A Week

1.) Entire Polish Government Dies In Plane Crash


Mourners In The Streets Of Warsaw (Photo: Dean Gallup / Getty)

... Fortunately, that's not entirely true, but it sounds like the beginning of one of the worst Polish jokes imaginable.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of Poland's top Parliament members and policy-makers died this past Friday when their plane crashed in heavy fog, creating a unique crisis in a country's government: It was decapitated by the tragedy.

Also among the passengers was Bronislaw Geremek, the anti-communist Polish politician whose actions in the late 1960's began the Solidarity movement, and was a living legend in creating a post-Soviet-dominated Poland.

The bitterly ironic twist to this story is that the plane (a former Soviet Tubolev airliner) went down about a half-mile from a runway outside the Russian city of Smolensk. It was carrying a delegation to a ceremony commemorating the massacre of more than 20,000 members of Poland’s elite officer corps 70 years ago, at the hands of the Soviet army and NKVD -- forerunner to the KGB, Vladimir Putin's former employer.

2.) Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens To Retire

John Paul Stevens, at nearly 90 years of age the second-longest sitting Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court and its leading liberal voice, announced this week that he will retire over the summer.



Senate Minority Leader John Boner said the GOP "will push to replace that old Liberal _______" with a large trainable rodent, similar to four other members of the formerly venerated and formerly neutral Hugh Court.


3.) Mine Explosion Kills Twenty-Nine


Handmade Highway Sign, VA (Photo: Jeff Gentner / AP)

In churches across southwestern Virginia, services were held Sunday mourning the loss of 29 miners in what appears to be an underground explosion, possibly due to a lack of ventilation of coal dust -- something the mine's owner, Massey Energy Corp., had been cited for by Federal safety officials on four separate occasions in the past year.

But, you know; any Teabagger will tell you: That there nosy Federal government got no business poking around in the affairs of honest citizens, and preventing free enterprise from bein' more free. Yuh.


4.) President Obama Announces U.S. Reserves Right To Use Nuclear Weapons Against Rogue States Who Possess Them And Haven't Signed the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty


Little Mahmood Plays 'Jeopardy': Odds Are, He Loses

On Saturday, President Barack Obama announced a summit for nations in the 'Nuclear Club' to agree to specific controls to their stockpiles of nuclear materials to be put in place within four years -- on the strength of the argument that not to do so, seriously, invites terrorist acts too terrible to contemplate.

At the same time, Obama announced that while a "No First-Use" of nuclear weapons was the stated position of the U.S. government, that did not apply to rogue states such as North Korea or Iran, which have (as in the case of North Korea), or appear to be developing (as with Iran), nuclear weapons.

What this should tell us: earlier this week, Iran publicly unveiled, on their national television with a ceremony, a new centrifuge design for enrichment of Uranium. At the end of last year, they were shown to have built a secret enrichment facility which they kept from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran only admitted it because the British and U.S. governments were about to publicly announce it. And, Iran has conducted several tests of medium-range missiles, capable of hitting targets in Israel -- which has no trouble seeing potential nukes and operational missiles as a serious threat... particularly when Iran's "President" says the Holocaust didn't happen.

All in all, the Iranian government has shown it has no intention of slowing their march towards building nukes, and has no fashion sense (those windbreaker-and-khaki-pants-with-white-shirt ensembes just scream "Repressive Misogynist Uptight Religious _______"). The Israelis have said they can't permit Iran to have nuclear weapons.

Also, they would like the Iranians to at least start wearing button-down Oxfords -- in muted colors, for Christ's sake; they don't have to immediately jump to stripes or tattersalls -- and try maybe jeans, with Timberland or Bass loafers, and a grey or brown tweed sports coat from LL Bean or Joseph A. Banks.

I'm only a dog, but I won't be surprised to wake up one morning and find that Iran's nuclear facilities have been bombed (in the same way that the Israelis leveled Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981) and this time possibly with "bunker-busting" tactical-level nuclear warheads.

If so, the Middle East's political and military circumstances, and possibly its fashion direction, will change in a hurry. I believe Burkas will be all the rage, whether women want to wear them or not. And, radiation suits will be in vogue, for a while.

---

It's The Money, Honey -- But You Knew That

Doesn't Know Much About History, Doesn't Care


Nasty, Greedy Little Man (Photo: I Spit On News Corp.)

When reasonable people have disagreement over issues, even passionate disagreement, it's possible both sides can make an attempt to retain a basic, innate respect for their humanity -- a recognition that "we all breathe the same air; we all cherish our children's futures; and we are all mortal".

