Dixie's Political Blog

GIRL SCOUT KOOKIES

2010-03-26T13:23:00.004-05:00

Damn. Enter the strident, proselytizing evangelicals, again, this time into the world of Girl Scouting. The theocrats are "quoting" publications (publications for which they provide no means of viewing for oneself) alleging the Girl Scouts are distributing age-inappropriate, graphically portrayed, sex education material to the kiddies.

Once again, we see the radical evangelicals indulging their own prurient bent; it could be through vicariousness or through "naughty" behavior of their own or by voyeurism. By golly, the morality police must watch all that sexy stuff..in service to the Lord, of course. How many big-time players in the world of evangelicalism have we seen who've had to publicly acknowledge their own sex-related "sins?" Dang. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they really are the experts on this subject!

There's a connection between the zealousness of the fringe and sin and redemption. For evangelicals, confession of one's supposed transgressions is the key to redemption. Get it? To put it bluntly, you need to "sin" in order to need redemption. Hallelujah.

Now, the Girl Scouts are in cahoots with Planned Parenthood to ruin our next generation of women. Right. Does the evangelical movement ever stop? Hell, no! That's why I write about the issue so much. Everybody needs to understand what's happened in the past 30+ years to our culture as the direct result of intervention and activism on the part of radical evangelicals. We continue on the road toward a theocracy. Navigation will be easy for the evangelicals because over half the population isn't paying attention to this trend in the first place; or, in some cases, they don't quite understand the issues involved but, hey, who's against God?...right?

The Boy Scouts shamed their own organization by prohibiting gay men from being scout masters; they caved in to evangelical pressure. Will the Girl Scouts quietly kowtow to the same movement now? At this juncture, that seems likely to me.

When I was still working, I always signed up for voluntary deductions from my pay to be donated to the United Way, never attaching any stipulations on how my money would be used. When the Boy Scouts issued their homophobic criteria, I started specifying that none of my contributions go the Boy Scouts. I further stipulated that my money go only to Planned Parenthood. Some of you could do the same thing. Many people aren't aware they can make those choices about how their donations to United Way are used, so I'm calling it to your attention. One of us doing this makes no difference in the scheme of things. But, a concerted activism effort organized around the country to reduce funding to these organizations could potentially have an impact. You know what they say: "Money talks, ....walks."

The Girl Scout organization is administered at the local, regional, and national levels. Let's all contact them before it's too late. Tell those offices you don't want the Girl Scouts to cave in to the evangelical movement's pressure for yet another inroad into our culture.

- Dixie

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

2010-03-17T18:17:00.011-05:00

February was Black History Month and March is Women's History Month. Guess which of these the larger number of people know about? Guess which one is observed in schools all over the country? Here's a clue: black men in the United States gained the right vote in 1870 but women of any race were not allowed the same privilege until half a century later. My own paternal grandmother was forty-four years old in 1920 when she was allowed to vote for the first time. How's that for context?

Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of both Black History Month and Women's History Month; I know the history textbooks I studied in school gave both blacks and women short shrift when it came to including their contributions to our nation. It seems to me, however, that blacks have made more progress in that area than have women. And, when people talk today about "civil rights," they are almost always talking about blacks and/or homosexuals...not women in their own right. Why is that? No one should read this as an attempt to split factions; I'm for civil rights for all. I simply prefer parity in advocacy and progress over what we have now. With only approximately 10-15% of our population being black, maybe 10% being gay, and about half of us being women, something seems off kilter about this to me. I say we can thank misogyny and religion (often partners in crime) for that.

It's always been mostly feminists who have any special observance of Women's History Month. Honestly? My guess is that's also mostly who knows about it in the first place! Lord knows, even in 2010, there's a stereotypical caricature of who feminists are and were that sends many women and men scurrying as fast as they can from the label and anything they think it stands for.

In it's simplest form, being a feminist means being pro-woman; how can any woman not be pro-woman? How can any man who loves women not also be a feminist? I guess it's easier to deny part of oneself when you have idiots like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on the air waves blaming 9/11 on those who had angered God...like "feminists." Demonizing one's opponents is a time honored tactic for one reason...it works. Further, when women's progress is portrayed in the media as necessarily anti-male, the status quo becomes easier to maintain. Remember, we still don't have an Equal Rights Amendment for women.

If you've read my rant so far, you've discovered this isn't so much about Women's History Month as it is about the need for it. And, no, no body's advocating erasing white men from our textbooks. I just think history should reflect history, no matter who writes it.

Yeah, we've come a long way since my grandmother's day. But there's still a long way to go...and some of us were never "Baby" either. Get it?

- Dixie

REVISIONIST CIVIL WAR HISTORY

2010-03-10T21:00:00.006-06:00

The United States Civil War began in April of 1861 and would last four long years. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln referred to the secessionist movement as an "insurrection" which he believed could be quickly squelched. Approximately 650,000 men would die before it was over.

I can only speculate as to why Lincoln was so dismissive and so wrong about the seriousness of the differences between the North and South. After Lincoln was elected and before he was sworn in as president, seven states had already seceded from the Union. Those states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, in that order. If he discounted that fact, by June, four more states had joined the Confederacy...Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

The victors write history and that's nowhere more true than in the case of our Civil War. We are taught in school that the hero of the Civil War was Lincoln for freeing slaves when, in fact, he did no such thing. Nor was he inclined to. He did make some "official" proclamations, but they were so full of exceptions that the result wasn't even close to completely outlawing slavery and many remained enslaved. He made political gestures, not sweeping reforms.

If I were the victor, I'd prefer that history record me as the savior of an entire group of people too, rather than as the hapless president who over saw a blood bath in the name of preserving the union. As victor, perhaps it would be convenient to omit things like states' rights and unfair taxes/tariffs as legitimate grievances of one's enemy.

After Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in the late 1700s, the South became increasingly a one crop economy. More and more plantation owners abandoned other crops in favor of cotton after Whitney's invention dramatically reduced harvest time. In contrast, the North was becoming more and more industrialized. The South claimed the North had an unfair advantage when it came to tariffs, as the South had to import many more of their needs than did Northerners. Northerners were producing their own products in their own factories while the South was picking cotton. In some ways, the Civil War was about an industrialized economy bumping heads with an agrarian society and it was a boil festering since at least the early 1800s.

Southern secessionist states believed their rights as sovereign entities were being steadily eroded and further believed that to be in violation of provisions of the Constitution. They fervently resented what they saw as federal encroachment into their daily lives and didn't believe a state should have to accept every law coming out of the nation's capital at the expense of what was coming from their own state legislators.

This is not to say that slavery was not an issue in the Civil War. Some would even argue that our Civil War began in the 1840s and 1850s when the streets of Kansas and Missouri bled red over the issue of slavery, not in 1861 at Fort Sumter. Missourians were primarily pro-slavery, while Kansas was home to many abolitionists. Missourians repeatedly crossed into Kansas and made raids. "Bloody Kansas" referred to battles with "Border Ruffians."

The abolitionists were busy too, including pulling off one particularly infamous massacre in 1856 (at Pottawatomie), led by abolitionist John Brown and several of his sons in retaliation for those killed in a massacre in Lawrence, Kansas. This is the same John Brown who would in 1859 lead a disastrous raid at Harper's Ferry, in an effort to arm slaves for revolt. Yes, we were fighting a war over slavery a long time before 1861.

There's a popular misconception about the Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. Many still cling to the belief that rich plantation owners were fighting to protect their livelihoods and what they saw as their property (slaves). The reality is that there were relatively few rich people in the South in 1861. Most were dirt poor, unable to afford even shoes, and struggling to put food on their tables.

Unfortunately, Southern politicians and large plantation owners (often, one and the same) banded together to rally poor white folks to fight their war for them and used the issue of slavery to persuade them to bear arms against the "damn Yankees." Those with a lot at stake stirred the masses with the assertion that if slavery was made illegal, there would be even fewer jobs for poor whites; the argument was that, of course, freed slaves would work for less than would whites. For those barely able to keep food on their family table, this was perceived as an unacceptable threat to their already marginal existence. It was a rallying call.

The bottom line? Poor white folks fought the rich man's war. What a surprise. Fat cat plantation owners knew their livelihoods depended on their ability to keep slaves. No less than the Governor of Georgia would in 1860 write a letter to the editor of a prominent newspaper warning that whites would have fewer employment opportunities if slaves were freed, but he positioned it as a states' rights issue. In the main, Confederate soldiers were not fighting to keep slaves; they were fighting out of fear they'd be in even more dire economic circumstances than they already were if slaves were freed. There's a difference.

Even today, some in the South are still angry about the Civil War and some in the North don't understand why. They wonder, "Why don't they just get over it?" If I had a nickel for every time I've seen that sentiment expressed online on a political forum, I'd be in a hammock today, somewhere in a balmy clime, sipping daiquiris instead of sitting here writing this damn blog.

It's important to remember just how relatively recent the Civil War really was when you look at it in the context of generations and not just the number of years since it's been over. When viewed in that context, it really wasn't so long ago. I grew up knowing people who had known people who fought this bloody war. Does that put it in better perspective?

Tennessee State Capital Building in Nashville, occupied by Union forces in 1862

I have ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War. One, my maternal great great grandfather, Edward Simmons, fought with a Union regiment formed in Maryland...a border state in which allegiances were deeply divided. He had four brothers who did the same. Edward was wounded at Gettysburg in a battle that was later confirmed by his commander to have been fought against a Confederate unit from the same Maryland county where Edward's unit was formed. The often stated assertion that the Civil War was one of brother against brother and cousin against cousin was literally true.

Edward Simmons was something of a local hero when he came home after the war, per newspaper accounts of the time. After surviving the injuries he sustained at Gettysburg, he fought with his regiment for the duration of the war. He came home, married, and raised seven children. One of his daughters would be my mom's grandmother who would live until 1970...long enough for both my mom and I to have heard many stories about Edward's participation in the war. The war isn't so long ago now, is it?

Union soldier Edward Simmons

I have several paternal grandfathers who fought for the Confederacy, but records for them are much harder to come by. I can document one of them, James Lewis Jones, Sr., with complete records...the exception in the South, not the rule. He was my dad's grandfather and Dad knew him well. Of course, Dad heard about the war from him and I then heard some of it from my dad. Lewis was also at Gettysburg and was wounded at Seven Pines. My grandmother was his child and lived to be ninety-six. By then, I was twenty-six myself, so I'd had many years to hear the tales she related as told to her by her father. Again...a history that has been more alive than not in my lifetime.

So, you see? Not only are the wounds and animosity relatively recent, there is also the issue of the devastation visited on the South by Union troops. Most have at least heard of General Sherman's fiery hell that reigned from Atlanta to Savannah, but that wasn't all of it. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the South had not only lost a generation of her young men, her economy was completely destroyed. Her historical records were pillaged and burned and her legacy was forever compromised.

While I'm at it, I'll address the issue of what is properly known as The Confederate Battle Flag, but is usually referred to simply as "The Confederate Flag." The displaying of this flag remains a contentious issue even today for those whose history lessons did not include the fact that the Civil War was fought over much more than slavery alone. Instead, blacks and politically correct whites still insist the flag is a pro-slavery symbol; I guess that's "sexier" than states' rights and unjust tariffs.

I, on the other hand, see the Confederate Battle Flag as part of my personal history, part of how I became who I am today. I'm not offended by its display and I believe that, too, to be a states' rights issue. I'm no more proud of my great great grandfather Simmons' service to the Union's cause than I am of my great grandfather Jones's service to the Confederate cause. Indeed, why on earth should I be?

The Confederate Battle Flag has thirteen stars, representing not only those states that seceded from the Union, but also Missouri and Kentucky...neither of which had outlawed slavery.

Confederate Battle Flag

As for the flag of the Union troops, the one used by the end of the war had thirteen red and white stripes, representing the original thirteen colonies. But, it also had thirty-five stars. There were thirty-five stars because President Lincoln thought it would legitimize the secessionists if the stars representing their states were omitted on the flag that represented the "union" he was trying to preserve.

Union flag by the end of the war

Those who claim either tariffs, states' rights, or slavery as the sole reason for the Civil War are incorrect; it really was about all three. As with most issues, more than one thing can be true at the same time. It's only those with the simplest of minds who insist on the simplest of answers.

We need to set history straight and stop teaching that slavery was the sole reason for the Civil War and that President Lincoln was the great hero and emancipator of slaves; it wasn't and he wasn't. It's time for history lessons on the Civil War to include as much about trade/tariffs and states' rights issues as they do about slavery. It's also time for Southerners to be able to proudly display a flag that represents their ancestry and history without being labeled as racist and pro-slavery.

Today, most large cities in the South have become quite cosmopolitan and old grudges and offenses are fading to be not much more than notations in history books. That's true where I live, but there are still people here I wouldn't have a conversation about the Civil War with. That would be even truer for me if I spent much time in the "hollers" of eastern Tennessee. One still hears "damn Yankee" occasionally and I doubt that's going to be completely gone for a long time. Again, we're not talking about a history that's ancient and the South was devastated by the war. But, those who keep the memories alive are dying off. It remains to be seen how their children and grandchildren will continue or not continue the discussion.

It also remains to be seen if we've learned any lessons from this history. Only if we embrace the entire truth will we be able to move on as a nation and stop fighting old wars. We have too much to do to not work together.

- Dixie

EVANGELICALS: PUBLIC ENEMY #1

2010-03-03T18:09:00.005-06:00

The way of life we were to have been guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution is under attack as we careen ever closer to a theocracy. While some loudly denounce at every turn the message leaders of Islam expound to their adherants, Christian evangelical religious leaders right here at home tell the faithful to pray for the death of President Obama. Is there a fundamental difference between the two in this instance? Ever since Baptist Reverend Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority over thirty years ago, there has been a well organized war on secularism. Anybody who doubts that has been asleep under a rock for a very long time.

Two days after the tragic events of 9/11, Falwell suggested during an appearance on the Christian television show The 700 Club that God "allowed" 9/11 to happen because we "deserved" it as a result of our "moral decay." Mr. Falwell finds room for plenty of blame, singling out homosexuals, atheists, pro-choicers, the ACLU and feminists. At his side, Pat Robertson expressed agreement. The Falwell/Robertson interview was highly publicized when it occured. That's fine with me. I say the rest of us need to know what the enemy is thinking. Their movement is nothing short of a crusade. Or, their own brand of jihad.

Today, it's more difficult for a woman to have a legal abortion than it was thirty years ago. In the interim, those who work in facilities which perform this legal medical procedure have been threatened, bombed and shot...some have been murdered. Those who terrorize women and medical practioners do so because they are trying to force their own religious beliefs onto the rest of us.

In spite of small steps forward, there have been as many steps going backward as regards progress in securing the same civil rights for homosexuals that heterosexuals already enjoy. Don't forget: People are still not asking and not telling. Thank you, evangelicals. Every time ERA-related legislation is introduced in D.C., it quickly goes no where and isn't even acknowledged in the press as ever having been on the agenda. In the 21st century, we still refuse to make women equal to men before the law. Another one for the evangelicals.

In small towns and counties all over the country, evangelical Christians are getting themselves elected or appointed to local school boards. What's the big deal? The big deal is that they're changing in a profound way how science and history will be taught to our children, our leaders of tomorrow. No where is this more insidious than in Texas. The evangelicals there have attained enough power to radically change which textbooks are approved for Texas schools. Worst of all is that Texas is the largest single buyer of textbooks in the country. It doesn't take a quantum leap in logic to see how textbook publishers could find it more economically attractive to print only textbooks approved by their largest customer than to publish several alternatives.

While we're on the subject of school and books, let's not overlook the phenomenom brought to the public's attention by a film titled Jesus Camp. Jesus Camp is a movie about the indoctrination of children in intensive "camp" sessions. This is one of the scariest films I've ever seen in my life. I mean that literally. The scariest part of all is that the entire production was approved by those who founded Jesus Camp, some of the same people seen on film doing what I consider nothing less than child abuse. For the kiddies, Christianity is framed in the context of a war between "us" and "them" and the sessions are heavily sprinkled with references to "war, "warriors for Christ," dying for one's beliefs in the coming religious wars...all very explicit. Presented to children. Impressionable children. They're invited to be martyrs in the fight to make us a theocracy. If nothing else can convince you that our current way of life is under attack, viewing this movie should disavow all doubt. It's available to rent at your video store or can be streamed from the NetFlix site.

There's more. I could go on about church shootings committed by Christian evangelicals because they disagreed with what they perceived to be a "liberal" theology. Or, I could introduce you to The Foundation. Or the mega churches filled with evangelicals every Sunday to hear a politician speak for their "sermon." We could talk about the "Faith Based Initiative." Or Westboro. I could mention that I'm old enough to remember when every politician didn't end every speech or public appearance by uttering the words, "God bless America." Our public figures have allowed themselves to be bullied into such proclaimations, no matter how hollow, during the past 30 years. Our foreign policies in the Middle-East are heavily influenced by lobbyists for those who see everything in a religious, prophetic, context.

Yes, there's much more that could be said. I'll leave all of that aside for now and instead refer you to an article, written in 2007, by one Davis C.C II. A large banner across the top of the page where I found this proclaims, "Conservative Christians ONLY. Liberals, Atheists Not Welcomed." The site was apparently a pro-Brownback effort back when anybody in America actually knew who he was. Brownback's fifteen minutes may be over for now, but what makes this two and a half year-old article of particular interest now is the author's rants about now President Obama. More to the point, his argument is that neither Obama nor any other person of color could ever be elected as President of the United States. The Bible tells him so.

Here's how he begins the piece:

It is written in Rev 20:8-Satan shall go out to deceive all the nations which are in the four quarters of the Earth, Gog,and Magog to gather them together to battle: The number of whom is countless and of the sand of the sea or shores of the sea. As descendant of Canaan, Liberal Democrat, Barack Obama Hussein is indeed a liar for that there is no disputing. He has and will continue to with his lies to God’s children that abortion, blatant homosexuality, fornication, and socialism is fun and good. This does not however make him the great liar that God tells us is to be the Anti-Christ. It is Barack Hussein Obama’s curse of coloredness that will prevent him from ever being elected leader of a true Christian nation, one that is founded upon Christian principle by the chosen, fair-skinned people of God.

He closes with this:

Brothers and Sisters as a Prophet of God I share with you these words told to me by the angel Radueriel, Those who believe that this cursed man, or any man of color, will ever lead this country or fear his election have shown doubt in the very Word of Christ and They SHALL BE TORMENTED WITH FIRE AND BRIMSTONE IN THE PRESENCE THE HOLY ANGELS, AND IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LAMB-Rev 14:10.

I recommend going to the site to read the rest for yourself. If for no other reason, go to read some of the responses posted by those who share the beliefs espoused by Mr. David C.C. II. The article is at: http://tinyurl.com/28tll6

I'm sure if I'd seen this article in 2007 when it was first written I would have laughed out loud. Today, if this gets into circulation again, I suggest you buy stock in Depends; everybody will need them. Those on the Christian evangelical right will be pooping their drawers in embarrassment and the rest of us will be chortling past all control. Yup, Depends, I tell ya. Not plastics.

Once we stop laughing, however, we need to remember these people walk among us and they vote. They're involved in daily proselytizing and recruiting. They even manage to get into the gated community where I live and knock on my own door. The door of the place for which I pay all the bills. The door of the home I consider my sanctuary. Uninvited. Because it's important to them what my personal beliefs are.

Trust me on this: I'm willing to bet that the same evangelical Christian never knocks on my door more than once. I give them an earful that leaves them turning tail, as they mutter something about hoping I have a "blessed" day. Somehow, I don't think they get that a blessed day for me would not include uninvited evangelicals invading my private space.

Living in Nashville as I do, I'm clearly in what is often referred to as the Bible Belt. Hell (sorry, wink wink), considering that we're home to both the Southern Baptist Convention and the largest publisher of Bibles in English and other religious publications in the world (Thomas Nelson), one might even say we're the buckle of that Bible Belt. Evangelicals' numbers here and elsewhere in the country are growing. This is not a movement confined by any stretch of the imagination to one geographic locale; it's a movement in which they're literally pounding the pavement all over the country every day for their version of Jesus and Christianity.

The rest of us should be doing some organizing of our own. The alternative is to quietly surrender and submit to a crusade which has as its goal nothing less than the conversion of the U.S.A into a theocracy. Ideally, Christians who don't share the same radical fringe views of the evangelicals in their midst would be more vocal about their differences. As it is, all of Christianity takes a hit better reserved for those who truly deserve it. I'd love to see the same people clamoring for the leaders of Islam to rein in their adherents do the same for Christian leaders.

I don't want to hear nonsense about our Founding Fathers being Christian (they weren't) or that Christian theology should determine law for the rest of us because our nation overwhelmingly identifies as Christian (it shouldn't). The framers of our Constitution sought to guarantee we'd have a republic, not a democracy. They understood the evils inherent in giving sway to the tyranny of the majority. If there was ever a more critical time to remember this, I don't know when it was. Unfortunately, I don't think many of us even understand the concept.

