Sorry for the dearth . . .

So I got back from Mexico to the news that my grandfather--the only grandparent I have left--was in the hospital. So I spent the holiday weekend in Cincinnati.

He's home now, and waiting for an angiogram and likely bypass/ valve replacement. Anyway, I'm a little behind.

Every Founding Father was a chickenhawk

You heard me. All those guys whose names are on the Declaration of Independence -- not one of them had ever fought in a war. John Adams? A lawyer. Thomas Jefferson? A plantation owner. Benjamin Franklin? A jack-of-all-trades and career diplomat. John Hancock? A merchant. But not ONE of them ever fought in the military.

And what about the big guy, Georgie Washington? Yeah, he fought some -- but he couldn't exactly be called a stellar military genius before the Revolution broke out. His major claim to fame was advising a British general not to lead a Redcoat army in full regalia into a trackless forest in hostile Indian territory. The general ignored Washington's advice and got himself shot along with most of his army. Not exactly fodder for war hero status.

So does that mean the Revolution shouldn't have been fought?

Or, for that matter, what about the other prominent chickenhawks who have made the decision to lead America into her greatest battles? Like Franklin Roosevelt, who led us through the dark days of World War II? Or Bill Clinton, the admitted draft-dodger, who led the coalition that entered the most altruistic war in world history, the Kosovo conflict, and whose fighting force was led by a general who so many of us would like to see run for President?

My point is, I don't like the chickenhawk meme. I just don't. I don't think we should have fought this war in Iraq, and I don't approve of the way we're fighting it now -- but I don't give a rat's ass whether those who have ordered us into the conflict ever served in the military or not. The soldiers who are fighting in this war are, at least for the time being, volunteers -- people who agreed to give their lives for their country if the government in power deemed it necessary. Now, to be clear, I don't think the government should have deemed it necessary to spend precious lives on this war, but I don't see why they need to send themselves or their sons and daughters off to a battle that other people have volunteered to fight in order to prove their case; a little circumspection and regard for human life and the rules of diplomacy would have done the job just fine.

If we were in a draft, then sure, let the unwilling potential soldiers in Congress put their money where their mouths are. But right now, I don't think they ought to be judged any differently from warmongers with no military service such as Adams and Madeleine Albright. Their war is wrong. But not because they're not fighting in it.

Some food for thought on this Fourth of July.

[Update] I was wrong about some of the Founding Fathers' military service. I still don't like the chickenhawk meme.

Popping in quickly

from my parents' in Ohio . . .

No one here seems to remember the password to the wireless network, so I flew in carrying a $1200 paperweight. So posting will be sketchier than I wanted.

Jeremy, Tim--feel free to jump in.

Stupid slow news day

I wish something newsworthy had happened today. I got nothin' right now.

Friday Random Ten

The First Day of (Summer) School Edition

1. "Union Square" Tom Waits from Rain Dogs
2. "Happy, The End" The Innocence Mission from Glow
3. "Where it Begins" Martin Sexton from The American
4. "I Don't Wanna Know" Indigo Girls from 1200 Curfews
5. "Blue Boat Home" Peter Mayer from Earth Town Square
6. "Kathleen" Patty Larkin from Tango
7. "Golden Fear" Sean Staples from This is Boston . . . Not Austin
8. "Walk Through Trouble" Black Randy from The Waterbug Anthology
9. "Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" Richard Shindell from Courier
10. "Don't Make Me Leave" Dan Bern from Fleeting Days

Something else for our inferiority complex

The Big Headline this morning:

City drops out of top 20

For the first time since before the Civil War, Milwaukee is not among the 20 largest cities in the United States, according to figures released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. [. . .]

According to the annual figures, which estimate population each July, Milwaukee's population in 2004 was 583,624, down nearly 3,600 residents from the same time in 2003.

I, for one, am not telling where I buried my share of the bodies.

But seriously: A bunch of people will probably associate the decline in the city--and in the metro area, generally ("Milwaukee's metro population growth in recent years has sat near the bottom of the country's 43 largest metropolitan areas," the article says) with the topic covered in another article from the paper this morning:

[Peter] Fisher, who earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, analyzes five indexes. Of the four that included Wisconsin in their ratings, the Badger state ranked anywhere from 13th to 41st, with 50th being worst. Fisher challenges the methodology used in the indexes and contends they're poor gauges of a state's economic potential.

