The Beauty of the Turmoil in Japan and the Middle East

It's a weird juxtaposition. What you say? The way the circles of reality lay themselves out in your mind, jostling for position and authority.

We look out at the wider world and see two rather momentous events happening simultaneously: the spread of revolution across Arab states, and the spread of radiation and nuclear instability across Japan. Both events will reshape modern life... are reshaping modern life. Our gas prices are rising, causing us here in the States to rethink our overall energy strategy. Obama's speech today at Georgetown University proposed a cut in foreign oil dependence, and an increase in both domestic oil reliance and energy diversification. Here, within two very different world situations, the common elements are danger, energy and opportunity.

Danger lies in the potentiality that none of the revolutions across Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya will ultimately lead to democratic nations. Ridding the world of dictators does not rid the world of men with ambitious, cunning dictatorial hearts. And in Japan, the patient and gallant response to massive destruction--last tally, 27, 652 dead or missing (Bloomberg)--does not begin to answer the questions that are being asked as miniscule traces of contamination begin to show up in odd places.

One really does not want to get caught debating the merits of energy policy when people are fighting and dying for freedom (across Arabia) or trying to recover from a tsunami and its inflicted derivations in Japan. And yet energy is a major player in how these societies will evolve when they are finished... evolving. Will nuclear in Japan prove so damaging that people begin to seek to rely on alternatives? Will the contamination effect trade and the products that Japan excels at producing? Energy touches everything, everywhere. In the Arab lands, energy can fund freedom or dictatorship, driving policy and relationships.

The beauty of the turmoil lies in the opportunity for change. It takes a shakeup to reach down into the mind and energize it in a way where it recalculates the possibilities. So long as you are guided by the status quo, with nothing pressing or pushing or seeming to fall apart, the human mind will not normally flex itself. It's during these moments of extreme danger when everything is shaken that the mind finds new foundations to build upon.

Republicans Suppressing Democracy, Gaddafi Style

What does Libyan leader Gaddafi have in common with Republicans? Well very little actually, but we can't help framing the question when we see the actions of state officials in New Hampshire attempting to suppress political activity.

The proposed legislation was ostensibly part of an effort to crack down on voter fraud. But, as Greg Sargentpoints out, there is little evidence of such fraud, and for the most part anti-fraud measures just make it more difficult for liberal groups to vote. New Hampshire Speaker of the House William O’Brien made it clear that was part of the motivation for the New Hampshire bill when he told to a Tea Party group that students lack “life experience” and “just vote their feelings.” “Voting as a liberal,” he told them, “that’s what kids do.”

(BigThink.com)

Keeping legitimate voters from voting seems to be running effort in some Republican circles, and usually under the guise that some group--black, Hispanics, the young--are engaged in a massive voting fraud that distorts the results. Such accusations help de-fund organizations like Acorn, and also help to advance the lie that when liberals win, it is without legitimate support.

These types of un-American challenges continue, evidenced by the number of states who are seeking to challenge the citizenship of the president by presenting legislation that is stubbornly irrelevant to existing facts, designed solely to obstruct and belittle, and lend a type of government sanction to ideas germinated in the gullible mind. If the twelve or however many candidates cannot match President Obama in votes, then find ways to keep people from voting for him. Just "equalize" the equation and call it democracy.

That's how men like Gaddafi do it, albeit with a bit more force and bluster.

Japanese Nuclear Engineers Look Fear in the Face

Voice of America reports on a second blast today in Japan:

Tokyo Electric Power company, which operates the plant, said an undetermined number of workers had been injured in the blast.

(VOA)

I would imagine that workers at a power plant don't normally expect anything to go very wrong. They are smart, well educated, conscientious. They didn't likely fall into this occupation as a last resort, like a few of those in the military. In contrast with the military, there is no backdrop of  likely death. People may enter the military at a time when the nation is at war, and that risk is always a factor in the decision. Some will join because we are at war, and some will join precisely when we are not, and always risking the odds of death. Same with firemen and police, who measure the risk, but take the jobs due to altruism, patriotism, love of the work or family history.

Working at a plant is different, since the risks are rather unlikely, and out of the blue. In Japan, it was an earthquake and tsunami triggering damage. Now the pressure is building in reactors and workers have to be on hand to manage the situation.

