A Perfect Storm: Part I

Twin incidents in the early 1990s – Ruby Ridge and the Waco Branch Dividian assault –inadvertently played directly to the “black helicopters” and virulently anti-Left mindset of the survivalist, neo- patriot, Christianist, militia Far Right, and may have triggered the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

But in a way, something even worse happened. These two events left a very big chip on the shoulder of the entire Right. Today, some fifteen years later, they have been positioned to prevent the Federal government from even investigating, let alone moving to contain the threat of violence from the Right. I call this the Ruby-Waco Effect.

The spectre of a repeat Ruby Ridge or Waco act to allow the Right to roll back the line on impermissible expression further and further. Effectively, this spectre is immunizing even blatantly incendiary speech and proximate violence. Witness the recent and increasingly frequent presence of armed weapons at presidential appearances, the frequent invocation of bloodshed on rightwing TV and radio, and accusations of treason, among other fighting words, on the part of the Left. Not to meention the palpably racist “You lie!” outburst at a sitting President’s speech before a Joint Session of Congress. This serious breach of decorum has not been seen since the Civil War Era. Lest "decorum" sound too ridiculously quaint, be reminded that civility is essential for achieving workable compromise. When decorumis so crudely dispensed with, we might well ask whether workable compromise is a shared objective. I think we know the answer to that. The GOP has told us repeatedly that they WANT this President to fail. I call that treason.

Yesterday's clarion call was "black helicopters." Today's seems to be "Obama's death camps."

The Ruby-Waco Effect has seemingly paralyzed US government at every level vis a vis restraining nacent rightwing threats, but none so much as the Federal government of an “N-word” president.

No one dares to draw the line past which this avowedly murderous, kying, secessionist Far Right faction can go without endangering the peace and/or the President.

This is the first post in a series of posts about the gathering perfect storm. Stay tuned.

Another Boondoggle in the Works

Requiring every American to have health insurance, and offering a federal subsidy to Americans who can't afford to buy health insurance.

That's what Senator Max Baucus's long-awaited health care bill will do.

There wouldn't be a public option.

I haven't thought about this insurance requirement much until now. You know what? I think it's a very large boon to an already grossly over-fed corporate America. Everybody has to buy one of their products, and the government will pay for it if you can't.

Read what the BBC notes: "In particular, the 'individual mandate' (the rule forcing all Americans to take out health insurance or face a fine) will create a lot of new customers for insurance companies, and many of the newly-enrolled members will be young, healthy people who have previously opted not to get insurance."

Right. Let me see if I've got this. Make the healthiest part of the population buy health insurance. With their cushy new jobs and high salaries, I'm guessing. Or not; I think I heard that for teens today, the jobless rate is 25%. That's a Great Depression jobless rate.

Is there a countervailing requirement that this new-found insurance industry bounty be used to fund the un- and underinsured poor and elderly? Not that I know of. I don't think the Senate Finance Committee wants to interfere with executive bonuses.

An acquaintance pointed out that this plan is not so different from requiring all drivers to have car insurance -- except of course the government doesn't buy car insurance for you if you can't by it yourself.

The thing is, there are all these laws but there are still millions of people driving around without auto insurance. If this measure passes, there'll be millions without health insurance, too.

Who's going to police them/us? Who's going to collect those fines? A whole new phalanx of insurance bureaucrats paid for by you 'n me in the form of our mandatory health insurance premiums, that's who. I can't imagine our beneficent employers will leap to the front of the line to pick up that tab, can you?

But see, if we had a public option, government would create an insurance competitor--not unfairly capitalized or able to put private insurors out of business; just sufficient to force crucial price and coverage concessions from the for-profit private sector.

If we had a public option, government would negotiate cost savings for prescription medications, medical aids (wheelchairs, hearing aids, etc.), as well as surgical and diagnostic procedures.

A public option would also be less cumbersome because it wouldn't mandate an enforcement brigade or a collections department.

And it wouldn't have to be invented. We have one now. It's called Medicare.


But all this is far too sane for our Congress. Entirely too clean for a bunch of bought-and-paid-for insurance, pharma, and for-profit healthcare hacks.

Bottom Feeding

Parse the evening news commentary. Like CNN. The airwaves are hot with the Joe Wilson story. He's "an American hero to many." It will probably "do him good" in his Republican district. "It's going over well in the heartland." Joe raised $200K!

Yeah?

Well, Joe's opponent, the former Marine, the Democrat who's running against him, raised over $1M in the same 48 hours. But that's not something you need to know.

And let me tell you something. "Real" Americans just won the White House and both houses of Congress, so you can stop equating "real" Americans with "conservatives" and "heartland" with "real" America any second now. That would be truth in advertising, you brain-dead, programmed news droids.

And on the subject of programmed brain-washed news droids, how about making clear that Joe is flat-out wrong. Just establish that FACT, could you? The bill expressly excludes immigrants who are here illegally. There's no "yeah but" about it. End of story.

Here's what: Joe just lowered the bar for acceptable political discourse, at a time when it's already in the gutter on the Right and manufactured deliberately to take us inexorably to a place where the time for talking is over and only weapons will speak. I worry for my country. But don't let that stop you from making him into a "hero."

"Hero"? Is it the standard now that you're an American hero if you're uninformed, dead wrong, crudely inarticulate, militantly insult a sitting President, dumb as a slab of mutton, and can't tell the difference between a Joint Session of Congress and a bunch of drunken Bubbas at a hog callin'?

Hey, if he's a hero, let's just get this done right now and get it over with! Let's ditch the Bald Eagle and make the polecat our national icon while we're at it. Ann Coulter can be the new Secretary of Ethics and Integrity, and Michelle Bachman can be our new Madonna.