Last summer I spent a lot of time talking about this issue, and even some last winter. (I'm lazy and summer school starts tomorrow--yes, on a Friday; they don't ask me about these things--do your own archive search.) I've dropped it recently, since jeebus knows that the legislature has given me plenty of other stuff to write about. But it is worth noting, again, what Fisher says in this article, that any kind of national rankings of Wisconsin, our tax rates, our business climate, and whatnot is probably not terribly reliable. Consider, for example that seven states don't have income tax. Or that California's auto registration fee is four times Wisconsin's. It's really difficult to make a fair, easy comparison.

But in reality, our plummet out of the top 20 has much more to do with the growth of the South and the Southwest than any kind of "tax hell" mumbo jumbo promulgated by hardcore "stop me before I spend again!" wingnuts in the state: " 'The pattern of historical migration is one of people moving from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt, said William Gayk, director of the Center for Demographic Research in Fullerton, Calif." Still, I predict at least three letters to the editor in the next week blaming the taxes.

And, of course, everyone is thinking heavily about taxes and spending, what with there only being a couple of hours left in the fiscal biennium and our not having a budget. Fortunately for me, I will be awake at 6:15 tomorrow morning, so I can keep an eye on the legislature, since that's when they tend to do all the important stuff. I'll let you know.

Read This

Bill Christopherson is on the ball again. If this doesn't make you want to bang your head on the table, repeatedly, then I don't know what will.

By the way, the Next Door Foundation (if you'd read Bill's post like I told you to, you'd know) has a lot of people on its board of directors who contributed to members of the Joint Finance Committee, like Lazich and Jensen. I'm not making any accusations here; I'm just reporting what the WDC tells me. And I bet a more enterprising Googlemonkey could come up with more dirt somewhere . . .

Milwaukee Election Fraud/ Reform

I'm still trying to catch up on what I missed from last week. I guess Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's commission finished its work on how to reform Milwaukee's election process to avoid the mess that came to light in November--and probably existed long before that, just without scrutiny.

The recommemdations are really quite simple, and mirror what I have been saying all along, that Milwaukee's problems stem not from concerted efforts at fraud but from understaffing and undertraining. Since yesterday I took the paper's editorial board to task, I have to give them credit for being right today (emphasis in the original):

Wisconsin Republicans have been harping on what is really a side issue, largely not germane to the electoral breakdown that took place in Milwaukee and around Wisconsin last November: a proposal to require that every time you vote, you show a Wisconsin driver's license or a state or military ID card.

That photo ID mandate would not have stopped the fraud that unscrupulous registrars perpetrated when they handed in names of people they falsely claimed had registered to vote. A task force recommendation would curb such fraud, however: Outlaw the practice of paying registrars for each new name.

A photo ID mandate would not have stopped the 200 felons from voting who allegedly shouldn't have last November. After all, the felons gave their real names. A driver's license doesn't indicate whether a person is a felon. A task force recommendation would discourage felons from casting ballots, however: Inform voters prominently on registration cards and in address-verification cards mailed to new voters that felons still on probation or parole are prohibited from voting. Better yet is Gov. Jim Doyle's proposal that voters check a box indicating they have read such a notice - which, in turn, would give prosecutors a hook for bringing charges should felons vote anyway.

A photo ID mandate would have stopped one case of alleged fraud, as reported in a criminal complaint filed last week. The voter gave different addresses in allegedly registering and voting twice, the first time using a driver's license, the second time a Social Security card. But enforcement of existing rules would have also stemmed any fraud. A Social Security card is not supposed to be accepted as a proof of residence.

A photo ID mandate would not have stopped the vast bulk of the rampant miscues and errors last November because they did not stem from identification fraud. But the recommendations of the task force would accomplish that task, because they zero in on the actual causes of what went wrong.

There were, according to a non-partisan investigation, 100 or so instances of same-day registrants who were gaming the system in some way, including the Social-Security card user cited above. Actual enforcement of the law would have stopped most of them, I am willing to bet, and anyone who took the trouble to dig up identification to register falsely and vote could have faked an ID, as well. The investigation didn't look at the other 200,000 or so votes for fraud, but even if fraud existed among those votes (at the same rate, that may have been a whopping 300 instances), better organization at City Hall would have caught the phony registrations.

So let J-Dizzle veto the voter ID bill again, so that we don't inconvenience the other 3,000,000 or so voters around the state, and let Milwaukee fix its own house. If, after the additional measures and intense scrutiny in November 2006 show that there is still room for fraud or abuse, then we can talk about moving Wisconsin's voting laws to a par with the lowest-turnout states in the nation.

