Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

…And the carnage continues, unabated and mostly unnoticed. Unnoticed because it usually happens to poor people, living poor lives, in poor and broken neighborhoods. Its reasons are multitude but well known: poverty, desperation, a deranged narcotics policy, an under funded and poorly managed public education system, a corrupt criminal justice system with misplaced priorities, a dearth of effective social services, an overabundance of cheap firearms in the hands of teenagers, inadequate mental health services and on and on.

I haven’t heard the sound of gunfire from my own home since I moved a year or so ago. Even before that, the sound of gunshots at night, in my old neighborhood, was slowly abating, moving ever further away as housing prices rose. Despite my relative safety, one of the murders listed the article that got me thinking about this awful topic occurred two blocks from my home while I was watching the Eagles – Steelers game and drinking too much beer. My wife and I and our friend, who watched the game with us, heard nothing as a maniac bludgeoned a gifted young woman to death with a baseball bat. We heard no sirens – no ambulance – nothing. A weird feeling to be sure.

In a country that wasn’t half off its nut, the daily bloodbath that occurs on the streets of our cities and towns would be a top priority. Addressing the underlying issues would be of the utmost importance, considered critical to our nation’s survival - crucial to achieving national greatness. In a country that wasn’t half off its nut that is.

IT TAKES your breath away.

The horrible truth is there’s a war on in the city, and innocents are being killed.

From the Washingon Post:

House Republicans proposed changing their rules last night to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in a leadership post, a move that would benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, according to GOP leaders.

Shame, humility and ethical behavior are in such short supply, that anybody who could bottle the stuff would be a millionaire. Well maybe. I kind of doubt the GOP would be buying.

If you haven’t had a look at The Liberal Avenger yet, you should. It’s new to me, but the writing and observations are top notch. This particular post really moved me this morning, as it catches something I’ve been feeling, but have been unable to articulate myself in any meaningful way. Here’s a little but go read the whole thing.

I take back my reluctant resignation and understanding of why taking Fallujah was important. It wasn’t. None of the war is important. It is abject stupidity. The wanton, mechanized destruction of people and property. An insane, artificial push towards entropy - the antithesis of the civilization and values for which we stand.

We’ve devolved into one of the final, absurd stages of war - the destruction of a city in order to save it. Examine the language: “Liberate Fallujah.” “Pacify Fallujah.” Peace and Freedom in a smoldering city filled with corpses that has been reduced to rubble.

E.J. Dionne Jr asks a magnificently stupid question in his column this morning: “So will moderate Republicans stand up?”. Hahahahaha. Just bask for a moment in the bright glow of unfiltered lunacy. Be careful. You may get a burn. Our mission to Mars will be well underway long before something as outlandish as a moderate Republican bucking their party’s leadership ever even comes close to happening. I expect that by the time a moderate Republican actually speaks out, we’ll all be having our brains placed inside robot bodies. Whatever you do, don’t hold your breath.

[Update] The column itself isn’t all that bad. It’s just the question that got me giggling.

A series of television pool images shot by NBC shows a U.S. Marine shooting dead a wounded and unarmed Iraqi in a Falluja mosque November 13, 2004. U.S. Marines rallied round the Marine now under investigation for killing the Iraqi during the offensive in Falluja, saying he was probably under combat stress in unpredictable, hair-trigger circumstances. (Reuters TV/Reuters)

Let me be clear, the fault does not lie with this Marine alone. The Marines’ defense, that he was under extreme combat stress at the time of these pictures, has validity. The Marine, himself, was shot in the face earlier that same day but returned to duty. One can only imagine his state of mind and the psychological trauma he was experiencing at the time of the incident. The fault lies far above this one man’s pay grade. It belongs with the people who put him in the most horrific of combat situations, with too few comrades and without the proper support apparatus in place to identify soldiers who are breaking under the stress of endless war. It lies with the people who so badly fouled up the planning and implementation of this war, placing our soldiers in no win situations with too few resources and no plan to win the peace. It lies with Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, but above all it lies with Bush. As he is our elected leader, it lies also with us.

I guess if you fuck things up at the NSA badly enough, the sky really is the limit. I wonder if she’ll have a tough confirmation hearing? Hold on…Hold on. Sorry. I forgot to take my head out of my ass. What was I thinking? With a proven record of incompetence and neglegence, along with some wildly embaressing utterances made in on national television, she’s a shoe in. Why even bother to have hearings?

Good old Bill will publish his very last piece on January 24, 2005. What will we do? What deranged conspiracy theorist could possibly hope to fill Bill’s shoes? I wonder if he’d like to take a part time gig as my grammar nanny? The pay is terrible but I’ll be sure to keep his food dish stocked with nuts.

It seems as though the same quality of after action planning that worked so well in the preliminary stages of the Iraq War, is still very much in effect.

