This is for Libertine and the others who have admitted how sad they are; and for those who haven't, but are, as well...

She walked out onto the porch.  For three days now, the sky had been every possible shade of grey with myriad textures of clouds.  Out one door, the mountains were draped with dusty grey shrouds; peeking out from behind the peaks were thunderclouds of off-white, the last vestiges of fair weather that are often so deceptive.

Countless threads of darker grey virgas sent their moisture to the hills below, speaking to the possibility of rain, yet still not promising it.  Dark stratus-cumulus leviathans crept slowly toward her, while lower streams of vapor above the river marched westward below them.

An occasional rumble of far-off thunder meant rain somewhere; a tease, really, as only a spritz or two of drops had materialized so far.  At least the raging spring winds of dust had finally ended, and some blessed rain had come.  Her skin was still parched from that time: the faint tributaries of a desert-dweller's skin could be smoothed by lotion, but that ritual was often forgotten in the midst of her increasing unease.

So much to do this time of year as the garden hit its peak, the fruits and veggies calling to be picked and preserved for the coming long winter.  She tried to pay it all enough attention, although lately some days it all took second place to her other life...her oddly more necessary life.

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So much of our conventional wisdom maintains that our morals have been formed by Christian-Judeo principles (peace to the American devotees of other religions).  Atheist Sam Harris blogged about his new book at Huffpo last week, in which he claims it's high time that science begins to help the discussion about morality. 

His contention is that the purpose of morality is to enhance human happiness, and avoid misery in the world.  For the sake of this discussion, I'd suggest we could also use the terms contentment or well-being, happiness sounding like such a shallow term (my bias), and toward that end, science could in principle provide markers in various areas such as institutions, sociology, child-rearing, war, economics, neurobiology, and presumably education.

He asks and attempts to answer twelve questions in the short article, I'm just hitting a few points here, assuming only half of you will read the article.  ;-) 

 

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This is all crazy-making, waiting to hear the final, or even a tentative message about the fate of the Reader's Blogs section.  Josh says he wil speak tonight, so check in with the main page often.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/d/o/doctor_cleveland/2010/09/questions-for-reader-blogs.php#comment-4087650  

In the meantime, please post any ideas on the current fixes you may have found to access commenting on Movable Type. It breaks my heart that so many of you are locked out again, especially as workaround after workaround fails after a day, a few hours, whatever... If you try any of the suggested fixes and they prove inadequate, I will offer my services. Let me know, we will somehow exchange emails if I don't have yours, and I will gladly shuttle messages to threads on your behalf, and send answering comments back to you.  It's the least I can do after your acceptance into the Cafe; and let it always be said that: The Reverend WD always did the least she could do.  LOL!

Some threads have been de facto Goodbye Threads, and I hate that many of you haven't gotten in on the Luv., apologies, make-up sessions, etc.  (All that saccharine end-of-the-road shit...)  It sucks, and I'd like to help.  So hang tight, all you darlin's; you all suck, but I do luv you true, misanthrope though I be.

If you don't care for personal blogs, Universal Theme blogs, strictly non-political blogs, be warned: this one ain't for you.

If you've never faced the Dark Night of the Soul, either for yourself or for humanity, or your brothers and sisters in far-off lands: this may not be for you.  You may not have considered ending your life in response to the Dark Night, and you can take this song in different ways, but passionate, it is.  No matter; we all face the future with different attitudes, and many of us have developed coping mechanisms; some of us don't feel things as strongly as others; that's okay.

I have been incredulous about the varying responses to the possibility of Josh closing the Reader Blogs section of the Café.  The categories of responses speak to who we are as people; chronicling them would have made a fascinating blog in itself.  But alas; I didn't clip the comments!

But the thing that really has me buffaloed is the degree to which many of us have already departed; have seen JMM's decision as already written, even while sometimes trying to control things by establishing New Rules based too often on bloggers' own biases or sense of what content mattered most, or which bloggers were to blame!  Feh!

It seems impossible for too many to take Josh at his word: It's the cost!  I, too, want him to heed my cries that the Cafe needs to remain intact, since we have needs to express ourselves, and believe our ideas can spread outward to help our nation recover.   We are smart, we say, and good-looking to boot; our blogs could enhance the site, not be a financial drain.

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You all know how it is that when we work hard for something, or save hard for something, we appreciate it ever so much more?  That's how it is for me and my garden...

 

My garden's a wee thing compared to the enormous gardens we used to grow, but for now it's juuuust right.  Ah; I wish I could share some of it with you.  Just this week I picked quarts of snowpeas...and cut gallons of fresh basil... and cucumbers and spinach and chard.  I clipped bunches of chives, and the leeks are getting plumper by the day.  The tomatoes are five or six feet tall in giant cages, and the fruits are ripening, and the foliage is so dense you can just cast glimmers of orange and red from the ones deeper inside ...the tiny patch of corn is tasseling, though it's almost decorative or ceremonial: my husband is a former Nebraskan, so there has to be at least an homage to corn, in case you want to toss some pollen to the rising sun, either accompanied by a prayer...or not.