The Hunting of the Liberals

A couple months back, I was excoriated by über-neo-conserva-monster David Horowitz for an aside I wrote in this post: "Do we also have to start rounding up the college professors and putting them in camps? David Horowitz is this close to being that explicit." I wrote that because Horowitz maintains a database of dangerous people, including many prominent academics alongside Osama bin Laden and Dennis Kucinich. Plus, Horowitz is the figurehead of CampusWatch, which empowers conservative college students to dialog with any professors they don't agree with using such time-honored conflict-resolution techniques as red stars.

Perhaps the idea of putting people in camps was slight hyperbole. Perhaps, though, if you follow what David Neiwert is talking about, you can see how it is not such a far-fetched possibility. Go and read that please, and then come back.

I mean, really, can someone please explain to me how the kind of rhetoric that you regularly hear from Savage and Coulter and Limbaugh and now Rove doesn't even merit an eyelash-blink? And worse, how is that the media is willing to equate this kind of "round up the libruls" lies and distortions with less inflammatory and esentially true words. Take the local rag (please!):

Among the more notable headline-grabbers, Democratic Party leader Howard Dean called Republicans "pretty much a white, Christian party" and said "they all behave the same, and they all look the same." Vice President Dick Cheney's comeback? "Maybe (Dean's) mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does."

That's a low blow, even on the playground. Good thing Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin evened the score in the Senate, comparing conditions at the Guantanamo prison camp to Soviet gulags, Nazi Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodian regime.

At least he smartly apologized. Not enough politicians do.

This week's big zinger came from White House adviser Karl Rove, who thought it smart to say liberals would "offer therapy and understanding" to the 9-11 hijackers rather than go to war. The Democrats could have turned the other cheek, but instead they clamored in vain for Rove's resignation.

It's hard to know where to start here: First, this same paper bent over backwards to tell us that Bush was re-elected on the efforts of Christians and similar "values voters." So Dean was wrong . . . how?

Second, Durbin's description of the "American Gulag" is accurate and disturbing: Conservatives can continue to defend U.S. policy at Gitmo and elsewhere, but they have to go through all sorts of contortions to explain how holding people without charges, attorneys, access to courts and so forth for three or more years is reasonable. Durbin's apology was a cop-out, especially after conservatives and the media inaccurately accused him of calling U.S. soldiers Nazis.

Third, Cheney's and Rove's remarks were not even remotely like Durbin's and Dean's. Cheney went after Howard Dean's mother, for crying out loud. Although, I guess that's not as bad as his dropping the f-bomb on the Senate floor. And Rove set out to paint all liberals--your humble folkbum included--as being soft on terrorists. Everyone else has already pointed out the factual errors in Rove's speech (and Hunter today noted that perhaps it's Bush who's soft on terror), so I will instead take issue with the editorial's assertion that Democrats should have "turned the other cheek." To that, I have to drop a big old Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: When the second most powerful man in Washington (next to Dick Cheney, of course) paints roughly half of the U.S. population with an innacurate and inflamatory brush, the only reasonable response is to ask for his resignation. My frigging tax dollars are paying this man's salary, and I refuse to allow such modern-day red-baiting on my dime.

At any rate, when they do start rounding us up, all I ask is that I be given a nice low number. I don't do pain well, and if they're going to tattoo it onto me, I'd like it to be short.

Bryan Kennedy Needs Your Help

Many of you read the last post below from guest-poster ColdFusion04 about F. Jim Sensenbrenner. F. Jim has raised the ire of a lot of Democrats, liberals, moderates, even some Republicans of late, and a consensus is growing that it's time to give him the boot.

That's why it's important that you take a few seconds and drop by Bryan Kennedy's website to learn a little bit about the left's best chance to take F. Jim out next November. And remember that June 30 is an FEC filing deadline; Bryan's trying to raise $100,000 by then to make a statement that the Democrats are ready to make F. Jim history. So go and contribute as much as you can, even if it's only $10.

Don't forget to add .01 to let Bryan know that the blogosphere is behind him!

I Am Home

And flushing toilet paper with abandon.

I will post tomorrow, trying to catch up on some of the stuff that went down while I was gone . . .

At any rate, let's have another big round of applause for ColdFusion04 and Jeremy Young, who kept the blog rolling with timely and timeless posts. Take a bow, guys.

An intelligent design supporter says ID isn't science

Finding myself utterly unable to compete with Cold Fusion's utterly brilliant piece of original reporting below, I've decided to make my final post here at Folkbum about the debate over teaching creationism in the schools.

