It’s the Effing Zeitgeist!

Wed 03/29/06 at 12:08 pm

Warning! I hope anyone can enjoy most of my site. I do feel that written profanity is a little harsher than spoken, but this entry is about profanity and may require some. I can’t bring myself to write “frick” or “f-word” beyond this sentence.

A poll about profanity is bound to inspire lots of jokes and a fair amount of swearing.

I don’t remember my mother or father swearing much. My Mom said “damn” when she was really frustrated — I find myself doing the same thing and long considered that the most powerful curse.

I remember the first time I said “fuck” in front of my Mom (I was about 16). She covered her ears, winced as if struck and cried, “oh, my virgin ears!” I don’t think she ever got comfortable hearing it.

One thing that stung in comments with the survey was the claim that swearing indicates a limited vocabulary. Well, fuck that! Even allowing for some self-delusion and ego-inflation, I’m a pretty fucking articulate guy — no shit! And I don’t need a god-damn thesaurus, thank you very much. I enjoy expressing myself in many ways, some subtle, some coarse. I wonder what those who think “it’s the vocabulary, stupid!” think of the ubiquitous cool — enjoyed by all ages — one of the few exclamations I use more than “fuck.”

I’m really surprised that age predicts swearing, or more specifically, that 35 is the dividing line between foul and fair. Remember the Simpson’s Geriatric Profanity Disorder. I’m over 50 and I’m certain I say fuck many times a day, as do my wife and many of our friends (though I never write it as much as I have here). It’s just what we say. What the fuck happened to our peers — how did so many people grow up to become their own grandparents?

The Bill Bennetts and like-minded puritans will see this as further evidence of the decline of civilization. Obscenity may be a symptom, but so is burning abortion clinics and shooting doctors or judges. Evil sometimes wears nice clothes and a smile.

I’m not saying the world is a better place because of swearing. The real issue is one of anger and potential violence, which has risen immensely in my lifetime. I’d rather get cursed at than shot at. “Jerk!,” screamed at you may actually be worse than “asshole” said with less venom. Just as a thrust finger is harsher than a “what the fuck?” It’s tone, don’t you know.

Still, as the Mothers said, “it’s fucking great to be alive.” mjh

Results of AP-Ipsos poll on profanity

The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on public attitudes about profanity is based on telephone interviews with 1,001 adults in the United States from all states except Alaska and Hawaii. The interviews were conducted March 20-22 by Ipsos, an international polling firm.

Results were weighted to represent the population by demographic factors such as age, sex, region, race and income.

Demographics and details of profanity poll

Some demographics and details about the AP-Ipsos poll on attitudes about profanity.


Cell Hell

Tue 03/28/06 at 10:48 pm

We’ve probably all witnessed behavior similar to that which is described below: people being oblivious because of their cell phone addiction.

Of all the many bad examples, the ones that disturb me the most are like what I saw in the grocery today. A mother was on her cell phone. Her son pointed to a product and said something. His mom responded with “I’m on the phone!” Nice lady. God forbid you spend a moment in real contact with your child.

A few months ago, I saw a father pushing a cart around the store with his daughter riding facing him. He was glued to the phone. She was staring dully. Think she’ll remember fondly those trips to the store with dad?

If your kids hate you, won’t talk to you, or won’t get off the god-damned phone themselves, you only have yourself to blame. mjh

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
Locals Worship Their Cell Phones

CELL PHONES have officially taken over the world, and nobody has even noticed yet. Mostly because they are all too busy talking on their cell phones. If only they could see the irony of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” playing as their ring tone.

I work at a local retail store, and the ratio of people that I check out who are on their cell phones during the entire transaction is two-to-one. I feel as if I need to call them in order to ask to see their identification when they hand me their credit card.

I drive home from work, which is only a few blocks from my house, and someone who is busy yakking away at their cell phones cuts me off at least twice a night. The obscene amount of cell-phone usage has reached the point of becoming an epidemic.

When people are having a conversation with an actual human being, they should have the decency to unglue their cell phone from the side of their face for five seconds.

When they get in their car, they should have courtesy and respect for others’ lives and call them back later. They are not the center of the universe. Their cell phone is not God. If they don’t answer it, but rather call the person back later at a more convenient (time), the cell phone will not smite them. They will not die. I promise.

ANGELA BINGHAM
Albuquerque

I oppose cell phone towers as dreadful visual pollution. I oppose most public cell phone use as auditory pollution. I oppose most public cell phone users as selfish loud-mouths.

