Friday February 18, 2005

Those Little Slice Of Life Stories That Blogs Were Always Supposed To Be About

The blog Unfogged has a generally good crew, and may well make my blog list next time I update it, if for no other reason then poster Alameida, who has a killer delivery:

The first time I ever saw my (then future) step-dad, he was passed out on the floor of my living room, and a dog was licking his face. The only thing he did during that time to particularly distinguish himself was get into a knife fight with my dad. But that could happen to anyone. After my parents split up, my mom started seeing Edmund, and for a while I thought he was pretty cool. He had a juvenile sense of humour and a talent for roughhousing.

...

I remember when he got arrested for assault when I was in college. He got out of his car during a traffic altercation and bashed the roof of the other guy's car in with a cinder block. I was just praying with all my heart he would be in the county pen eating cold grits on Christmas morning, but I guess the guy didn't want to press charges.

She says in another post that she was accused of pushing the Southern Gothic thing a little too hard in a high school writing class (and I was like, "I toned it down!"). Lady, don't let anyone tell you how to write.

Friday Baltimore Blogging

[Update] Images for this week have been removed. Check this week's postings for new images.

Ah...Welcome Back To Liesville Ari...

World 'O Crap has a pretty good summary of the Guckart/Gannon story so far. It's something somebody's needed to do on this story now for a while, since it's got a number of threads in it. And of course, the Bush gang is lying about it too, and you can always see how clearly they're lying about something when you lay out the timeline of events (weapons of mass destruction anyone?).

And speaking of liars...Ari Fleischer is now part of the story. Why is this not surprising? John Aravosis is on it:

"I found out that he worked for a GOP site, and I didn't think it was my place to call on him because he worked for something that was related to the party," Fleischer said in a phone interview. "He had the editor call me and made the case that they were not related to the Republican Party. He said they used the GOP name for marketing purposes only."

He said he resumed calling on Guckert, who used the alias Jeff Gannon, after Bobby Eberle, owner of both GOPUSA and Talon News, "assured me that they were not part of the Republican Party." Eberle is a Texas Republican activist and served as a delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Yep, Ari went straight to the source and cleared the whole thing up.

I can't imagine why John is skeptical of what Ari says there.

Well...yes I can actually. You can't always expect the unvarnished truth from a white house press secretary, but Ari Fleischer's brazen, in-your-face lies were spectacular even by white house press secretary standards. And it started the minute he stepped up to the podium. His first act as Bush press secretary was to feed a phony story that Clinton staffers had vandalized the executive branch offices before leaving. It was a story that Fleischer skillfully, masterfully, first coyly dangled in front of white house reporters, then fed day by day with small details alleging that the damage was even greater then previously thought, all the while insisting, Nixon style, that Bush wouldn't make a big issue out of it, because Bush was, in his words "not going to come to Washington for the point of blaming somebody in this town. And it's a different way of governing, it's a different way of leading."

For days Fleischer dropped hints at the vast scale of the Clinton staffer's acts of vandalism, all the while denying he was making it an issue. Computers had been damaged, carpets torn, wires were cut, items were missing. The press had a feeding frenzy with it, all the while Fleischer kept coyly insisting that president Bush was not going to point any fingers or assign blame, because he was about changing the tone of government in Washington. By the time the GAO had reported back to outraged republicans in congress that there had, in fact, been no damage at all, plenty of damage had been done to a lot of hard working, decent Clinton staffers, whose only crime had been that of being democrats. It must have been sweet. Fleischer would later deny he had made any of the false claims he'd made about the vandalism.

One of these days, some time in the future, you can almost count on it, someone's going to ask Fleischer something about his days in the white house, and he's going to deny that he was ever Bush's press secretary.

Thursday February 17, 2005

Perhaps One Of Those Nice Creationist Publishers Can Help You Out...

From our Department Of Unforseen Consequences...yes, we can outlaw honest, truthful discussions about homosexuality in the classroom...however, that means we might have to drop a few courses from the curriculum...

SPANISH FORK, Utah (AP) Nebo School District officials want to replace their 7-year-old textbooks for psychology classes in high schools, but they haven't found any that don't discuss homosexuality.

State law does not allow the advocacy of homosexuality to be taught, and the Nebo district wants no discussion of it at all.

"I don't think Nebo's position is that unusual, but it's becoming more difficult to do both things: teach the subject and have up-to-date things," said Priscilla Leek, the psychology teacher from Springville High School who brought the matter to the attention of district officials.

...

District curriculum officials also realized the text for the AP psychology class the book essentially required for a student to pass the AP test and earn college credit not only addresses homosexuality, but takes an in-depth look at it.

...

For the regular psychology classes, the solution is not as simple. The district is now looking at as many options as possible to keep the psychology classes updated while steering clear of the unwanted content, said Nedra Call, the district's director of curriculum.

"We're still looking on that; we have people that are looking," Call said. "The teachers are thinking they may be able to find something, use parts of books, or maybe we don't need to adopt a text to meet the curriculum."

Some board members suggested staying with the old textbooks, but were told the books are falling apart.

Well you can solve that problem by just not teaching them to read...right? Then they won't need textbooks, and even if they manage to get their hands on one, won't learn anything from it anyway. I'll bet a few folks in Utah are giving that idea some serious thought right now too.

It Isn't Harassment If You Deserve It

Judge Pamela Dembe in Philadelphia, has given gay haters all over America the green light to start riots at gay pride festivals everywhere:

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) A Philadelphia judge Thursday dismissed charges against four evangelicals who disrupted Outfest last fall.

The four members of Repent America were charged with ethnic intimidation, criminal conspiracy and inciting to riot. If convicted they could have been sentenced up to 47 years in jail.

The four, and 6 others who were not charged, marched to the front of a stage at Outfest and began to yell Biblical passages to drown out the events on stage.

Police attempted to get the protestors to move to an area on the edge of the site. Instead they went deeper into the gay crowd. Using a bullhorn they condemned homosexuality. They then got into an argument with a group of Pink Angels, who screamed back.

It was at that point police intervened.

The entire incident occurred as filmmakers were working on a documentary and was recorded on video tape.

Thursday, after reviewing the tape Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe said the charges were unjustified.

"We are one of the very few countries that protect unpopular speech," Dembe said.

Then why didn't she? The unpopular speech that day was the Outfest, which was supposed to be a celebration of gay and lesbian lives. If you think that's popular speech in America, you must have been on another planet during the last election. The Repent America rioters represented the popular feelings of a lot of Americans, particularly red state America: that homosexuals are little more then human garbage. See it here:

This isn't religious proselytizing, it's harassment, and in the context of Outfest, inciting a riot, or none of those words have any meaning. And it was the attempt that day of Repent America, to shut down the Outfest, to silence the gay community of Philadelphia, that Dembe felt she had to protect. She doesn't give a good goddamn about unpopular speech. From the moment these legal proceedings began, she's made it abundantly clear she feels her responsibility is to defend the right of the many to prey on the few, and to uphold the right of hate to have its way with the hated. The first amendment in her court, does not apply to homosexuals. The gay people at Outfest that day, had no right to speech. She said as much, when she give Repent America a green light to take over the festival at their pleasure, and provoke any violence they could.

If a group of gay people picketed a religious right gathering wearing t-shirts that said, among other things, that Christians masturbate with crucifixes, they'd be arrested on the spot, if they weren't killed on the spot, and charged with the same crimes as the Repent America brownshirts were. The only difference is that They would be convicted. But it's just speech when gay haters scream obscenities with bullhorns in the face of Pride goers, and shove signs in their faces telling them that they deserve to die of AIDS, that they have sex with gerbils, that god wants them dead. They have the right to spit in our faces. We have the right to take it.

This is so clearly, so obviously, about provoking an incident that justifies violence toward homosexuals, that there is no other possible explanation other then that this judge wants that outcome. Certainly certain members of the Pennsylvania statehouse want that outcome:

Following the arrests, a bill was been introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature to remove several classifications including gays, lesbians, and the transgendered from the state’s hate crimes law.

It's not hate if you deserve it. Harassment is after all, a form of speech. And clearly, sickeningly, this judge believes that homosexuals deserve it. There is no way she could have looked at the evidence here, and ruled for the brownshirts unless she believes that freedom of speech does not apply to gay and lesbian Americans. Instead of actually protecting unpopular speech, which is what Outfest was in every way that the actions of Repent America were not, she gave gay haters all over America the green light, to go to their local Pride festivals, and try their level best to shut them down.

