RNC Avoidance

I've watched about 5 minutes total of the big rally to take our country back to 1953, which is probably on the whole the perfect moment as far as "they're" concerned, all features considered: you have a new Republican President who's a war hero, you have Joe McCarthy and John Foster Dulles, and a raging cold war, and atomic testing, including the H-bomb, and Mickey Mantle smoking Camels in the outfield, and Miss Monroe on the silver screen, schools are well segregated, women are mostly quiet visual objects if they're young and pretty, or hard at work cooking and cleaning otherwise, gay people are secrets, and abortions are illegal or go by other medical names when necessary for those with money and in need.

Every speech I've seen or heard snippets of is laced with lies. There's no point in even bothering to counter them. (Edroso went and got married, and he's busy.) There is one speech, though, that really bothered me beyond all the rest. That was Mr. McCain's, last night. McCain decided to even bring our day to day foreign policy into the conversation. Here's what he said last night, in part (as transcribed by Fox News):

....When Iranians rose up by the millions against their oppressive rulers, when they beseached our president, chanting in English, “Are you with us, or are you with them?”, when the entire world watched as a brave young woman named Neda was shot and bled to death in a street in Tehran.

The president missed a historic opportunity to throw America’s full moral support behind an Iranian revolution that shared one of our highest interests: ridding Iran of a brutal dictatorship that terrorizes the Middle East and threatens the world.
The situation is far worse in Syria. What began as peaceful protests has now become, 18 months later, a savage and unfair fight.

With the full backing of Iran, and Hezbollah, and Russia-with tanks, and helicopters, and fighter jets, Bashir Assad is murdering men, women and children.
More than 20,000 people have perished. Extremists are gaining ground. And the conflict is becoming more dangerous by the day for our allies, and for us. In other times, when other courageous people fought for their freedom against sworn enemies of the United States, American presidents – both Republicans and Democrats – have acted to help them prevail.

Sadly, for the lonely voices of dissent in Syria, and Iran, and elsewhere, who feel forgotten in their darkness, and sadly for us, as well, our president is not being true to our values.

For the sake of the cause of freedom, for the sake of people who are willing to give their lives so their fellow citizens can determine their own futures and for the sake of our nation – the nation founded on the idea that all people, everywhere, have the right to freedom and justice – we must return to our best traditions of American leadership and support those who face down the brutal tyranny of their oppressors and our enemies....

Mr. McCain does a grave disservice to our State and Defense Departments to bring such a blanket indictment into the political conversation. He knows full well that President Obama is engaged in these global matters, and that he makes decisions (as will a President Romney, or any rational President) with the considered advice of diplomatic and military professionals. McCain knows full well that setting out on some quest to save a country from itself is dangerous and almost guaranteed to be an act with an even worse outcome than doing nothing--unless all the many details that have to be considered are considered.

It's not like we don't have the adventures of the last Republican administration to take note of, not to mention the various adventures of earlier times. It's not like we don't have Vietnam in our past.

Maybe that's the trouble with being the party of 1953. In 1953 there was only Korea to measure against the wonder of World War II, which had by then been mythologized into a glorious and nearly bloodless victory for the forces of Light, lead of course by Ike, McArthur, and George Patton. In 1953 there was really nothing much to learn, and the gaping wound that was the American Civil War had been plastered over so effectively that only a few articulate black folks had anything to say about anything. In 1953 America still lynched people.

Maybe we're going to have to live the whole of McCain's lifetime again. How stupid is that?

[photo (c) Eugene Smith]

Friday Update: As I've just said, trying to counter the literally hundreds of lies with which the GOP is building this campaign is beyond my interest and time. But here's something to consider. One can, with historical detatchment, view this whole process as the meltdown of the mainstream media, and the failure of the media to do it's fundamental job--namely inform voters of the truth. If we do end up with a government run by deluded Christo-fascists aiming to bring on armageddon while making their fortunes in the military war market,we will have the media to thank as well as our own slothfulness. Because the information is indeed out there to find, even if it's not on CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS, PBS, or even MSNBC, who's coverage of the convention has been over all as appalling as the rest.

And it's possible that Mr. Eastwood, last night, has saved us from ourselves. He's been aptly compared to Andy Kaufman, and it's possible. There are many commentaries to be found easily. I think Sadly No's might be the best one I've seen. On the other hand, my take on his speech is simpler. He was just massaging the base, and doing a little P.R. work for the industry he represents, to folks who pretty much think "Hollywood" is synonymous with "faggot communist," and who would gladly close the whole place down. Come to think of it, 1953 was pretty much a black and white world, not that they weren't making outstanding films back then too, and with a lot more guts and subtlety than the films that allowed Eastwood to become a Director. Watching Eastwood confronts another mystery. But it's not really new. It's just the mystery of unselfawareness, played out for everyone in the world to watch. And it's not like Mr. Romney doesn't trump Mr. Eastwood in that, now is it?

Returning to Earlier Days

Here's what his little web bio says:

Bryan Jonathan Fischer is the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association. He hosts the talk radio program Focal Point on American Family Radio and posts on the AFA-run blog Rightly Concerned. Wikipedia
Born: 1951, United States of America
Spouse: Debbie Fischer
Education: Stanford University

Apparently he has a big voice in the world Republican.