Wireless Action Network, NM concerns itself more with the ill health effects of cell phones. If you want to give yourself a brain tumor, fine. But those nasty towers may be spewing poison to all of us.

Gotta go — phone’s ringing. [Kidding — everyone knows I hate all phones.] mjh


ABQjournal: Speak Up!

Tue 03/28/06 at 10:47 pm

ABQjournal: Speak Up!

IT WAS amusing to watch the hypocrisy during the war protest. The protest was not about the war, but a rally for the hate-the-president crowd. If it is human life that is your concern, why weren’t you protesting the old regime in Iraq that murdered tens of thousands of its own— or do you think an American life is worth more than an Iraqi’s?— C.C.S.

I WOULD THINK a report of 1,000 people marching in Albuquerque would warrant being on the front page.— M.S.


Former DeLay Aide Enriched By Nonprofit

Tue 03/28/06 at 10:45 pm

This latest story is really just “business as usual.” It shouldn’t be very hard to run against these greedy influence peddlers and money launderers. mjh

Former DeLay Aide Enriched By Nonprofit
Bulk of Group’s Funds Tied to Abramoff
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer

A top adviser to former House Whip Tom DeLay received more than a third of all the money collected by the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit organization the adviser created to promote a pro-family political agenda in Congress, according to the group’s accounting records.

DeLay’s former chief of staff, Edwin A. Buckham, who helped create the group while still in DeLay’s employ, and his wife, Wendy, were the principal beneficiaries of the group’s $3.02 million in revenue, collecting payments totaling $1,022,729 during a five-year period ending in 2001, public and private records show.

The group’s revenue was drawn mostly from clients of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to its records. …

The group’s payments to the Buckhams — in the form of a monthly retainer as well as commissions on donations by Abramoff’s clients — overlapped briefly with Edwin Buckham’s service as chief of staff to DeLay and continued during his subsequent role as DeLay’s chief political adviser.

During this latter period, Buckham and his wife, Wendy, acting through their consulting firm, made monthly payments averaging $3,200-$3,400 apiece to DeLay’s wife, Christine, for three of the years in which he collected money from the USFN and some other clients. [mjh: this is money-laundering] …

Wendy Buckham was not the only spouse of a DeLay staffer to benefit from the USFN revenue stream sustained by Abramoff’s clients. A consulting firm owned by the wife of Tony C. Rudy, DeLay’s deputy chief of staff, was paid $15,600 by the group in 1999 and another $10,400 in 2000. Rudy resigned to work with Abramoff in 2001. It could not be determined what the payments were for. …

Before the U.S. Family Network folded in 2001 under pressure from an FEC probe, it became involved in other controversial political matters.

In 1998, the group lobbied Congress against new regulations on cigarettes and collected a $100,000 donation from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. It also spent $75,863 that year on radio ads that called for President Clinton’s resignation and attacked Democrats, according to the group’s ledger and transcripts of the ads.

The following year, the National Republican Congressional Committee gave the USFN a $500,000 check to finance additional radio ads in the districts of vulnerable Democrats.


The Few, The Proud, The Republican Guard

Mon 03/27/06 at 6:47 am

On Sunday, the Albuquerque Journal published the views of veteran Shawn Bryan as a counterpoint to those expressed by veteran Anthony Thomas Garcia last week. I suggest you read both (links below) and draw your own conclusions about the mental health of our veterans.

My general reaction to Shawn Bryan’s views is shock and sadness. This man is full of anger. Having survived a hellish experience I would not want to be able to imagine, he’s still in combat mode — and half the country is his new enemy. I feel sorry for those nearest him until the adrenaline and testosterone drop below toxic levels.

While Bryan says he has no interest whatsoever in what people like me think, I am quite interested in his deeply disturbing thoughts. At first, I thought his views belong on a blog or talk radio, not in a real newspaper, but I might never see them if not shoved in my face. We all need to know these dark thoughts.

Bryan can’t stand “the ungrateful war protesters who continually plague the free streets of America.” They are “people who will never fight for freedom but are the first to use their right to protest and stir up trouble.” Further, whether you stand in the streets or not, “if you are not wearing a uniform and serving there, your opinion does not matter. Sorry, but it just doesnt matter.” That’s right — your opinion does not matter. Doesn’t this actually mean that the opinions of the entire Bush administration and the leaders of the Radical Right don’t matter — few of them have ever been in uniform and fewer are in Iraq.

