1993 when Bill Belichick (before he was “Miracle Bill” of the Patriots), called a press conference and cut Kosar in mid-season without a viable backup to injured Vinny Testaverde. Belichick muttered the line “diminishing skills” and with that, he was gone.

The only good thing about that was seeing Kosar getting scooped up by the Cowboys, who were en route to a Super Bowl. When Troy Aikman got one of his patented concussions, Kosar stepped in and helped push the team into the Big Show.

(Over the years, I seemed to have remembered Bernie throwing a ridiculously good pass to Alvin Harper for a touchdown. Found it in that link. It's like finding a memory of your first kiss.)

The last snap of that Super Bowl win? All Kosar, who knelt to the ground to run out the clock.

I only got to see him play live once. It was in 1994 or 1995 when the Dolphins (his last stop) played the Packers in the pre-season Shrine Game at County Stadium. He led the Dolphins’ second unit down the field with ridiculous precision. Of course, he wasn’t going to supplant Hall of Famer to be Dan Marino, but I could dream.

Eventually he retired and became one of the few success stories in post-game life. He had a business degree and a good mind for running things. He invested in real estate, restaurants and greeting card businesses. He was doing exceptionally well.

Then, everything broke again.

The market turned, his wife left, his health began deteriorating. His fortune turned to dust and his fans started to wonder about him.

The Browns brought him back to do color on their broadcasts, only to find that fans believed him to be drunk or drugged up on TV. The slurred speech and the lapses in thought had them thinking the worst of the man who gave them his very best.

As it turns out, Kosar was dealing with serious post-concussion syndrome, much like many of his other mid-1980s NFL brethren. No one knew to ask for a while and when they did, Kosar wasn’t willing to share.

As of this writing, Kosar has finally come to grips with some of these issues. He’s still trying to rebuild his life. He’s speaking out on issues of finance, as witnessed in Billy Corben’s classic “30 for 30” film “Broke.” He also appears to be getting healthier.

Kosar recently spoke out in favor of an experimental treatment he’s been receiving for concussions. He said the pain has subsided, the ringing in his head has stopped and he feels healthier than he has since his 20s.

My only concern is in the minor details of the story (shown here) that refer to his doctor as a “pioneer”  and the treatment as “groundbreaking.” In both cases, the quotes are directly from the source material, leaving me curious as to why the writer chose that path. My hope is that this isn’t some sort of snake oil salesman, glomming onto a downtrodden player in hopes of a fast buck. My cynicism leads me to think this to be the case, in spite of hoping against it.

Still, I’ll be keeping an eye on ol’ Number 19, watching him get back off the turf one more time.

If anyone deserves a winning outcome, it’s Kosar.

God Bless the ACLU

Destroying traditional America one court case at a time. 

A. 

Brave

Five years ago, a former student of mine teetered on the edge of ending her own life.

I never knew it at the time, as she had slipped through the cracks of life like so many other kids who sit in my classes and stare back at me as I pontificate about something or other. She was a great student, a funny kid and an amazing journalist. She had that weird “quirk” about her that predisposed her to a life spent with coffee and cigarettes and off-color jokes. She oscillated between self-deprecating humor and claims of being a Golden God of design. She just had that odd newsroom sense of being annoyed with herself and being proud of herself all at the same time.

Turns out, some of that was the doing of a mental illness.

In a column she wrote a few years back, she did the scariest and bravest thing I could imagine: She told people she was broken.

(The DM didn't keep the full version on its site. She added this note to her Facebook page that was the "uncut" edition. Read it if you get a chance.)

She explained the nature of her bipolar disorder and how the pills weren’t helping and how she had neatly arranged the bottles and pondered how best to end her own life. She explained that this wasn’t a mental snap, a one-shot deal where she “had a bad day” but rather a slow build that had taken half of her life from her. She provided details of life as a kid, a young woman and an adult who was forced to live a silent struggle against a societal shaming.

You break a leg? Ouch! There’s a doctor for that.

You contract an illness? Oh, you poor thing! There’s a cure for that.

You have a mental “issue?” Snap out of it. Jesus… Quit being such a crybaby.

I hadn’t thought about her for a while until I read the story of Officer Jen Sebena and her husband, Ben, who is now charged with her murder.

We were watching TV on Christmas Eve when the news of her death came across the screen. She was found dead while on duty, having been shot multiple times outside a Wauwatosa fire station. Two days later, her husband sat in a courtroom, while the details of his disturbing behavior had been revealed.

Ben Sebena was a highly decorated Marine, who was part of the invasion force at the start of the 2003 Iraq War. He received a Purple Heart after surviving a mortar attack that left him with scars all over his body.

In a YouTube video, he talks of seeing friends killed all around him, of having to kill a child, of learning that “death is OK.”

Over the past month, Jen Sebena had told fellow officers her husband had become more erratic.

He abused her, held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her.

He claimed to be jealous of “other men” although no evidence has come to light suggesting any other men in his wife’s life.

He punched holes in the walls of their home.

In the days leading up to the murder, Ben stalked his wife, following her in the couple’s 2012 Prius. He then emerged from the shadows on Christmas Eve around 4:30 a.m.

He shot her twice in the back of the head before removing her service weapon from its holster and pumping three more bullets into her face. He later told police he wanted to make sure she was dead and that she didn’t suffer.

Ben Sebena has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide and although no one has made mention of it yet, I would be willing to bet every dollar I have that his “mental condition” will come into play at some point.

Chances are, those events he spoke of during that video and many more he couldn’t bring himself to discuss hurt him in a way far deeper than that mortar attack ever could. He told people that he had been “into the dark places,” and it’s unclear if he ever truly recovered from that. Even more, he might have had issues before he entered Iraq or before he entered the Corps or before he entered high school.

In the end, this hulking man who had been trained to kill couldn’t or wouldn’t come to grips with the idea that he probably needed mental help.

In reflecting on her decision to publish her story, Nicole talked about how mental illness is one of the last giant stigmas in our country. In fact, it was the death of a police officer prior to her column that inspired her to come out about this issue:

Last year, a man with bipolar disorder shot and killed a state trooper. In the interviews with his family afterward, they said they had been trying to get him help, but the public response seemed to be “crazy people shoot cops.” I’m not saying I’m crazy, but I do believe if the man had gotten the help he needed, he could have managed the disease.

In the five years since she was able to crawl back off that ledge, Nicole has been climbing the ladder at a prestigious newspaper, spending time with her boyfriend and advocating for the mentally ill. This year, she also donated a kidney to her father.

She touched many lives and made so many people so much better because she figured out she needed help and she got it.

Ben Sebena probably needed help and he had access to it. The VA in Milwaukee is renowned for being one of the best in the Midwest in terms of providing services to veterans. Those who have served have access to counseling, medicine and health care professionals.

In many cases, though, the vets don’t take advantage of these opportunities due to a distain for bureaucracy. In other cases, I would imagine, the societal equation of mental issues with weakness would be another reason.

I’ve spent more than enough time with “guy’s guys” to know what gets said over beer when the subject of someone seeing “a shrink” comes up:

“Does his husband go with him to see the shrink?”

“Hey, did the doctor give him a box of tampons too?”

“I just figured he was tougher than that…”

In other words “mental illness equals pussy.”

And yet it was this diminutive kid with a pixie haircut who was stronger than all of them, a woman who laid bare her fears and shared a story that most of those manly men can’t tell. She was tougher than people who earned a chest full of medals by being willing to stand up in the face of death but are unwilling to sit down with “a shrink.”

It was probably the bravest thing I ever saw.

Now, Now to Sit or Never

From OccupyMARINES, the scene outside the Michigan statehouse this morning.

This is why we say never stop.

This is why, when the smart money in Wisconsin said to calm down and back down and sit down, to just concentrate on the next election and whatever, really, people stood up. Because you never know where it stops. 

