From Jeff Sharlet's Salon article on Bart Stupak and Joseph Pitt's house-mates:

In its internal documents, the Family refers to itself as an "invisible organization" and the "prayer cells" into which it organizes politicians as "invisible believing groups.'"

The connotations run wild: part Manson Family, part Al-Qaeda, part Illuminati, part Scientology. I try not to invoke the word "post-modern" much these days, but I can't think of another word that fits. Well, other than "creepy" and "ludicrous" and "risible" and "scary."

Thanks to Stupak and Pitts, I learned another interesting word:

Together, they're poster boys for the evangelical/conservative Catholic alliance known as "co-belligerency," a culture war strategy designed to take territory within the Democratic Party as well the GOP. [em-phassis mine]

I don't know if that's the Family's word or Sharlet's own diction, but it raises an eyebrow or two (or three, if your third eye is alarmed.) On Sharlet's part, it could be rhetorical overload; he's genuinely --and rightly-- concerned about the religious right's (admittedly smart) tactic to infiltrate both parties to push their agenda forward. But the rest of us --secular left, religious left, or middle, or whatever word choice you wanna make-- could take a page from the fanatical fundy insurgency manual and (hopefully) adapt it with more intellectual honesty and transparency.

Anyhoo, just to be self-promoting "hoower", here's my relevant cartoon for this week.

Originally published at mooreroom.

The Planned Parenthood Action Center has a form letter you can send to the White House to encourage President Obama to defend women's reproductive rights as the Senate debates health care reform. There's pre-written stuff, but I have heard from activists in various fields that more attention/weight is given to original writing. Maybe that's a fairy tale we tell ourselves to get to sleep at night, but I wrote my own verbage:

An unfortunate part of the health care reform legislation passed by the House of Representatives this weekend denies coverage of abortion procedures for subscribers to the so-called "public option" and receivers of federal subsidies to purchase health insurance.

This rule effectively robs women of the right to exercise reproductive rights upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court for almost four decades. Poor and lower middle class women do not have the means to pay out-of-pocket. We should not tolerate the creation of such a caste system for women's rights.

This rule also affects the coverage of women who have health insurance. Any woman who works for a small business mandated to purchase insurance through one of the exchanges will not have access to abortion procedures. Currently most health insurance companies cover abortion; yet these companies will have to create separate plans that only women who do not need public assistance can afford. This could become an increasingly small group and potentially wipe out health coverage for abortions altogether.

This is not what you promised in your run for President; indeed, you promised to uphold the reproductive rights of women. So live up to your promise. As the Senate debates health care reform, defend women's reproductive rights and fight against the inclusion of legislation that would deny coverage for abortion procedures.

Thanks for reading,

Link found via Tara Dublin.

Originally published at mooreroom.

This shooter is mentally ill. This other shooter is a terrorist.

Or perhaps this shooter cracked under economic pressures. And this other shooter cracked under anti-religious racism and the pressures of war.

Whenever these violent outbursts occur, I never feel that the explanations for them are adequate. Yet how we explain them -- and our arguments over which explanations are better than others -- say more about our prejudices and biases than the horrible events themselves. Certain factors come up again and again: mental illness, economic struggles, war trauma, religious extremism and racism. Not all of these elements are present in every case -- and based on the two most recent events, I have neglected to list other forces that strongly influence "active shooter" cases, such as misogyny and homophobia. I think a big mistake some folks make, especially those in the punditry profession (which is congenitally given to conclusion-jumping), is latching onto one of these factors in isolation from the others. Those with an axe to grind against Muslims have seized upon the Ft. Hood shooting as a case that proves all their other condemnations of Islam as a religion, political correctness, multiculturalism, and, for good measure, Barack Obama and the "liberal media." None of that is very helpful, but it isn't much better to cite the other factors of war, racism, mental illness, etc. without considering them all together as systemic forces that will eventually combine to produce random acts of violence, whether of the active shooter kind, or in cases of rape, domestic abuse, and/or suicide. After all, most people with mental illnesses (a nebulous category that we should refrain from generalizing upon, anyway) do not go on shooting rampages. So far Marc Armbinder is the only high profile media professional who has urged restraint:

Does shooter story today focus on Islam, on the man himself and his demons, on the Army and war? Lots of data points = context needed.

This event, like the Columbine shootings ten years ago, will be endlessly pored over. I still have not figured out Columbine, but there is at least the positive influence of The Columbine Project to help teens address the kinds of issues that were brought to light by that awful event. Armbinder is right, however: context is needed, and to fully appreciate it, we need time to think before we speak.

So, ya know, STFU.

Originally published at mooreroom.