I'm saying to you that I believe our homegrown evangelical Christian terrorists are to be even more feared than are terrorists representing any other group. In terms of impact on the daily lives of us all, it's not even a close race. For those who think my use of the word "terrorist" to describe evangelical Christians is either heavy handed or patently untrue, I invite you to read this definition of terrorism:

...the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.

...the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.

...a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

You tell me. Is that not what the evangelical Christian movement is about? It's time we recognize who truly is our Public Enemy #1. And, it's not Muslims and Islam.

- Dixie

SARAH DOES NASHVILLE

2010-02-08T20:14:00.006-06:00

My mom likes to defend her political opinions by commenting, "I subject myself to enough crap to stay well informed." Amen, Mom. Amen.

I just finished watching video of the complete 40-minute speech Sarah Palin gave at the first ever national Tea Party Convention, held here in Nashville over the weekend. Can anybody else say they've either watched or heard the entire thing? Not just a summary, some excerpts, or opinions of it? Hey, I'm not even into S&M and I did it. You can too.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP4PJlufZ0c

(Continued after photo...)

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin addresses attendees at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tenn., Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)

I was prompted to go find the video in the first place because I read some online comments making a big deal out of Sarah's supposedly having crib notes written on her hands to use during the event. After viewing the speech for myself, I see no reason to make noise about notes on her hands when there's a much more obvious criticism to be made. Honestly, "Obama teleprompter" critics should be glad no one's talking about how often Palin looked down to read and be prompted by her papers. She was looking down about as much as she was looking up. She either needed those notes or she has a fetish for wood grains. Your call.

And, she still made her own gaffes. Once, when encouraging Tea Partiers to be active and make their voices heard, she said they should not "remain silence" when she clearly meant to say "remain silent." Better/worse (perspective, right?) was when she said "Alaska" when she intended to say the U.S. while referring to a "beacon of hope" for the "repressed" around the world. Big deal gaffes? Of course not. But let's keep the record straight. Obama isn't the only one using prompts. And, he's not the only one who still makes gaffes when he does.

Anybody wanting to hear any specifics about what Palin thinks we should do to address the most pressing issues facing our nation today should probably look elsewhere. Or, alternatively, fast forward to about minute 25 in the video. You'll only need to watch until about minute 33. That's right, folks. Palin used her hugely publicized platform to tell in eight minutes out of forty what her plans for the country would be if she has any future in politics. If she was president. If she was running. If the sun comes up in the morning.

The rest of the speech? It's tempting to say that most of it was whining. I'll be more kind and say she spent the biggest portion of her time criticizing the policies of others...when she wasn't repeating the stale sound bytes of the disgruntled. That's a home run play when you're at bat in a house full of fans willing to spend $350 dollars to hear you. They loved it. Nor did it hurt that the rest of what she said was cheer leading for their movement.

One particularly precious moment came when she was being critical of the Obama administration for its performance in the aftermath of the attempted terrorist attack in December. She referred to the failure of the attack as "a Christmas miracle." No attribution to the breakdown of a system. No mention of the lack of follow through for some of the suggested changes in aviation security...over eight years after 9/11. No reference to the intervention by those on the plane. Nope, it was a "Christmas miracle." You betchya.

Tomes could be written about the ridiculousness of most of what she said at the podium. I'd call it, in general, B.S. I think that observation is at least as substantive as was her speech.

Are there any lessons to take away from the big party? Probably. The event was fraught with controversy before it even began, with many sponsors and participants pulling out ahead of time. Palin may have enthralled the devout, but I don't know what she did for those who bailed or those who supported their withdrawal.

She did mention "revolution" a number of times. I myself was revolted.

- Dixie

PAYING FOR ONLINE NEWS

2010-01-21T17:27:00.001-06:00

Will charging for "premium" access to online newspaper sites become a widespread trend? The Wall Street Journal has done it for years. With the announcement this week that the New York Times is planning to charge for premium access to their own website beginning in 2011, the argument over whether or not this is the future for newspapers' online presence is in the forefront again. When the #1 rated online newspaper site (in terms number of readers) makes a move in that direction, people pay attention.

Despite a failed earlier attempt a few years ago to charge for some content on their site, the Times is poised to give it another try. Details are still sketchy, but it appears the NYT will allow a certain number of visits to their site before a visitor is informed they will have to pay for further visits. This reminds me of last year's controversy over internet service providers considering charging different rates for a tiered system of access of their own.

I'm against both. The internet has been a great equalizer when it comes to access to information; that's its biggest contribution to society and shouldn't be underestimated. I can't think of another invention since Gutenberg's printing process developed in the 1400s that has had as much power to get as much information to the masses. In the United States, there are few who don't have at least some access to the web, even if it's only in a school or public library setting.

I worry about where charging for online content will lead. In essence, we would be creating a system that segregates by money our access to online information. I'm against anything that puts barriers up when it comes to the universal dispersion of information. Our society can only benefit from a better informed populace and that means all of us, not just the ones who can pay for site subscriptions.

It's arguable that the Times and other newspapers must find new ways to generate revenue or face going under. This has not been a good time for print news in general, with both circulation and ad revenues being down. It's no wonder they're looking for options. But the dilemma may not be solved by charging for premium online content. While online readership is up for the Times site, ad revenue generated from those visits is not. I can think of no reason why ad revenue would increase in the proposed tiered system.

There's no doubt this is risky business for the Times. They may lose some online readers, at least until/unless more major newspapers follow suit. Even from the outset, I think the NYT will have to do something to improve site content to entice visitors to be willing to pay for more of it. There must be added value in order to make it competitive with sites that continue offering free access.

The Times has a year to come up with what they think will be a workable plan. But my guess is it better be a dang good one. They'll have to sell themselves to a populace accustomed to free everything on the internet and that could be a tough sale to close.

- Dixie

A ONE YEAR PRESIDENCY

2010-01-20T16:33:00.002-06:00

One year ago today, Barack Obama made history by being sworn in as the first black president of the United States. In spite of claims from some corners that Obama won solely because blacks voted for him in record numbers, he could not have won without a broader coalition and a 50-state press. Like it or not, he is our president for at least three more years.

At the close of the first year of his administration, pundits everywhere are weighing in on what this year has been like and what it bodes for what we can expect to see in the future from an Obama White House. The foolhardy have gone so far as to pronounce four years will be defined by one; clearly, a review of history is in order for them.

In assessing for myself this presidency's first 365 days, I must go back to last year's stratospheric expectations for Obama's performance in office. That was always hyped more by the media and the far right than by those who actually voted for him.

There were some who voted only grudgingly for the Obama/Biden ticket as the lessor of evils because we thought the contest would be closer than it was and shuddered at the possibility of a McCain/Palin administration. Some of us had been voting third party and wanted to continue doing so. There were also those Republicans and independents who felt disaffected after eight years of the Bush regime. The Tea Party movement may be growing under Obama's thumb, but the birth of that ideology came from conservatives as a result of the Bush years.

Even without the moronic hyperbole from the mainstream media and the fringe right referencing Obama as some sort of messiah to those who voted for him, Obama's own campaign positioned him as a reformer. Unfortunately, that's a broad umbrella and it depends on your particular issue/cause whether or not you think Obama has yet shown evidence of earning that mantle. His opportunities to disappoint in this arena are many.

It's true that Obama inherited two wars and an economy in ruins, but it's also true that it's time for him to own the country's ills and for his admirers to stop whining about it. At this point, offering the mistakes of the Bush administration as a "reason" for why Obama has been less than successful in pushing his own agenda is just silly. The state of the nation one year ago was about Bush; unavoidably, this year it's about Obama.

Three of the hottest issues in the 2008 campaign were the economy, health care, and two wars. The jury's still out on Obama's economic policies to date and it's hard to see how anybody could be either thrilled or dismayed at this juncture; more time is needed. Health care? Good grief. Could the White House and the Democrats in Congress have been any more obtuse in the way they went about trying to formulate health care reform legislation? Could the Republicans have been any more obstructionist? Obama's leadership was largely absent. He was more like the third ring of the circus that was Pelosi and Reid and the nation's now been mired in their missteps for months.

As for Afghanistan and Iraq, I've yet to see one plausible explanation of a substantial difference between the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. If somebody has one, please, do tell. Further, if you were raising hell about Bush's policies in Afghanistan and Iraq for seven years, I hope you're raising hell about Obama's now. In the end, I don't think it will be his first year in office so much as his eventual foreign policy in the Middle East that will define the Obama presidency.

Do I sound disappointed by President Obama's performance his first year in office? Not really. I'm one who never had high expectations of him in the first place, so it's hard to feel much more than a little smug. Nor do I believe anybody can read the future based on this past year. But I do hope and pray for the welfare of us all that he does better in the next three than he's done in the first.

- Dixie

NEW YEAR OF POLITICAL RESOLVE

2009-12-28T18:16:00.004-06:00

It's been many years since I made New Year's resolutions. I mostly saw the exercise as irrelevant to me, as I always have personal goals.

But this year is different. I believe our nation is at a crossroads and the direction the country takes at this juncture will impact the lives of generations of future Americans. This is not the time to sit idly on our hands and bemoan the state of affairs in D.C. It's time to take action. If we don't, we're abetting the other side. Politicians like to claim otherwise, but they can be swayed if their constituency is loud enough.

Know this: Whatever your opinions are on the issues facing the United States today, there are movements afoot that call into question even the most basic rights addressed in the document that's supposed to be our rudder, the U.S. Constitution.

So, I'm making resolutions for 2010. This time, I can't ignore the fact that everything is political. Everything.

In 2010, I resolve...

- to visit more sites online that focus on activism and use them to send more electronic messages to those in elected office. I'll scrutinize groups for effective strategies. The internet will continue to evolve into a major source for all things political and offers one avenue through which anyone with an internet connection can make their opinions known.

- to connect with local activists to see what part I can play in their endeavors. If nothing else, I still know how to march and carry a sign. Phones need to be manned, events publicized, and supporters rallied. There's a job for everybody.

- to again use the telephone and snail mail to contact my representatives at the local, state, and national levels about the issues that are important to me. The point is to make contact in as many ways possible.

- to stay informed on everything the clowns in D.C. are doing. That means reading the proposed bills, knowing who sponsors what, and knowing which lobbyists are lining whose pockets. It also means scrutinizing the voting records of those in Congress who are charged with representing me; I'll watch what they do, not what they say.

- to read, read, read. The only reason I read any mainstream media is to note what they're reporting and what they're ignoring. It's imperative to get a wider lens' view of what's going on here and abroad politically. I'll read independent press and PBS. I'll read foreign press, and I'll read blogs. I'll read every angle I can find. I won't doubt that the truth's out there, but I will acknowledge I'll have to dig to find it.

- to continue offering a blog of original political opinion, hopefully presenting as often as possible a perspective not found elsewhere. I understand that my views may not be shared by any other living being on the planet.

What will you be doing in 2010? Will you work at making your voice heard? It's no longer nearly enough to vote. I challenge each of you to resolve to stay or become active politically in whatever way you can. Nothing short of our very way of life is at stake.

May your blessings of the New Year include the satisfaction of knowing you tried to make a difference.

- Dixie

Happy New Year, to one and all.

A NON-CHRISTIAN CHRISTMAS

2009-12-13T14:26:00.013-06:00

I'd like to offer one non-Christian's view of Christmas and an explanation of why some of us non-Christians embrace and celebrate the holiday anyway.

I'll begin by saying I do not believe there's any wide spread, nefarious plot for a "war on Christmas." I'll acknowledge that there are those who would like to see more December holidays recognized than only the Christian one. Clearly, some of them object even to being greeted with a "Merry Christmas" and prefer a generic "Seasons Greetings." Some atheists don't want any greeting at all.

Intellectually, I understand their argument about other holidays. There is, for starters, the Winter Solstice, first celebrated B.C. by Pagans on December 25th and now celebrated annually by many Pagans in the U.S. on December 21st (this year). Many Pagan groups will gather for this observance of the changing of the seasons. Also, the Jewish eight-day celebration of Hanukkah began on December 11th. Both Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice are holidays every bit as religious as Christmas but neither is a federal holiday as is Christmas.

There's also Kwanzaa. While not a religious holiday, it is widely celebrated in the African American community and begins on December 26th. It's a holiday deemed worthy of a public announcement by President Bush for at least one year of his administration (2004).

There are also arguments against Christmas because there is history to suggest the day became a Christian holiday as a result of early Christians wanting to draw attention away from the long established Pagan rites of the season; they did co-opt some of the Pagan traditions. And, Jesus was not, after all, born in December.

Even some fundamentalist Christians today hold that the December celebration of Christmas is blasphemy. It was considered such by many early European settlers on this continent as well and was not widely celebrated here as late as the early to mid 1800s. I have in my genealogy files transcriptions of legal transactions (land sales and marriages, for two examples) occurring on December 25th.

Frankly, I don't get hung up on all this. I'm attuned spiritually more to the Solstice than I am to Christmas, but I've celebrated Christmas every year of my life and have no plans to stop. The Winter Solstice is a more solemn, personal time for me, but I don't have to believe in either the resurrection of Christ or that He died for my "sins" to embrace his teachings.

I don't think I'm alone in my sentiments about this. I think many non-Christians feel the same way and even some self-identified Christians have no more religious element to their December celebrations than I do. A special Christmas grace will be said before eating, but I'm not sure many go further than that. We do, however, embrace the spirit of the holiday. Honestly, is there any other day that more universally represents love and good will toward mankind than does Christmas?

For me, Christmas is time to be with family and friends, some of whom I may see only three or four times a year. We gather over good food and exchange well wishes along with gifts. We still all buy for everybody, each according to our means and desires. It's special and we all love it. There will be more Christians than not (by a large margin) at our Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas morning breakfast gatherings, but I promise you we'll all be filled with the larger spirit of Christmas.

So, I put up my little "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree on Friday and finished decorating it yesterday. I've hung the wreath on my door and already have Christmas cards I've received displayed prominently. I've sent my own cards, am up to my elbows in Christmas baking, and have my gift planning all in place. I don't do a lot of decorating anymore since it's just me here and the family gatherings are not in my home. But I do this Christmas decorating for my own pleasure and I love the smell of something good in the oven. I'll drink hot chocolate with whipped cream when I rest from cooking and sometimes reminisce about Christmases past. I hope I never get so old I can't enjoy this holiday.

Please, wish me a Merry Christmas. Or whatever seasonal wish you'd like to extend with good will. I'll accept the greeting in the spirit in which it's intended and will delight in greeting you in kind.

Let me be one of the first to wish you a Merry Christmas. May you find therein the special meaning that fits for you and yours. And, please, accept this in the spirit in which it is intended.

- Dixie

Merry Christmas to you all, from my little corner of the world.

'TIS THE SEASON

2009-12-07T17:47:00.001-06:00

'Tis the season. It's time for the annual political argument over whether or not there's a "war" on Christmas and whether or not it's o.k. to say "Seasons Greetings." In the spirit of public service (cough), I call your attention to holidays you can all enjoy this month, no matter where you come down on that issue. There are other days of observance in December; I just picked the ones that I think particularly party-worthy. These are celebratory occasions you have probably missed out on in other years. And nobody will give a crap whether you say Merry Christmas or not!

I lament I didn't get this posted earlier; I'm still pouting over missing both National Cookie Day and Bathtub Party Day. Damn. And I'm skeered to find out what Weary Willie Day is. I need to move on and focus on preparations for a celebratory Cat Herder's Day.

Dec 1 - Bifocals at the Monitor Liberation Day

Dec 4 - National Cookie Day

Dec 4 - National Dice Day

Dec 5 - Prohibition ended in 1933

Dec 5 - Bathtub Party Day

Dec 5 - International Ninja Day

Dec 6 - National Pawn Brokers Day

Dec 7 - National Cotton Candy Day

Dec 9 - Weary Willie Day

Dec 15 - Cat Herders Day

Dec 16 - Barbie and Barnie Backlash Day

Dec 16 - National Anything Chocolate-Covered Day

Dec 21 - National Humbug Day

Dec 26 - National Candy Cane Day

Dec 26 - National Whiners Day

Dec 28/29 - National Chocolate Day

Dec 31 - Make Up Your Mind Day

For you party hounds that need an entire week to celebrate, consider these holiday options:

Dec 1-7 Cookie Cutter Week (You've still got a few hours!)

Dec 1 - 19 Santa Paws Week (Yes, those are the dates for the "week")

Dec 6 - 12 - National Hands Washing Awareness Week

For those who just can't get enough, you can celebrate these holidays all month long.....

Bingo Birthday Month

National Tie Month

Party on, y'all!

- Dixie

ONE AUSSIE'S VIEW OF THE U.S.

2009-12-02T16:12:00.008-06:00

I have an Australian online friend who's currently on a world tour. He chose the United States as the first leg of his journey and has been in our country for almost three months. In that time, he's crisscrossed the U.S. by plane, train, and bus and has mostly stayed with other Americans he's met online. His is a wonderful adventure most of us will never have. After meeting him last week when we went out for an evening of dinner and music, I knew I wanted to interview him about his experiences in the U.S. and with Americans in general. This article represents one Aussie's viewpoint, as told to one American. It's nothing more nor anything less than that.

For context, Steven is fifty-nine years old and the owner of a landscape design and construction business in Australia. He has four grown children, six grandchildren, and a teen-aged daughter. He lives in Brisbane (population about two million) in the Australian state of Queensland, in the eastern part of Australia, about three or four hours south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Brisbane has "Sister City" status with cities in China (two), Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and the UAE. Steven describes the weather in his home city as "beautiful one day, perfect the next." I looked up some weather stats and must say it sounds like his description is spot on!

Our Australian visitor is intelligent, erudite, and possesses a quick wit; he's very serious one moment and impish another. He has visited the U.S. on four previous occasions, all in the late 70s and early 80s. On the two occasions we've met so far, Steven declared himself to be "mostly non-political," but he does claim the label "liberal" and I agree that the opinions he expressed during our interview are congruent with that. A large part of our discussion was based on questions suggested to me by some of the posters on MyWay's politics board. Some of the questions were more complex than others, but all were addressed.

(Continued after picture....)

Steven showing his impish side

I'll get through the easy questions first. One person wanted to know if Steven found Americans in the northern or southern parts of the U.S. to be friendlier, one more than the other. It was a southerner who posed the question and I'm a southerner too, so I had some hope he would say those in the south were the friendliest. That's not what happened. His immediate response to the question posed was that he found Americans all over the country to be friendly and welcoming. His declaration was adamant and repeated more than once in the course of the interview. Even when he was "warned" by others that he wouldn't find much civility in New York City, he had such a different experience there that he's made two stops in that city on this trip. At the end of the interview, I asked him if there was a particular part of the country he would most like to have more time to visit and his answer was NYC. He found the vibrancy of the city heady and acknowledged he's not the sort of guy to seek solace in a bucolic setting. He prefers the stimulation, company, and cultural opportunities afforded in larger metropolitan areas. He also mentioned San Francisco and we both agreed it would be a lovely place to live, considering geography, climate, food, and cultural attractions.

Another question suggested was that I ask our guest what he thought about Alexis de Tocqueville's work and its relevancy (if any) today. The poster further said that if Steven didn't know who Tocqueville was, he should stick to his own country. Well, I asked the question and he didn't know Tocqueville or his work. But I didn't suggest he stick to his own country because of it! I don't know why it would be a surprise to anyone if an Australian tourist is not familiar with a French writer whose most famous work, written in the early-mid 1800s, is about the U.S. I've read Tocqueville myself, but I'd bet that most of those who post on MyWay have not. What country should they go (back) to?

Still on the "easy" list, one MyWay poster said it had been his experience that Aussies share in common with Americans a general outlook on many things and a similar sort of sense of humor. Steven's immediate response to that opinion was to nod in general assent, but he added that he thought Aussie humor somewhat darker than American humor. He would express other differences as regard a general outlook later in the interview, but I'll deal with them in the context in which he voiced them.

The only question I asked Steven that seemed to stump him momentarily was the one I asked about what he thinks of when he hears the words "American politics." After a momentary silence, I prodded him a little by suggesting that he not think too hard about it and instead give me the immediate thoughts he had on the subject. At that point, I got a one word answer, "narrow." When pushed to explain what he meant by narrow, he said he believes Australians have more political choices than do Americans. He cited the existence of more than two major political parties in Australia and that, of necessity, some coalitions formed and shifted over time. Nonetheless, even a lessor party like the Greens has enough presence in the government to stop bills they oppose.

He also expressed the opinion that many Aussies are confounded by American foreign policy and that Bush's frequent references to Australia as part of the "Coalition of the Willing" angered many because the Australian population in general was against the war and furious that their government committed any troops at all to the cause. He further opined that many Australians feel a certain "sympathy" for Americans due to our seeming lack of understanding and knowledge when it comes to the rest of the world and that he was of the opinion Americans tend to view things in an all or nothing manner, often missing important nuance.

Most complex of all was our attempt to address a question posed by another MyWay poster wondering if Steven thought Australians more tolerant than Americans. The problem was that the questioner didn't specify what was meant by "tolerant," so I brought up some of the issues generally raised in discussions of tolerance here in the U.S.

