Samson's Baby Picture

All I can say is "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!" This arrived via e-mail this morning. It's a good thing, too. The said Samson, now 11 months older, chewed a Chi-size hole in the center back cushion of the leather sofa, and shredded my new magazine before I could read it. Don't say there's no such thing as angels. Somebody is watching out for his scrawny little hiney.

Reagan on Bush: Yeeecht

In case you know people who still labor under the illusion that George W. Bush was in any sense a manifestation of Ronnie, read this. And while you're at it, bookmark this site. It's got a lot of good resource-type stuff. Hat tip to my buddy Pam for this duo.

Family Values

Nicholas Kristoff writes in the NYT today about sex slavery and the vicious torture of girl slaves in the trade in Cambodia. Read it, if you dare. This grisly, filthy business actually isn't a world away. To the extent that it caters to them, it begins in the consciousness of Western men. It exists because they like it and because Cambodian men and women slave-traders and brothel owners can profit from it.

Kristoff concludes:

"Sex trafficking is truly the 21st century’s version of slavery. One of the differences from 19th-century slavery is that many of these modern slaves will die of AIDS by their late 20s. . . .

"I hope that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will recognize slavery as unfinished business on the foreign policy agenda. The abolitionist cause simply hasn’t been completed as long as 14-year-old girls are being jolted with electric shocks — right now, as you read this — to make them smile before oblivious tourists."

Everything Kristoff says is true and urgent. And yet. . .

Is Kristoff really unaware of the slavery that underpins much of US business? Florida's and Texas' citrus and vegetable industries are equally brutal, routinely practicing beatings, starvations, and murders--not to mention gross wage theft. Growers know it, local residents and authorities know it, state officials know it, ICE knows it, and so does Congress. Everyone winks.

Is it somehow easier to focus on Cambodia's sex trafficking than on the domestic variety? Ask any big city US mayor whether there's a thriving underground economy in trafficking and torturing girls (and boys)--whether Cambodian, Vietnamese, Russian, Texan, or New Yorker. Ask the Attorneys General in Utah, Texas, and Arizona whether sex slavery exists in remote fundamentalist Mormon enclaves, protected by whole townships. Ask them whether torture is involved. If they don't mention re-assigning wives, dumping boys too young to fend for themselves and without any means of support, and handing over pre-teen girls for the sexual pleasure of men old enough to be their grandfathers, point out that these things, too, constitute torture.

I don't knock Kristoff's service in publicizing the horror of the Cambodian sex slave trade. Good for him. But it's breathlessly naive to assert that sex slavery (abroad) "is truly the 21st century’s version of slavery." (It's this kind of thing that makes me think of Kristoff as such a lightweight.)

"Truly the 21st century's version of slavery"? Well, no.

Sex slavery is merely ONE of 21st century America's versions of slavery. We have several.

Wherever wage theft occurs, there is some degree of forced labor, one criterion for defining slavery. This includes the legions of mostly foreign domestics brought here and then imprisoned in the blight of a million McMansions.

There are legions of undocumented workers lured and brought here and sold off by "coyotes" to complicit managers in construction, agriculture, meat processing, landscaping, and entertainment.

There are legions of girls and boys bought and sold as sex slaves for guys we see in suits every day. There are legions of children who are being circulated among pedophiles, and raped by their fathers and uncles and brothers and cousins. These, too, are forms of sex slavery.

So you might wish that Kristoff would place the Cambodian sex slave trade in its larger global context, and that he would also illuminate the myriad forms of slavery happening right here, right now. The home-grown variety.

And you might think that, in addition to challenging Obama and Clinton, Kristoff would challenge, oh, say, the "religious" Right.

You might think that it's a far, far worthier cause to target slavery in any of its loathesome manifestations than it is to target the right of GLBT persons to marry, adopt, and serve openly in the US military.

Last-Minute Rants from 2008

Crusing WaPo tonight. Saw, again, Sally Quinn doing women and religion. That's like Bill O'Reilly doing charm and chastity.

Can we put a lien on the holdings of the Bush family to compensate us for the massive fraud romp they've perpetrated on us all?

Yes, I'll pray for peace in the Mid-East, and yes, I know Hammas fired first this time, but dammit, this Gaza conflict makes me sick. Angry and fed up. I'm sick of Palestine, sick of Israel, sick of Hammas, sick of Hezbollah, sick of Irgun, sick of Haganah, and sick of everyone like any of them. I'm sick of US policy, sick of Arab policy, sick of Israeli policy. I'm sick of the whole effing lot of them. Everyone involved has failed abjectly for 60 miserable, woe-begotten years. Yes, I know I'm not there, but so how long does it take to end war and make peace? How many brain cells does it take to see that violence just breeds violence? When do these people lay down their weapons for the sake of their children? Or do they intend to keep this up until the conflagration overtakes the entire world? Sometimes things are so screwed up they can't ever be fixed. This is one of those things. The only way out is to lay down the weapons and lay down the grudges.

