FIRST DRAFT

Best Healthcare In The World Blah Blah

One of the arguments we always heard during the healthcare debate was that America is the driving force behind every major medical advance in the universe, since forever. Indeed, Tennessee's own Junior Senator Bob Corker had the nerve to tell Canada's former Public Health Minister that Canada and France were mooching off of American innovation: we're the ones coming up with all the technological breakthroughs, which they benefit from! And dammit, it's unfair! It's our money paying to develop cures for cancer! Parasites!

Oh yes, that was embarassing. 

I thought of that when I read about a Cleveland researcher's struggle to get funding to start clinical trials of a promising breast cancer vaccine:

With additional funding, the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute immunologist could begin testing the vaccine in two groups of humans: women with advanced breast cancer and healthy women with a high risk of developing the disease.

The cost to just make the vaccine is an estimated $1.8 million, a small part of the $6 million for all of the costs associated with conducting a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Tuohy said.

As 2010 wound down, however, Tuohy's hope that he would be able to secure sizable grants to cover those costs vanished into thin air.

The National Cancer Institute -- which the year before provided him funding -- and Susan G. Komen for the Cure had rejected his grant proposals, ending any chance that human trials could be launched before the end of 2011.

Why is this happening in America? Because, the article tells us, competition for cancer research funds is "stiff." Only 12% of the grant proposals NCI receives are awarded funds. Komen funds fewer than 80 grants of the 1,400 proposals it receives. And Dr. Tuohy is developing a preventative vaccine, whereas the medical community is focused more on treatment for existing cancer. Apparently prevention goes against the grain in the medical community.

This is the greatest healthcare system in the world? Bah. A paltry $6 million to test a promising breast cancer vaccine? We can't do this because why? With all the money we spend on crap at the Pentagon we can't scrape together $6 million for a preventative breast cancer vaccine? The Army spent $7 million sponsoring NASCAR driver Ryan Newman last year. We can do that but we can't fund clinical trials for a breast cancer vaccine? (On a related note: did you know the Dept. of Defense has a Breast Cancer Research Program? I didn't either. But no, they rejected Dr. Tuohy's application, too.)

So now citizens are pitching in. People, this story just restores my faith in America, it really does. Folks all around the country are holding fundraisers to help Dr. Tuohy, in what has to be the medical research equivalent of a pickle jar by the cash register. They've held garage sales, races, concerts, you name it. They've kicked in big money and little money. A sample:

Earlier this year, Judy Fitzgerald, a retired middle school teacher who lives in Portsmouth, R.I., sent Tuohy a check for $702, money raised from a 1950s-themed dance and items sold at a crafts fair.

These people are my heroes. You'd think our government or fucking GlaxoSmithKline or whatever would be able to cough up $6 millioni dollars for clinical trials -- hell, maybe WellPoint CEO Angela Braly could dip into her $13.2 million annual compensation, after all, isn't a breast cancer vaccine a lot cheaper in the long run for insurance companies than cancer treatment? But whatever. Free hand of the market, yada yada.

So once again the people step in when others have failed. It's not the most seamless or efficient way of doing things but we stumble along and eventually we get there.

The article has lots of links to donation pages if you're interested in getting involved.

Cardinal's Pulitzer, Emmy Winners Optimistic About Journalism's Future

That really shouldn't have to be a headline, right, but how many of these do I complain about to you guys, panels of journalists talking about how journalism's glory days have passed by and kids today don't read and everybody's just interested in Kardashians now and everything sucks? I either attend one of those things or read about one happening elsewhere once a week, which is why I drink so much. 

Finally, on Friday, I went to one that was inspiring instead of hectoring. It was in conjunction with The Daily Cardinal's 120th anniversary, and was actually two panels, one of Emmy/Peabody winners and another of Pulitzer winners. They had in common that they got their start at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's oldest student newspaper, and they were speaking primarily to an audience of journalists and other journalism students. 

In the morning, there was a lot of talk about ethics and transparency in traditional media. Chuck Salituro of ESPN said the network now bans its journalists from writing "as told to" books for sports figures, because of the inherent conflict in being the ghostwriter for someone you're covering (IMAGINE). Both Steven Reiner and Peter Greenberg of CBS talked about video news releases and the perniciousness of their use in smaller markets. 

They also spoke about "experts" paying to opine on various news subjects. And all these things were allowed to happen, were allowed to flourish, because the new economics of journalism placed ever more pressure on people to produce material, and the temptation to take the easy path was greater. 

(As an aside: Why is it that every Q&A ever includes at least one person who stands up and says, "MY QUESTION IS I HATE YOU?" It's like a law of nature.) 

Cardinal photo by Mark Kauzlarich

In the afternoon, the print folks took over and a lot of the questions they were asked about the "future of news" resulted in my two favorite answers: It's always been endangered and it's actually less endangered now because new voices have less expensive platforms to work through. 

Abigail Goldman, formerly of the LA Times, said that one day we'll look back on this as a golden age of journalism, because students are learning to be entrepreneurial, to scramble, to push themselves through the noise online. "Those who do good work will rise," she said, and, "The medium doesn't matter. The story does." 

Neal Ulevich, who photographed the Vietnam War for the AP, said the web has been good for getting news photos attention, and noted that a lot of the imagery coming from war zones now comes from cell phone cameras. "It's not about the technology. It's about the image." 

Which is very true. What we have now, in journalism, are tools we didn't have before, and the ability to combine those tools, to specialize in terms of subject matter but broaden our work in terms of the ways we cover things. Immediacy isn't always bad. Twitter isn't ruining everything. Asking people to send in a cell phone video is not going to kill us all. And as long as the story isn't trivial, the coverage won't be. 

A. 

Fuck Yeah Norway

How it's done. 

A. 

Some People Spoke Up

Never let it be said that everybody went along: 

Over and over again, in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Guantánamo, in secret CIA black sites and at CIA headquarters, in the Pentagon, and in Washington, men and women recognized the torture for what it was and refused to remain silent. They objected, protested, and fought to prevent, and then to end, these illegal and immoral interrogations. While the president and his top advisers approved and encouraged the torture of prisoners, there was dissent in every agency, at every level.

The documents are full of these voices. In fact, it is thanks to these dissenters that much of the documentary record exists. From emails among FBI agents sharing their shock over scenes they had witnessed in interrogation booths in Guantánamo, to letters and memoranda for the record, to major internal investigations, the documents show that those who ordered and carried out the torture did so despite constant warnings and objections that their actions were ineffective, short-sighted, and wrong. It is no wonder that so many of these documents were suppressed.

There's this tendency, especially among our stupider punditry, to act like "everybody" just lost they damn minds in the wake of 9/11 and went all torture-happy because "we" were all so pissed off from having been attacked like nobody had ever attacked us before with the new world we were living in and all that transformative socio-bullshittery and nonsense. Thus, if "we" are all responsible, then none of us is responsible, and nobody needs to be held to account, and nothing needs to be said. Let it all be forgotten so we can go on our merry way. 

Obama's record on this stuff, by the way? Appalling. Especially so, and all the more so, for a fucking scholar of the law. Forget punishing the people who did this. It would be nice if he, himself, stopped doing this, first off.

A. 

Shorter Federal Court: MOST OF YOUR BASE, SCOTT WALKER

There was "no rational basis" to force union recertification and forbid dues collections for some unions but not others.

