Something just occurred to me

Is "radical conservative" an oxymoron?

Even so, how else would you describe them?

Thank you, Gen. Powell.

I heard yesterday that Colin Powell, a Repubulican, does not support the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.

I have a deep respect for Mr. Powell; As Secretary of State, he was a relatively moderate voice and had diplomacy down pat. Granted, his schtick about weapons of mass destruction was just plain wrong, but hey, lots of people believed the lies.

As time wore on, I think he was relegated to "token black" in the presidential cabinet; I find it interesting that Condoleezza Rice, another African American replaced him.

Since his resignation, he seems to have found his voice. I'm sure that there are lots of rightwingnuts out there who will say that he's just bitter about not getting his way, but I'm not convinced.

Matt Sandwich has quoted an article in the Washington Post, which reminded me that I'd heard about Powell's opposition of Bolton.

It seems that Two GOP senators called Powell for information on Bolton. The WaPo article says this:

"General Powell has returned calls from senators who wanted to discuss specific questions that have been raised," said Margaret Cifrino, a Powell spokeswoman. "He has not reached out to senators," and considers the discussions private.

General Powell did not sign a letter from seven other former U.S. secretaries of state or defense supporting Bolton.

Class act, that man.

More personal info.

To my select readers--all 5 of you!--The time has come to let you know that I have finally obtained gainful (if underpaid) employment) in Yosemite National Park.

I'm leaving Rhode Island in a little over two weeks, and I've been busy packing my stuff for storage while I'm gone.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up with all the news in order to provide my perspective on current events, but once I' there, I hope to use my 'l337 social engineering skills to obtain wifi access to post.

I grew up in California, and hold some very dear memories of Yosemite. It was one of the few places that enchanted me as a child, where I have good memories of my mother, and it's been calling me back for a few months.

The job is pretty up in the air right now. I don't even know what I will be doing once I get there. It could be as a maid at the Ahwahnee lodge, or the Yosemite lodge. I could be cleaning stables, or slinging hash in a High Sierra camp.

My blog will not become a worker's rant. If I post, I promise I will not delve into the horrors of working for the park's concessionaires. I will try not to become a travelogue, either. There's plenty of information on the beauty of Yosemite out there already.

Wish me luck, gentle readers. This is an adventure.

Jean Dudley.

Mark this day on your calendar!

In my last entry, I wrote that Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, joined the Hitler Youth before it became compulsory. I was wrong.

There's a very good article that refutes the London Times article here.

Mea culpa.

Former Youth for Hitler elected Pope.

Well, that was quick. They went with the white guy, but get this--he used to be a Youth for Hitler. Apparently he joined when he was 14, the year before it became compulsory. Supposedly his membership was short and not enthusiastic. His father was anti-Nazi Now, I'm all for believing people can change, and forgiveness and all, but this just sticks in my craw. He's also 78 years old.

Further, he's the head of the leader of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, the Inquisition's latest incarnation. He's also a stern conservative, speaking out against Asian priests who held that Non-Christian faiths were part of God's plan for humanity.

Looks like we're in for a bumpy ride, folks.

"Drinking the Kool-aid"

I've been seeing the phrase "drinking the kool-aid" a lot recently in the left hemisphere of the blogosphere. It's used to refer to those in the Republican Party who seem to be going along with the Neo-Con leadership and against the time-honored values of the Right.

For those who are too young to remember, the phrase has its origins in a terrible tragedy of the late 70's.

Jim Jones was a charismatic man, a self-styled prophet and messiah figure. He claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus, Buddha, even God. He began in San Francisco, but moved his "People's Temple" to an enclave in Guyana, where he was the autocrat who had full control over the lives of the 900+ members. Every aspect of their lives was controlled; He even drew a particularly tragic page from history (Massada), and practiced "white nights" where the entire population would drill for mass suicide by drinking small cups of red liquid at his bidding.

Everything came to a head when a US Congressman went to Jonestown in Guyana to investigate allegations of human rights violations. Jones Would not let him in the compound until after dark. The Congressman Ryan managed to take out 16 members who wanted to leave, and among them was a mole who opened fire at the airstrip as they were about to leave.

At that time, Jim Jones put into motion the actual mass suicide that he had rehearsed for all those years. The final "white night" was November 18, 1978. Over 900 members lined up and drank the cyanide-laced grape kool-aid drink, mothers giving it to their babies first, and then drinking it themselves.

Jones was shot by his own guards.

Listen to NPR's "Remembering Jonestown", an audio file on the story of Jonestown. Requires Real Audio.