It could all so easily escalate. But that's clearly the plan here. All it takes is one shove back, one angry gesture that could possibly, even remotely, be interpreted as a swing, and then the clubs, and the guns, come out, and gay people die. Without a doubt, that's what Repent America is trying to make happen. And when it happens, it'll be the gay community that'll get the blame. Dembe has given Repent America the green light to do whatever they have to do to provoke an incident they can then use to justify a violent response, secure in the knowledge that whatever disturbance they cause, regardless of their actions, her court will not hold them responsible. That's exactly how the brownshirts of the 1930s worked their magic, in the days before the ovens lit.

We can be peaceful, and resolved not to be provoked, and they will keep assaulting us until they either find an individual who can be provoked, or convince every gay hating thug in Philadelphia that they can have all the fun they want with homosexuals and we won't fight back no matter what they do to us, thereby guaranteeing that more gay bashings will happen, and more gay people will die. And dead homosexuals don't go to Pride fests, don't speak out for their rights, don't need freedom of speech.

A Perfect Team

The same guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who elevated a lawyer who wrote a paper saying the President could order the use of torture, pretty much whenever he felt like it, to the position of Attorney General, has now appointed the man who enabled death squads in Central America in the 1980s, to be the nation's first National Intelligence Director:

As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in coordinating US covert aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras. During his term as ambassador there, diplomats alleged that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina. In a 1995 series, the Baltimore Sun detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 3-16, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still missing.

So the Death Squad Ambassador joins the Torture Attorney General on the new Bush second term Team. Swell. We can all sleep better at night now.

Dancing To Oblivion With George

Maureen Dowd today in the Times (registration, and so on...)

I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors."

I know the F.B.I. computers don't work, but this is ridiculous. After getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Mr. Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the White House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.

Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a military-stud Web site is a recommendation?

Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House, even on gay issues, was endearing. One of his stories mocked John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" with the headline "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."

With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes. If you're their critic, nothing goes. They're waging a jihad against journalists - buying them off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail for doing their jobs and replacing them with ringers.

Just so. And there's something here you should consider. There must have been thousands, literally thousands, of bright, eager, clean cut fresh from the seminary religious right recruits they could have chosen from, who would have all thrown themselves at commander codpiece's feet for a chance to be his sock puppet. But they didn't go there. They went with Gannon/Guckert. Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White even on gay issues, was endearing. A prostitute, not only in name, but in the very essence of soul. He would sell himself, and perhaps a few of his military buddies along the way, and then go to work for people who hate homosexuals with a passion, willingly kicking his fellow gay and lesbian Americans in the teeth for his masters. To the Bush Gang, he was the perfect American. When republicans talk about patriotism, this is what they mean. Someone who will become nothing, who will turn their soul into a blank slate, that the party can scribble its will upon.

Look at this. Its the republican vision for America.

Wednesday February 16, 2005

No...They Really Don't Have The Votes For It

After running the most anti-gay presidential campaign in history, Bush and the republicans have decided that a federal amendment banning same sex marriage wasn't so important after all...

WASHINGTON - Republicans have abandoned banning gay marriage this year, the Senate's leader said yesterday.

A constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman grew less urgent because 13 states banned gay nuptials in November elections, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

When asked if the legislation will be introduced, Frist replied, "Maybe not this year, but in all likelihood in this Congress."

"It may be this year," he added a moment later, sounding unsure during a "Fox News Sunday" interview.

But a Senate Democratic source told the Daily News the amendment isn't likely to be proposed next year either, since it's an election year.

Enacting the ban was a key issue in President Bush's reelection campaign platform. But Bush admitted in a recent interview that he doesn't have enough votes in the Senate.

Bullshit it won't be introduced again in an election year. How else are the republicans going to turn out the bigot vote that they can't win elections without?

You hear it said over and over, that Bush is only playing to the religious right on this issue,that he's not a bigot at heart, that while Bush may talk the gay hating talk, he isn't walking the gay hating walk. You hear this from Log Cabiners whistling past the graveyard. You hear it from the I was a liberal/democrat crowd, who keep voting for gay bashers all the while insisting that they really aren't bigots themselves, they aren't actually voting for an anti-gay pogrom in the United States, they just don't like where the democrats stand on...whatever... They'll reliably point to this as evidence that the republicans aren't really in the pocket of the religious right. Oh really?

Washington -- A federal agency's efforts to remove the words "gay," "lesbian, " "bisexual" and "transgender" from the program of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention have inspired scores of experts in mental health to flood the agency with angry e-mails.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is funding the conference on Feb. 28 in Portland, Ore. On the program, at least until recently, is a talk titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals."

Everyone seems to agree the topic is important. Studies have found that the suicide risk among people in these groups is two to three times higher than the average risk.

So it came as a surprise to Ron Bloodworth -- a former coordinator of youth suicide prevention for Oregon and one of three specialists leading the session -- when word came down from SAMHSA project manager Brenda Bruun that the contractor running the program should omit the four words that described precisely what the session was about.

Bloodworth was told it would be acceptable to use the term "sexual orientation." But that did not make sense to him. "Everyone has a sexual orientation," he said in an interview Tuesday. "But this was about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders."

The title rewrite was one of several requested changes. Another was to add a session on faith-based suicide prevention, said Mark Weber, a spokesman for SAMHSA, who said he believed the brouhaha was all a misunderstanding.

SAMHSA prefers the term "sexual orientation" simply because it is more "inclusive " he said. And besides, he added, it was only a suggestion.

Asked how strong a suggestion, Weber replied: "Well, they do need to consider their funding source."

Neat. A Bush Gang science hating, gay hating twofer. The part about sexual orientation being more the inclusive term is delicious. Right wingers have orgasms when they can manage to use the language of tolerance as a way of destroying tolerance.

Frist would have written up the Federal Marriage Amendment for a vote first thing in the morning of the new congress, if he'd thought he could get it to pass. The only reason they're not is because president junior doesn't like loosing, so he only plays when he can win. They really know they don't have the votes for it. This isn't something they're just trying to sweep under the carpet until the next election. They really want to make gay and lesbian Americans official state pariahs. But for now they know all the amendment is good for is winning the bigot vote. They'll use it for that in the election, never doubt it.

Tuesday February 15, 2005

Mulling It Over

The lack of activity here is party due to schoolwork, and partly because I've been riveted lately (as I reckon many of you were) by the unfolding Jeff Gannon story. I'll post something on it myself soon. I'm not pulling a John Aravosis here, I don't have any amazing revelations to share. I just want to pull a few threads together here. There's a confluence of events in this that's really nagging me to make sense of it. Andrew Sullivan goes on hiatus, and then this creep who is, at base, everything ugly an rotten that Sullivan made of himself in his need to attack liberalism appears on the scene. Homophobe Alan Keyes, champion of the gay demonizing political base that was instrumental in bringing the Bush gang to power, disowns his openly gay daughter Maya, while a gay who, according to the evidence Aravosis pulled together, worked as a male escort and built M4M gay military escort sites, suddenly gets preferential treatment to get a white house press pass and into a presidential press conference, after writing anti-gay news articles for a Texas right wing billionaire's faux news organization. The Bush gang greases the wheels to get this guy into the white house on a fake ID, at the same time they're stoking anti-gay hate for political gain.

I'm still a bit stunned by all this, and still thinking it over. In the meantime...valentines day came an went.

And I'm still single. The day would have been a good one for going into a deep funk, except I am still a bit overwhelmed with work and school work together, so I didn't have time. But I ran across these articles about how valentines day is celebrated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia...

Saudis Mark Valentine's Day Despite Laws

By Donna Abu-Nasr
The Associated Press
February 13, 2005

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- In gift and flower shops across Saudi Arabia, the flush of red has started to fade.

Each year shortly before Feb. 14, the country's religious police mobilize, heading out to hunt for -- and confiscate -- red roses, red teddy bears and any signs of a heart. In a country where Valentine's Day is banned, ordinary Saudis find they must skirt the law to spoil their sweetheart.

The Valentine's Day holiday celebrating love and lovers is banned in Saudi Arabia, where religious authorities call it a Christian celebration true Muslims should shun.

The kingdom's attitude toward Valentine's Day is in line with the strict school of Islam followed here for a century. All Christian and even most Muslim feasts are banned in the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, because they are considered unorthodox creations that Islam does not sanction.

