Polanski agonistes

By Carl

First off, by no stretch of the imagination should this be construed as a defense of what Roman Polanski pled guilty of doing: raping a 13-year-old girl.

As a victim of sexual abuse as a far younger child, I can tell you that the scars this now-43-year-old woman feels run very deep: mistrust, uncertainty, and social ineffectuality are only the tip of the iceberg.

Polanski should be held accountable, to be sure. A 30-year exile is inadequate, full stop. That he pled guilty tells me he has spent at least some of this time regretting and remorseful over his actions.

And it's important to keep in mind that this all occurs with the dramatic backdrop of the murder of his wife 40 years ago, Sharon Tate (as we were reminded last week with the death of Susan Atkins).

None of us can wrap our minds around how a tragedy like that would affect us, what behaviors we'd indulge in that would ultimately have a bad effect on our lives.

Personally, I'd just as soon forget the bastard. I hadn't given much thought to him over these past years, except when he'd appear in the society pages from the Cannes festival, or if one of his movies would pop up on the TV, most notably Rosemary's Baby.

Too, the victim, who has been named elsewhere but whose name I can't bring myself to repeat, has said she has forgiven him and thinks he should not be jailed. Her grand jury testimony was damning, to be sure, and exposed Polanski's deeply troubled mind.

Not that the sex was sadistic or anything, but we're reminded of this girl's youth.

Which brings me to the poutrage the right wing blogs have shown over even the meekest defense of Polanski.

For example:

Hollywood, meanwhile, rushes to defend a child rapist. And they like to lecture us about morality.

"Lecture us about morality" -- huh? When?

Ironically, this tight-pantied little man had nothing to say about the Mark Foley scandal when it broke in 2006, except in the aftermath when the House declined to bring charges against Foley, as did federal prosecutors.

Apparently, The Fool is not against fucking little boys in the ass, but little girls? Whoa, Nelly! I'm guessing The Fool and Dan Riehl go out chickenhawking together.

Just a joke, Fool! Right? ;-)

This "black or white, no middle ground" attitude of the right wing has so poisoned the justice system of America and the political climate that anyone who proposes even modest compromises on any issue is automatically painted by one side or the other as either a sell-out, or a crackpot. After all, a blowjob warranted an impeachment trial, but letting 3,000 Americans die because of a president's negligent behavior, followed by another 4,000 dead Americans because of poor judgement in which fight to pick?

Hey, presnidetting is hard werk!

Polanski should pay. As a Christian, I know he will pay when my Lord sits in his judgement. But thirty years after the fact? On this plane of existence?

I really couldn't care less.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Potential for conflict in a melting Arctic

Guest post by John Malone

John Malone, a VP/Senior Analyst with John S. Herold, an energy investment research firm in Connecticut, is a Truman National Security Project fellow.

[Ed. note: This is John's second guest post at The Reaction. You can find his first, on the importance of geothermal power, here. -- MJWS]

**********

Given the threats we as a nation have faced since 9/11, it's reasonable to think in terms of how climate change will affect societies that are already under stress – how countries could quickly degenerate from fragile to failed states, drawing U.S. forces into civil wars or humanitarian interventions, or providing fertile ground for terrorist recruiters. Water shortages, crop failures, and rising sea levels will trigger crises in some of the world's poorest countries that could stretch the resources of a military already fighting two wars abroad.

But as we prepare for such a world, we can't ignore how a warming planet will shift national interests among the established great powers. Sea ice in the Arctic is retreating, opening up access to resources and trade routes that to date have been beyond reach. A frozen Great Game is shaping up in the Arctic, between the U.S., Russia, Canada, and the Nordic countries, that will see – in the best case – U.S. military resources diverted to the far North, and in the worst case potentially leading to conflict with Moscow.

The U.S. Geological Survey now estimates that the offshore Arctic contains over 400 billion barrels of oil and natural gas equivalent, and that estimate assumes existing oil and gas technologies – advances in exploration and drilling techniques could bump up that number significantly. Most of the Arctic's unexplored areas lie offshore Russia – and Putin's Kremlin has made it abundantly clear that it considers the Arctic its backyard, all the way to the North Pole itself. Norway and Russia are already arguing over borders in the area. The gold rush for hydrocarbons in the Arctic is moving what has been a geopolitical backwater to the front burner for Western navies, and certainly will lead to (hopefully only diplomatic) conflict between the littoral states.