Let's get one thing straight here. Democrats didn't have the power in Michigan to stop this. The people might, but it's far from a sure thing. But it's not the responsibility of anybody to listen to what you have to say. It's your responsibility to speak. If people listen, if people act, that's a bonus. That's a grace. That's a miracle. If what you say spreads out across the world and turns the tide, that's the prize. But that's not the work. The work is you opening your mouth about what you care about. And the work is never done.

It seems like I ask you this question every year, like it's cold out, and I'm tired, and I just want to get off the damn treadmill and so do you. When does the treadmill stop? When does it get easier? But the secret is that there's no treadmill and no off. Stop thinking that there's gonna come a day when things are easier, Mr. A and I say to each other at least once a week. Stop waiting for that day. It's poisonous and small and it'll kill you every day just a little bit more. This is all there is. It's hard. Stop thinking hard isn't what it's supposed to be. Stop thinking hard isn't what you're here for. 

There's such a gloriousness of purpose in fighting the hardest that you can for what you really want. There's such a strength in it. Half of our frustration and all of our anger comes from asking so little of ourselves every day, from the constant work of convincing ourselves there's nothing we can do. There's always something. Look at that up there. Did they win? No. But you tell me they lost as much as everybody on the couch and I'll call you a liar. 

Watching the Ustream of the protests this morning here, a man with a sign reading "We Fight Until You Take My Union Card from My Cold Dead Hands" looked over the crowd chanting "Kill the bill." He grinned, even in the face of certain defeat. 

"Worth it," he told the camera, a smile in his voice and on his face.

"Worth it." 

A. 

Obama, Michigan and 'Right to Be Shitcanned' Legislation

I suppose better when he doesn't have anything to lose anymore, than never: 

And by the way, what we shouldn’t do -- I just got to say this -- what we shouldn’t be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions.  (Applause.)  We shouldn’t be doing that.  (Applause.)  These so-called “right to work” laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics.  (Applause.) What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.  (Applause.)

I mean that. I do. Should Obama stay in Washington and send out a tweet for this just because that's what he did two years ago? After all, it's not like Michigan's not epically screwed: 

This governor has a checkered record on saying he wants to cooperate with Democrats and moderates and actually doing it.

First he signed a bunch of legislation that labor didn’t much like and there were no Democratic votes. The governor had control of the house and senate and he used it to advance his early agenda.

But when there was the uproar in Wisconsin over anti-labor legislation there, this governor reassured everyone, “Michigan will not be Wisconsin.”

Damn right. It'll be worse. Which is what happens when you delay fights for a better time. When you keep your powder dry. 

Horwitz said he believed the White House would be more aggressive on the labor battle in Michigan than it had been in Wisconsin.

“There’s nothing but upside for him on this one. The landscape has changed,” Horwitz said. “In the terms of the way the fiscal cliff is being pursued, the president is fighting for the middle class and saying, ‘let’s tax the elites.’ … In the middle of that, the Republicans are saying let’s curb union rights.”

THAT'S WHAT THEY'VE BEEN SAYING FOR 20-30-40-100 GODDAMN YEARS JESUS GOD. This isn't a new thing. They've been pounding away here, trying to get to exactly where we are, where unions are so neutered and assailed as such anachronisms by every fuckstick with Sunday paper real estate that it's hard for them to even rate a seat at the table. And all the while Democratic politicians thought that if we just hunkered down and let this one storm pass us by the skies would be clear forevermore. 

This has been building for a while. And I'm glad Obama opened his mouth and said something about it now, because every day you wait, every day you refuse to speak up, every day you hang back is another day they can dig in and poison the ground. Michigan's gonna need all the help it can get in the coming days. Luckily, Wisconsin's sending reinforcements: 

Randy Bryce, an organizer for Ironworkers Local 8, is putting together a group of workers from Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to join the protest against legislation pushed by Gov. Rick Snyder and Republicans in the Legislature to make Michigan a right-to-work state.

Bryce, a Racine County ironworker who was involved in similar protests against anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin, said the issues involved are even greater in Michigan.

"A lot of things are eerily similar to parts of what happened here in Wisconsin," said Bryce, who expects 40 to 50 people from his union to travel to Lansing, Mich., by Tuesday when lawmakers reconvene and Snyder plans to sign the bills into law. "I would say what’s under attack there is even bigger because they decided to go after the public- and private-sector unions."

A. 

Our Fate is Your Fate

Michigan edition.

A. 

Just A Reminder

Yep. Power in a union.

Remember--this happened. And that energy, and that power, is still out there. We've had some wins lately, and a lot more losses, but the people are still there, and will always, when push comes to shove, tell the powerful where to stick it.

Black Friday

I think I said this last year, but I find the bitching about Black Friday to be almost as tiresome as Black Friday itself. Go shopping if you want to go shopping, but honestly, the carping about how awful it all is just smacks of classism to me. Herf derf, lookit the stoopid poor people trying to get a cheap TV, how dare they?

Um, well, stores are handing out hot chocolate to people in line and advertising "door buster" sales, and allowing people to camp on their property weeks in advance, so you'll pardon me if I reserve my contempt for the people selling the shit and creating the dangerous situation in the first place. 

And the coverage never fails to make me stabby. Here we are, Bob, standing outside a Wal-Mart to interview crazed shoppers, just hoping somebody gets trampled to death for the tail end of November sweeps. It just encourages bad behavior that we can then all soberly deplore in editorials a day later. How's about you stop covering it like it's fucking D-Day? And by the by if I read one more asshole comment about how Kids Today just don't stand in line for anything that matters, I will take hostages. 

Kids Today, and people today, are in fact better than we think they are: 

What is at times overlooked is that Occupy Wall Street was always about mutual aid. The most shared images were of protests and pepper sprays, but the scene in Zuccotti was a common kitchen, a free library, shared living space, a medical tent and endless conversations in which people listened to and learned from each other as they modeled a mutually invested society as an alternative to the culture of Big Corporations…and Big Government. Had OWS found a way to make mutual aid its loudest message, it may have found even more followers from the start.

A. 

Support Independent Journalism

My friend Erin is working on an amazing project in the American Arab communities in Michigan and New York. She's an outstanding reporter of the kind we should nurture, if we ever want to get better at understanding the world around us. 

Go, read, and contribute if you can. 

A. 

'The Arguments We Have Are a Mark of Our Liberty'

My favorite of Scout's excellent photos.

 From the President's remarks last night (this morning): 

That's why we do this. That's what politics can be. That's why elections matter. It's not small, it's big. It's important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy. That won't change after tonight. And it shouldn't. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty, and we can never forget that as we speak, people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter -- (cheers, applause) -- the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.

I think I don't like the bipartisan argument, the civility argument, the insistence that America is so horribly divided and that everyone should be nice and agree and not fight, because they all smack of fear.

Fear of a raised voice. Fear of a harsh word. Fear of feelings hurt, of offense given or taken, of the kind of questioning that happens when a deeply held belief meets its equal argument. 

Fear of weakness. When fear of weakness is the greatest weakness of all. 

Think of all the arguments you don't have, every day. They don't have to be big ones. Think of the small things you don't talk about. With family, with friends. With your employers. With yourself. Is there anything more exhausting, more deadening, more destructive than the fights you don't have? We're all so afraid of the knock-down, drag-out. We never think to fear the smothered, the stuffed-in, the starved frustration of the things we don't say. We never think to fear them, but they kill us slower and surer than any door-rattling barn-burning brouhaha. They kill us by stifling us. They kill us by teaching us to fear our own voices. 

All night long on the TV were David Gergen and all the CNN hairdos mouthing stupid nonsense about how the popular vote division meant Obama had a tremendous obligation to compromise and "reach across the aisle" and I kept threatening to Elvis my television because there's no magic way of reaching that will make rabid wolves not bite your hand off, like how much more can he give up? Maybe just one cut to Social Security, just one part of Medicare here or there, right? It's what we're all afraid of, even in this victory, right? A dubious bargain, an empty compromise, a pointless gesture that costs us far more than its rewards. 