Beyond the ban, it is a challenge for unmarried couples to be together on Valentine's Day or any other day because of strict segregation of the sexes. Dating consists of long phone conversations and the rare tryst. Men and women cannot go for a drive together, have a meal or talk on the street unless they are close relatives. Infractions are punished by detentions.

Valentine's items descend underground, to the black market, where their price triples and quadruples. Salesmen and waiters avoid wearing red. Though taboo, Valentine's Day still gets a fair amount of attention in Saudi society.

"Female voices demand the release of the red rose," read a headline in Sunday's Asharq al-Awsat. Women complained to the paper no one had the right to ban flower sales.

Sheik Abdullah al-Dakhil, head of the religious police, known as the muttawa, in Thumama, a town outside Riyadh, told Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper that "despite awareness campaigns and the confiscation of flowers, chocolate and other items, there were 15 infractions" for Valentine's Day indiscretions last year.

In religious lectures at schools, teachers and administrators warn students against marking the occasion, noting Saint Valentine was a Christian priest, according to an educational supervisor speaking on condition of anonymity.

Saint Valentine is believed to have been a 3rd-century martyred Roman priest or bishop. Why the holiday became a celebration of lovers is unclear, but some theories say it stemmed from his Feb. 14 feast date falling close to a pagan love festival or that it was because mid-February was seen in Europe as the time of year when birds start mating.

The supervisor said that on Valentine's Day last year, girls lining up for daily morning prayer were inspected head to toe by teachers looking for violations of rules that ban wearing or carrying any red item on the day.

Ribbons, boots, jackets, bags and pen holders with a hint, stripe or pattern in red, burgundy and hot pink were thrown into a heap, and the school called the girls' mothers to pick up the offensive items, the supervisor said.




Valentine's Day Comes Under Fire in Iraq

By Omar Sinan
The Associated Press
February 14, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- For Adel Mousa, Valentine's Day is complicating an already delicate situation with his fiancee: He postponed their wedding planned for this month and has been looking for a safe way to make it up to her.

Mousa, a 28-year-old engineer, says he already has days he avoids his fiancee simply because water shortages leave him looking -- and smelling -- less than desirable.

So, setting aside his worries as best he can, Mousa's made dinner reservations Monday, Valentine's Day at a fancy restaurant. He'll rush Rana home before dark.

"It's unsafe for couples to stroll Baghdad streets -- car bombs and explosions are everywhere," Mousa said. "I don't want her to be hurt or kidnapped by gangsters."

Valentine's Day has never been a widely marked holiday in Iraq. Some Iraqis eye it suspiciously as a retail gimmick to get people to spend money they don't have; others say it's inappropriate -- a violation of conservative Islamic values -- or that it simply is not possible to find an appropriate place to steal a romantic moment.

These days, isolated corners largely out of sight are too dangerous -- crowded cafes are far safer, if less romantic. And in a time when Islamic extremists are fighting alongside loyalists of former dictator Saddam Hussein, public displays of affection are risky.

At City Center, a western Baghdad restaurant popular among high school and university students, a husky bouncer kicks out couples who cross red lines of propriety.

"No kisses, no touching and no hiding in the restaurants' corners," said Omar Mufeed, who tips the scales at more than 300 pounds.

"All the couples hate me. I am even known in all the universities," said Mufeed, 35. "But I would tell those who fear me, I am only doing my job."

Zaid Falih, a 24-year-old student, said he will buy a bouquet of flowers for his sweetheart -- against his better judgment. Valentine's Day, he said, is just an excuse to squander money. "It will be the cheapest thing I can buy," Falih said of his bouquet.

Martin Rowel, who sat inside a Baghdad ice cream shop with his girlfriend Wafaa, downplayed the importance of such a holiday.

"I don't need an official date to celebrate love," said Rowel, 25.

But sometimes, he acknowledged, he's needed a little help.

Rowel, a Christian who derided Islamic extremists as the scourge of Iraqi society, said he and fellow students at the nearby Technology University would gather at times in the same ice cream shop, pretending to be a group of casual friends.

But each privately would pay attention only to one special date, he said, giving Wafaa's hands a warm squeeze.

I wonder if Rowel would understand how it is that gay folk regard Christian fundamentalists in exactly the same way. Some days you really know that it isn't sin the fundamentalists hate, it's love.

You hear the I was a liberal/democrat once crowd use the term islamofascists quite a lot. Here's why that's a meaningless word. Take the islamic fundamentalist assault on valentines day, and apply it to the American religious right's assault on same sex love, 365 days a year, and tell me what the difference is. There are no "islamofascists", there are only fascists, and the I was a liberal/democrat once crowd has given American fascism the keys to America. If you don't think they're as bad as Islamic fascists, then you're not paying attention. And that's why those of us who still believe in Liberty and Justice for All, think you I was a liberal/democrat once guys are a bunch of drooling morons, not much better in your own way, then the guys like Sullivan and Gannon, who gave themselves to a bunch of right wing thugs who hate their guts, and who will cheerfully toss them in the ovens once they get the absolute power they crave. There's a lot of selling out going on in America these days, and that's exactly the kind of thing that makes fascism happen, that turns something as simple and sweet as giving a rose to the one you love, into a crime.

Sunday February 13, 2005

Busy...Busy...Busy...

If you've noticed the lack of posts this weekend there's a reason. I'm busy getting both a programming project and class homework done so I can turn them in by the end of the day. These little programming projects I'm finding, all have at least one little gotcha in them that takes me hours to resolve.

But I think I'm back on track for cartoons. There will be one for Monday as usual. And stay tuned...I'm working on a little "slice of life" cartoon project, which I hope to have done and posted up here before the end of the month. It'll be something different from the editorial cartoons, and in a slightly different style...all line art, no charcoal shading. And multi panel. It's working out to about five pages, comic book style, about a small event from my life as a gay teenager, back in the early 1970s, still very much bewildered by sex and my own sexuality. One of those, gosh, isn't hindsight twenty-twenty kinda things. I have a whole story arc worked out about my experiences growing up back then, and if this first take works out, I may make it a regular feature.

But...back to my homework now...

Friday February 11, 2005

Friday Baltimore Blogging

[Update] Images for this week have been removed. Check this week's postings for new images.

Thursday February 10, 2005

Hubblewatch...(continued)

I need to say this up front: I don't speak for the Space Telescope Science Institute. I only work for them.

It's been noted that I haven't posted much on the new Bush budget, and the decision not to include money for a Hubble servicing mission, robotic or otherwise. That's partly because at the moment I don't think anyone knows how seriously to take this budget. For example, there are cuts to farm subsidies, which nobody in their right mind actually thinks will happen. That's cutting into the pocketbooks of their red state base.

But also, it's party because I've never expected anything but a slow, steady, utterly determined course on the part of the Bush gang, to kill off Hubble. Yes, they've dallied with a possible robotic servicing mission...I won't go into the reasons why I've always been deeply skeptical of that. The Lanzerotti committee findings that the robotic mission had less chance of success then a manned servicing mission, instead of giving a boost to a manned mission, simply gave O'Keefe and his boss the excuse they needed to trashcan the robotic concept. Now they can say for the cameras that they tried, they really tried, to save Hubble. But make no mistake, Hubble was slated for the block, the moment Bush took office.

Here's the latest example of why:

U.S. scientists say they are told to alter findings

More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds.

...

More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business.

...

"The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife offices around the country," said Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

...

One scientist working in the Pacific region, which includes California, wrote: "I have been through the reversal of two listing decisions due to political pressure. Science was ignored — and worse, manipulated, to build a bogus rationale for reversal of these listing decisions."

More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information."

...

Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion.

"Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency."

...

One biologist based in California, who responded to the survey, said in an interview with The Times that the Fish and Wildlife Service was not interested in adding any species to the endangered species list.