The most annoying Talking Head on TV? That self-righteous, overstarched, cross-eyed Republican. Somehow he reminds me of a seagull on a dry pier post. Get him out of here.

Did you hear that Republican babe announce last night that next on the list of the Republican social terrorists will be gay adoption? I am so unutterably fed up with our being the national punching bag. Have they no imagination?

I know. Let's start a counter-movement. No marriage, no adoption, no out in the military? Fine. No taxes, no culture, no poetry, no style. We'll be only too delighted to leave you to your tomato-wrestling, Velveeta-eating, Palin-worshipping, Enquirer-oggling, Limbaugh-laden, Hummer-craving, sour, miserable, faded, despairing, panicky, tacky, craven little Chef Boyardee lives.

It's "symbolic" to prosecute Bush and Cheney for war crimes and other acts of treason? Does that mean it's "symbolic" to prosecute the rest of us for speeding? God I hate how these people think.

If you hate insurance companies and financial planners even more than you hate Exxon, raise your hand.

What's more useless than t*ts on a boar hog? Being compelled to know that you're patronizing a "Christian" dry cleaner or a"Christian" Jiffy Lube or a "Christian" drywall hanger. Is this a campaign to balkanize this country or just an excess of sharing? Emphatically: I don't need to know the religion of my shoe repairman. I need to know he can fix my shoes. So just shut up. Like the man says, "You don't tell me about your religion, I don't tell you about my genital warts." That's a deal, baby.

My hopes for 2009? We're out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we adopt a comprehensive, sane, and humane immigration policy, Joe Arpaio is impeached, there really are war crimes and treason trials, our soldiers get first-rate health care, the economy turns around fast, the Wall Street crooks go to jail,and the whole world goes green. See Wall-E.

I'm going to stand up in a minute and kick 2008 from here to history, but first I have to wish everyone a sincere happy, healthy, peaceful, wonder-filled, loving, and adequately prosperous New Year, and I do. Long shots sometimes work out fine. And before I go, I want to wish Barack Obama the best four years he's ever had, and thank God for Rachel Maddow.

Night, all. Thank you so much for dropping by.

Meet Samson Ledger, Pico's New Sidekick

This is Samson Ledger, aka Sam, aka Sledge. He's Pico's new sidekick and the newest member of our family. Sam arrived with us on December 27, 2008, at 4 pm. He'll be a year old on January 14.

Sam is the strong, silent type--hence the name Samson Ledger. The Samson part should be obvious. The Ledger part is a tribute to the late, great strong, silent type Heath Ledger, in his role as Ennis Del Mar, in Brokeback Mountain.

A Gas Tax? Friedman Makes a Great Case for It

When the fix has to do with money, the rich never lose.

Thomas Friedman has written persuasively today about the need for a gasoline tax. I can't find the flaw in his logic, except to note that the poor and middle classes are hit the hardest in a recession, and even a modest gas tax can make a big difference to a home with a part-time breadwinner. Friedman's case is pretty tight, but look at it this way. A $20 tax consumes a larger percentage of a modest income than it does of a fat one. That's what makes a gas tax regressive in short-term effect. Is it still necessary? Yes. But I merely report. You decide:

"Today’s financial crisis is Obama’s 9/11. The public is ready to be mobilized. Obama is coming in with enormous popularity. This is his best window of opportunity to impose a gas tax. And he could make it painless: offset the gas tax by lowering payroll taxes, or phase it in over two years at 10 cents a month. But if Obama, like Bush, wills the ends and not the means — wills a green economy without the price signals needed to change consumer behavior and drive innovation — he will fail.

"The two most important rules about energy innovation are: 1) Price matters — when prices go up people change their habits. 2) You need a systemic approach. It makes no sense for Congress to pump $13.4 billion into bailing out Detroit — and demand that the auto companies use this cash to make more fuel-efficient cars — and then do nothing to shape consumer behavior with a gas tax so more Americans will want to buy those cars. As long as gas is cheap, people will go out and buy used S.U.V.’s and Hummers.[Emphasis added.]