The other issue at hand is transport: an Arctic sea route between the North Atlantic and the Far East that could cut substantial time – and therefore cost- off trade between Europe and Asia. Retreating sea ice is opening new lanes, which means more tonnage through the Arctic, which in turn means more need for military patrols and monitoring. Ottawa is apparently already budgeting for drone aircraft earmarked for Arctic surveillance.

Russia has made it clear it is going to aggressively pursue its interests in the Arctic, and Canada has been saying for a couple years now that it plans to take a tough stand on its Arctic sovereignty. Thankfully, the new dynamic in the Arctic has not gone unnoticed in the Pentagon. In May, the Navy formed a task force to address climate change-related planning, and the potential for engagement in the Arctic is apparently at the top of the to-do list. Climate change is not only going to call upon more U.S. infantry and special forces abroad, it's going to mean more work for big-ticket items – naval task forces, icebreakers, new satellite systems – and the cost of their deployment and maintenance... not to mention a greater chance of bumping up against one of our oldest adversaries.

(Cross-posted from Operation FREE.)

Defending Polanski; or, how the Hollywood left has completely lost its marbles

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yesterday, I posted on the truth about Roman Polanski, and this was my conclusion:

Whatever you think of the cinema and celebrity of Roman Polanski, it is the truth that should matter most, including the truth about what happened over three decades ago.

What is that truth? That he drugged and raped a minor, a 13-year old girl (read the sordid details here).

That is disturbing -- and criminal -- but what is also disturbing is how so many in Hollywood have rushed to his defence since his arrest in Switzerland.

Consider some of the high-profile, world-famous names who have signed on to the "Free Polanski" movement: Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Wong Kar-Wai, Jonathan Demme, and Harvey Weinstein. According to The Guardian, Weinstein is "calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation."

Apparently, the "terrible situation" is Polanski's arrest, and the fact that he may now be held accountable for his actions of over three decades ago, but the real terrible situation is what he actually did (or what he is alleged to have done, and was convicted of), namely, raping a minor. How is his arrest more terrible than the crime? How, to these cinema big shots, is rape so insignificant as to pale in comparison with the plight of one of their own, of a man who raped a minor and then spent over three decades avoiding extradition, continuing his career and living the good life, one much imagine, in France?

Look, it's not that I don't respect Polanski as an artist. I do. I think he's grossly overrated, but I do appreciate, for the most part, what he has done in film. And I love some of filmmakers on that list, especially Woody Allen. But please. This outpouring of support for Polanski -- from Hollywood, from Poland, from Switzerland... from around the world. Are we simply supposed to ignore the fact that Polanski raped a minor? Apparently so.

And that shows that there is a despicable double standard at work here. What if, instead of being a celebrated movie director, the rapist were, say, some anonymous dude? Well, he would have been send off to prison with a long sentence way back when, no possibility of escaping to France to avoid extradition and without a single notice in Variety. Or what if the rapist were, say, a conservative filmmaker (there are a few), someone without so many famous friends and allies on the Hollywood left? Sure, he would likely have received the support of the anti-Hollywood right and become a cause célèbre among fellow conservatives, but, then, double standards do go both ways, do they not? Just because the right would do something doesn't mean the left should.

Honestly, I am sickened by the "Free Polanski" movement, sickened that so many great filmmakers have taken up the cause, sickened that not nearly enough attention is being paid to what actually happened thirty years ago. And I say this as a liberal, as someone fairly sympathetic to the left, including the Hollywood left. I expect such behaviour from the right, but, as I hold the left, and liberals, to a much higher standard, it just pisses me off when the left pulls this sort of shit. Isn't the left about women's rights and children's rights and fairness and equality and progress and the rule of law? Since when is it a moral vacuum where you can get what you want if only you're a famous artist and know the right people? Since when does it care not a whit for rape?

As I put it yesterday, if the case was politically motivated or mishandled (which it may have been), or if Polanski is actually innocent, then let the evidence be presented in a court of law, not in the faux court of the pro-celebrity press... and certainly not with Polanski's pals using their own fame to agitate for his release and exoneration. Do they know the facts? Or, as is more likely, do they simply not care what happened, preferring instead to support their friend no matter what?