Uber-conservative columnist Morton Kondracke, who apparently is a Democrat despite thinking the Republican Party is "not conservative enough," recently penned this editorial (registration required, or use Bugmenot) eviscerating the Creationism-in-schools argument:

"Intelligent Design" (ID), the religious alternative to Darwinism, ought to be taught in schools — Sunday schools and high-school social studies or history classes.

But in biology classes? No way. ... ID isn't science. Its concepts can't be independently verified. In essence, ID holds that living organisms are so complex that they couldn't be the product of blind natural forces, but had to be the work of a Designer — or, at least, a designer.

The scientific problem is this: There is no way to locate actual evidence of a designer, be it small "d" or big "D." Proponents of ID, including some sophisticated scientists, point to holes in Darwinian explanations for the development of life and say that only "intelligent design" can fill the gap. But that's not proof of design.

It's true that, as John West points out, the article is riddled with factual errors that make the ID people seem much more intelligent than they really are. But I'll take what I can get, particularly since Kondracke himself is an ID supporter, as he explains later in the article:

Personally, I think that high-school students ... ought to be taught that no one knows for sure what caused life to originate on Earth or what caused the creation of the universe. I favor the religious view of this, but there's a secular view that students should know about too.

But as to the "how" of biology — the science — schools should teach the best evidence available, which is evolutionary theory.

In reality, the evidence against intelligent design is an insurmountable vastitude. Eloquent evolution scientist Stephen Jay Gould famously declared in 1999 that "The hard bony evidence for human evolution...surely exceeds our reliable documentation of Caesar's life." In 1986, seventy-two Nobel laureates -- including DNA discoverers Watson and Crick, H-bomb progenitor Hans Bethe, and two-time laureate Linus Pauling -- signed an amicus brief that stated, in part, "The evolutionary history of organisms has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as any biological concept." Geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky argued in 1973 that "evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry."

As evidence that evolutionists are slowly winning the battle over creationism, Kondracke notes that ID advocates have launched "a retreat from old-line creationism", no longer arguing that the world was created in 4004 B.C., for instance. However, he cites the disturbing statistic, collected just last year, that only 13 percent of Americans believe in non-divinely-assisted Darwinian evolution.

And so the debate continues between those who choose to view the world for what it is and those who discount facts as fictions. But if Kondracke's column is any indication, it is possible that those of us in the reality-based community (to borrow from the great DHinMI) are inching closer to a victory on this particularly vexing issue.

Thanks so much to Jay for the opportunity to post my inferior rants over here for a week. If for any reason you find yourself wanting more, you can get your fix over at my Kos diary or at Schweitzer for President. Folks, it's been a pleasure.

Sensenbrenner to Contituents: No Apology Necessary

Tonight I hauled all the way over the remote outskirts of Congressman Sensenbrenner's district (Pewaukee, WI) for a Q & A session. It took me 50 minutes to get there through a construction zone on a Sunday night. And, not surprisingly, there were only 15 people there due to the time and location.

But it was all worth it, because I got to yell, "POINT OF ORDER!" during a lively debate on Gavel-Gate. (Audio below)

Sensenbrenner was unapologetic for his Patriot Act hearing premature gaveling. In fact, he was snippety for almost the entire evening.

I was positioned mid room, with an elderly couple in front of me who prefaced the evening by speaking "privately" with the Congressman about their rental properties, and how "That Senate scares me!" and, "Can't the President just appoint those people while the Senate's on recess?" To which Sensenbrenner responded with all of the legal details of doing such a thing, and they seemed quite pleased. Until later in the evening... You'll hear their reaction in the audio clips.

Of course, the issue of the Patriot Act hearing gaveling came up, and one of his constituents, who also happens to be Associate Directory of the ACLU in Wisconsin, brought up how disappointed she was in his actions. He said, "You only saw the very end of the hearing." TO which I and many others shouted out, "We saw the whole two hours [Unspoken: ...you asshole]!" He said the witnesses were "off-topic", blah blah blah... And then it got pretty ugly.

When it got ugly, I realized I had my PDA (it contained the driving directions) in my pocket so I reached in and hit record. Clip 1 begins mid-yelling match between Sensenbrenner and a constituent who is pushing the issue of "Gavel-Gate". Another constituent has interrupted and Sensenbrenner is not happy... Not at all.