"There has to be a system that permanently changes consumer demand, which would permanently change what Detroit makes, which would attract more investment in battery technology to make electric cars, which would hugely help the expansion of the wind and solar industries — where the biggest drawback is the lack of batteries to store electrons when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. A higher gas tax would drive all these systemic benefits.

"The same is true in geopolitics. A gas tax reduces gasoline demand and keeps dollars in America, dries up funding for terrorists and reduces the clout of Iran and Russia at a time when Obama will be looking for greater leverage against petro-dictatorships. It reduces our current account deficit, which strengthens the dollar. It reduces U.S. carbon emissions driving climate change, which means more global respect for America. And it increases the incentives for U.S. innovation on clean cars and clean-tech."

Knowing what you now know, will you support Obama if he calls for a gas tax? I will. Because otherwise, the cost to future generations is incalculable.

Surviving All That

The Christmas season isn't all saccharine, all gluey sweet, but some of it is. It isn't all twinkly lights and shiny colored orbs on a pretty tree, or GodHelpMe "Walking in a Winter Wonder Land," but way too much of it is. So by the time I make it to December 27, what I want is Springsteen's "Spirit in the Night," top volume. What I need, the way collards need ham, is The Band, The Last Waltz, Mavis Staples and Levon Helm, and "The Weight."

This time of year, if I've survived, I have a dirt-deep, nitty-gritty physical need to hear Janis Joplin scorch "Me and Bobby McGee." In other words, what I need is music that scrubs the residue of all that right out of my soul. It's already too cluttered.

I need to see a winter-dry Maryland field, a gray waterman's sky blistered with reticent blue, and an impervious formation of Canada geese, and after that, a plate of steaming hot red tamales and a painfully cold beer.

Maybe you know what I mean.

The Crisis of '08 Reading List

From The New Republic, and reprinted in full here (emphases added) on the theory that if you want to fix it, you first have to understand it. It's very good, very timely information, although Momma doesn't expect anybody to read every book here. It's more a matter of picking one from Column A, etc.--perhaps starting with Naomi Klein's essential guide to what ails us, The Shock Doctrine.

The Crisis Of '08 Reading List by John B. Judis
The best books to help you make sense of Marx, Keynes, the Great Depression, and how we got where we are now

Every few years, someone urges me to do a Christmas book list, and while protesting my ignorance and incompetence, I gladly comply. This year's subject is the current global recession, which threatens to become a global depression. This is a layman's list, because I am strictly a layman on the subject of economics. You don't have to know anything about string theory to read any of the books I recommend.

I learned most (or what little I know) of economics from reading on my own or from study groups we used to hold in the fading days of the new left. I read all three volumes of Capital in a study group organized by the late Harry Chang, a Korean immigrant to the Bay Area who was a computer programmer by day (in the keypunch era) and a Marxist scholar by night. I read Keynes under sporadic supervision of economist Jim O'Connor, the author of The Fiscal Crisis of the State, and a fellow member of the collective that published Socialist Revolution (which in 1978 became Socialist Review). And I got my introduction to economic history from historian Marty Sklar, who was also a member of that collective.

A decade ago, I might have been embarrassed to admit that I was raised on Marx and Marxism, but I am convinced that the left is coming back. Friedrich Hayek is going to be out; Friedrich Engels in. Larry Kudlow out; Larry Mishel in. And why is that? Because a severe global recession like this puts in relief the transient, fragile, and corruptible nature of capitalism, and the looming contradiction between what Marx called the forces and relations of production evidenced in unemployed engineers and boarded up factories and growing poverty amidst a potential for abundance. As capitalism itself--or at the least the vaunted miracle of the free market--becomes problematic, the left is poised for an intellectual comeback. So here are four topics and some books to read about them, plus a few articles, from someone who learned economics by reading and rereading Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy's Monopoly Capital.

1. The current crisis. I was warning my colleagues of an encroaching disaster a year ago, because I was reading the columns and articles of Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, Larry Summers, and Dean Baker. They were on top of this when Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke were still telling everyone not to worry. Of the current books I've read (and I haven't read many), I'm very high on Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf's Fixing Global Finance, George Cooper's The Origin of Financial Crises, Jamie Galbraith's The Predator State, and Dean Baker's Plunder and Blunder. Wolf is terrific on the international currency mess--and the Financial Times is the paper to read--Cooper is first-rate on the irrationality of money and finance, Galbraith has a good explanation of how we got to where we are, and how to get out of it, and Baker is the expert on the housing bubble. I also liked Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics when it appeared almost ten years ago (Short take: If it could happen to Japan, it could happen to us). There is a new edition that incorporates some material about 2008, but I haven't read it.