When formerly American heroes were men like Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., now American heroes are men like Joe Wilson? I denounce and deny that. Words have meaning. Heros have earned our highest regard, generally by putting their lives on the line for others. Joe Wilson just brayed like a jackass. He's American white trash, maybe, but he's no "hero."

I would love it if, just once, moderate, thinking Republicans--all ten of you--stood like grown-ups and called the line on the thugs that have stolen your party, the media, and the national discourse and replaced them, respectively, with the SS, the National Enquirer, and a spitball fight.

I mean, my inlaws--who would JUST DIE if they knew I called them that--are educated people. Nevertheless, they watch Fox. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. Can someone please explain to me how educated people can watch FOX and believe it? How is it possible that they consider themselves decent, conservative, and well bred, AND Republicans, when Republicanism has become synonymous with Fox News? With Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, Joe Wilson, and Joe the Plumber? Why aren't they ashamed? I mean, you just cannot be respectable AND Republican. You can't be educated AND a creationist, capable of independent research AND believe Fox, a proponent of family values AND a fan of Michelle Bachman, or respectable AND a Republican.

America really is in a race to the bottom, and Republicans are winning it.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, Presente!

In the end, the reason I'm a Democrat and not a Republican--never a Republican--is that the orientation of my party is outward, to ensure the wellbeing of all, and forward, to achieve the promise of the future.

The letter from Senator Edward M. Kennedy referenced by the President in Wednesday night’s address to the Joint Session of Congress.

May 12, 2009

Dear Mr. President,

I wanted to write a few final words to you to express my gratitude for your repeated personal kindnesses to me – and one last time, to salute your leadership in giving our country back its future and its truth.

On a personal level, you and Michelle reached out to Vicki, to our family and me in so many different ways. You helped to make these difficult months a happy time in my life.

You also made it a time of hope for me and for our country.

When I thought of all the years, all the battles, and all the memories of my long public life, I felt confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the President who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society. For me, this cause stretched across decades; it has been disappointed, but never finally defeated. It was the cause of my life. And in the past year, the prospect of victory sustained me-and the work of achieving it summoned my energy and determination.

There will be struggles – there always have been – and they are already underway again. But as we moved forward in these months, I learned that you will not yield to calls to retreat - that you will stay with the cause until it is won. I saw your conviction that the time is now and witnessed your unwavering commitment and understanding that health care is a decisive issue for our future prosperity. But you have also reminded all of us that it concerns more than material things; that what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.

And so because of your vision and resolve, I came to believe that soon, very soon, affordable health coverage will be available to all, in an America where the state of a family’s health will never again depend on the amount of a family’s wealth. And while I will not see the victory, I was able to look forward and know that we will – yes, we will – fulfill the promise of health care in America as a right and not a privilege.

In closing, let me say again how proud I was to be part of your campaign- and proud as well to play a part in the early months of a new era of high purpose and achievement. I entered public life with a young President who inspired a generation and the world. It gives me great hope that as I leave, another young President inspires another generation and once more on America’s behalf inspires the entire world.

So, I wrote this to thank you one last time as a friend- and to stand with you one last time for change and the America we can become.

At the Denver Convention where you were nominated, I said the dream lives on.

And I finished this letter with unshakable faith that the dream will be fulfilled for this generation, and preserved and enlarged for generations to come.

With deep respect and abiding affection,

[Ted]

Liberatarians and Republicans: Prove It

The other week I was considerably annoyed to hear a reasonably young lawyer opine that the public option would create a nanny state. The public option would provide health insurance, for a premium, to those who can't get it now. The conversation also included Switzerland, which our young lawyer was pleased to castigate as a nanny state destined to be populated by a mass of barnacles. (My phrase, not hers.)

Well. Isn't it amusing that the World Economic Forum just anointed Switzerland just last week the world's MOST COMPETITIVE ECONOMY, eclipsing the USA, and people are speaking openly about the USA's apparent descent to 3rd world country status--blaming it on Obama, of course, who has been in office about 1/100th of the time that Republicans have controlled US trade, economic, and monetary policy in the last 50 years.

The UN is even thinking about replacing the dollar as the currency standards with a global currency.

Here's what I want to say about all that.

The GOP has run its massive demonstration projects twice now, for a very long time. The first time led to the Great Depression, an epoch of agonywithout measure. The second, inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and driven to a fiscal, moral, and civil nadir by George W. Bush, just concluded.

Over against that was the incredible success of Clinton's trade, economic, and monetary policy.

So to conservatives, I say, show me your successes. Put the record up against the rhetoric. Exactly what has a free-market economy and welfare state for bankers, oil corps, pharmaceuticals, mining, Enron, Halliburton, and KBR achieved for the majority of Americans? What has insurance-dependent, for-profit medicine brought the average family? What has union-busting achieved for the average blue-collar worker? Where is the vaunted prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s, which thrived BECAUSE OF Franklin Delano Roosevelt's brilliant conprehension of the relationship between democracy and economics? Why has the dollar plummeted in value? Why has the average family required two or three jobs to break even (if that)? Why has dismantling worker protections brought workers to their knees rather than the promised prosperity of trickle-down economics?

I want the GOP to answer. Rhetorical attacks on the political economics that brought the world the most prosperous nation in human history just don't cut the mustard anymore.

So when you hear Jon Kyl--that sanctimonious lying sack of liquified excrement--intone about the sins of Obama, why don't you pin his trollish ears back with some facts? When Mitch McConnell--that butter-fed mongoose--warns darkly about "socialism," why don't you just sit down, shut up, and think for a change. Read some history.

I would think figuring out what went right then and what has gone so horribly wrong since would be a high priority for you.

But then I never imagined anyone would be fool enough to vote for George W. Bush.