Here's the other half of Citizens United coming home to roost: If money is speech, then money is protected speech on First Amendment grounds. 

A. 

'A Poor Leader'

The essence of leadership is bigotry and cowardice, apparently: 

A student body president in Alpharetta, Ga., said he was removed from his leadership post after school administrators disagreed with an idea he proposed to make the titles of prom king and queen open to gay couples.

Reuben Lack, 18, was removed from his post on Feb. 8, 2012 for “pushing personal projects,” according a suit the teen filed in federal court.

[snip]

“The student was essentially a poor leader,” Suzann Wilcox Jiles, attorney for the district said in a statement issued to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “He behaved in manner not becoming of student body president including but not limited to rescheduling meetings with little notice, directly going against the instructions of the faculty advisers.”

I am really getting back in touch with my inner 17-year-old girl because adults, seriously, are we doing anything right lately? Turn up the Beastie Boys, fuck authority, all that. Heavens. Rescheduling meetings, this kid was doing. If that got you kicked off a volunteer post for real, there'd be nobody left in America to do anything. 

By the way, what the actual fucking fuck is this about: 

Lack, whose Facebook says he is straight, alleged the suit that administrators at Alpharetta High School violated his first amendment rights when they shut down a student council meeting discussion on modifying the prom king and queen tradition to make it accessible to gay couples.

Whose FACEBOOK says? Couldn't you call him up and ask him, if it was essential that you know if he was behaving like a decent human being out of some Homosexual Hive Mind solidarity? Or were you afraid that his response would be appropriately something like, "What business is it of yours which BY THE WAY IS MY ENTIRE POINT?"

I know this is how things work. People push forward, people push back. I am getting impatient, though. We have a limited amount of time on this planet, guys, and we are wasting it trying to go backward and be less. We are wasting it arguing with kids who get this so much harder than we do. Being a teenager is like ... you're trying on a bunch of things, finding something that fits. Here comes this kid who says, "If being gay fits you, why the fuck shouldn't you be prom kings together?" And it's the adults who are jumping up and down to protect others from this dangerous concept, lest it implode the whole world, and the kids are in no danger from this at all. 

You know what kids are in danger from, besides being shot by paranoid fuckholes who think their Skittles and hoodies are skeery? Besides hunger and poverty and the cost of college and the general fact that the air might not be breathable when they grow up? Besides urban blight and the tap water lighting on fire and drug-dealing gang members and poison in their spinach and how a car could paste them all over the freeway at any moment? You know what kids are in danger from?

They're in danger from fucking adults who are supposed to be their role models telling them that the best they can hope for in life is to avoid upsetting somebody, that the glory raging inside them should be blunted and blurred, that they should only ever ask for what they think they can get, and that they should accept that something called "the real world" is an inevitability instead of something that is the way it is because nobody's been strong enough to change it yet. 

Let's reschedule the meeting about gay prom royalty to never, and get on to the real question of leadership here. 

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What Would Amelia Do?

You know, what with everything with an R after its name taking every single opportunity on the planet to be just the biggest penile implant that ever was, it's easy to overlook HOW FUCKING AWESOME CHICKS ARE: 

A finger bone fragment, DNA samples, a photo showing a wheel protruding from water. Amelia Earhart disappeared 75 years ago, but the clues continue to surface.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is set to meet with historians and scientists as a new hunt is launched for the wreckage of Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery will begin the search in June, according to the Associated Press, off the remote island of South Pacific island of Nikumaroro, in the nation of Kiribati.

A. 

JUNE 5 BITCHES

That's when Walker will be evicted, the baby flying spaghetti monster willing. 

Epic First Draft drinking crack-vanning VERY SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL REPORTING is planned. 

A. 

An open letter to Russ Feingold

Dear Russ,

I know I’m not the first to take on this quixotic task and I’m quite certain I won’t be the last. However, if your time as my senator has taught me anything, it’s that there is nothing wrong with trying something if you truly believe in it.

I spent part of last week perusing your book “While America Sleeps,” and for the first time in a long time, I actually didn’t mind thinking about politics. From the snippets I read online and in Barnes and Noble, the book was well-reasoned, logical and well thought out. It gave me just enough gossip to be light-hearted but focused more on the issues. It also talked about a topic that most people have stopped paying attention to, but probably need to take a second look at.

I then caught your interview with GQ. (Any man willing to do an interview while slurping a brandy old-fashioned is my kind of guy, by the way.) I was really amazed at some of your answers. You still maintain that Republicans and Democrats can be friends. You stand behind your choices, whether they were the bedrock of Democratic politics or veered into more Republican territory. You don’t apologize for voting against the Patriot Act while simultaneously being in favor of dropping a big honkin’ bomb on bin Laden. Your name remains on the McCain-Feingold Act, which was meant to try to do something about people who use big money to create a political imbalance in their favor.

You are smart. You are willing to listen. You are balanced in your approach to action. You actually listen.

In other words, you are everything our current governor is not.

It broke my heart to see the last line of that GQ interview regarding the likelihood that you’ll run for office sometime soon:

I won’t run for office again until I feel like it. And right now I don't feel like it. I've always been grateful for the enormous outpouring of support and affection that I've received here in the state, but I've never kidded myself that anybody is irreplaceable.

You’re right that no one is irreplaceable. You’re right that people love you. You’re right that a job is hard to do when you don’t feel like doing it. However, you have always done what is right, even if it means you have to hurt a little bit to do it. You’ve been true to yourself, but also true to the needs of this state.

You’re a far better man than I am, and I freely admit this. You knew going into the 2010 election that you were going to lose. The mood of the state, and the country, had changed. The Teawads had stormed the castle with the superhero costumes they made in special ed and their cans of spray cheese. A “vote the bastards out” vibe had hit, thanks to a crappy economy and the sense that liberals had just elected Dolemite to the presidency. When you lost (and MAN did you lose), you took it in stride and you kind of just walked away.

I can’t imagine doing that. I probably would have gone the “you’re not going to have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore” route. I probably would have gone on the talk-show circuit and criticized every move Ron Johnson made, from his stupid haircut to his inability to stay on message in a speech of more than three minutes.

I would have been hurt. I would have been pissed. I would have said “fuck y’all” a lot. I have a hard time believing that you don’t have just a little bit of this going on deep within the recesses of your soul. You’re human and this had to hurt. It’s probably why you don’t want to take another pass at politics right now.

You did a good job of not letting the pain show and not letting a flash of anger undermine your decades of service. I couldn’t do that.

In a much smaller and much less significant way, I found myself on the outs like that once. I was running to lead an organization that I believed in quite a bit. As the sitting VP of the group, I had what had traditionally been considered an inside track if I wanted it. I really didn’t want the job, but felt the obligation and thought I could do a good job of it. Instead, problems from administrations long gone came back to haunt the our board that year. Instead of pulling together, a few self-centered political opportunists took the chance to use those things our group had nothing to do with to attack the board and essentially attack me. They propped up a cardboard cutout, screamed about how I was a horribly bad candidate and beat me. About a year later, the cardboard cutout wilted in the rain, the problems persisted and I got a knock on the door, asking if I’d be interested in running for president again.

“Not if you tied my tongue to your muffler and drove me naked over a field of broken glass at 70 mph,” I told a stunned colleague. “I will NEVER take a leadership position in this shithole again.”