It's something I've never been quite confident the president understood: Compromise in service to a goal is one thing. Conflict avoidance so as to minimize the need to sing to God in your own voice is another. Be proud of what you want, and fight to get it. We're socialized to be such good little boys and girls and never, ever, ever ask for more than we think someone will give us, instead of asking for what we want. We hedge our bets and limit our options and keep our powder dry for a perfect moment that never comes. 

Here stood the president, saying let's yell it all out. You disagree with me, fine, convince me. Do your best. You think I'm wrong? Say so. Cut the passive-aggressive shit already. You think you can do me one better in a shorter timeline for less cost? Let's have it, for God's sake, quit screwing around. America has ever been divided, not in twain but in a thousand thousand pieces and those pieces are our lives, so for the love of God stop bemoaning the need to get off your ass. Sack up and fight it out like it matters because it does. It deserves to matter. You deserve it to matter. 

Don't be afraid of the raised voice. Of the harsh word. Sticks and stones can break your bones but opposing arguments make yours stronger, and only a coward fears gaining strength. For God's sake, nobody will ever give you what you want unless you're strong enough to ask for it, and if it's not granted, to demand it. And two sides of an argument don't always meet in the middle. Compromise isn't always possible, nor should a middle ground always be sought. Sometimes you have to add up the numbers. Sometimes you have to risk looking, sounding, feeling mean. 

The arguments we have are a mark of our liberty, the president said.

The arguments we win are the making of us. 

A. 

Sending It Out To New York City Tonight

Witnessning the unraveling of the city, those of Harry Penn's reporters who were not killed (as many of them were) returned to The Sun to write about it. They sensed that this was the proper thing to do, even if everything else had gone to hell, because they knew enough to know that whenever the world ends it always manages to begin again, and they had no intention of being left out.

— Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin

The New York Daily News is updating from a darkened newsroom. There are floodwaters in the subway tunnels and hospitals are without power. Various jackasses are making various kinds of jackassed remarks for which it is not only too soon, but will never not be too soon. And as always, there are acts of extraordinary bravery happening amidst the chaos. 

Remember tonight that there is no part of America that America can live without. Donate to the Red Cross for disaster relief here. 

A. 

Stand Up For Yourselves

Via reader JW, here's a bit of heartening news: 

More than 100 Seattle Times news staffers signed a protest letter Thursday against The Times Co.'s decision to sponsor political ads promoting Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna and the Ref. 74 campaign to legalize gay marriage.

The Times launched the campaign with a full-page pro-McKenna ad in Wednesday's editions. Company officials described the campaign as an effort to demonstrate the effectiveness of newspaper advertising and attract new political-ad revenue.

But the letter from Times newsroom staffers, delivered Thursday to Publisher Frank Blethen, warned the campaign threatened the newspaper's credibility with readers.

"We strive to remain independent from the institutions we cover. We shine a light on the process from the outside. We are not part of the process. This ad threatens to compromise that integrity," the letter said, noting The Times had become "part of the campaign's machinery, creating a perception that we are not an independent watchdog."

Which is exactly right, and would have been right if the paper's ads had said the opposite as well. You can't life the rest of us about how you're the last bastion of independent democracy while letting your bosses make a mockery of that upstandingness every single day. There's always a risk in this kind of protest, sure, but in the end the greater risk is looking like you don't notice, or don't care, what is being done in your name. 

A. 

Right About Everything: Rest, George McGovern

DAMMIT:

Elected to the Senate in 1962, Mr. McGovern left no special mark in his three terms, but he voted consistently in favor of civil rights and antipoverty bills, was instrumental in developing and expanding food stamp and nutrition programs, and helped lead opposition to the Vietnam War in the Senate.

He would have been an extraordinary president. 

A. 

Fuck Yeah JK Rowling

Baby.

A. 

Requiem for the Picayune: the Rising Tide 7 Media Panel

The estimable Jason Berry aka Ashe Dambala filmed the Rising Tide conference for the second year in a row. He did double duty as one of my panelists this time around. It was the end of a long day and everyone, myself included, was exhausted. The mood in the room was positively funereal. I looked at the audience and saw a section of former and soon-to-be-former Picayune-ites and decided to play it straight for once. I had a few puns and zingers planned but had to file them away for future use. Tone is everything when you're performing in public so I had to shackle Shecky.

My goal as moderator was to get NOLA.com's James O'Byrne on the record with the paper's position. I'd promised him fair treatment and I believe I kept my word. One of the puns I discarded was a play on the similarity of his last name to the leader of one of my all-time favorite bands. I saved it just for y'all: O'Byrning Down The House. It's what Advance publication has done to the Times-Picayune, after all.

At the party the night before the conference I had a long chat with former TP photog John McCusker. His take: the Times Picayune as we knew it, is already dead, the formal interment will be Monday, October 1st but the spirit left the body the day of the great bloodbath in the newsroom earlier this summer.

Back to the panel. I made a new friend, laid off Picayune reporter, Katy Reckdahl, who stole the show with her insightful comments and keen analysis. As I said before, I wasn't really on my game. I even passed up a straight line from my friend Clay who asked the last question of the panel. I usually never pass up straight lines but this time I did. There's nothing funny about the demise of a local institution and 200 people being fired. Sounds Romneyesque, doesn't it?

I mentioned the funereal atmosphere. Since it's New Orleans, you might think that it would be a jazz funeral. Nope. It felt like one of those funerals that has you poleaxed because it was for someone who died way too young. I recall being at the funeral of an elderly in-law who was born cranky and stayed that way until her death in her Nineties. My brother-in-law turned to me and said "that was the period at the end of the sentence." He was talking about his Grandmother but he was absolutely right.

The death of our daily paper merits stronger punctuation than a period but since I don't believe in exclamation points, I am somewhat at a loss. Suffice it to say that the death of the Picayune we used to know feels like a crushing blow because of how important the paper and its staff were to all of us after Katrina and the Federal Flood.The reporters and staff at the Times-Pic were like soldiers who became a family because of shared circumstances and, yes, suffering.They became a part of the community's extended family as well. That's why this hurts us so much.

My primary lament is not for the *form* of the paper but for the way its institutional memory has been erased by rich cocksuckers from New Jersey and their local henchmen. If I thought they could be shamed, I'd give it a shot but shameless is as shameless does. Uh oh, I sound like Forrest Fucking Gump.The suits have erased the institutional memory of their own news organization by discarding talented people like my friend, Stephanie Grace, whose insightful political columns I already miss.

Okay before I get even more maudlin and morose, it's time to pour a shot of Jamesons,  toast the end of an era and cue up the media panel:

Rising Tide 7 - Black and White and Red All Over from Jason Berry on Vimeo.

 

When Even Symbolic Action Is Too Much

Go read Dan and listen to the embedded recording at the link. Frack this: 

A group of citizens concerned about fracking spent the summer drumming up support for more local control. This was an effort of grassroots activists who weren’t paid a dime and who gathered signatures on their own time. We went door to door in the time that was left over after work, family and other obligations were taken care of. We ended up with hundreds of signatures.

Earlier this month we took the signatures to the trustees, along with a nonbinding resolution expressing our concerns about fracking and our disapproval of Columbus for usurping the sovereignty of local communities. The key word is “nonbinding.” It was a purely symbolic resolution, and it was presented as such. Nothing in it required any action, conflicted with the state or put the trustees in legal jeopardy with the oil and gas industry. We emphasized that this was about being representatives: literally representing the views of many of their constituents, even if they themselves disagreed with the sentiments.

One of their refrains over the past few months has been that they would love to help, but their hands are tied. This nonbinding resolution gave them the chance to do something with their hands untied, even if it was just a purely symbolic gesture. 

What a bunch of chickenasses. I think my favorite part of the recording, besides where the board is all WE WILL ARREST YOU FOR ANNOYING US WITH YOUR BEING RIGHT, is how people keep repeating, "our hands are tied." 