“New Mexico Democrats: Wake up. You guys should realize not only does New Mexico not care what you have to say, but I think that the president has a lot more to do than worry if the New Mexico Democrats are happy with him— he is a Republican.”

In a state where the Governor is a Democrat and more than half the state legislature is Democrat, where 2 out of 5 federal representatives are Democrats, Bryan believes “New Mexico [does] not care what [Democrats] have to say.”

I wonder if one should conclude that the toxically divisive tactics of the Radical Right, the dividers-not-uniters, has turned America’s armed forces into the Republican Guard. All Hail Augustus Bush! It is not hard to imagine someone saying, “We can’t allow those trecherous Democrats to seize power — we must stop them to save America.” And thus begins the military coup. I’ve always heard the military is devoted to America, but Bryan’s America is divided between decent people and Democrats. Would he stand against or for a Republican tyrant?

This is the fruit of Karl Rove’s evil genius. Bush doesn’t have to care what Democrats think — he’s a Republican, stupid! I thought the President of the United States had some duty to all Americans (oh, but Democrats are only nominally Americans); I thought he had a duty, as this soldier does, to the Constitution, which Bush has called “just a god-damned piece of paper.” All Hail Augustus Bush! mjh

As an aside, notice the interesting alternative headlines from the Journal. In print, this column is entitled: “Marine Just Wants Respect for the Nation” (a respect he does not have for half the nation). On the Web, it is: “The Few, The Proud, The Republicans.” Clearly not the same hand at work.

—

ABQjournal: The Few, The Proud, The Republicans By Shawn Bryan, United States Marine [Sunday, March 26, 2006]

I am a United States Marine who in recent months has returned from Iraq….

ABQjournal: Iraq Vet: This War Is Wrong By Anthony Thomas Garcia, Iraq War Veteran [Sunday, March 19, 2006]

I have served my country in three wars.


tuck

Sun 03/26/06 at 1:28 pm

Sometimes I arise
before dawn
and in those first few moments
I am six again
alone in the endless dark
not quite afraid but
far from mommy and home
that innocence passes
more quickly this time
with the coming of the light
the radio informs
as the coffee cooks
and I tuck that child
safely back into
his corner of my head
shh-shh
it’s ok
go back to sleep mjh

10/27/2005


white blossoms on black

Sun 03/26/06 at 12:27 am

blossoms on black


Muslim Moderate

Sat 03/25/06 at 5:58 pm

Rice Presses Karzai on Convert’s Life Associated Press

“Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die,” said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.


Censure, Not Impeachment

Sat 03/25/06 at 5:12 pm

Anyone who has read this blog before knows I despise BushCo, the political monster pieced together by the greedy and the fundamentalists. I can hardly wait for their passing.

However, I think talking about impeachment over the next 6 months is a big mistake. We need for the Democrats to gain as much ground as they can in both House and Senate, if only to restrain the currently unrestrained Radical Right. While talk of Impeachment may galvanize the Left, it will also do so to the Right. Candidates who can’t really defend some of the things Bush has done will nevertheless defend him from impeachment.

On the other hand, censure is called for. It will be dismissed by many as a slap on the wrist, but someone needs to stand up to these domestic bullies and say, “basta!” Then, let’s move on and see what happens as the Right continues in their excesses. mjh

PS: I recommend you follow the link below. This piece appeared in the Albuquerque Journal under the curious title “Censure Smells Like Sour Grapes”. Originally, it was “No one benefits from censuring Bush”. Not quite the same sentiment, is it?

No one benefits from censuring Bush by Carl P. Leubsdorf

A new Newsweek poll shows 42 percent support censure of Mr. Bush, but only 27 percent say Congress should impeach him.

So any impeachment move aimed at Mr. Bush, like the 1998 one against Bill Clinton, might play poorly with the public. …

Indeed, a censure or impeachment effort would look like delayed revenge for the way Republicans took advantage of President Clinton’s false testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky to spend months in a futile attempt to force him from office.

Even many Republicans didn’t think in retrospect that was wise. [mjh: I have never heard any Republican express regret or apologize for their stupidity regarding Clinton.] …

Even today, some Republicans believe his impeachment was a Democratic vendetta, though the public disagrees. But the 1868 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson was mainly political, as was Mr. Clinton’s.

Yet another impeachment effort aimed at yet another president would make this beacon of democracy seem no better than the Philippines, which has seen repeated efforts – some successful – to oust elected presidents in recent years.

