btchakir's blog

I think the oil spill is getting us to think more about about what humankind has done to the other living creatures that make up the Gulf's biosphere. As I was searching for something completely different (the source of the joke "Death or Moobli" which I laughed heartily over as a read a book on conversation that I picked up at the Shepherdstown Library... I'll repeat it further down the post), I discovered this small video entitled "Tortoise helps tortoise":

We see that in its slow-motion way, a tortoise actually rescues one of its kind... evaluates the situation, gets into position and pulls off a turnover.

I'm not sure what the human response would be in the same situation. I mean, after all, we can talk and evaluate things...

"Are you drunk?"

"What's it worth to you?"

"Look... if I have time...I'll send someone."

Is this an opportunity to take someone's territory? Steal their wallet? Laugh at their situation?

And so the joke (thanks to Daniel Menaker in "A Good Talk"):
Two missionaries are captured by a tribe of natives deep in the heart of the jungle. They are tied up to poles and surrounded by dancing tribe members and it doesn't look too good for them. Finally, the Chief stops the dancing, faces the two missionaries and says:

"You have a choice. Death or Moobli?" (Why the Chief speaks English, I don't know.)

One missionary, thinking that death has got to be the worst choice, asks for Moobli. The Chief raises his hand and the tribal members untie the missionary from the post and proceed to beat him, strip him of his clothes, yell insults at him, urinate and defecate on him, make him run through a double line of the tribe's children who pelt him with stones and finally they leave him sobbing in a pile of garbage. He is shattered, a broken man, and goes insane.

The second missionary, seeing what has happened to the first, decides that it would be better to be dead than go through the horrible and unbearable punishment that his associate had, looks at the Chief and says;

"I choose Death!"

The Chief raises his arms and says: "Death!.... But first, Moobli!"

Hopefully, I haven't ruined it in the retelling. This tells me a lot about what life is like among people.

http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com

I guess we'll know tomorrow with his "speech to the nation," as it is being called by the TV Pundits. It's been 56 days now since the explosion that started the oil eruption under water and just about everything that has been tried has been functionally useless (there's a cap of sorts taking our a small percentage of the flow, but not enough to make a difference, and two relief wells are being drilled to cut off the leak itself, but we're about two months away from it happening).

BP is spending millions on advertising where they say that they are taking "full responsibility" for the leak and the cleanup, and that no American taxpayers will have to pay for this. Of course, such a statement is utter bullshit, since all the news shows talk about lately is business owners and fishermen on the Gulf who have appealed to BP for recompense do to their losses in the tragedy and have not been able to get the oil company to pay for anything.

BP put this out on it's website:
BP's onshore response efforts have rapidly expanded, with equipment and people staged and ready in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. BP has positioned rapid response teams in Alabama and Louisiana to enable quick response and cleaning of areas where oil may come ashore. These 12-person teams will assess initial impacts, and then call in a larger contingent of trained responders and volunteers to clean the affected area.
If that sounds good you should tie it to the word yesterday afternoon from Alabama that their beaches were now covered with tarballs and oil mass and their summer tourist season has been destroyed (along with the wildlife.) So much for "rapid response." One of the things Obama is supposed to be doing today is speaking with BP officials. Let's see if that gets him anywhere.

Joe Scarborough made what I thought was the best suggestion on his show this morning...and I rarely agree with Joe Scarborough... when he said that Obama should use the "speech to the nation" to bring our National Dream into a non-oil-dependent energy target. He compared it to JFK's famous speech pledging to put a man on the moon in a decade.

This from Scarborough:
"I would make the John Kennedy speech that by the end of the decade, we will go to the moon. This president can say, thank god it's the beginning of the decade, by the end of a decade, America will break its dependence on foreign oil. By the end of the decade, we will control our own destiny. By the end of the decade, we will be positioned to dominate the world in energy for the next century. We will do it because we must do it..."
That's a terrific idea.