Because, um, no they're not. We do ourselves no favors when we pretend that what we're doing is not what we're doing, when we take away our own power under the guise of letting ourselves off the hook. Because it's one thing to make what you consider a legitimate choice, out of expediency or financial concern, and another to kid yourself and everyone around you about what you are and what you want. 

Lying about powerlessness is the thing that drives me craziest. Your hands aren't tied. You may not have anything you want to do or anything that's easy to do or anything that won't bring ten tons of hell down on your head, but your hands aren't tied. There's a vast difference between that and this. 

A. 

With Us

Re-posting for the umpteenth time because it was the first thing I read after that day, after that blur of a day and the two-three weeks that followed, that didn't feel like a fucking greeting card, that made any kind of sense to me at all: 

As we approach the Brooklyn Bridge, a ferry pulls in to the pier, calling for passengers to Jersey City. That's where Don lives. We both stop, frowning, and for a moment we just stand there together as others pass us with their heads down, concentrating on going. We don't want to leave each other. Without each other, it's just us by ourselves. It seems strange and worrisome, and I sense that he wants me to go with him so we can stick together still, but I also know he knows I have to go north and finish the walk, that it's important for both of us to get to our homes. All of these thoughts come and go and we don't say any of them aloud. We shake hands, wish each other the very best of luck, although it's not a day with much of that. Don heads back towards the pier. I turn back to the hill ahead of me. I don't turn around. It's just me now, going home.

We reach for this easy stuff, all the time. My Facebook feed is being overtaken with images of bald eagles superimposed onto the Twin Towers by people who were thousands of miles away when the planes struck. I got angry at it back then; I am angry at it now. It's so easy, the treacly songs, the easy post-and-repost remembrances. We were Forever Changed by this terrible thing that happened. Every word of that annoys me because no, we weren't, and we aren't we anyway. 

(I think I get so angry at the easy remembrances because I envy the sense of safety people now mourn as having been ripped away. I envy their former obliviousness to the randomness of bad fortune.)

Those for whom 9/11 was just a particularly compelling TV show, for whom the community prayer vigils were fan conventions for America, who were happy to wave their flags and paint their chests red, white and blue and beat up on Sikh shopkeepers? They weren't altered by it, not really. Three to six weeks later they stopped going to church again, or quit calling their parents, or started snapping at their kids, because that's how we're built. 

We are prone to grand declarations — remember how snark and irony were going to be So Over? — that have no hope of coming true. We make wild promises we have no hope of keeping, and get angry when someone reminds us of the words we spoke so rashly, of the vows we made in moments of clarity. Full of excuses as to why we didn't live up to our best image of ourselves, the one we invent to keep from going mad when something terrible happens. Like a couple of planes slamming into a building. Or a gunshot. 

Change doesn't happen with a break, or a leap, or a plane crash. The shock isn't what alters you. It's the grinding down, afterward, the every day scraping forward and forward and forward until the skin's rubbed down to the bone. It isn't fun and it isn't set to music and it certainly can't be reduced to a 15-minute ceremony in front of a statue once a year. It's every day. It sucks. 

You tell me, though. What choice do we have?

Giffords was broken on that day, and she’s broken now. I’m broken, too, and so are you. Every day breaks us in a different way. But broken is not the same thing as dead, and if you’re not dead, you’re alive, and if you’re alive, you can do something. That’s not courage; it’s just what you do. You wake up. Something’s sore. Your head hurts. You don’t want to do what you have to do today. You don’t want to talk to humans. There’s so much weight that it feels like you can’t do it anymore. It’s pointless. It’s unmanageable. It’s awful. You can’t do it. You know, deep down in your stomach, that you simply can’t do it anymore. It’s impossible.

You get up anyway.

A. 

Shorter John Kerry: Who You Callin' A Bitch?

U-N-I-T-Y: 

Ask Osama bin Laden is he is better off now than he was four years ago.

[snip]

You know it isn’t -- it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to say that Mitt Romney doesn’t have a position on Afghanistan. He has every position.

(APPLAUSE)

He -- he was against -- he was against setting a date for withdrawal. Then he said it was right. And then he left the impression that maybe it was wrong to leave this soon. He said it was tragic to leave Iraq. And then he said it was fine. He said we should have intervened in Libya sooner. Then he ran down a hallway to run away from the reporters who were asking questions. Then he said, the intervention was too aggressive. And then he said the world was a better place because the intervention succeeded. Talk about being for it, before you were against it.

(APPLAUSE) Mr. Romney -- Mr. Romney -- Mr. Romney, here’s a little advice; before you debate Barack Obama on foreign policy, you’d better finish the debate with yourself.

(APPLAUSE)

Now -- President Mitt Romney -- President Mitt Romney, three very hypothetical words that mystified and alienated our allies this summer. For Mitt Romney an overseas trip was what you call it when you trip all over yourself overseas.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, it wasn’t -- it wasn’t a goodwill mission. It was a blooper reel.

[snip]

Folks, Sara Palin said she could see Russia from Alaska. Mitt -- Mitt Romney talks like he’s only seen Russia by watching Rocky IV.

At which point the watching party I was at lost its goddamn collective mind. 

People are always surprised whenever I tell them my one true political love is John Kerry. I mean, John Kerry? He's boring. He lost. And conventional wisdom is that he lost because he was boring and elite and lacked backbone and what have you, he windsurfed and shit. He's French. 

Well, call me a Frog because hot damn, last night he walked out onto the stage and told Mitt Romney his other ride was Mitt's mom and next time if Romney doesn't shape up he might not use the saddle. 

And immediately the commentary was WHERE WAS THIS GUY FOUR YEARS AGO, because certainly our noble political punditry couldn't possibly have fallen all over itself to make Kerry unsuitable despite the hockey-playing, liberal-lion-2, war-hero story he had to offer them. Surely they couldn't have missed something. 

Except yeah: 

"Did the training wheels fall off?" –-after being told by reporters that President Bush took a tumble during a bike ride "Here I am in the state of New Mexico. George Bush is still in the state of denial. New Mexico has five electoral votes. The state of denial has none. I like my chances." "Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor." "Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country." "Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent." –-item #3 on Kerry's "Top 10" list of Bush tax proposals, as read on the "Late Show With David Letterman" "I wanted to have John Edwards stand. Dick Cheney wanted to sit. We compromised and now George Bush is gonna sit on Dick Cheney's lap." –- discussing negotiations over the vice presidential debate

(And before anybody starts in with me about Edwards, ask yourself if the worst thing he has ever done is still nicer than the nicest thing Dick Cheney has ever done. As long as he wasn't Vice President of Being Responsible With One's Penis, he probably could have muddled through.)

In fact, watching Kerry actually made me remember my biggest disappointment with Obama, his truly dismal record on civil liberties. That was what Kerry ran on in 2004, and the biggest wrong he would have righted if we could have pulled our heads out of our asses and elected him. It was why, all kidding about OMG WHATTA BABE aside, I fell in love with him: He went to war and came home and at the age of 27 walked into the halls of Congress and said stop this, stop this now before it gets any worse. 

We all should have listened then, and again in 2004. Maybe we'll listen now. 

A. 

DNC Final Crack Van Nooooooo

It can't be over already! We still have half a jug of scotch in the back seat! 

I'm going to be at a convention-watch party but I'll be in the van as much as I can because OMG KERRY. DeeLorelei may be checking in from Charlotte. Posts in the van belong to their posters, not to First Draft World HQ Inc. Pet the ferrets.

Update: van closed. Talk in comments amongst yourselves until I get home from this party and can gibber about Kerry some more because HOLY FUCKING SHIT MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON. Also there is this Obama dude who is pretty good at speeches.

A.

DNC Crack Van #2

Share the HAMS, circus animals. 