"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

There has never been an administration more hostile toward science then this one. What science it cannot buy or alter, it simply discards, and then defunds. They're putting junk science about condoms on the CDC website now, because the Bush gang doesn't want any actual science contradicting their religious right abstinence only programs. They're altering environmental studies because the Bush gang doesn't want any science that questions what their corporate crony's are doing to the environment. You might think that Hubble, with it's focus simply on the stars above, would be immune to all this, and you would be dead wrong. It's about more then maximizing corporate profits. It's about more then appeasing the religious right. I said the following just before O'Keefe first announced there would be no servicing mission, back in January of 2004. If anything, the election we had since then underscores it:

Lies are what brought them to power. Lies are what hope will keep them in power. Lies, and whatever fear of their power they can manage to instill in others. Theirs is the morality of thugs and criminals. The practice of science represents everything they loath and fear and resent about the human status, that they themselves have long since renounced. It empowers, because knowledge is power, whereas in their zero sum view of life and existence, any power gained by others, is less for themselves. Science proceeds from the evidence, not the dictates of authority. Science is a noble endeavor, encouraging and rewarding the best within us, curiosity, thoughtfulness, a desire to learn, a courage to follow knowledge wherever it leads, a habit of truth. More then the contradictions to their cherished dogmas, it is the vision of the nobility which is possible to the human race, reminding the thugs and cheats of the world of what they sold out, of the empty void they've made of their inner selves, that they hate about the practice of science. It's not just that they want the facts bent to suit their policies, it's that they want practice of science to be finally regarded as the heresy they have always regarded it as being: the heresy that says there is more to life, and to what it is to be human, then the gutter they live in.

And when you're busy dragging America into the gutter, you probably don't want people looking up at the stars.

Wednesday February 9, 2005

And Just Who The Hell Was It That Made People's Private Lives A Battlefield Howie?

So I see media whore Howard Kurtz is bellyaching that "liberal bloggers" went too far in rattling the skeletons in Gannon/Guckert's closet.

It's fine to disagree with his politics, but did they go too far, I think a lot of people are asking, in dragging in some of this personal stuff?

Gosh, you're right Howie. People's private lives shouldn't be used as fodder for scoring cheap political points, should they Howie? That's just pure wrong, isn't it Howie?

Then again, if it's your wife's pals that are doing it, it's probably okay. Isn't that right Howie?

More from David E...

Monday February 7, 2005

Feh.

No posts today...maybe not tomorrow either. Bad day at work...bad results from my first class assignments... Feh. I'm feeling right now like I want to just go sulk in my room for a few days. Alas, grownups don't get to do that.

Sunday February 6, 2005

Busy...much too busy for my own good...

I had a great time finishing up my stage props for the Goddard community theater project the other day, but now I'm hard pressed for time to get my classwork for the week turned in. So they'll be no cartoon for the week, and no more posts until probably sometime late Monday.

Viz, Sullywatch... Yes...I've noticed a tree fell... Did anyone notice when his conscience resigned? I'm just curious because I have a running bet with myself as to whether or not he ever had one to begin with. I heard he'd gone on hiatus a couple of days after, and other then Gosh, you know I still feel a tad dirty for actually having read his books once upon a time... I really don't know what to say, other then "Where do I send the Good Riddance Card"? But he'll be back. If I've learned anything about his kind in my fifty odd years of life, it's that he'll be back. Likely a tad uglier of soul, a touch cheaper, a wee bit smarmier then he was when he went away.

Friday Photo Blogging

So after I tell you that I work almost exclusively in black and white, and how much I love my old manual film cameras, my first Friday photo blogging turns out to be mostly color shots taken with a digital. These were all taken with my Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi, Last February in Rodondo Beach, California. I was out there for a software developer's conference, and between sessions strolled around the area with the camera.

The Minolta is nice for a digital camera, but the main reason I took it along to the conference was that I was travelling by air. Weight considerations precluded taking any of my F1s, which friends of mine have dubbed The Brass Monsters. And going through airport security with exposed film would have been too risky. Though I love my old, manual film cameras, the Minolta still has its useful place in my tool kit.

ISA was set to 400 for these. I handle exposure on the Minolta by using spot mode mostly. I'm finding that digital is often so prickly in the high contrast backlit situations I gravitate to, that I sometimes have to sacrifice more detail in the highlights and shadows then I'd like. There may be settings in the camera that allow me to better compensate, but I haven't stumbled over them yet. I usually work with the zoom at its widest angle, which is where all these shots were taken.

Fair warning: If you're looking at these in the archive, and it's more then a week past the date I posted this, then you're probably seeing different photos. Check here for an explanation why.

Power Plant, At Dawn

Enjoy Pacific Lobster

The Sea Spray

The Best

Seven

All images copyright © 2005 by Bruce Garrett
All Rights Reserved.

Thursday February 3, 2005

Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow...(continued)

I hate these hacks, these brain dead numbskulls, these drooling morons who call themselves journalists. I'm watching some lady yap, yap, yapping into the camera for CBS, a "corespondent" somewhere in Iraq. She finishes giving her spiel about recent casualties and then adds that there was at least some good news today too, as some U.S. military commander in some other Iraqi town issued a statement saying they had "shut down insurgent activity there".

Now...think about that for a second. Why the flying fuck is it good news that someone has issued a statement saying they'd shut down insurgent activity? Oh yeah...it would be good news if they actually have, but this so called journalist doesn't know for a fact that they have. All she knows is that they issued a statement. Why is that good news for bleeding Christ's sake? They've been issuing statements about their wonderful progress over there ever since Junior gave the command to go, and things have just been getting worse and worse.

And whose job would it be to find out what the hell is actually going on over there...?

I've asked this before. Here...let me ask it again: what is the more morally reprehensible...a nation with no freedom of the press, or a nation with a free press that sells out?

Photoblogging To Commence Tomorrow

I was looking over what I already had scanned in to start a Friday Baltimore Blogging segment, and got sidetracked by so many things I'd done elsewhere, that I've decided to just to a general photoblogging thing every Friday now. I've got some of my Baltimore stuff scanned, but it's only a fraction of what I've got and I don't have time right now to scan anything in before Friday. I've got reading assignments to deal with, class work to turn in, and most of the day Saturday at least, I'll be helping out with the Goddard community theater project again (yay!). And it just makes more sense to post from my whole library, then only the Baltimore stuff. I have a good many things in my film archives, a thirty-plus year body of work so far, that I'm very proud of, but which I've never shown to anyone else.

I don't have a lot of space to put photos up...so this is what I'm going to do: I'll have graphic image files named something like "friday_photo_blogging_1.jpg" that I'll update weekly with new images. That'll mean that previous entries in the blog archive will always show the current image unfortunately. But until I get infinite space somewhere for storing photos, that's how it will have to be.

The Closet Is A Lie, Which Is Why Right Wingers Approve Of It

Signorile brings up an excelling point in his New York Press column this week: is it any wonder that the lives of right wingers who keep telling gays to go back into the closet, who keep telling us that the moral thing for us to do is hide, conceal, cover up our lives, enter into sham marriages, fake it for the sake of heterosexual sensibilities, is it any wonder their own lives are so damn full of lies and deceit? Take Maggie Gallagher, the right wing pundit who, along with Armstrong Williams, was outed recently as having been paid by the Bush gang to propagandize the Bush agenda. As Signorile writes:

In fact, Gallagher's crime is far more egregious than Williams', despite the latter having made $240,000 for his efforts, while Gallagher only made off with a little over $40,000 ($21,000 for writing the government's marriage initiative brochures, and a subsequent payment of $20,000). What few media reports noted last week was that Gallagher, in addition to writing the Bush administration brochures and pumping up its policies in her columns, testified before a Senate subcommittee in support of the federal marriage amendment that the White House eventually backed and pushed throughout the presidential campaign. But Gallagher was not identified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights as the individual who wrote the White House's policy on marriage, but rather as the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, an independent think tank. She was thus a paid witness on behalf of the Bush administration, testifying before the Senate.

Moreover, Gallagher's stature as an "expert" before the committee was enhanced by her stint as an anonymous writer of Bush's policy a year earlier—a spectacular example of sleazy self-promotion. On his blog Soundbitten.com, Greg Beato explains how Gallagher actually promoted her own book by ghostwriting for the government.

"In return for the $21,500, Gallagher's primary task was to draft a 3000-word essay for one Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services," he explains. "Ultimately, the essay was published by Crisis magazine; in it, Gallagher, writing as Horn, exclaims: 'Adults, too, benefit from healthy and stable marriages. They tend to live longer, healthier lives and are more affluent. Married mothers suffer from considerably lower rates of depression than their single counterparts. Like a good education, a good marriage is a real asset. Married men earn between 10 and 40 percent more than similar single men, and married couples accumulate substantially more wealth. By the time they're ready to retire, married couples have, on average, assets worth two and a half times as much as their single counterparts. (The figure for married couples is $410,000, compared with $167,000 for those who never married and $154,000 for divorced individuals, according to Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher in their book, The Case for Marriage.)'"