This is precisely why I would be a lousy politician and why you are a great one.

The state you love is in trouble. In that giant wash of “sticking it to the man” that took you out of office and gave us Senator Salad Bar, Wisconsin elected a greedy, selfish, idiotic fool. They elected the yin to your yang. The backlash, the party politics and their ability to drink the sand led normally sane Wisconsinites to put Scott Walker in office. This has finally gotten so bad that more than 1 million of these people, many of whom voted for him in the first place, have said, “We can’t tolerate four years of this.”

They got the signatures. They got a recall election going. They need a candidate.

With no disrespect to Kathy Falk or the other folks running, this state can’t get rid of Governor Deadeyes without you.

If I were you, I wouldn’t do it either. I’d be fine with a simpler life of teaching law at Marquette, hanging out with my family and quietly watching politicians run around like terriers with their fur on fire. It’s got to be a great gig to sit back and enjoy that brandy old-fashioned while quietly saying to yourself, “See? Not a lot of fun out there, is it?”

However, you need to keep one thing in mind: This idiot is your governor, too. As a citizen of this state, a taxpaying member of society as his party likes to say, you are represented by this pathetic food tube.

Most of us can only do so much. We signed the petition for change.

You, on the other hand, can be the petition.

Please run. Give us back our state.

Sincerely,

 

Doc

Protesting Too Much

So a few hundred people with signs was enough to scare the G8 to Camp David instead of my home base, and reporters are acting like small-town beauty pageant losers all HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO POOR WIDDLE US, and I can't tell you the bitching that was going on for the past month or so. About how there were going to be all these awful protesters mucking up the pretty pretty downtown that's there for people from Wisconsin and Michigan to visit, getting their unwashed free speech all over everything and how horrible that they raise their voices. 

You know, the usual one percent doctrine. 

Steve: 

Seriously, the city could have encouraged its hospitality industry to market to the protesters as well as the dignitaries. Tents, supplies for signs, protest apps . . . a whole market to exploit.

And even more seriously, welcoming protesters as participants to the weekend would have been much smarter than treating them like the enemy and turning the whole thing into an impending crisis. Our cultural, civic and political institutions could have scheduled workshops, debates, art exhibits - the whole works. We could have shown the world how to bridge the gap and connect the 1% to the 99% and showcased democracy at its best.

Security would still have been an issue and incidents no doubt would have occurred - and likely still will when NATO gets here. But that's part of the price we pay for living in a free society.

Seriously. Maybe Occupy would have been a little less hardcore about stuff if the city hadn't shown every indication of meeting them more than halfway, acting like there had never been a demonstration here before and oh god oh god we're all going to die get the riot gear Martha, it's the big one. I've never seen such fucking hick hysteria, and this in a city everybody goes around mouthing all the time is so world-class.

There are a lot of goddamn people who live here, and some of them are going to stand outside a convention center with a sign that says FUCK THESE PEOPLE, and we are all just going to have to get over the unspeakable trauma of seeing that.  

A not-insignificant number of people may have been (may still be) total dicks, violent and destructive, but why on earth was the fear of that cause for the full-scale militarization that was going to occur? Do people not act like violent destructive dicks every day around here, too? Whence cometh the idea that these criminals required tank divisions basically, and other criminals don't? Or are we just flat-out saying it now, that the prime minister of East Gofuckistan is deserving of a peace and quiet our citizens can easily do without? 

That's unworthy of a place like this, a big glorious noisy busy messy place like this. The other day I went out my front door and there was a whole rotisserie chicken lying in the middle of the road, I mean every time I ride the L there's some guy in a panda costume singing for no reason or something. We live here because of the crazy shit that goes on, not in spite of it, and despite everyone's best attempts to sanitize all public spaces the public, occasionally, has other ideas. Acting threatened by that doesn't intimidate our critics. It just exposes our cowardice. 

In other words, sack up, and figure that if the vast majority of the world's people can live with crushing poverty and systemic powerlessness all of their days, you can handle a week or two of people on the street being rude enough to bring it up in conversation. 

A. 

Women's History Month + Black History Month = Awesome History Month

Fuck yeah, Daisy Lampkin! 

A. 

Voice for the Voiceless, Silenced

Anthony Shadid, New York Times foreign correspondent, Pulitzer winner, fellow alum of my beloved Daily Cardinal, and a personal hero of mine, has died in Syria: 

The death of Mr. Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent who had a wife and two children, abruptly ended one of the most storied careers in modern American journalism. Fluent in Arabic, with a gifted eye for detail and contextual writing, Mr. Shadid captured dimensions of life in the Middle East that many others failed to see. Those talents won him a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2004 for his coverage of the American invasion of Iraq and the occupation that followed, and a second Pulitzer in 2010, also for his Iraq reporting, both of them for The Washington Post. He also was a finalist in 2007 for his coverage of Lebanon, and has been nominated by The Times for his coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings that have transfixed the Middle East for the past year.

Mr. Shadid began his Middle East reporting career as a correspondent for The A.P. based in Cairo, traveling around the region from 1995 to 1999. He later worked at The Boston Globe before moving to The Post, where he was the Islamic Affairs correspondent and Baghdad bureau chief. He joined The Times at the end of 2009.

He was no stranger to injury, harassment and arrest. In 2002, while working for The Globe, he was shot and wounded in the shoulder as he walked on a street in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. During the tumultuous protests in Cairo last year that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Shadid was hounded by Mr. Mubarak’s police, and during a police raid, he had to hide the computers used by Times reporters.

Mr. Shadid, Mr. Hicks and two other Times journalists, Stephen Farrell and Lynsey Addario, were arrested by pro-government militias during the conflict in Libya last year and held for more than a week, during which all were physically abused. Their driver, Mohammad Shaglouf, died.

In the 2004 citation, the Pulitzer Board praised “his extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril, the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended.” In the 2010 citation, the board praised “his rich, beautifully written series on Iraq as the United States departs and its people and leaders struggle to deal with the legacy of war and to shape the nation’s future.”

He spoke of the risks he took while reporting in an interview in December with Terry Gross on the NPR program “Fresh Air.”  “I did feel that Syria was so important, and that story wouldn’t be told otherwise, that it was worth taking risks for,” he said of an earlier trip to Syria in which he entered the country from Lebanon on a motorcycle across a rugged stretch of land.

In addition to being one of the best reporters and writers working today, Shadid was unfailingly kind to the place he and I both started out. Whenever I'd send a kid his way for some advice or encouragement he always responded, even if at the moment he was God knows where with the world blowing up all around him, and if he had time he'd give it, and if he didn't have time he'd make it. 

A friend and I used to send his stories back and forth annotated with notes like CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW GOOD THIS IS, marveling at the depth of detail in his reporting and the unforgiving, unrelenting reality of his writing. He did what I tell students to do all the time, what I tried to do to the best of my own comparatively meagre abilities in my own work: Go there, and tell everyone you can everything you see. It sounds easy, but it's not. It's not easy to make people care about the victims of war, the ordinary people caught up in conflict, but he did it, by showing us our common humanity and never losing sight of that no matter what the political situation was. 

We need more like him. My deepest condolences to his family and those he loved. 

A. 

Fighter Pilots in Love

Holy shit, these people:

They'd pick a time to meet. Their rendezvous point: 3,000 feet above a bridge at Lake Martin, 25 miles away. He'd be flying a repaired AT6 trainer. She'd be in a much slower Piper J-3 Cub.