The American people are as intelligent as anybody else. They're just a whole hell of a lot less educated. Most of us don't have a foggy inkling what Roosevelt actually did--let alone what profound issues apart from soup kitchens lay behind what he did. Most of us couldn't trace the connections among Reagan, Bush, Bush, and the gazillion-dollar deficit if our lives depended on it. Because we don't vote policy. We vote personality.

I hope everyone is right ready to explain to your 20-year-old how your vote was in his or her generation's best interests.

Help Shut Joe Wilson's Big, Fat, Boorish Republican Mouth

Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina, you're a bona fide member of the US Right wing, and you're a boor. But, oh, sorry. That's obviously redundant.

An address to the American people by the President of the United States before a joint session of the United States Congress attended by the Diplomatic Corps, the members of the US Supreme Court, and the President's Cabinet isn't a hog calling in Bug Tussle, South Carolina.

Since aren't in charge of your mouth, don't bother to read facts, and don't have your emotions under control, you obviously qualify to be a first-rate member of the Republican Party.

But you just don't belong in a position of national leadership or in the company of civilized ladies and gentlemen. And you don't model behavior that I would want my children to witness. You model Republican values: You're a disgrace.

More than that, you're a bully and a coward. How do I know? Because if the President were a white man, you wouldn't have dared. And I want you out of office. To that end, I am donating cash to the election campaign of Democrat Rob Miller, your opponent, and I strongly encourage everyone I know to do likewise. It won't take a minute.

Show Joe how progressives feel about boors on the Right. https://secure.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/19079 Visit ActBlue, and act.

Then and Now: A Reflection on the Civil Society

I ran across this while I was cleaning out my trusty day timer thingy. It's got zip lockable pockets into which I put my stuff. So I was rummaging in my stuff to see if there's anything in there that time and experience have transcended when I ran across this prayer, said to be Ben Franklin's.

Now, please don't feel that I'm pushing religion down your throat. That's none 'o my biz. I'm just asking you to read this sociologically, within the context of then--the period when our Constitution and Bill of Rights were written--and now--the period when folks protest a President who encourages learning and hard work, and actually take Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh seriously.

O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolutions to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to Thy other children as the only return in my power for Thy continual favors to me.
Amen.

I get really hot under the collar when I hear conservatives blabber about personal responsibility and individual rights. That's all well and good, but it ain't the whole hog. They would have us believe that poverty is a choice and that success is self-made, and that lending a hand to a neighbor is creating a nanny state.

That's when I go on about how there's no such thing as "self-made." What I mean is what Franklin recognizes here. Whether we attribute it to God or to human technological and intellectual advancement, the fact is that in the USA especially, all of us rise up by virtue of enormous advantages that we personally had no role whatever in creating.

These are the myriad advantages without which none of us could claim to have "made it," no matter how hard we worked. All of us are indebted to a great, collective social bounty. (The only reason that conservatives don't hyperventilate and call it "socialism," too, is because that would really mess their ideology all up. Oh wait. They do call it socialism and they want to "privatize" it! More about THAT later!)

Here's what I'm talking about, and even if we don't all have each one, we all have some of them. I'm talking everything from driveable highways, free public schools, emergency medical technicians and ambulances, libraries, book stores, museums, parks and truck farms, and phones that work, and gas and electricity on demand, and civil order, and national security, and accessible food supplies, all the way up to the elegant essentials of nature: air to breathe, water to drink and play in, sunshine, moonlight, vast canyons, awesome mountains, great wheat and corn fields, fish and plants and animals large and small.

I'm talking from spiritual and physical to technological and communal and intellectual, and, yes, political: We have the greatest constitution and bill of rights the world has ever known.

It all counts. ALL of it is ours without our every having even acknowledged it, let alone had a hand in creating it. And I haven't even gotten to the individual advantages of race, class, culture, gender, wealth, and connections that grace so many.

So wouldn't you think we'd be honest enough, and humble enough, to own that massive debt, and to get that there's only one way to repay it? To get that it can only be paid forward because it can never be paid back?

Franklin understood that unequivocal, inescapable, profound, and universal truth. I think it's no coincidence that he could help to write our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. These come, ultimately, from the same wellspring: a proper, grounded, fact-based understanding of the human being's place in the cosmos.

For all their "Christianizing," the Right, the GOP, and conservatives don't seem to have grasped this at all. Therefore, it's no coincidence that they would lead us, if we let them, straight to Hell.

It's Yours to Save or Yours to Lose

I'm sitting here watching the country nose-dive into the latter-day equivalent of the Dark Ages, wondering how in the hell we got here.

For anyone with any historical depth vis a vis the US of A--that would be anyone who is at least 40, has an interest in this country, and values a fact-based universe--where we are is all but unimaginable.

Did you ever think, in your wildest imagination, that a vocal part of the country would actually object to a sitting President's extolling our kids to study hard, learn more, and excel? I confess: I sit nigh paralized in wonder.

I'm even more stupefied that the whole entire rest of the country hasn't just risen up as one and slain these agents provocateur.

Can we immediately stop calling these people fools and morons? Can we step back a moment and observe that they are successfully de-railing the agenda of a Democratically controlled government? That's many things, but "stupid" isn't one of them.

I've followed the Far Right for quite a while: since the early 80s, in fact. All that time, I've tried to warn any who would listen that we're in for a whirlwind of the Daniel Webster (see Scopes monkey trial) sort. Can you see it now?

AND WHY IS THAT? When Pat Robertson lost his bid for the White House, the Christianist Far Right devised a brilliant long-term strategy to remake this country in the image of a fascist, patriarchalist, capitalist, racist, fundamentalist society.

what does that mean? Look up each word. Fascist. Capitalist. Patriarchal. Racist. Fundamentalist. Now THINK. Is what you see consistent with what I say is going down?