2. John Maynard Keynes. Keynes is back in vogue, and rightly so. One economist--I can't remember who it was--recently warned against reading The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money because it was written strictly for economists. I don't agree at all. It's a very hard book, especially some of the middle sections, but worth reading and rereading. If you don't have energy for the whole thing, read the first three chapters, some of the middle chapters (7, 10, 16, and 18 are my suggestions) and the last three. I suggest, however, a guide. The best I've found is Dudley Dillard's The Economics of John Maynard Keynes, which, to my amazement, is still in print after sixty years. I also like Hyman Minsky and Paul Davidson's guidebooks to Keynes. But you've got to read Robert Skidelsky's three-volume biography of Keynes, Hopes Betrayed, The Economist as Savior, and Fighting for Freedom (also now available in an abridged one-volume edition). Believe me, this is one of the great biographies. The way he brings together Keynes, the gay aesthete of Bloomsbury, and Keynes, the economist and man of worldly affairs, is something to behold. Skidelsky's second volume is also the best introduction to Keynes's economics, because you learn that exactly those ideas you found mystifying or most difficult in Keynes were hotly debated between him and his colleagues.

3. The Great Depression. There have been a lot of books on this subject, but most of what I read I read decades ago, so I'm sure I'm going to overlook worthy choices. Still, there are two older books that continue to stand up. George Soule was an editor of The New Republic during the 1930s. He was also an economist and in 1947 published a study of the American economy from 1917 to 1929 entitled Prosperity Decade. Soule shows that well before 1929, there were rumblings of trouble in the American economy--not only in the stock market bubble, but in overcapacity in key industries like auto, and in the rise of technological unemployment. You'll see the surprising resemblance to our own decade, including an anticipatory recession in 1926 like the one in 2001. On the international crisis of the 1930s, I like Charles P. Kindleberger's The World in Depression, which I reread two months ago when I was writing about the current international imbroglio. I want also to mention an essay by Sklar in The United States as a Developing Country. In chapter five, "Some Political and Cultural Consequences of the Disaccumulation of Capital," Sklar puts forward the idea that during the 1920s, capitalism shifted from the accumulation to disaccumulation of capital. That's Marxist jargon, but what it means is that goods production began to expand as a function of the reduction rather than increase in labor-time and in the labor force. That created an enormous opportunity, but also a potential crisis. The depression of the 1930s, Sklar argues, was the first "disaccumulationist" depression. One of his former students, historian Jim Livingston from Rutgers, has put forward a similar analysis of the current recession.

4. Marx and Marxism. Marx, like Keynes, is best read in his own words. There are a lot of brilliant shorter works, but I'd put the first volume of Capital up there with The Origin of Species, The Interpretation of Dreams, and The Philosophical Investigations on my list of great books of the last two hundred years. It's not a guide to starting your own business and really doesn't have a theory of crises. Some of that is in the other unfinished volumes. What volume one does is establish capitalism as a phase, and perhaps a passing phase, in world history whose very nature has consisted in disguising that fact from worker and capitalist alike. You read Capital to understand the historical underpinnings, not the mechanics of capitalism. Marx's theory of history has obvious deficiencies--he didn't foresee, certainly, the rise of corporate capitalism and of corporate liberalism. His trademark theory of the falling rate of profit, which you can find in volume three, is also unpersuasive. But these failings pale beside his portrayal of capitalism as mode of production based upon labor power as a commodity and on the accumulation of capital. I wish I could recommend guides to Marx's thought. The economic guides often err by trying to justify his works as modern economics. G. A. Cohen's book, Karl Marx's Theory of History, is a little academic, but of all the books I've read in the last twenty or thirty years, it's the best.

Have a good, if grim, read of these books--if you have some better ideas, include them in the comments below--and let's hope that the next year brings some better economic news than this one.

John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic.

What Else Would You Like to Know About my Christmas?

From icanhascheezburger:

(Hat tip to pal VL for kitteh pic.) Is it me, or is there a strong resemblance to Barbara Bush?

Prius: More Than Just a Car!

For the survival-inclined, from the Harvard Press:

“Around the corner at Madigan Lane, John Sweeney, a member of the town’s conservation-minded Heat Advisory Committee, took a characteristically green approach to powering his home during the [ice] storm. He reported his achievement in an e-mail, saying it was no big deal, but that his wife thought it an impressive tale worth sharing: Sweeney ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan, and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas.

“’When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius…These inverters are available for about $100 many places online,’” he wrote.

“The device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power.”