Knowing a little of the history of Australia and their Aborigines, I had a few questions about their current status in Australia. Steven allowed that there were similarities in his country's treatment of the native population and the treatment the indigenous population received here in the early European colonization of both lands. Both native groups were marginalized and treated brutally by their invaders. In Steven's opinion, the issue of Aborigines in Australia now is more about class than race. Educated Aborigines are fully integrated at all layers of Australian society while others languish in government supported enclaves. There, as here, are some native groups who have no interest in assimilation; they want to protect their own culture from further dilution and possible extinction.

One point of interest to me in our discussion of native populations was Steven's reminder to me that Australia declared "National Sorry Day" in 1998. This came about largely because of public distaste for a history that includes taking Aborigine children from their families and placing them in far away schools "for their own good," much as we did here on this continent with the children of Native Americans. While National Sorry Day is not yet a national holiday in Australia, it's widely celebrated and there is some movement afoot to make it one.

Regarding rights for gays and lesbians, Steven said they mostly enjoy the same rights as do heterosexuals, including when it comes to marriage. In spite of some murky laws around the issue (the subject of an ongoing battle), Australian law allows for a de facto status of "married" if couples (both homosexual and heterosexual) live together for a certain number of years. It sounds much like a system in place for heterosexual couples in some U.S. states for "common law" marriages.

Toward the end of our interview, I asked Steven what he thought Australians' general opinion of President Obama is. He responded that Obama enjoys widespread popularity in Australia, especially after eight years of President Bush. He believes most Australians are still optimistic that Obama will bring about desired change in foreign policy; I suspected from his reply that Aussies may be more patient on this issue than are many Americans.

Steven reports being surprised by a few things he's observed while here, mostly of the cultural/folk variety. For example, he lamented the fact that we Americans like to throw a lot of cheese into our cooking and that it's frequently a cheese product rather than real cheese. He also thinks we slather mayonnaise on way too many foods. He was surprised by the size of food portions and what he considers the large amounts of food we eat at one sitting. He doesn't think much of the bread products he's tried here and is both shocked and amused to see pharmaceutical companies advertising on television. He is astonished that almost nobody here uses a clothes line to dry their clothes.

Steven identified as his biggest surprise the amount of poverty he's seen while in this country. This was something he had also mentioned during our first meeting, so I was curious to know by what criteria he was assuming poverty. He explained he was astonished at the number of panhandlers he'd encountered (including the night we went out last week) and the number of "ramshackle" neighborhoods he'd passed through during his travels. Steven relates this, again, to his opinion that Australians have more choices than do Americans.

There was only one issue raised for which we could find no common ground at all and that was about 2nd Amendment rights versus gun control/prohibition laws. Steven's opinions about guns and the role they play in American society is very far afield from my own strong pro-gun sentiments. I believe each of us to be passionate in our beliefs about this; we're probably both on the outer fringe of groups on opposing sides of this issue. After exchanging our bare bones stances, it was clear there was nowhere else to go with it so we left it alone.

That covers most of what we discussed in our interview. Steven will be here until next Monday and we're hoping to fit in a day of visiting some of the architectural highlights in Nashville and perhaps a night out for a beer and more music with him and the two couples whose homes he's been staying in while here. I've no doubt I'll learn more then about what he thinks of the lot of us.

And, he's learning along the way what some Americans think of him and his visit. Steven's having each person he meets write an entry in a travel journal he'll savor when he returns home. When he leaves Tennessee, he's headed for Brazil and Peru in South America before he goes to Europe to meet up with his fifteen year-old daughter for a European stay of two or three weeks. (He's flying her in from Australia.) If he has time after Europe, he plans to go to at least one country on the African continent and possibly Russia before he goes back to Australia. By the time he gets home, he expects to have visited five continents.

One of the highlights for me of the afternoon came about as a result of where I chose to conduct the interview. Tennessee law stipulates no smoking allowed in any building in which anyone under the age of 18 is ever present; that covers a lot of places, including many bars where it's not uncommon for musicians to bring along their families when they perform. But I have a friend who owns a bar that strictly limits admittance and she still allows smoking. Since Steven and I are both smokers and we knew we'd be at it for a few hours, it was a no brainer to go to her place. Unfortunately, when we got there, some verrry country music was playing on the jukebox and neither of us likes country music. So, I pumped some bucks into the machine for a long line of American 70s and 80s rock tunes and by the time we finished our business, Steven was singing along with the music. Indeed, he knew the lyrics better than I did! Once again, evidence that American pop culture is alive and well in other parts of the world. I smiled for the moment in which neither of us was particularly or peculiarly American nor Australian, for the moment when music was the mutual language more cohesive than our shared English.

I've no doubt that Steven's opinions will rile some of you. I suggest two things about that:

1) Remember that these are the opinions of one person and one person only...Steven. They are not represented here as anything other than just that.

2) Steven sounds like an Aussie (which I learned should be pronounced AuZZie) who is very proud of his country. I've no doubt that if a similar interview was done with an American touring Australia, you'd see the American's pride in country in that interview as well.

Clearly, Steven likes us, warts and all. He has, after all, visited here five times and is spending the largest chunk of time of his current travels with us. He said he felt privileged to be given the forum of this interview to express his opinions.

Me? I believe I was the privileged one. And I'm just pleased as punch that we Americans have been gracious hosts to this traveler. Godspeed to Steven as he continues his most excellent adventure; I hope he's treated as well in other places as he has been here in the U.S.!

- Dixie

(You may comment on interview below picture...)

Steven and I out for a night on the town

YOU MIGHT BE A HYPOCRITE

2009-11-29T19:08:00.005-06:00

If you supported the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq until January 20, 2009 and now lambaste Obama for following a very Bush-like policy in both countries, you might be a hypocrite.

If it was o.k. with you that Bush had no real exit strategy regarding Iraq and Afghanistan for almost seven years and you're now jamming Obama for not having one after less than a year in office, you might be a hypocrite.

If you believed during the Bush regime that the lives of our military men and women lost in Iraq and Afghanistan were nothing more than reminders of the hell that is war and now blame Obama personally for every casualty incurred, you might be a hypocrite.

If you slammed an anti-war online forum poster for posting war casualties during the Bush years and now do the same yourself, you might be a hypocrite.

If you considered the money spent on two wars necessary to our national defense during the Bush administration and now decry the continued costs of the same wars, you might be a hypocrite.

If you're now criticizing Obama for his jaunts away from D.C. and didn't do the same when Reagan and Bush spent inordinate amounts of time at their homes away from the capitol, you might be a hypocrite.

If you were outraged when the Bush daughters' under age drinking was covered by the media but now think it's o.k. to target the two Obama (or Palin) children, you might be a hypocrite.

If you're one who's criticized Michelle Obama for her body shape but never noted Laura Bush's distinctly boxy shape (not to mention a rather broad beam), you might be a hypocrite.

If you were one who cheered Dick Cheney's pronounced efforts to expand the powers of the administrative branch of our government and now carp that Obama has those same powers, you might be a hypocrite.

If you enjoy catty remarks about how much Michelle Obama spends on her shoes and didn't go bonkers over what Nancy Reagan spent on clothes, you might be a hypocrite.

If you pounced on the Dixie Chicks and didn't do the same to Imus, you might be a hypocrite.

If you cite and claim support for a Constitution that provides for freedom of religion yet would ban (or worse) certain religions and their adherents, you might be a hypocrite.

If your approval or disapproval of any particular politician hinges solely on whether there's a "D" or an "R" behind the name, you might be a hypocrite.

If you approve of a spammer burying one group's posts on a political forum yet persistently call out another poster for perceived censorship, you might be a hypocrite.

If you claim you don't understand the sentiment behind Reverend Wright's declaration of "God damn America" yet daily wish for the damnation of our president and his administration, you might be a hypocrite.

If you know how many times Bush visited the troops overseas on Thanksgiving and still jawed about Obama not doing so this year, you might be a turkey.

- Dixie

WHO GETS CALLED WHAT?

2009-11-29T12:18:00.003-06:00

Liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, left-winger, right-winger....These are just a few of the labels posters on political boards often want to categorize others with. I think it makes the world seem easier to negotiate if you can compartmentalize everyone neatly into their own little box, one in which you presume to know all the positions held by those you've put in those boxes.

Unfortunately, it's a flawed model. Very few of us fit neatly into one particular political party or movement, no matter how we're labeled by others.

I can only speak for myself on this one, but I want to address the label "liberal" as frequently applied to me. Honestly, it never fails to amaze me that some of you think I'm a liberal. I'm guessing that is based on my opinions on some social issues; abortion and equal rights for gays and lesbians come to mind. I suggest to you that my views on those subjects are more Libertarian than liberal. I'm always going to come down on the side of individual rights over governmental nanny nonsense.

I can further assure you that most left leaning liberals do not think I'm in their corner. They've read my opinions on such matters as the 1st, 2nd, and 17th Amendments to the Constitution, "hate crime" legislation, the Obama administration to date, Civil War history and the flying of the Confederate flag and have expressed dismay at my positions. Again, I claim I'm coming down on the side of the rights of individuals. That's what Libertarians do.

You know those online tests people sometimes take? Those that purport to analyze your political leanings? Every one I've ever taken has resulted in my being labeled as a Social Libertarian. Basically, that means I agree with many Libertarian positions but am willing to spend more government money than many other Libertarians are. I think Social Libertarian is a fairly accurate description of who I am politically.

This post is about a couple of things. One, labels limit mutual understanding because most of us don't actually completely agree with any one ideology. Two, we miss opportunities for discussion when we presume to know some one's position on one matter because we know their position on another.

The other point I'd make is that I think everybody should call themselves whatever they want to; the Westboro bunch comes to mind. But we should never paint others with a brush so wide that there's no allowance for individual differences. That's a myopic view that distorts reality.

- Dixie

THANKSGIVING, WARTS AND ALL

2009-11-25T19:17:00.003-06:00

When I first decided to write about Thanksgiving, I thought the focus of the article would be on addressing stereotypes and myths about the first Thanksgiving on this continent. By the time I had pored over at least a couple dozen sources, I knew I would be writing something entirely different.

What I found made a couple of things clear. First of all, there is no consensus on when the first Thanksgiving occurred. Some claim the first was probably thousands of years ago, not the few hundred years claimed by others. Some cite President George Washington's one-time proclamation of a day for giving thanks in 1789; others cite President Abraham Lincoln's action in 1863 making Thanksgiving a national holiday. The date of observance was later changed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 from the last Thursday in November to the 4th Thursday. It's clear, too, that there have been extended periods of time after Europeans first came to this continent when no such day was observed at all on a wide-scale basis.

I also decided nobody really needs to be reminded that the Thanksgiving story of the Puritans in 1621 we were taught by both our educational system and Hollywood is fraught with myths and stereotypes. Surely, we all know by now that the Puritans weren't running around in funny hats and buckles. Nor were the Native Americans present that day likely decked out in full feather headgear and wearing tomahawks strapped to their sides. We can also acknowledge that, for a very long time, the Native American version of the events in 1621 was not included in our history books; the Euro-centric version was simply passed from one generation to the next. We all know that the victors get to write history.

I'm sure it's politically incorrect to say I don't care about sorting all of that out. Oh, well. What I honestly care much more about is what the day has evolved into in our modern culture. It's become a day, yes, for giving thanks. But I doubt many Americans will tomorrow consciously think about 1621 when grace is being said before the feast. I believe what most of us will be thinking about are those we love and our good fortune to gather together again. We'll probably also give at least a moment's thought to other blessings in our lives, perhaps, too, remembering there are always those less fortunate than ourselves. In my family, it's also frequently a time to include a few friends we know don't have plans for the day; we invite them because they enrich our own Thanksgiving Day by sharing it with us.

There will be no guilt over history at my family's celebration tomorrow nor will there be arguments about the particulars of earlier Thanksgivings. We'll simply share good food and good company and make new memories. What more is there, really? Well, there is football.

I wish for you all the Thanksgiving observance that's most meaningful and pleasurable to you. Any opportunity for coming together with loved ones to celebrate just being alive and together should not be missed. Tomorrow is never promised.

- Dixie

POLL RESULTS: ELECTION 2010

2009-11-20T12:20:00.003-06:00

In the small, unscientific poll recently ended on this blog, there are what I consider to be some interesting numbers in the results.

The question asked was:

Election 2010: What do you think?

The answers to choose from and the percent of votes garnered by each option are as follow:

1) The Democrats will retain control of both the House and Senate 31%

2) The Republicans will gain control of the House 17%

3) The Republicans will gain control of the Senate 0%

4) The Republicans will gain control of both the House and the Senate 15%

5) It's too soon to say 35%

Of most interest to me is that if you add the number for those who believe the Republicans will gain control of the House to the number who believe they'll gain control of both the House and the Senate, you get a full 32% of the respondents believing there will be significant gains by the Republican party in 2010. With 31% of those responding believing the Democrats will retain control of both chambers, it's easy to see that opinion, at least for now, is pretty evenly divided. Remember, too, that people who vote in these polls frequently vote for what they want to happen over what they think will happen.

The battle between Democrats and Republicans will be for those who answered "it's too early to say." It's true a lot can happen in twelve months, but I expect the races in the 2010 elections will be hotly contested. I think many of them will end up being close no matter what happens between now and then. If you plan to stay up to watch election returns come in that night, you'll probably be up late.

Both the Democrats and Republicans have a lot at stake in 2010 and I don't see a clear advantage for either at this point.

Dixie

DISSENT IS PATRIOTIC

2009-11-18T22:25:00.004-06:00

Loving one's own country, warts and all, is a big part of what patriotism means to me. I'm reminded somewhat of the love parents have for their children; we don't stop loving them when their behavior angers us. Instead, we let them know what we expect and what's acceptable to us when it comes to their actions; we do so precisely because we do love them. I suggest that's an approach we should consider taking in our relationships with those who govern us as well.

Our freedom of speech includes the right to dissent and disagree with those in Washington. I'd go further and say dissent is not only a right, it's a responsibility. Our ability to be vocal about our disapproval of our government without fear of years-long detention or worse is one of the things that sets us apart from many other nations. Loving one's country enough to actively participate in the civic process, including vigorously discussing which paths are best for the nation to take, is patriotic. So is having a desire for one's country to be the best it can be.

So, why is it that criticism voiced about a U.S. administration or policy is so frequently labeled as un-American by other Americans? Or traitorous? Have we forgotten that our country was founded on the backs of those who lead a revolt against their own governance? Had they not done so, we could still be a British colony.

Part of the problem is that we Americans have deluded ourselves into believing our own propaganda. We are educated and acculturated to believe the U.S. is the best at everything on the planet, no matter the issue or circumstance. All the studies and statistics in the world will not move the obstinate few who feel threatened when confronted with the truth. They are afraid of having what they've been taught about their country challenged, as it makes the world a scarier place for them.

Further, there are those Americans who fervently believe Divine intervention is responsible for both the history and the future of our nation. Theirs are beliefs that can't be shaken by any amount of logic, reason, or evidence. Indeed, those are beliefs that provide fertile ground for feelings of superiority.

We also have those for whom dissent is acceptable only when it's not their guy or party being criticized. In plain English, that's called hypocrisy. You cannot cry foul for dissent from one group and not for dissent from another. You either believe in our history of free speech, or you don't; I don't see much gray area on this one. Making an attempt to separate the issues from names and political parties and focusing instead on what you believe is best for the nation is an act of love for your country.

I don't care what you call yourself. You can be Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Independent, Socialist, Communist, Libertarian, left, right, progressive or whatever other label(s) you see as a applicable for yourself. My point is that it's your patriotic duty to voice your dissent when you believe your country is following a course that is not in her best national interest; not to do so is to ignore one's responsibility as a citizen of this great nation of ours.

I'll take some rowdy, patriotic dissent over blind nationalism any day.

- Dixie

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM

2009-11-07T21:05:00.006-06:00

American anti-intellectualism is not new. It's a sentiment voiced as long ago as our colonial days, a time when John Cotton proclaimed, "The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee." Perhaps Puritan Cotton's opinion had a biblical basis, grounded in the text of Genesis with God's admonition forbidding partaking of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

Albert Einstein would later observe, "Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds." Indeed. Anti-intellectualism is pernicious class war waged by the same people who accuse others of waging class war when social inequities are raised. They accuse others of snobbery while demonstrating their own. Touted as a populist stance, anti-intellectualism grows faster than, well, arugula.

In order to better understand the bias against intellectualism, look to those who hold that bias. There is a segment of the American population fearful of free, progressive thought. They're uncomfortable if they perceive their own beliefs and values are being questioned. Independent thought confronts their frequently xenophobic status quo. In short, superior intelligence sends some folks 'round the bend. Einstein had it right.

Anti-intellectualism is evident in every aspect of our culture and no where more prominently than in our politics. Politicians with high I.Q.s (Obama, Clinton, Carter, Gore, Kerry, all contemporary examples) are vilified as elitist. As for George W. Bush, I don't recall another U.S. President in my lifetime who so personally or tenaciously clung to mediocrity, wearing it at times much like a badge of honor. No egghead, that one. But there was that sneer.

Our educational system suffers from the same anti-intellectualism. Teachers have time and get paid to do little more than teach to the test. There's no agenda for fostering and developing critical thinking skills; both very bright and very slow students are a bane to the average teacher. Daily de facto curricula at the elementary and highschool levels are more models of rote memorization and crowd control than exercises in education; on college campuses, students indignant over poor grades for poor work are writing bad performance reviews of professors and instructors who demand excellence. Untenured university staff are particularly vulnerable to those tactics, as their livelihoods are likelier impacted if they don't concede to the students' demands for higher grades. Learning for the sheer value and pleasure of learning itself has been mostly abandoned in the race for the right grade to get the right degree to get the right job. There's a great old Frank Zappa quote: "If you want to get laid (I would change the word to 'screwed'), go to college. If you want an education, go to the library." How revolutionary.

The most talented writers are rarely on best-seller lists and the best crafted movies are often not box office hits. The guy voted "most trusted newscaster" in a Time poll this year airs on Comedy Central and infotainment has replaced journalism. Even entertainment has been dumbed down to include "reality" shows; it's a bizarre world when the likes of Jerry Springer and Judge Judy have their own TV gigs. We demonstrate how little we as a society value education when we watch the NBA or NFL award multi-million dollar contracts to bad boys who can barely read or speak a cogent sentence in their native language. To acknowledge any of this is to invite being labeled imperious.

Intelligence is not so much about what you know as it is about what you have the capacity to learn. That's what's really at stake here. If we allow anti-intellectualism to stifle the curiosity that fuels innovation and challenges us to think outside-the-box in order to develop creative solutions to the problems facing us in the 21st century, what will we as a society miss? Where will the new answers for new problems come from? How will we hold on to a position of leadership in the world? The absurdity of anti-intellectualism must be shown for what it is: a misguided and out-of-date concept, one too dangerous to tolerate at this point in history.

- Dixie

FREE SPEECH VS CENSORSHIP

2009-10-31T21:31:00.004-05:00

It's the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that's supposed to guarantee what most of us are referencing when we mention "freedom of speech." What many don't recognize (or else, refuse to acknowledge) is that the 1st Amendment is for all of us, not just a privileged few.

Here's a partial list of "celebrities" who have put the issue of freedom of speech on the front burner for at least minimal discussion in recent years: Don Imus, the Dixie Chicks, Mel Gibson, Larry Johnson, Michael Richards, and the Reverends Wright and Anderson. On his radio show, Imus referred to a female college basketball team as "nappy headed hos;" the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines said at the beginning of one of their concerts she was embarrassed that President Bush was from her home state of Texas; Gibson cut loose with an anti-Semitic tirade after a traffic stop for suspected DUI; Johnson let fly an anti-gay Tweet and locker room comment; Richards exploded in front of an audience with angry, racially charged slurs; Wright preached "God damn America," while Anderson encouraged his congregation to pray for the death of President Obama.

More frequent than celebrity gaffes, however, are the racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-religious (any religion other than their own) comments made daily by John and Jane Q. Public on internet message boards. You know the words I'm talking about: nigger, injun, boy, wetback, cunt, whore, faggot, dyke, etc. There are some posters who are seemingly incapable of even referring to a person of color without mentioning the race or ethnicity of the one they're talking about. On just one board alone, I've read "no more niggers in the White House," "blacks have ruined this nation," and, today, that Obama "should be a slave, not president." Regular readers of these boards know there are many more examples that could be cited.

I'm bringing up this issue not because I think any of the above referenced people should be censored (I don't) or because I think any of them owe apologies to anyone for what they said (I don't). Nor is this a new position for me. In the instances I've referenced, I've consistently taken the stance that people should be able to say anything they damn well please. We are, each of us, entitled to our opinions and the free expression of the same. If feelings are hurt, so what? Not every slight (perceived or otherwise) deserves an apology. Nor should those who speak their minds have their livelihood or lives threatened, as has been the case in some instances.

Whether or not I personally find the remarks made to be aberrant or disgusting is hardly the issue. The real issue is this: Just as those who make anti- (fill-in-the-blank) comments have a right to voice their opinions, so do those who find the comments offensive. It's your right to think or say whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be wearing your big boy or big girl panties when your language is labeled by those whose values and opinions are other than your own. Like it or not, freedom of speech is a two-way street. What we allow to be denied to one can be denied to all.