"When I'd get to Lake Martin, I'd see this bright yellow Cub putt-putting along," he said. "I'd be real proud: She was on time and on target."

He'd pull down and fly in formation with her. They couldn't communicate by radio; her Cub didn't have one. All they could do was smile, wave and blow kisses.

Seeing each other in flight created a bond. When they flew together, it was as if they were holding hands in midair. At the end of their aerial encounter, he'd peel away, only to circle back. He'd sneak up behind her, pull in front and leave her in a trail of airwash. Her tiny craft shook mightily. She'd come to expect it every weekend.

"It didn't faze me," she'd say. "I was the better pilot. ... I just didn't fly the fastest aircraft."

 

What a couple of blistering, water-walking badasses. You know, it's easy to forget amidst all the crazy that goes on that human beings have always been pretty awesome, and that whatever limits others set for us, somebody's gonna go out there and blow those limits away.

A.  

The War is Finally Over

Rest easy, now, be at peace. 

A. 

Sweet Jesus, These People Are Insane

Fuck you guys. This is bullshit.

Well, it's February in Wisconsin. And that means it's time for the Polar Plunge. That's right. Every year, a bunch of totally insane motherfuckers jump into a hole cut into the ice as a way to raise money for the Special Olympics.

This year, friend of the blog and regular commenter Hobbes is taking the plunge. So throw her some cheddar so she can get wetter.

Also, our good friends the Mad Rollin Dolls also have a team jump. Help them out.

If you're interested in other individual donations, check out Andi or Patty.

Go give some money, bitches!

It's for a good cause, people. If you've got some spare change to toss this way, please do. I know the economy sucks and the world's caving in around us, but this is one of those little things that we do to make life better for the people served by this organization; also, it increases the total amount of joy in the world, which makes it a better place for all of us. Cough up a buck, you cheap bastards.

A Million Strong

A million. A MILLION. In the snow and the cold, over the holidays, with ads blaring from every TV set that said Walker was going to save them all and they'd be sorry, with carping pundits complaining about how very rude and mean this all was, they got A MILLION.

This is why you never give up. This is why you get back up. This is why you shout as loud as you can with every voice you possess, because one of these times, somebody's going to fucking HEAR YOU. And you never know when that time's coming, because it's always coming, always out there, always heading your way. 

I can't. Just. 

Wait, maybe I can. Thank you to everyone who donated, who circulated, who worked, who watched. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I've lived here a long time but Wisconsin will always be my home. Thank you for caring enough to try to save it. 

Scout's gonna have more later. Jude just texted me that he's at the "cocaine-fueld abortion fest and black mass to celebrate recall sigs. Can't get a signal to Tweet. Tell the world it kicks ass." 

I think the world knows. 

A. 

The Final Week

If you live in Wisconsin and haven't signed, get your ass in gear! 

A. 

Indy Dems Split to Prevent Another Union-Busting Attempt

Fuck yeah. 

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The kids are alright: Star Witness

Because we could all use some inspiration:

These two high school students, Kate and Janelle, are seniors in the arts program at Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School (PCVS), located in downtown Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Earlier in the fall, district school board trustees voted to close the old (founded in 1827!) downtown fixture next year and move its highly-regarded Integrated Arts program to larger more modern Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School. The decision to close down the much-beloved PCVS sparked protest after protest in the community but it didn't seem much of anything was going to reverse the trustees' decision. A few weeks ago, just trying to draw more attention to efforts of their peers and the community at large to keep the school open, Kate and Janelle recorded their video, using the reverb in a PCVS stairwell to make Neko Case's already-atmospheric Star Witness sound even more haunting.

 

It worked. The video started getting forwarded around, someone tweeted it to Case, she re-tweeted, the video went viral, the story got blogged, re-blogged, and picked up in the media. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, thoughtful, concerned citizens (and teenage girls singing like angels) for the win!

On Monday, more progress: the Ontario Minister of Education appointed a special facilitator to review the policy and process behind the school trustees' decision to close PCVS.  Follow the PCVS story here.

 

Hey Walker: Screw Us and We Multiply

Now that people are close to the number of signatures necessary to force a recall, suddenly the certification process for signatures is flawed and must be destroyed. Suddenly the people who pass muster on the signatures are suspect. 

Assholes, let that FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND number be a hint. The people coming for you won't stop. I was up in Wisconsin last weekend for hockey and some Christmas shopping, and people were standing on street corners, outside shopping centers, in the blistering cold wind, in conservative-ass Brookfield, not because it was fun or it was cool or they were getting paid or they were hanging out with their friends but because and ONLY because they want you ten-a-penny fascisti fucking amscrayed.

They want you DONE, and every legislative punishment you devised hasn't stopped them, and every vote you've taken against their interests hasn't stopped them, and every nasty radio tirade by your creepy little wormtongues hasn't stopped them. They won't stop. They'll never stop. They showed up a hundred thousand strong in the snow and when you kicked them out of the building they stood on the lawn, knee-deep, freezing, singing the national anthem.

I don't think you know the extent of the avalanche crashing down the mountain, if you think this will stop them. If you think this is just the next hurdle, that if you can somehow get the Government Accountability Board neutered then everybody will have to give up and go home, I don't think you've heard the song they've been singing underneath your window for almost a year. I don't think you've heard it, so listen again: 

Listen to that. Five hundred thousand is the beginning. Five hundred thousand is just a start. 

Donate to the recall effort here. 

A. 

The Rural vs. Urban Divide

It's not what you think, in Wisconsin: 

Three hunters turned their truck and trailer around and pulled up to where I stood on the sidewalk. I explained that I was with the Recall Walker campaign. "It's why we turned around," the driver said. He had already signed, but his father wanted the chance. First, he checked to see that I had a campaign volunteer badge. "Some people pretending to be with the campaign are destroying petitions," he said.

While his father signed, I told him about the woman losing $200 a month. He held up four fingers. "For me, it's four hundred a month." He's a prison guard, and the cut in health care and retirement benefits is hitting his paycheck hard.

I believe that the Recall Walker campaign leaders significantly underestimated discontent in rural areas. When the Iowa County office opened up to train volunteers several days ago, over 100 people showed up. And in five days, they have gathered well over 50 percent of the total signatures they expected to gather in that county in the entire two months of the process.

Walker's pals like to talk about Milwaukee, Madison and then the rest of the state, because "Madison" is code for college kids and homosexual communists and "Milwaukee" means black people, but the rural areas of the state are more liberal than the suburbs of the largest cities.

It may make those who oppose the recall feel better to think there are all these quietly stoic farmers and manly hunters out there who silently support them, but the truth is, the range of opinion is not, entirely, based on location. 

Mr. A and I were traveling all around for the holidays and saw the Thanksgiving weekend signature gatherers on corners and outside stores. Heroes, one and all. 

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We Do Not Suck

Not all of us. 

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There's a Crack in Everything

It's how the light gets out: 

XJ: How did you go about finding someone nearby who would allow you stage this from inside their home?

MR: Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully there. But then I got one call from a sane person Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

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'I don't like bullies'

Recall effort begins: 

On a recent weekday evening, about a dozen people gathered at a small clubhouse on Milwaukee's east side. These middle aged men and women came to be trained on how to circulate petitions to get the signatures needed to recall Walker. The mere mention Walker's name sparks a visceral negative reaction among them.