I think about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Two men whose arguments and writings, more than any of the American Revolutionaries, shaped the creation of an entirely new order of representative government. They became the closest of friends, then the most bitter antagonists -- two men who could not have been more opposed to each other professionally or personally (You think politics during the Nixon, Reagan or Clinton years were crazy? Do some reading).



It took a long time, but they slowly picked up the threads of their old friendship. And when Adams, the crusty old Federalist, lay dying on July 4, 1826, his last words were, "Yet Thomas Jefferson survives"... not knowing that the author of most of the Declaration Of Independence had passed away hours before.

American politics has always involved some of our worst -- and best -- instincts. But the (probably intellectual) notion borrowed from our British roots about politeness and "Seemly public discourse... as an edification to all who observe" has all but disappeared.

Politics is now more theater than it has ever been -- and as a method of evoking raw passions to carry a debate, it looks more like the psychology of advertising than trying to find a national consensus over serious public issues... exactly the problem facing the American Revolutionaries in the late 18th Century.


24 Hours A Day: Alarm, Anxiety, Fantasy -- With Commercials

And, because getting more and more is the new religion, a media industry has evolved with essentially a 'Yellow Journalism' business model which thrives on creating conflict, division, sensation and 'controversy', so that they can sell things.

This means much of what they broadcast are untruths: They lie. Period.

Little Rupert Murdoch is the current Citizen Kane of Right-Wing media. He's a conservative, but a pragmatist, too: He just wants to make more, and if somehow being more Progressive would bring more profit, that might be News Corporation's intellectual position.

But Little Rupert's not personally disposed to be Liberal, and he likes spewing crap for his team. He thinks of people as stupid, gullible, and worse (if he didn't, Little Rupert wouldn't treat his 'consumers' that way). And, he likes media people who are like him -- Rightist, but "at the end of the day" don't give two hoots about telling people the truth, or the politics: Show Me The Fookin' Money, Mate.

It's why he's let The Simpsons run for ten-plus years; not because it was a groundbreaking animated program, or embodies generally decent values -- but because Viewers = Higher Ad Buy Rates.

Ben Frumin at Talking Points Memo reported that Fox News' Liar Rightist Shill News Commentator guy Glenn Beck doesn't say the things he says and cries because he cares deeply about politics, or about the United States of America; or about other human beings (if he did in a real way, his message would probably be very different).


As Frumin Reported, And As Beck Says, "He's an entertainer"

A new profile in Forbes states that Beck "insists that he is not political":

" 'I could give a flying crap about the political process'. Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. 'We [i.e., Fox] are an entertainment company,' Beck says. He has managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth. "

Frumin goes on to note that, according to Forbes, Mercury Radio Arts, Beck's own company "(which Forbes dubs "Glenn Beck Inc."), reported $32 million" in revenue in the 12-month period ending March 1st, and which Forbes and Frumin list as

* $13 million a year from books and magazines;
* $10 million from radio syndication;
* $4 million from a newsletter, GlennBeck.com, and merchandise;
* $3 million from speaking engagement fees;
* $2 million income as a News Commentator at Fox 'News'

Beck and Fox, Hannity, Lard Boy, Loofah O'Reilly and Mikey Wiener; and Rightist 'commentators' and propaganda outlets, are coming under increasing scrutiny for regularly using escalating, violent rhetoric, which are considered contributing factors in a rising number of violent right-wing incidents.

You can't immerse right-wing nut jobs in a bath of Fox 'News' and battery acid for 24 hours a day, and not anticipate that one or more of them will just start killing people.

One example -- just today, an obese amazingly fat right-wing Texan named Larry Worth was arrested by the FBI for placing 36 pipe bombs in Post Office Boxes around the country. A friend of Worth's told local reporters that the man "sat around watching Fox all day, and getting angry".


Larry Worth, Who Looks Disturbingly Like Someone I Work With
(Photo: Smith Co., Texas; via TPMMuckraker, April 8, 2010)

People like Lard Boy and Beck enjoy being virtually untouchable. They can say, even do, almost anything. They enjoy being the people who create and channel the fear of their audiences into anger -- and they enjoy the power that gives them in Rightist circles. But it's not about serious political principles; it's an act. It's about ego, and about personal enrichment.

Limbaugh said in 2009, "First and foremost, I’m a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest audience possible so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.” Then he added -- as if he had to after a rare moment of honesty -- "But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement."