Dig it. Gallagher goes on the take, and in effect gets taxpayer money to promote her own book in the process. Not bad. This is how values work in the kook pews.

But there's more. Gallagher, as it turns out, was an unwed mother herself for about ten years. As Digby puts it:

Maggie waited until she was 21 before she got knocked up by her kid's father whom she didn't bother to marry. By her own standards she was too selfish to marry for the next ten years. But she always finds others to castigate for their immorality and selfishness, rarely copping to what she would call a decadent lifestyle if another woman lived it. Her story remains vague and unknown to most people who read her material. Her close friends, the right wing think tankers and pundits in Manhattan and DC don't see anything amiss, however. (Falafels and strip poker anyone?)

Go read Digby for the links to the rest of that story. Seriously...how often have we all been here before. Right wing moralizer fulminates about the decline of civilization...right wing moralizer turns out to have belly flopped a time or two themselves into the sin pool. They expect homosexuals to lie about their lives, because lying about their own lives comes so easily to themselves.

Danziger!

Not The Boomer I Thought I Was

All these years, and I thought I was trailing edge boom. Come to find, via Digby, that I'm actually leading edge boom:

My ex-boyfriend is trailing edge. Boy...is he getting fucked over by Bush. But then, we all are.

Another Mission Accomplished Moment

Okay...it's been a few days since the so-called elections in Iraq, and now the questions that should have been asked then, are starting to trickle out shamefacedly now. This from Editor and Publisher, via Digby:

I'll be delighted if the turnout figure, when it is officially announced, exceeds the dubious numbers already enshrined by much of the media. But don't be surprised if it falls a bit short. The point is: Nobody knows, and reporters and pundits should stop acting like they do know when they say, flatly, that 8 million Iraqis voted and that this represents a turnout rate of about 60%.

Carl Bialik, who writes the Numbers Guy column for Wall Street Journal Online, calls this "a great question ... how the journalists can know these numbers -- when so many of them aren't able to venture out all over that country." Speaking to E&P on Wednesday, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post -- one of the few mainstream journalists to raise questions about the turnout percentage -- referred to the "fuzzy math" at the heart of it.

[...]

"Election officials concede they did not have a reliable baseline on which to calculate turnout," Kurtz concluded.

He also quoted Democratic strategist Robert Weiner as saying: "It's an amazing media error, a huge blunder. I'm sure the Bush administration is thrilled by this spin."

Reporters can't travel in much of Iraq without a military escort. They seldom venture outside of the protected zones in Baghdad. Yet they all knew that eight million Iraqis voted. Uhm...how?

And the sickening answer is: they didn't know. They just passively accepted and passed on what the Bush gang told them, because that was the script, because to do otherwise would cast aspersions on a war, they themselves were instrumental in getting America into. They looked the other way while Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction...you think they're going to check out anything he says about Iraq now? Fat chance.

And when the offical figures are announced...hey...guess who'll be announcing them? The same people who announced that Saddam was on the verge of deploying nuclear bombs, that's who.

And Digby notes something we all need to look at, really look at, regarding American attitudes toward the people of Iraq:

As I watched the news shows last Sunday, I was struck by the lockstep maudlin sentimentality of the coverage --- a sure sign that it is complete bullshit. Apparently, the word went forth that the tone was to be "proud parents" --- America herself had just birthed the Iraq democracy in the back of a humvee. The purple thumbs evoked a collective "awwww" as if the Iraqi voters were sheet swaddled newborn babes or a big ole pile 'o kittens.

One of the most disturbing (and embarrassing) aspects of this entire enterprise is the air of cultural superiority emanating from Americans as we enlighten the primitives, dahling...

This, is what makes it so easy for people to shrug when they hear stories about innocent Iraqis being tortured, women and children being shot and killed by our soldiers. We're playing with dolls dressed up in exotic middle eastern garb. And never mind that the civilizations those dolls are descended from predates America by thousands of years.

Tales Of The Smirk...(continued)

You can't believe a word they say. Nope, nope, and nope. You can't believe a word they say. Via Atrios, Bush unveils his "fix" for Social Security and...no... it's not what he says it is. And that's leaving aside the obvious fact that Bush and the republicans don't want to fix Social Security, they want to kill it, like they've always wanted to kill it, since FDR and the democrats established it. Bush says that

"You'll be able to pass along the money that accumulates in your personal account, if you wish, to your children . . . or grandchildren...and best of all, the money in the account is yours, and the government can never take it away."

Well...no...

The plan is more complicated. Under the proposal, workers could invest as much as 4 percent of their wages subject to Social Security taxation in a limited assortment of stock, bond and mixed-investment funds. But the government would keep and administer that money. Upon retirement, workers would then be given any money that exceeded inflation-adjusted gains over 3 percent.

That money would augment a guaranteed Social Security benefit that would be reduced by a still-undetermined amount from the currently promised benefit.

In effect, the accounts would work more like a loan from the government, to be paid back upon retirement at an inflation-adjusted 3 percent interest rate -- the interest the money would have earned if it had been invested in Treasury bonds, said Peter R. Orszag, a Social Security analyst at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton White House economist.

"I believe you should be able to set aside part of that money in your own retirement account so you can build a nest egg for your own future," Bush said in his speech.

Orszag retorted: "It's not a nest egg. It's a loan."

Under the system, the gains may be minimal. The Social Security Administration, in projecting benefits under a partially privatized system, assumes a 4.6 percent rate of return above inflation. The Congressional Budget Office, Capitol Hill's official scorekeeper, assumes 3.3 percent gains.

If a worker sets aside $1,000 a year for 40 years, and earns 4 percent annually on investments, the account would grow to $99,800 in today's dollars, but the government would keep $78,700 -- or about 80 percent of the account. The remainder, $21,100, would be the worker's.

"The Government", being these days, the republicans. Another way to look at this, is that you're loaning a portion of your Social Security money to the republicans and their Wall Street friends, under terms that don't even guarantee you an interest return at all. In fact, they get to keep any interest return to the rate of inflation or three percent.

Of course, they'll still have to pay back the principle. Uh...won't they?

[Edited a tad...]

[UPDATE...] Now the Bush gang are saying that, oh no...the entire amount of the private account will go to the worker when they retire. What they're not saying is that everything but a portion of the interest will be deducted from your regular Social Security benefits. They're playing a shell game in other words, giving you the money in the privatized plan, but taking it from your regular Social Security benefits, and claiming that means you get the whole amount. But you still don't. You don't even get all the interest it accrued.

Brad DeLong has more, here.

Wednesday February 2, 2005

Ka-flumph...flumph

Took the Hasselblad out for a test run today, strolling around the Hopkins campus during lunch, looking for a good shot to start a Friday Baltimore Blogging run with. I discovered two things about Hasselblads. First, using one is as smooth as I thought it would be. It's bigger then my Canon F1s, but not by so much that it's clumsy to do stroll about street photography with. The 45 degree prism finder is bright and easy to focus with, and adds next to nothing to the camera's bulk. I still need to work with a separate light meter, which makes firing off a shot a bit more time consuming, but I think with a little practice I can deal with that.

The other thing I've learned already is that this is not a stealth camera. That's fine...in its day the Canon F1 wasn't either. For a while in the early 70s, it attracted some attention and I got used to keeping it slung around me in such a way as to keep it innocuous, until I started using it. I'm not sure I can manage that with the Hasselblad. And its shutter mechanism, while not loud, is a noticeable, Ka-flumph...flumph. I think it's mostly the sound of the mirror flopping up, and the rear film curtains flopping open and then closed again. You can barely hear the sound of the lens shutter going off over it. I'm not going to get away with sneaking off any shots with this camera, unless I'm someplace where the ambient noise level is already loud. It calls attention to itself. I'll have to be careful about where I take it, because of that.

Rabid Eeyores And Babbling Numbskulls

Via Eric Alterman, some righteous venting at a more then deserving target:

How to be a McCarthyite, part II. Let us welcome Jeff Jarvis into the club together with Rush, O'Reilly, Coulter and Little Roy. He writes, "The worst of them -- the rabid Eeyores, the Coles and Altermans -- exhibited utter disdain to the point of hate toward anyone there who dared to say positive things about their freedom and America." I don't know what an "Eyeore" is in this context, and I don't really care, but I'll venture a guess that it has something to do with someone who thinks maybe the Bush administration was not telling the entire truth about its desire to invade Iraq. Here.