Passport blues; It's amazing what you learn when you read the papers.

It's amazing what you learn when you read newspapers. F'rex, take George Bush. (Insert Rodney Dangerfield joke here). According to this Reuters article, he learned that his own administration is going to require passports to travel back from Mexico and Canada by reading a newspaper.

Um, how can he not know about this?

WASHINGTON, April 14 - President Bush said Thursday that he had been surprised to learn in the newspaper of his administration's decision last week to require Americans to have passports to enter the country from Mexico or Canada by 2008. He said he had asked the State and Homeland Security Departments to look into other means of tightening border security.

At least, he's showing some common sense in opposing it.

Something's weird about the whole passport issue. Next year they will begin issuing passports with Radio Frequency ID chips, (RFID for short). Your name, date of birth, and a digitized copy of your image will be transmited by these little beacons, but it seems to me that unless they're encrypted 6 ways to Sunday, anybody with a hand-held receiver will be able to find the Stupid, Ugly American in a crowd. There seems to be some debate over how far away these chips can send info, but it ranges from about 4" (10 centimeters) to about a yard (1 meter).

What's really stupid is that they refuse to use contact-read devices--like the magnetic strips on your ATM, Debit and Credit Cards. Same information, but a hell of a lot more secure. And they aren't beacons advertising the exact location of your passport.

For a good source of information, I recommend this article in Freedom to Tinker.


Via BoingBoing.

BTW, get your passport now before they begin putting RFID chips in them. They cost about $100 for a first time issue, not including the cost of getting your picture taken. They are good for 10 years. When they are renewed, they give you your old one back after updating the expiration. At least now, they do. This means that a passport issued without an RFID chip will not be replaced with a new one with the chip.

Wal-Mart is ripe for unionization--let's hope the union actually does something for the workers.

I'm still a bit leery of unions. Not because I think they're socialist in nature, but because as with lots of large groups of formerly-oppressed people, they all too often become oppressive themselves. However, some corporations are ripe for an organized backlash from it's workers.

Take for example Wal-mart. They've been showing up an aweful lot on my blog roll these days. What prompted me to write about them today was this article from those good folks over at Think Progress.

Unions often are ham-fisted in their approach, and, I think, ripe for sleeping with the enemy. Far too often, stewards are buddy-buddy with management, and as a result, the people they are supposed to represent are left in the cold.

I will be working for a union this summer for the first time in my life. Watch this space for more information.

Sometimes synchronicity happens

I'm not sure why, but I was wondering just who the first women in Congress were this morning. I can't remember the train of thought that led to that question. It flashed in my brain, and I made a mental note to do some research later--one of the millions of research topics filed in some inaccessable corner of my mind. I rarely ever find that list again when I am bored and have access to teh internets.

Then synchronicity happened. I stumbled across a name referenced somewhere; Jeanette Rankin.

Daily Kos quotes a WSJ article about Brian Sweitzer:

Red, blue or purple--color-coding Montana's patterns of voting is just too simplistic, and [Montana Democratic Governor] Brian Schweitzer fits the non-conformist mold to a T. A prosperous farmer/rancher from the area of Whitefish in the tony Flathead Valley country, Mr. Schweitzer cultivates a well-spoken, gun-owning, dog-loving, native-ritual-doing, shot-of-whiskey-drinking true-west style somewhere between that of Jeanette Rankin (a famously antiwar liberal Republican elected to the U.S. Congress before women's suffrage was passed) and Mike Mansfield (the conservative Democrat senator and former ambassador to Japan whose voting record, taken as a whole, was more liberal than that of George McGovern)

Whoa, hold up a second! She was elected to the House of Representatives before women were even allowed to vote? But wait! There's more!

Miss Rankin (I'm adhering to period forms of salutations here; She would not have used "Ms." in her time frame, and may not have approved of it.) was a Republican, albeit she advocated for programs that would have been called Socialist today.

Take, for example, the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921. In an era when women were giving birth in their homes with the assistance of female neighbors in some cases, or if they were lucky with the assistance of a skilled midwife, infant mortality rates were high. Jeanette Rankin advocated for public funding for clinics and education on prenatal health and childbirth.

She's a fascinating look at the history of women in politics in America. I recommend looking her up.

Peter Jennings is a class act.

ABC's anchor Peter Jennings revealed to his audience that he has lung cancer. He's a remarkable man, and I wish him full remission and recovery. (With thanks for to those good folks at Crooks and Liars for the video clip and heads up)

I knew it would happen.