Obligatory Cute Animal Photo In Middle Of Social Discourse

The 'intellectual engine' comment is part of the act; Limbaugh displays no intellect in his vaudeville. His career is about ego, and about money; the remark about "confiscatory ad[vertising] rates" says it all. People like Lard Boy want it (as Grace Slick once famously sang) "fat, and round", and they want it for themselves. Politics are just a means to that end. And Blimpy did get fat, and round.

This government is governing against its own citizens. This president and his party are governing against us. We are at war with our own President, we are at war with our own government. -- Rush Limbaugh, January 9, 2010

The real indicator of their lack of commitment to any ideas or principles appears when their listeners begin to act on the anger which the Becks and Lard Boys work day after day to manufacture. When a militia group is taken down, when nut cases call Progressive or Liberal elected officials to threaten them; when physicians and nurses at family planning clinics are harassed and their homes firebombed; when the number of credible threats to an African-American President rises substantially...

When these things happen, the Becks or Limbaughs don't stand proudly behind their work. They don't talk about being 'Culture Warriors', revolutionaries, and take responsibility for their role in creating and enciting violence against a government they keep shouting is illegitimate and evil.


All Part Of The Game; It's Even On Nintendo

Like every bully ever born, when it's possible they could be punished for their behavior -- or when it might affect their cash flow -- suddenly they become subdued, polite. Then, people like O'Reilly or Beck don't claim to be 'news commentators', or 'journalists'. They're not even savvy businesspersons.

Suddenly, they claim to be only simple entertainers -- and entertainers can't be held accountable if what they say is taken seriously, right? It's the fault of those crazy persons who do those violent things. It's really someone else's fault.

Always someone else's fault.

---

Heavy Thinking, For A Dog

Fifty years from now, most of the major players involved in the invasion of Iraq and the deregulation of America's financial system into a private game for the benefit of a relatively small group of people will be dead.

Then, in that distant time, there will be books and articles written which admit that "some mistakes possibly may have been made", but that the people who made them were really good with kids and felt sort of bad about it occasionally, and weren't really evil or anything -- and so couldn't be held accountable.

And, it was all so long ago, anyway.

---

Banking Reform: Now With 50% More Jowls

 [NOTE:  Please see the updated version of this post from 2013 here.]

Larry Summers, 2010 Gore Vidal-Look-alike Contest Runner-Up

Every time I see Larry Summers, he looks fatter. It's almost a parody of what being a BSD will get you, or a reverse 'Portrait Of Dorian Grey': Public evidence of a corrupt life worn in his face.

Summers has been over and under and up and down, as the Sinatra song says, but has generally been a King, not a Pawn. He's been one of Harvard's youngest tenured professors; was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan from 1982-1983; and served as Chief Economist for the World Bank until 1993.

It was at the World Bank that Larry wrote a memo, later leaked to the press, in which he said, "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that . . . I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted". Larry claimed the remark was 'sarcasm' and was taken out of context, which is a far cry from saying it was a fraud.

Larry served as the Secretary of the Treasury during the last year-and-a-half of the Clinton administration's second term. Summers was successful in pushing for capital gains tax cuts. During the California energy crisis of 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Summers teamed with Alan Greenspan and Enron executive Kenneth Lay to lecture California Governor Gray Davis on the causes of the crisis, explaining that the problem was excessive government regulation. Under the advice of Kenneth Lay, Summers urged Davis to relax California's environmental standards in order to reassure the markets -- Californnia had to deregulate it's electricity markets.

Remember Enron, a company full of leeches and criminals? Remember the conversations recorded between Enron energy traders, laughing -- because the deregulation Summers and Lay wanted allowed Enron to buy California's own electricity, and sell it back to California at inflated prices? Thanks, Larry!

Summers supported the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. Summers also pushed heavily for deregulation of the derivatives market, which was successful under Lil' Boots Bush.

All of that led directly to the current economic disaster we're experiencing, by the way. Without a firewall which kept banks out of other financial businesses, and kept investment houses out of the banking business; without regulation of the derivatives market, you end up with... well, where we are now.

The Nation's Financial Future Bores Larry: Nothing In It For Him

Ol' Larry was also made President of Harvard University -- until he was forced to resign in 2006 after receiving a no-confidence vote from a majority of its faculty, because Summers had made dismissive comments about the value of women; tried to dismiss an African-American professor for spending time working on a particular Democrat's presidential candidacy; and showed favoritism to a visiting instructor because there was money in it for him.

In short, Larry continued to behave like a greedhead sociopath. Surprise, huh?