We have a choice. Either we say NOT NO, HELL NO, and say it NOW, or we will be ruled by the most violent, illiterate, uneducated, male-supremacist, racist, homophobic, and Darwinian 20 percent of Americans ever created.

Young Americans: Wake up. You are about to lose the Dream.

And that, my friends, is why this President is right: A good education is worth more than gold. With it, you can navigate the dangerous rapids of endless propaganda and mass manipulation. Without it, you're helpless.

Protecting Our Stuff

Did you hear that the "Today Show" has hired Jenna Bush? What a pitiful, miserable, gilt-laden, zirconium studded, steaming pile of crap. Glenn Greenwald has a great, great piece about it on Salon. Read it.

Why are American conservatives so vicious? Were they all born into the kind of red-dirt poverty that made them determined never to be tainted with the scent of poor people ever again in this lifetime? Are they all closet bubbas, are all conservatives to poverty what a closet queer is to homosexuality--so ingrained with it, so permeated by it, so deathly afraid of it, so hideously ignorantly persuaded of its moral depravity that they will do anything, anything to distance themselves from it, including deny the very fundamental values of common decency and civilization?

I have in mind their psychotic displays of outrage over the mere suggestion that we are our brothers' [and sisters'] keepers. (Um, that's from the Bible, you know. Gen 4:9.)

All this reminds me of a dream I had many years ago. Both my grandfathers were ministers, so when I tell you that I dreamed that my mother's mother was a Socialist, and this was in the 1960s, maybe you'll understand how unlikely a dream it was. Only, in my dream, my grandmother came to me and said that the ideals of Socialism are much closer to the ideals espoused by Jesus (and the ancient oral tradition represented in Genesis) than the ideals espoused in capitalism. No kidding. Gee. Go figure. Put THAT in the face of the next GOP thumper son-of-a-bitch you run into.

(I have some distance to go to before I learn to love my enemies.)

Speaking of a good take on all this, here's a short essay by my buddy, Pamela Penman, reprinted here with permission.



We're Only Borrowing
Monday, August 17, 2009 at 12:59pm

You know the old adage, "you can't take it with you?"

Why do we read this once in awhile, agree heartily, yet fall back into the same routine--making money and stuff the center of our world?

My 3 year old asked me why I had to go to work yesterday.

"Do you like sleeping inside?" I asked her.

"Yes..." she tenatively replied.

"Mommy goes to work to get the money to pay for the house, and to buy the food that we need to eat." That was a bit too much for her, but it satisfied her for the moment.

I didn't tell her that I also work so that we can travel, so that I can give her the experiences which will be so central to the big kid and adult I want her to become, so that she can have not only shoes on her feet--but the really good kind which will support her growth. I didn't tell her that I have a Louis Vuitton fettish, or that I like to eat meat at every meal, or that I like to be surrounded by comfort and beauty.

Stuff. There's a certain contentment to having it.

Not that I've got a lot of it. But I like to be able to get it.

Every now and then something happens, though, which causes me to ask my self--why the hell do I do it? Why do I work my backside off? I watched the death of Edward Kennedy, I feel the seasons changing even today--another summer lost to the digital photographs which I took in vain to attempt to stop time. The ache in my throat and the sting in my eyes as I hold my daughter on my lap--her body stretched out now nearly to my feet, yet her hand still wrapped around my fingers. I reevaluate the cost of working and missing every single moment and breath that she takes.

Why do you work? For some of us, it's a question of just surviving, for others it's about status and feeling good about ourselves, and for others it's about more stuff--better cars, being more financially secure, better neighborhoods, better schools. But are we ever really more financially secure? Do we ever get "there?"

The answer might have been less obvious 10 years ago, but now we know, that no, we are never financially secure. That is because our spending tends to run parallel with our income and because tomorrow, God forbid, something could happen that could wipe all of that security away. Forever. Far fetched? Look around. Homes are foreclosing, folks are losing their jobs, savings accounts have been cut in half or more.

Everytime I go through this exercise, this soul searching, this regret over how fast time passes, I find myself coming to the same conclusion. I have to work, there is no choice, and I must love every day I have with my daughter. But I am ever so grateful that I have never felt the need to work for more "stuff."

The truth is, the stuff we have is borrowed; it doesn't really belong to us. It's on temporary loan. We can't take it with us.

So why do we get so protective of our stuff? Why does the very notion of helping others who have less than us enrage us to the point where we want to see proof that those who have less have worked just as hard as we have before we bend down to offer them a kind word or a bite to eat? Why must we insist on making sure that we're not being tricked by someone who might just be looking for a free ride?

I ask these questions in the heat of the current debate on healthcare, and the innuendos about socialism and the end of the American Dream.

And then I'll ask one more question--what is the American Dream?

Is it the ability to take advantage of those less fortunate on whose backs we build our wealth? Is it the false notion that "if you just work hard enough, you too can build your own wealth?" Is it the notion of once you get there, you don't look back and don't help others less fortunate than you because you mistakenly believe that the only reason they're down there and you're up here has all to do with you and your work ethic?

Isn't the American Dream the idea that given the proper tools, we can live independently? So how can those who don't have the tools (sound mind, education, inner drive to succeed instilled by parents or caregivers who valued this) even possibly aspire to the American Dream?

And if everyone cannot live the American Dream, perhaps we should rename this concept. Maybe we should call it, "the American Dream for Those Lucky Enough to Have been Born into the Right Circumstances."

Protecting our stuff is the single most critical reason for the mess we're in today.
Pamela Penman


It's very much worth a thought.