Nice, huh? From what I can tell, there are several kinds of power inverters. Best check with someone knowledgeable--for instance, an RV outfitter accustomed to recommending power inverters to run appliances from a vehicle battery--to see what kind will work best for your needs. [Note: I'm not specifically endorsing the roadtrip america site. I list it here only as one of many possible sources for background information only. Use it or any other information source at your own risk.]

"Separate and Not Equal"

From the editorial page of the New York Times: Separate and Not Equal
Published: December 20, 2008

"Civil unions are an inadequate substitute for marriage. Creating a separate, new legal structure to confer some benefits on same-sex couples neither honors American ideals of fairness, nor does it grant true equality. The results are clearly visible in New Jersey, which continues to deny same-sex couples some of the tangible civil benefits that come with marriage.

"Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey has long said that he would sign a measure granting the right to marry to couples of the same sex. We are heartened that he has declared that that should happen sooner rather than later.

"We hope Mr. Corzine intends to prod legislators into passing such a law early in the 2009 session. That would make New Jersey the first state to legalize marriage for same-sex couples through legislative action. Three other states — Connecticut, Massachusetts and California — have done so through the courts. Unfortunately, California voters approved a ballot measure in November rescinding that right, at least for now.

"Mr. Corzine made his statement after a state commission released its final report on New Jersey’s two-year-old civil union law. The commission noted the hurt and stigma inflicted by shutting out gay people from the institution of marriage. It also found that civil unions do not assure gay couples of the same protections, including the right to collect benefits under a partner’s health insurance program and to make medical decisions on behalf of a partner who is unable to do so. The panel concluded unanimously that the state should enact a law to remove the inequities.

"We regret that the leaders of the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature do not view this issue with the same urgency. Senate President Richard Codey, for instance, said recently that progress in civil rights areas 'is typically achieved in incremental steps.' We suspect that political expedience is clouding Mr. Codey’s sense of fairness. Next year in New Jersey, the governorship and all seats in the Assembly are up for grabs in an election. Some Republicans already are talking about making their opposition to same-sex marriage a campaign issue.

"Governor Corzine typically takes the right side on important issues, but he has been known to retreat in the face of opposition. We hope that’s not the case here. It’s past time for him and for the Democrats in Trenton to find the political courage to extend the right to marry to gay couples."

It's time for the nation to find that political courage. Anything less is despicable.

Anti-Semitic, Misogynistic, and Homophobic: Now Do You Care About Rick Warren?

Here's an important new article about the Rick Warren tag that puts a whole lot more light on this ugly subject. I strongly recommend it. Here's an outtake:

"Yet this is symbolism with real-world consequences and concrete implications. First of all, it reifies the image that Warren has been assiduously constructing for himself as 'America’s Pastor,' a post-partisan and benevolent figure with a quasi-official role atop the nation’s civic life. When it comes to his public persona, Warren is something of a magician. He has convinced much of the media and many influential Democrats that he represents a new, more centrist breed of evangelical with a broader agenda than the old religious right. This is, in many ways, deceptive. Yes, Warren has done a lot of work on AIDS in Africa, but he supports the same types of destructive, abstinence-only policies as the Bush administration. One of his protegés, Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, has been a major force in moving that country away from its lifesaving safer-sex programs. He’s been known to burn condoms at Makerere University, the prestigious school in Uganda’s capital, and in his Pentecostal services, marked by much sobbing and speaking in tongues, he offers the promise of faith healing to his desperate congregants, a particularly cruel ruse in a country ravaged by HIV.

"The truth is that the primary difference between Warren and, say, James Dobson is the former’s penchant for Hawaiian shirts. Warren compares abortion to the Holocaust, gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, and social gospel Christians as 'closet Marxists.' He doesn’t believe in evolution. He has won plaudits from some journalists for his honesty in forthrightly admitting that he believes that Jews are going to hell, but even if one sees such candor is a virtue, the underlying conviction hardly qualifies him as an ecumenical peacemaker. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Warren himself described his differences with Dobson as 'mainly a matter of tone,' and was unable to come up with a theological issue on which they disagree.

"If Democrats collaborate in positioning Warren as the centrist alternative to the religious right, they consign vast numbers of people, including many of the party’s most dedicated supporters, to the fringe. 'It does strengthen Warren as kind of a new Billy Graham figure,' says the Reverend Dan Schultz, a United Church of Christ pastor and the founder of the progressive religious blog Street Prophets. That has especial relevance for Warren’s role in Africa, where a very conservative kind of evangelical Christianity is exploding, bringing with it virulently anti-gay politics. 'What I have heard is that it will help Warren overseas,' Schultz says of Warren’s role in the inauguration. “He’s big into work in Africa. This will give him a lot of clout over there. Part of the reason this is kind of insulting for me is that Warren has supported some pretty awful people in Africa, including people who think homosexuals should be jailed.”