For retired police officer John Harrington, the anger runs deep. He says he opposes the state's new law requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls.

"The voter ID thing bothered me a whole lot," he said. "Besides I've had a lifelong aversion to anybody that beats up on people. I don't like bullies. I don't like bullies with money who have an office."

And that's about it. That's all this is. It's picking on the weaker kid to make your buddies laugh. Trouble for you is, the weaker kid is the club of the most of us these days, and as Hecate said last Tuesday when Ohio went down, "We are many. They are few." 

You can contribute here. 

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Walker Recall Kicks Off Tomorrow

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Occupy APEC

Musician Makana plays Occupy song during APEC dinner....his video description relates:

My guitar tech shot this with a camera phone during my performance for the World Leaders Dinner at APEC, which was hosted by the First Family.

He had to be extremely discreet as Secret Service had warned those on site that any phones used to capture photography or video would be confiscated. Since he has a guitar tuner app on the phone we were able to justify having it out, but grabbing video was not easy. We were under constant surveillance. Personally I like to have video of every performance. It's my art and my right.

SNIP

My goal was not to disturb the guests in an offensive fashion but rather to subliminally fill their ears and the entire dinner atmosphere with a message that might be more effectively received in a subconscious manner. I sweetly sang lines like "You enforce your monopolies with guns/ While sacrificing our daughters and sons/ But certain things belong to everyone/ Your thievery has left the people none". The event protocol was such that everyone there kept their expressions quite muffled. Now and then I would get strange, befuddled stares from heads of state. It was a very quiet room with no waiters; only myself, the sound techs, and the leaders of almost half the world's population.

If I had chosen to disrupt the dinner and force my message I would have been stopped short. I instead chose to deliver an extremely potent message in a polite manner for a prolonged interval.

I dedicate this action to those who would speak truth to power but were not allowed the opportunity.

Me ka ha'aha'a,

Makana

Ohio Hope

Go down in flames, Kasich.

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Blanket the Earth

Rude Pundit has some ideas about how best to spend Black Friday.

Go forth and assist if you can.

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So There Was a Strike in Oakland Today

Photo by Oakland99er.

They've shut down the port.

I feel like we've been talking in circles for years. Part of the reason I have such affection for the protesters nationwide is that tell me what else, I mean, honestly. People elected Democrats to end the war and the war went on. People want the rich taxed and the rich get their taxes cut. Everybody knows the right thing to do and nobody's doing it and this has been the case for years. We say, every year, as it gets dark and cold, that maybe this year it won't be so dark or so cold. What if it is? What if this is as good as it gets, when we do what we're supposed to do?

Maybe this is what it takes. The conversation's changed, I can tell you that much, around dinner tables where our pundits like to source their tirades. It's not about the deficit anymore. It's about this being as good as it gets lately and that fucking sucks, so what happens next is important. Now that we're talking about this, about how there aren't any jobs except shitty ones and that the best you can hope for is to not be quite so desperate as you were yesterday, where does that energy go? Who steps up to harness all that? I have no faith in the leaders of my party, that they see this and will respond. They've squandered every opportunity presented to them in the last decade. Why not this one, too?

But if not them, who? What's out there, that hasn't been thought of yet?

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'Teaching 3rd Graders and Doing Landscaping'

That sort of thing is apparently beneath our Galtian overlords:

Someone in the Chicago Board of Trade dropped leaflets on top of “Occupy Chicago” protesters Wednesday afternoon as they rallied alongside unions in the city’s financial district.

“We are Wall Street,” the leaflet said. “It is our job to make money.”

“Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves,” it continued. “What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.”

“Do you really think we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping?” the leaflet asked.

Right. You work at the Board of Trade because you're ABOVE such things, after all. I mean, the reason you pledged a frat was so that you wouldn't end up living life like the plebes do. Your parents played all that golf with the chancellor for a reason!

Fucking arrogant pricks. I'm sorry, but you know what? It is possible to be a rich person without being a TOTAL DILLHOLE. It is actually possible to go to your job, make your money, go home, and enjoy your life. America really wouldn't hate you, if you did that. Not to the point that there'd be rallies outside your work place asking people to honk if they want you indicted.

What makes America hate you is shit like this, this epic whining that you have it so rough and how dare five guys with mowhawks bang drums. Not only do you want to make a giant pile of money to swim around in like Scrooge McDuck, but you want every single person in the world to love you, too. Guess what? It is a matter of physics. Eventually you have to stop jerking or you will break it off, man. It starts to look needy.

Nobody in any one of the dozens of Occupy outposts around the country is saying you, personally, Trader Joe, give me $50. What they're saying is that the system rewards you and punishes them, and they would like to stop being fucked so hard constantly for the unpardonable sin of working every day. Doing trivial things. You know, like landscaping, or teaching third grade.

Schmucks.

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Fuck Yeah, Church of England!

How often do  I say that around here?

The canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, the Rev Dr Giles Fraser, has resigned in protest at plans to forcibly remove protesters from its steps, saying he could not support the possibility of "violence in the name of the church".

Speculation grew in the last 24 hours that Fraser, a leading leftwing voice in the Church of England, would resign because he could not sanction the use of police or bailiffs against the hundreds of activists who have set up camp in the grounds of the cathedral in the past fortnight.

Just after 9am on Thursday, Fraser tweeted: "It is with great regret and sadness that I have handed in my notice at St Paul's Cathedral."

In a statement to the Guardian, Fraser, who was appointed canon in May 2009, confirmed his resignation, saying: "I resigned because I believe that the chapter has set on a course of action that could mean there will be violence in the name of the church."

[snip]

Fraser quickly became a hero figure among the Occupy the London Stock Exchange (LSX) movement, clearing police officers off the steps of St Paul's and supporting the group's right to peaceful protest after a court injunction stopped it from setting up camp in nearby Paternoster Square. He also delivered a Sunday sermon decrying corporate greed, which was seen as another sign of his endorsement of the protest.

Occupy London said it was "deeply moved" to hear of his resignation.

"He is man of great personal integrity and our thoughts are with him. He respected our right to protest and defended it. For that we are very grateful, as he ensured that St Paul's could be a sanctuary for us and that no violence could take place against peaceful protesters with a legitimate cause - challenging and tackling social and economic injustice in London, the UK and beyond."

The Catholic Church I attend when I drag my lazy ass out of bed on Sunday spends a lot of time gathering donations for the local food pantry, running benefits for the homeless, and generally working in the neighborhood around it, which isn't the richest in the whole world.

It's why I kept going after I felt I'd done my best to do the whole "believe in God" thing and was only ever going to get partway there. I kept going there because it wasn't just "try not to be such a douche all the time," though those sermons are useful to me. I kept going because I felt like that was the kind of place the church, and organized religion generally, needed more of: not a word about how women are whores merrily having abortions all the time, and lots and lots of actions about feeding some damn poor people already. 

Somewhere along the line we got the blasphemous idea that the only moral issues the church could take a stand on had to do with sex. As if there was any damage we could do by banging each other that would begin to approach the level of damage we do walking around every day in a world where some of us have more than enough to eat and some of us don't and that's somehow okay.

Kudos to Rev. Fraser for making a moral stand.

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'Misdemeanor Illegal Lodging'

Riot cops were apparently needed to combat the evil sin of camping:

Interim Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference later in the morning that hundreds of officers and sheriff's deputies from more than 12 agencies moved in on about 170 protesters.