That's how it works, folks. The Bush administration/big media Master Narrative on the elections has been defined as follows:

* Democracy, good.
* Democracy = election. Elections, good.
* Democracy = elections = invasion of Iraq. Invasion of Iraq, good.

* Questioning, bad.
* Bad = disloyal = "hate America, hate freedom."

Question any part of the Master Narrative, regardless of its relationship to reality and you are branded a traitor. The Jarvises of the world could not be doing the job better if they were placed on the Rove payroll. (Hmmm, I wonder....)

(We note for the record that Jeff Jarvis, with a background in EntertainmentWeeklyTVGuidePeople, enjoys no specialized knowledge with regard to Iraq and Iran and is therefore easy prey for the Bush administration's propaganda ploys. Juan Cole, on the other hand, has spent his adult life studying the region, knows its history and cultures, speaks and reads its languages and literature. Because Cole's understanding leaves him suspicious of the administration's specious claims, the belligerently ignorant Jarvis tars him as someone who hates "freedom and America." We recalled that Joe McCarthy purged the State Department of Asian experts because he and his cohorts did not like what they were saying about China. This helped pave the path for the tragedy of Vietnam. The tragedy of our misadventure in Iraq was paved with an ignorance no less belligerent...and dangerous. And this time, we don't even need a McCarthy. We've got Coulters, Sullivans and Jarvises to do their dirty work for them.)

Let it be said along with this, that in addition to purging the intelligence community of everyone who refused to tell president whining rich boy jackass what he wanted to hear about Iraq, namely that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam didn't have a nuclear program, and after years of sanctions, and no fly zones, was no threat to his neighbors, let alone the United States, the Bush gang have been busy tossing out of the military, more gay arabic linguists then previously acknowledged, apparently on the grounds that telling Junior what he wants to hear is more important to homeland security then correctly assessing a potential threat, and fighting the religious right's war on homosexuality more important then fighting the war on terror. Clap your hands for freedom and America Jarvis...

This Jarvis "blood libel/Get on the bus or else" bluster reminds me of the day the Marines tore down the statue in Baghdad. I had just questioned Paul Wolfowitz's contention that "we will be welcomed as liberators" in The Nation. What happened on that day? Little Roy demanded that I take it back on his blog. David Brooks announced that my entire world view had collapsed. Bill O'Reilly showed my picture on Fox - the last time my face has been up there...as some kind of Wall of Shame type thing. And the Weekly Standard included me in their collections of idiotic statements, or whatever it is they call them. What else happened? Well, I was right. More than 1300 dead Americans and 11,000 injured Americans and who knows how many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would tell you that, if they were still alive to do so. We were "welcomed" as not as liberators but as occupiers. A bunch of marines pulling down a statue didn't change that; proclaiming "mission accomplished" didn't change that; pretending your found WMDs won't change that; and elections, unfortunately, won't change it. Thousands more will die for Bush's ignorance and arrogance. And the Jarvises, Sullivans, O'Reillys, etc. will do their damnedest to make sure that the rest of us stick to their stupid script. Well, not this time, bub.

Rabid Eeyores... Gotta love it. There are dweebs, there are pathetic geeky pimple-faced pocket protector dweebs, and then there are the Iraq chickenhawks. Rabid Eeyores, Venomous Care Bears, and Fanatical Elmos, oh my. Toto, I think we're still in Kansas.

On his web site, Jarvis adds, "Reasonable people can agree. Reasonable people should agree that the exercise of freedom and democracy in Iraq is good for the Iraqi people." Gosh, you're right Jeff. And reasonable people hope that someday the Iraqis will get that chance. But reasonable people, which is to say, those of us in the Reality Based Community, understand that as long as they are an occupied people, as long as it's the Bush gang picking their leaders and writing their laws, they'll never get that chance. Alterman is right: we're seeing all these heart warming images of democracy in Iraq from the same goddamned sources we once saw what we now know were completely staged acts of tearing down statues and welcoming American troops. Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! Oh...and Bullshit! How many more images like...oh...I dunno...this...

...do drooling morons like you need to see before even your kind gets sick of listening to your own stream of conscience-free babbling about how good this splendid little war is for the Iraqis, and the cause of democracy, let alone the security of America. Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!...

"There is only one traffic law in Ramadi these days: when Americans approach, Iraqis scatter. Horns blaring, brakes screaming, the midday traffic skids to the side of the road as a line of Humvee jeeps ferrying American marines rolls the wrong way up the main street. Every vehicle, that is, except one beat-up old taxi. Its elderly driver, flapping his outstretched hands, seems, amazingly, to be trying to turn the convoy back. Gun turrets swivel and lock on to him, as a hefty marine sargeant leaps into the road, levels an assault rifle at his turbanned head, and screams: 'Back this bitch up, motherfucker!'

"The old man should have read the bilingual notices that American soldiers tack to their rear bumpers in Iraq: 'Keep 50m or deadly force will be applied.' In Ramadi, the capital of central Anbar province, where 17 suicide-bombs struck American forces during the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan in the autumn, the marines are jumpy. Sometimes, they say, they fire on vehicles encroaching with 30 metres, sometimes they fire at 20 metres: 'If anyone gets too close to us we fucking waste them,' says a bullish lieutenant. 'It's kind of a shame, because it means we've killed a lot of innocent people.'"

Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!

"I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river." He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!

It started when a young boy hurled a sandal at a US jeep - it ended with two Iraqis dead and 16 seriously injured.

I watched in horror as American troops opened fire on a crowd of 1,000 unarmed people here yesterday.

Many, including children, were cut down by a 20-second burst of automatic gunfire during a demonstration against the killing of 13 protesters at the Al-Kaahd school on Monday.

Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!

It appears the killings started as the troops were searching the building and as motorists approached the barbed wire which the soldiers had placed without warning across the road. Witnesses said the first car contained at least two men. "The second contained two children about 10, their mother and their father who had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war - he was a cripple," a local shopkeeper told me. "They all died. The man's legs were cut in half by the bullets," he added. A third car then approached the Americans, who opened fire again. One of the occupants fled, but the other two remained in the vehicle and were killed.

I know...I know...better to throw pathetic insults at those of us who have been right time and time again about this war, then look at yourselves in the mirror of the recent past. And when it all comes crashing down in Iraq, that'll all be our fault too, won't it Jarvis, because we didn't care enough about America, to keep our mouths shut while your kind were busy wiping your collective asses on everything fine and noble America once stood for. Reasonable people don't think you teach the values of liberty and justice and democracy by rounding up people at random and torturing them to see if they know anything, kidnaping children and threatening them with rape if their parents don't cooperate, killing scores of innocent people like they were so many expendable targets in a video game instead of real flesh and blood fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, and then wrapping yourself in the mantle of the Great Liberator and claiming you did it all for them. Reasonable people think you have to live by the values you preach. But let's face it Jarvis, you probably can't remember the last time you and reason, let alone your conscience, were on speaking terms.

Tuesday February 1, 2005

Hasselblad!

[Camera Geek Alert]

I've been casting around for something to compete with all the Friday Cat Blogging going on here and there, and thanks to Tom Tomorrow, I think I've found it. He recently linked to a New York blogger whose photoblogging he said, almost makes him miss Brooklyn.

Well...that should have made one Brooklyn photographer very happy, and it got me to thinking I could do a Friday Baltimore Blogging thing. It's not as if Baltimore is lacking for interesting subjects, and I sure don't need an excuse to take pictures of it, just motivation to post some of it. And I have a new camera, which I need to take out and run a few test rolls through.

I got the first camera of my dreams back when I was a teenager in high school, a Canon F1 that I'd spent the summer working in a fast food joint to buy. I got the second one just last weekend, a Hasselblad; a camera that I'd practically given up on owning, because even used they are so damn expensive. But last weekend a dealer made me an offer on used, but cherry condition 501c, with 45 degree finder and a lens hood, that I could not refuse. I've had it now for a few days, my eyes and fingers getting to know it, something deep inside of me thrilled at the prospects ahead, like I haven't been since I got my first F1. I've been wanting to do more medium format photography recently, and nothing in that format beats the lenses on a Hasselblad.

I've been a shutterbug since I was a little kid. As soon as I was old enough to understand how they worked, I would attempt to monopolize the family camera every time it came out of the closet. I got more successful at it, the more pictures I was allowed to take. Even my sour grandmother, who almost never gave me complements on anything I ever did, liked the pictures I took. In fifth or sixth grade, Mom bought me a Brownie Fiesta, and I took it with me when my class went on a field trip to the C&O Canal. I still remember the complements I got on those pictures, from family and teachers alike, and more, the tinge of adult surprise in the complements. Oh...these are Good pictures.... I think I started realizing then, that I had an eye for it. But praise, while very much welcome, wasn't why I wanted my own camera.

