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  • LONGWALK wants to hear "the fruit of my mind more".  Unfortunately, ain't that much fruit there that's edible, and most of the fruit that is there comes from reading other people's thoughts.  You don't want to hear me complain about my own life, I'm quite sure, and pretty much the only other thing that's in this febrile brain of mine is political in nature.


    But here's an idea for something you can DO.  If you dislike the fascist Dubya, and appreciate populist leaders like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, buy Citgo brand oil and eschew the other brands.  The article below helps to explain why. 


     I was once the editor, incidentally, for the author Jessica Pupovac when she reported for our little "alternative" newspaper here.  It appears that she has moved on to bigger and better things, and that her English has improved.  Or perhaps she just has another good editor. 












    Chicago Turns Down Discounted Venezuelan Oil


    by Jessica Pupovac (bio)


    As Chicago's poorest face an increase to already-high public transit fees, the city is ignoring an offer of discounted diesel fuel to benefit low-income people.



    Chicago, Dec 28 - The Chicago Transit Authority is refusing an opportunity to alleviate commuting costs for hundreds of thousands in the Windy City's low-income neighborhoods. Instead of accepting deeply discounted fuel from the Venezuela-owned Citgo Petroleum Corporation, the city is instead raising fares to solve budget shortfalls.

    In an October meeting with representatives from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the city's Department of Energy and other city officials, Citgo unveiled a plan to provide the Chicago with low-cost diesel fuel. The company's stipulation, at the bidding of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was that the CTA, in turn, pass those savings on to poor residents in the form free or discounted fare cards.

    But two months later, despite claims of a looming budget crisis, the CTA president "has no intent or plan to accept the offer," according to CTA spokesperson Ibis Antongiorgi. She gave no explanation.

    According to Venezuela's consul general in Chicago, Martin Sanchez, the CTA has yet to inform his office of its decision to decline the discount offer.

    In place of the proposed discount, which the CTA apparently does not want Chicagoans to even know about, budget shortfalls will be addressed by fare hikes. Chicagoans who are unaware of the Venezuela offer will be hit with an increase of 25 cents per ride next month, and discounted route-to-route transfers will be eliminated for passengers paying cash.

    "This is going to hurt the poor and the minority people, like me," said Dorothy Chew, resident of Humboldt Park, where one-third of residents live below the federally recognized poverty level – currently just $16,000 for a family of three. Chew relies on the CTA to get to work and to Chicago Commons, where she attends classes daily in preparation for taking her GED. Since she rarely has money to invest in a fare card, she will be forced to pay for transfers the majority of the time.

    Chew's classmate, Linda Cox, works a minimum-wage job and has been a Public Aid recipient for 15 years. She also relies heavily on public transportation.

    "I only earn $560 a month and of that, over $200 a month goes to my bus fare," Cox told The NewStandard. "I have a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old who also need to get to school. If they change the prices and take away transfers, there are going to be a lot of days missed. I already see no money at the end of the month."

    The offer of discount fuel is not just confined to Chicago. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the first of Venezuela's "oil-for-the-poor" programs in the US was launched. Citgo struck a deal with three nonprofit organizations in the Bronx to deliver 5 million gallons of heating oil at 45 percent below the market price. The deal will amount to a savings of $4 million for the 8,000 low-income households slated to benefit from the plan.

    Citgo has made a similar arrangement with Citizens Energy Corp. in Boston for the sale and distribution of 12 million gallons, saving low-income and elderly residents there a total of $10 million. The company's website says that it expects to expand the program to other boroughs in New York City and that it is exploring the possibility of offering discounted fuel to residents in Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

    However, in all of Illinois, only about 12,000 households use heating oil.

    So instead of fuel for heat, Citgo representatives offered the CTA a 40-50 percent discount on diesel fuel for buses to benefit Chicagoans most in need of relief from soaring oil and gas prices this winter.

    "We didn't know how else to reach enough people," said Consul Sanchez.

    Another difference between the Chicago offer and the programs enacted in the Northeast is that Citgo proposed to work with a government agency, rather than nonprofit organizations. The CTA relies on the US federal government – which is in a constant war of words with Venezuelan President Chavez – for much of its funding. In fact, just weeks after Citgo made its offer to the CTA, Congress signed the Federal Transportation Appropriations bill, allocating $89 million in infrastructure project funds the CTA had been seeking for years.