Now, Larry is the principal member of the Obama Administration's Economic Advisory Council. President Obama is expecting him to work on... reforming the investment and banking industry.

Right.

Summers has recently come under fire for accepting perks from Citigroup, including free rides on its corporate jet in 2008. After he economic stimulus legislation was passed in early 2009, Larry called Senator Chris Dodd and asked him to remove caps on executive pay at firms that received stimulus money, including Citigroup.

Later that year, it was disclosed that Summers has been paid millions of dollars by companies which he now has influence over as a public servant. He collected approximately $7.7 million in fees from various Wall Street companies which received government bailout money.

What a guy. Thanks for everything, Larry; millions of people are barely treading water -- but you got yours, huh? So I guess it's okay. The interesting thing is, you're two years younger than I am, and man; I look in way better shape.

Hee hee hee hee hee hee. But, then, I'm a Dog, and this means I'm only eight years old in a human timeframe. However, Larry can't bark very well, and possibly spends less time licking potentially embarrasing areas of his body in public.

Mongo In The Early Years

---

Johanna Sällström (1975-2007)

Johanna Sällström As Linda Wallander And Krister Henriksson
As Kurt Wallander On The Set Of Before the Frost (2004)

Three new episodes of the BBC-1 Wallander mystery series were released on British television this past January, starring Kenneth Branagh as Swedish police Inspector Kurt Wallander. I'm not certain when they'll be released in the U.S.; however, I've seen them already (courtesy of the redoubtable Donka Ufman), and they're excellent.

I've been rereading Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman over the past week, and wondered this morning whether the latest (and probably the last) Wallander novel had been released in English.

During a search to answer that question, I was stopped in my tracks by a reference about Johanna Sällström, the actress who played Wallander's daughter, Linda, in the Yellow Bird Productions version of the mysteries for Swedish television; she had died in 2007.


Before The Frost; Sällström's Linda Wallander

I didn't know about Henning Mankell's work, the Wallander character or the Swedish version of the televised novels and stories until Branagh's BBC production came to PBS last year. The Yellow Bird Wallander episodes were great; Sällström's portrayal of Wallander's daughter was excellent but dark, complex -- much different than the take on the character portrayed by British actress Jeany Spark.


Spark's Linda Wallander: Not Yet A Cop; British, And So Different

In Mankell's novels, Wallander himself is painfully divorced and awkwardly alone, his relationship with his father adversarial, difficult. He's only focused and certain when working as a police detective -- and he's a good one. Linda Wallander is a counterpoint to her father; trying to keep connections to divorced parents (her mother, remarried, means there's also a stepfather) and grandparents (Wallander's angry, willful artist father), and find her own way in life. Yet, they're both drifting a bit.

Linda darts from small job to University and back, never quite finding something that will anchor her in the world -- until one day, using her father's ability to look for patterns and make decisions, she enters Sweden's national police academy. Eventually, Linda ends up serving as a beat cop in her old home town; now, her relationship with her father is professional as well as familial. She wants to become a Detective -- and Wallander stands aloof, letting other officers in his detective squad make sure she earns it.


Krister Henriksson As Kurt Wallander

As a father, he's seen Linda zip from job to job; he worries -- was she trying to find herself? Is this job just one more sidetrack? As a career investigator he can't carry someone who doesn't have the gift for the work, and it's deadly serious ("You carry a gun. This is life and death"). But, Linda has it, painfully making her debut in a case involving multiple homicides and a childhood friend -- the basic plot of Mankell's novel-turned-Wallander episode, Before The Frost.

Sällström had the opportunity to bring that character to life on Swedish television, and in subsequent episodes of that series. Half of them were original television screenplays authored by other writers; Mankell had given the production company the rights to do so. In fact, he was so impressed with Sällström's acting (as a playwright, and director of one of Sweden's oldest theater companies) that he had projected three more mysteries, featuring Linda Wallander as the investigating detective.


Sällström In 1995: The Up-And-Coming Swedish Teen Star
(Photo: Wikipedia)

Sällström, in many ways, seemed lucky. She was the daughter of a 70's-80's Swedish pop musician, a teenage star of soap operas on Swedish television, and had broken into film acting, even winning an award. Sällström found the attention, her sudden celebrity status, was too much. In 1997, she abruptly put her acting career on hold and moved to Denmark where she worked anonymously in a cafe.