Update: Van closed. Big Dog brought the house down. Sandra Fluke told Rush to stuff it. It was gorgeous. Be back here tomorrow at 7 p.m. CST for all the festivities.

A.

DNC Crack Van

You will be expected to put up with my shameless fangirling of Kerry, Tammy Baldwin, and NANCY SMASH, as well as my repeated instructions to Rahm to eat a bag of dicks. Have fun, behave yourselves, and hold on tight. 

Van closed. Continue discussion in comments because HOLY FUCKING SHIT MICHELLE.

Looking Back at the RNC: On Kerry, Stockdale, and Mitt

I think my favorite part was when Clint Eastwood accused Obama of starting the war in Afghanistan without discussing it with the Russians first. 

I know you were against the war in Iraq, and that's okay. But you thought the war in Afghanistan was OK.

You know, I mean -- you thought that was something worth doing. We didn't check with the Russians to see how did it -- they did there for 10 years.

In all seriousness, everybody making Stockdale comparisons all over need to step back: 

Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale died in 2005. He served on the Ticonderoga in the Gulf of Tonkin, and was shot down over Viet Nam in 1965. He was the highest-ranking naval officer to be held as a POW, and was Ross Perot's VP candidate in 1992. Interesting guy. Afraid they'd videotape him and show the world a well-treated and valued prisoner, he beat himself with a stool. He cut himself with a razor; he did what had to be done. He limped for the rest of his life.

In the camp, he invented new ways for his men to resist torture, sent coded messages to his wife, invented new ways to break through isolation and communicate with each other. New ways to stay alive. The men cleaning the courtyard, during a period of enforced silence, swept the ground in the syncopated rhythm he'd taught them, silently and defiantly spelling out to him inside the walls: "We love you. We love you. We love you."

That's an actual bad motherfucker, not somebody who's played one in the movies. 

Speaking of comparisons that are making me bonkers, just for kicks, let's look at my boyfriend John Kerry's convention speech in 2004 and see if it is ANYTHING AT ALL LIKE THIS CRAPFEST: 

Listen to that roaring. They won't let him START. Mitt had to rush to the stage before the applause ended so it wouldn't look pathetic. 

(Also, as a writer? There's no goddamn contest. Cadence and artistry.)

He didn't have to wait for the audience to catch on to the applause lines. He didn't have to ask for the laugh. He lifted that crowd UP.

Most of all, listen to the story he's telling, the lessons he learned. I have zero truck with Mitt's "success" in business being the backbone of his story, but it's not fundamentally fueling any kind of understanding of what America is about. It's not teaching Mitt about all the ways government can lift up and support decent business practices. It's just an example of how government sucks and needs to go away. 

Kerry's history, even the difficult parts when America failed him and the rest of us, taught him about the greatness of America. Mitt's, by his own words, taught him that Obama sucks. 

That's not even rage-inducing. It's just sorrowful. It's a pity. 

A. 

Neil Armstrong, R.I.P.

Neil Armstrong reflected the best of who we were, are and should be. He was a modest hero who didn't trash talk, brag or spike the proverbial moon rock. He died yesterday at the age of 82 but he will always have the right stuff.

 

Righting A Wrong

Well done, journos. 

A. 

'We Are Not Going Anywhere'

Though it may take a thousand years, love wins.

A. 

'We've got wheels down on Mars'

Via a Facebook pal, video from Mission Control as NASA puts a fucking car on fucking MARS. 

Fast-forward to 4:30 to see what people look like when they're doing what they were made to do. 

A. 

Caring for Veterans for $500 a Week

Revolting: 

Have you every worked 16 hours in a row? Have you done 16 hour shifts every other day or every 3rd day? Would you like to keep that up for 7 months straight? That is life as some care staff know it at King Veterans Home located about 30 miles Southeast of Stevens Point near Waupaca.

Twenty-five staff spoke-up about conditions at the King Veterans Home at a listening session for the public on July 26th at their union hall. This morning one of the staff members, Sara Goodhue, was put on a “disciplinary track” for speaking to WTDY recently about staffing and care conditions. AFSCME’s Marty Biel told me about the matter by phone this morning: “This was on her private time. … They are sending a message to the workers: we will discipline you for speaking”

“I wonder if they [other workers] are going to be singled out for speaking out on the conditions on their own time?”

These people should be paid like basketball players and treated like rock stars. In a world in which we truly value the service of veterans, in a world in which we truly value hard work, they would be. 

A. 

Fuck Yeah Olympians!

Wow. 

Ordinarily the Summer Olympics do nothing for me. The attention on gymnastics has always bordered on creepy for me, and nothing else really grabs me as much as ice hockey and skating do, but I'm gonna be trying to find Nur Suryani's event and watch it, because what a badass. 

A. 

Dems Take Over Wisconsin Senate

Think the recall elections didn't do any good? Lookee here.

Also, Mike Ellis is just a penis with a suit on: 

The position of Senate Majority Leader now goes to Mark Miller (D-Monona), who promptly named Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) as the new Joint Finance Committee co-chair, a position she will share with Republican Rep. Robin Vos.

"You're the Majority Leader. You can do whatever you want," Ellis told Miller.

Miller countered that it was the job of the Majority Leader to respect the voices of the minority party and the general public, too.

A. 

How Protesting Is Done

Nice. 

A. 

The War is Never Over

Before Camp Randall was a football stadium. 

They worried people would forget.

It might seem odd now, even 150 years after the Civil War, that anyone would not remember the terrible fight to preserve the United States. But that fear of losing the collective memory spurred veterans - both Confederate and Union - to construct monuments and memorials.

So 100 years ago, a large arch of gray granite was rapidly built in a few months on property set aside for a memorial at a cost of $25,000 and dedicated at Camp Randall, Wisconsin's largest Civil War training camp. It still stands as a sentinel today though the land where 70,000 soldiers mustered before heading off to the battlefields of Shiloh and Gettysburg has long since been claimed by the University of Wisconsin.

A. 

Hey Baby, It's The Fourth Of July

It's recycling time again: my annual posting of Dave Alvin's classic tune. This time as performed by X with John Doe on lead vox:

 

Cancer, Earrings and The Fight that Must be Won

Fuck it.

It’s still Friday.

I still have the floor.

Maybe that’s the only thing I can control right now, which is why this is what I’m doing at 11:24 p.m., when I should be nestled in bed, wrapped around my wife and snuggling in for some much needed rest.

My friend Amy is battling cancer.

It’s a simple noun-verb statement that I can’t get past.

She fights it.

Noun-verb-object.

If you want to find the people who run universities, don’t look for the presidents and provosts and chancellors.

Don’t seek out the deans and the chairs and the academic elite.

Get past the people with giant offices who sit behind giant mahogany badges of self-importance and who layer their walls with plaques and certificates and photos of them shaking hands with other important wankers

Look for cubicles. Look for the small, cramped offices off the “main office.” Look for desks piled with papers that pulse and wobble. Look for the places with “Same Shit, Different Day” bumper stickers on the filing cabinets and the odd trinkets glued to the tops of ancient computer monitors.

Look for the administrative assistants or the program assistants or whatever title we’ve decided to bestow upon once we learned that secretary didn’t quite cut the muster.

Look for people like Amy.

Had I never met her, I would never be where I am today.

It sounds cliché. It sounds trite. It sounds hollow.

It’s what we say about people when they retire and when they die.

She has already done the first and I would step in front of a bus to stop her from doing the second.

She was the assistant to the director of the journalism grad school where I went for my Ph.D. She had a kind, round face and a body to match. She had glasses that were thick and large and were at least 10 years out of fashion. She sat in a cramped office behind an overflowing desk near a filing cabinet that had a single calendar page taped to it with one date circled: the day she could retire.

She could have been the stereotype of the school marm in any 1950s sitcom, but she was so much more. She had that uncanny ability to coddle and nurse and yet kick your ass at the same time. She had a biting sense of humor and she knew exactly how to needle everyone from the first-year master’s student on through to the dean.