Brava's Spirit

Another side of Brava -- taken the day before her amputation surgery, July 2009.

Brava Raffle Correction

I spoke too soon. Please look on any gift to Brava's fund as a simple gift. You will not be entered in a drawing for the painting. The reason? We do not yet know enough about AZ gaming law to set up a raffle, and we do not want to violate any state gaming laws.

Please consider the raffle a future, separate event unrelated to this appeal. Thank you for your understanding and your patience.

Sid, red-faced in Phoenix

Brava: The Story of a Miracle

Brava (shown here the day before her surgery) touches everyone she meets. People seem to recognize her huge spirit and enormous courage, and are drawn to her. Her eyes are so soft and loving, and she is so receptive to people that she’s like a four-legged angel. She makes me want to try to be as loving and forgiving a person as she is a dog. It’s risky saying that out loud, I know, because I also know I can’t possibly live up to that. But I’m just saying: That’s the effect she has on me, and I believe that is her gift to us all. She’s an incredible being, and she is a miracle.

This is what I know of her story. Directions for how to contribute to her care follow at the end of this post.

On July 21, I learned that a gorgeous, well-bred red Doberman, cropped and docked, was on the execution list at a Phoenix animal shelter. Later I learned that she had been left chained in a yard, unattended. For days or weeks, the chain wrapped around her right rear leg, strangling her foot. She must have chewed it off then, for when I rescued her that day, she had been walking around on a raw stub for so long that her leg had begun to atrophy.

What I saw almost made me scream: a stump with three inches of exposed, baked, dirty raw flesh. There was no skin and no fur; just naked meat and protruding bone. Someone had allowed her to live like that.



Somehow she escaped. She became a stray. Someone called Animal Control. “Velvet”—we know her slave name—had been micro chipped. Animal Control found her owner, who denied responsibility, said he couldn’t afford to care for her, and turned her over to the shelter to die. But she survived.

The 20-mile journey from the shelter to the vet seemed to take forever, though I was driving 80 mph or more. Most of the way she was kissing my cheek, and laid her head on my shoulder. I swore and cried and swore and cried. Who could treat any living being so horribly?

I fell in love, and named her Brava.

Next came the awful amputation, and a very tough recovery. We almost lost her the day after because of bleeding. But she survived.

Oh, but there was more in store for Brava. As if all this weren’t enough horror, her IV tube was allowed to tangle around her inner thigh for hours until it wore a trough-like gash an inch wide and six inches long. Brava was again severely wounded. Our vet was livid and I was sick and cold with fury. Those responsible were terminated. But she survived.

We thought we were on the road to recovery, however after a week, Brava still had not stood--very unusual for canine amputees. Was it Exhaustion? Anemia? The hideous IV wound? The shock of surgery? The endless pain? Whatever it was, she couldn’t stand.


She tried: One morning I saw her rise to a sit and then stand for about 20 seconds before collapsing. She flashed me the biggest, proudest Dober grin, and I cheered her. We thought she'd soon be walking.

But then the IV wound split open, revealing raw muscle beneath her skin. I rushed her to the vet, expecting stitches, but en route, Brava began to bleed heavily from the surgical site. It was Von Willebrand’s Disease. The techs and I spent three hours putting pressure on the bleeding site to try to stop the blood flow, but there was nothing we could do. Brava was rushed to an emergency vet where she spent the next two days in intensive care, very, very close to death. But she survived.

So far she has survived, but Brava faces critical challenges in the days ahead.

Brava’s medical care already exceeds $3500. We expect additional costs of at least another $1500, for a minimum total of $5000. If you will help, please know that you are helping a miracle come to be. Her teaching is love despite everything, and courage in the worst of it. Her example is the purest nobility of spirit and heart. Brava belongs to all of us, and is the best of the best of a wonderful breed. I'm pleading with you to be a part of her recovery.

Those who wish to contribute may do so in any of three ways (scroll to the end of this post). If you have questions, please contact me privately at jsoliver@cox.net

1. Valley of the Sun Giant Schnauzer Rescue is my mentoring 501c3 rescue organization. I’ve worked under their auspices since I began Desert Harbor Doberman Rescue of AZ in January. If you wish to use a credit card to make a contribution to Brava’s medical fund, please use the orange PayPal button on the left side of the Valley of the Sun Giant Schnauzer Rescue website home page. Scroll down to find it. VSGSR will keep a tally of contributions for Brava. These funds will be totaled and used to pay for the enormous North Valley Regional Animal Hospital costs, where Brava was sent for emergency intensive care from the afternoon of August 8 through the morning of August 10. Contributions to Brava made via VSGSR are tax deductible.

2. OR, you may make credit card contributions directly to Brava’s home vet, Deer Creek Animal Hospital, by calling 602-404-0066 and designating ‘FOR BRAVA.” Deer Creek will keep a tally of contributions for Brava. These contributions will go directly to retire Brava’s still-growing Deer Creek account. Deer Creek Animal Hospital is incredibly supportive of our rescue and the Giants’ rescue, and her vet, the incredible Suzanne Higgins, walks on water.

3. OR, if you wish, you may send a check made payable to Desert Harbor Doberman Rescue of AZ and designated “For Brava,” to Desert Harbor Doberman Rescue of AZ, PO Box 97425, Phoenix, AZ 85060. I do maintain a totally separate bank account for rescue purposes.

4. Please contact me privately at jsoliver@cox.net, and let me know your name, address, and amount, and where you contributed, so that I can (1) cross-check the numbers with the VSGSR tally and the Deer Creek tally; and (2) can send you a thank you and acknowledgement.

[THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REMOVE ANY REFERENCE TO A RAFFLE. PLEASE SEE THE CORRECTION ANNOUNCEMENT IN THE NEXT POST.]