[Emphasis added throughout.]

Did you say "Rick Warren"???????

Thanks to Zooborns for the loan of this image, and hat tip to VL!

The Shock Doctrine Coming to a Theatre Near You?

Anyone who's read The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) will need no further introduction to this piece of information:

"A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

"'Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,' said the War College report.

"The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

"International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Wednesday of economy-related riots and unrest in various global markets if the financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are hurt by credit constraints and rising unemployment.

"U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., both said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson brought up a worst-case scenario as he pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September. Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, said that might even require a declaration of martial law, the two noted." [Emphasis added.]

This article isn't reassuring, either, to those of us who have watched as, step by step over the last eight years, the Bush administration has laid the groundwork for precisely this eventuality--from sinister and anti-constitutional changes to our surveillance laws, to construction of concentration camps on domestic soil, to suspension of the regulatory apparatus that was supposed to prevent the kinds of fraud that have wiped out our investment banking and home mortgage industries. When all of these developments manifest at the hands of one regime, what's a smart person to think?

Rick Warren: So NOT the Change We Hoped For

Obama's decision to invite Far Right evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration spits in the upturned, hopeful faces of America's GLBT people and of the women and men who believe that women have the right to control our own bodies.

Warren doesn't sit quietly on the political sidelines. Nor is he a theological moderate. Warren is as virulently hostile to gay men and lesbian women as James Dobson, of Focus on the Family. The difference between them, as People for the American Way president Kathryn Kolbert says, isn't theological. It's just a matter of tone.

This isn’t Obama’s first public liaison with a homo-hater. If you recall, about a year ago, he made a similar alliance when he chose to campaign in South Carolina with outspoken heterosexist and homophobe Donnie McClurkin. That made me furious. This time it’s worse. This makes me question Obama’s heart.

It goes without saying that that these decisions are rank and cynical political calculations. They reflect Obama's capitulation to the worst form of demagoguery, the kind that pits one group of Americans against another, the kind that perpetuates and legitimizes militant ignorance on a vacuous cry of “religious freedom,” the kind that intentionally stimulates the worst of us to daily acts of physical, psychological, spiritual, legal, and verbal violence.

I believe Obama knows that he's taking risks with our wellbeing, but I think, like most straight people, he severely underestimates those risks so that he never has to examine his religion or take responsibility for his role in making GLBT people and women second-class citizens in America.

As an African American active in a quasi-evangelical Christian church, Obama is fully aware that many black Americans are outraged when GLBT people claim that our struggle is a civil rights struggle. He may well share that view.

I don’t understand it so I can’t explain it, but I suspect that it comes from that font of never-ending curses, Pauline and Augustinian Christian theology.

A superstitious hostility to sex is deeply embedded in both Catholic and Protestant forms of Christianity, and is nowhere more pronounced than in the Church’s conservative evangelical and fundamentalist sectors. For these believers, thanks to the Bible and the very word “homosexual,” GLBT people exist, by definition, outside the righteous realms of civil rights. The language itself and a pernicious Christian tradition drown our humanity in the stews of other people’s phobic, misogynistic sex panic.

Accepting us as peers in the claim for liberty and justice would mean looking that panic in the eye. Embracing us in common humanity would demand that African American and other Christian conservatives let sex intrude into the holy war on discrimination. That, in turn, would complicate our cherished cultural narrative that links “innocent” to “victim” before the courts of public opinion and of law, and turn a very bright light on the myriad forms of sex and gender violence in American society.

This brings us back to the intrinsic link between sexism and heterosexism, between denying women the right to control our own bodies, and writing GLBT persons out of the book of common humanity. After all, there is no way to define a “gay” or “lesbian” person without the underlying reference to the Patriarchy’s rigid assignment of gender roles. It’s no accident that Warren espouses the views he does. Nor are his views benign.

THIS is why Obama’s decision to elevate Warren, specifically in his role as biblical interpreter and Christian authority, is utterly unacceptable.

In this action, Obama will have symbolically fused Rick Warren’s brand of extreme Christian terrorism to the White House. Whether or not Obama intends it this way, the choice of Warren for this role is a Far Right Christian theocrat’s wet dream come true.

I’m pretty sure that Obama doesn’t see it this way. I believe he means the Rick Warren choice to signal Obama's intent to be President of all the people. I believe that, in his mind, this kind of outreach is essential to set the tone for an administration that has to unite the country in order to succeed in dealing with its numerous threats.