I'll be astonished if it happens.

http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com

I guess we'll know tomorrow with his "speech to the nation," as it is being called by the TV Pundits. It's been 56 days now since the explosion that started the oil eruption under water and just about everything that has been tried has been functionally useless (there's a cap of sorts taking our a small percentage of the flow, but not enough to make a difference, and two relief wells are being drilled to cut off the leak itself, but we're about two months away from it happening).

BP is spending millions on advertising where they say that they are taking "full responsibility" for the leak and the cleanup, and that no American taxpayers will have to pay for this. Of course, such a statement is utter bullshit, since all the news shows talk about lately is business owners and fishermen on the Gulf who have appealed to BP for recompense do to their losses in the tragedy and have not been able to get the oil company to pay for anything.

BP put this out on it's website:
BP's onshore response efforts have rapidly expanded, with equipment and people staged and ready in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. BP has positioned rapid response teams in Alabama and Louisiana to enable quick response and cleaning of areas where oil may come ashore. These 12-person teams will assess initial impacts, and then call in a larger contingent of trained responders and volunteers to clean the affected area.
If that sounds good you should tie it to the word yesterday afternoon from Alabama that their beaches were now covered with tarballs and oil mass and their summer tourist season has been destroyed (along with the wildlife.) So much for "rapid response." One of the things Obama is supposed to be doing today is speaking with BP officials. Let's see if that gets him anywhere.

Joe Scarborough made what I thought was the best suggestion on his show this morning...and I rarely agree with Joe Scarborough... when he said that Obama should use the "speech to the nation" to bring our National Dream into a non-oil-dependent energy target. He compared it to JFK's famous speech pledging to put a man on the moon in a decade.

This from Scarborough:
"I would make the John Kennedy speech that by the end of the decade, we will go to the moon. This president can say, thank god it's the beginning of the decade, by the end of a decade, America will break its dependence on foreign oil. By the end of the decade, we will control our own destiny. By the end of the decade, we will be positioned to dominate the world in energy for the next century. We will do it because we must do it..."
That's a terrific idea.

I'll be astonished if it happens.

http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com

"They got everything else in the entire bureaucracy that they need to control our healthcare system ... with the signing of this bill. ... That's why repealing this bill has to be our No. 1 priority."
- Republican Minority Leader John Boehner on a live radio show announcing his intention.
Repubs are pulling this out on the week that the first b$250.00 Medicare supplement checks are going out to seniors. Tim Kaine, head of the Democratic National Committee is daring the Repubs to make this destructive repeal move the focus of their fall campaign to win back Congress and has challenged Boehner and Company to reveal the things they'd take away from Americans and give back to Insurance Companies.

Today the DNC will release this television ad:

Back in March, he President made it clear that Democrats wanted Repubs to use health care repeal in their campaign:
"Now that we passed it, they're already promising to repeal it. They're actually going to run on a platform of repeal this November. And my attitude is, 'Go for it.'"

"If they wanna have that fight, we can have it," he went on. "Because I don't believe the American people are gonna put the insurance industry back in the driver's seat. We've already been there, we're not going back. This country's moving forward."

Looks like Boehner is walking right into it. One would hope.

(thanks to TPM for staying on top of all this.)

http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com

OK. As we look at the alarming crisis that BP and the oil industry has brought us to, as we evaluate the amount of military spending we are pouring into the middle east for no evident return (and as we consistently apologize for killing innocent civilians with airborne missiles), as we observe politicians and lobbyists letting payoffs and focused fundraising deny the needs of voters in favor of the needs of corporations, as we see the Supreme Court gradually eliminate generations of civil rights achievements, we are getting more and more convinced that making a change in America... indeed in the whole world... is getting less and less possible.

Bummer.

Our air is polluted, as are our seas and lakes. Species we would like to preserve are becoming extinct, while species of new (to our shores) and dangerous insects are coming out in the changed environment to sting us with new diseases appearing in their wake. The climate... oh, the climate... it is getting warmer and, in some areas drier, and less beneficial to our agriculture. Our food sources might just disappear by the end of the century.