Any donation, no matter how small, will mean a great deal to me and to Brava.

Thank you from Sidney Oliver, Desert Harbor Doberman Rescue, and Brava.

Seth, Day 2

This is Seth. He's doing a lot of sleeping this morning. That rescue bidness is tiring! In a minute, we'll be heading up to Deer Creek Animal Hospital for Seth's medical check-up. Paul's handling the details by phone from British Columbia.

Fetching Seth

The shelter at Casa Grande is down a lonely stretch of I-8, the interstate that connects Tucson to San Diego. The desert rises slightly, in a modest regime of foothills on the south side, to my left, and levels into a vast plane on the north. Either direction, saguaro cacti stand stark still in the noonday sun. It is hot as seven devils as I take the right turn onto the dirt road leading past a dusty corral and three pintos—one a young colt—to the Casa Grande Humane Society.

It is a white cinder block array, ugly and low to the ground, squatting inside a steel cattle fence. Dust rises from the red dirt parking lot as I pull up and park, facing a dreary shelter thrift store tucked into a small opening between the shelter door and the building's facade. Odds and ends: a 1970s metal TV tray stand, some computer cables, an assortment of small and very bad framed things, a few baseball caps, and a motorcycle helmet. Thin pickings.

The white wood door with its eight murky panes creaks open. Inside, to the right, a very heavy Native American woman leans on the laminate counter. In front of her, an Anglo thin as a copper wire paces back and forth, militantly waiting for the Mexican man and his daughter to wrap it up. I look around. A rack of yellowed business cards, a stack of those free real estate pamphlets, and a few dog leads and collars for sale. The Anglo, pale gray T-shirt dark with sweat, wheels in his jeans and cowboy boots and leaves.

Soon enough the Mexican family departs. Had they bought or sold? Not clear.

My turn.

“I’m here from Phoenix for Seth, the Doberman.” Lillian raises her moon-round, dark café au lait face and beams. Unusual for a Native American out here to smile at an Anglo, I think to myself. But then there’s not a lot to smile about, I guess. Especially not if you work at the Casa Grande Animal Shelter and it’s 110 outside. The white plastic fan behind her ruffles the blue print mu-mu thing she’s wearing and, mercifully, turns my way for just long enough for me to miss it when it turns back again.

She must be pleased that Seth is finally going home. Her long, straight black hair is pulled hard back into a knot on the top of her head. She looks like the Buddha.

To my right, an officer of the Animal Control Department of Pinal County is standing hip propped against the counter, talking on the Shelter's one line about a German Shorthaired Pointer. Charlese Theron should have her part. She’s got some mileage. She's tough but still attractive in her khaki and green Animal Control uniform. I picture her line dancing in some Pachecho cantina, tequila on the rocks in one hand. Salt and lime.

The one small room fills up with our body heat. I can almost see it lying like a meringue on top of the thickly layered white gloss paint that suffocates the wooden counter in the back of the area where Lillian reigns.

Behind me,through several large panes of glass over tiers of cinder blocks, we can see steel cages full of cats lining a dreary wall.

The fan tries, wanly but to no real effect.

I do the paperwork. Lillian does the Xeroxing. The officer and I exchange business cards. Now she knows there’s a new Doberman rescue in the city. Now I have two contacts in Casa Grande: Lillian and Linda. I hope there won't be many calls. It's a 130-mile round trip.

Lillian passes through some kind of curtain to the kennels, and in a minute, returns with a small, red Dobey boy. I look into his upturned face and wonder what he thinks as she hands his red nylon kennel lead to me.

I say, softly, “Well you’re a little guy, aren’t you? And you know what? It’s OK now, Seth. It’s all good. You’re outta here, boy. You’re going home, Seth, you’re going to your Forever Home and your Daddy’s name is Paul.”

“That’s it?” I ask Lillian.

“That’s it.”

“Well, OK then. Thank you, and thank ya’ll for what you’re doing here.”

The door slams shut behind me. Seth and I blink into the glare. In a minute, he’s in the back of the 4Runner and we’re headed back to Phoenix. He's a free man. I've made a small installment for the space I take up.

So Much Bull, So Little Time

In addition to everything I said in the earlier post on Sotomayor, it occurs to me that the giant smear of regurgitation known as the Republican Party is also attempting a sleight of hand, a bait and switch. Whereas Sotomayor herself never said her empathy is limited only to other Puerto Ricans, or even other women, or even other Latinas or only Latino/as, the GOP baldly distorts the record to say that Sotomayor's empathy is prejudice.

Where did Sotomayor ever say that her feelings of empathy and her life experience equip her only to hear one side of any given case? She didn't. The suggestion that she did is a lie intended to gin up a white male backlash--that is, to call out the base.

How can fellow-feeling for both the defendant and the plaintiff possibly be prejudice?

It can't be.

This is GOP bullshit, a phrase that I recognize comes dangerously close to redundancy.

The GOP is gambling that you and I won't stop and think, or pay attention, or even remember. Klan-loving SOBs like Sen. Jeff Sessions are trusting that it's impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the American people.

Unfortunately, too often they've been correct.

So if you're in an argument with one of those bottom feeders, what. you. need. to. do. is. listen. very. carefully. and. simultaneously. apply. common. sense. and. logic.

First, know the transcript. Don't ever take a Republican's word for it. Then you can contrast it with the GOP spin and Lord, what a revelation there'll be.

In other words, how do you know Orrin Hatch, Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell, and Chuck Grassley are lying? If their lips are moving. If they're breathing, they're about to lie.

Whites Only, Men Only

Listening to Southern Senator Jeff Sessions blast USSC nominee Sonia Sotomayor for applying empathy and personal life experience in her role as a judge is a first-rate immersion in GOP intellectual dishonesty.