    Representatives from the US State Department and city officials, including Aldermen involved in the negotiations and the Chicago Mayor's Office, refused to respond to queries about whether international politics played any part in the CTA's rejection of Citgo's offer.

    Some critics of President Chavez say his offer of cheap fuel to low-income communities in the US is a political ploy to win the support of the American people. Larry Birns, executive director of the progressive think tank, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, said Chavez is trying to counter Bush administration criticisms with "petro-diplomacy." Birns, who criticizes both US policy toward Venezuela and Chavez's confrontational style, told TNS, "There is a certain amount of humor involved in needling the Bush administration for neglecting it's own while attempting to stand tall in Latin America."

    However, as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research – another progressive think tank – pointed out, the Venezuelan government has been providing cheap fuel to several countries in Latin America. Weisbrot is a staunch supporter of the Chavez administration.

    "It is part of [Venezuela's] policy to compensate for the impact of the high oil prices on poor people," he said. "They don't have any grudge against the American people; it's just the Bush administration that they don't like."

    Consul Sanchez echoed this sentiment. "Any corporation that makes a big profit in a community owes that community something in return," he said. With one of Citgo's three light-oil refineries located in nearby Lemont, 30 minutes outside the city, Sanchez said, Venezuela has "a special relationship with people and community organizations in Chicago."

    There remains no sign, however, that the government of Chicago will take Citgo and Venezuela up on the unilateral offer.

    © 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.

  • The Year 2005 - a Retrospective














    Published on Monday, December 26, 2005 by the Boston Globe

    Staying the Course

    by James Carroll

     


    American intelligence was proving itself inadequate to the challenge. The president appointed a special commission to make recommendations. The year was 1954. The commission chairman was James Doolittle, the retired bomber general who had led the first air raid against Tokyo.


    ''It is now clear," he stated in his report to President Eisenhower, ''that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counter-espionage services, and must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may be necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy."


    Sound familiar? Again and again, in the year now ending, the American people have been told by their leaders that strategies based on a new ''repugnant philosophy" are required if the nation is to survive the challenge facing it. Forbidden incendiary weapons must be used in urban settings. Prisoners of war must be deprived of Geneva protections. Aggressive interrogations of enemies must approach torture. Commitments to provide US combat forces with adequate protective gear must be forsworn. Extrajudicial kidnapping of bad people must be justified. Allies must be pressured into joining secret networks of detention camps.


    Human rights standards must be jettisoned. Traditional obligations to the United Nations must be ignored. Treaties that limit action can be cast aside. Distinctions between foreign and domestic espionage must be left behind, with US citizens subject to unmonitored surveillance by military agencies. Public libraries must be regarded as government peepholes. The lawyer-client privilege must no longer be regarded as sacrosanct. The press must be recruited into the project of information management. Dissent must be labeled as treason.


    A great American erosion has occurred this year, and only now are the contours of what is lost becoming apparent. Much more is at stake than the abandonment of ''longstanding concepts of 'fair-play' " of which Doolittle wrote. To ''subvert, sabotage, and destroy" what threatens us, we have begun to subvert, sabotage, and destroy what protects us: the mutuality of solemn compacts abroad, fundamental safeguards of the Constitution at home. Because the justifying ''state of emergency" is an open-ended war, the trashing of ''hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct" will be permanent. Get used to it.


    Doolittle proposed a break with American traditions and laws for the sake of far more aggressive responses to Soviet communism. The year he did so saw the initiation of unprecedented American covert actions in Iran and Vietnam, with unhappy consequences that reverberate to this day. But Doolittle's remained a minority report in the annals of US government responses. Eisenhower was neither as freaked out by what threatened as his commission chairman, nor as indifferent to basic decency as a standard of national identity. To Doolittle's credit, he and those who saw things his way understood themselves as occupying the country's shadows. They knew enough to be ashamed of what they thought was necessary.