Most pernicious of all, to my way of thinking, are the reactions from those called out or questioned for their use of prejudicial epithets. I have a couple of favorites....

First, there's the oft used excuse that one's own language is the result of language used by another. Please. Just once, I'd like to see somebody take responsibility for their own mouth and not blame what comes out of it on somebody else. Just once, I'd like to hear somebody say, "yeah, I'm racist" without the cop-out that they're behaving like one because somebody else already thinks they are. They imply they take the label as a point of pride.

My other favorite excuse, always used to justify the use of "nigger," is the intonation that the word refers to a state of mind or behavior and not to race. Again, puhleeze. White folks aren't called niggers...nigger-lovers, maybe, but not niggers.

Language and imagery are powerful; there's good reason for saying the pen is mightier than the sword. It's in our language that both subtle and not so subtle references to both good and bad are made. Think not? Who wore the black hats and who wore the white hats in the westerns you watched as a kid? Do you know the difference between "white" magic and "black" magic?

I say, go for it! Say what you think and feel! But don't expect those who object to be quiet about their disagreement with you. Just as you have a right to your opinions, so do the rest of us. You can't have one without the other; this is an example of a privilege that comes with responsibility.

Those who already do so will continue to post daily about the "black bastard," the "mullah," "drunk injun" and worse. Give us the best homophobic, racist, misogynistic lines you've got. Will the rest of us continue to label that speech for what it is? On that, I give ya my best, Palinish, you betchya!

- Dixie

STRATEGY OR STRATEGERY?

2009-10-28T23:08:00.008-05:00

What are we trying to win in Afghanistan? Why are we sending more troops over instead of bringing home the ones already there? These are questions that have no answers because each is based on a false premise. The first asserts that there is something winnable to begin with; to even consider the second requires a belief that repeating history will result in a different outcome. Remember that spinning top you had when you were a kid? And how it would sometimes careen out of control? That seems a perfect metaphor for our eight year-long excursion into Afghanistan.

Whether or not you agreed with the originally stated mission of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 (to go after bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and their Taliban allies), it's difficult to argue for our continued presence in Afghanistan at this date. With the exception of 2003, our military casualties have increased every year we've been there and we're now coming to the end of what's been the deadliest month ever for American troops in Afghanistan. Both the Taliban and al-Qaeda have grown their spheres of influence. How many lessons do we need before we understand and accept the impossibility of defeating insurgents in a country that will hide and protect the worst among them rather than trust an outsider?

We now find ourselves in a situation in which even a career State Department employee walks away from the action in Afghanistan, no longer able to justify it morally. We've supported a government generally considered corrupt and ineffectual. In spite of many accusations of voter fraud resulting in bogus votes in his favor, President Karzai has been forced into accepting a runoff election that is scheduled for the end of next week. As if the controversial and drawn-out election process hasn't been enough of an embarrassment for Karzai, this week we've seen the allegation that his opium-dealing brother has been on the CIA payroll for almost eight years. Does this sound to you like a government designed to inspire confidence among its populace? It's no wonder the Karzai regime is widely seen as a puppet of the United States.

Here at home, we're as divided on this issue as we are on others. In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, 49% of those who responded were against any significant troop buildup in Afghanistan, while 47% favored such an increase. Nor do the opposing sides appear to be coalescing in any discernible manner. There remains a lot of "you're either with us or you're against us" mentality on one side, while on the other side there's the frustration of a group that has decried our presence in Afghanistan for years.

The administration and media like to refer to the military men and women in Afghanistan as "Coalition Forces," but let's get real. Of the roughly 1,500 "coalition" deaths as a result of our attack on Afghanistan, almost 1,000 of them have been American men and women. I'm sure I'm not the only one reminded of the "Coalition of the Willing."

It's in the context of today's reality in both Afghanistan and here at home that President Obama must make his decisions about which direction we're going to go next in Afghanistan. He's being criticized on the right (notably, by John McCain) for taking too long to respond to General McChrystal's troop request while being vilified on the left for continuing what's looking increasingly like a Bush-Lite version of foreign policy, particularly as it regards Afghanistan and Iraq. Some praise Obama for taking what they consider an appropriately measured study of the situation before acting, but I frankly don't think that pail will haul water much longer.

I think it was fair to call this Bush's war in the past, but with no recognizable change in direction after nine months of a new administration, it's time for ownership to pass. To put it bluntly, it's time to do your business or get off the pot. Candidate Obama promised troop withdrawals, not increases. At what point do his die-hard supporters insist on more consistency between Candidate Obama and President Obama and demand that he keep that promise?

I mentioned casualty numbers earlier. If we don't get out of Afghanistan a.s.a.p., brace yourselves for some real numbers; they're coming. Perhaps the most important question that needs to be asked today is whether or not your grand- and great grandchildren will see military action in Afghanistan when they grow up.

It's time for President Obama to show us the way out. The left can't bleat about Bush's failed foreign policy if their guy guarantees more of the same. If they demanded an exit strategy from Bush for Iraq, they should certainly demand one from Obama for Afghanistan.

Many years ago, a very wise man told me something I've never forgotten. He told me that if I didn't know why I was doing something, then I probably shouldn't do it until I figured that part out. I wish he'd had Bush's and Obama's ears too. Maybe we'd have strategy instead of strategery.

- Dixie

PANDEMONIAC PAKISTAN

2009-10-24T22:28:00.003-05:00

Pakistan exists as a country today thanks to the British who carved out a section of India in 1947 to create a home for Indian Muslims. This came after many years of British colonialism in India and strife between the different segments of the Indian religious community. After the partition, bloody fighting broke out, with Muslims fleeing to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs seeking refuge in India; disputes over some boundaries continue to this day (think Bangladish and Punjab, for starters).

Pakistan has no long periods of stability to cite; just since 1958, Pakistan has been under military rule for a majority of the time and there have been three coup d'etats. More than once in recent years, Pakistan and India have appeared to be on the verge of violent confrontation. And now Pakistan has both the Taliban and al-Qaeda taking advantage of its many places to hide from what the locals consider to be an invading force.

Pakistan is in what one might call a bad neighborhood: its border countries include bitter enemy, India; Afghanistan and Iran, both of which have porous borders facilitating the entry into Pakistan of terrorist organizations like the Taliban and al-Qaeda; and China, always a wild card. Of the five countries, three are known to have nuclear weapons capabilities (Pakistan, India, and China) and Iran is reported to be in quick pursuit of the same status for themselves. A lot of Iranians may oppose Ahmadinejad's government, but few of them would argue against Iran developing a nuclear capability; their rationale goes along the lines of, "if everybody else has them, don't we have the same right to have them ourselves?"

In the U.S., opinion has been split over how seriously Pakistan takes responsibility for governing its own country and stemming the flow of insurgents across their Afghan and Iranian borders. For the past few months, there does seem to be a stepped up effort on the part of the Pakistani military to clean out the terrorists' strongholds, but such maneuvers have been applied before, only to result in the military making deals which allow for continued safe havens for staging operations by the Taliban.

During this latest excursion, many thousands of Pakistanis have fled their homes seeking safety from the fighting. Not surprising to those who know much about Pakistani culture, those fleeing are not angry at the Taliban or al-Qaeda. The prevailing attitude is that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are not foreigners, a distinction critical to understanding the middle eastern way of thought. There's also a deep resentment over the U.S. aid involved in this latest attempted rout. Drone aircraft, shared intelligence and other U.S. military assistance are sore spots for a country acutely suspicious of outsiders.

General McChrystal, Admiral Mullen, and Robert Gates have all claimed their satisfaction with how the current anti-terrorists campaign in Pakistan is progressing, but the broader question may be how long will the Pakistanis stand still for what they see as American intervention. Pakistani President Musharraf was forced from office last year in part because he was seen as a puppet of the American government; how long will the current government keep the natives at bay?

The situation in Pakistan is dire for several more reasons. Previously, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were operating away from large metropolitan areas and in relatively sparsely populated areas of a rough terrain; they've recently become emboldened to operate closer to population centers and the Taliban has re-seized control over some areas they previously were driven out of. Almost daily, there are attacks from the insurgents, including a suicide bomber who a few days ago attacked a nuclear weapons site. In recent days, at least one militant has declared that no part of Pakistan is immune from attack.

There's so much more to be said about a country as diverse as Pakistan. Urban areas are heavily populated with an educated people who would be fairly considered urbane just about anywhere else in the world. For much of the rest of the country, centuries' old tribal law still applies; Pakistan is nothing so much as a study in contrasts. They've been huge supporters of NATO as evidenced by their troop commitments, yet they are unable to govern their own country. It should also be noted that Pakistan is home to the second-largest number of Muslims in the world (Indonesia comes in first).

Of course, one would like to be optimistic that this recent surge in cleaning out terrorists within Pakistan's borders will have some long lasting impact. History doesn't offer much hope that will be true and I'd say the probability statistics for that are extremely low. Related to this article is a a site of pictures showing both the beauty of parts of Pakistan as well as the difficulties imposed by her geography. See them yourself at http://www.wild-landscape.com/galery/a_gal_66/karakor/agalkar.html and imagine how many hiding places there could be.

The real reason I wrote this article is that I'm frequently reminded of the answer given by more than one career intelligence officer when asked what situation in the world wakes them up at night. The answer was always the same: Pakistan. Flesh out that answer to acknowledge that Pakistan is in a rough neighborhood, is armed with nukes and disarmed by an ineffective government, offers a battleground for ideologies and a haven for terrorists, and their answer makes chilling sense.

- Dixie

THE CIA AND IRAN: 1953

2009-10-21T22:34:00.001-05:00

Those who don't care for President Jimmy Carter often cite him and his response to the taking of American hostages in Iran as the beginning of our problems in the middle east. They don't know their history. They should look instead to the year 1953, twenty-six years before the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979, if they want to understand how we arrived where we were with Iranian/American relations by the time Carter was in office. When you look at the earlier history, it's hard to see how Carter was more than a scapegoat for an Islamic revolution we fomented by overturning a duly elected government in 1953.

This is another tale of greed and oil in the middle east and the theft of one country's resources to support the lifestyle of another. By the early 1900s, oil rights to most of Iran's oil belonged to the British. The company that would, after several name changes, become British Petroleum was sponsored and supported by the British government and had long been drilling and exporting Iran's oil to their own country.

Unfortunately for foreign investors, Iran in 1951 nationalized all oil production. Iranians had by then grown increasingly angry about the rape of their resources, but the western world didn't see it that way. In the west, an addiction to hegemony was firmly entrenched and western nations were seemingly incapable of understanding why a people would object to another's appropriation of their own oil. Further, scant notice was taken by any but the Iranians of the deplorable working conditions in which Iranians toiled to send oil to Great Britain and the relative pittance Iran received for their efforts.

This is where the story begins to get interesting and the cast of characters involved reads like a "Who's Who" in early 1950s American politics - names like Roosevelt, Dulles, Truman, Eisenhower, Schwarzkopf. The British were anxious to regain control over the Iranian oil and went to the U.S. to ask for help in pulling off a coup to replace a duly elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh because he was seen as pro-communist. President Truman was not amenable to intervention, but the players anxious to overthrow the Iranian government and regain control of her oil found an ally in President Eisenhower when he took office in 1953. There was no bogeyman bigger than communism in a nation that would see the infamous McCarthy hearings the following year.

There were voices in Washington calling for intervention in support of Great Britain. Two of those voices came from the Dulles brothers, Allen and John. Allen Welsh Dulles began serving as the first head of what would become the CIA in 1953 and his brother, John Foster Dulles, was appointed Eisehower's Secretary of State the same year. Together, they would wield a powerful force in Washington during the Eisenhower years. Of note is the fact that both of the Dulles brothers were partners in the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, one of whose clients was Anglo-Iranian Oil (precursor to British Petroleum).

Enter one Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt, Jr. This Roosevelt was the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and a cousin to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Most important to our story is that he was a chief CIA operative who was ultimately put in charge of overthrowing the Iranian government through a mission labeled Operation Ajax. Roosevelt himself published a book in 1979 titled Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. In his book, he outlines the CIA's and his involvement in Operation Ajax, although he justifies it as necessary to combat communism. He makes almost no mention of Iranian oil. Coincidentally, the Shah published his memoirs the same year and makes almost no mention of the coup.

Operation Ajax was very nearly a failure and credit for its eventual success must go to Kermit Roosevelt. The plan was to replace the Mossadegh government with one more friendly to the west; the person the Americans and British wanted in power was the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. After the first coup attempt failed, Roosevelt was ordered by the CIA to leave Iran, but he stayed on anyway. At the same time, the Shah fled for a brief period to Italy. Both Roosevelt and General Herman Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. (father of "Stormin' Norman") were sent to Italy to urge the Shah to return to Iran. The Shah feared for his safety and it was only after much discussion and the promise of support for his regime that he reluctantly agreed to return to Iran.

In the meantime, both the CIA and British intelligence (with the knowledge and support of Winston Churchill) were hard at work organizing demonstrations against the Mossadegh regime. CIA sponsored propaganda was distributed and thousands of dollars were spread around to sway opinion. Both sides were paid to protest and hundreds would die in the streets of Iran before the coup d'etat was finally accomplished.

Unfortunately for both the U.S. and the people of Iran, the Shah would prove to be a ruthless leader, with his own intelligence agency (SAVAK), largely trained by U.S. and Israeli forces, cast in the role of brutal enforcers. While the Americans and British no doubt thought they'd found a puppet in the Shah, the Islamic movement in Iran was becoming more and more vocal about the secularism of that regime. In short, the Shah didn't endear himself or his regime to many.

This is a history many Americans have either not heard (it was hushed for years) or one they choose to conveniently forget for partisan reasons. The CIA shenanigans occurred but twenty-six years before the Iranian uprising in 1979 and failure to see the connection is stunning in the context of a country that's home to an ancient civilization; twenty-six years is but a nanosecond when it comes to forgiving and forgetting that your elected government was overturned and replaced by foreign powers with a ruthless dictator. Twenty-six years ago from the present time puts us in the year 1983; does anybody dare to suggest we Americans wouldn't still be enraged if such a coup d'etat had been organized by a foreign entity to undo our own election results?

As the past decade has shown us, Islamic terrorists are big on symbolism, frequently planning attacks on the anniversaries of or at the site of some previously attacked position. I and many others believe that's why in 1979 Iranian militants chose as their target the U.S. Embassy in Tehran; that's where the nefarious 1953 coup was staged.

There are several books written about what happened in Iran in 1953 that I would recommend to those wanting to know more. One such book is Kermit Roosevelt's own already mentioned, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. If you have any lingering doubts of a conspiracy between British and American intelligence to overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran, that book alone should be enough to disallow your denial. The Shah's book, published in the same year, was originally written in French but has been translated into English: Answer to History. That should be read as well. I'd also include Stephen Kinzer's book, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Root of Middle East Terror. For more about Iran in 1979 and after, check out V.S. Naipaul's Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted People. While you're at it, sample some of Chalmers Johnson's books as well. Johnson didn't invent the term blowback but he does an excellent job of explaining it and assigning its use to 1953 Iran.

As for the Carter years and the hostages, there has been a persistent rumor that Ronald Reagan made a deal with the Iranians to not release the hostages until after the 1980 election. Reagan knew Carter was taking a beating with the public and in the media because there were still American captives in Iran. Interestingly enough, the hostages were released within the first few minutes of Reagan's inauguration and Reagan in turn sold arms to Iran. You decide.

I'll leave you with an excerpt from Kermit Roosevelt's book. Here, he quotes the Shah as saying, "I owe my throne to God, my people, my army and to you!" Roosevelt explains that the 'you' he [the Shah] was referring to was him (Roosevelt) and goes on to say "We were all heroes." In their own eyes, perhaps; but most assuredly not in the eyes of those oppressed by Shah Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

- Dixie

SEND IN THE CLOWNS

2009-10-18T20:56:00.003-05:00

IT'S SUNDAY: SEND IN THE CLOWNS

President Obama executed a full-court press on Sunday, as no fewer than six administration officials and Congressional Democrats fanned out over the Sunday news shows on all major networks except Fox. Obama's agenda was clear: to spread his message about Afghanistan, healthcare reform, and the economy. Opposition to the White House and Congressional Democrats' plans on all three issues has been loud and persistent and it appears Obama wants the ball back in his own court. Today was "O" day, even if a lot of it looked like a game of dodge ball.

There are currently five different healthcare reform bills under consideration in Congress, each trying to navigate that elusive route to becoming a bill that can be brought to full House and Senate votes. President Obama has recently modified his stance on the necessity of a government-run program, angering many liberals in the Democratic party who feel betrayed by this step away from a campaign promise. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (appearing on CNN and CBS) and White House advisor Valerie Jarrett (on NBC) both re-asserted Obama's newly announced position that a public option is not a deal breaker in a healthcare reform bill. Adviser David Axelrod (on ABC) refused to get into specifics, but argued instead that there are still compromises to be made and that it's premature to speculate on what a final bill will look like. Mr. Axelrod appeared to fall back on the "wait and see" position a number of times as his favored response to direct questions.

This is all circus, smoke and mirrors. Currently, the most widely held opinion of a public option is that it doesn't stand a snowball in hell's chance of being in a final bill signed into law, public wishes be damned. If the Sunday shows wanted guests to explain or defend the proposed healthcare reform bills in Congress now, they should have considered inviting insurance and pharmaceutical industry executives or lobbyists instead of politicos.

The matter of Afghanistan looms large. While our military is eight years into the occupation of that country, we appear to be failing miserably in our efforts to bring about effective change to a population accustomed to centuries' old tribal rule and one that has an extreme distrust of outsiders. The winner of the recent presidential election has yet to be determined; it's not even clear if President Karzai will be forced into a runoff election or not. What is guaranteed is that whoever is eventually declared the winner will take the oath of office under the cloud of alleged voter fraud. It's hard to see how either outcome will do much to bolster Afghan support for a government widely believed to be riddled with corruption and generally seen as a puppet of the occupying force.

There's still no definitive answer from the Obama White House regarding General McChrystal's recent recommendation to greatly increase our military presence in Afghanistan and the central argument on Sunday seemed to be not so much about numbers as about the process used to determine those numbers. Senator John Kerry, Democrat from Massachusetts (appearing on CNN and CBS), argued that the administration is exercising only due responsibility by not being rushed into making a decision about numbers, while Republican Senator John Cornyn from Texas (on CBS) suggested that the delay "emboldens" our enemies and casts doubt about our commitment to our mission in Afghanistan. Rahm Emanuel's comments seemed calculated to call into question whether or not the Afghan government can be seen as strong enough to be effective partners in their own housecleaning. Mr. Emanuel, as Chief of Staff, has President Obama's ear more than anyone else; I would consider his comments about Afghanistan to most accurately reflect the opinions of this administration.

The other popular topic du jour was the economy. Is it any wonder? Current official unemployment figures are inching closer and closer to 10% but that, of course, is not an accurate measure of how many Americans are actually un- or greatly under-employed. There's no effective means of measuring those whose unemployment benefits have long been exhausted or those who have taken minimum wage jobs after making six-figure incomes; if there was, that percent would be a much larger number. If there was one bright spot about unemployment news, it came from Republican Senator Judd Gregg (New Hampshire) who said he thought Congress was close to working out a deal for another extension of unemployment benefits. Gregg appeared on CNN.

Of course, unemployment is only part of the economic picture. Jarrett and Axelrod would beg the public's patience a bit longer and stuck to a mostly wait-and-see attitude about the success of any stimulus package. Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut (on NBC), and Rahm Emanuel were both critical of big compensation packages in the banking and financial industries and further suggested that the two industries are fighting oversight reform.

In listening to the arguments regarding the economy, how it's doing now, and what needs to be done, the one fact that seems most clear to me is that nobody really knows for sure what's working or what will work. There's talk of a $250 payment to Social Security beneficiaries to ameliorate the absence of a COLA for the first time in decades and even of another stimulus package. I'm afraid every one's crystal ball is clouded on this one.

Just because President Obama didn't send a spokesperson to Fox News on Sunday doesn't mean the network didn't come up in conversation. On one show, Emanuel basically endorsed a statement made last week suggesting the network is an "arm" of the Republican Party and Axelrod did pretty much the same thing on a different show. Axelrod did, however, say the Obama administration will have people appear on Fox in the future. He didn't offer particulars. In the meantime, Karl Rove was himself on Fox charging the current administration with keeping an "enemies" list containing media outlets and reporters. This isn't the first administration I've heard that charge leveled against, nor do I expect it to be the last.

How successful will Obama's Sunday dash be? I have my doubts that any minds were changed about anything. I'll go further and say that today's full assault must have been at least a little embarrassing to the Democrats. After all, didn't Obama himself do this himself just a few short weeks ago? Does he think his representatives carry more weight than he does? Not bloody likely.

There was little new this Sunday, mostly talking points repeated; it really didn't matter who or which station you were watching - or perhaps even if you watched at all.