I agree with the definition given at that link, which says in part:

Intellectual dishonesty is dishonesty in performing intellectual activities like thought or communication. Examples are:

the advocacy of a position which the advocate knows or believes to be false or misleading

the conscious omission of aspects of the truth known or believed to be relevant in the particular context.

Rhetoric is used to advance an agenda or to reinforce one's deeply held beliefs in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence

The conscious omission of relevant aspects of the truth, and the advocacy of a position the advocate knows to be misleading are mainstays of the rhetoric of the Right. I hear examples of these things all the time and in fact would argue that these are policies of Fox News.

In this case, Sessions's argument that no judge ought should employ his or her life experience or powers of empathy on the bench depends for its impact on the unspoken contention that white men never apply empathy or life experience in their judicial decisionmaking. Much of early American legal history is nothing but the result of white male experience applied in empathy to other white males. What else can we calk the arguments that only white male landowners should be entitled to vote, that African slaves were only 3/5ths human, and that women, like dogs and horse carriages, were chattel, the possessions of men?

All these positions have at one time or another been embedded in US law. Not coincidentally, those were times when neither people of color nor women were at the bar, let alone on the bench.

And so it is clear that the problem eating at Sessions isn't the application of empathy and experience to judicial decisionmaking. His problem, in intellectually honest terms, has to do only with whose empathy and experience will be applied.

I hope that American women and people of color are listening carefully to the senators debate Sotomayor's nomination and are noting that Senator Sessions is calling this the conservative, Republican perspective. Their message is that if they have their way, none but privileged white males--and those who annihilate their own life differences in order to be as much like privileged white males as possible--ever need apply.

Arizona Bites Again

I read today of a measure pending in AZ that would allow official inspection of a private kennel upon a written complaint. I sent the article around to a local dog list and received this bit of enlightened genius (in part) in response:

It is clear, though, that there is continuing pressure every year in every legislative session to tighten animal control regulations and there are legislators who are cheerfully carrying the water for the activists that want them. For this, we may thank our friends at HSUS and PETA for their political activism and we may also thank our population of Latin Americans (mostly the illegals) who share a third world view of domestic animal treatment and who provide a continuing stream of animal abuses for law enforcement and the media to fawn over. A near-perfect storm.

This is what passes for thought in Arizona.

OK, one, who knew Latin Americans have a monopoly on cruelty to animals! Dang! It wasn't Ernesto Vick who got busted for vicious cruelty to pit bulls.

Two, who knew that it's "mostly the illegals" who pressure our legislators to carry the water for PETA and HSUS! I guess that must be just after they crawl out of the arroyo into the voting booth, huh. Right in front of Shurf Joe, even! Shee-it, man, they've got 'nads, don't they?

Three, I personally rescued a Doberman a couple of months ago who had been shot in the testicles by some white-boy brain-dead bubbas up in Flagstaff. I call that "animal cruelty," don't you?

It's not surprising to get this kind of trash. What's surprising is that it has become commonplace. This is the face of backlash stoked by the Republican religious Right.

The thing is, a country can't stoke these flames without getting very badly burned.

No justice, no peace.

Church Outlaws?

Interesting discussion going on here. Seems that the Methodist Church of Great Britain is banning members of the British National Party (BNP), which is a whites-only political party, from joining the denomination.

So this raises again the question, what is the proper role of a Christian denomination when it is confronted with the fact of an officially racist or antisemitic party? (This one won two seats in Parliament.)

Warning: You are embarking on a stream-of-consciousness exploration of this headache. It ain't no place for sissies.

If it is proper for a denomination to ban racists and antisemites, what about pornographers? Homosexuals? Women who have abortions? Bank robbers? You see the problem.

On the other hand, if a denomination espouses certain values, shouldn't it stand up for them? If it has, say, ten commandments, shouldn't its members be made to abide by them? After all, they're not the ten suggestions.

We all know that some Catholic clergy have insinuated themselves into the voting booth on the matter of Democrats' support for a woman's right to abortion. Do we think that's kosher (you should pardon the expression)? Are we in favor of that?

And if not, shouldn't we dislike banning racists from our denomination just as much? What's the dif?

That's what I was wondering.

If there's a problem in the British Methodists' or the American archbishops' approach, where does it reside? Is it in the nature of the behavior that's indicted? Is there something inherently different between racism and having an abortion that makes banning adherents of one OK but not banning adherents of the other? And can we apply that difference--if any--axiomatically, to help us decide which behaviors to ban and which to ignore? For instance: Since everybody knows racism is terrible and so is adultery, therefore a denomination is right to ban racists and people who commit adultery. Right?

Not comfortable with that? Me, either.

So maybe the problem doesn't reside in the nature of the indicted behavior. Maybe the problem resides in the nature of the establishment--in this case, in the nature of a Christian denomination. In the nature of the Church.

By nature, I mean its authentic mission.

I haven't reached the end of my ruminations and I'm no expert on church order and discipline. I'm still thinking about this. but for now, I suspect it's not in the authentic mission, or role, of a Jesus church to attempt to impose morality by force--which is what punitive action comes down to.

Well, but what about excommunication. And defrocking.

Did you know that excommunication is construed to be the act of removing oneself from "communion with God," and not as the imposition by the church hierarchy of punishment for one's misbehavior? I didn't.

As for defrocking,, or laicization, this is a hierarchichal judgment of a priest or ordained minister's grave misbehavior. Laicization--returning the cleric to the status of lay person--can apply only to clery, by definition. Accordingly, it should be seen as a means of enforcing the church's authority over its priests--with whom it has a particular and special relationship.

OK, then, what about the fact that some established, mainline denominations do impose punishments on lay members for behaviors seen as grave sins?