She was like a maestro, waving the wand perfectly to get the very best out of each member of the orchestra, all the while never once picking up an instrument to join the cacophony that was all around her.

She stayed out of the politics. She stayed above the fray. She had her finger on the pulse, but never attempted to alter it.

For me, she was like a modulating device. She knew when I needed to be brought up out of the depression and the doldrums. She knew when I needed to be taken down a peg.

This was true, even when I didn’t know which of those things I needed myself.

The honest reason I can say she was the sole reason I’m Doc and not “Hey, you, car guy” is a cold, miserable Friday in February about a decade ago.

If you have ever finished a doctoral program, you know what comps are. If you never have, you probably have heard about them. If you have done neither, let me explain.

Our program was simple: You have five members on your doctoral committee. Each of them chooses a “section” of your program to quiz you on. You agree to a readings list. You read those readings for about a month or two. You read them over and over and over until your eyes bleed.

Then for five days, four hours per day, you show up at Amy’s office.

She hands you a single question and a floppy disk (yes, they still had those). You have never seen the question. You don’t know what is on that piece of paper. You have no notes, no materials (save for a dictionary in those pre-spellcheck-is-installed-already days) and no help. You enter a room that has a computer, a desk, a chair and any food/beverage you want to bring with you. From that moment until the moment Amy comes to get you, you write.

You analyze the question. You write.

You think about the readings. You write.

You type and you type and you type, not knowing how much is from your head and how much is regurgitation of someone else’s shit. You then type some more.

Five days. Five questions. Thousands of words. Each more mind-numbing than the last.

The first day, the question threw me. The member “zigged” while I had planned to “zag.” Rough start.

The second day, my committee chair and resident hard-ass had the floor. It felt like this scene from “Back to School.” I got to part 27 at about the 3:59 mark.

I was fucked.

I saved what I had. I took it to Amy. I lost my shit.

“I can’t do this,” I practically pleaded. “This isn’t something for me. I’m not supposed to be an academic. I’m the kid of a factory worker. I’m… fuck.”

She looked at me, broken, tattered and eroding me, and said something extraordinarily calming.

“You have Stephanie’s question on Monday, right? Try that one. If you really fall apart on that one, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that will happen. If you can’t do it, we’ll talk.”

I had a restless weekend, followed by a series of “I’m buried alive” dreams.

Monday came.

I opened the question.

Total cake.

The final three questions were a blur of ease and jargon. A perfect blend of ease and academic obfuscation.

I passed written comps and the oral defense. I was ABD, or as we say in cribbage, in the shit hole. Almost there, but so far away.

Amy leveraged my last shred of sanity into salvation.

She did it again when my chair submarined my dissertation proposal at my proposal committee.

She did it again when I fucked up, playing two jobs against each other before losing them both.

She did it again and again and again.

It dawned on me that, as I walked across the stage in that “Henry the VII meets Detroit pimp” doctoral regalia, she probably did it for hundreds of other doctoral students, having never actually walked the doctoral path herself. She was like the Louis Gossett Jr. character in “An Officer and a Gentleman.”

She made us officers. She made us what we are.

Thanks to her, universities saw us as “better than her station.” If we were honest, we never did.

I wonder if she saw us that way.

I wonder how many people see her that way.

 ---

Tonight, an odd confluence of events brought me to the breaking point.

The Novocain wore off at about the same time that The Midget came home from a pool party. Shortly after arriving home, I heard some rumbling upstairs and the garage door open. She and The Missus left abruptly.

Upon returning, my wife came downstairs with her “Remain calm. The kid feels bad enough already” face on.

“She lost an earring.”

“Which one?” I asked kind of already knowing the answer.

“Grandma’s”

My grandmother died of cancer about six weeks after our wedding. She was at least a couple pack-a-day smoker and had been for most of her life. She suffered like I’ve never seen anyone suffer before and yet she was so goddamned stubborn that she wouldn’t quit on us. She was going to see us married and it didn’t matter how hard it was to survive.

She was also a recovering alcoholic. She had few possessions at the end of her life, as what little she had went to the cancer treatment.

One of the last “pleasures” she allowed herself was on her 75^th birthday, when she went out and got her ears pierced. After decades of clip-on earrings (do they even make those any more?), she had two holes punched in her head and adorned her ears with whatever she could afford.

The earrings were single stones, probably some level of cheap cubic zirconium. Mom had saved them from the estate and when The Midget lost an earring while staying over at her house, she put the earrings delicately in my child’s lobes and explained where they came from.

“Don’t let her lose them,” Mom cautioned as I took her home.

And I did. And then I found out about Amy.

Despite my best effort to be a calm and explanatory parent, I failed.

I somehow gave my child the impression that my grandmother, who is now in Heaven, hates her because she lost an earring. I spent 20 minutes holding her as she sobbed herself to sleep, feeling like the worst parent ever, knowing my grandmother was looking down at me and cursing, “Dammit, they’re just earrings!”

The folks at the party said they’ll check the pool filter and the bathroom where the girls changed tomorrow.

We might find it. We might not.

Dammit. They’re just earrings.

 ---

Cancer is a scary and evil thing.

I honestly don’t think it means to be, any more than a roach means to be spread infection or mold means to ruin food.

Each is born, somehow, and does what it is predestined to do.

Roaches scurry. Mold grows. Cancer attacks.

Intent? No such thing. It is what it is. It does what it does.

We can destroy roaches. We can inhibit mold. We can fight cancer.

Cancer is to the body what weeds are to the garden. Somewhere along the line, someone determined that certain plants are good and pretty and should be saved while other plants are bad and ugly and must be removed.

The plants don’t know why. They just grow how they grow.

We look at certain cells of the body and say, “Grow! Multiply!”

We look at other cells of the body and say, “Stop! Die!”

The cells don’t know why. They just do what they do.

Somewhere in all of this is a scared person, sitting in a paper robe as a doctor holds up an X-ray to the light and explains in the simplest possible terms that the garden is growing too many weeds and something needs to be done, lest the garden be lost.

So the ingest poison, they endure radiation and they hope against all hope that normalcy will somehow be restored.

And we all hope for them.

 ---

Talk to an old boxer who has been to the brink of death. A fighter like Joe Frazier or Meldrick Taylor. A fighter who has been pushed to the point in which the mortal coil has seemed to unravel.

Ask that fighter about the last nerve. The last moment. The last flurry.

Doctors and scientists will explain it in scientific terms, in “fight-or-flight” language.

A fighter will explain it differently.

When faced with that moment in which death has come to collect its due, that very rawest of human nerves will be tapped.

The fighter, pushed beyond what should be tolerated, will be systemically spurred to fight back. To flurry. To punch. To prevent what might be.

It is my hope that somehow tonight, amid her early cancer treatments, that Amy knows how many people are digging down to find that nerve for her.

I hope that my grandmother pokes St. Anthony in the ribs and says, “C’mon. Just put it in the pool filter and get it over with.”

I hope.

Because sometimes, that’s all you can do.

Love Wins

Go read this. 

Not everything sucks. Sometimes it's nice to remember that. 

A. 

If I Can Last 30 Rounds There's No Reason You Should Ever Have Your Head Down

It was a small moment but a telling one, on the Capitol Square, when the one Walker supporter waving a lawn sign (stakes still attached) around got tired from holding the thing over his backwards-capped head and let it slip. It struck the union-t-shirted fellow standing beside him right in the head. 

"Whoa, sorry man," said the Walkerite, as everyone around him went tense and silent. 

The union fellow smiled. "It's all right," he said, and people took deep breaths again. "I'm fine." 

Once NBC and MSNBC called the election for Walker, the crowd of a thousand faded, people walking one by one and two by two off into the night. Now and then someone would turn to a fellow protesting stranger and talk in terms of long-shot hopes: Absentee ballots, and remember the 2000 election, how wrong everybody was then? But there had been no swings all night, no movement in Barrett's favor, and everybody was tired. 