He said police fired beanbag rounds and tear gas, but no one was injured. Television news footage showed protesters being taken away in plastic cuffs without incident, although an officer did fire a non-lethal projectile from a shotgun at a protester who lobbed a bottle, authorities told the San Francisco Chronicle.

One of those arrested, Aiyahnna Johnson, 30, of Oakland, had been living at the camp with her 2-year-old daughter. "We want the best for you guys, that's all," she was quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle telling two officers who were leading her away.

And via my pal Scott on Facebook, here's a story that illustrates what the point is of all those crazy hippies banging drums in the street:

Occupy Wall Street has already achieved a stunning victory – a victory that is easy to overlook, but impossible to overstate. In just one month, the protesters have shifted the national dialogue from a relentless focus on the deficit to a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street: the lack of jobs -- and especially jobs with decent benefits -- spiraling inequality, cash-strapped American families' debt-loads, and the pernicious influence of money in politics that led us to this point.

To borrow the loosely defined terms that define the Occupy movement, these ordinary citizens have shifted the conversation away from what the “1 percent” -- the corporate right and its dedicated media, network of think-tanks and PR shops -- want to talk about and, notably, paid good money to get us to talk about.

The latest of Time magazine is Joke Line's fucking idiocy about how left and right are evil, of course, and that the only way to get yourself heard politically is to disavow actually giving a shit in any way, and mouth platitudes that express not true moderation but a desperate attempt to ensure balance by insulting fucking everybody. I'd link to it, but it's behind a paywall, and also contains zero polling data to actually back up the assertion that everybody likes people and politicians who eschew movements. In truth, only Joke likes these, because they allow him to point out his own superiority over those gross people who believe in stuff.

So people like that have the money and the power, the airwaves and the soundbites, and hippies have tents and signs, but when all you've got is a hammer you might as well nail some shit down. What's the point of protesting? To change the conversation. When and if the protests end, the work that has always been done will continue being done, so that we get better as a country, but right now we need to talk about something else besides the deficit and how hard rich people have it when everyone hates them.

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Charming

Occupy Maine folks get a present:

PORTLAND — Portland police are looking for the person who threw a chemical bomb at the Occupy Maine encampment in Portland during the early morning hours today.

Sgt. Glen McGary said police responded around 4 a.m. today to an explosion in Lincoln Park at Congress and Pearl streets.

Though no one was injured, McGary said the homemade bomb, which consisted of chemicals poured into a plastic Gatorade container could have caused serious injury.

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The Fight's Not Over

November 8 is going to be a very big day in Ohio:

LIMA — Off-duty firefighters and police officers walked door-to-door Saturday, urging Lima residents to vote “no” in next month's ballot fight over the state's collective-bargaining overhaul.

About 40 cops and firefighters took part in the canvassing, organized as Protect Ohio's Protectors, part of the We Are Ohio coalition opposing the collective-bargaining law known as Senate Bill 5. We Are Ohio is the union-backed coalition that spearheaded efforts to get the referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot and continues pushing for S.B. 5's defeat.

“It's a safety issue, not just for the firefighters, but it translates to safety for the citizens of Lima,” said Sean Carpenter, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 334 and one of the canvass volunteers. “One thing they're going to take away from us is the ability to sit down at the negotiating table and determine manning factors, determine the type of equipment that we have.”

Via Dan on Twitter.

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Reading Comprehension: You Haz It

This was predictable.

In response to our video of Jan Schakowsky claiming the parade of lunatics she lead last night was “patriotic,” despite not having one American flag present, Chicagoist.com author Chuck Sudo suggests, that burning the stars and stripes would be just as patriotic as not having one at the march.

Emphasis mine, because: predictably wrong.

Of course.

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Frank Kameny, big damn hero

In Washington, DC yesterday, a man named Frank Kameny died quietly at home. He was 86. Fittingly enough, Kameny's death happened on National Coming Out Day, something we've been celebrating since 1988, when it was created to commemorate the great 1987 March on Washington, that October day when a quarter-million LGBT citizens came to their nation's capitol to remind the rest of the country that they too were Americans and wouldn't accept being treated as anything less. That such an event took place at all, that we still celebrate it nearly a quarter of a century later, that more people than ever before are out, that DADT is history now, that same-sex marriage is a reality—none of these things could have happened if pioneers like Frank Kameny hadn't paved the way for us.

"Hero" doesn't  seem big enough somehow to describe what Kameny was, what he accomplished, what he risked, but he was a hero and much more. He was out, proud, and fighting for his civil rights during times when it was truly dangerous, when doing so could get you fired, jailed, publicly shamed. All that and more happened to Kameny but he chose not to accept it.

That 1987 march was actually the second GLBT march on Washington, but decades before either, years before even the Stonewall Riots, Frank Kameny started fighting back. His career as an activist began in 1957, after he was fired for being gay.

Kameny, a WWII veteran, earned a PhD in astronomy from Harvard, taught for a year, then became a federal employee in 1957, working for the U.S. Army Map Service in DC. Not only was he fired within a year for being gay, he was (as was customary at the time) banned from from future federal employment. He appealed his termination all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

In 1965, Kameny was an organizer of the first-ever gay and lesbian protest at the White House to draw attention to government discrimination against homosexuals. Another LGBT pioneer, Jack Nichols, describes the event.

As we marched, I looked about at our well-dressed little band. Kameny had insisted that we seven men must wear suits and ties, and the women, dresses and heels. New Yorkers later complained that we Washingtonians looked like a convention of undertakers, but given the temper of the times, Kameny's insistence was apropos. "If you're asking for equal employment rights," he intoned, "look employable!" In the staid nation's capital, dressing for the occasion was, in spite of New York critics, proper.

We paraded in a small circle. Behind lampposts stood unknown persons photographing us. Were they government agents? Perrin and Otto wore sunglasses so absolute identification would be difficult should they fall prey to security investigations. We walked for an hour that passed, as I'd predicted, without incident. A few tourists gawked and there were one or two snickers, more from confusion than from prejudice.

We'd hoped for more publicity than we got. Only The Afro-American carried a small item about what we'd done. But we'd done it, and that was what mattered. We'd stood up against the power structure, putting our bodies on the line. Nothing had happened except that we'd been galvanized, and, to a certain extent, immunized against fear."

 Forty-four years later, Kameny was present in the Oval Office as President Obama signed a memorandum extending (limited) federal benefits to partners of gay federal employees.

 

Fuck Yeah, Robin Hood!

My city wins everything forever today.

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Shorter Seattle Mayor: Come to Butthead

Now the strategy seems to be "annoy the protesters until they go away:"

However, that same SLOG piece reports that the Seattle Police Department are telling protesters they can't stand under awnings, use tarps nor sit down under an umbrellas ("you can't have an umbrella open unless you're standing and holding it," one policeman is quoted as saying).

Umbrellas. Really?

In other words, the mayor and the police department are attempting to break up the protesters by making it really inconvenient for them. It's a strategy, can't argue with that, even if it is exceedingly pedestrian and petty.

We're sure these moves are endearing him to somebody (or at least he seems to think so), but we are having a hard time imagining who they would be.