We built our house into a hill, and the downstairs back door opens onto a walkway between two strips of rock garden, starting shoulder high and falling to ground level as you walk down the flagstone walkway toward the windbreak row of poplars and fir and the chokecherries the birds love so much... 

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Ruta's yesterday-blog was one of his best, IMO.  He called it Sand, and featured a photo of a sign on a road in the middle of a desert of sand.  If I can paraphrase, he said its impact was such that it got him thinking about how most of his blogs could be summed up by that word: Sand.  He explains further, of course.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/r/u/rutabaga_ridgepole/2010/08/sand.php

It got my brain pinging about images and icons and signs, and what they stand for to each of us, and what words or signs or labels stand for us as people.

"What's your sign?' was one of the idiotic questions hippies of a certain stripe would ask each other early on in the getting to know you phase.  I once heard a woman say, rather proudly, I thought, "I never met a Sagitarius who had her shit together.  (This was in Aspen, which is packed with phonies of every socio-economic class, IMO.  (grin) 

Now being a She Sagitarian, I wanted to pop her one in the nose, but I didn't even have the self-confidence to call "Bullshit!"  But I digress...

I thought it might be interesting to ask you all what sign could stand for you.  Not so much astrologically, though feel free to throw that out, too; but what might stand for your true self, or to your aspirational self (might want to differentiate, if it's going to be informative).

I often used to quip, "Slippery when wet" when asked The Question; oh, what a wag I thought I was!

Helpful hints: If yuou Bing or Google "Images of signs" or "Iconic Images" and the like, you can a page of hits, click on one, enlarge it.  If it's the one you want, you can copy the web page and link to it.  Like this:

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/684679/80541516.jpg

(I'd googled "Images of slippery when wet signs".)

 

So: What's your sign?  ;-)

Note: since Kirkman has about 20 posts up, I figured there was room for something not-so-very-serious.)

We've become accustomed to the Ratchet Effect in American politics, the idea that our politics keep moving to the Right.  (Thanks, Ellen.)

Loosely speaking, some other Ratchet Effects are occurring. One huge one concerns the migration of wealth upward; recent figures say that the Ruling Class 1% now owns around 45% of the country's wealth (their assets, minus what they owe), and the bottom 50% owns about 2% of our wealth (by 2007 figures).  If the old adage is true: It takes money to make money, now we're off to the races!  (ratchet, ratchet)

We tend to blame Congress and the President and the Fed for a lot our current predicaments (and we should, IMO), but if we step back and look at wealth inequality, we have to admit that there is a Ruling Elite, an Oligarchy that is also responsible.

We used to laugh a bit at Euro-nations whose businesses and government were so entwined (think: BP and England, for instance), but we're now seeing increased evidence of it in the US, and we're frustrated at our lack of options for reversing the trend.  How entwined was the White House with BP, we want to know, and for good reason.  Is 75% of the oil released in the Gulf really gone?  Are the shrimp and clams and crabs really safe to eat?

Citizens United was a low blow for regular Americans; it's effectively erased constraints on advertising dollars spent for elections.  Even the Democrat's Crap Bill to neutralize the SCOTUS decsion which simply required a line identifying who paid for an advertisement was shot down recently.  Good grief; if ad sponsors need to be hidden from voters, what's up with that? (Read Jim Hightower on it here.)

 

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  My songs are missing, and I don't know where to find them.  For so long they were just there; I took them for granted.  I feel as though I should, or at least want to apologize to them; and maybe if could find just the right formula of retroactive gratitude and renewed fervor, with even a smattering of the humility that's akin to prayer, they might come back.  Or maybe they'll just remain memories, chimeras of sound floating into the Mystic (as Van Morrison would say), never to be found again.

  Our lives are full of things we used to do, even did passionately, and we might glance back at them with fondness, and a realization that we've moved on; maybe reconfigured our priorities; maybe we're now physically incapable of a pursuit.  As in: I used to walk up mountains; well, rats; I can't do it any longer...but...there it is.  We're philosophical about it, accepting of it.  No biggie, right?

  And then there might be the other things; previous endeavors that we didn't let go of willingly, but we've tried to mentally toss into the dustbin of the past that can even now haunt us because they've been left unresolved.

  And hell, I'm writing this to help heal myself a bit, but if I publish it, it's because I intuit that there may be some amount of Universality to my plight.  We'll see; I don't always guess right on that one.  LOL!

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On August 2, 2010, Israel yielded to calls from the US and the International community to participate in an independent investigation of the May 31 attack on the Mavi Marmara in which in which Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists on a ship attempting to deliver supplies to Gaza.  Israel claimed the right to board it on the high seas, given their official blockade of Gaza; others consider it a flagrant abuse of international law and murder. 

The Israeli military completed an internal investigation in which it found no culpability, and says a civilian investigation is in the works.

By August 11, the investigation seems to have changed direction according to Ban Ki-moon  (from Al-jazeera English):   

"The UN has begun its inquiry into Israel's deadly attack on the Gaza aid flotilla with a first session on Tuesday to determine the scope of its task.