As blogged by Patrick Goldstein, Josh Olson takes the L.A. Times to task for an article that pits "middle America" against "Hollywood elites" regarding the Roman Polanski child rape case. Olson is appropriately snarky, and his response brings to my mind other instances when self-professed moral authorities (of either Left or Right stripe) demand to know where my outrage is or why I haven't commented on such-and-such. Here's a great snip:

I cannot pretend, as some have, to have spent the last thirty years gnashing my teeth at the fiend Polanskis escape from justice, but neither can I pretend to be outraged that a convicted criminal who fled prosecution has been caught. Perhaps I missed the meeting where these things were explained, but it just never occurred to me that I was supposed to stage a rally when something happened that doesnt bother, interest or affect me in the least.

Melissa Silverstein is quoted as saying, "I think people are afraid to talk in Hollywood. They are afraid about their next job." Well, shes half right. Were all scared about our next job. Thats the nature of the business. You never know where the next paycheck is coming from. What we are NOT, however, is sitting around fretting about whether or not Roman Polanski will be displeased with us if we publicly state that we think raping children is a bad thing.

As a rule, when I read the news that a fugitive from justice has been caught, my standard response is to think, How nice, and turn the page. If its a particularly interesting story, I might tell my girlfriend about it, but until this moment it never occurred to me that I was supposed to alert the media as to my feelings on the subject. Its hard enough keeping up with all the injustice in the world. Now we have to stand up and shout every time it goes the way its supposed to? No offense to Ms. Silverstein, but some of us have jobs.

The rest is worth a gander.

Originally published at mooreroom.

This is what centrism looks like:

The public option has become for the left what "death panels" have become for the right -- an easily understood metaphor that can be used to wage an ideological war over the issue of Big Government, and mostly a sideshow.

Steven Pearlstein doesn't wanna hear any more liberal whining about the "public option." Fine. He favors so-called "co-ops." Okey dokey. But to draw a moral equivalency between a totally fabricated distortion that killed a bill designed to empower patients, on the one hand, and, on the other, a program to expand health coverage to millions of people who need it is intellectually bankrupt. Glib moderate journalist dithering.

The rest of his argument against the public option is reasonable, even if I disagree; and he offers some good ideas (so they seem), like capping prices of drugs and setting prices hospitals charge to insurers. So let me be clear: I don't care if my liberal football team wins. I want people -- people, of whatever class or "station in life" they inhabit -- to have access to the health care they need. Period. I favor the public option because, short of single payer, it is the best means of achieving that end. It's not great, but it is the best I have seen so far.

None of which means the public option will be in whatever bill Congress throws together in the Fall. Liberals in Congress are threatening to vote against a health care reform bill if it lacks a public option -- a move I sympathize with, but don't feel is very constructive, and might be self-destructive in the long run. Which probably puts me in the Matthew Yglesias camp. Hmmmm. I may have to rethink that position.

Originally published at mooreroom.

Last week I mocked the white privilege protecting Mr.Tree of Liberty as he stood outside Obama's town hall in New Hampshire with a loaded gun strapped to his thigh. I assumed that had he been any other color than a whiter shade of pale, our libertarian extremist dolt would have faced a beat down by the cops.

Well, today a black man carrying a semi-automatic outside Obama's speech before the VFA in Arizona may have proven me wrong.


Link: Arizona Republic

From the article:

A man, who decided not to give his name, was walking around the pro-health care reform rally at 3rd and Washington streets, with a pistol on his hip, and an AR-15 (a semi-automatic assault rifle) on a strap over his shoulder.

"Because I can do it," he said when asked why he was armed. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms."

Two police officers were staying very close to the man.

"What he is doing is perfectly legal," Det. J. Oliver, of the Phoenix Police Department said. "We are here to keep the peace. If we need to intervene, we will intervene at that time."

So I was wrong. A black asshole gets the same legal protections as a white asshole, right? Er... we'll see how Troy Anthony Davis' retrial works out before we jump to that conclusion. (Not to imply that Mr. Davis is an asshole, btw. He could be, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.) Given that this takes place in Arizona, I am not too surprised: ten years ago, elsewhere in the American Southwest, the Black Panthers of Texas openly carried rifles and semi-automatics in a counter-demonstration against the Ku Klux Klan -- a display of force as warranted as anything I can think of. The police seemed to think so, too, and did no more than keep the peace.

Nonetheless a few commenters over at the HuffPo post on this article automatically assume the nutjob with the Freedom Gun is white. IMMA WAKE observes: "Many of these angry folks are just plain mad because this country has elected a "Black" President." Not AWAKE enough to click the link to the article itself. More ambiguously, CaptainVideo asks: "Imagine how the right would have reacted if a black man had brought a gun within vicinity of President Bush." So either CaptainVideo assumes the gun carrier is white, or he thinks this black guy is getting away with something he wouldn't under a white president -- which sounds more paranoid than a real comment on racial injustice.