    Where is the shame in Washington today? How does Donald Rumsfeld not blush in the presence of the soldiers he so routinely betrays? How does Dick Cheney maintain that straight face, treating core values as a joke? The recasting of the nation's moral meaning -- a blatant embrace of ends-justify-the-means -- is happening in plain daylight. No shadows here.


    Every time the Bush administration is caught in one of its repugnant purposes (Thank God, again this year, for Seymour Hersh), the White House declares its intention to stay the course. Torture? Wiretapping? Kidnapping? Deceit? The president's eyes widen: Trust me, he says with a twisted smile. Then he leans closer to display a snarling defiance. The combination reduces his critics to sputters.


    Perhaps Bush's savviest achievement has been to make the public think that Rumsfeld and Cheney are the dark geniuses behind the administration's malevolence. If Bush is taken as too shallow to have a fascist ideology; as too weak to stick with hard policies that undermine democracy; as a religious nutcase whose apocalyptic fantasies don't matter; as a man, in sum, the average citizen can regard as slightly less than average -- then what he is pulling off will not be called by its proper name until it is too late. 2005? Oh yes, that was the year of the coup.


    James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.


    © 2005 Boston Globe


    ###



  • This is in all likelihood my final poem, at least for a long while.  The events that gave rise to the poem took place in 1981, but it's a fairly universal theme.  I hope it isn't applicable to you this holiday season.  God bless each and every one of you reading this.


     


     


    A CHRISTMAS VISITATION


     


     


    The eggnog went undrunk,


              and the Scrabble and the record went unplayed.


    No time tonight for these! 


              So much to say, explore, and share, so little time!


    Things old yet ever new,


              discussed a thousand times before -


              and still she stayed,


    Loath to leave, and I to give her leave -


              Oh, mystic moments, bitter yet sublime!


     


     


    But all too soon the witching hour came -


              so on with boots and scarf and coat.


    Soft words, eyes searching souls, last lingering hugs -


              then out into the night.


    I watch her from the doorway, fighting tears,


              as unseen demons mock and gloat.


    Emotions soar and plummet


              like an eagle in his lone majestic flight.


     


     


    But for aspirin on the counter,


              footies on the kitchen floor,


              it all would seem


    (The memory of her gentleness and warmth,


              softly-scented silken hair)


    Mere figments of a fantasy, mirages,


              phantom figures in a dream.


    Rooms once more silent, empty now -


              yet transformed briefly by her presence there.


     


     






    I go outdoors again just moments later -


              all is somber, cold, and still.


    A barren, lunar landscape,


              starkly white in the streetlight's hazy glow.


    Involuntary shudders course my body -


              far, far more than winter's chill!


    All, all has vanished in the night,


              save tire tracks faint imprinted in the snow.


     


     


    Helpless hands hang limply, shoulders sag,


              numb feet are dragged by feeble knees.


    (Her every gesture vivid,


              and the mind recalls, replays each word she spoke.)


    Profound despair and hope contending for the soul


              (the demons taunt and tease!).....


     


    "Good-bye!  Have a good life!"  


              .....wished devoutly, but intangible as smoke.


     


     


                                       J.B.W.


                                       copyright 1981


     


  • Angels We Have Heard on High

    Well, Xanga has begun to grow quiet, like a Christmas eve night with new-fallen snow.  I've not been getting the visitors/eProps/comments I deserve.    Nevertheless here's one of the nicest Christmas cards I've ever received.  I got it last year, and I really love the image.


    In the next couple of days I'll be posting the final one in the series of what one of my sporadic and more critical readers has termed my "hackneyed" poems.


     



     

  • More Swell Christmas Fun

  • Swell Christmas Fun

  • Yes, I'm afraid those godless liberals have done it again.  They've put together a web site that purports to break down the monetary cost of the war in Iraq to date, so that you can see how much it has already cost your city or county, and ultimately you yourself and your family, to ensure that those citizens of Iraq who still remain alive will enjoy the same freedumbs that we enjoy here in the good old U.S. of A.   Go here


    http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=61


    to see how the godless liberals use "funny math" to distort the truth and undermine our great nation by giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

     

    **********

     

    Now here's what the godless liberals think we should be doing with your hard-earned tax dollars, in lieu of providing freedumb and democrazy for those Iraqis we decide not to kill:

     


    According to the Cost of War web site  http://costofwar.com/ ,

    for what the US has spent on wrecking...errr, liberating Iraq, we could have:


    * fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 9 years


    * fully funded global anti-AIDS programs for 22 years


    * assured that every child in the world was given basic immunizations for the next 74 years


    * paid for 29.6 million children to attend Head Start


    * built 2 million public housing units

     

    **********

     

    While you're at it, check out sizoda1's latest blog entry, entitled "You Can't Govern If You Don't Believe in Government".  Never mind....she protects her posts now, so I'll reprint it here.  It's a good example of how the "liberal media" distorts the truth to portray Ronald Reagan as something less than The Greatest President Who Ever Lived, and the current administration as slightly less principled and exemplary than the Founding Fathers.

     


    You Can't Govern if You Don't Believe in Government


    Thom Hartmann


    In a May 25, 2001 interview, Grover Norquist told National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."


    Norquist got his wish. Democracy - and at least several thousand people, most of them Democrats, black, and poor - drowned last week in the basin of New Orleans. Our nation failed in its response, because for most of the past 25 years conservatives who don't believe in governance have run our government.


    As incompetent as George W. Bush has been in his response to the disaster in New Orleans, he wasn't the one who began the process that inevitably led to that disaster spiraling out of control.


    That would be Ronald Reagan.


    It was Reagan who began the deliberate and intentional destruction of the United States of America when he famously cracked (and then incessantly repeated): "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"


    Reagan, like George W. Bush after him, failed to understand that when people come together into community, and then into nationhood, that they organize themselves to protect themselves from predators, both human and corporate, both domestic and foreign. This form of organization is called government.


    But the Reagan/Bush ideologues don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, they agree, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - perhaps most important - corporations.


    Let the corporations handle your old-age pension. Let the corporations decide how much protection we and our environment need from their toxics. Let the corporations decide what we're paid. Let the corporations decide what doctor we can see, when, and for what purpose.


    This is the exact opposite of the vision for which the Founders of this nation fought and died. When Thomas Jefferson changed John Locke's "Life, liberty, and private property" to "Live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it was the first time in the history of the world that a newly founded nation had written the word "happiness" into its founding document. The phrase "promote the general welfare" - another revolutionary concept - first appeared in the preamble to our Constitution in 1787.


    Talk show cons and TV talking head cons and political cons - both Republican and DLC Democratic - repeat the mantra of "smaller government," and Americans nod their heads in agreement, not realizing the hidden agenda at work.


    Reagan was the first American president to actually preach that his own job was a bad thing. He once said, "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." One can only assume he was speaking of himself and his fellow Republicans, and certainly the current Congress's devotion to the interests of inherited wealth and large corporations displays how badly his philosophy has corrupted a role so noble it drew idealists like Jefferson, Lincoln, and the two Roosevelts.


    But cons can't imagine anybody wanting to devote their lives to the service of their nation. The highest calling in their minds is to make profit.


    As Reagan said: "The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."


    This mind-set - that the only purpose for service in government is to set up the interests of business - may account for why not a single military-eligible member of the Bush or Cheney families has enlisted in their parents' "Noble Cause," whereas all four sons of Franklin Roosevelt joined and each was decorated - on merit - for bravery in the deadly conflict of World War II.


    There are, after all, no reasons in the conservative worldview for government service other than self-enrichment. As Ronald Reagan said: "Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."


    What they don't say is that the reason they want to remove government in its protective capacity is because they can then make an enormous amount of money, and have a lot of control over people's lives, when they privatize former governmental functions. They want a power vacuum, so corporations and the rich can step in. And with no limits on the inheritability of riches after the "death tax" is ended, wealth vast enough to take over the government can emerge.


    Given this conservative world-view, it shouldn't surprise us that in 2001 George W. Bush appointed his 2000 presidential campaign manager (Joseph Albaugh) as head of FEMA, or that two years later Albaugh would have left FEMA to start a consulting firm to marry corporations with Iraq "reconstruction" federal dollars, and put in charge of FEMA his assistant (and old college roommate), an equally unqualified former failed executive with the International Arabian Horse Association.