However much they disapprove of Mr. Bush, Democrats should resist the siren call of the Feingolds, the Conyerses and the netroots and concentrate on devising alternatives to his policies.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington Bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News.

Near Paul Revere Country, Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder By Michael Powell, Washington Post Staff Writer

“Impeachment is an outlet for anger and frustration, which I share, but politics ain’t therapy,” said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts liberal who declined to sign the Conyers resolution. “Bush would much rather debate impeachment than the disastrous war in Iraq.” …

“The Clinton impeachment was plainly unconstitutional, and a Bush impeachment would be nearly as bad,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. “There is a very good argument that the president had it wrong on WMD in Iraq but that he was acting in complete good faith.”


use their incompetence to argue that government can never work anyway

Sat 03/25/06 at 4:06 pm

In Charge, Except They’re Not By E. J. Dionne Jr.

This episode is important because it is representative of a corrosive style of politics. Bush and many of his fellow Republicans have done a good business over the years running against the ills of Big Government. They are so much in the habit of trashing government that even when they are in charge of things — remember, Republicans have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for all but 18 months since 2001 — they pretend they are not.

And when their own government fails, they turn around and use their incompetence to argue that government can never work anyway, so you might as well keep electing conservatives to have less government. It’s an ideological Catch-22. Even their failures prove they are right.


Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement

Sat 03/25/06 at 4:03 pm

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act’s expanded police powers.

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ”a piece of legislation that’s vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people.” But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ‘’signing statement,” an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law. [mjh: so now Duhbya’s a judge, too?]

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law’s requirements, he could withhold the information….

The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law. …

Past presidents occasionally used such signing statements to describe their interpretations of laws, but Bush has expanded the practice. He has also been more assertive in claiming the authority to override provisions he thinks intrude on his power, legal scholars said.

Bush’s expansive claims of the power to bypass laws have provoked increased grumbling in Congress. Members of both parties have pointed out that the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to write the laws and the executive branch the duty to ”faithfully execute” them. …

Bush’s signing statement on the USA Patriot Act nearly went unnoticed. [mjh: Thank you, MSM!]

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, inserted a statement into the record of the Senate Judiciary Committee objecting to Bush’s interpretation of the Patriot Act, but neither the signing statement nor Leahy’s objection received coverage from in the mainstream news media, Leahy’s office said.

Yesterday, Leahy said Bush’s assertion that he could ignore the new provisions of the Patriot Act — provisions that were the subject of intense negotiations in Congress — represented ”nothing short of a radical effort to manipulate the constitutional separation of powers and evade accountability and responsibility for following the law.”

”The president’s signing statements are not the law, and Congress should not allow them to be the last word,” Leahy said in a prepared statement. ”The president’s constitutional duty is to faithfully execute the laws as written by the Congress, not cherry-pick the laws he decides he wants to follow. It is our duty to ensure, by means of congressional oversight, that he does so.”


Doctor-Patient, Attorney-Client — Nothing Sacred

Sat 03/25/06 at 4:00 pm

An undeclared War Without End gives Bush and countless unelected functionaries the right to ignore or violate just about any curb on their power. Is this a great nation or what. mjh

Calls to doctors, lawyers subject to NSA listening The Associated Press

The National Security Agency would not have been barred from capturing communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients during its controversial warrantless surveillance program, the Justice Department told Congress Friday.

Such communications normally receive special legal protections.

“Although the program does not specifically target the communications of attorneys or physicians, calls involving such persons would not be categorically excluded from interception,” the department said in responses to questions from lawmakers. …

The House Democrats asked if any other president has authorized wiretaps without court warrants since the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs intelligence collection inside the United States.

Choosing its words carefully, the department said, “if the question is limited to ‘electronic surveillance’ … we are unaware of such authorizations.”

The department also made clear that the program — as confirmed by Bush — has never been suspended since it began in October 2001. [mjh: Remember this spying *still* going on in spite of Constitutional controversy.]


God Bless Molly Ivins

Sat 03/25/06 at 3:57 pm

Call it ‘Dumb and Dumberer’ By Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate

Our problem now is that we’re not fighting the people who attacked us — they’re still running around on the Afghan-Pakistan border while we battle Iraqis who don’t like us occupying their country.