Surprise, people are sloppy on the InterWebz. But they also carry around assumptions about race that have arisen during this health care debate (sic), at least insofar as who the "townhellers" are. From all previously reported evidence, they are white, conservative, pretty libertarian, and in many cases whupped into a frenzy by professional conservative action groups. The appearance of a black conservative libertarian doesn't undermine that general profile; rather it raises other questions about an individual's racial identity and ideology that are best answered by, say, this particular gun nut in Arizona. Of course, conservatives will argue that the appearance of this man proves wrong the "liberal media" depictions that support the Angry Townheller profile. I think he is an exception that proves the rule: like Rachel Maddow, an intelligent cable news pundit, he is more curiosity than representative a genuine demographic.

UPDATE: Surprise. He was part of a conservative radio talk show stunt. Oh, those silly pranksters. What will they think of next? Strapping C4 to their chests and brandishing a detonator at the crowd? My freedoms tingle with pleasure.

Originally published at mooreroom.

From the NYTimes article on Hillary Clinton's "fit of pique":

As one journalist covering her trip put it: She is a celebrity. We have a celebrity secretary of state. When you have a celebrity, you get celebrity coverage.

Well, there's a deflection of responsibility if I ever saw one. Read: Just cuz we have treated her like a celebrity since day one, it's not our fault if coverage of her official trip as Secretary of State to Africa focuses on trivial shit like her marriage or her husband's "overshadowing" diplomatic efforts or even the possibility that she has been "marginalized" by the Obama administration.

I touched on this in the post underneath my cartoon on the so-called "outburst" today, but I feel like elaborating, so indulge me. Inheriting a steaming pile of foreign policy crap, Obama has deployed not only Clinton, but Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and other high-level diplomats with considerable "celebrity" status of their own. We can debate the merits of these deployments; but the main mission is clear: salvage US relations with other powerful regional countries and seek to serve national interests while pursuing multilateral objectives on terrorism, nuclear proliferation, global warming, resource competition and other important issues.

So the main story should be about the success or failure of these efforts, the details of negotiations, the competition among major world players, the effects on the billions of people living in poverty, human rights, war, violence, etc. Not Hillary Clinton's career. Her marriage. Her psychological state, at least vis-a-vis her role in the Obama White House. Her efforts in Africa deserve attention, debate, scrutiny. It is interesting that the NY Times article cites among the factors contributing to Clinton's irritability, such as jetlag, the awful use of rape as a war weapon in the Congo in the context of a corrupt, patriarchal ruling class. Then there was this:

Her talk with the students had started out friendly enough, with questions about human rights and the environment. But it got a little edgy when several students pushed her on why Congo, whose first prime minister was ousted with the help of the C.I.A., should now trust the United States. She then became a little prickly.

Uh, Patrice Lamumba was not simply "ousted" -- he was fucking murdered. So Clinton is "prickly"? It's a reasonable question: "You fucked us over in the past, why should be trust you now?" The focus on her celebrity and her temperament allow the corporate press to not only perpetuate stereotypes of women in power as "bitches"; it obscures the history of US and European sponsored violence and resource exploitation that continue to plague Africa. No, we are not all to "blame," but WOW have US geopolitical and corporate interests played a significant part in disrupting the continent (and, yes, European colonialism, it goes without saying.) It's one thing to lecture Nigeria on political corruption, but it would be nice to acknowledge the corrupting influence of US and British oil companies -- and hey, maybe seek to redress it.

Originally published at mooreroom.

Discussing the scaremongering surrounding "ObamaCare," my wife suggested that right wing fearsome scenarios are like that liver organ transplant sketch from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.



It's eerie just how well suited this sketch is to current rhetoric. Granted, the Pythons were joking. Bit of a distinction, that.

Originally published at mooreroom.

FOXNews Chris Wallace thinks you're a "grassy knoll nut."

Clear Channel turns down your right wing radio show.

Glenn Beck tries to dial you back:

Via Media Matters.

Originally published at mooreroom.

Turns out my cartoon yesterday linking the birther conspiracy theory with other forms of paranoia was more accurate than I had guessed. "Crazy Eileen," the birther made famous by a YouTube clip of her confronting her Republican congressman (and then leading everyone in reciting the pledge) subscribes to more traditional forms of delusional fantasy.

"I have actually talked to an angel who came down in human form," she said during the Jan. 1 show. "We will have alien contact in October of this year, in the southwestern USA."

Sigh. If only Carl Sagan were still alive to see this. Shortly before his death from cancer, Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World, extolling the scientific method to question claims of alien abduction, angel sightings, and other paranormal and conspiracy claims. (I read it only recently, so it is fresh in my mind; now I am picking up The New Skepticism by Paul Kurtz, who taught philosophy at SUNY at Buffalo when I was there -- too bad I never took one of his classes.)

Originally published at mooreroom.