None of this is all right, and now they get to do whatever they want, Walker and his supporters. None of this is fine, and now it's open season on everything it makes a teawad feel good to kick: Teachers, cops, firefighters, janitors, professors, prison guards, students, women, kids, the environment, hunters, journalists, liberals, people who look like liberals, people who used to be liberals, people who once said something that could be construed as liberal, people who are insufficiently conservative, and people who just don't like bullies, no matter their political stripes. Now we get to see if giving everybody just one more tax cut is enough to restore harmony, if this time it might work magically. 

But before we get to all that, before the second-guessing and the post-campaign back-stabbing, before the stories from disinterested national observers about how this was all a stupid idea anyway and we should have known better, we have to appluad some people. Some people who everybody gave up on, nobody noticed, everybody made fun of, and nobody believed in. 

Some people who stood at the Capitol day after day in the snow and the rain, as TV pundits yammered on about how the day of the union was over, and we'd never see a demonstration of union power in our lifetimes again. 

Some people who disregarded Very Serious Advice that a recall would be too hard, and gathered a million signatures in the bitter Wisconsin winter, over the Thanksgiving holidays, while talk radio blathered about what traitors they were. 

Some people who took a look at a long shot no one else wanted and said what the hell, what's the worst that could happen? Some people who refused to listen to their own party when the party wanted nothing to do with anything that wasn't a sure thing. 

Some people who forced this fight to be a fight, this fight which should have been a fight. What Walker did should have been as hard as it was, because otherwise nobody fought back, and if there's one thing you need when you aren't winning, it's the example of people who refuse to agree to be beaten. 

Leaving Madison this morning, I stopped at a parking lot to look back at the city, across the lake smooth as glass. It's my favorite sight in the world, that skyline, and this morning joggers and bikers passed on the path, in the sun, and fishermen cast their lines over the sides of their small motorboats. And I thought of a line I saw carved on a statue in Dublin, from a song called The West's Asleep: 

Be sure the great God never planned 
For slumbering slaves a home so grand. 

We don't know where this ends. We don't know how many of them will stay in politics, how long it'll be before Walker's actually indicted, if the Senate flip will hold, if anything else is lurking out there. We don't know how far it reaches, how many people heard it, how many of them were changed. 

This hasn't ended, if only because things like this don't end, and we have some people to thank for that. 

A. 

The North Remembers

They were standing by a lamp post, this middle-aged couple. They could have been my parents, in another life. They could have been yours. 

Sue and Kim. He retired after 33 years working for the state. She still worked for the state, on a temporary contract that kept getting extended. They'd had pay freezes for half a dozen years, when they didn't have pay cuts. They weren't getting wealthy on their pensions. They weren't sporting $60 haircuts. They lived in a small town. They were trying to hold on to what they had. 

Behind them, around Madison's beautiful Capitol, people walked with kids and dogs, and cops watched from their bikes and horses. A man in a Badger costume danced on the steps. A man with an accordion played. 

"This is where we were 18 months ago when the protests began," Kim said. "We thought we would finish where we started." 

Look, there are a lot of things I could say right now. About how it's not over, about this instance of voter fraud or other, about the indictments sure to come down. About where we go from here, about what we do. The crowd at the Capitol was stunned, Tuesday night. Angry, but mostly just stunned. And then the song began, rising up from around the statue of the Lady, holding out her hand to tomorrow. 

Oh, how glad and happy when we meet
I’ll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I’ll fly away.

This stuff is hard for a reason. These fights are fights for a reason. Unlikely victories in the face of impossible odds take place because the odds are impossible and the victories unlikely, and we fight what we fight because otherwise we'd spend our entire lives talking about how and why we didn't fight them. I know I say this all the time. I know it gets tiresome. It IS tiresome. Tell me what else to say, here. Give me words. 

There's not a lot this life asks of us. Just fight the fights in front of you, that's all, and you pick what those fights are. People who picked these fights, they weren't planning on having it easy. Do you know how long it's been since there's been any demonstration of union strength in this entire goddamn country? Do you know how far back into history people had to reach? 

I can tell you this, for certain: We are no less free, because thousands of people in Madison and Milwaukee and upstate and downstate and east and west, city mice and country mice and mice in the burbs, stood up and said no more. I can tell you this for certain: We are no poorer, for the past 18 months. We are no dumber, we are no weaker, we are no more afraid. 

We are no less. 

After the returns came in, and the crowd quieted, and the TV crews turned their lights off and went home, I looked for Sue and Kim. 

I couldn't find them. 

But as I searched through the crowd, the songs rose up, over the city in the pale orange light of the setting sun. 

Just a few more weary days and then
I'll fly away
To a land where joys will never end
I'll fly away.

I hope they heard it, that song, rising up. I hope everyone heard it. I hope it rang through the halls of power and I hope no one ever forgets. 

A. 

Bonne chance, Wisconsin

I've been missing in inaction while dealing with a string of crises but wanted to briefly chime in on the recall. It looks a bit dicey right now but with Athenae joining Scout and Jude on the barricades anything can happen.

 

Finally, on a quasi-practical note, Richard Adams and the Guardian's crack team of reporters are live blogging Wisconsin's recallmania.

"No good thing ever dies..."

For A and all the folks who give us this place. Today, more than ever, we hope.

Tomorrow, Just Hours Away

Quick takes: Shortly after noon tomorrow I'll be heading up to Madison where Jude, Scout and Joanie will join me in presiding over one of the following: The wildest victory party in the history of cheese, a wee-hours recount-worthy scenario whereby nobody really wins, or a series of posts that will be just the word "fuck" and rehashings of things I wrote back in 2004, which is sort of how this feels right now.

Doc will be running a Tuesday night crack van for you all starting probably around poll-closing-time, dependent on his schedule, and reporting in as well. You can also listen for us on WORT, where Roadmaster has promised we will turn up at some point that night. I have no idea what is going to happen. The polls are all fundamentally fucked up, and that's the technical term. My educated opinion at this point is total pessimism, but that is my educated opinion about everything. I am a pessimist on purpose. That way I am sometimes surprised but never disappointed. 

In the past several weeks I've had conversations about the election with family and friends, some of whom agree with me. Some of whom don't. And what I keep coming back to is fear, among the Walker supporters, among those who say things like "we can't afford to keep paying for pensions" and "we can't afford anything but the lowest of low taxes for corporations" and "we can't do anything we did 40 years ago because of reasons I don't understand but I know, in my bones, that we can't, we just can't." And I'm being reminded of how radical a message it really is, how radical it always is, to say we can achieve what we want to achieve. 

Because it's not just the cavalier "I don't wanna, I got mine, screw you," not from all of them. Not from those who aren't billionaires but from those who've listened to what the billionaires have to say. Who've been fed hate and fear for months now, hate and fear of their neighbors, hate and fear of their own futures, and worst of all, hate and fear of their own history. 

Their parents or grandparents lived lives we now think of as anachronistic or idealized: Union jobs at a factory, pensions through retirement, health insurance, Social Security and Medicare that actually took care of them when they were very old. Schoolteacher and police officer being occupations that allowed you to own a home, a car, perhaps even send your children to nice schools if you saved very carefully. Possibly a vacation, nowhere fancy, maybe a road trip memorable for anything but the destination. 

When you retired, your pension allowed you to keep spending money at the local grocery and dime stores, to stay in your house and maintain it, to enjoy your neighborhood restaurants and attend your neighborhood church and donate to your local Lions Club or VFW. You could rest easy in extreme old age knowing that even if you didn't leave your children an inheritance, at least you wouldn't bankrupt them with debt and thus hinder their own starts in life. 