- Dixie

HOMELESS IN AMERICA

2009-10-14T19:51:00.006-05:00

Trying to get to the truth about homelessness in America is an endeavor fraught with barriers and false assumptions. Our collective inability to understand the issue begins with our differing opinions on how homelessness should be defined. For the purposes of this article, I will define homelessness as a situation in which one has no permanent domicile of one's own. That would include those persons spending nights at friends' or families' homes for short periods of time or staying periodically in cheap motel rooms. You don't have to sleep under a bridge or in a cardboard box in order to be homeless. Some of you will, no doubt, disagree with the definition I'm using.

Nor will I attempt to address here specific numbers estimating the total homeless population or the demographics for those numbers; the existing data does not give a clear picture of how many men, women, and children we're talking about when we say "homeless." I'll focus instead on how and why the homeless population is under-counted and on the services that exist to assist the homeless, including information on why so many who are eligible never apply for those services.

Who and where are the homeless in America?

One reason it's so difficult to get accurate numbers about homelessness in the U.S. is that in official tallies, individuals counted as homeless are generally only those who seek services available to the homeless population; that's an approach guaranteed to result in an under-count because many homeless people never seek those services. Nor do the numbers reflect those living out of their cars, those staying temporarily with a friend or relative, or in cheap motels that cater to those seeking temporary respite from the streets.

The homeless population tends to center itself in large metropolitan areas rather than in rural settings. There are more services available in the city (food banks, shelters, etc.), more places to hide when living on the street and more public places where one might feel safe catching a little sleep (libraries, hotel lobbies, hospital waiting rooms, transportation hubs - Amtrak stations, bus terminals and airports, for example). There are more places to spend time while trying to avoid drawing attention to oneself so as not to be hassled by the local authorities or targeted for victimization by those who perceive the homeless as easy targets. It's easier to find public bathrooms to wash up in and easier to find day labor work for those mentally and physically able to do a day's work.

One of the silliest things I read while preparing to write this article is that the U.S. Census Bureau will devote three days to an effort to ferret out and count the homeless population in next year's census. Considering the enormity of the task, it's ludicrous to even go through the exercise. Three days? I can't imagine what they were thinking, nor can I come to any conclusion other than our government doesn't consider it important to count the homeless population; out of sight, out of mind? Perhaps. The government warns (through official looking messages on your census forms) that you're required by law to answer questions like how many bathrooms you have in your home, but they can't spend more than three days trying to do a simple count of our most vulnerable population? This is a population that goes out of its way to go unnoticed; a large number of homeless people in urban settings are not going to be counted by any such enumeration.

The homeless population is not monolithic. There are both the chronically homeless and those who are homeless for a relatively short period of time. There are single men and single women of all ages and families with children who need to be in school. Some worked and paid rents or mortgages until recently, while others have either never worked or not worked in many years. Among their numbers, too, are some veterans who never really came home.

There's a disproportionate amount of substance abuse and mental illness as compared to the general population, particularly in the chronically homeless group. Many may argue the point, but I think it's clear that most substance abuse by homeless people is self medicating for a mental illness or chronic pain issue that's not being medically addressed. Because it's so cheap and readily available, alcohol is the drug of choice.

One thing that most of the homeless population do have in common is a lack of what the rest of us take for granted and consider to be essential to survival each day: a refrigerator to keep perishable food in; a stove to cook meals or heat foods on; a toilet, sink, and bathtub; a roof over our heads; a bed to sleep in. Anyone familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs understands that nothing can happen unless safety and security issues are first addressed satisfactorily. The homeless must struggle for that level of sustenance on a daily basis.

There are hundreds of thousands of American families who today are living 60 to 90 days away from homelessness themselves. When a household already living paycheck to paycheck loses income, paying the rent or mortgage that keeps them sheltered becomes an impossibility and it's not many steps from there to the streets.

Services available for the homeless

Cities, particularly large ones, do offer a wide range of services to help homeless people. There may be shelters, soup kitchens, food banks (homeless people won't be able to get food stamps unless they can prove they have a way to cook food), health care screenings, community outreach programs to find the homeless where they live, job training programs and more. There are a couple of problems with this, however. One problem is that these services are inevitably under funded and under staffed to do the job they're charged with doing. When charitable contributions go down, this chronic problem only gets worse. Agencies that provide services to the homeless generally turn away almost as many as they help. Some programs have waiting lists that are years' long and some are so far backlogged, they will no longer even accept applications. Certificates for Section 8 housing that could get some of the homeless off the streets and into subsidized housing are a case in point.

The other problem is that many homeless people will not apply for nor will they accept some of the help available to them and that's a much more complicated problem than is the one of funding. Reasons for not applying for assistance include not knowing what's available, a lack of transportation to get to the application site, the lack of some "proofs" required for assistance (i.e., birth certificates, state issued ID cards) and no means to obtain them, illiteracy (and its accompanying embarrassment), no safe place to leave the few worldly possessions they still have while they're out applying for help, an unwillingness or inability to conform to rules in general (frequently a barrier for both the mentally ill and the substance abusing population), a physical or mental impairment that prevents one from persevering through bureaucratic processes, an objection to participation in religious rites required in order to get service through some agencies, a fundamentally fierce sense of independence (found frequently in homeless veterans). There are other reasons, but those are the ones I've most often heard from the homeless themselves.

In increasingly more cities, the homeless have good reason to stay out of sight. They've been criminalized by making panhandling illegal and routed from their places of safety using anti-loitering and other laws. When the laws on the books don't go far enough for the good citizens of the city, they have their politicians write new ones. More than one of the "tent cities" that have sprung up across the country has been shut down that way. Such laws and the gentrification of many inner city neighborhoods never allow for the relocation of all the individuals displaced by "progress." It's really no wonder that so many of the homeless feel like they must be (and effectively are) hidden.

So what?

This article is by no means an exhaustive look at homelessness in America; it's barely a tip-of-the-iceberg story. But there's enough here to give a thoughtful reader pause. I quoted an Everlast song recently and I'm going to have to do it again now...same song, "What It's Like." The verse is:

We've all seen the man at the liquor store beggin' for your change
The hair on his face is dirty, dreadlocked and full of mange
He ask the man for what he could spare with shame in his eyes
Get a job you fuckin' slob's all he replied

That's the refrain from those who don't understand the dynamics of being homeless and having to live constantly in survival mode (remember Maslow). Some people really do understand the cliche', "it's a jungle out there." They're not the ones who avert their eyes at the misfortune of another while assuring themselves they're superior because they had a good dinner and a comfy bed to sleep in the night before. But think about that 60-90 day window I referenced earlier. Think about it and get on your knees and pray that if you're ever homeless, you're treated better than most of the homeless we have now are.

Then get up and do something. Carry singles and change in your pocket to give to panhandlers. Give more if you can. Make eye contact. Manage a smile. Ask yourself if it matters more why a person is homeless than it does that he/she/the kid simply is. Is not each of us (and, by extension, them) somebody's son or daughter, father or mother, brother or sister? No matter the reason for the homelessness, would you not want that person to have a decent meal and a bed for the night?

Projections indicate our homeless population will grow. Necessity will eventually force us to become more creative in our approaches to dealing with homelessness. Some of the things being explored now are "tiny" houses and homes constructed with cheap materials or forged from items that would otherwise go unused, homes that would be a considerable step up from a piece of cardboard on a sidewalk grate. It's an alternative sort of architecture I find fascinating. For those interested in exploring that part of the equation, you may want to visit my StumbleUpon site at http://honkytonkyme.stumbleupon.com and click on my "architecture" tag. You'll find some rather opulent architecture there, but most of it will be articles and pictures of alternative housing of the sort I'm referencing here.

Do you wonder how many people are sleeping outside in your city tonight? Or, probably more to the point, how many are afraid to fall asleep outside tonight so will instead force themselves to stay awake until the library opens in the morning and they can put their head down on the hard wooden table to get some sleep?

Remember: just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're not there.

- Dixie

FOUR MEN, ONE PRIZE

2009-10-10T13:09:00.005-05:00

Since yesterday's announcement that President Barack Obama has been selected as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, there has been a great hue and cry, mostly from those who would oppose him and any award he received even if he could walk on water. Since 2000, three Americans have been honored by being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and, on each occasion, the right has thrown a hissy fit that demonstrates both their fundamental misunderstanding of what the award stands for and their intransigent opposition to anyone with a "D" after their name, in or out of office. Part of the opposition is also related to the fact that many Americans perceive the word "intellectual" as a pejorative label, somehow a sissified, socialist, undesirable trait to have. Many in the U.S. are accustomed to and comfortable with mediocrity and intellectualism is to be sneered at. When a people decide that being an intellectual (thinker, student, teacher, progressive) is a bad thing, it doesn't bode well for the future direction of our nation. How many "dummies" do you think were involved in the creation of our Constitution? By today's criteria, the framers of our system of government would have been met with derision and men of great vision would have been ignored.

When former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, those on the right professed to not understanding the connection between global warming and climate change and prospects for peace around the globe. Whether you agree or not with Gore's proclamations on global warming, it's hard to see how anybody wouldn't consider climate change as a situation that could result in chaotic mass migration and wars over resources. Wars have been fought over oil; will they be fought over water? That's not a stretch of the imagination. There are at least a couple of lawsuits currently in our court system between some U.S. states over water rights. Imagine that on a more grand scale and perhaps you'll get the connection between climate change and world peace. Gore's work connecting the dots is worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

Ex-President Jimmy Carter could easily be the poster child for good works done by an ex-President of the United States. Indeed, it was over 20 years from the time Carter left office in 1981 before he was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Which ex-President in modern times has done more good since leaving office? Since Carter's term was completed, he has been actively involved in the middle east peace process and served as a member of groups dispatched around the world to monitor elections suspected of being riddled with fraud. He has worked tirelessly for human rights. At home, both he and ex-First Lady Rosalynn Carter have pounded nails and worked for the Habitat for Humanity project which provides housing for deserving low-income families. Jimmy Carter earned his Nobel Peace Prize because he understood the connection between internecine strife and poverty and the threat to peace. Further, he took it upon himself to see how much good one person could do.

President Barack Obama, too, is deserving of his Nobel Peace Prize. Many have argued (myself included) that Obama hasn't accomplished much since being in office. That's true in the area of legislation coming out of Washington. But Obama's biggest accomplishments to date have to do with his influencing world opinion of the United States and the major sea change we see in that arena as a result of his election. In the relatively short time since Obama was sworn in, our standing around the globe has increased dramatically after a steady decline between the years 2000 and 2008. For proof of that decline, look to the Pew Research Center for the largest ever global poll on the issue. The rest of the world and the Americans who elected Barack Obama as President of the United States grew tired of the bellicosity of the Bush years. If Obama never accomplishes another thing while in office, he's earned the Peace Prize on that basis alone. His emphasis on diplomacy in matters of foreign policy (as well as his work against nuclear proliferation) is a welcome change. Yes, his accomplishments are about peace. Barack Obama understands you attract more with honey than with vinegar. Who would you suggest as a better recipient for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?

Some of the disgruntled right wingers point out that Bush was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during his administration while two other Americans were; they cite this as proof the Nobel Prize is a joke and not to be taken seriously or coveted. Will somebody explain to me what Bush did during his tenure in office to deserve such an award? I'm thinking that starting two wars probably had something to do with disqualifying him. How many wars can you start and still deserve a prize based on promoting peace? Rather than promoting peace, Bush conducted wars that most in the world saw as illegal invasions and occupations. His "coalition of the willing" was never much of a coalition. The U.S. owns the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. His foreign policy was largely devoid of diplomacy and more about guns and ammunition, "shock and awe," than anything else. Bush's infamous "you're either with us or against us" statement may have delighted those who relate to the psychology of the kid on the playground who stopped play and took his ball home when he didn't get his way, but the rest of us are asking, where's the peace? In a dangerous world, we need allies, not enemies.

What do Gore, Carter, and Obama have in common besides their Nobel Peace Prizes? All three are incredibly smart and willing to persevere even when their goals are difficult ones to obtain. All three have demonstrably contributed to the cause of world peace. All three have been denigrated because they're perceived as intellectuals. Horrors of horrors, at least one of them probably eats arugula!

It's time for those on the right to suck it up and work harder at finding leadership within their own ranks instead of lambasting Americans who have proven that they deserve these awards. It's time to recognize that the Nobel Peace Prize goes to those whose ideology and works have targeted areas that impact world peace. It's time to acknowledge that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, has earned this award. It's time to be proud, not whiny.

We've arrived at a point in our history when the assumption is made that if one disagrees with another's politics, somebody has to be labeled un-American, un-patriotic, even traitorous. We must learn to disagree without falling back on partisan, inflammatory talking points.

God help us if we don't.

- Dixie

THE REAL DEATH PANELS

2009-10-08T23:32:00.004-05:00

Over our long summer of discontent (will it ever end?), the three fears I've most frequently heard expressed regarding pending healthcare reform legislation are the fear we'll lose the freedom to choose our own doctor and the right to participate in the decision making process regarding our healthcare; the fear that new legislation would ration care, resulting in "death panels;" and the fear that a government run insurance program would be found lacking by most of the population because government sponsorship, by definition, would prove to be inefficient.

Perhaps somebody should ask those already enrolled in huge government insurance plans - through Medicare and the Veterans Administration - how satisfied they are with their government insurance. When an ABC/Washington Post poll did just that earlier this year with Medicare recipients, they found a whopping 71% of seniors reported being "very satisfied" with their Medicare coverage. (That number doesn't include those who said they were only "satisfied.") When it comes to those who get their healthcare through the Veterans Administration, the numbers are even more astounding. Using criteria developed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, veterans scored their healthcare through the VA an amazing 91 points out of a possible 100. Do these sound like dissatisfied consumers to you? I weight more heavily the voices of those receiving government-run healthcare services than I do those of the idealogues squawking that a government option would be a doomsday indicator.

Choice in the American healthcare system has been on the decline for decades. Unlikely bedfellows Richard Nixon and Teddy Kennedy worked together to pass legislation in 1973 that opened the floodgates to what quickly became the industry standard for employer-offered health insurance: HMOs and PPOs. We ended up with legislation that required any employer with over twenty-five employees to offer an HMO style plan, a move that heralded the beginning of the end for true choice when it comes to healthcare in this country. Economics and an emphasis on wellness and preventative care originally made the plans attractive to both employee and employer alike. Over time, employees were offered fewer insurance options and today many workers have only an HMO or PPO plan to choose from.

That's the last time one should use the word "choose" when it comes to HMOs. If you're covered by one of these plans, one of your first tasks will be to select a primary care provider for yourself and each insured member of your family. But most of your "choice" will have been already removed because you'll be required to choose a physician from a group of doctors pre-approved by your HMO. If you want to continue care with another doctor instead, you'll have no insurance coverage to pay for it. How's that for choice? That's only the beginning. You'll also need to know which hospitals in your area your HMO will cover expenses for and which it won't, as well as which pharmacies you can have your prescriptions filled in.

All of that's not bad enough. Worse by far to me is that in one of these "managed care" (doublespeak) programs, decisions about which medical procedures and diagnostic tests can be performed and about which specialists you'll be insured to see will not be made by you and your doctor. You'll have a third party at the table, one who works for neither you nor your doctor but who works instead for your insurance carrier. Your doctor or his/her representative will have to obtain "permission" from the insurance company before proceeding medically with your case or referring you to someone else for specialized care.

It gets worse: the person who answers the call at the insurance company when approval is being sought may have little or no medical background. In a best case scenario, the call will probably be fielded by a Registered Nurse; other insurance companies are not so picky. Consider that when looking at the number of whistle blowers from the insurance industry who have sworn over the years they were told to automatically deny certain treatments or procedures, and you can see that those who express fear of losing choice have already lost it. The suggestion that any proposed healthcare reform would result in the establishment of "death panels" is the most deceitful of all arguments against reform. When one cannot see that we already have death panels (we currently call them insurance company "claims representatives"), I can only believe that, once again, the issue of choice is raised in the context of healthcare reform for reasons more grounded in politics than reality. It's but the next verse of the lament some bray regarding that which they appear to know very little about.

We have a serious healthcare problem, indeed, a crisis, in this country. Estimates of the percentage of those under the age of 65 in the U.S. who have no health insurance range from 18% to 27%; that's a lot of Americans with no coverage, living in a nation that spends more per capita on medical related expenses than almost anybody on the planet. We don't even get a big bang for our healthcare buck; the World Health Organization has consistently rated over all healthcare in the United States below that of such countries as Costa Rica, Chile, and Morocco. With so many uninsured, our emergency rooms are strained past capacity, filled with those who wait until they're very ill before going to the only place they can go to get medical care.

This is probably as good a time as any to lay to rest another healthcare myth and that's the commonly held belief that a hospital emergency room is required to give you treatment if you show up at their door. There are elements of truth in that, but it's not the whole story. If you are being transported to a hospital by ambulance, the ambulance personnel will call ahead to see if they may deliver you to the hospital of your choice. If that ER says they're too busy to take you, you'll be transported to a different hospital whether you want to go there or not. Your best bet is to get to the ER of your choice by having someone else take you; if you show up that way, they do have to see you. But don't confuse "seeing" you with any meaningful treatment. What you can generally expect is to be in the hospital no more hours or days than it takes to stabilize your emergency condition and you'll be released. Don't expect a long list of referrals for desirable follow up care either, because there aren't many places you can get anything but emergency care without some sort of insurance coverage.

So, why do so many Americans argue we have the best medical care available anywhere when the numbers simply don't bear that out? No doubt, a large part of the answer is about politics, pure and simple. For those who have a problem with anything but linear thinking and upon whom nuance is wasted, healthcare is another all-or-nothing issue and one's views are determined by whichever political party you identify with.

However, part of the answer lies, once again, in American arrogance. We enjoy the "feel good" stories the press covers periodically of some horribly deformed or injured child being flown to this country by an American benefactor for treatment. What we don't see stories about are the benefactors from other countries who do the same thing, flying children to their respective countries. Nor does the press give much coverage to the wealthy American celebrities who can afford any treatment they choose who fly to another country to get state of the art treatment they consider better than what's available here.

Nor is there much mention of a practice more Americans are turning to, medical tourism. That's not so much a "feel good" story. We'd rather pat ourselves on the back for helping the relatively few children that are brought here for treatment and ignore the rest of the truth. The same principle allows us to believe that donating five or ten bucks to a charity earns us the right to avert our eyes from those children around the world whose images we see on our television screens, their bloated bellies and maggot infested wounds something we'd rather not have interfere with our dinner pleasantries.

It's hard to see how we'll solve a problem so many insist doesn't exist. In the realm of healthcare reform, we must stop telling lies about the system we do have before we can have any clear vision of what the future should look like. At minimum, we should understand that we already have death panels.

- Dixie

OBAMA'S REPORT CARD

2009-10-04T22:42:00.003-05:00

President Barack Obama has now been in office for a little over eight months. That's about the same amount of time our children spend in school during the course of a year, so I think it's fair to present Obama with a report card on progress made thus far in his administration. If it makes you feel any better, consider that one-sixth of his elected term is already over.

I believe the only fair way to assess the President's progress until now is to compare what Candidate Obama promised to what President Obama has delivered. When considered in that light, I don't think he fares very well.

Let's begin with the closing of our prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Candidate Obama insisted that would be a priority of his administration; it even seemed in the first days of his presidency that it would be when he announced a January 2010 deadline by which the shut down was to be complete. By his own admission, the best grade Obama can be given here is an "Incomplete." I think he's been trying to reach his goal, but he's been forced to acknowledge the deadline he himself set won't be met. With the fate and destinations yet to be determined for over 200 detainees still remaining in Guantanamo and no long line of countries volunteering to take them in, the closing of Guantanamo is proving to be a herculean task. The best President Obama has been able to do is to get small commitments from countries like Hungary and Kuwait, each agreeing to take one. Bermuda has agreed to take four, Italy took a couple and the tiny island country of Palau has agreed to take about a dozen. Is this reminding anyone but me of the "coalition of the willing?" In fairness, a few European countries are expected to make announcements soon about taking a few of the detainees, but nobody expects the numbers to look much different then than they do now. At least as thorny an issue is the fact there's no American support or stomach for bringing them here either. (Some inevitably will be, if only to stand trial.)

On Iraq and Afghanistan, I'll give Obama a "D", with a note home that he's not applying himself. The "D" grade is justified because of the differences between Candidate Obama and President Obama. In fact, since taking office, he's been very Bush-like. It's true that Obama came into office obligated to a pact signed last year by the Bush administration with Iraq that included timelines for troop withdrawal, but I doubt anyone believes Obama could not have renegotiated at least part of that pact had it been his priority to do so. Let's face it - they want us to leave. It's hard to see how the Iraqis would have objected much if Obama had asked them to scrap the pact and we'd begun the process of getting out faster.

It's also difficult to see a lot of difference between Obama's and Bush's policies in Afghanistan. Does anyone think Bush would not have also been increasing the size of our presence there? The only reason this grade is a "D" rather than an "F" is because I think Obama inherited two wars nobody really knows what to do with.