A statement on the inaugural meeting between the four-member team and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said the inquiry was "not designed to determine individual criminal responsibility".

Instead it would "examine and identify the facts, circumstances and the context of the incident", it added.

Led by Geoffrey Palmer, the former New Zealand prime minister, the panel which includes Israeli and Turkish representatives met to decide how to go about its task after the meeting with Ban. 

 

 

 

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(Yuri Cortez/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images...American and Afghan soldiers on a joint patrol last week in Kandahar Province. Military officials say the counterinsurgency strategy needs time to work.)

The Obama White House is getting a wee bit nervous that Americans are increasingly less supportive of the war in Aghanistan.  Congress, especially the House, mirrors that sentiment, and more Representatives, at least, are balking at blanket funding.  General Ray Odierno is pushing back at the House for cutting funding for certain projects in Iraq, for instance.

At the same time, Robert Gates and General Petraeus and other military commanders want the Afghanistan timetable extended.  Gates will be on NBC's Meet the Press tomorrow morning; look for David Gregory to ask Gates the really tough and incisive questions (once he finishes saluting, that is). 

Gates will tell us how many things have gone right there this month, including capturing some top Taliban leaders 'connected with Al Qaeda, and the progress already made in night raids in Kandahar (the offensive has begun, for those of us who have been awaiting its prolonged beginning).

 

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Based on an article by this name by William Greider, The Nation 

(published at Alternet by this blog title) 

Most of us at the Café are Warren fans; she minds The People's business in a most spectacular fashion.  What she and her committee (Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP) is hard-reading, but, IMO, a must read for anyone who gives a fig for the future of our economy.  Greider believes that Warren's investigation was the best and most complete of the three bodies that investigated the responses of to the financial crisis.

You may remember watching the Tim Geithner confirmation hearings for Treasury Secretary in which he accidentally damned himself by declaring that, "As Chairman of the New York Fed, I wasn't a regulator."  Of course, that job actually was a big part of his job description; he just didn't take it seriously apparently.  His part in the crisis was major; the NY Fed of course, is in charge of Wall Street and the Big Banks. 

Some of the bailout directives happened at the end of Bush's term; the rest proceeded under Obama.

This piece tells the story, and hits a lot of the high places (or low, more specifically) and takes note of the incestuous relationship between the Fed and Wall Street, and addresses the impact (or not) of the recent Regulatory Reform bill.  Geider believes that the AIG story is useful as a 'touchstone' since many other deals were like it, but AIG's reach was massive; many counterparties, including many foreign banks.

 

 

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Don't they look Happy ?

I forget what we may have been invited to focus on around July 20, 2010.  But it apparently wasn't the International Donor Conference on Afghanistan in Kabul that week. 

Hillary Clinton and Ban Ki-Moon were there, as were Richard Holbrooke, and representatives from either forty or seventy countries (depending on who's reporting the story).

But the outcome of the meeting earned barely a blip on the news radar.  Are people just tired of the war and the shifting timetables for the 'beginnings' of troop draw-down?  Do they mean anything?  Gates and Petraeus say different things than the President; are the dates designed to soothe us, as the 'costs in blood and treasure' mount?  As Americans (not to mention NATO allies) turn away from support for the war?  As 100 Congresspeople voted to de-fund it recently?

 

 

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9th Circuit District Court Judge Vaughn Walker offered a 136-page decision in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, firmly rejecting the Prop 8 law passed in November 2008.

UPDATE: Here's Judge Walker's conclusion:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

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Under a law passed in 1986, 5 grams of crack would trigger a five-year prison sentence, but the same sentence would only be triggered by 500 grams of powder cocaine.  The disparity, of course, meant that more minorities went to prison than white collar whites.

As of today, the mandatory minimum will be triggered by 28 grams of crack, which translates to a disparity of 18:1.

There is a long history of racial bigotry and lies to promote social funding involved; you probably know many of the issues already.

Bogus 'studies' for decades fanned the flames of misconception and fear over the addiction rate of crack compared to snortin' coke; 'crack baby' stories abounded, and a campaign against crack brought legislative and punitive reaction completely out of line with its danger.  The concerted disinformation reminds us now of William Randolph Hurst and Reefer Madness.

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  I spent most of my childhood on a magical island named Catawba, and although it wasn't technically an island any longer, it felt like an island to me.  A causeway had been built across a bit of Lake Erie to connect it to the mainland, which made access a whole lot easier than a ferry boat could, which was the usual mode of transport to the other islands off the coast.

  It was heaven, that island existence, though I of course didn't know it at the time; but when I remember the ease and safety and natural beauty of the place, I see it for what it was: a veritable kids' idyll.

  The grey lake was for swimming and fishing in summer, and ice skating and ice fishing in winter.  There were long expanses of rock walls guarding the houses at the edges of the lake; the tops were smooth and flat, and just made for walking on.  If you were careful, you could leap across the gated openings; if you fell...well, take my word for it, you didn't want to fall.

 

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