HalTurnerRacist,
originally uploaded by Jean Dudley.

So, yes, it would send the radical-religio-rapture-racist-right into conniptions if an African were elected pope.

I may have to go to church to pray for his election. Or maybe not. He might be assassinated by the likes of Hal Turner within a week of assuming the papal crozier.

Didn't take ol' Hal very long to get all nasty in the pants over this, did it?

Why isn't Hal Turner in jail?

Hal Turner of halturnershow.com seems to be crossing the line from free speech to inciting violence. Or not?

Take a look at this screen cap of his archive, and note the two articles on the right.




I have to wonder if he's had any visits from the FBI over this. My wild-ass-guess is that he has, and they've decided not to go forward with prosecution. However, the man did say that he'd volunteer to assassinate judges. Perhaps all he's lacking is a political action group?

It's illegal to kill judges. It's illegal to threaten them. It's illegal to incite violence against them. I'd call this a clear case of inciting to violence, wouldn't you?


This is a link to the full-sized screen capture.

Just what kind of ignorati are in the Senate?

Senator Cornyn (R-TX) had something pretty puzzling to say on the floor the other day (Apr 4, 2005).

I don’t know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that’s been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.

(Video link here, WMV file)

Is he being disingenuous, deliberately making connections and dancing around the justification of "courthouse violence"? Or is he just plain ignorant of recent events? I can think of two instances right off--the man who overpowered his police guard, and the murder of a judge's husband and mother. Both of those were not related in any way to "judicial activism".

He contradicts himself when he says "Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently..."

I suppose one could imply that what *is* new is that the public perception has shifted from just run-of-the-mill courthouse violence and politically motivated courthouse violence.

Now he's issued a rebuttal to those who make the claim that he's justifying the violence, and turning it around and blaming them for taking his quote out of context.

Out of context or not, the above statement contains factual inaccuracies. Nobody seems to be killing judges or their families out of political frustration in the US. I'm not convinced he was actively calling for such violence. But I am leaning towards a belief in manipulation by misinformation. This administration, and especially the so-called "Republican" side of the isle has an increasing track record of doing so. How many people believe that Saddam Hussein was in some way responsible for the tragedy of 9/11?

No, he's not ignorant. He's a twister of words and current events to his political ends. And he's aiming to take over the judiciary.

R.I.P,. Prince Rainier.

Prince Rainier has died at the age of 81. He was Europe's longest reigning monarch. As the Prince of Monacco, he was deeply loved by his people. In turn, he deeply loved his American starlet wife, Princess Grace.

Rest in peace, Prince Rainier.

So...

How do you think Americans would react to an African (read "black") pope?

Oh, I hope they do it, I REALLY do.

Be fun to watch all the racists go apeshit.

One thing I will say about the pope...

I think that for all his faults, Pope John Paul II had one redeeming attribute: He lived by Jesus' words "Turn the other cheek".

He showed an immensity of spirit when he forgave and befriended the man who tried to kill him.

It may not completely balance out his destructive stand on abortion, contraception and alternative insemination, but I think it went a very long way towards that end.

Rest in peace, Karol.

Pedophilia and Homosexuality

I had a conversation some time ago about the sex abuse by priests in the Catholic church. The person I was speaking with said that it was because Catholic priests weren't allowed to marry, and so gays were more likely to become priests and molest boys.

I disagreed with him. It's not about homosexuality, I said, it's about power. "Then why do they choose boys?" Because boys are less likely to talk about what happened to them, due to fear that they will be labeled "gay".

Pedophilia isn't the same as homosexuality. Most pedophiles self-identify as straight, but will choose their victims carefully to ensure that they are not caught. The gender of the child isn't as important as the age.

When women sexually abuse children, they also chose boys because in our culture a boy who is "seduced" (read "coerced into sexual victimization") by an older woman is "lucky", it's part of his initiation into manhood. But if a boy is "molested" by a man, he is queer.

As much as I dislike the prohibition on marriage for the priesthood, it's not responsible for the exploitation of children in the church.

About time, I'd say

It seems that the national security hawks have finally caught on regarding America's security risk due to an increasing demand for foreign oil. A group of former national security advisors has sent a letter to President Bush stating that America's dependancy on foreign oil is now a concern to them.

We *must* develop new means of generating energy, or face the reality of being held slaves to antagonistic governments. America was once the land of innovation--we have the brightest minds in the world, and we now need to put them to work devoping an alternative to fossil fuels. We can, we must, but will we?

No more blood for oil.