    It also shouldn't surprise us that although Dick Cheney has stayed on vacation in Wyoming through all of this, his company, Halliburton, has already obtained a multi-million-dollar contract to profit from Hurricane Katrina's cleanup.


    It's not that these conservatives are incompetent or stupid. When their interests are at stake, they can be very efficient. Consider when Hurricane Charley hit Jeb Bush's state - a year earlier than Katrina - on the second weekend of August, 2004, just months before the elections. The White House website notes:


    As of noon Monday [the day after the hurricane left], in response to Hurricane Frances, FEMA and other Federal response agencies have taken the following actions:


    -- About one hundred trucks of water and 280 trucks of ice are present or will arrive in the Jacksonville staging area today. 900,000 Meals-Ready-to-Eat are on site in Jacksonville, ready to be distributed.


    -- Over 7,000 cases of food (e.g., vegetables, fruits, cheese, ham, and turkey) are scheduled to arrive in Winter Haven today. Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) are on the ground and setting up comfort stations. FEMA community relations personnel will coordinate with DMATs to assist victims. -- Urban Search and Rescue Teams are completing reconnaissance missions in coordination with state officials.


    -- FEMA is coordinating with the Department of Energy and the state to ensure that necessary fuel supplies can be distributed throughout the state, with a special focus on hospitals and other emergency facilities that are running on generators.


    -- The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin its efforts to provide tarps to tens of thousands of owners of homes and buildings that have seen damage to their roofs.


    -- The National Guard has called up 4,100 troops in Florida, as well as thousands in other nearby states to assist in the distribution of supplies and in preparation for any flooding.


    -- The Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense together have organized 300 medical personnel to be on standby. Medical personnel will begin deployment to Florida tomorrow.


    -- FEMA is coordinating public information messages with Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina so that evacuees from Florida can be informed when it is safe to return. -- In addition to federal personnel already in place to respond to Hurricane Charley, 1,000 additional community relations personnel are being deployed to Atlanta for training and further assignment in Florida.


    All of this aid was vitally important to Bush family political fortunes in the upcoming election of 2004. Disaster relief checks were in the mail within a week. In just the first thirteen days after Hurricane Charley hit Florida, the White House web site notes that the Bush administration had succeeded in:


    -- Registering approximately 136,000 assistance applicants


    -- Approving over 13,500 applications for more than $59 million in housing assistance


    -- Establishing 12 disaster recovery centers, which have assisted nearly 19,000 disaster victims


    -- Deploying medical teams that have seen nearly 3,000 patients


    -- Disbursing 1.2 million liters of water, 8.1 million pounds of ice, and 2 million meals and snacks


    -- Delivering over 20,000 rolls of plastic sheeting and nearly 170 generators


    -- Treating more than 2,900 individuals through FEMA Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, supporting damaged hospitals


    That, of course, was for a Republican State, with a Republican governor, the crony brother of the President. Republicans needed to act like they cared about governing, because they wanted people to vote for them three months later.


    But now, with no election looming and with death stalking a Democratic State with a Democratic Governor unrelated to the President, we once again see the Reagan philosophy held ascendant. Bush's call to action? "Send cash to the Red Cross." One of those "thousand points of light" non-governmental organizations his father told us about.


    As Brian Gurney, a listener from California, noted: "You can't govern if you don't believe in government."


    But you sure can make a buck, and take care of your brother, your campaign manager, and your vice president's company.




    Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, host of a daily progressive talk radio show syndicated nationally by Air America Radio, and host of a morning progressive talk show on KPOJ in Portland, Oregon. www.thomhartmann.com/commondreams.shtml His most recent books are The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Unequal Protection, We The People, The Edison Gene, and What Would Jefferson Do?


     

     

  • We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Thanksgiving Programming....

    ....to bring you this special political announcement.


    I'm not a big fan of Antonin Scalia and his "strict constructionist" views, as I think that the Constitution is or should be a "living document".  And on some level I do agree with Zaphod Beeblebrox, quoted below.  But our beloved Mr. Bush is a horse of an altogether different color.  Note, incidentally, his Xtian manner of expressing himself when the cameras aren't rolling....


    **********



       Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a

       goddamned piece of paper'

       By Doug Thompson

       Capitol Hill Blue

       Friday, December 9, 2005


     


    Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the

    Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk

    about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.


    Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked

    period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks,

    caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American

    Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent

    conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose

    renewal.


    GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more

    onerous provisions of the act could further alienate

    conservatives still mad at the President from his botched

    attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the

    Supreme Court.


    "I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President

    and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."


    "Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a

    valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the

    Constitution."


    "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed

    back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"


    I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day

    and they all confirm that the President of the United States

    called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper."


    And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the

    United States is little more than toilet paper stained from

    all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped

    on the freedoms that "goddamned piece of paper" used to guarantee.


    Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House

    counsel, wrote that the "Constitution is an outdated document."


    Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal

    beliefs. It doesn't matter if you are a Democrat, Republican

    or Independent. It doesn't matter if you support the invasion

    or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has

    stood for two centuries as the defining document of our

    government, the final source to determine -­ in the end --­ if

    something is legal or right.


    Every federal  official -­ including the President -­ who takes

    an oath of office swears to "uphold and defend the

    Constitution of the United States."


    Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when

    someone calls the Constitution a "living document."


    ""Oh, how I hate the phrase we have—a 'living document,'"

    Scallia says. "We now have a Constitution that means whatever

    we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism,

    for Pete's sake."


    As a judge, Scalia says, "I don't have to prove that the

    Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better

    than anything else."


    President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the

    Constitution over the last five years, including a

    controversial amendment to define marriage as a "union between

    a man and woman." Members of Congress have proposed some

    11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of

    the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion.


    Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution

    comes from a loss of rights.


    "We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones,"

    Scalia warns. "Don't think that it's a one-way street."


    And don't buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is

    a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law

    that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and, as

    one brave aide told President Bush, something that undermines

    the Constitution of the United States.


    But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just

    "a goddamned piece of paper."



    "Look property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property.

    Therefore this ship is mine, Okay?"

    -Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe


    When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag

    and carrying a cross.

    -Sinclair Lewis

  • Thanksgiving, Part One

    Prologue:  Gino Sitson is absolutely unbelievable.  I just discovered him.  He's from Cameroon, and does intricate vocal harmonies reminiscent of Bobby McFerrin in "Circlesongs".  The liner notes for "400 Years After" read, "This is the story of the enslavement of a people which still continues 400 years later...a people who would like to be apologized to as well."


     


    **********


     


    I’m not sure who wants to read about this or why, but I promised a recap of my little Thanksgiving holiday trip, “set in a political context”.  I thought there were a couple of points worth making in there somewhere, and I’ll try to find ‘em again.  So here goes:


     


    Thanksgiving, Part One


     


    On Thanksgiving afternoon I braved the bone-chilling Illinois prairie wind to drive up to Chicago in my 22-year-old pickup truck with the piss-poor gas mileage and the slow leak in the right front tire caused by a RIM that is rusted out around the valve, if you can imagine such a thing.  I guess I don’t have to tell you how rusty the REST of the truck is.


     


    I had been invited by a dear young African-American friend, whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing for several years now and who has become like a daughter to me, to have Thanksgiving dinner at her grandmother’s house and to meet her family.  “Monique” and I went to the same Ivy League college, albeit 31 years apart, and we first met when I read about her in an alumni publication and e-mailed her something like “While I celebrate your accomplishments, I urge you not to forget your roots, where you came from.”  Her gracious response blossomed into an e-mail correspondence and eventually a personal relationship for which I am most grateful.


     


    So I went to this tumble-down two-story house in the heart of Chicago’s south-side inner city, where Monique’s grandmother resides.  There was a series of little rooms, scarcely larger than hallways, whose arrangement would be almost impossible to describe in words….something like two railroad trains consisting of three cars each, sitting side by side and joined by two doors.  The kitchen linoleum was torn and the house sagged so badly that all of the doorways were out of square, making it difficult or impossible to close the doors.  Somewhat incongruously, there was a stained-glass “church” window just inside the front door.  In the tiny kitchen without adequate cabinet or counter space, Monique’s grandmother performed the Herculean labor of cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 30-40 people.  The only person who furnished any food for the meal, other than the grandmother herself, was Monique.  Oh, and I took a coconut creme pie. 