I've always had this hunger, this need to make visual imagery, that all my life has been almost impossible to put into words. That's largely, I am certain now, because it comes out from a non-verbal place inside me to start with. Imagery is the only language I have to say the particular things that come from that part of me. Over time I've tried to put this or that set of words, this or that set of verbal explanations, to the images and I've never, to my own satisfaction, managed to explain what I am doing. But I know exactly what I'm doing. When I sling a gadget bag over my shoulder and go out for a stroll, I know exactly what I'm looking for, whether I'm walking through Monument Valley, or Philadelphia. I can see the same themes developing over time in my photographic imagery, surely and certainly as if I'd set out with a well defined plan of how to go about doing it, instead of a need to express and explore something I just can't describe. Once upon a time I thought I might try to make a living as a working photographer. I worked as a freelance newspaper photographer for a short time, and made money on the side doing weddings. But after a few years of it, I realized that I didn't have the temperament for earning a living at it, and now I just do what I do, not precisely for the love of it, but simply because I have to.

I got my first 35mm camera in 10th grade, my first SLR, a Petri, in 11th. By then I'd converted the one bathroom in our apartment into a part-time darkroom. I probably stank up the apartment with my chemicals, but Mom supported and encouraged me in it like she did all my creative endeavors. Also by then I'd become recognizable in school as the kid who always carried a camera with him everywhere. The summer before my senior year, I worked at a fast food joint to get enough money to buy the first camera of my dreams, a new Canon F1. Its five-hundred, seventy dollar plus pricetag was dear in a time when fast food wages ran around a buck seventy-five an hour, but the moment my fingers first touched one in a camera store I knew I had to have one. There are good reasons to be careful of materialism in one's life, but some things are precious to us not for their status value, but for the power they give to our imaginations. Tools that free our imaginations, that fit their forms to our hands, and our minds, perfectly, are rightly regarded as magical. The moment I first picked up a Canon F1, something inside me said This will take you there...

I do lightfooted, mostly environmental photography verite. I work almost exclusively in black and white, and I gravitated early on to the 35mm SLR camera, for its totablility, speed, and what you see is what you get composing. What's kept me from investing in a Leica all these years, despite their wonderful lenses, is that I just cannot get used to composing a shot in a rangefinder's viewfinder. There is always a slight parallax, even in landscape photography where there are important foreground elements. And you have no sense of depth of field. An SLR uses the taking lens as the viewing lens too, and so you see things exactly as the film will see them. So I can compose with what I'm seeing, without juggling things in the back of my head like parallax and depth of field while I'm doing it. Metering through the taking lens adds to the seamlessness of the act of composing a shot. I typically stroll around a place that seems interesting, and when I see a good shot, put the camera up to my eye and go with it. The camera has to work with me.

How important this was to me was driven home by two other cameras I bought in the past few years. With my first digital camera, I found that the electronic viewfinder was constantly getting between me and what I was taking a picture of. At the time that camera, a Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi, had more pixels in its viewfinder then other comparable digital cameras, and yet it was not nearly enough. Detail was simply lost in the pixilated image my eye saw. You could not use it to manually focus the camera at all. When I turned back to my SLR film cameras, I felt as if a gauze curtain was taken away from my eyes, and I could see what I was taking pictures of again. With the Mamiya C330 I bought recently, I discovered once again that parallax can kill a good shot. The C330's parallax indicator just doesn't cut it. It's accurate as far as it goes, in showing you where your true frame is, but the relationships between the objects in the field of view are not quite what you think they are, what you see them as being, through the separate viewing lens.

I really regretted that, because I've been wanting to do more medium format photography recently, for its greater detail and precision. In just over thirty years of darkroom work, I think I can now squeeze about the last little bit of detail possible from 35mm tri-x. I reckon that if I applied that to a 6x6 negative I can achieve very eye pleasing results. But medium format cameras that work for the kind of photography I like to do are expensive, and the one I really wanted all these years was fantastically expensive.

A few years after high school, a friend and fellow photographer splurged recklessly on a Hasselblad, and the day he showed me the first pictures from it, my jaw practically dropped in amazement over the richness and detail the Zeiss lens on it was capable of. He let me examine the camera, and it was that same feeling as I once had with my first F1. This will take you there... They're about as small as you can make a medium format SLR, almost as totable as a 35, and exceptionally well made. But christ almighty they're expensive, even used. For nearly thirty years I just couldn't get my head around that. So last year I bought the Mamiya, and last New Years I had it with me at Ocean City, right along with my very first F1, but making a point to use the Mamiya most. But was a struggle. There was the reversed image you get in a waste level viewfinder, and there was parallax on top of that. It needed a prism viewfinder. But I'd looked at Mamiya prism finders, and they made the camera unacceptibly awkward, and they were far too dark to even focus properly.

I knew what I needed to really get into medium format photography. But Hasselblads were just too damn expensive. Then the other weekend I saw a little black 501c at Service Camera, the store that moved dangerously close for my wallet to where I live. It was in nearly new condition, and breathtakingly affordable. Well...for a Hasselblad. I took a look at my budget, which was already suffering from my computer crash last December, and took a deep breath. I'm fifty-one. I've been wanting one of these since I was twenty. Time was I couldn't possibly afford it. Now I'm just negotiating with my budget. What I really need to decide now isn't whether to put if off for a while longer, but do I want to just forget about medium format photography altogether. Do I want to finally see what I can do with the format, or do I want to stick with 35mm, which I'm good at, for the rest of my life..? I know I'll never be a large format photographer. I'm not the kind who likes dragging around a view camera and setting up for hours just to take one or two shots. I'm an explorer. Medium format is as big as I can get, and still do what I do. Maybe. Or maybe not after all. Now I have to decide if I want to really try or not.

Next morning I bought the camera. Between that, and the new computer hardware, and tuition for this semester, I'll have to live lean for quite a while. The dealer said the camera sat mostly in a rich man's closet. That could be the photo shop equivalent of the little old lady that every used car once belonged to. But this camera will not pine for someone who will use it like it was built to be used. By the time a great camera has taken its last picture, it should have lots of stories to tell. My first F1 sure does.

[Edited a tad...] I need a real film scanner that I can focus...

Monday January 31, 2005

Tales From George Bush's America...(continued)

It's little stories like this, that really tell you all you need to know about the republicans:

...I was monitored for about half of the inaugural party I was covering for The Post. For the first couple of hours of the Independence Ball, I roamed the vast width and length of the Washington Convention Center hall dangerously unescorted.

I had arrived early to get a head start on mingling among the roughly 6,000 people eating and dancing to celebrate the president's reelection. Unaware of the new escort policy (it wasn't in place during the official parties following the 2001 inauguration), I blithely assumed that in the world's freest nation, I was free to walk around at will and ask the happy partygoers such national security-jeopardizing questions as, "Are you having a good time?"

Big mistake. After cruising by the media pen -- a sectioned-off area apparently designed for corralling journalists -- a sharp-eyed volunteer spotted my media badge. "You're not supposed to go out there without an escort," she said.

I replied that I had been doing just fine without one, and walked over to a quiet corner of the hall to phone in some anecdotes to The Post's Style desk.

As I was dictating from my notes, something flashed across my face and neatly snatched my cell phone from of my hand. I looked up to confront a middle-aged woman, her face afire with rage. "You ignored the rules, and I'm throwing you out!" she barked, snapping my phone shut. "You told that girl you didn't need an escort. That's a lie! You're out of here!"

With the First Amendment on the line, my natural wit did not fail me. "Huh?" I answered.

Recovering quickly, I explained that I had been unaware of the escort policy. She was unbending and ordered a couple of security guards to hustle me out. I appealed to them, saying that I was more than happy to follow whatever ground rules had been laid down. They shrugged, and deposited me back in the media pen.

There I was assigned a pair of attractive young women, who, for the next hour or so, took turns following close at my heels. I thought about trying to ditch them in the increasingly crowded hall, just for the sport of it, but realized it was pointless. They never interfered with my work. I found I was able to go wherever I wanted, and to talk to whomever I desired. The minders just hovered nearby, saying nothing. They were polite but disciplined, refusing even to disclose their full names or details about themselves.