Yet it would seem that the public is more concerned with the price of SUV's (which, of course, 95% of which are not used as off-road vehicles or for any sports/utility purpose whatever, and which pollute and use more fossil fuel than smaller, more efficient vehicles) than they are with the price that food, water and air will cost us in the very near future. Much of this is due to the prominence of advertising as the functioning basis of ALL of our media (and if you think public broadcasting avoids this, just start keeping track of all the donor companies that get noted with hardly subtle ads at the beginnings and end of programs ... and guess how much influence these companies have on what is broadcast or reported.)

We listen to liars on television these days... like the corporate officer of BP telling us that this kind of crisis has never happened before less than a week after 60 Minutes publicly demonstrated that these crises happen all the time. We don't want accountability debated... we need something done... something changed in how government and business work for people as opposed to profits.

So we will go our way into more organic gardening, and less automobile travel, and more working in our own local community, and less falling into trusting silence as those who are "leading" us become millionaires as we become the new poor.

If nothing changes, we most likely have ourselves to blame.

http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com

...Rand Paul, winner of the Kentucky Republican Senate Primary.In an interview last night, Paul told Maddow that he agrees with most parts of the Civil Rights Act, except for one (Title II), that made it a crime for private businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of race. Paul explained that had he been in office during debate of bill, he would have tried to change the legislation. He said that it stifled first amendment rights.

Rachel pushed for specifics:

Maddow:... How about desegregating lunch counters?   

Maddow: Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul.

Oh Boy... this is going to make Kentucky a real fight. Paul faces Democratic Senate candidate and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway in the general election to replace Republican Sen. Jim Bunning on November 2, 2010...

Here's a big chunk of the Maddow show if you think you haven't heard enough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4FTd-1m-o&feature=player_embedded

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As I thought about Florida Rep. Ted Deutch's quote in my previous post this morning, I also recalled a discussion I head either on Olbermann or Rachel Maddow last night ( I really wasn't looking at who was talking, but was lying flat on my back after taking a pain killer for my cracked ribs) in which a Republican said he was really in agreement on the nuclear decisions that the President had come to, but in terms of voting for the treaty with the Russians he would probably have to vote NO. The reason? Because the Party Leaders are insistent on not supporting anything the President does prior to the November elections.

The goal is, still, to make the current Administration a failure.

This is very upsetting to hear at this point, since Obama has been making such real accomplishments that it is clear even the Republican individuals actually realize it and, often, agree with The President on many of his views. That the Republicans have chosen through their leadership (and here we must single out Boehner and McConnell as the Elected Leadership, plus Gingrich and Palin as the Unelected Leadership) to barrage the Press and public with anti-positions to every Obama pro-position, that they can maintain that there is public support for the Righties in November.

And there are polls... polls which don't seem to agree with actual votes when they happen... polls which have a lean to one side or the other before they are carried out and evaluated. It has stopped me from looking at polls altogether.

Before Ted Deutch winning his special election, it was clear to all the world that a Republican would take that seat. So, lo and behold, what happened? Did the constituents (especially the retired seniors who are the weight of Deutch's district) realize that they are actually protected b the new Health Care law... that they are likely to save money..that there is no Death Panel to report to?

And won't the rest of America realize what they got from the Health Care Law, and from Obama's other successes, when they go to the polls in November. I think there is going to be a surprise for both the Republicans and the Press.

http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com

I've really only been to Los Angeles to spend time once, but during that time one of the most important things for me was to visit the Watts Towers, the folk art monument and masterpiece in one of the city's worst neighborhoods. The Watts Towers have been on my interest list since I first read about them in the early 1960s while a student at Northwestern (I got interested in them after seeing a black and white photograph on the cover of a paperback volume of poetry), and I have been monitoring their condition and appearance ever since.