Awards, But Not Happiness: About To Be A Recluse, 1997

She eventually married, returned to Sweden in 2000, and tried to resume her career -- except, instead of the previous bright opportunities from three years before, Sällström found work only in occasional bit parts. Her marriage deteriorated into separation; money was an issue. Relative to her prior fame, a struggle just to have enough to eat and pay rent must have been a real challenge.

Sällström divorced her husband in 2003, shortly after her daughter, Talulah (named after the flamboyant American actress, Talulah Bankhead) was born. Depressed, running out of money, she faced eviction -- and said in a later interview that she felt so isolated and lonely that she even invited the court official, assessing her for eviction, to sit down and have coffee simply for the human contact it offered. It was at that low an ebb that she managed to audition for and won the role of Linda Wallander in Yellow Bird's Production of Mankell's Before The Frost.



This should have been her turning point. She was employed on a hit television series in Sweden as a dramatic actress, her career seemed back on track... then, on December 26, 2004, Sällström was vacationing on the western coast of Thailand -- a popular destination for Swedes -- with her one-year-old daughter when the Sumatran earthquake and Tsunamis struck.


Phuket, Thailand: December 26, 2004

They survived (Sällström held on to a small tree with one hand and her daughter with the other for several hours, until the tidal surge stopped, and receded), but watched hundreds of people killed around her, including friends and dozens of fellow Swedes. After her return to Sweden, the experience never left her.

She returned to her acting career, but suffered nightmares and depression. By 2006, Sällström was briefly hospitalized in a psychiatric unit in Malmö, where she lived. In February of 2007, at age 32, she took an overdose of sleeping pills; at the time, her daughter was five.


Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell had been involved with the Yellow Bird productions of his novels, and was impressed with Sällström's ability as an actress and personal courage, enough to consider writing three more Wallander books focused on Linda Wallander as the central figure.

Mankell spends his time when not writing or directing very actively involved in raising awareness about HIV-AIDS, and to provide support (primarily in Africa) for those afflicted with it. In the past several years, he spent his own money to build three schools in Mozambique. He's helped to found the country's first national theater troupe.

It's only a guess, but it doesn't seem out of character for Mankell that he might have considered further Wallander mysteries centered on the character Sällström brought to life as a way he could help her by doing what he loves to do best -- write. The Wallander books were Mankell's way of exploring contemporary Swedish social themes, but he'd said that the character was becoming stale for him as an artist. Seeing Sällström's acting work may have given him additional inspiration to continue using the characters he'd made in a slightly different way.

Her death shocked and affected him, enough that he abandoned the plan -- his most recent Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, released in Sweden last year and to be published in English sometime in 2010, will probably be Mankell's last featuring his most internationally-famous creation.

It's an odd feeling, in retrospect, thinking about the Swedish Wallander productions with this new, additional perspective of talent, tragedy; a shortened life. Sällström initially appeared as Wallander's daughter does in Mankell's novels: An on-again, off-again supporting player; then, she became one of the two central characters. She was good, she had solid credits to build a career upon -- but her internal support was thin.



Depression is a weight of almost unimaginable proportions. Like an iceberg, most of it is hidden from the outside world; others don't see it or understand it. But, that weight inexorably pulls its sufferers down a spiral staircase within themselves, to a place progressively darker and where what little air is left seems fouled. And whether or not someone can find their way back becomes a crapshoot, like so many things in life. Not everyone who gets pulled down has the luck or strength to return into the light.

I enjoyed Sällström's work, and only wish she'd lived longer, so that we could have seen more of it.

---

They Benefit; You Pay

(Screencapture: New York Times Online Edition, 4/1/10)

This isn't an April Fool's joke.

The Lazarus-like recovery of the nation’s big banks did not benefit just the bankers — it also created huge paydays for hedge fund managers, including a record $4 billion gain in 2009 for one bold investor who bet big on the financial sector...

The manager, David Tepper, wagered that the government would not let the big banks fail... That strategy handed Mr. Tepper, a plain-spoken Pittsburgh native who first made his name at Goldman Sachs, the top spot on the annual ranking of top earners in the hedge fund industry by AR: Absolute Return+Alpha magazine...

[Note: Tepper is the Putin-like figure at top left in the photo above.]

“There are the haves and the have-nots,” said Sandy Gross, managing partner of Pinetum Partners, an executive recruiter for hedge funds. “These guys are the exceptions. You’re talking about the top people at top firms...”

And, of course, It did not hurt that the Treasury Department was a fellow investor, buying preferred stock and warrants to help steady the faltering balance sheets of the banks...