As of Sept. 11, 2001, there were a few hundred people identified with al Qaeda’s ideology. Even then, it was unclear that the U.S. military was the right tool for the job. Now, Rumsfeld is apparently prepared to put the full might of our forces into this fight indefinitely, backed by the full panoply of ever-more expensive weapons and the whole hoorah. I don’t think the people who got us into Iraq should be allowed to do this because, based on the evidence of Iraq, I don’t think they have the sense God gave a duck.

On top of everything else, Rumsfeld is now circulating a grand strategy for the long war written by Newt Gingrich. Am I the only person covering politics who ever noticed that Gingrich is actually a nincompoop? When Newt bestrode the political world like a colossus (Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1995), many people took him seriously — but he was a fool then, too. The Republicans were so thrilled to have someone on their side who had ideas, they never seemed to notice Newt’s were drivel. …

Republicans are so amnesiac, they didn’t even snicker when Newt turned up recently posing as a respected party elder to give them advice on ethics. Ethics. Next, family values.


Sauce for the Gander

Sat 03/25/06 at 3:53 pm

I would completely ignore the issue of Ben Domenech (see below), but there are a few things in his story I have to comment on.

Some Readers See Red Over Post.com’s New Blogger By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post Staff Writer

[Ben ] Domenech [, 24-years-old], who was home-schooled by his mother in South Carolina and Virginia, says he began writing for the conservative publication Human Events when he was 15 and continued until he left to attend the College of William & Mary. He was an intern and researcher for the Bush White House, served as a speechwriter for Tommy Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, and then spent two years working for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). [mjh: Cornyn’s the nice man who thinks some violence against judges may be deserved; not all bad, he has supported FOIA.] …

Domenech is a board member and one of three founders of RedState.com, which bills itself as a “Republican community Weblog.” Under his regular pseudonym, Augustine, he questioned President Bush’s decision to attend King’s funeral because she is a “communist.”

“I regret using the term because I think it’s been way overblown,” Domenech said. …

Ben Domenech [said] that the reaction to his new “Red America” blog is “a little meaner” than he expected.

First, what’s the point of giving a blog to someone who has a blog. If this guy features prominently in a widely read blog, link to him, sure, but the Post, and others, should give new opportunities to people who don’t already blog.

Second, his pseudonym is “Augustine”? Is that Latin for pompous ass? (Apologies to Bob Kerrey for ripping off his brilliant witticism: “[Rick] Santorum? Is that Latin for asshole?”) Still, come on — Augustine? Is some other “Deep Thinker” already using Augustus?

Third, Right-wingers throw around “Communist,” and more recently, “Socialist” like normal people use “jerk” or “weirdo.” At one level, it means nothing more. But, it does connect him to other jerks like that weirdo Ann Coulter, Joe McCarthy’s disciple. Notice Benny’s cowardly semi-retraction; he meant what he said, he just didn’t want to get beat up over it.

Finally, boo-hoo; Liberals are so mean! We learned it from the likes of Lush Limbaugh and really can’t begin to match the mean-spiritedness of the Radical Right, no matter how we try. The Radical Right has risen to power under a Janus-like mask: to their own, they show a pious face, to their enemies, a vile one. The worst bullies are the ones who accuse their victims of their own crimes. mjh

[Updated before I can even post this:]

Post.com Blogger Quits Amid Furor By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post Staff Writer

A 24-year-old conservative blogger hired by The Washington Post Co.’s Web site resigned yesterday, three days after his debut, amid a flurry of allegations of plagiarism.

Ben Domenech, an editor with Regnery Publishing, relinquished the part-time position hours after a liberal Web site posted evidence that he had plagiarized part of a movie review he wrote for National Review Online. Previous allegations of plagiarism in Domenech’s writing for the College of William & Mary student newspaper surfaced Wednesday, but the 2001 review was the first instance found since he attended the college. …

[I]t was not until they gathered evidence showing he had repeatedly used material without attribution that some conservative bloggers joined in calls for his firing. …

Domenech said yesterday he resigned because “if the firestorm gets past a certain level, there’s nothing you can ever say that will be taken seriously. . . . It’s reached the point where there’s nothing I can really do to defend myself.” [mjh: Brave and principled to the very end.]

“When I was 17, I was certainly sloppy,” said Domenech, who did not graduate from college. “If I had paid more attention, none of these problems would have happened.” [mjh: When I was 17, people were expelled from college for this.]

People, people! Just because one former White House worker plagiarized something and another tried to rip-off a local business doesn’t mean there’s any Culture of Corruption! mjh


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