Clip 1 (449K .wav file):

Constituent: Calm down... That's all I'm saying... Now look, you're ready to jump out of your chair at me!

Sensenbrenner: I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU! [His face was beet red here - veins bulging] Ms Crawford has the floor, now one at a time!

Constituent: All I'm saying is that you were hot-headed. And you were beyond the composure that I would expect from my Congressman, whether or not you feel the rules are out of order or not. I would ask for an apology for having been represented in that manner [85-year old wingnut in front of me can be heard: "OH, Come on..."].

Sensenbrenner: I don't think an apology is necessary for enforcing the rules maam. You know I don't apologize for enforcing the rules. The witnesses...

Constituent: I'm not asking you to apologize for enforcing the rules...

[Inspired by the heated exchange, I am emboldened to pull the recording device out to my lap. Quality of recording is much better below.]

Clip 2 (910K .wav file:

Sensenbrenner: [The Agenda] was chosen by Democrats and Mr. Conyers. And again, if that went on in any courtroom, you know, where irrelevant testimony that did not relate to the issue that was before the court, the court would have had to abstain, ah, sustain an objection. I didn't do that, I let em' talk!

Constituent: I'm not asking for an apology for that, I'm asking for an apology for your behavior. For your huffing, your puffing, [85 year old wingnut in front of me can be heard: "OH, Come on..."] your interrupting them, and your screaming and shouting. I'm not yelling at you, but you're yelling at me. So now I ask you personally for an apology because you're yelling at me.

Sensenbrenner [Interrupting]: The hearing was over with, and that's why the hearing was adjourned [Wingnut: Yeah, yeah, Pfff]. Everybody who was there was able to have, after five minutes to be recognized to say what they wanted to say. The witnesses spoke for five minutes, they were able to answer questions that were offered to them by members of the committee, and the fact is that..

Constituent: They actually weren't able to answer all the questions...

Sensenbrenner [Interrupting]: Well, because the time ran out, and you know the thing is...

[Much Laughter throughout the room.]

Me [Laughing]: Point of Order!

[Forget publishing a book and everything, this was the highlight of my year hands down. Sensenbrenner glares in my direction.]

Sensenbrenner: The thing is, when you ask a question that's 4 minutes and 55 seconds long...

Constituent: It's common courtesy to allow somebody to expound on a question...

Sensenbrenner: No it isn't, because, and...

Constituent: And you have the power...

[I shut down due to funny looks]

There were some other good exchanges - For example, Sensenbrenner cut off a gentleman who pointed out that he accepted the highest amount of lobbying money in the entire Congress, to which he said, "Ever read the First Amendment?!? Lobbying is Free Speech!" Then he wouldn't let the guy ask any more questions, stating that he had accused him of "accepting bribes".

In summary, I now realize that this guy is a classic nutjob, and really quite scary in an unstable sort of way. He was even more unaccepting of criticism than even I had grown to believe.

Things I will not miss about Mexico

1. la tourista
2. Spanish-language keyboards
3. sunburn (okay, I get this at home sometimes)
4. paying for the internet by the minute (though it is cheap)
5. watching the exchange rate fall over the course of the week and wondering what the hell Bush did now
6. guys who shout "¡Hey, Amigos!" every time you pass because they think you simply must want to rent a golf cart
7. the killer bees
8. the hard beds
9. not being allowed to flush the toilet paper
10. did I mention la tourista?

My love affair with Ray Charles

"I Had It All" by Ray Charles

He was just an ole honky-tonk singer
Perched on a stool at the end of the room,
And over his head a lightbulb was swinging,
Keepin' rhythm to each other's tunes.
He sang stories of bygone glories
And how Lady Luck could change;
I was content just to hear his lament,
And this isn't all that he said.

"I had it all" -- he said that -- "I had it all;
I've been a rich man to a poor man, black suits to leather, jailhouse to the Taj Mahal;
I had it all, -- I had it all;
Dodge vans to limos, lounge acts in Reno, even down in ole Carnegie Hall."

Yes, it seems he was raised to a reasonable age
By loving Mom and Dad,
And he soon decided that he'd hit the stage
And give up everything he had.
Well, he got a shot, and he went straight to the top --
Man, you know, he just couldn't lose;
But whiskey and smoke cut off all the high notes --
Now he can only sing the blues.

"I had it all" -- you oughta hear him -- "I had it all;
A rich man to a poor man, black suits to leather, jailhouse to the Taj Mahal;"
He said, "I had it all, -- I had it all;
Dodge vans to limos, lounge acts in Reno, even down in ole Carnegie Hall."