These aren't fancy things, that we're now told are too much for us to handle, are luxurious and out of hand. These aren't outrageous expectations. This isn't Free Purebred Kitten Day, or foot massages from film stars. These are reasonable rewards for living a reasonable, upright, decent life. Used to be, we could afford as a country large numbers of people living just like this if they so chose. This used to be something we could do with ease. And now we're being told no, we can't have that anymore, and in fact we have to make sure people don't have that anymore, we have to make sure nobody even dreams about that anymore, because it's too expensive and everything's going to hell. And we're so, so angry at anybody who tells us different, so, so afraid. 

I say it's fear because: If those things aren't out of reach, if it isn't true that "we" can't afford them anymore, then we have to ask ourselves the question: Why don't we have them? In answering that there is no earthly reason we can't have lives just like our parents and grandparents led, but for the bastards we enable in power, we have to admit that we allowed this to be done to us, that we let hucksters and thieves turn us against each other while they ran away with the piggy bank. In really looking at how much money there is and what it goes for, we have to admit that we just didn't want to question our politicians and fight our bosses and resist our every human urge to not make a fuss in order to get the very least of what is owed to people who teach children and put out fires and arrest that one asshole who keeps ripping up the library's rhododendrons. 

That's too much to look full in the face. In answering it we have to own up to just how much of our own power we've been willing to give up. We have to admit that what teachers and public workers and nurses and cops are asking for isn't some outrageous thing, not if for one second we'd stop undervaluing ourselves, and start demanding what we've had to demand so many times before. 

We think this is some insurmountable problem, some terrible divide, that we've never seen before. We have always had people saying sit down, shut up, don't rock the boat, while some slick-talking jerk in a shiny suit was pouring fire and brimstone about how the company was gonna mess you for your own damn good. We have always had the jerk, too, and his bosses, and the company will always be with us. This is how this has always worked. What we haven't always had is an entire pseudo-middle-class establishment media, especially on 24-hour cable news, appealing to ignorant-ass 'necks reinforcing the message to lay back and think of Wall Street, or else they'll come for you next, but even that's not a total excuse. 

They're always coming for you, is what I want to tell everybody who's angry and everybody who's scared. The jerk, the company, they're always out there, and the only thing you can't afford is to think they're on your side. When they're done with the teachers and the steelworkers and the cops, they'll come for you, too, and no racist sign or hat with teabags glued on gonna save your soul then. The only thing to fear is fear itself, said the last person who understood this well enough to make a case, so up you get. 

There's no reason to be scared, when the scariest thing is that it's all up to you, and you decide what "we" can and cannot do. And the things we cannot do just melt away, once we really start taking them apart, and seeing what they're made of. We can do anything if we want it bad enough. We can afford what we want to afford.

We can afford what we can get enough votes to afford.

A. 

Memorial Day Reading

GO GET THIS NOW. It's mindblowing. 

I'm about 10 pages from the end right now, and practically ate the thing in the past three days. 

A. 

Memorial Day: Who I Remember

We here at First Draft believe in recycling so I decided to repeat this Memorial Day post for the third year in a row. Just call it the trifecta:

The veteran I'd like to remember on this solemn holiday is the late Sgt. Eddie Couvillion.

My family tree is far too tangled and gnarly to describe here but suffice it to say that Eddie was my second father. He served in Europe during World War II, not in combat but in the Army Quartermaster Corps. In short, he was a supply Sergeant, one of those guys who won the war by keeping the troops fed, clothed and shod. Eddie was what was called in those days a scrounger; not unlike Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22 or James Garner's character in The Great Escape. 

Eddie's favorite military exploit was running a army approved bordello in France after hostilities ended. He always called it a cat house and bragged that it was the best little whorehouse in Europe. One can serve one's country in manifold ways...

Eddie died 5 years ago and I still miss him. He was a remarkable man because he changed so much as he aged. When I met him, he was a hardcore Texas/Louisiana conservative with old South racial views and attitudes. At an age when many people close their minds, Eddie opened his and stopped thinking of black folks as a collective entity that he didn't care for and started thinking of them as individuals. Eddie was a genuine Southern gentleman so he'd never done or said an unkind thing to anyone but confided to me that the only one he'd ever hurt by being prejudiced was himself. I was briefly speechless because we'd had more than a few rows over that very subject. Then he laughed, shook his head and said: "Aren't you going to tell me how proud you are of me? You goddamn liberals are hard to satisfy."

Actually, I'm easily satisfied. In 2004, Eddie had some astonishing news for me: he'd not only turned against the Iraq War but planned to vote for John Kerry because "Bush Junior is a lying weasel and a draft dodger." That time he didn't need to ask me if I was proud of him, it was written all over my face. It was the first and only time he ever voted for a Democrat for President. 

I salute you, Sgt. Couvillion. I only wish that I could pour you a glass of bourbon on the rocks and we could raise our glasses in a Memorial Day toast. 

Make All Those Mean Recalls Go AWAAAAAAAY

Covering a Story That Won't Die is difficult. It's exhausting. Day in, day out, talking to the same people about the same stuff all the time, trying to find something -- anything -- new to say about the same issues, getting calls from the same six pissed off people no matter what you do ... it's worse than just about anything. 

Other than having your rights and working dignity stripped away, hearing your reasonable compensation blamed for financial catastrophes not of your making, and being vilified for the unpardonable sins of teaching schoolchildren to read and mopping the floors of public buildings, that is. 

The Wisconsin State Journal editorial board has opposed all of the attempts over the last year to recall state senators of both major political parties and the governor.

It's not that we agree with everything these politicians have said and done. Far from it.

It's that all of these leaders were elected to four-year terms and shouldn't be targeted for recall because of public policy decisions. The recall process is designed to quickly purge politicians for illicit behavior, not to punish those who take controversial stands on single issues.

Yes, the recall organizers targeting Republican Gov. Scott Walker have a long list of complaints. But the critics of any governor of any political party always can cite many faults.

First of all, the recalls have hardly been "endless." It's been 18 months. When you're talking about decimating the rights people have enjoyed for generations, maybe 18 months isn't quite the Wars of the Roses. Tone down the drama. Remember the Maine. 

Second, "critics of any governor of any political party always can cite many faults." They're all the same! There are governors and critics, and who are we to decide if some criticism has merit and some doesn't? It's not like we have any responsibility to set an agenda or sort out truth from fiction. And it's not like gathering a million signatures was any kind of test at all of the strength of public objection. 

Tens of millions of more dollars are being spent during tight times on misleading and divisive political ads. Our leaders are distracted by and obsessed with opinion polls and raising piles of campaign cash, rather than tackling Wisconsin's many pressing challenges.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, most of the money Walker's raising would otherwise be spent employing hucksters in other states to make shitty campaign ads, so at least there's that boost to the economy. This isn't cash the Kochs would otherwise be giving to Wisconsin's farmers and starving kittens and nuns. 

You know, I have less of an issue with an actual endorsement of Walker than I do with this puling about how icky the recalls are. At least that's taking a position in the fight, instead of standing off to the corner loudly deploring the tone in the room so that everybody can see what a superior person you are.

People are pissed off. They're "divided." They have come to the realization that lots of their neighbors, co-workers and relatives don't agree with them on stuff. Some of them have come to understand, with a degree of shock that's really uncalled-for in 2012, that a lot of their fellow humans will hurt just about anybody including themselves to feel like they're one-upping somebody else. It sucks, having your eyes opened to just how many people around you are assholes. Guess what? 

This is what the world is like, under its skin. This is what we do. The Wisconsin state constitution provides for this process, which is playing itself out as it should be. In fact, we're damn lucky the only major political violence in Wisconsin has been economic. Other places, you'd be thrown in jail or shot or worse. The recalls haven't killed anybody.

They've eaten up money that might otherwise have been used for other mechanisms of democracy, and that's too bad, but you could just as easily say Walker should have ended this months ago by backing down as that his opponents shouldn't be forcing the question in the only way available to them. 

A. 

Walker vs. Barrett: REMATCH

Four weeks, cats and kittens. Four weeks for all the marbles. 

Donate here. 

Volunteer here. 

A.