But while camps for displaced civilians have been set up 4 miles north of Fallujah, U.S. forces appear to have no transportation or logistical plan to get civilians from the battle-scarred neighborhoods to the camp.

…
Families who answered the Marines’ call to leave their homes Friday were still waiting in the safe house Saturday afternoon. Without adequate supplies, they were reluctant to leave the city or move far away from their homes.

How long were they planning to retake Falluja, a city of some 300,000? How many months of planning took place with, what appears to be, little or no thought given to the aftermath? Incompetence and gross negligence are what happens when nobody is fired for either incompetence and gross negligence. The architects of this disaster sit comfortably behind their giant wooden desks, in their comfortable offices, while U.S. enlisted personnel and Iraqi civilians are maimed and die and starve due to negligence.

Apparently the number of prisoners serving under death penalties has fallen to a 30 year low. I’m pleasantly surprised, but their is a very long way to go. Over the past months, I’ve started numerous posts about my personal opposition to death penalty but have deleted each. I can never seem to find the words. While I do realize that I’m in the minority, I find the practice beyond appalling - beyond immoral. One day, perhaps, I’ll find the right way to articulate my opposition.

The Rittenhouse Review has a delightful story about everybody’s favorite dog lover, small government proponent, and the foulest of my commonwealth’s U.S. Senators, ripping off local taxpayers. Nothing but the best for his constituents, right?

The Rittenhouse Review also has a few stories about the man-child who rounds out Pennsylvania’s Senate delegation. Here are the links - link - link

Disclaimer - My father once tried to buy a pie factory from Specter’s wife Joan. To the best of my knowledge the deal fell through. My family doesn’t own any pie factories at any rate. If I recall correctly, my dad used to bring home some free samples and the pies were pretty damn tasty. Despite their tastiness, I don’t expect those pies, eaten so long ago, to influence me in any way when it comes to writing about that less than zero Senator of mine, should I choose to do so.

He is a teetotaling Mormon, a former Capitol Hill police officer who opposes abortion and was a cosponsor of the constitutional amendment banning flag-burning. He is a little-known senator from a red state whose considerable skills do not include being a compelling presence on television or behind a lectern.

That is the opening description of incoming Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, in Sunday’s New York Times. The article goes on to say that he’s pretty camera shy and doesn’t like going on the Sunday morning talk shows.

Dear Senate Democrats,

Um…I hope this was a good idea guys. We’re all pulling for you…I think. Didn’t you guys have some recent troubles with a Senator, from a very Republican state, being your leader? Wasn’t there some issue regarding his effectiveness in promoting the Democratic agenda while he simultaneously had to cover his right flank? Well whatever. Never mind.

(Via AmericaBlog)

The recent upsurge in over the top religious proclamations regarding the Election of President Bush is what prompted me to put up those quotes from Jefferson and Adams earlier today. I find myself puzzled that so many people seem to have forgotten, or choose to ignore, some of the most basic lessons of our country’s founding - Lessons they were probably first taught in their sixth grade history classes.

Despite the proclamations of many, America was not founded as a Christian nation, or even entirely, by people who considered themselves Christians. They were, often as not, Deists. Their writings on matters of faith, Christianity, and the role of clergy in political life would seem shocking if a modern politician uttered them. Those writings would likely render any modern, national candidate unelectable. Those writings would surely enrage the religious right, who would quick dub them and their authors as un-American.

I was interested to see that Edwin Yoder published a peice in Salon on this very issue, just a few days ago. Here’s a little, but go read the whole thing.

The deists, influenced as they were by the French Enlightenment, pictured a God majestically indifferent to the pettier vanities and ambitions of humankind. We lived, they said, in a Newtonian universe whose creator had wound it up and set it ticking on its own like a great clock, then stood back. How important was deism at America’s founding? Very. Whatever claims are now made about American religious origins and doctrines, it can’t be denied that deism was the overriding persuasion of our great founding generation — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and many others. Nor that under the benign influence of this outlook they designed a constitutional system in which church and state were to be eternally separated.

Today, alas, those words and their meaning have grown foggy in the minds of many. I was startled, some years ago, to discover that even the great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had remembered them incorrectly. He thought the clause read: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion” — a consequential mix-up of definite and indefinite articles. There are even Supreme Court justices who think, or pretend to think, that what the Establishment Clause does, and all it does, is forbid an established church — a view that scants the clause’s scope no less than its original intent. It was apparently the hope of Madison and other draftsmen to forbid any federal meddling whatsoever with religion, even in those states that still maintained church establishments. But as Madison’s auxiliary writings make abundantly clear, the phrase “an establishment of religion” also embraced any and all programs of subvention to religion.

Zoë is demonstrating how I spent my vacation.