...

Consider that the escorts weren't there to provide security; all of us had already been through two checkpoints and one metal detector. They weren't there to keep me away from, Heaven forbid, a Democrat or a protester; those folks were kept safely behind rings of fences and concrete barriers. Nor were the escorts there to admonish me for asking a rude question of the partying faithful, or to protect the paying customers from the prying media.

Their real purpose only occurred to me after I had gone home for the night, when I remembered a brief conversation with a woman I was interviewing. During the middle of our otherwise innocuous encounter, she suddenly noticed the presence of my minder. She stopped for a moment, glanced past me, then resumed talking.

No, the minders weren't there to monitor me. They were there to let the guests, my sources on inaugural night, know that any complaint, any unguarded statement, any off-the-reservation political observation, might be noted. But maybe someday they'll be monitoring something more important than an inaugural ball, and the source could be you.

[Emphasis mine...]

We know who you talked to. We know exactly what you said. Just remember...we're watching you comrade. Always...always...watching you... These are the people who say they have brought democracy to Iraq.

Fatigued

I had an invite to help out on a community theater project this weekend. Once upon a time I used to build architectural models for a living, and being that I still draw and paint (though not nearly as much as I'd like to), I'm still good enough at creating an effect of, among other things, stone with paint, that I was asked to help build a faux stone fireplace for a stage prop. I had a great time helping out, but broke a simple basic safety rule...the one about not putting your finger in the path of the blade, and slashed my left had a good one with a razor knife, while cutting some styrofoam for the stones.

It bled pretty badly. I bandaged it up and kept working. There was almost no pain...razor cuts can be strange like that...but it would not stop bleeding. That is, as soon as I took off the bandages to clean and re-dress the wound, it bled like it had just been cut. Twelve hours later it was still doing it, and concerned that my bandages might come off while I slept, I ended up going to the ER. I reckoned I'd need stitches, but they glued it instead, and sent me home with a prescription for antibiotics, which they were insistant I take. I questioned it, because you hear the warnings that antibiotics are being over prescribed, but the ER folks were absolutely insistant that I must take all the antibiotics they prescribed for me. So...okay.

So I'm feeling very tired and worn out right now, like I've just gotten over some big illness. Which I haven't, but antibiotics do that to me. And I didn't get to do as much as I wanted on the theater project, partly because of the bad weather yesterday, but also partly because I had a hand that was still half numb from the trip to the ER (they numbed it down so they could go in and clean the wound), and I was feeling too poorly to drive in sleet and snow because of the antibiotics. Rats. It was fun while it lasted.

Friday January 28, 2005

We Have An Office In Siberia, For Queers And Queer Lovers Like You...

Remember that jolly guy president I'm A Uniter, Not A Divider appointed to head the Office of Special Counsel...the federal government office charged with protecting federal employees from discrimination? The guy who once worked for that right wing think tank, the Claremont Institute ? You know...the folks who say, among other things about homosexuals, that "what proponents of same-sex marriage do not seem to appreciate - or willfully ignore - is that for centuries the social normalization of homosexuality has been resisted because for good and sufficient reasons people have considered it to be a threat to the common good, morally objectionable, and a violation of ancient and honored injunctions"...? [my emphasis] The guy who...as one of his first acts as head of OSC, took all references to sexual orientation discrimination off of the OSC Web site and from OSC complaint forms? The guy who said he did that because he did not believe federal law protected gay federal employees from job discrimination? The guy who said he would put it all back after Congress pitched a fit and Bush issued a statement reiterating the Clinton policy of banning discrimination against gay federal employees...and still hasn't...? That guy?

Right. That guy. Well...surprise, surprise...he's purging OSC of gays and anyone who thinks they're not human garbage:

Scott J. Bloch, the controversial head the U.S. government office charged with protecting federal employees from discrimination, has threatened to fire 12 high-level employees - two of whom are gay - unless they agree to be reassigned to positions in other cities.

Three government watchdog groups called Bloch's action another in a series of moves aimed at packing the Office of Special Counsel with religious, right wing cronies and threatening its longstanding mission of protecting federal employees from harassment or intimidation for exposing corruption or incompetence.

...

A source familiar with the OSC said the only two openly gay staffers at OSC are among the 12 employees chosen by Bloch for the involuntary reassignment. The source said a third person picked for the reassignment is an OSC attorney who adjudicated and reached a settlement favorable to a gay federal employee who filed a discrimination complaint against his supervisor in 2003.

...

Insiders believe one possible reason for opening the Detroit office, said Bruch, is that it is close to the Ann Arbor, Mich., based Ave Maria Law School, a conservative Catholic institution with ties to Bloch. A number of OSC attorneys hired by Bloch are recent Ave Maria graduates, Bruch said.

According to the three watchdog groups' letter to Collins and Lieberman, Bloch "has broken with past OSC practice" by hiring all of his new high-level officials, including the Ave Maria graduates, through a non-competitive process that circumvents the traditional civil service hiring process.

"Not a single one of Mr. Bloch's personal picks, so selected, is being forced to move" in his staff reorganization, the groups stated in their letter.

...

The three watchdog groups stated in their letter to Collins and Lieberman that Bloch has refused to allow other OSC employees to volunteer for the 12 newly assigned posts. The groups also point out that there are at least 11 current vacancies at OSC headquarters in Washington. Bloch has chosen not to move the vacant positions to the field office posts and to fill them with residents in the three cities, a move that would save OSC money to help pay moving expenses for the 12 employees he wants to transfer, officials with the groups said.

"In fact, the way that the 'reorganization' is being implemented leads to the inescapable conclusion that existing career staff are being purged..."

Why is none of this surprising?

You can't have homosexual witch hunts and purges, if someone in government keeps insisting that homosexuals have rights, now can you?

Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow...(continued)

You should read this post on Steve Gilliard's blog. Particularly if you watched Nightline's "Town Hall Meeting" on Iraq. It was phony as all hell, in the way that most mainstream news is phony. Gilliard, at the end of his post quotes, this from Daily KOS, from someone who was there, and saw a lot of stuff you didn't get to see on your TV:

Then, during the third commercial break Rabbi Waskau stood up and loudly said, "I was invited hear to speak, but then was told I could you would not allow anyone from the religious community to sit in the front row and that I would be allowed to make a comment later if I would take a seat in back. But now I have been told that I will not be allowed to speak at all."

(upon hearing that, I realized that nobody had spoken from a religious/faith based perspective, and wondered if that was indeed intentional).

He went on, "So I will ask my question now during the break so as not to cause embarrassment to you Mr. Koppel"

Ted Koppel said, "Thank you, go ahead"

The Rabbi spoke: "You do not want the religious community to speak because we DO see the BIG picture (referencing a marine who had spoken earlier saying that people who were for ending the occupation in Iraq di not see the big picture) "We know the story of the Pharaoh, who tried to hold back God's people, and that the Pharaoh's lust for power was so great that we pushed his army against the Hebrews again and again no matter how many time's he failed... he continued to deny the circumstances until the army of Egypt was beat down and depleted at the expense of his subjects." (I wish I could communicate the eloquence with which he spoke)... "President Bush is the Pharaoh, and he has stripped the American people of basic social services such as healthcare and education in order to arrogantly keep up his holy war. I will no longer stand for the U.S. government and the media denying the religious community our voice. The common people of the Untied States and of Iraq and elsewhere are suffering."

Then he said he was done, (there was definitely some applause during parts of his speech) and he was escorted out the church where the Nightline episode was being taped.

[Emphasis mine - BG]

...

As I was waiting to filter out with everybody else, I heard one of the Iraqi's, who was very upset, talking to a producer: "This is not what we expected, we were told we would get a chance to speak in the press release you sent us, and you did not give us the chance to say what we came to say."

The producer just kind of appeased him... nodded and stuff.

People are waiting for some big Tet Offensive moment to happen, where the news media finally starts admitting the whole shit can isn't winnable, that people have been lied to from the beginning, that the rational for war was a crock of bullshit all along...and let's face it...that isn't going to happen this time. Baghdad Bob is laughing in our faces. The saving grace of it is, that when it all comes crashing down in flames in Iraq, at least they won't be able to blame dissent here at home for it, because dissent wasn't allowed a voice in the mainstream.

Well...yes...they will anyway... Of course they will anyway...

Well If Jesus Didn't Say It, He Should Have

From Atrios comes today's lesson on why religious right biblical proof texting is a tad unsound, theologically.