Most likely vague racists and fraidy-cats in the richest neighborhoods and farthest-flung suburbs, who like to talk about how they go into downtown "all the time" by which they mean a play and dinner once a year, after which they spend two weeks bitching about how a young/black/Hispanic/pink-haired person looked right at them with their eyeballs.

That's usually what makes up the crowd of voters who delight the most in pissing off liberals.

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Occupy Chicago: Somebody Stood Up

 

A lady on the corner of Jackson and LaSalle was holding this. Every cabbie and bus driver that went by blew his horn, to much applause from the crowd.

 

 

 

 

Right now we are living in a time of aggressively not having important conversations. I mean we're really putting our backs into it. Those conversations, we're not having them hard. All around us the earth is caving in and our country's discourse is basically about how debt is bad and Obama is a Muslim. Watching TV, reading the paper, watching the local news, you could be forgiven for thinking things weren't that bad. That maybe we were all okay, and you were the one who was cracked for feeling the ground shake under you every time the phone rang.

They Cannot Muzzle The Light

You know that famous picture from the Westboro Baptists protests and counter-protests? This one?

I feel like standing next to Capitol Hill with that sign right now. Or the DNC headquarters. Something.

Thousands of people are in the fucking streets. Thousands. In New York, Boston, Cali, Philly. Thousands.

Yet Washington Democrats cower in the corner for fear of joining them.

I can see why. What if one of the hippies has a rude shirt?

And doesn't it make Obama look bad to point out that the earth is caving in on his watch?

What if somebody at the rallies compared Republicans to Satan? What would Chris Matthews say?

What if somebody at the rallies once sold his food stamps on Facebook?

Won't that give Republicans and the pundits who hold Washington hostage cause to say mean things about us? Won't that give them cause to talk about how we're all about the smelly kids and faggots and welfare cheats and others who are anathema to America? Surely they wouldn't be doing that anyway so I'd best stay over here, and pretend those protesters don't speak for me.

Surely I'd better not note that these are my people, my constituents, the middle class workers for which my party is supposed to have fought, once upon a time, in a land far, far away. Surely I'd better not concede that even if they are just "college kids," they're goddamn citizens of this country whose concerns deserve a voice and whose voice is a vote. Surely I'd better not worry that where there are ten of them today there will be sixty tomorrow, because when in history has that ever happened?

Surely it's safer to stay indoors, keep my powder dry, and hold off having this fight until things get just a little bit worse. Surely, when the right moment comes along, someone will let me know.

In case it's escaped anyone's notice, the Occupy All That Shit protests aren't going away. They're growing. They're going from city to city. They're getting louder. They're gaining friends and allies. They're becoming more. And I don't know how much more, how many more people it's going to take before somebody supposedly on the side of the middle class takes fucking notice and gets his ass down to the microphone. 

Isn't there a single strategist in Washington yelling that there are thousands of votes out there to be won by actually acting like a Democrat? I know that hasn't exactly been in high favor the last 10 years, but do thousands of people in the street express anything BUT a deep hunger for a world that isn't going to screw them over? And isn't that a political opportunity of which someone should avail himself?

Yes, the Tea Party was funded, and marketed nonstop by Fux News. You know what else it was? Supported by every major Republican candidate, who looked at the racist signs and the ignorant-ass 'necks in attendance and said sure, some of them are gaping assholes but all of 'em are gonna vote and they might as well vote for me. That's part of how that movement gained legitimacy. If tea partiers held a march against Obama's wars, they wouldn't lack for grand marshals.

Our leaders, even among those who do nothing but comment, just snipe about hippies and kids, as if they have any economic or demographic data on these crowds at all. That's if they notice; most are too busy figuring out how much to cut from Social Security. I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. Yes, everybody's tired, but eventually your exhaustion is just self-indulgence, and it doesn't matter what's on the back of the trustafarian's shirt at this point.

You go to the revolution with the revolutionaries you have.

I'll be at Occupy Chicago tomorrow with food and coffee for the demonstrators. Where will our leaders be?

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Jobs Protesters

Surely this will merit media coverage on par with the Tea Party, now that everybody's brushed their hair.

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Waiting for the Miracle

Oliver would like those kids today to be good so Daddy won't hit them:

If you dress up like a dope-smoking hobo, expect to be treated like one and not be taken seriously. Get a haircut. Wear a nice shirt. Carry a sign with a message that makes some kind of sense to an average American.

It might work.

Dan continues the discussion over at Corrente, citing an observation from Allison Kilkenny on the media coverage:

For every batshit crazy quote Bellafante presents, I can match it with a calm, articulate response from another attendee. I guarantee that. However, that's not the point. I'm not a believer in the "perfect objectivity" goal for journalists because it's impossible to ever obtain. Human beings inherently possess prejudices and biases that blind them to aspects of reality. Bellafante is less likely to see the Matthews. I'm less likely to see the black bloc.

Yet we risk much when we traipse into this false equivalency territory. The two approaches I've described above aren't given level platforms in our society. Bellafante reaches a far, far larger readership, and the ones who dismiss protesters always do because their corporate overlords love depicting protesters as flower-waving, stoned-out-of-their-gourds hippies. If you think those are the only people on your side, why get off the couch at all?

Well, that's the point, really: To find a reason not to get off the couch. If they're all just hippies in hoodies, there's no reason for you to think about what they're saying. If they're all just filthy teenagers, you can go back to your dinner and not worry about that nagging feeling in your gut that says get on a goddamn bus and go join them. If you can find a reason why this protest, these protesters, are unsuitable, then there's really nothing you need to get worked up about.

Better bide your time, keep your powder dry, and wait for a protest when everybody's wearing a color that doesn't clash with your hair. Better wait for the perfect cause, with the perfect leader, for the perfect reasons. That's sure to come along any minute now.

Every second spent worrying about the clothing and behavior of the protesters is a second spent not talking about why they're out there in the first place. We saw this during the Wisconsin protests, too: the constant fear that one single shitsmack would spit at a cop and then it would all be over. We debated if protesters had "jumped the shark." Monitoring the behavior of people who were standing up to power so easily took precedence over monitoring the behavior of people in power, as if their actions had equivalent consequences. It's easier to kick down than to punch up, and with our new journalism that equates amoral disinterest with objectivity and passion with bias, the powerless find their mohawks as much of an affront to America as mortgage fraud.

My view on this is pretty simple: The meanest thing a protester could possibly do would be nicer than the nicest thing Dick Cheney has ever done, so until that son of a bitch is in chains in a basement somewhere, you'll pardon me if I can't get too excited about somebody yelling anarchic slogans.

Because here's the thing: It is never okay to treat anybody like this:

Among the video clips on the Occupy Wall Street website is one that shows a police officer macing a group of young women penned in by orange netting.

Another video has circulated of a police officer throwing a protester to the ground, though it is not clear why. The video shows the man standing in what seems to be a non-threatening manner before the incident.

No matter what he's wearing, or what she's saying.

x-posted to Firedoglake.

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Weekend Question Thread

Tell me something nice that happened to you recently. I think we could all use a little sunshine.

Me, I had a bunch of really great people give my blog presents all week.

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Why Don't the Young People Protest Anymore?

If only they would do so.

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Heroism or Socialism?

So, Fox News, it's heroism for humans to instinctively pull together and save someone who's busted up, helpless, and about to burn to death in front of you but it's nanny state socialism for society to provide a safety net of healthcare benefits so that otherwise healthy 24 year olds don't die of sepsis from infected wisdom teeth?  