Yesterday's LA Times pointed out a falloff, due to the economy, in support from the County of Los Angeles in the maintenance of the Towers, Here is a section :
L.A.'s municipal budget crisis has hastened the need to find help just to continue the partial measures that have been the rule. Because of layoffs, a hiring freeze and an early retirement plan aimed at trimming city employment rolls, the Department of Cultural Affairs expects to see its staffing reduced from 70 positions to 37 by July 1. Among the employees being lost to early retirement, Garay said, are Virginia Kazor, longtime curator of the Watts Towers and another historic landmark, Hollyhock House, which architect Frank Lloyd Wright planted on a Hollywood hilltop in 1921.

The towers, topping out at just under 100 feet high, were created single-handedly by Simon Rodia, an uneducated Italian immigrant stonemason who built them in his spare time from 1921 to 1954. He created the framework of steel, wire and concrete and ornamented the three main spires and their 14 surrounding sculptural elements with colorful bits of broken glass, pottery and seashells.

Especially after they were left untouched during the 1965 Watts riots, the towers gained symbolic heft as an emblem of resilience, individual initiative, underdog achievement and potential rebirth.
It is well- known, actually a part of the Towers' historic mythology, that Rodia, after spending over 30 years creating the architectural model, deeded the property to a neighbor in 1955 and moved away. He died in 1965 in Martinez, California age 86. In 1959 William Cartwright and Nicholas King purchased the lot for $3000. It was later given to the City. That the Towers have survived this long is in itself somewhat of a miracle.
LACMA officials said they would lend their expertise to help conserve the towers. They also promised to help raise private donations to keep them in good repair. That's critical, because heat and moisture continually create cracks in the towers and the fanciful structures surrounding them, and the eye-popping ornamentation -- seashells and pottery shards and discarded tiles and glass bottles -- often falls off. The cost of deferred conservation work has been estimated at $5 million, yet the city will struggle to scrape up $200,000 for the landmark next year, and the Cultural Affairs staff is being cut nearly in half. Among the departures is the towers' curator.

If the Watts Towers were located in, say, Westwood, they might be a more internationally renowned symbol of the city than the Hollywood sign. Then again, if they weren't tucked at the end of a cul de sac in a poor and gang-wracked neighborhood, there's a good chance that by now they would have been torn down and replaced by a mini-mall or a housing tract. Notorious for bulldozing its historic structures, Los Angeles is also remarkably stingy when it comes to support for the arts.

Rodia's gift to the city is far too precious to be lost to history.
One of the things that the LA Times pointed out to me was how few visitors, relative to the quantity of tourists visiting LA and to the actual visits by residents themselves, the Watts Towers actually get. Seeing them in person is something I will never forget. The were splendid, remarkable creations ... creative expressions of an Italian craftsman who spent a major part of his life making them. If you get the chance to see them in person, don't pass it up.

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And have you noticed that even when they are "in Session" they throw away most of Monday and Friday with traveling? And have you noticed that from Tuesday to Thursday Senators are rarely on the floor, so they are spending more time having Quorum Calls than they are debating?

Have you noticed that when they are debating neither side ever seems to be actually "debating" with the other side... like they don't respond to each others' comments and queries? And have you noticed that even when they do comment on a question from the other side they never really provide an accurate answer?

Have you noticed that religious holidays (like Good Friday) are observed as National Events, despite the separation of Church and State? And have you noticed that NO political party actually represents the declining Middle Class? And have you noticed that Health Care legislation should be renamed Health Insurance Company Preservation legislation?

Have you noticed that our government, our media, our students and, well, everyone else, have become more and more illiterate (misspellings on CNBC bottom-screen trailers pointed this out to me as well... or as my wife said "...but it's CNBC!" as if that implied that a major financial network should not mistake "hole" with "whole"... as in "Secretary Geithner is getting us out of a whole")? And have you noticed that no attention is paid to this increased illiteracy at all? By anyone?

There's more... oh yes, there's much more to notice, but most people are more concerned with carrying guns to public events, or paying no taxes for demanded services, or not missing Desperate Housewives. You can argue with me and say all this is not true, but could you prove it?

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