One more thing:
Well, of course there was a woman
He loved all the way,
But he hit rock bottom, and she soon forgot him;
Now all that he can say
Is, "I had it all" -- just like me -- "I had it all;
I've been a rich man to a poor man, black suits to leather, jailhouse to the Taj Mahal;"
"I had it all -- Oh, I had it all" -- I did;
"Dodge vans to limos, lounge acts in Reno, even in old Carnegie Hall. ..."

One of the things that I share with Jay is our twin loves of politics and music. I tend to be more interested in classical and Broadway genres; but when I saw a CD of Ray Charles' greatest hits for a dollar at a booksale, I decided it was time to broaden my horizons. What I discovered was a poet of deep perception whose words and music deftly captured the feeling of alienation and aloneness that characterize many Americans today and, indeed, have done so for most of the twentieth century.

Ray Charles was more alienated than most of us. For starters, he was blind. Also, for many years he was a heroin addict. When he sang about "whiskey and smoke...just like me," he wasn't kidding. Yet somehow he knew what touched the human spirit most deeply, and infused his songs with its inimitable quality. Unlike most of our coddled leaders, Charles had experienced the real hard life. And it made him succulently sour, though capable of incredible sweetness.

The reason we as a nation loved Ray Charles (who died last year) was that we felt he really understood us. He gave us the great gift of empathy. And (since I promised Jay I'd do a post connecting Ray Charles to politics), it's a message that should be adopted by the Democratic Party if it ever wants to win elections again. Two examples will suffice: Bill Clinton (of whom I am not a fan), who nevertheless managed to make Americans feel he was one of them; and (of course) Brian Schweitzer, whose folksy ways and commonsense pragmatism are endearing to the many who are sick and tired of elitist politicians. Yes, I said elitist politicians, and activists, too. Drink that one in slowly, so it burns your throat as it goes down. You'll feel better.

We need to stop acting like we're better than the average Joe, because, in all honesty, the average Joe isn't all that bad a guy. He's much more intelligent, hardworking, good, honest, caring, and much less lucky than many of us realize. Ray Charles understood that -- understood that people can make mistakes and still be good human beings, can fall and rise again. And he chose to focus on the rising.

I'm including one more song lyric because I think it absolutely captures the message of hope that Ray Charles sent spinning out from all his music to the millions who loved him. He was telling them that he loved them too, and that, more importantly, they could never truly live until they loved themselves.

"Let Your Love Flow" by Ray Charles

There's a reason for the sunshine sky,
And there's a reason why I'm feelin' so high.
Must be the season when that love light shines
All around us.

So let that feeling grab you deep inside
And send you reeling where your love can't hide
And then you'll go stealing through the moonlit nights
With your lover.

Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams
And let your love show and you'll know what I mean
It's the season.

Let your love fly like a bird on the wing
And let your love bind you to all living things,
And let your love shine and you'll know what I mean,
That's the reason.

Now there's a reason for the warm sweet nights
There's a reason for the candle lights.
It must be the season when those love rites shine
All around us.

So let that wonder take you into space
And lay you under its loving embrace
Just feel the thunder as it warms your face
You can't hold back.

All you do is just let your love flow like a mountain stream
And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams
And let your love show and you'll know what I mean
It's the season.

Let your love fly like a bird on the wing
Let your love bind you to all living things,
And let your love shine and you'll know what I mean,
That's the reason. ...

Everything old is new again

I'm up in the middle of the night here on the West Coast, and I'm delving into my roots as a History major to bring you a choice tidbit.

It's the year 1890, and the robber barons are in full control of the machinery of government. A plucky little movement called the Populists has organized as a major threat to both corporate-dominated political parties.

What follows is a choice selection from the platform written in 1890 for the party by Ignatius Donnelly. It's a stunningly worded piece that seems visionary even now and that bears a striking resemblance to many of the things being written both on- and offline today by the radical left. See if you can pick out the parallels with the Iraq war, the current economic conditions, the rise of big business, and the alleged Ohio irregularities, among other amazing similarities.

...We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. ... The people are demoralized; ... the newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. ... The fruits of the toil of millions are badly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires. ... A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. ... They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of the ''plain people,'' with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. ...

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is not precedent in the history of the world. ... We pledge ourselves that if given power we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation, in accordance with the terms of our platform. We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teaching of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land. ...