Obama gets a "C" from me on the issue of health care reform. "C" students perform on an averaged level and I base this grade on the fact that both Candidate Obama's and President Obama's plans for health care have been generally diluted and attacked in the same way and by the same people that all other attempts at health care reform have met with throughout our history. But, he gets another "does not apply himself" note sent home too. He waited too long to get involved in the writing of the legislation; guys who don't take the extra step never get more than a "C".

The President gets a big fat "F" on the issue of "don't ask, don't tell" for the military. He came into office having campaigned on a promise to get rid of the policy and had the backing of both the American public and enough military advisers to get Congressional approval for doing so. President Obama hasn't shown enough effort to make good on what Candidate Obama said he would do and I see no extenuating circumstances for which to excuse him.

He earns another "F" for reversing as President the position of Candidate Obama regarding the prosecution of those involved during the previous administration in illegal interrogation practices. Whether you agree or disagree with his decision, it still represents a dramatic difference in policy from the one he espoused last year.

On the issues of global warming and immigration reform, I'm willing to give President Obama an "Incomplete" again. I think it's fair to allow him more time to begin work on both of these problems; it's not like there hasn't been plenty to deal with already. Additionally, these are both issues that promise to be at least as contentious as has been the spirited debate on health care reform. His ultimate grade will be determined by how he handles them when they do come up.

I'll put a couple of things under the heading of extra-curricular activities and will not assign them grades. These are both issues that should never have warranted presidential attention in the first place, so neither is technically a part of his job description; nor was either event foreseeable by Candidate Obama. But President Obama let personal interests override better judgment in these two instances. One was his infamous interjection of himself into the Henry Gates debacle and the other was his decision to get in the middle of making the case for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics. Note home from coach: Barack sometimes handles the ball himself when he should pass it off.

In spite of all this, President Barack Obama still enjoys a better than 50% job performance rating (as averaged from top polls by realclearpolitics). You can find both friend and foe giving Obama higher marks on some issues than I've assigned here. You can also find those who think I was too generous. I say facts are facts, inconvenient or otherwise. To deny that and form your opinions based on party affiliation is un-American. Some of us should be dang glad we're not getting report cards ourselves.

None of what I've written here should be misconstrued to suggest I think Obama wasn't the better candidate for the Presidency last year. I shudder to think how long this eight months would have been had we ended up with a McCain/Palin administration. But I do believe in holding to the fire the feet of those who are supposed to serve us. We'll never move forward as a nation with many problems to solve until we're all willing to do so.

- Dixie

THE 17TH AMENDMENT

2009-10-03T22:46:00.003-05:00

Quick! How many of you know what the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for? My guess is that question sent many of you to Google or Wiki.

The next question is, why should you care about the 17th Amendment? You should know and care about it because it was that Amendment which fundamentally changed our system of representative government in a way that resulted in the upset of a delicate system of checks and balances originally intended in our Constitution. It effectively ended the idea that states, as sovereign entities, were entitled to representation in Washington.

The 17th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified and became law in 1913. It reads:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

As originally written, the Constitution provided that the U.S. House of Representatives be the arm of government to directly represent the American populace; House members have always been elected by the popular vote of their constituencies from relatively small home districts.

The U.S. Senate, on the other hand, was first established as the body of government through which the states themselves would be represented in Washington. I realize that in this age of generally diminished states' rights that may be a difficult concept for some of you to grasp; yes, kiddies - states used to have rights. Senators were selected and sent to Washington by the legislatures of each state and served at the pleasure of those bodies; if the state decided that one of its U.S. Senators wasn't properly representing his state or otherwise not doing his job, the Senator was called home and someone sent to D.C. in his stead.

It wasn't a perfect system. In-house fighting in some statehouses resulted in unoccupied seats in the Senate for extended periods of time. There were also charges of corruption, including allegations that Senate seats were being bought and sold. Those factors, accompanied as they were by a growing populist movement that suggested direct election by the people would be a more democratic process, were largely responsible for the ratification of the 17th Amendment. The desired effect was that there be less corruption and more direct representation of the people.

For those keeping track, here's the third question: Have we created a system in which the outcome is the antithesis of the original intent of the Amendment?

Obviously, the answer to that one must acknowledge the facts that we still have battles in individual states over unoccupied Senate seats, we still have corruption and the issue of buying and selling seats, and you and I are no more directly represented in Washington than are the leafs turning color outside your window - probably less so, if your tree's part of a protected species.

Further answer to the question is that today each of our states has two Senators who were elected more by powerful D.C. lobbyists than by either you or me. The costs of running a statewide campaign to obtain or retain membership in the U.S. Senate have become so prohibitive that the only ones capable of financing those campaigns are the lobbyists; you and I can't even come close to competing in that arena.

Politicians understand one thing if nothing else: you dance with the one that brung ya. Since ratification of the 17th Amendment, we've seen special interest groups finding it increasingly easier to curry favor in the U.S. Senate. Instead of having to spread their lobbying resources across fifty state legislatures, they can more effectively target a relatively small number of individuals in Washington to do their bidding and accomplish their end game.

Earlier today, I was attempting a discussion of this Amendment with a family member. His comments were sprinkled with references to conspiracies, the Rothschild family, the Federal Reserve, banking in general, and dates going back to Napoleonic times. I don't know about all that. But I do think we're at a point where we need to reexamine the 17th Amendment to see if it's made matters better or worse.

I believe term limits should also be on the table in any discussion of this Amendment because the two issues are irrevocably connected. It's an unavoidable truth that the longer a Senator is in office, the more power and influence he/she has on Capitol Hill. As famously noted by Henry Kissinger, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Senators send home just enough bacon to keep that power and we, deluding ourselves that our votes count for anything more than mere numbers, send them back to repeat the same egregious behavior term after term.

It may be too late to undo the damage done, as we may have created a monster that won't be controlled. The very ones who most benefit from our current system are the same ones who will ultimately make the decision about any changes to it.

But we can at least push them to have the conversation and make our own voices heard. If teabaggers and disrupters of town hall meetings were able to garner attention this summer for their causes, then perhaps it's time for the rest of us to learn from their example and participate in activism of our own design.

The issue of the 17th Amendment impacts all of us in at least as many ways as do taxation and health care reform. It may not be as 'sexy' an issue, but it's nonetheless symptomatic of a system that's become so corrupt and eroded I doubt our founding fathers would recognize it. We must begin to seek redress.

- Dixie

UGLY AMERICANS

2009-10-01T18:13:00.013-05:00

I have some vague recollection of hearing the term "ugly American" when I was a child, but my understanding of what the term really meant came after I moved as a pre-teen to France for four years. I regret having to acknowledge that I saw much boorish behavior on the part of "ugly Americans" in France; for me, the inescapable truth was that we had earned the slur.

Part of Americans' problems with France have nothing to do with France at all. Rather, we Americans tend to be a rather xenophobic culture to begin with. We have a perceptual problem when it comes to how we regard any society other or different from our own. Our assumption is that we're the best, no matter the area of expertise, and facts be damned. Worse, if one dares to present facts contrary to that assumption, one is labeled un-patriotic or "part of the hate America crowd." Such retorts are calculated to attack the messenger instead of the message, to silence not to discuss, to censor any questioning of our government or her policies - very lemming like.

For many around the globe, eight years of a swaggering, sneering, "you're either with us or you're against us" mentality from United States President Bush only reinforced our reputation as bad neighbors. Starting two wars, at least one of which was almost unanimously opposed around the world and flew in the face of international law, did nothing to enhance our reputation as a people who don't give a damn what anybody else thinks. For an interesting worldwide poll that tracked the popularity of both Americans and our foreign policies during the years from 2000 to 2008, look to the Pew Research Center. What you'll see is a dramatic decline in numbers favorable to either during that time frame, though many are able to separate Americans from her foreign policy and gave Americans a much higher rating overall than they gave our foreign policies.

Americans believe we're always right. By God, literally, some believe we're always right, that divine intervention has determined our history, that we're God's chosen country. It's hard to argue with "logic" like that. But it goes a long way toward bolstering our perceived superiority.

So, how did I see those attitudes reflected in the behavior of Americans when I was in France? I saw it in both subtle and covert ways. Some Americans never referred to the French people as anything but "frogs." The origin of that particular usage of the word is in question, but what's not in question is that it's a derogatory epithet.

Most Americans I knew never even bothered to learn the language of their hosts, even though they knew they were going to be there for three or four years.

I could go on and on about "ugly American" behaviors I've seen, but I'd rather focus instead on what I think it means to be a well mannered guest in another country and the wonderful memories I have of France and her people. I'll acknowledge, unapologetically, that I'm a Francophile, so all of my opinions should be considered in that context.

Everyone in my family became fluent in French while we were there. I fell in love with the language, a love affair that continues to this day. The lilting intonation, the expressive body language....Who could resist? I've now lost, regrettably, most of my French. I sometimes confuse it with the Spanish I studied after I returned to the States. I can understand more of the written language than the spoken, so I make it a point from time to time to find French language sites online, just to see if I can figure out the gist of what they're saying; usually I can. I sometimes watch French language film for the same reason.

Let's take the matter of language a little further. Most Americans can speak only one language because we think we have no need to learn another. Everybody else should just learn English, right? Even when we teach a foreign language in our schools, it's almost never before at least the middle school level (more often, at the high school level), while many other countries (France included) start second language skills in the equivalent of our first grade. Any Americans paying attention to our changing demographics should seriously consider learning Spanish and/or Mandarin, at minimum. But we won't.

I conducted an interesting experiment as a class project while I was a freshman in high school and still living in France. My younger brother had attended a French pre-school and was then in a French school for the first grade. I spent several days visiting with his class, taking notes to compare what I noticed as being different from American schools. There were many differences (school uniforms , extended lunch breaks, etc.) but what had the most lasting impact on me was that French first graders were learning English, writing in cursive, and doing long division on the blackboards. Again, this was in the first grade. Those of you who are parents know that would be highly unusual for first graders in our own country. Our first graders are learning to print and add and subtract simple numbers.

I have clear memories of my parents constantly reminding us we were guests of another country and, as such, needed to be respectful of the French people and their customs. It paid off too. My family became friends with a couple of French families and were honored by being invited into their homes on numerous occasions. That was considered a rare privilege, offered to only a few. But we became fast friends, even taking a two-week camping trip with one of them. Both of those families have since come here to visit us in our own country.

I can recall only one other American family during the entire four years I was in France that ever made friends with the locals, or who even considered it desirable to do so. How much of the experience of France they missed because of their self imposed isolationism! What a shame. Most went home as ignorant of France and the French people as they were when they got there.

The French have historically been allies of the U.S., going back to our Revolutionary War. Yet, when they refused to back our invasion of Iraq, we forgot all that and ended up with the absurdity of "freedom fries." Good grief. How embarrassing was that? We had idiots in the U.S. House of Representatives who proclaimed such nonsense during the period from 2003 through 2006. How to explain that other than idiocy and the kind of knee jerk reaction you might expect from children on a playground?

Yes, I think America's attitude toward France goes beyond our general xenophobia. We have nothing that can touch the long history and ancient architecture of France. Her cathedrals, castles, museums, all have a history that long predates our own. We in America are also descendants of Puritans and maintain much of that same attitude today toward sex and nudity. The language, the cuisine, the delightful, unhurried French pace - are we jealous? Or are we simply too "macho" as a culture to appreciate anything but the vulgar? Do we believe an appreciation of the arts to be "sissy" or unnecessary or unimportant? Perhaps.

We point to the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of our beacon welcoming those who come to our shores. We owe that to France too. I don't think the French people want us to bend over backwards thanking them for the friends they've generally been to us; I think they'd be happy with just a little respect for their culture from those who visit their country, and that includes Americans.

- Dixie

P.S. If you're considering a trip to France, or just want to visit a pleasant site about the people and customs of France, do check out http://french-holidays-aude.blogspot.com/ The site is like a mini vacation for me.

DEAR MR PRESIDENT

2009-09-27T00:30:00.001-05:00

Dear Mr. President:

Yes, it's me again. I suspect you may be tired of my missives by now, but I'm feeling a bit crotchety tonight. More than that, I'm perplexed as to why you haven't yet taken my previously offered free advice. I'm trying very hard to be patient; I'm not, however, a saint.

I understand you've recently stated a public option may not be an option after all in the health care bill. And, that you're willing to disallow a provision that would pay for end-of-life counseling? Please, indulge me a bit further; what's up with that deal you cut with the pharmaceutical companies last Spring? You know; the one that smells like the same lame 2003 legislation Congress passed that forbade Medicare from negotiating with the big pharmas for lower prices? While they sell their product out of country for a fraction of the cost we pay? Yeah, that one.

O.K., now I'm pissed.

Where is your leadership? Why have you not spent what Bush was so fond of referring to as (but you actually had more of) political capital? Why are you continuing to let the morons in Congress write meaningless (or worse) legislation without pushing your own agenda more forcefully?

Hey, nobody's happier than I am that you're a hit around the globe. Lovin' it, dude. We were definitely long overdue for a booster shot in that area. Good job. Tell Michelle and the kids I think they're great ambassadors too. Tell Michelle, also, that while I don't understand the media's fascination with her arms, I said, "You go girl!" I don't care how much her shoes cost either. And, my goodness! I love the new puppy! A nice touch, that.

But, let's talk.

Just barely into your administration, there was the SCHIPS bill. You signed off on the damn thing. You let Congress fund health care for children on the backs of one segment of the population with a regressive tax. I remember Candidate Obama saying he was for progressive tax reform. But, I saw what President Obama did and noted the difference. The dishonesty of funding on the backs of a few something we as a society say we value is nothing more than shameless politics as usual.

I have a few other questions too. Where's the change in the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy? And, could you explain to me, please, the significant differences between yours and Bush's approach to Iraq and Afghanistan? Plain English, with no flourishes, will do just fine here. Numbers are good. So are dates.

One more thing, and I'll stop. I really must bring up that "stimulus" package, another instance in which you let Reid and Pelosi and their cohorts write a piece of crap legislation. Where was your leadership then? Leadership is not repeated remarks that Congress "must" pass A bill. You didn't seem too much bothered by exactly what kind of bill it would be, just that something be passed.

Which brings me back to the real purpose of my rant, er, letter. I'm having deja vu with this whole health care reform thing. Again, there's the insistence that A bill be passed. Where's the backbone of this administration? Concessions like taking out funding for end-of-life counseling and pretending that a co-op of private insurers will solve the problem of health care coverage for all are an insult to the American people. Why would you cave in on these issues?

All along, I've expected a crap sandwich to come out of Congress under the guise of "health care reform." What I didn't expect was your being such a soft touch.

You're just about on my last nerve at this point.

Still kinda sort lovin' ya,

Dixie

A WOMAN'S CHOICE

2009-09-26T00:21:00.004-05:00

Back in the 70s, there was a T-shirt that many in the feminist movement wore. It said, simply, "Keep Your Laws Off My Body." Over thirty years later, those T-shirts should come out of moth balls and be donned again from coast to coast.

Of course, I'm talking about a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. Have those of us no longer of child bearing age lost our enthusiasm for activism around a cause that no longer directly impacts us? We, who in our youth filled the streets with raised fists and voices? Where are our voices today in support of our daughters and granddaughters?

If we're not loud, the other side most assuredly is. In spite of widespread public support for a woman's right to choose, the vocal fringe on the far right has maintained its fight and today it's more difficult than it was thirty years ago for some women to obtain a legal, legitimate medical procedure. Some of those women must leave town or even the state where they live in order to have a safe, legal abortion. Women who have made a deeply personal decision are harassed and taunted as they enter clinics by people who don't know them and, more to the point, whose business their lives are none of. There's a line in an Everlast song that says, "they called her a killer, they called her a whore." They do. When they're not bombing clinics or threatening or shooting doctors.

It's my opinion that one of the biggest mistakes the pro-choice movement ever made was in allowing the far right loons to create the language in which the public debate would be held. They called themselves pro-life and we let them get away with it when what they really are is anti-choice. It's an anti-woman stance and a particularly pernicious, Orwellian sort of doublespeak. The media let them get away with it too, just as they did when a rabid right winger later coined the phrase "partial birth abortion." Today, I'm willing to bet that over half the people in this country still don't even know there is no such medical procedure. There never was. They just made it up, threw it out there and it stuck.

Enough background; let's cut to the chase. Leave the drama and hysteria at the door and let's look at a little Biology 101. The relationship between a woman and a zygote or blastocyst or fetus (or whatever else you want to call it) is one of host and parasite. Do those words offend you? It's simply the unsentimental, biological truth about pregnancy. The parasite's life is sustained at the expense of the host's. Once you comprehend that fact, any argument against a woman's choice is both madness and woman hating.

Spare me, please, any argument that uses the word "innocent." In the context of a woman's right to choose, it's a word generally reserved for that which is not yet a human being. The unspoken assumption is that the woman cannot be "innocent;" she must be the opposite of innocent and the anti-choice movement is quick to point out all the "reasons" that's "true." Anti-choice proponents must assign a higher value to the well being of the unborn than they do to that of the mother in order to justify their ridiculous stance.

I refuse to dignify with any comment many of the obnoxious accusations made about women who consider or choose to have an abortion. None of that is germane to the real issue, which is a woman's legitimate right to choose for simply biological reasons, her own moral compass, or any other reason whatsoever whether she hosts a parasite for nine months or not.

Talk to me again when all sex is consensual. Ask me to reconsider when women are no longer beaten daily by partners or spouses angry when asked to use a condom. Bring the subject up when there's cheap, easily accessible, 100% foolproof birth control on the market for women. But, you'll really get my ear when medical technology advances to the point there's a safe, simple procedure for transferring the developing fetus to be hosted by the biological father.

In the meantime, spare me the moronic comments that I must hate babies, including my own two children. Both of my children were conceived in love and very much wanted and anxiously awaited. Wouldn't it be great if every child born had that kind of start in life? And, yes, each of them was my "baby" before they were human. If you understood anything I wrote here, you'll see no contradiction in what I've said.

My argument is simple but flawless in its logic. You can try to talk me out of it, if you like, but I'm going to look for my old T-shirt and may not be back for a while.

- Dixie

YOUR COUNTRY ON DRUGS

2009-09-24T22:57:00.003-05:00

I'll begin with the obvious, as proven in one research poll or another every day: The lunacy called the "war on drugs" is not working by any applicable criteria. With some of the strictest drug laws in the developed world, we also have some of the highest rates for usage of mood altering substances. That's an argument frequently used by those who advocate either the legalization of medical marijuana or the de-criminalization of it in general.

The other most referenced issue in any discussion of the "war on drugs" is the rate of incarceration in this country in general and, more specifically, the extraordinary percentage of those who are imprisoned because of drug related offenses. In 1970, only 16% of federal prisoners were there due to drug related crimes. President Ronald Reagan declared the "war" on drugs in 1971 (while Nancy stumped for "just say no") and in 2004 (the last year I could find numbers for), the percent of those serving in federal prisons for drug related offenses was an astonishing 54%. (It peaked at about 60% in the 90s.) These numbers represent only those doing their time in federally run facilities and do not include data for either prisons run on a contractual basis by private corrections firms or state prisons; percentages are frequently higher in state systems. Just take those numbers in for a moment.

Portugal's drug laws are often cited as a model that should be studied; they decriminalized virtually all substances in 2001 and built into their system an option through which those caught with small quantities of drugs can be offered treatment. Since then, Portugal has one of the lowest incidences of substance abuse of any European country. They've also dramatically decreased the spread of HIV by providing clean needle programs.

Portugal's system would certainly be an improvement over what we're doing in the U.S. now, but it doesn't go far enough. We should not be having a discussion about decriminalizing any substance; the conversation we need to have is about the complete legalization of substances, and that's an entirely different policy.

Maybe before we can move on, we need to better understand how we got to where we are now. Americans have a long history with substances and their use/abuse and laws enacted to govern the same. Ships' logs from as early as the 1600s report ships returning to Europe because of concern they'd run out of "ale" before they reached these shores. Not too long after that, we had Puritans here punishing those who imbibed, including public humiliation.

It's not possible to look at our history of drug legislation without acknowledging the role race has frequently played in policy making. The Harrison Act of 1914 came about largely as a result of concerns that Chinese workers on the west coast would entice white women to their "opium dens," while in the south, fears were expressed about cocaine in the hands of "negroes" who would, of course, rape white women while under the drug's influence.

The Marihuana Tax Act passed in 1937 came as a result of pressure from our southwestern states who associated the substance with Mexicans entering the country. (Yes, that's how the original Act was spelled.)

Today, who can deny the racism behind the disparity in sentencing guidelines for powder cocaine and crack cocaine? Crack cocaine was developed as a way to make cocaine affordable to inner city populations that were predominantly black. Historically, most users of powder cocaine have been white.

More importantly, somewhere along the line we abdicated our right to control what we do with our own bodies and let lawmakers with little or no medical experience (never mind any knowledge of pharmacology) make policies that assume substances are either inherently good or inherently evil. That's an erroneous assumption; Just about any drug that can be abused also has a legitimate medicinal use. Our laws are so restrictive now that whole classifications of drugs are ineligible for Medicare payment because of their potential for misuse and doctors are afraid of prescribing therapeutic doses of some medications for fear they'll be investigated by state oversight agencies for malpractice. That's particularly true for some medications prescribed for pain and in the instance of methadone; in many states, a doctor must apply to a state board before prescribing more than a certain dosage of methadone and the threshold is often too low to be therapeutic for long time heroin users trying to kick the habit.