     


    Fortunately I was greeted at the door by someone I knew – Monique’s husband from Tanzania.  I soon saw Monique and their baby boy, and began to be introduced to all the relatives, some forty of them as the afternoon progressed.  I managed to remember the names of perhaps a third of them, and spent the rest of the day trying to understand who was related to whom and in what way.  I was the sole “marshmallow” present.  Besides Monique and her husband, I mainly had a nice long chat with the grandmother – the typical African-American matriarch who, by dint of sheer will, manages to hold the family together with metaphorical coat hangers and duct tape.


     


    I felt a bit like a cultural anthropologist as I met the family and observed their interactions.  While the grandmother has pretty much adhered to the straight-and-narrow, a number of her children (including Monique’s mother) have had problems with crack addiction, spent time in prison, etc.  Even had I not been apprised of the situation by Monique, it was evident in their speech and mannerisms.


     


    Of all the grandchildren, Monique is the only one to my knowledge who has attended college of any sort, let alone an Ivy League institution.  She attributes that to the fact that she, unlike her three younger siblings, was raised from an early age by her grandmother, who made sure she got into magnet schools and otherwise had opportunities to realize her potential.  Monique’s younger siblings, raised by their mother, still have a spark of intelligence in their eyes, but it will probably never be fanned into a flame, and the spark will eventually die out as it has in the mother’s generation.


     


    Monique struggles, as I did 31 years before, with her identity.  She is caught between the mythology of the “American dream” and the reality of her past and present environment, between her personal integrity and the gritty amoral imperatives of the “real world”.  She has the Ivy League education, but is not at all sure how to make use of it.  She has returned to Chicago without mentors there, or the support of an “old boy network”.  She has had few decent role models in her life.  She would like to help her siblings, but doesn’t know how other than by trying to be a role model for THEM, which she can do only at a distance.  She also feels the need to help her husband, who is an intelligent and wonderful guy but nevertheless is lacking in formal education.  And she is raising a baby.  Altogether a daunting task, which she is tackling with courage and fortitude, one day at a time.


     


    Monique and I are candid with one another, and talk about anything and everything.  On the ride back to her place I commented that I had hoped to gain some perspective into Monique by meeting her family, but felt that I still had very little understanding of how she got to be who she is.  I said that it seemed to me that she had been dropped from some other planet into that family.  She replied that she often felt that way, too, and that if it wasn’t for her grandmother she might be just like the rest of them.


     


    Monique illustrates for me the vital importance of positive intervention in our lives at crucial times.  The typical “conservative” will tell you that racism is a thing of the past, and that people’s life outcomes are determined solely by their own choices.  One need only meet a family like Monique’s to recognize the profane superficiality of such a view.  Without help, without positive role models, a child’s options are severely limited.  If a person does not perceive that she has any choices, then in fact no choices exist for her.  This is true, I might add, whether you’re white or black or Asian – whatever ethnicity you are.


     


    Later, in a telephone conversation, Monique was telling me a statistic from an article she had just read.   Currently the median net worth of African-American families – in Chicago, in Illinois, in the United States, I’m not sure of the demographic – is $7,500.  The median net worth of white families in the same demographic is $79,000.  This is illustrative of one of the many lingering effects of slavery and racial discrimination.  One of the primary ways in which wealth is accumulated is through inheritance, of real estate and other assets.  Until very recently, black families had few if any tangible assets to pass on to their children.  Many still don’t; Monique will find herself in the company of those who inherit little or nothing.


     


    Well, I don’t know how to end this.  Whenever and wherever you can, be a mentor.  If you’re white, make some African-American friends and simply LISTEN to them.  Your efforts will be rewarded many times over, and the world will be a better place.


     


    Oh, and stay tuned for the exciting sequel, “Thanksgiving, Part Two”.  

  • Why is it....

    ....that I get more comments when I'm GONE than when I'm here? 


    I'm wanting to tell you a little bit about my Thanksgiving holidays - placing events in a political context of course   - but so far I haven't had the energy to actually type it all out.  And tomorrow I have my world music radio show to do.  Please bear with me.


    I love you guys.  I really do.  Most of you know that.