What if you had to rise this morning, knowing that you had to go into a potentially radioactive environment? Life--YOURS-- might be cut short. It's your job, but, it's not mandatory. You won't be court-martialed if you leave, necessarily. Does that nuclear engineer or site specialist in Japan decide, on this particular morning, of all the mornings in the world, to pursue his inner muse, skip work, and take up another career out of cowardice or self preservation? Does the father of a young child want to make sure he sees his son play baseball as a teen?

There is now the potential of dying for energy, or dying to protect everyone else from contamination. Your life could be cut short on the tail end, with the resulting sickness slow and deadly, or you could go right up front in one stark blast of light.

Right now there is little talk of alarm. There is probably an entirely stronger discourse going on behind the closed doors of officials, and in the mind of that individual worker who sits there wondering if this day at work will be uniquely life changing in bad way. That is fear. I can feel that fear from the comfort of my home many miles away in the Arizona desert, and where Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station--the largest nuclear site in the U.S.-- sits 45 miles away from me.

I wake up this morning knowing that I can skip work, and quit, and it won't be a big deal. Nobody will die because of my fear, or suffer because of my inaction. I will sit ans eat a piece of Toblerone, and fill in a spreadsheet, while others lay their lives on the line.

Egypt Enters the Balut Phase of Democracy

We are often quick to push for democracy no matter. A person walks into our mental store, and we say, "Sit down, and try this shoe on." The person says, "Do you have it in jasmine?" and we say, "No but we have it in democracy." "How about in size seven?" they say, eyebrow raised. "No, but we have this one in democracy," and on it goes. Each new and different person who arrives on the scene gets democracy,with the premise that the same shoe fits every man, woman and child on earth.

Would that new born democracy was so easy as slipping on the right slipper and dancing off into a better future. Often it never arrives, and gets torn asunder and eaten alive by displaced, misplaced hungers and appetites.

Getting rid of the strong leader often leads to unexpected reactions, and violence. When people are free, they are inclined to be free to be incredibly cruel. They can bicker, fight, and pull out the old grievances because the adult is not in the room. You can demand democracy, but it's a process--even a physical one-- and often our intellectual hopes outstrip the reality on the ground.

From the Independent (U.K.):

The euphoria that swept Egypt after the fall of Hosni Mubarak was souring yesterday after sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians left 13 people dead and armed men attacked demonstrators demanding reform in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

In a show of force against the demonstrators, a squadron of about 40 soldiers followed by chanting civilian supporters swept through the square last night and ripped down the tent village which has developed since Mubarak was toppled almost a month ago.

This is sad. That real people won't be here anymore, dying unexpectedly for a dream. It must be a strange sort of fog that allows a person to devour another life, then head home to a nice dish of balut.

Obama Slip of the Tongue, Palin Slip of the Mind

People are doubting Sarah Palin again, wondering whether she knows that Africa is a continent and not taking her retroactive word for it. Via Huffingtonpost, we get her interview with the BBC, where she states:

"Rumors like I didn't know Africa was a continent, that's still out there, that's a lie," she told the U.K.-based outlet when asked about criticism of her intellectuality. The former Alaska governor reportedly seemed "tense" when she was confronted with the matter.

She also managed to slip in the variable truth (meaning untruth) that Obama stated he would spend $1 billion on the upcoming election. While Obama probably will, and administration officials and reporters have speculated on that, so too will his opponents and the armada of 3rd parties Republicans will use to try to win the election. But her ability to float untruth is unrivaled.

Supporters of Sarah are usually willing to let her "gaffes" pass because they are far too busy trying to convince themselves that the Columbia and Harvard educated black guy elected president is their inferior in every way possible, real and imagined. We recall Sarah's Facebook mash-up that creates a paragraph of nonsense out of Obama's various verbal and rhetorical misfirings. Of course the actual construction of the paragraph is designed to create a grandly disjointed stream of consciousness, of the type and length that Palin usually creates on her own when speaking on any given subject. It's a a creative construction designed to dumb down Obama's slight individual errors into a Palin style mental masterpiece of "misclarity". And don't even refudiate me on this point.

But let's be clear. Palin might get the benefit of the doubt on these things if she demonstrated some deep thoughts on complex subject matter, but usually when gaffing it up, she is stumbling on basic subject matter. When you know calculus and mess up on 2+2, then we know it's a slip of the tongue. But when you are still studying addition, and mess up, then there is a question of what do you know, and how well do you know it. Or, the chef at The French Laundry makes a bad meal and the McDonald's employee makes a bad meal (impossibly over-nukes a beef patty), and by virtue of similar gastronomic failures the McDonald's employee mocks the chef, and says, "Frankly, I should could be chef." Yea, no.