Here's what he says about the election this morning:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMUAidXAYOllye9saUNnfrShqAmmv8WxVL4-UFw0iCwHoPpeUpG9GmetZj1hhOG6LicHNMxDFRYV8wLLJmqZuOXVItzGSNFk5L0ZUqJWP5ctrLRWZs9_dG4Td5anx3zVwLaqUjJn-vnuSr/s1600/Fischer+1.png

If you don't care to paste the link into your browser, here's what he twatted:

"Women's suffrage only thing keeping Obama in the game: Obama down 8 with men, up 8 with women."

No doubt if anyone should "call" him on that remark, his answer will be the same as Romney's--this campaign needs some levity. Humorless libs, pah.

I mentioned 1940 as the date they want to return to yesterday. Clearly it is earlier by several decades.

Beyond Fireworks

In case you thought he was all hat.

In other news, Charles Pierce has a solution for the Democratic Party now that it is an undeniable fact that the Republican Party has no further interest in compromise or governance, but simply aims to destroy the United States as it has evolved since 1940.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/pro-choice-movement-2012-11944332

How is Pierce's idea a mistake? I sure can't see.

Small Houdahenian Events

Fuzzy has now achieved a new monniker, Puzzle, which I think is pretty nifty. He's growing the biggest (and possibly the fattest). We're trying to keep him from tending to always eat the leftovers, but it's hard to do that without being more constantly alert to their every notion and whim than we already are. We do have other aspects of our lives. I took out the trash, and the recycling, and changed the oil on both vehicles, and went to work. Just for example.

Libby got the boys an electric water fountain water dish last night. She sat up pretty late getting it going. I plugged it back in for them this morning. Possibly they weren't thirsty. They just looked at it and went on. But it's true that moving water fascinates them. Somewhere in the fairly distant but still computerized past I saw a cat who someone with a lot more time on their hands had trained to used the toilet. It was remarkable. I think he might even have flushed. No doubt it's somewhere on Youtube. It clearly proves that cats are somewhat interested in moving water. Wuzzy likes to whack the water dish and watch the water splash out. Also dip his paw into it and flick it around. Sometimes he'll come into the back room, where I'm doing something important like watching Al Sharpton, and jump onto my lap with his wet paw. Then I can tell what he's been up to, and admonish him. Usually he purrs loudly when I'm admonishing him.

This morning when I got up the usual situation was at hand, namely Momma was sitting on the porch looking intently at the door at me. As she's trained us, that "means" "I am hungry, people." I immediately set to filling her bowl. She gets a can plus some dry food mixed in. I made sure the boys were not standing right at the door, opened the door, placed the food out on the porch from a kneeling position. Momma was watching from the ground (it's a kinda small stone stoop of a porch). She has even now and then meowed just a bit to me, a new interaction. She also does the eye thing cats do when they want you to know they like you. (We can get into the eye thing some other time, but people who read books about cats will already know about it, and some dog people, the Romney kind of dog people if you know what I mean, will think it's just more liberal cat malarkey I'd expect, so I'm not going to rush into getting into the eye thing with you.)

Anyways, Wuzzy leaps over my arm and is suddenly outside, and standing pretty much beside Momma on the ground. He's fast and as heedless as Kurt Busch during the last ten, on bad tires. Momma wasn't sure what to make of this identical black cat landing beside her. She retreated under the house. What's funny, however, is that Wuzzy never noticed her at all. He was interested in sniffing the ground where he'd landed, and never moved when I went out and picked him up and brought him back inside. I rattled her dish a bit and left it outside on the porch, and shortly she hopped up and ate breakfast. When she finished she sat on the porch for a little while, grooming, then headed out into the woods as she does. We won't see her again until the next time. It's her schedule. I'd say there's a 70% chance or so that she'll be around this evening, and somewhat higher percentages for tomorrow morning. One day a couple of weeks back she sat out on the little race car that's a yard ornament for most of a morning. That hasn't happened again.

Bruiser became Grey Bear and is now 'Mokey, which stands for Smokey. Once the biggest, he's now the smallest of the three. He's the most finicky eater, which might account for some of that size differential. He's plenty full of energy and if we can guess the food he's really into on a given moment, he'll chow down like the others. Otherwise he'll eat some and then go sit on the windowsill, and like as not Puzzle will clean his plate for him.

All of 'em can now leap up to nearly any surface in the house. We are slowly losing our surplus of crockery. They are all tending to sleep in the bed down near our feet, and to function well as kitty alarms in the AM. I'm concerned that they use the wood stove as a perch and leaping station to higher spots. I don't want them to burn they little footsies, but how to prevent at least one such moment I'm really not sure of. We're about six weeks or so away from the first fire, if the weather is typical. They also have lept on the gas range without warning, fortunately not when a burner was in operation. I'm sure it's quite possible that one Sunday morning I could find one of 'em standing in the middle of the bacon or the scrambled eggs.

There was a nifty short story in the New Yorker a long time ago, about the senior year of some kids in high school. The story was sort of wry (not to be oxymoronic), and at one point the mother of one of the girls in the story says, to a friend, something along the lines of "well, at least if they're driving too fast in the middle of the night, they can't be having sex." The girl who's the object of this comment leans in the door and says, "why not?"

This is the motto of the Houdahenian Tribe.