Platform
We declare, therefore—

First.—That the union of the labor forces of the United States this day consummated shall be permanent and perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the republic and the uplifting of mankind.

Second.—Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. ''If any will not work, neither shall he eat.'' The interests of rural and civil labor are the same; their enemies are identical.

Third.—We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads; and should the government enter upon the work of owning and managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the constitution by which all persons engaged in the government service shall be placed under a civil-service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase of the power of the national administration by the use of such additional government employees. ...

We demand a graduated income tax.

We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered. ...

TRANSPORTATION.—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph and telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people.

LAND.—The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.

Expressions of Sentiments
Your Committee on Platform and Resolutions beg leave unanimously to report the following: Whereas, Other questions have been presented for our consideration, we hereby submit the following, not as a part of the Platform of the People's Party, but as resolutions expressive of the sentiment of this Convention.

RESOLVED, That we demand a free ballot and a fair count in all elections and pledge ourselves to secure it to every legal voter without Federal Intervention, through the adoption by the States of the unperverted Australian or secret ballot system. ...

RESOLVED, That we commend to the favorable consideration of the people and the reform press the legislative system known as the initiative and referendum.

RESOLVED, That we favor a constitutional provision limiting the office of President and Vice-President to one term, and providing for the election of Senators of the United States by a direct vote of the people.

RESOLVED, That we oppose any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose. ...

Two important points Donnelly raises here have still not been enacted. The first is the introduction of a national initiative and referendum, by which Americans could change laws by a direct popular vote. The second is the last provision, opposition to "any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose". I do not believe in corporate welfare or even corporate bailouts, for any reason; if we're going to oppose the laws of free enterprise, we ought to do so for the benefit of the people, not the major corporations.

In any case, it's just a jaw-dropping declaration of sentiments. I've omitted a lot of it that seemed dated to me, particularly all the stuff about Free Silver (which -- oddly enough -- we actually have now, in adulterated form) -- but if you're interested, go read the rest of it.

Enough of nerddom for now -- I'm going to bed.

Friday (not) Random Ten

Ten songs I wish I had with me on the beach:

1. "Beautiful Valley," Don Conoscenti
2. "Beautiful World," Colin Hay
3. "Take All the Sky You Need," Ellis Paul
4. "The Ocean," Dar Williams (duh)
5. "Tangerine Shirt," Kate McDonnell
6. "Blue," Jayhawks
7. "There Goes Mavis," Richard Shindell
8. "Gentle Arms of Eden," Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
9. "Suzanne," Leonard Cohen
10. "Out of the Blue," Willy Porter

Not necessarily in that order . . .

Schweitzer for President

I realized after I put up that last post on the environment that I hadn't properly introduced myself. I'm Jeremy Young, Arizona/Maryland occasional blogger. I met Jay blogging for the Dean campaign -- and I've been reading here ever since he put up that wonderful post on the Deanblog comparing the nine Democratic Presidential candidates to a baseball team. I also did quite a bit of on- and off-line volunteer work for the doomed Babbitt for Congress campaign here in Arizona. Now I'm working on an ambitious new project, and Jay gave me permission to plug it here.

So -- introducing Schweitzer for President -- the online nerve center for news, views, and field reports on the nascent movement to draft Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer into the presidential race in 2008 (or later).

Why Brian Schweitzer? Because he is the most intelligent, most eloquent politician I have seen in a long time. Because he knows how to frame issues like the environment and individual liberties and progressive values in ways a large majority of the American people can understand. Because he's not afraid to stand up and say "No!" to special interests, or to tell the downtrodden that they matter. Because he's shown he can win in the reddest of red states. Because he's supported strongly by progressives and moderates alike. Because he is honest and decent and kind and visionary.

Don't believe me? Come on over and check out the site. Read some of the articles on the sidebar, or some of the posts on the main page.

P.S. I know this site is pretty much a Feingold site. Truth be told, of all the candidates that have made it clear they're looking at running, I support Feingold the most. But that doesn't mean I can't still try to draft Brian Schweitzer into the race while supporting Feingold as the best of the likely candidates. After all, Kos was able to found a Draft Clark movement and then support Dean.

Oh, and thanks to Jay for letting me post my divergent views on his territory. The courtesy is much appreciated. :)

An Obituary for the Environmentalist Movement?

Like many movements, this one started with a book.