“One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

-Thomas Jefferson. April 11, 1823 in a letter to John Adams

I don’t think Mr. Adams would have been all too offended:

“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’�

-John Adams. October 19, 1756

I wonder if these guys could even get elected to sit on a school board if they were alive today?

“In your reelection, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn’t deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism”
-Bob Jones on the President’s reelection.

Silly me. I didn’t even know that Zeus was on the ballot.

[Update] I decided to put the whole letter up to provide fuller context. Well that, and for some more of that Bob Jones goodness we all crave. Go to the extended entry if you have the stomach.
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Did anybody else happen to catch MSNBC’s coverage of Yasser Arafat’s funeral this morning? Coverage isn’t really the right word. The right word escapes me. Let me try to explain.

Apparently MSNBC simulcasts the Don Imus radio show in the mornings (the sad things one learns while on vacation). Anyway, today’s show consisted of him chatting with Andrea Mitchell, who was posted on a rooftop in Ramallah to cover the burial. She was basically playing the straight man for a bunch of pretty tasteless, humorless jokes about Palestinian funeral customs.

Listen, I don’t really understand thousands of people shooting their guns in the air either, but that’s one of the ways they pay respect to people they consider military heroes. Most Palestinians probably wouldn’t get my family’s custom of eating too much and getting really drunk after a funeral. Such is life on a big planet.

The problem with shooting guns in the air is that all of those bullets come back down somewhere. This is actually a pretty serious problem in Philadelphia, of all places. I used to live in a neighborhood where some people (not me) go outside on holidays, like Independence Day or New Years Eve, and shoot handguns and semiautomatic weapons into the sky. Inevitably somebody, usually completely uninvolved, will be found later with a bullet lodged in their brain and a bullet hole in their ceiling. Brutal stuff.

Nevertheless, I’m fairly certain that the Palestinians are fully aware of the dangers of their custom and they still choose to attend funerals, en mass, where it takes place. That’s fine I guess. They can do as they please. What’s not fine is that MSNBC had Andrea Mitchell, and her whole off camera crew, posted on rooftop, completely exposed, while tens of thousands of people were shooting guns into the air - all so she could play Don Imus’ straight man. She was clearly scared half out of her mind - stammering and pausing and unable to finish sentences or sometimes even words. All the while, good old Imus continued his unfunny, tasteless blather.

On second thought, she has enough clout to get herself out of doing something so mindlessly stupid without hurting her career. Her crew doesn’t.

There are no words.

One thing that Jerry does which we all should admire, is to follow this simple rule - If you are going to be crazy - Be completely, over the top, apeshit, dripping with bile, methadrine addicted elephants laying polkadots & moonbeam eggs in your brain crazy. Oh…And make huge, heaping piles of cash while you’re at it. My guess is that this is a sign that Jerry needs a new addition added to his house so he can store all of his new nuts.

Call it the second coming of the Moral Majority. Jerry Falwell said yesterday he is launching a political organization that will be “a 21st century resurrection” of the Moral Majority, the Christian lobby he founded and led from 1979 to 1987.

The new group, named the Faith and Values Coalition, will “utilize the momentum of the Nov. 2 elections to maintain an evangelical revolution of voters who will continue to go to the polls to ‘vote Christian,’ ” Falwell said.

Does discussion of mass transit put you to sleep? No. Wait. Don’t answer.

I was pleasantly stunned to see this article in the New York Times this morning, regarding mass transit in Denver. Apparently they are planning six new train lines. Amazing. You may grow up to be a real city one day Denver.

I have nothing much to add - you can wake up now.

This is a bit of a reminder to myself - feel free to ignore. One of my goals, with this site, is to build it to sufficient size, that it can be used an effective tool towards progressive change in local, Philadelphia politics. At this point, I’m far from certain what form that will take or if it will be remotely effective.
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Those were the words used in a memorandum written by the man, who may be your next attorney general, to describe the Geneva Conventions’ prohibitions on the torture of prisoners of war.

The AP, on why he may be a controversial pick-
For instance, Gonzales publicly defended the administration’s policy — essentially repudiated by the Supreme Court and now being fought out in the lower courts — of detaining certain terrorism suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts.

He also wrote a controversial February 2002 memo in which Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture law and international treaties providing protections to prisoners of war. That position drew fire from human rights groups, which said it helped led to the type of abuses uncovered in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

If that’s not clear enough, read what Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said in this article. -
“It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for ways to avoid legal accountability. The effect is to throw out years of military doctrine and standards on interrogations.”

I think that a number of people have expressed concern that, while getting rid of Ashcroft is great, the person Bush chooses to replace him, may well be even worse. A valid concern, indeed. Another concern is that Senate Democrats will roll-over on this. Given their track record, I think that concern is valid as well.