Mr. Tepper... also benefited from a successful investment in bonds of American International Group, the giant insurance company that was also rescued by the government.

Rescued by the government; of course. So much money to be made at the top levels of the pyramid. The sound of grunting and oinking around the trough is dreadful. Simply dreadful. Why, you can't hear a child, crying in hunger, for all the noise.

In a culture so motivated by profit, fascinated by celebrity and focused on personal enrichment, you end up with a culture that produces another kind of line-up:

---

Topeka

Guh-Ghu-Guh-Giggity



Google, the people who aren't Evil™ (just profit-driven), have a new look this morning. I had a moment of Whaaaaa? until I realized what day it was.

But, you know, there's something in this idea. We can customize a number of applications with different skins; how about Google that anticipates and matches our moods?

Here's mine, this morning:

---

Little David Brooks, Five Years Old

Little Bucky Beaver: One Useless Piece O' Crap

David Brooks is a forty-nine-year-old conservative commentator who appears regularly on PBS's oh-so-neutral News Hour With Jim Lehrer, and is a regular columnist via the New York Times. It's a nice gig, considering (in my opinion) that to get it, he helped kill other human beings.

I don't often feel motivated to read Little Davy because of that, and because he's an idiot. He claims to have been a "liberal" until he was 22 (Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge, says Davy was publicly humiliated by Milton Friedman, of all people). But, as he's spent his life as a gleeful pusher of other people's lies, I doubt that's so.

Prior to his current career, he was a hot supporter of the Project For The New American Century (PNAC). Their stated objective was promoting an unashamed projection of America's foreign policy objectives at the point of a gun (Civilize 'em with a Krag, as it was said during our first attempt at Empire in 1898; a Krag being the standard American infantry rifle at the time).

Little Davy was the, uh, right-hand BFF of Bill Kristol (also a PNAC member), who had taken over as editor at the National Review, the right wing's leading journal founded by William F. Buckley.


Young Davy, An Up-And-Coming... Something

Davy later washed up at another rightist-porn rag sheet, The Weekly Standard. He made a name for himself as one of a crop of young, up-and-coming right-wing pundits; essentially, Brooks learned how to fluff old-line conservatives like Buckley and Norman Podhoretz, and to get close to their darlings, like Kristol. There was a career in it (Davy could smell it), though the Clinton years were hard until 1994. Davy spoke highly of Gingrich and his Contract On America, even if as a serial adulterer Ol' Newt made Davy's nose wrinkle up.

Then, Lil' Boots Bush was appointed by a conservative majority on the the Supreme Court, and the crowd at PNAC had automatic entry to run American foreign policy. They needed propagandists. Little Davy's career took off.


Man Meets Pie: Kristol At 2005 Speaking Engagement

Davy was an unabashed and enthusiastic cheerleader of the invasion of Iraq, as was his boss Kristol at NR. I'm not going to argue the case that attacking Iraq was utterly unnecessary, based on lies and manufactured intelligence, and resulted in America taking it's eyes off the real goal of a War On Terror: Destroying Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The invasion was nothing more than a way of projecting naked military power directly into the heart of the Middle East; it was utterly the brainchild of the people who founded PNAC and those who saw war as a golden opportunity to make millions -- and it was arguably the worst possible decision the United States has made, ever. And Little Davy thought it was swell.


"Suck On This": Bucky And Clueless Tom, Who Hearted PNAC's Iraq

Some feel that the 100,000 Iraqis killed during our March, 2003 invasion (the most conservative estimate, courtesy of the British medical journal, The Lancet), and the 4,000 American soldiers who have died there, did so for no real reason beyond the arrogance and greed of a handful of men... that they, and their enablers who (like Davy) promoted that war and fed lies to the American public about it, have blood on their hands.

I agree with that perspective -- and in my opinion, while Little Davy (whom I like to call Bucky The Beaver) certainly isn't alone, he's an unindicted war criminal.


Me Jourimalismist. No Habla Veritidad.

And in the aftermath of seven years of Iraq, and in Afghanistan, with a resurgent Taliban and Al-Qaeda, life is good for Bucky. He's a well-known opinion-maker; he's one hell of a pundit (whatever that is). Want an example? Well, Bucky has pushed the idea in the past that our culture is awash in sex, and that

...sex is more explicit everywhere, barring real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious by waiting longer to have sex... and having fewer partners. [The Culture War is] nearly over, because today's young people seem happy with the ... wholesomeness of the right. (NYT, 2007)

Awesome. Just Awesome. Bucky appears to believe the 'Culture War' his Right-wing has waged on the rest of the country, on the entire world, is all about sex... And in that same spirit through his NYT column, Bucky pushed his little crooked snout into a story waving around today's entertainment headlines: The circumstances actress Sandra Bullock is currently involved in -- and in fairness to Ms. Bullock, whatever that situation is, it's private, and none of anyone's business; we're not going to be discussing it here.