Some do. But apparently not many do, and I don't think that's an accident. Cults, on the other hand, appear to do so fairly regularly. Maybe the reason cults do and most mainline denominations don't is because such punishment is a means of enforcing authority, not morality.

I don't think morality can be enforced. And that's why I don't think withholding membership in the denomination of British Methodism is an appropriate response to members of the BNP.

Who should deal with racism, then?

I think it's the role of religious denominations to teach and inculcate values, and the role of the criminal justice system is to enforce the law.

All the jaw-flapping on the Right about "Christian nations," Western laws just aren't exact embodiments of Christian values. I don't think I've seen a law against hating thy brother. If you want an exact correspondence, I give you Sharia. I don't think we want to go there, do we?

Given that law is secular and religious values are, well, religious, it follows that the role of political parties is to advocate for principles of law and government, not for religious do's and don'ts. Not for scriptural values per se, but for the good order of a society. It also follows that the role of religions is to advocate for religious principles, nearly always grounded in some holy writ.

I've seen what confounding church and state can do. That's why I recommend that we keep our churches well clear of the business of politics and government, and our political parties well clear of the business of churches.

Let the political parties denounce and abjure racism, homophobia, antisemitism, and the like. Let them advocate for and enact the laws that punish these behaviors. But let the churches preach against them, attempting to influence the values of the citizens who will select the ruling party and thus determine the nation's laws and penalties. Keep the churches out of intervention in the democratic process, and the parties out of the business of the churches.

Musings on The Family's Values

That pillar of conservative Christianity, Sen. John Ensign, had an affair. With a staff member. The wife of another staff member. And then his mommy and daddy paid the staffer and her husband $96,000. Only out of concern for their wellbeing.

It happens every day. Is it not a fact that wealthy families hand over checks to suffering underlings so often that we tire of hearing about it? It's just not news. Not like Clinton's penis.

You know, I don't know what makes me sicker: the sleazy affair, the pay-off, the hypocrisy, the rank, sexist exploitation, or mommy and daddy bailing out their little Johnny. Or maybe Ensign's membership in The Family.

Moral rigor, ethical office practice, respect for the sanctity of marriage(s), reverence for family values, and the highest level of personal responsibility are embodied in Sen. John Ensign as in no other leader we know.

That must be why he was chosen by God, personally, to lead us wastrels into the paths of neo-fascist righteousness. EnterThe Family.

What is it about Christianity that first attracts authoritarians and fascists and militant capitalists, and then lends itself to their profoundest, most egregious, most antithetical distortions? Hitler cloaked himself in Christian rhetoric. The Klan perceives itself as an agent of the Lord. Sun Myung Moon is just another of the type. Men like Moon and the senators and Congressmen of the C Street house, aka The Family -- which includes disciple Mark Sanborn and residents John Ensign and Tom Coburn, among others -- not only support an almost certainly antisemitic, racist, and misogynistic authoritarianism, but also practice an unusually venal, rapacious form of capitalism, all as expressions of Christianity, no less, and see wealth as an index of God's favor: The wealthier the greater God's regard, ostensibly. And of course if that's accepted, it only follows that any social program that alleviates poverty is impertinent, sinful interference in God's predestined order. Calvin as pure GOP.

But if I remember aright, Jesus taught that it is more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to gain God's favor, and taught us The Beatitudes from his own lips.

Which brings me to another question. How is it that these same types craft and implement decades-long wars on homosexuality, about which Jesus said Zip, Nada, Nuffink, but yet dedicate themselves to doing the very opposite of what he did say, and then call themselves "Christian"?

Why don't we rise as one and do as Bart Simpson does so well: Just point and laugh?

But of course we can't stop there. Time was when a version of Christianity much more in line with the teachings of Jesus held sway over a considerable segment of public policy. I'm talking about the 'seventies and Liberation Theology and its sibling progressive tenets. Way past time to head back in that direction. Militantly.

PS: Fascinating, isn't it, that Liberation Theology and similar anti-poverty/pro-justice iterations like Dorothy Day's Catholic worker movement emerge out of the Roman Catholic Christian tradition and not from Calvin-dominated Protestantism.

Life is full of ironies, n'est-ce pas?

Rhinestone Curtains

What to make of the nearly two-week media extravaganza since Michael Jackson's death on June 26? I'm looking for balance relative to other global events, proportion relative to their gravity, fidelity to the American public, and seemliness--quaint concept, I know--with respect to death, grief, sorrow, and loss.

I'm not finding them.

I don't begrudge the late entertainer the attention he's getting. What I resent is the blanket it has thrown over every other issue on the planet. The near 24/7 fixation on nuances of nuances to do with his childhood, family, career, mentors, tormentors, oddities, brilliance, influence, drug use, and death is just one of many instances in which CNN and MSNBC especially have abandoned the interests of the country in favor of making a quick and easy buck.

Unless you're of a certain age, you might not remember how it was back when there was news on TV and American media supported the quaint notion that a democracy depends on an informed public. But I do.

There's stuff going on out there. I want to hear about it without having to dig up the Jerusalem Post or the London Times. I want to know what Congress is up to, how the healthcare issue is coming along, what's doing on global warming, whether N. Korea is as dangerous as it seems, who's behind the attack on 35 federal websites, what's going on in post-Katrina New Orleans, what Obama is going to do about immigration, and whether the stimulus is expected to work or isn't. For starters. I don't want or need to know whether Catherine has control of Michael's estate, or that 7 was Michael's lucky number. Give me a break.

I want the information that I need in order to be an informed citizen and a competent voter. I want a diet that's 60% brain food, not 95% National Enquirer.

But I don't know how to get it. Do you?