We know Obama went to great schools, and that he was a lawyer, and that he also taught constitutional law. Deep down we all know he is competent unless we are willing to accuse Ivy League students of being morons when not infallible. (It's the racism in some of us that lets us create that type of equation).  But we don't know that Sarah is educated, on anything. She has no history that leads to answers to questions that need answering.

In most cases with Obama, that verbal gaffe is a slip of the tongue, while the vast majority of Palin's errors represent a slip of the mind.

"It is wonderful to be back in Oregon," Obama said. "Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."
(Obama, after campaigning in many states and territories).

"It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where - where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border,"
(Palin, during an interview that covered her foreign policy experience)

Glen Beck's Redundancies of Disaster Bring Mood Down (Says N.Y. Times)

"Joel Cheatwood, a senior vice president of development for Fox News and the executive in charge of the show, thinks it’s silly to suggest that the American viewing public’s romance with Mr. Beck is on the wane — he’s trouncing his competition — but says that keeping the show upbeat is something he discusses with Mr. Beck.
“We have talked about that, at his instigation,” Mr. Cheatwood said. “It is really important that no matter how dire he thinks things are or what horrible direction things may be going from his perspective that the show maintains a sense of hope.”

(N.Y.Times)

You know, because maintaining an upbeat attitude when talking about real life issues is more important than maintaining truth and some sense of reality.

If Beck's audience starts to slip due to his relentless negativity, great. But it would be much better if it slipped because people were less willing to believe nonsense, rather than just flipping their brains from the dark world of Beck to the mental equivalent of Glee.

"Infidels" in the U.S., France and Pakistan Challenge Free Speech

Died for Jesus' Sake

Stupid people, and we are not granting any other more refined epithet to those who push lies, live in vocal fear that the President might be an infidel, Islamic. He might use his attendance at a church for 20 odd years as a counterweight to this argument, but then he opens himself to having to fight his associations and the fact that he did not vet the speeches of his pastor. Rock meet hard place. But even if those who voted for him were accidentally blind or delusional--and that would be half of the voting population, roughly--and had voted in someone who followed Islam, then what? What is the proper response?

One of the things that makes us uniquely different from the world is our tolerance of people's differences. It's a tolerance that cannot be removed from the western tradition, mind you, but it's also a tolerance that keeps the door open to people being able to express their minds, their thoughts, and their religious beliefs. It's a freedom to be what you want, name your own name, and not be hindered by the majority, since majorities often get it wrong until enlightenment slowly comes.

Thankfully, and we say this slowly, we are not France, where Brit John Galliano, the now former Christian Dior chief designer, is up for trial for spewing anti-semetic nonsense while drunk. He has apologized, but that won't immediately undue his loss of lucrative employment or the potential jail time and financial penalties. And all for speaking words, and while tossed. Your words can kill... your career.

(On Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor announced that Mr. Galliano would stand trial for racial insults Also on Wednesday,Mr. Galliano released his first statement. It said in part: “I only have myself to blame and I know that I must face up to my own failures and that I must work hard to gain people’s understanding and compassion. To start this process I am seeking help and all I can hope for in time is to address the personal failure which led to these circumstances and try and earn people’s forgiveness.”)

(N.Y.Times)

Contrast that Christian Dior incident with the ostensibly "Christian" Westboro Baptist Church. The church was  sued by the father of a soldier whose funeral they desecrated by proximity. The church has a long running feud with America in general, figuring the nation godless and on the sodomite path to ruin. It's actually a type of fiery message you often hear in the more conservative born again, non-denominational and fundamentalist churches, except Westboro has amped the message up to hateful and distorted proportions, targeting every "sinner" except themselves. Ministers talking, and talking, from Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor) to the bought and sold Franklin Graham, nary mindful that any message, even a judgmental one, should be centered in love for everyone.

The ruling came down today that the church was well within their constitutional rights, with the Supreme Court ruling 8-1 in favorite of their right to speak and be evil. Alito was the lone holdout, taking a more Francophone approach:

"Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case," Alito wrote, adding that giving a family "a few hours of peace without harassment" would not undermine public debate.

Yet the court majority made plain that states may regulate funeral protests in some situations. Roberts observed that since the 2006 Snyder funeral, the Maryland Legislature has enacted a law prohibiting picketing within 100 feet of a funeral. Roberts also noted that Westboro's picketing would have complied with that restriction.