Bucky titled his screed "The Sandra Bullock Trade", wherein he uses her private misfortune as some kind of conservative teaching moment -- and the lesson for all America's women in considering Bullock's situation? Women of America -- you can choose a career, but your success will be hollow, because you lost your chance for real happiness and fulfillment.

Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow? [Bucky chittered] ... if you had to take more than three seconds to think about this question, you are absolutely crazy. Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being.

If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.

Bucky's entitled to his tail-thumping opinions (no pun intended, there) -- but this is, frankly, oversimplified, juvenile bullshit. It's not a very nuanced grasp of human motivation. I wonder how wide or deep his personal experience is with partnership, sexuality and human nature; based on his comment, my guess is narrow and shallow.

For Bucky, those women who are focused on their careers are losers. Worse; they're insane. In his world, American teens are now more abstemious, more moderate in their sexual habits, than their free-love dirty hippie grandparents as a reaction to a culture saturated with sex. And, Women -- surrounded by images of equality and self-actualization -- should do the same, forsaking individuality to... become homemakers and mothers?


Obligatory Cute Animal Photo Added To Cultural Discussion:
Giant Beaver Statue Outside Grand Prairie, Alberta, Canada

I'm not arguing that women must have careers. But Women should have the choice, as adults, as individuals. To drag Bullock into his argument as a negative object lesson, insinuating she had been punished for choosing a professional career -- that her current circumstances are somehow her own fault because she made that choice -- is standard, misogynist boilerplate and it makes me want to puke.

Did Bucky give up on a career as a right-wing propagandist for a war which could be classified as a violation of the Nuremberg Statutes, so he could find true fulfillment through marriage and love?

No -- because as a man, he can work hard at a "serious" career (though in Bucky's case, being an unidicted war criminal isn't really a career), and have his dinner ready when he gets home, and get laid, while his wife is... well, Bucky's wife. And what would Bucky's reaction have been if anyone pointed this out to him -- make that sniggering little rat-toothed giggle, familiar to News Hour viewers?


'Loss Of Dignity'? From Someone Who Looks Like Pikachu??

The difference between Bucky and myself is while both of us have opinions, only Bucky speaks from a soapbox that potentially reaches millions of people, with the gravitas of the New York Times supporting it ... and only one of us has a sense of humor.

And, while some of my opinions may strike others as out of step, even for a Dog -- only Bucky would ever tell women that the institution of marriage is the more legitimate, more fulfilling path to self-definition than other adult choices.



But, I'm a dog, and no one listens to me. If I ever meet you, Bucky, I'll bite you and pee on your leg. Stay classy, and stay out of countries that recognize the legitimacy of the World Court in the Hague.

---

Who Could Have Predicted

Connect The Dots On Your Own



When you live in a time where the Right wing of a two-party political system has regularly used increasingly inflammatory and violent-leaning rhetoric to demonize its opponents, and has done for almost fifteen years; when the Right defines it's position as being in a 'Culture War' with the rest of the country;

...if I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot. -- Ann Coulter, 2007

A time where that same political Right wing embraces and encourages its most radical elements, and give support to those who call the federal government "illegitimate", "socialist", "parasitical", the elected President a Muslim (therefore, an enemy) and not even a citizen;

Leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider because they view the loss of life as a vindication of their belief that they are right. -- Erick Erickson, 'Red State.com' Editor, and Currently New CNN Political Commentator

That the Right appears to believe (as it says in its media) that this illegitimate government will use 'death panels' to triage healthcare, and force women to have abortions; that the Left is in league with the United Nations or an unnamed conspiracy to create a single World Government; that everyone will be heavily taxed to pay for social programs for the undeserving poor, for "lazy hippies" and illegal aliens;

What we are possibly looking at is something far worse than the Depression. We are in much greater debt as individuals. We don’t know how to grow our own food... We’re also looking at civil unrest all around the world. You need to prepare. This is something that could be really dangerous... My hands, now, for the first time in my life, are shaking. -- Glen Beck, February, 2009