However, if that’s true, it reveals another frightening blind spot on the part of the President-Elect. If true, it comes from a place of sublime heterosexual privilege, a place where it isn't necessary even to see, let alone to understand or empathize with the lives of GLBT Americans even far enough to get our feelings of betrayal over the choice of Warren. And so he doesn't.

We saw a glimpse of this in Christian fundamentalist Rev. Mike Huckabee, recently, who actually said out loud that gay marriage isn’t a civil rights issue because gays "aren’t getting their skulls cracked." Oh, really? This will come as quite a shock to the Real world.

I guess Matthew Shepard didn’t count. I guess the savage slaying of a lesbian couple on the Appalachian Trail didn't count.

Because of heterosexual privilege, Obama, like Huckabee, can manage to believe that any prejudice against gay men and lesbian women – like Proposition 8, for instance – merely amounts to inconveniencing us. Because of heterosexual privilege, the majority of their audiences can agree. If they don’t know about the avalanche of suicides and homicides and bashings and rapes, it’s because they don’t have to know. Though these are reported every day to Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and in the GLBT press, they are rarely reported in the mainstream media. It’s part of the privilege of being a heterosexual not to have to see that, thanks to heterosexual bigotry, being taken for Queer in America can be fatal.

Because of what the Warren selection says about and to women and about GLBT people, Obama needs to rethink this one. It’s so not about being President of all the people in a fractured society.

It’s so not the change we hoped for.

Trashed

On George W. Bush's watch, we've seen the trashing of the US budget, the city of New Orleans, the US investment banking industry, the US mortgage industry, the US global reputation, the nation of Iraq, and now the Big Three US automakers.

Bad as this sounds, it utterly obscures the savage and ongoing pain that Bush and the Republicans have delivered to average Americans and Iraqis. Pain is too small a word for lives rubbed out and homes and farms lost and lifetime savings wasted by fraud, for a severely trashed job market, for a flood of lost businesses, for homes wrecked and families separated by financial disaster. I don't know that Americans younger than 80-something have any real frame of reference for what has been unleashed on this country.

A handful of men and women, propelled into office by election fraud and a corrupt Supreme Court, have done graver and in some ways more enduring damage and brought more anguish to American families than anything since the other gigantic Republican-induced disaster, the Great Depression.

I'm not trying to state the obvious. It's just that it occurs to me that most of us take a mechanistic view of these developments. We've been told so often that the causes are incomprehensible, complex, remote and technical that we retreat into a kind of dull stupor to numb the anguish.

But the causes aren't remote and incomprehensible. They're all too easy to see. Each of these catastrophes was brought about by an intentional White House policy. All were driven by some combination of greed, dishonesty, flawed ideology, arrogance, and recklessness. These -- even ideology -- are schoolyard sins, only in this case writ infinitely larger. I mean, they're not at all incomprehensible. Everyone knows what they are and what they accomplish.

But I suppose that if go there, we also have to look at ourselves, at our own role in enabling these cataclysms. Apathy, paralysis, support for that flawed ideology, endorsement of those fraudulent officials. That's asking the walking wounded to pile on more pain. Not likely, and probably at this moment not wise either.

But at some point, we have to take at least enough responsibility to explain to our children why this happened, honestly and clearly enough for them to avoid our mistakes.

It's a heck of a record, isn't it? A heck of a job.

Technical Difficulties: Your Input Requested

Layout Mess! The right-side column of this blog may not appear unless you scroll way down the page.

This happens to me when I use Mozilla's Firefox browser, which I just installed this morning. It does not happen to me when I use Microsoft Internet Explorer.

I've tried to fix it by tweaking the code in Blogger. Unfortunately, that only erased some resent images and widgets. It will take a while for me to remember what I've lost, but I'll be restoring context as time permits.

Yes, I've alerted Firefox to this problem and requested assistance. I hope that they or I can correct this layout mess soon.

In the meantime, could you, dear reader, please leave a comment telling me what you see and which browser you use? If you'd rather email me, please email picodegallo@cox.net

Your feedback will be very helpful. Thank you, and please accept my apology for this inconvenience.

Is This Funny?

The two leading names in the current financial crisis are CashCarry and MadeOff.

Need to Tune Your PC?

I'm not getting paid for this, I promise.

One, go to Majorgeeks.com and check out the list of recommendations for software to do wondrous things.