(USA Today)

We think here that Alito might be right in some fine line, inconsistent, depending on mood kind of way. The majority of the court likely assumed that making a judgment in favor of the soldier's father would prove too arbitrary a decision that could lead to an erosion of First Amendment rights as each future case attempts to determine where the line to be crossed is not.

So here in the United States, you are free to speak, and speak lies, or hideous and hateful things, because we want to also preserve the right to express the opposite, or the right to express unpopular things that need to be expressed. Weighed out, we hope the good overwhelmes the bad.

Not so in Pakistan, the paid ally of the United States, where you pretty much won't get the right to express your beliefs if you are Christian.Shabaz Bhatti was Pakistan's only Christian cabinet member. He lost his job today too while expressing his beliefs. He also lost his life. In fact, he knew that he might lose his life for expressing ideas and words. These words expressed his belief in Jesus, and his desire to see minority rights in Pakistan respected.

Bhatti could visualize his own death, and new his enemy. He knew those following a different religion might come for him and make him put his life where his heart was. His last interview included an affirmative statement of his belief in Jesus, his fight against blasphemy laws, and his willingness to die for his beliefs.

In Pakistan, you cannot be a vocal Christian, and they killed him, spraying him with bullets. Bhatti fought the law, and violence won (for now). His carefully chosen words, his desire to express his faith, shut down by people who cannot tolerate difference.

We pay Pakistan. They are our ally. They kill people for words that represent ideas they fear. In the light of Bhatti's death, I can appreciate our Supreme Court's ruling even more.

But in the light of the Supreme Court's correct ruling, I can appreciate Alito's assertion that words matter, and we need show some attention to the power of speech.

In leaflets left at the scene of the shooting, al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban Movement in Punjab province claimed responsibility. They blamed the government for putting Bhatti, an "infidel Christian," in charge of an unspecified committee, apparently referring to one said to be reviewing the blasphemy laws. The government has repeatedly said such a committee does not exist.

(NPR)

State Legislatures Pick Birther Nose to Smear Obama

All Hawaiians Illegal Aliens?

Our question for today is, "How many states are concerned that our current president is not authorized to be president, and that the plurality of voters who voted for him were either duped or willfully ignorant, and that it's not a racist issue to suddenly question the birthplace of your first black president, even though you have previously questioned his intellect, his Christianity, his patriotism, and the quality of his work history, and that it is necessary to ignore the state of Hawaii and its method of determining birth for all its citizens, and that doing all of this at the expense of creating jobs during the biggest modern day recession is both prudent, and wise, and that years from now we won't look back at this moment and think what a bunch of asses we were riding all the way to the land of stupidity."

That's a long question, but by questioning President Obama on his settled birth issue, you invite related assumptions.

The states with pending legislation include: Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Connecticut, Indiana, Nebraska, Tennessee and Maine. The measure has failed this year in Montana." (Huffingtonpost.com)


One might imagine that these states have the more pressing and authentic problems solved, but given that we are sitting here in Arizona watching the economy bumble along with cuts in taxes and jobs, prolly not. These states are like the student who pauses to excavate the nose with pencil and daydream, while in the middle of a test that is beyond his level of intelligence. 

USA Today Emphasizes Triviality in Measuring Public Sector Compensation

The USA Today presents data showing that on average government workers were compensated about $2500 more than private sector workers. What they fail to do in the creation of their headline, which reads, "Wisconsin one of 41 states where public workers earn more," is actually adjust said headline for the real facts, which are buried in their statement of analysis:

The analysis included full and part-time workers and did not adjust for specific jobs, age, education or experience. In an earlier job-to-job comparison, USA TODAY found that state and local government workers make about the same salary as those in the private sector but get more generous benefits.

(USA Today)

If we read this correctly, USA Today concludes that public sector workers have better total compensation in earnings and benefits, and adjusting for jobs, public sector workers gain more benefits, but they say nothing about whether the previous study adjusts for experience or education, nor do they opt to see if the average is skewed by extremes on the ends. There is a lot of illuminating detail that is left dark.

Anyone eye-roving the paper will likely miss that significant fact that state workers tend to do no better than those of equivalent workers in the private sector in terms of salary. And while missing this fact, they will also fail to question whether the public sector should follow the corporate world down the low benefit path.

Corporations will simultaneously argue that healthcare is out of control, that the benefits must be curbed, while also fighting any real reform efforts that would make benefits for all sustainable.