Certainly, there was the earlier proto-environmental movement involving John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and protector of Yellowstone; Theodore Roosevelt, who protected 190 million acres of America's wildlands; and Gifford Pinchot, who founded the U.S. Forest Service and later helped bring down the conservative Taft administration. But the achievements of this group of visionaries were largely obliterated by the end of the 1920's. Muir was unable to save the Hetch Hetchy valley from damming and destruction; Roosevelt's wildlands were largely returned to development by the Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations; and Pinchot's Forest Service became a moderating veneer over all manner of degradations by logging companies on America's forests. And the movement remained dead for thirty years.

And then in 1962 came the book that changed everything. I am reading that book, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, right now. It is not an easy read, either in language or in import. It explains in punishing detail how chemical pesticides reduce long-established species of plants and animals to rubble and create a sort of genocide against nature. It leaves unsaid the most difficult implication of all: that, just as Attila's hordes could not find succor without destroying everything in their wake, every expansionary move made by the human race leads to the death of some part of the natural world.

After the book came the movement, complete with its own Prophet, the great David Brower. Declaring, "We do not inherit the earth from our fathers, we are borrowing it from our children," he transformed Muir's moribund Sierra Club into a powerful weapon that he successfully wielded against those who wanted to dam the Grand Canyon. Sympathetic laws flowed down from the federal government in quick succession -- the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Wild River Act, and the Wilderness Act. This last measure created another level of wildland protection even higher than that of National Park: the National Wilderness Area, in which even human visitation would be limited in order to preserve untouched the wildlands of America. The Act stated, "Wilderness...is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. ..." The Act was passed "in order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas...leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition...to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. ..."

But, as with all organized movements, the environmentalist movement passed into dark days. During the Reagan years, the atrocious James Watt held court at the Interior Department, which became a nerve center for the organized destruction of forests and wildlands across America. The environmental movement fell into the hands of militants such as Edward Abbey, who called in his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang for a suicide bomber to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. The image of a a burning ski lodge in Vail, Colorado, set afire by ecoterrorists, was emblazoned into the American collective memory.

Yet the movement was restored to potency in the 1990's by a pair of Democratic politicians: Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Vice President Al Gore. Babbitt convinced President Bill Clinton to create 58 million acres of National Wilderness Area by executive order; Gore traveled to Kyoto and personally saved the emission-reducing talks there. But with Gore's heartbreaking loss to George Bush in the 2000 election, these reforms were all undone. Bush summarily pulled out of the Kyoto Accords that Gore had worked so hard to save. Last month, he gutted Brower's priceless Wilderness Act by declaring all National Wilderness Areas open to logging and mining.

But it is not these setbacks that cause me to worry that the environmental movement is dead. All movements ebb and flow with the changing winds of political fortune. Rather, it is that no one seems to care that the environment is in dire straits.

As I read Silent Spring, I see as never before the deeply-rooted conservatism in the environmentalist movement. Carson declares that the environmental problem arose because "The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. ..." She laments that "time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time." She essentially calls for a halt to all adulteration of the world by humanity in favor of conserving the world created by nature.

Carson's message is not an easy one for a progressive movement increasingly concerned with what the name implies: progress, and a sort of libertarian freedom of expansion and individuality. Conservationists, on the other hand, are beginning to realize that it is no coincidence that the name of their movement stems from the root of "conservativism." The Republican party cannot be responsive to conservation, beholden as it is to corporate interests; but the split between environmentalists and progressive Democrats, it seems to me, runs far deeper, at the ideological level. How can one express one's individuality, one's liberty, when one is constantly being careful where one treads in order not to destroy nature?

I am fearful that progressives and environmentalists have come to a parting of the ways. Such a severance would be disastrous for both groups, in my judgment, as conservationists found themselves helpless and alone and liberals discovered their victories hollowed by the absence of a meaningful natural world. Still, I am uncertain how to heal this ever-widening breach between the two groups and philosophies.

I have been called, by some more fervent in the cause than I, a fake environmentalist. And it is true that I would rather sit in a comfortable chair and write than dirty my hands cleaning trash along the highway; I readily admit this failing. Nevertheless, in my own way I am prepared to fight for the sanctity of this planet against the human invader. I will match my pen against any man's hoe to preserve unspoiled by human touch the remnants of this world we call ours but that belongs truly only to itself. If this means breaking with progressives, then so be it.

But I hope fervently that my fellow progressives will stop to smell the wildflowers and recognize the importance of the natural world before it slips silently away.

Advocate Weekly 8

Just popping in from scenic (and rainy) Mexico to tell you all to check out Joe´s fine work putting together another Advocate Weekly.