Two, for a great freeware to clean up, tweak, and speed up your PC, I recommend IObit's Advanced System Care 3. (Follow the link to version 2 on Majorgeeks. Eventually it will walk you to version 3.) Disclaimer: Of course if you try it and something screws up, that's not my fault! I'm not a pro. I'm just saying that I had great results today. But, do note my tweaking rule: If I don't understand it, I don't mess with it. That said, the registry cleaner, spyware tool, defrag/optimizer, and junk files remover did wonders for me.

What Makes Me Feel Safe

It's a measure of my wellbeing as an American that I don't think first of military protection, though God knows I'm grateful to the men and women who create the shield that's invisible to most of the rest of us. God bless them and keep them safe.

And it's a measure of my personal good fortune that I live in a well-lit house with a beloved partner of 25 years and three very cool dawgs.

It's another measure of my luck in life that I was born to a couple of wonderful parents who brought with them a whole passel of kin, most of them an asset to anybody's life.

I have way too many blessings.

After CJ, I count our friends chief among them, the long-timers and the newcomers, and all the laughs and warmth they've made for us these many years. Wherever you are, you're in my heart forever. You know who you are.

Tonight I try to count my blessings and give thanks from down deep in my heart. For me, this season is about shedding the failings and the woes of the year just passing, about cleaning out the closets and cupboards to give what I no longer use, and about opening my soul, praying that I will notice all the miracles yet to come. That's what a Christmas tree means to me. It stands for the gift of the Created Universe in all its simplicity, in all its splendor and complexity, in all its richness and fecundity and nourishment.

If I can just feel that, feel my organic connection to all that unutterable Wonder, I can't help but think myself richer than any Wall Street princeling ever thought about being.

Then I can't help but stop the whining that marks the days and nights of so many pampered Americans as we willfully fixate on all the wrong places--annoyances of download, overwhelm of shopping, tedium of life's marvelously automated chores, and fits of traffic. We're a marvel, aren't we, we simpering, spoiled sacks of arrogance. All it takes to see the truth in that is to glance for just a second at the world around us.

Music makes me feel safe--Wyndham Hill's first Winter Solstice album, for instance. Its minor key summons cold medieval cloisters with candles all alight and warmth somewhere inside. It conjures new, warm bread, a rabbit stew, a bit of story-telling, a smoky fire, a round of red wine, and a moment of peace.

Roasted potatoes make me feel safe. Actually, potatoes in any form make me feel safe.

A bead at the neck gives me joy, especially if I've made it with my own two hands.

The kindness and welcome in my beloved's face when she smiles at me, even now, after all these miles and all these years.

A very small Chihuahua who chooses to snug in the small of my naked back in night's darkest, stillest hour restores my aching, bedraggled soul.

Memories make me feel safe--gossamer thin though they may be, but oh, don't they circle and circle in the quiet of an evening to give reassurance that one's life perhaps has meant something important, albeit small and fleeting, to this or that one here and there?

My memories call up scents and colors, touches and sights and sounds and whole living moments. Resurrections, I call them, and they grow more precious the older I get.

That one frigid Taos evening, adorned with the last roasted chicken in the whole dark town, a six-pack nestled in the snow outside the low-hung window, and a couple of Santo Domingo turquoise necklaces draped on the mantel above a mesquite kiva fire in our bare, spare little adobe.

That green fiberglass and varnished timber Old Town canoe, and my father's scent of clean, sweaty male, marine motor oil, fishing tackle, cigarettes, and the Tennessee River. How could I have had any idea, at age ten, that I was in the presence of the Divine--whatever That is?

The twinkle in my late lovely mother's dark brown eyes as she tried in the worst way to sing a hymn with the best of them, or as she appeared around the kitchen corner to host us with dry roasted nuts, rocquefort cheese dip and crudite, and one Manhattan too many.

Just in case I ever needed to know the very living definition of Joy, seeing our Fury, the most beautiful Doberman who ever lived, racing full out across a snowy golf course that none of us was ever meant to be on, running like a gazelle, top speed, free for the first time in her two-year old life. (We had adopted her a few days before, and I knew from the look on her face that she'd so far spent most of her young life in a crate.)

The Milky Way spread across a velvet 1950s Tennessee sky.

My first sight of the red-rock West.

My first taste of real New Mexican carne adovada.

Water skiing on the Caney Fork--the clearest, blue-green river there was in Tennessee these many years ago.

Sneaking off when I was nine to get a fountain Coke, a pack of those waxy little yellow banana thingys, and a pack of Kools because I liked the penguin, at the long-gone corner cafe in Sewanee.

The smell of coffee in the morning. Always. Still.

A good country ham.