Like Hope
Still Disgusted
On hearing the news, I had to ask myself yet again, how many more fucking times does this need to happen? Omaha, Virginia Tech, and now this (with plenty of other less publicized shootings in between). Not only can the NRA go fuck itself for blocking sane gun control legislation, the Democrats can fuck themselves sideways for running away from the issue like the useless cowards that they are.
posted by Werner Herzog’s Bear at 6:25 PM
Yesterday was the anniversary of Chicago’s ‘St. Valentine’s Day Massacre’ on February 14, 1929, and today is the anniversary of the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the killing of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak on February 15, 1933. These events led to one of the few gun control laws still on the books, the National Firearms Act of 1934. Our recent gun violence should also lead us to take action.
Today, as we grieve with the victims and families of this latest mass shooting, I call on college and university presidents across America to join with us in demanding that the presidential candidates – as well as the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush – support meaningful action to prevent gun violence. Much more needs to be done to help make our schools and communities safer.
Statement Of Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke, On Northern Illinois University Shootings, February 15, 2008
I’ve been looking around in my usual haunts over the last few days in order to see if there’s going to be a response to the murders at NIU. Maybe folks are trying to be cautious and not take advantage of tragedy by using it for publicity, but so far the reaction has been remarkably low-key, if not invisible. Herzog’s Bear got it just right, I think.
This is the complete post but it’s worth a visit to the site to see the comments. One of the most striking argues that the problem is not too many guns but not enough guns. I heard something similar on Fox the other day. The idea is that these incidents could be prevented if we allowed people to carry concealed weapons.
The irrationality of that argument makes it almost impossible to refute, like trying to convince someone that they were not abducted by aliens. Even worse is the idea that we need these weapons as insurance against our own government. Insurgents, as recent history has shown, don’t need cheap handguns to fight.
In any case, even if we did have to fight our own government we would be silly to mount a violent campaign when a non-violent war would be so much more effective. Maybe one way to counter this silly self-defense notion is to read more about what happens when Americans do take up arms against their own government.
“Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman,” is Cathy Wilkerson’s remarkable memoir that tells this very story. It’s easy to forget that this romance of violent resistance was once a central story in progressive circles, just as it is a central story now in mainstream right wing circles. Wilkerson might be telling the right cautionary tale for our times.
Bush’s Legacy
When I was a child growing up just outside New York City during the 1970s, I learned to be afraid of getting mugged. But this is not that. The criminals I’m talking about don’t bop anyone over the head and steal hundreds of dollars. These criminals slowly take $5, $10, and $20 from me, often with a smile. They pop a surcharge onto my monthly phone bill. They pad my TV bill with services I didn’t ask for. They drain my bank account — drip, drip, drip — when I’m not watching. These hidden fees keep me up late at night like the sound of a leaky faucet. I feel like I have to watch everything all the time, because it’s so easy to miss some statement on some form with some asterisk that means the company can take even more money from me. And when that happens, I suffer from what I call small print rage.
Am I crazy? Or am I just paying attention? One thing I know for sure: I’m not alone.
Bob Sullivan, from Gotcha Captialism, on MSNBC
[Gotcha Capitalism website; Bob Sullivan on Fresh Air]
Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming is Mark Bowen’s account of the struggle that ensued between Hansen and the Bush administration over a basic principle: a government scientist’s right to speak freely to the press. Censoring Science intertwines three separate but closely related stories. The first narrates the step-by-step attempts of a low-ranking NASA press staffer and right-wing ideologue, along with other officials, to censor Hansen. The concatenation of detail is not initially gripping — a timeline of events would have been helpful — but as it accumulates, the case is ultimately compelling. Bowen’s demonstration that censorship spread far beyond Hansen, affecting many climate scientists in NASA and in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is convincing and disturbing.
Michael Oppenheimer, Nature Reports Climate Change, January 16, 2008
[James Hansen on Fresh Air; Interview with Hansen on Columbia News.]
We’ll be hearing a lot about legacy today and in the next year. Setting aside Iraq War II, Katrina, and other high concept disasters, Bush and company have a rich list of accomplishments. Here are two areas in which their successes are more nuanced, fine-grained, and so perhaps longer lasting.
The first continues a long Republican tradition of refusing to regulate and of allowing their corporate cronies full reign. I think it’s reached some sort of Orwellian tipping point where we no longer expect anything but a kind of ongoing con-game in every transaction.
And the second suggests something of the profound depth of political corruption, down to the level of individual government scientists forced to play the role of political mouthpiece. Once these folks start talking again– this year, or the next– all sorts of things are going to look different.
Obama’s Deceptions
With all the talk about how to stimulate it, you’d think that the economy is a giant clitoris. Ben Bernanke may not employ this imagery, but the immediate challenge–and the issue bound to replace Iraq and immigration in the presidential race–is how best to get the economy engorged and throbbing again.
It would be irresponsible to say much about Bush’s stimulus plan, the mere mention of which could be enough to send the Nikkei, the DAX, and the curiously named FTSE and Sensex tumbling into the crash zone again. In a typically regressive gesture, Bush proposed to hand out cash tax rebates–except to families earning less than $40,000 a year. This may qualify as an example of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism,” in which any misfortune can be re-jiggered to the advantage of the affluent.
Barbara Ehrenreich, January 22, 2008
On positions from Iraq to health care, the policy differences between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama are minute. Much of the debate between them has involved making these molehills look mountainous or clashing over who-shifted-when.
The one most significant difference between them can be found in how they would approach the presidency – and how the nation might respond.
Hillary Clinton has been a policy wonk most of her life, a trait she has carried into the U.S. Senate. As her debate performances have shown, she has intelligence and a deep understanding of many issues. Her efforts in New York focused first on learning her adopted state’s issues in detail, and pursuing legislation that would not necessarily grab headlines.
But we also have a good idea what a Clinton presidency would look like. The restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare.
The State’s Endorsement of Barack Obama, January 22, 2008
It’s become a kind of cliché that the national media first develops a narrative around every presidential race and then pursues that story at any cost. The outlines of the story are becoming increasingly clear. Edwards is angry and so ineffective. The Clintons are self-serving and divisive. Obama is the peace maker.
The New York Times has endorsed Clinton, so maybe the narrative is not yet fixed. On the other hand, she’s a popular New York Senator, so that’s an predictable exception. What bugs me about Obama is that, as someone like Barbara Ehrenreich reminds us, his rhetoric is more deceptive than substantively progressive.
The Clintons, again as the cliché goes, are wonks and they don’t pretend to be otherwise. They are selling expertise and experience. Edwards is selling a fight that is logically unavoidable. Obama, though, is selling the false idea that progressive policies can be enacted without fundamentally challenging any of the powers-that-be.
The rhetoric of his supporters is telling. “From terrorism and climate change to runaway federal entitlement spending, there are big challenges to be faced,” The Sun endorsement begins (as quoted on Obama’s website), as if all of these things were part of a single syndrome.
“Terror” in this case refers to a kind of rhetorical trick pulled by Republicans to justify what can only be called criminal behavior on their part. “Runaway federal entitlement spending,” is more Republican code for the ongoing decimation of public services. “Climate change” seems to mean corn-ethanol and legalized price gouging. It’s hard to figure what this ‘peace’ is supposed to be, even rhetorically.