A time where the consistent message and actions of the Right denigrate, ridicule and actively seek to undermine the power of a central government; where a significant media presence broadcasts similar messages 24 hours a day; where it suggests there is a rising, growing "revolution" against that illegitimate government;

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. -- Grover Norquist, 2001

What the Right hopes for, longs for, is an apocalyptic cleansing, where what they perceive as the trash and filth of American culture (which amounts to anyone who does not look, speak, or believe as they do) will be swept away by a second coming, or a second Civil War -- because they don't believe in plurality;

This government is governing against its own citizens. This president and his party are governing against us. We are at war with our own President, we are at war with our own government. -- Rush Limbaugh, January 9, 2010

... and, given all this, is anyone surprised that by continually escalating violent language and actions, people openly carrying guns; that they shoot physicians working at family planning clinics, or organize paramilitary groups to "resist" a tide of immigrants, hippies and communists who they believe are the tools of the Antichrist?

Anybody?

---

'Zup, Girlfrien'? (A SALON Sampler)

Oh Girls Just Want To Have Fu-un. Right? Sure.


(Logo For Blow Salon, in Queensland, Australia)

I support Salon, the online 'zine. In fact, I pay them about $75 a year. For even less than that, you, too, could support their content (not bad) and the concept of New Journalism they represent -- and, dodge the layer of advertising slathered on to their web pages.

And for my $75, I also reserve the right to make fun of the 'zine and its contents, even if they don't deserve it.

There are a lot of contributing columnists at Salon. Many are good. Some start out well but seem to be afflicted with AADD after six months; they become almost visibly bored with the commitment they made. But, you know: Bloggers. Eeeeeewww.

Today's 'zine seemed to have a theme -- women, and not a great deal of the observations were flattering. And, the columns we primarily written by women.

So, if you're not busy -- let's look at a few nuggets from the headlines of today's tattered Reality:

Tiger Woods: He's Back (I Don't Care), But Can't Be Blamed 'Cause He's A Dude


(Photo: ©Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

There's nothing like dubious science to justify any wackadoodle idea. Want to say that Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs or that climate change is a crock? We've got the proof! And if you really want to have fun, roll up your sleeves, trot out your academic credentials and subtly suggest that a sports hero sleeps with a harem of cocktail waitresses or a bad-boy motorcyclist cheats on his wife with a woman sporting a swastika tattoo because "we can't really blame a guy for being a guy."

That's the conclusion from Dr. Louann Brizendine ... [who] explains guys can't help themselves: "Men have a sexual pursuit area that is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain."
(Mary Elizabeth Williams, "Tiger Woods' adultery: The scientific defense".)


Hey; D'Ja Hear All Younger Women Are Hormone-Driven Twits Who Fear Being An Old Maid 'Cause They've Bought Into Outmoded Cultural Stereotypes? Yeah; Me, Neither


(Photo: Salon/iStockphoto)

The current caricature of young women today would have you believe that they are tossing off tradition (along with their T-shirts -- woo, Spring Break!) and carelessly pursuing drunken hookups instead of marriage. But a new study has found that the "spinster" stigma is still alive and thriving -- and it's worst for women in their mid-20s to mid-30s. After reaching the age of 25, LiveScience explains, women begin to feel "scrutinized by friends, family members and others" -- including themselves, of course -- "for their singlehood."

I'm 26. Believe me, I've noticed.

After a long-distance relationship of nearly three years, I recently found myself "back on the market" -- a vomitous phrase that, so far, seems to accurately convey the experience of being single.
(Tracy Clark-Flory, "My terror of ending up an old cat lady".)


Obligatory Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Cultural Discourse

Feminism?? Ahhh; Who Uses That Word Any More? (See "All Younger Women Are Hormone-Driven Twits", Above)



This morning, when music critic and "The Girls Guide to Rocking" author Jessica Hopper tweeted, "Venus' new publisher sez feminism 'isn't relevant' to the new version of the mag, hires ed from Martha Stewart," I wanted to believe she was joking. But then I followed her link to a Chicago Reader article that confirmed it: The magazine that began in 1995 as a one-woman, college-dorm-room project with the mission of covering "women in music, art, film, fashion, and DIY culture because not a lot of other publications do" is so over feminism.

... Venus is once again under new ownership, and its new publisher is ... former MCI V.P. Sarah Beardsley... When asked for her take on feminism, Beardsley tells the Reader's Michael Miner, "That's such a word fraught with interpretation and meaning ...We don't use that particular F word around here. It just doesn't seem relevant."

(Judy Berman, "Who's afraid of the word 'Feminism'?")

---