We now have a system that punishes small time substance users while the gang higher-ups round up a few more kids to take the place of those shipped off to prison. Substance use treatment is not generally available to those who want it but have no means to pay for it. Even if insured, the patient will undoubtedly have limited annual coverage and not be able to get the kind of treatment that would return treatment centers to something more than the revolving doors they've become. You simply cannot address substance-related issues in 28 or 30 days and then send the patient back to the environment they came from and expect anything other than their eventual return.

We've burned crops, sprayed them with toxic substances (anybody remember paraquat?), confiscated literally tons of drugs and have created a violent underground that controls the drug trade in this country. We're willing to pay for the incarceration but not the treatment of a substance user. We'd rather let addicts risk contracting HIV rather than support clean needle programs that have been proven to work as a harm reduction technique.

Let those who are so inclined grow their own marijuana or coca leaves or poppies. Make effective treatment available to those who want it. Treat those who act irresponsibly while under the influence of any substance in much the same manner we deal with those who drive while drunk. But give us back our personal right to self determination. When that's done, I have no problem with holding to the fire the feet of those who are irresponsible.

One last point must be made and that's to point out the slippery slope we're on when we start legislating substances. Tobacco is just about one step short of being illegal now and municipalities around the country are banning certain fats and requiring restaurants to provide nutritional information on their menus. What's next? Legislation regarding sugar? Caffeine? Medicare and Medicaid will not pay for birth control but will pay for Viagra. What's up with that?

Politically, this is a third rail nobody really wants to touch. Apparently, the bozos we keep sending back to D.C. think they know what's best for the rest of us, history and evidence to the contrary. They play to the fears of those who know little or nothing about substance abuse or addiction and relish the photo ops they get when they pass another piece of nanny legislation.

It's time to get past the insane policies that are failing us so miserably and move on. Who has the guts to even broach the subject in Congress? I'm not holding my breath waiting for your answer.

- Dixie

AFGHANISTAN: NOW WHAT?

2009-09-23T01:01:00.007-05:00

Almost eight years and counting. That's how long it's been. Who in 2001 was predicting we'd still be in Afghanistan eight years later? Who knew that invading Afghanistan would do nothing so much as rekindle centuries of resistance to foreign occupation? Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about Afghan history, that's who.

So it is we find ourselves at something akin to a crossroads where deals can be made with the devil. On one hand, we have the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, and Admiral Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) both telling the president and the American people it's necessary to increase our military presence in Afghanistan by thousands of soldiers - an increase likely to be many more than either President Obama or the American people have the stomach for. The claim is that we'll suffer defeat if we don't ante up...again.

On the other hand, we have Afghan police, military, and political leaders declaring that just the opposite is true. Their claim is that it's impossible for NATO and U.S. troops to remain in country (never mind increasing troop strength) without perpetuating the perception most Afghans have of being invaded and occupied. In a poll conducted in July of this year by the International Republican Institute, 52% of Afghans asked said they believed their country was less stable now than it was this time last year. Not to put too fine a point on it, they want us gone and want authority over Afghanistan in the hands of Afghans. Their authorities may be corrupt, but they're not outsiders.

How many times are we going to have to hear this before we finally get it? Why can not Americans understand the visceral reaction Afghan citizens have to invasion and occupation? Can you even begin to imagine the anti-occupation resistance there would be in our own country were a foreign force to invade the U.S.?

Nobody knows exactly how many more troops will ultimately be requested by General McChrystal for Afghanistan, but predictions are he'll ask for an increase of maybe 40,000 troops or even more. Whatever the number ultimately is, it would be in addition to the considerable troop buildup (almost doubling the force) we've seen in the past twelve months.

My prediction is that McChrystal will not get what he asks for in additional military personnel. The American public has soured on the eight year-long war in Afghanistan and they want our soldiers brought back home, not more sent over. I foresee an angry debate on this issue, both in Congress and among the US citizens in whose name the occupation is perpetuated.

Whether or not you supported the originally stated mission for going into Afghanistan, how can our continued presence there be justified at this date? The Taliban is flexing its muscles more and more almost daily and al-Qaeda has shifted their locus of operations, turning Pakistan into even more a powder keg than it was. Where's bin Laden? Maybe he's somewhere guarding all those weapons of mass destruction we couldn't find in Iraq.

The Russians had a costly nine year-long nightmare in Afghanistan beginning in 1979. We'll no doubt be there longer than that, no matter what we do at this point. How quickly we forgot.

Or, how stupidly we plowed ahead anyway.

- Dixie

JOURNALISM 2009

2009-09-22T00:45:00.004-05:00

In a July 2009 poll conducted by Time Magazine, 44% of respondents said the news anchor they most trusted was Jon Stewart. Second, and not even close, was NBC's Brian Williams (29%). You know journalism is in trouble when the news guy who has the most public trust airs on Comedy Central. Think about that for a moment. Since the days of Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, and the Huntley-Brinkley Report, we've migrated to Comedy Central.

We're decades past any real journalism, no matter the outlet. A nation that was riveted to their television screens by the breaking Watergate story in the 70s is now lulled to sheeple status with graphic details of one singer's latest trip to rehab or the catty disclosure of how much Michelle Obama's shoes cost. (By the way, does anybody know - or care - if the Obamas really eat arugula?)

Now that ownership of almost all our media is in the hands of a very small group of huge conglomerates, journalism has become more about an accounting bottom line than investigative reporting. It's more cost effective to keep a roster of "experts" (read, talking heads) at the ready to call on for a 60 second "analysis" (read, opinion) and then move on to the next story. Fortunately for Ms. Couric and her cohorts, the only qualification needed today to be a news anchor appears to be an ability to read; that may have kept our 43rd president from being a news anchor, but it's sure helped Katie's career.

So, besides Monsieur Stewart, where else are we to get our news? Where will we find the stories corporate advertisers or owners of mainstream media outlets don't want us to know? The unavoidable truth is that we have to dig for it. It's incumbent on us to seek out independent news sources that still hire gutsy reporters who go out everyday and actually run down stories. We must read both U.S. and foreign press in order to get more than one perspective. Read blogs. Read everything you can get your hands on and have time to read. Online, follow backlinks to original sources of information. Consume. Think. Digest.

When we no longer have a "free" press (one that's free to report whatever the news is whether or not sponsors or outlet owners like it), we'll lose nothing less than our very freedom and way of life. An uninformed (or worse, indoctrinated) populace is too easily governed. History has demonstrated that truth many times.

So, what is it about Stewart that makes him seem trustworthy to so many of us? Is it his impish smirk and clearly unabashed pleasure in cutting up the big guys? Do we like that he's an equal opportunity basher? Is his popularity based on the fact we acknowledge on some level the absurdities of the world we live in and are grateful for some schmuck who gets the joke too? Instead of sitting in front of a camera trying to look serious while reading something he doesn't understand?

All of the above work for me.

- Dixie

OUTLOOK 2010

2009-09-21T00:15:00.000-05:00

Barack Obama was able to win last November's election due in large part to then Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's 50-state strategy. Democrats spent a lot of money and resources going into even states traditionally seen as Republican and it paid off for them. Not only did they win the presidency, they enjoyed higher than expected Congressional gains as well. Obama enjoyed support from more than one important segment of the population, contrary to the erroneous opinion held by some that only blacks voted for him. Or that all blacks voted for him (they didn't). What's rarely mentioned is that Obama pulled a higher percentage of white voters than did John Kerry in 2004.

One noteworthy event in the 2008 election cycle was the huge influx of young people and first time voters into the political process. Record numbers of voters under 30 became actively involved in a campaign that broke old rules and established an entirely new horizon on the political scene: the internet. And nobody used it more effectively than did Barack Obama. One could make a case for Ron Paul, but Obama is the one who got elected. In any event, politics will be forever changed by the shift and young Obama supporters are mostly responsible for that.

All of this brings me to my question: If you believe that young people were energized to participate in the political process in 2008 largely because of Obama's charismatic presence on the ticket (and I do), how interested and involved (or not) will those same young people be in the elections of 2010?

Charisma doesn't go far enough in explaining Obama's election. Many Obama votes were anti-Bush-era votes, votes from a population eager for any semblance of change in both domestic and foreign policies. Some voters also genuinely believed in Obama's campaign promises and the policy opinions he presented. But Obama won't be on the ticket in 2010.

Off year elections are historically bad news for the party in charge in D.C. Considering that, along with the fact that Congressional approval ratings are in the cellar, is there any reason to think young people will feel motivated to stay involved next year? I doubt it. I'd love to be wrong.

It's time for the Democrats to come up with a strategy for 2010 and they're going to have to be at least as creative as they were last year. They'll need candidates capable of keeping young people engaged in the political process while broadening their base of support. I don't know if Tom Kaine (current DNC Chairman) has any grand schemes up his sleeve for next year, but if he doesn't, he needs to pull a bunny out of a hat somewhere. Soon.

You can bet the Repuplicans are organizing. They seem to be rudderless and without any true leadership right now, but they do have a vocal fringe element of the party with a message that will keep them in the news. Remember, sometimes negative attention is better than no attention at all. They are energized as a base that can conceivably be built upon. And the American people have to stay angry with Congress for only another ten months...a prospect that seems as likely to me as the sun coming up in the morning.

- Dixie

NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE

2009-09-20T00:12:00.005-05:00

The idea of having some sort of mandatory national service for the young people of America is one I've considered for a long time. Whenever I've broached the subject with someone else, the responses tend to fall into one of two categories: Either they think mine is the best idea since sliced bread (am I dating myself?) or they think I'm proposing a nation of jackbooted, brown shirted civilian para-military thugs whose mission it is to keep the rest of us in line. This one's a political hot potato. I don't expect to hear either Republicans or Democrats raise this issue any time soon.

But we can talk. Let's first consider the many different ways in which such a program could be designed. For starters, it wouldn't have to be (but could be) military service. There are many other ways a young person could serve her/his country. Assignment to service would necessarily consider the individual's education and aptitude and the requirements of the job to be performed.

No doubt, some would choose military service, just as they do now. But couldn't we also use more teachers' aides in our classrooms and daycare centers? What about cheap American labor to build affordable housing for the poor? Do we not have an aging infrastructure in which everything from our roads to our bridges to our rail lines to our utility grids is in dire need of repair and upgrading? Would call centers for not-for-profits and charities benefit from a few more hands to man the phones in their efforts to solicit funding? How about if we had more tutors for remedial and literacy education for children and adults? Could homeless shelters and programs for victims of domestic violence use more staff? Would we as a society be well served by having more doctors and nurses to staff community health centers in both rural and metropolitan areas of the country?

Some young people might choose to serve in a department or branch of government, either locally, on a state level, or at the federal level. They could, at minimum, answer phones and do clerical work. They could even serve as pages and aides to members of Congress. We'd probably have to give congressional pages and aides hazardous duty pay (*smirk*), but I think you can see the possibilities here.

There could be flexibility in both the length of time served and when the time is served. Some areas of service (the military would be one) probably need someone for two years to make it worth their while to train them. Other jobs that need less training could be filled by those who are doing only a one year term.

There could also be choice in when the service is performed. It could be after high school (whether a drop out or graduate), after obtaining a two- or four-year degree, or even, in some cases, after receiving several years of post graduate education. Some jobs can be filled by high school dropouts, others require a better educated work force. There could be a financial incentive for choosing to get more education before doing your service, say, in the form of a larger cash bonus payable upon completion of your duty.

Of course, there would have to be some exclusions allowed. A couple that come to mind are legitimate financial hardship cases or some disability situations. But I really believe that if there is a large enough variety of jobs to choose from, most young Americans could perform a year's service to their country; I've seen too many sheltered work environments for the disabled to believe otherwise.

In cases where the work is performed near the young person's home, they could continue living at home. In instances where the job is further away, spartan but comfortable living space could be provided. In either case, a stipend could be paid for the work done and a bonus paid at the end of their time. As already mentioned, there could be room for variance in how much those bonuses are, dependent on criteria like how long the term of service is and whether or not the service was done after obtaining further education past the high school level. Or, maybe, according to how they chose to do their service. Would two years in the military deserve the same bonus as two years served in a rural health care setting as a doctor a nurse? Maybe, maybe not.

So, how would we pay for such a program? Hey, that really is above my pay grade! But let me ask you this: How could such a program cost more than hiring the engineers, teachers, medical staff, and union labor we'd have to employ to do the same things that could be done by a youth corp?

Here's the part where I'll probably lose even those of you who are with me so far: I propose that there be mandatory education in what we used to call civics built into the service program. I can already hear the stirrings...indoctrination!

Not really. Let me date myself again by saying I remember when civics was a for-credit, required course at the high school level. We learned about the three branches of government, how they work, and how they were designed to be a system of checks and balances. We were taught the language of the Constitution and its Amendments. Information about how our government works from a national level down to the local level was presented. Voters' rights information was provided and we learned that with the privilege of voting came the responsibility to be well informed. We learned the historical foundation of our present system of government and we were taught how our electoral college works.

Sadly, most Americans today couldn't even pass the test that immigrants have to pass before they can become U.S. citizens. As a populace, poll after poll shows how uninformed many of us are; you don't have to watch Jay Leno on the street to know that. Some of these people vote. I don't know about you, but I'd be thrilled to see some civics education again. Wouldn't it be nice if those of us who proclaim our patriotism actually knew something about the system we're pledging allegiance to? How do we keep it if we don't understand what it is?

The benefits to society of a mandatory service program that includes civics education outweigh any objections I've read. In the short term, vital work that needs to be done on our infrastructure or in social services or in the military - whatever/wherever, really - could be accomplished or assisted by such a service group. In the longer term, we would have adults better prepared to be contributing members of society and a better informed electorate.

How can that be a bad thing?

- Dixie

TAKE A MEMO

2009-09-19T00:10:00.005-05:00

George W. Bush circumvented Congress (and the Constitution) in 2007 by having his Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issue a memorandum that effectively allowed religious institutions to thumb their collective noses at federal employment laws. The memorandum in question provided an out for religious organizations through which they could choose to hire only those employees who professed to share their same faith and still be eligible to receive federal funding for their operations. Now, a coalition of religious and civil rights groups has come forth and made a formal request to Attorney General Holder to toss the document. The candidate Obama raised the issue of the provisions of the memo during his campaign, expressing his disapproval; but seven months into his administration, there's been no change.

Tossing is exactly what's called for regarding something that should never have been allowed to stand in the first place. There must be no federal subsidies for organizations whose employment policies discriminate on the basis of religion. We have an entire governmental agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), whose task it is to assure those laws are followed. Worse, policies enabled by the Bush administration's memo further eroded the separation of church and state and we should never stand for that.

Of course, any group that insists it's an expression of its own freedom of religion to hire only those who believe the same as they do can resist public money. Remember, just say no? Let them turn to those who share their belief system for funding. Who could argue with that? The answer to that question is simple: W. Or, alternatively, Simple W.

We should apply the same logic to the dollars spent funding organizations that provide social services while requiring participation in religious services or rituals as a condition for receiving assistance. That policy holds sway in a number of shelters for the homeless and substance abuse treatment programs across the country. The Salvation Army and some of their programs come to mind as prime examples of this. Those most vulnerable members of our society are subjected to what may be unwelcome religious indoctrination. Tax payers shouldn't pay for that either.

Nor should one assume that those who object to participating in religious services can simply go elsewhere to get their needs met. Social service organizations have taken a hit like everybody else and there aren't enough facilities available for those who can't pay for services. Some nights, ya just gotta pray to Jesus to get your dinner or a cot for the night.

Let's go further. Let's not only stop funding the programs of these institutions and agencies, let's get rid of the tax exempt status for religious and social service not-for-profit organizations in general - all of them. Black churches have historically served as the foundation of the black community and have always invited politicians to speak from their pulpits. Increasingly, other churches have begun to do the same thing. Today, Sunday morning church goers at any one of the large mega churches that have sprung up across the U.S. can often count on hearing from a politician or two when they come church to hear a sermon.

Let them all pay taxes; we subsidize every tax exempt organization in the country by paying more while they pay nothing. How do you feel about subsidizing the likes of Arizona Pastor Anderson who recently bragged to his congregation he's praying for the death of Obama? I know how I feel.

It's not just religious organizations that have their own beliefs to push. Having worked most of my career for not-for-profits, I can assure you everybody has their own party line to espouse. That's fine. The rest of us just shouldn't have to pay for it.

- Dixie

A POST RACIAL AMERICA?

2009-09-18T00:21:00.004-05:00

For the first time in our history, we've elected a black man to the office of President of the United States. Some have pretzeled this historic event into support for a pronouncement that we now live in a post-racial America. See? We told you we weren't racist.

The truth is that we're no more a post-racial society today than we were 50 years ago. Deeply ingrained racism was not so blatantly and widely expressed for a few decades, but it never went away. For some Americans, Obama's election represented an event to be proud of and embraced as a symbol of at least some progress made in a racist United States.

That was not a universal sentiment. For others, the election of Barack Obama was the scariest damn event in their lifetimes. Born of that fear is the in-your-face racist loathing you now see displayed online daily. You can read almost any political forum or blog on the internet and find a band of posters who are incapable of even mentioning the president's name without referring to his race. That's at minimum; many go much further, using racist and sexually tinged language I can't repeat on a blog I'd like to keep G-rated. What does that say to anybody who's paying attention? I don't recall a lot of entries about that "white Bush."

Obama's election has sent a certain fringe element right over the edge. Many are keyboard commandos using the anonymity of the internet as they rage at their own impotency to do anything else. Others are scarier. These are the ones joining white supremacy and related groups in record numbers. What does that say to anybody who's paying attention?

To believe we're a post-racial society is to ignore the facts. As vulgar as some of the racist comments being made are, even more insidious are the morons' reactions when called on their racism. The most frequent retort I've seen is the one in which the offender claims the one who called him on his crap is the one playing the race card! How's that for convoluted logic? At least it's consistent with the mentality of those who proclaim themselves to be strict Constitutionalists while arguing over whether or not Obama's a Christian.

As a nation, we have not yet come to grips with the fact that race is a man made construct created for the sole purpose of securing privilege for one group while denying it to another. Another fundamental short coming in Americans' understanding of race and racism is their denial of the impact racism has on us all. That's true whether you're a member of the oppressor group or of the oppressed.

We've become so acculturated to the social and political implications of institutionalized racism that we don't even see the instances of it all around us in our daily lives. It manifests itself in everything from our language to disparities in our justice and educational systems and more. DWB (Driving While Black) continues to be a frightful prospect for black men. We're still more segregated than not and there's also the issue of proportional representation in government at every level.

Yes, we elected a black man as president. But we're still not having the conversations we should be having about race and racism in this country. Few seem interested in even making the attempt. Only the fringe groups of either side want to take a stance while the rest of us prefer to not address the elephant in the room.

Some years ago, former NBA star and member of Congress Bill Bradley said he thought the issue of race and racism in this country was the single biggest problem we must deal with if we're to remain a united nation. I thought he made a lot of sense then and still do.

Dear Reader, please allow me one bit of advice while I have your ear: Keep an eye on our changing demographics. The view from the outside will be different from the one from the inside.

So, do you still not want to have those difficult conversations? And, do you speak Spanish or Mandarin?

- Dixie

SHOW AND TELL

2009-09-17T01:25:00.008-05:00

Whether or not you believe news outlets should publish pictures of dying soldiers or draped coffins is probably an indicator of where you stand on the wars currently being waged. At least one lesson was learned from Vietnam: Put a war in the middle of people's living rooms night after night and the country will sooner sour on the mission. The more body bags there are, the louder will be the public outcry demanding to know what plans there are for an exit strategy. Both Democrats and Republicans learned this and it's now a part of the politics of war.

This issue received some press recently when the AP wire service published a photograph of a young U.S. soldier dying in Afghanistan. Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the soldier's family reportedly asked the AP not to publish the picture, but the wire service stuck to their position and published it anyway. Most of the public response I read was on the side of thinking it inappropriate for the AP to publish the picture against the expressed desires of the family; I don't recall anyone caring what Gates thought.

But not everybody agreed that the family's desires should have been considered. I found the following at http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090905/D9AGV2680.html

Jorge Ruiz of Glendale, Ariz., said he and other ex-Marines had often talked about the sanitation of war and the social implications of a lack of images showing what war is really like.

"Death and the ugliness of war is not something we look forward to but a necessity to put the war in its proper context," said Ruiz, who also wrote the AP. "A picture is worth a thousand words. I applaud your courage to distribute the photo and the story of the death of Lance Cpl. Bernard."

Ex-Marine Ruiz and his buddies are talking about what they know that we don't. Pictures do tell a story. In this instance, the story told is but one small glimpse of the horrors of war. If we're going to wage war, shouldn't we be fully informed of what that means in the context of real peoples' lives on the line every day?