And Ron Paul would say that if motorcycle dude doesn't have insurance, there better be a church willing to take on his medical bills and resulting disability payments, rehab, taking care of his dependents, etc. Like most churches totally have that kind of dough laying around. 

“We’ve given up on this concept that we might assume responsibility for ourselves, that our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it,” said Paul, an opponent to federal healthcare as well Medicaid and Medicare plans.

No, we havent. Assuming responsibility for ourselves is what most Americans do every.fracking.day, day in and day out.  And if you do that, especially if you do that, as opposed to being, say, a rich dude running for office, you get why this argument is total crap.  You get that, as hard as you work and as much as you save, and as carefully as you plan, there are things out there that could take you down in a second, wipe out your savings in a few hours, reduce you to total personal and financial helplessness in a day.  

That's not conceptual. It's just the reality of life in the U.S. 

 

[Edited because I forget instinctually and instinctively are not the same thing]

 

9/11: His Death Was His

If your child is musical

don't study piano

and if he's dying

stay off his turf

So begins a poem Charlotte Mayerson wrote after her son died of AIDS. Her book about losing him, The Death Cycle Machine, clarified the way I felt about a lot of things, but this most of all: Ownership of another's experience, and how violently opposed to it I am. Someone else's suffering is not yours, it's not for you, and while you can be profoundly changed by things that have happened to others, you can't forget who those things happened to.

I had to be slammed to the ground

A thousand times

Before I figured out

Whose tragedy it was

People said this stuff all the time, in the days following 9/11, and they're saying it again now, in the relentless waves of anniversary coverage. "This has reminded me of how short life is." Umm, okay? Great? For you? I'm sure every single dead person is grateful for the chance to give you a little psychic kick in the ass? "This has made me love my family more." "This has made me go back to church." "I'm going to learn more about the world now." Awesome! But wasn't it kind of a lot of pressure to put on New York, on its still-smoking skyline, to teach you a lesson?

Who is today for? I did not lose anyone on 9/11. There was a friend in Washington we didn't hear from, for a few hours, but he was fine. This 10-year anniversary is not prompting me to react with post-traumatic stress (unless the overwhelming snappish anger toward treacly remembrances counts). This isn't mine. It's not for me. There is no hole in my horizon. I've been to New York twice, liked it both times, love many people there. I've visited DC, seen the Pentagon before and since the attacks. But these places aren't my home, and I can't claim it as such. I wasn't breathing dust and ashes. I didn't hear the planes, or feel the ground shake.

Back to Mayerson again:

That, broken heart or no

I'd one day sip

Condolence tea with honey

While he would choke

On snow.

Maybe if I had lost someone, I would be grateful for an entire country of strangers honoring him with their thoughts, today. But part of me says that's not what we're doing, right now. My doctor's office runs The Today Show no matter how much I complain, so Friday while I waited to be seen I was stuck listening to Matt Lauer and his cast of pretty twerps telling us all how to feel, as if feeling is primarily what we're supposed to be doing here.

There was this rage-inducing Bush interview [video], where he was asked about what it was like "to be commander in chief on that day." Because primarily what we're concerned about here is how the costume felt. Not, why did you respond the way you did, not, why did you drag America into two unwinnable wars and fail to kill or capture the man responsible, not in what possible way did any of your justice department's failed prosecutions of suspected terrorists help keep us safe at all, but what was it like to be playing a real-life war games scenario? What was it like, in Presidential Candyland? The barely suppressed excitement, in that question, as if that moment was not the breaking apart of thousands of lives but the beginning of a grand adventure.

And why not, really? It's not as if we drew any profound connectedness from these events, after day three or so. Bush told us to go shopping and carry on like nothing had happened, and in large part we did that, those of us for whom this was something we watched from afar. Even now, it's like, "What wars?" We thought it was awesome that Obama managed to have bin Laden killed but then we went right back to trying to make the mortgage.

If any part of this belongs to the country, if any part of this belongs to "us" as a whole, it's in what came after. In our complicity in the wars, in how we failed to stop so much of the hysteria and fearmongering from taking us over. In our willingness to take anything and everything off at the airport and our steadfast refusal to consider a change in how we deal with the rest of the world. In how we made enemies of allies, fought wars basically to make our pundits feel good about themselves, keep electing people who can't solve problems ... that's what we all own. That's what we all did, and didn't do.

But that's not a spectacle. That's not a show. And that pales, doesn't it, next to the voice mail message someone can't erase, because then he'll never hear her voice again.

Today doesn't belong to "America." It belongs to the dead and to their families. To those who tried to stop it, and those who succeeded, and those who failed. That the rest of us watched it like a movie, that can't be avoided, but we can avoid being absolutely gross about it, pretending that gives us admission to the show. Someone's father is dead ten years today. Someone's mother would have had a birthday, seen a grandchild born. Someone's husband, someone's wife, someone's brother, someone's friend, someone's son, someone's daughter. Ten years of holidays, trips to the beach, missed. Ten years of aching loss.

Not mine. Theirs. Yours, maybe. You have my condolences.

Never forget, people will say today. Not thinking about how lucky they are, to be able to even consider the option. Thousands of families don't have to be told.

A.

Remembrances

From those who were there:

"I didn't want to go downtown in the first place." I post this every year, because it's the best piece of writing on that day I've ever read.

"Ten Years Gone." Stark, loving, unmerciful poetry.

A.

Vic Bussie, R.I.P.

Louisiana used to be a Southern state with a populist streak as wide as TS Lee's swath. One reason for that was former Gret Stet AFL-CIO President, Victor Bussie who died today at the age of 92. I met him a few times over the years including at a dinner party that I wrote about 2 years ago:

Dr. A and I were recently the youngest people at a dinner party in Baton Rouge. It was thrilling to be at the kids table as it were. It was a gathering of people who were mostly over 75 among whom was a Louisiana legend, Victor Bussie. Mr. Bussie, who is now 90, was the head of the AFL-CIO in the Gret Stet for 41 years and he remains proudly, defiantly and adamantly liberal. His wife, Fran, was there as well. Ms. Bussie was one of the first women in the South to call herself a feminist. I dropped the name of my friend, NOLA political pundit Clancy DuBos and she said: "You can tell Clancy that he's still a young whippersnapper as far as I'm concerned." Ah, the joys of hanging out with the elderly...

Mr. Bussie told some very juicy stories about everyone from Earl Long to Edwin Edwards to Mary Landrieu most of which are off the record. I asked him why he hasn't written his memoirs and he said, "Well, if I did that I'd have to tell the truth and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings." Mr. Bussie is a class act and a very kind man.

Back to the post title, someone asked Mr. Bussie if he was as liberal as ever, after affirming that he was, he said: "Liberal. That's the most beautiful word in the language."

Rising Tide 6 Blogging

I'll have more later, since I got here yesterday and have decided to just sleep when I get home, but my first impression is that this is such a different place from four years ago, the energy and joy are incandescent, and seeing it makes me happy the way you are when you see a friend succeed at something: Way to fucking go, man, that's awesome.

Liveblogging updates within.

Continuing On Wisconsin

If I read one more goddamn "why don't people protest anymore" essay, while things like this are going on, I will not be held responsible for the hole in the wall.

Follow along with the protesters, who are presently locked out of the congressman's offices, at #WhereisPaulRyan.

A.