We're past the sanitation Ruiz refers to and up to our necks in denial and desensitization. We hear the words, but we no longer comprehend what they mean. It's as if we've become deaf and dumb. We're almost eight years into Afghanistan and six and a half years into Iraq and there are adult Americans who couldn't point to the two countries on a map that didn't have the names on it. There's an old joke that we Americans learn geography when we go to war; not always, apparently.

We need to see faces, not just politics, when we go to war. We need to see men and women, not just uniforms. We whose names these wars are waged under must not be "protected" from knowing what we're doing and what the real life consequences are.

The social implications ex-Marine Ruiz refers to should also be considered in the context of one big difference between the wars we're currently engaged in and the war in Vietnam. Today, there's no draft. Does anyone believe we'd still be in both Iraq and Afghanistan if we at home had once again seen our young soldiers drafted and sent into battle? The draft, as much as anything, fueled the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era. Today we have a disconnect.

Have we been so "protected" from these wars, with their embedded reporters and hidden coffins, that we don't care anymore?

Maybe. Just maybe.

- Dixie

DEAR HETEROSEXUALS

2009-09-16T00:31:00.004-05:00

Civil rights for homosexuals are always a hot topic when it comes up for discussion in the arena of politics. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have done a great job of advancing the cause, in spite of promises to the contrary. While poll after poll shows the American public's increasing acceptance of homosexuality, politicians still pander to a vocal minority by either jumping on their bandwagon or simply avoiding the issue whenever possible.

Many of those opposed to equal rights for homosexuals rationalize their opinions in a religious context. They seem to believe it would be the equivalent of nothing less than the the downfall of western civilization or even the end of times if society were to allow homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals. They frequently fall back on a "don't ask, don't tell" position, claiming that any acknowledgment of one's homosexuality is "flaunting the behavior."

After some consideration, I've decided that what is most needed now is a behavioral guide for heterosexuals. I think they may be on to something with their "don't ask, don't tell" policy. In fact, I'm so sure of it that I've come up with a guide to assist heterosexuals in demonstrating their support for their own "don't ask, don't tell" stance.

In the spirit of a public service announcement, I offer here five simple rules I've unselfishly developed for heterosexuals who want to put their money where their mouth is, figuratively speaking. Think of it as a MzManners (or MzMouth) for the 21st century. Or something.

Rule # 1) The next time you're tempted to whip out family pictures of the wife (or hubby) and the kids because you're just so dang proud of them and want to show them off over lunch at work, resist the urge! It's inappropriate to flaunt your heterosexual lifestyle in that manner. There's no room for this sort of thing in the workplace and it may make your co-workers uncomfortable to be subjected to graphic evidence in support of your heterosexual lifestyle.

Rule # 2) When you're tempted to give your wife or hubby a quick peck on the cheek in public, perhaps in a moment of shared intimacy (maybe a shared laugh?), please spare us all from a disgusting public display of your sexuality and wait until you're in your bedroom....or, get a room. Have you no shame? Impressionable children may see you; consider that before you yield to those spontaneous urges. The same goes for walking in public while holding hands with your significant other. Remember the kiddies, remember the kiddies.

Rule # 3) Never, ever, mention to anyone that you and your wife or girlfriend (hubby or boyfriend) are enthusiastically planning a weekend getaway or an exotic vacation. There's no reason to announce your heterosexual escapades. It should go without saying that you should also never show others the pictures from those trips, but I bring it up only because so many seem to be unmindful of this important rule. (Editorial note: Damned heterosexuals always want to be in your face!)

Rule # 4) Please stop sending out mass invitations to your "weddings" and related celebrations. Again, there's the issue of flaunting your heterosexuality. Even worse, you expect gifts, a reward for this behavior. You even go to stores and select what you want your gifts to be! We should all celebrate what you told when we didn't ask? Outrageous.

Rule # 5) The final rule is related to the 4th one. It's time to stop the blatant announcements of heterosexual "weddings" and engagements in our print media. These announcements are generally accompanied by pictures of you and your intended. The media's agreement to publish those announcements and pictures indicates tacit approval of your lifestyle and we can't have that. In order to protect society, the media should not be allowed to normalize heterosexual behavior by putting in-your-face images in the public domain.

I hope this guide is received in the spirit in which it was intended. Honest.

- Dixie

PASTOR ANDERSON

2009-09-15T00:04:00.009-05:00

By now everybody has heard of Arizona pastor, Steven Anderson, who recently told members of his congregation he was praying for President Obama's death. (You can see a video of Pastor Anderson's hour-long sermon at http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/politics/pastors_obama_rant_08_30_2009 ) There's no ambiguity or missing context needed in which to couch this. He said it and has since defended his comments. No, really.

Now it's being reported that the pastor has received threats on his own life. I see. It's alright to threaten death to those who pray for someone else's death? Or something like that? One's better than the other? Is this some kinky perversion of the biblical "an eye for an eye?"

I don't claim to understand those who are attracted to Anderson and his message, any more than I can say I understand those who support the Westboro bunch or the Taliban or any other extremists of any group, religious or otherwise. I find their beliefs both aberrant and abhorrent.

We must consider, however, that the extremists believe their positions to be grounded in faith. And, if that's the case, how do we address the issue of incitement versus free speech and freedom of religion? I may think it foolish or worse to handle poisonous snakes during Sunday's church service or to drink the blood of a chicken and bury its feet in a moonlit ritual; others would disagree.

The pressing question for us today really is about when do free speech and freedom of religion go further and become inciting violence? Where is that arbitrary line to be set? Frankly, I think there are a lot of people treading dangerously close to crossing over to the other side these days.

However, I'm not convinced that the problem is as much with those who froth and foam at the mouth as it is with the nut balls who decide to act out their hate. Some of these guys are powder kegs with a short fuse just about a hair's width from a lit match; it doesn't take much to set them off.

But, can they really claim their behavior was "caused" by the words or actions of another? There will always be "reasons" (excuses) for bad behavior; personal responsibility doesn't seem to weight the scale much lately. Too many of us want to justify bad behavior, our own and that of others, by playing the blame game. I'm having deja vu and Flip Wilson's Geraldine persona is proclaiming, "The devil made me do it."

Let me be clear. I'm in no way trying to express support for Pastor Anderson; to some degree, I'm playing devil's advocate. I don't think this is a simple problem with simple answers. One might even reasonably ask, must we wait for a tragedy to occur before we know a line has been crossed? From a Constitutional perspective, must we wait?

Never let it be said I missed a chance to argue for the elimination of tax-exempt status for all religious and not-for-profit organizations. For one thing, church and politics have always mixed. By the mid 1600s, Quakers were here on this continent promoting an abolitionist position. Black churches in the U.S. have always served as the community touchstone and today, huge "mega" churches invite politicians and/or their spokespeople to speak at Sunday morning "worship" services.

I have no desire to support with my tax dollars blatantly political stances espoused from anyone's pulpit. That would most definitely include the good Pastor Anderson's gig.

- Dixie

OBAMA'S COURT

2009-09-14T01:15:00.006-05:00

All justices who have ever sat on the United States Supreme Court have left their mark, for better or worse; it's a rather august body to begin with and intellectual slouches usually don't make the cut. (Note that I said "usually.") Each court takes on its own unique identity as a body too, depending on who the Chief Justice is and who is on the bench.

In large part, each of our lives is governed or determined by rulings pronounced by this body. Lower courts look to Supreme Court rulings as precedent for their own interpretation of the law, so it's no wonder politics is involved in the selection process for seating these judges. Add to that the fact these are lifetime appointments and you can see how things could heat up in a hurry.

With speculation that Justice Stevens may retire soon and concerns from some Court observers that Justice Ginsberg's health is an ongoing issue, a question that must be asked is how many appointments to the USSC will President Obama have an opportunity to make. He's made one already. It's conceivable, without much stretch of imagination, to think he may have to make one or two more.

But what would it really mean for balance on the court if Obama ends up making three appointments? I'm not sure Obama can get two more liberal leaning nominees through the Senate and onto the bench after Sotomayor's contentious confirmation hearings. If he can't, and one of those seats goes to a more conservative judge, the delicate balance in place now will be upset.

I think we saw in the run-up to Sotomayor's confirmation a glimpse of what some of the objections may be to future nominations from this administration. I expect the opposition to be much the same next time around, only louder. Further, I don't see any reason to believe that the Democrats would rubber stamp one of Obama's nominations if the outcry from the other side was too loud. Not every Democrat wants to see a liberal judge appointed and I think Republicans would raise hell - just for, well, the hell of it - were Obama to actually have the opportunity to name two justices, never mind three.

I am reminded, however, of the times presidents have made appointments they later came to rue. George H. W. Bush's appointment of Souter comes to mind. USSC justices have proven time after time they're not always predictable regarding their ruling on any given case. I expect some of Sotomayor's rulings to be a surprise to a lot of people. I believe she will be far from a consistently liberal jurist.

Musing about the possible retirement of Stevens and/or Ginsberg may be premature. But it has been noted that Stevens hasn't hired his usual group of law clerks for this session and Ginsberg's health will continue to be an issue. If either or both of them step down during the term of this administration, look for what may be the biggest fight of all for Obama's presidency. The outcome could forever define his legacy.

- Dixie

BACK TO SCHOOL

2009-09-13T00:40:00.008-05:00

My sister and I were recently discussing the issue of education in this country and what we see wrong with the system. She has three grandchildren: The oldest will be 16 next April, the middle one will be 14 in November, and the youngest will be 13 next March. In other words, all three are entering stages of their lives where getting an education gets a lot more complicated. Their horizons are frought with many barriers and pitfalls we just didn't have as kids. My sister and I laughed and lamented that we both sounded like a couple of old fogeys talking about "the good old days."

I loved going back to school each year. I loved the smell of new pencils, the fun of real fountain pens and colored inks, the texture of new binders and book bags (we didn't all carry backpacks then), and the excitement of having reams of paper to be filled as quickly as possible. I liked the gadgets, the pencil sharpeners and erasers. Rulers and protractors. Little bags to carry them in. I could hardly wait to get my hands on new text books, poring over them as soon as I did and reading entire books before the material was presented in class. I lovingly made and decorated bookcovers from brown paper bags cut to fit. My response to the perennial "what did you do on summer vacation" assignment was generally a review of which books I'd read.

I had the good fortune of growing up in a family that placed a high value on reading in particular and education in general. They expected us to do our best in school and showed us behaviorally that they supported us in that endeavor. They made sure our homework was done and that we didn't procrastinate on beginning long-term projects; they were available to help if we needed it. They attended PTA meetings and school conferences. They were there for school assemblies we had parts in or when we were awarded some certificate of accomplishment and cheered us on. They encouraged us to enter writing and art contests. I was taught to respect my teachers and I understood that if I misbehaved in school, there would be consequences at home too. I was subject to a certain amount of peer pressure that carried the message it wasn't necessarily "cool" to excel in school. I didn't care; I was happiest when learning something new.

But I didn't have to contend with what kids today do. I didn't have to be afraid of gang violence while just trying to get to my school. The only drugs around were tobacco and alcohol and my crowd didn't consider it at all cool to use either. Teachers didn't have to teach to a test and were able to let those of us so inclined go beyond the standard curriculum and explore related topics on our own. There was more time for individual supervision and extra help for students who needed it; there weren't 30 kids in the classroom. We had some kind of physical activity everyday during which we could blow off the steam that kids need breaks to get rid of.

Our educational system needs a major overhaul. We need to look backward and see what we've lost; sometimes the step forward is the one you take backward before you created the problem. We need to get extra help EARLY to kids who need it. Too many are doomed by the time they're in the fourth grade because they haven't yet developed fundamental math and reading skills. If they haven't done so by then, they're in no way equipped to go further with their studies and will only fall farther and farther behind each year. They're some of the kids who will drop out of school as soon as the law legally allows them to do so.

We need to invest more in vocational and technical training programs because not every kid needs to or even should attend a traditional four-year college. We should be teaching marketable skills that actually prepare someone to do a job when they finish their courses. We need to start viewing teaching as an honorable, respected profession again. One place to start is by giving teachers higher pay that more appropriately compensates them for the job we ask them to do. We need to support what we say we value. To do otherwise is hypocrisy.

We must also find a way to make it easier for parents to participate in their children's schooling. PTA and school conferences need to be flexible in scheduling to accommodate the reality that there are often two working parents in the household now. I can think of no single factor more important in improving the education of our children than for their parents to be actively involved in the process. In the end, parents are going to have to take back control and resposibility for being the adults at home. They must let their children know that they support them in their academic pursuits and provide them with what they need to get an education. That includes having a home in which there is a designated homework zone and somebody who knows what the homework is and sees to it that it's done.. TVs, game systems, and computers should be in common rooms, not in kids' bedrooms. Dinner is a time to discuss your day at school, not text your friends.

Without a well educated populace we will not be able to compete in the world of the future in any meaningful way. We can call ourselves world leaders as long as we want, but we'll lose the right to do so unless we get some of our priorities straight. I think that would include putting education high on the list of problems to be addressed..

The "no child left behind" program needs to be replaced with one named "leave politics behind.". Nothing less than the literal future of our counrty depends on the education of our children.

- Dixie

(First published at http://politicsandstuff.org

POLITICIANS' BOOKS

2009-09-12T00:10:00.007-05:00

'Tis the season. Summer's over, school's back in session, people are at home more and with more time to read. As every reader knows, late summer/early fall each year we're treated to another crop of new books. There's a big gift-buying season just ahead and a book's release now will maximize sales potential then. Usually, the lot is littered with a politician or two - each with an apology, ax to grind, or some other self aggrandizing reason to publish. This year, we get at least two. But, is one much different from the other?

Pity ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and buy his book, The Governor; he lost that job. Never mind that he's managed to appear generally oafish since the allegations that cost him his job were first made against him. Never mind that it would be easy to cite him as the poster child for a Jerry Springer-like mentality when it comes to playing the media; he does create chaos and then stands back and pretends it surprises him.

I don't know about you, but if a book was in Blagojevich's immediate future, I'd have thought we might find therein some hand wringing, maybe a bit more excuse than "it was politics as usual," and, oh, I don't know. Maybe an apology to the people of the state of Illinois? Well, no. Instead, he's sprinkled his page-turner with jabs like alleging Rahm Emanuel wanted him to help assure he could get his old seat back in Congress in 2010. And his remarks about the ego of Roland Burris are not to be missed. I'm confident Blagojevich knows hubris when he sees it; I think they're old buddies, Blago and hubris.

Enter Tom Ridge, with his own book to pimp, A Test of Our Times. Recently, it appeared as if he might sell a few books by claiming he was pressured to change the color-coded Homeland Security alert status for political reasons. Well, not so much now. Mr. Ridge has already had to back pedal on that claim.

It's probably a good thing he has his private security consulting enterprise to fall back on. Or maybe not. Mr. Ridge's biggest problem probably won't be the lack of stellar book sales; it may be the damage he's done to his prospects for securing future lucrative defense or intelligence contracts for his own firm.

While we're on the subject of Ridge, does anybody know exactly how much security experience he had before he joined the Bush administration as head of Homeland Security? Hint: It's a trick question.

Now, we're full circle. Two politicians, two books. One Democrat, one Republican. One will be known forever as a governor, while most don't even remember now that the other was a governor too. But they do share something in common and that's in the tale they want us to pay to read. Neither is above trying to sell books by making allegations about those they were formerly in cahoots with. No la familia here. Nor does either seem to really have much to say that many are interested in reading; in the over all scheme of things, they are pretty small fish.

Perhaps most regrettably, what they also share is that both offer us a window into what passes for the soul of American politics today. Mediocrity would be progress. Why reward incompetence (and worse) with book sales?

No thanks. I'll wait for the made-for-TV movie. And I don't watch TV.

- Dixie

(First published at http://honkytonkyme.stumbleupon.com )

"HATE CRIME" LAWS

2009-09-11T00:13:00.008-05:00

I've had very dear gay and lesbian friends as an adult. I probably had them when I was a kid too, but who knew?

I personally knew a young woman whose mafia-involved father beat her so badly when she told him she was gay, she had to be hospitalized for over a week. Hate.

I've known more than one lesbian who was kicked out of residential treatment centers for substance abuse when it became known she was gay. In a couple of cases that occurred where I was working, the lesbian became involved briefly with a bi-curious patient who initiated the contact and then told counselors about it. Each time, one was kicked out of treatment and one was not. I'm sure you can figure out who's who. Hate.

I've witnessed a man down and defenseless but for his hands over his head on a Chicago sidewalk, being kicked repeatedly by several men because they thought he was gay. Hate.

I've known several women who were "out" as lesbians during their college days and had outrageous things done to them, including having men throw bottles of liquids on them from cars as the women walked down the sidewalk or rode their bikes. More than one was raped to "show her a real man." Hate.

I'll never forget the first time I heard somebody call my son a "nigger." He was two years old and he touched an old man's trousers, kinda tugging to get his attention so he could smile and say hello. We were in line at a McDonald's and that's just the kind of kid he was. But that's beside the point. The point is that I saw the rage and hatred in the man's eyes as he told me to "keep that n...... away from me." I understood, clearly, for the first time, that people could hate my dear, precious son for only the color of his skin; with that instantly came the understanding that someone could hate him enough to do him harm. That he could be targeted for no reason other than who/what he was. I got it. Hate.

I was sitting in a bar one night, maybe 30 years ago, when a man came in who was new to the place. It was one of those little hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bars where everybody really did know your name and he was not on the list. He sat about 2 or 3 stools away from me and ordered a drink. After his drink was served, he got up and went in the direction of the bathrooms; but he never came back. There was an exit door close to the bathrooms and he apparently went out that way. He did, however, leave something in his wake. On the bar, next to his untouched drink, was a business card with KKK insignia on it. Handwritten on the card were the words "we are watching you." Nice, huh? At any given time, the racial makeup of the clientele in the bar was probably about 50/50 black and white. Imagine the threat that felt like. Hate.

I've seen the face of hate and it's ugly. I find it abhorrent that anyone would target somebody for harm because they don't like the color of their skin or their sexual orientation or their religion or their (fill-in-the-blank). But the value of lives taken because their murderers hated them for some arbitrary reason is not more than the value of the lives of anyone else murdered. You'd have to suspend belief in that reality in order to believe that "hate crime" legislation is a good idea.

There are laws on the books against assault and murder. We should prosecute to the fullest anyone who commits one of those crimes. But if they're found guilty, how do we rationalize that their crime was worse and hand down extraordinary sentences because they "hated" their victim? That is, in effect, special protection for some groups of people. And unconstitutional.

What you're really talking about when you advocate "hate crime" legislation is punishing people for their motives, not their crimes. In other words, you're punishing them for their thoughts.

Do we really want to go down that road? Do we not understand that governmental encroachment into our personal lives is run amok and only becoming more so?

We do not need thought police. Who among us has never had a thought we didn't act on but could be considered, nonetheless, a hateful thought?

No get-out-of-jail-free cards for you.

- Dixie

(First published at myway.com )

I'M A "GUN NUT"

2009-09-10T17:15:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time, I believed and espoused all the leftist dogma against guns. I laughed derisively at comments like "guns don't kill, people do." I was in favor of all manner of registration and restrictions on ownership laws, particularly as they regard some weapons. I was in the forefront demanding new and more restrictive laws every time another massacre occurred.

Not any more. I'm against all registration laws and all restrictions on gun ownership. When I say "all," I do mean all.

So, what happened to change my mind? A couple of things, actually. For one, I spent years studying my family genealogy and in the course of those studies I had need to look at a lot of history. I learned what militias were really like during the days leading up to our declaration of independence from King George.

I learned the militias were not of your Disney and other Hollywood variety. They were ordinary citizens, required by their local governments to bear arms. In at least one colony, Maryland, owning a gun was not an option; it was a requirement. Decisions about the minimum number of guns required per household were based on the number of adults and children in each home. Locally appointed militia leaders went from house to house to assure compliance. The bottom line is that the citizenry was required to be armed and that was your militia.

I decided I needed to take a fresh look at the 2nd Amendment and I did just that. I've come to believe that our founding fathers understood our need to protect ourselves from whoever would cause us harm, including our own government. I believe an unarmed populace is at the mercy of whoever's currently in power and that our founders knew that too.

The other thing that happened was the election of Bush and Cheney. Cheney made no secret that it was his goal to strengthen the executive branch of our government and he facilitated just that. The Bush/Cheney administration became the most secretive administration I can recall in my lifetime and took for itself unprecedented power. When that was going on, some of us tried to sound warnings, but we were called Bush bashers. Some of us tried to point out that those cheering such victories by the Bush/Cheney White House would rue the day another administration had those same powers. Do you see that happening now with all the flotsam about a run on guns and ammo since Obama took office?

If it were in my power to do so, I'd get all the gun laws off the books. Never mind that they don't protect us from evil as the nanny state proponents would have us believe. The fact is I think it's damn scary to contemplate our government knowing exactly who has what kind of weapons. Confiscation, anybody? And I damn sure don't want whoever happens to be in power at the moment to pass legislation about who can own guns.

So, call me a gun nut, if you will. Our current way of doing things doesn't work, any more than the prohibition of drugs does. Criminals don't follow the laws; it's the rest of the population who's at risk as long as this insanity continues.

- Dixie

(First published at http://politicsandstuff.org )