For more on Hollywood's appalling response to Polanski's arrest -- and much of it has been worse than a group of filmmakers signing a petition, notably from Whoopi Goldberg, who argued that the rape wasn't "rape rape" -- see my (conservative) friend Ed Morrissey:

Only a moron or a moral midget would read the transcripts and the actual facts of the case and conclude that Polanski deserves to avoid accountability for this crime. Unfortunately, Hollywood is filled with both.

Alas, so it would seem.

Military coup

By Creature

For a party that likes to promote democracy they really do seem to have issues living under one. When it comes to democracy, it's all lip service for the Right.

Craziest Conservative of the Day: Frank Gaffney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Gaffney had another mediocre day on Sunday against the Raiders, with just four catches for 39 yards. Given that Orton isn't airing the ball out much, and given that he's fourth on the WR depth chart behind Marshall, Royal, and Stokley, he just isn't a good fantasy option at this point. Besides...

Oh wait. That's Jabar Gaffney. Sorry.

Frank's the crazy one -- not that they're related -- and he proved it again over the weekend at the "How to Take Back America Conference" hosted by the Eagle Forum. Take this, for example:

If Bill Clinton, on the basis of special interest pandering and identity politics, was properly called the first Black American President, on that same basis, Barack Obama should be called the first Muslim American President. […] But there is evidence that a lot of Muslims think he is Muslim. But whether he is or whether he isn't, the key to me is, is he pursuing and agenda that is indistinguishable in important respects from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission ladies and gentlemen, we know from a trial in Dallas last year, is to quote to destroy Western civilization from within by its own miserable hand? That's what we need to keep our eye on.

Uh-huh. Whatever. This is a regurgitation of an old smear, and it continues to be utterly ridiculous: Obama is a "Muslim," in spirit if not in fact, and wants to destroy America. The claim is wholly without merit, of course, but conservatives like Gaffney continue to beat the drum. And conservatives, especially those in attendance at this far-right lovefest of insanity, continue to applaud enthusiastically. (What exactly is Obama doing to bring down America? Then again, anyone who isn't pursuing a radical right-wing and/or neocon agenda is un-American to these extremists.)

Other speakers at the conference were rather less subtle. Obama was equated with Hitler and those speakers who followed Gaffney stated outright that he is a Muslim. (How he's both Hitler and a Muslim is beyond me. It's also beyond me how he's both a fascist and a socialist/communist, but one thing we can't expect from these hate-filled ideologues, apart from sanity, is consistency. They're just going after Obama with every lie they can dream up.)

But back to fantasy football for a moment. After Jennings and Houshmandzadeh, I'm pretty weak at WR. I was fortunate enough to pick up Manningham from the Giants, and I just picked up Nate Washington to replace the injured Laurent Robinson, a potential breakout star this year. I really need Holt to step up, though. I'm 2-1, but I've won a couple of easy match-ups, and I need significantly more production from my WRs if I'm to have any chance of making the playoffs. I'm so unhappy with my team this year. Orton and Favre as my second and third QBs? Portis as my #2 RB? Ouch. Maybe Forte could actually do something, you know, to justify my taking him fourth overall. That'd be nice.

Frank Gaffney is crazy, though, huh? I much prefer Jabar, mediocrity and all.

The public option has stalled. So what now?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sen. Tom Harkin thinks he has the votes to pass a health-care reform package that includes a so-called "public option," and he may very well be right -- it's possible, if (and it's a huge if) Democrats pull together to break an expected Republican filibuster) -- but, as of right now, the public option has stalled in the Senate Finance Committee, which, despite a Democratic majority voted today against two separate proposals put forward by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockefeller. The problem is not so much that the Republicans all voted against them (including Schumer's compromise), it's that so many Democrats did, including Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who delusionally continues to push for a bipartisan package (without a public option) even with almost all Republicans clearly opposed to any and all compromise. (As Steve Benen notes, the Republican arguments against the public option were predictably stupid.)

We have long known that the Republicans are against meaningful health-care reform. What is so annoying now, though, is that the main obstacle is Democratic opposition in the Senate, from Baucus and Kent Conrad and so on. It is a small bloc of centrists, but it is a bloc that could side with the GOP on a filibuster (in refusing to break it, even against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of fellow Democrats).

So what now?

Well, Democrats could, and should, still push for the inclusion of a robust public option in any reform package. All it not lost yet.

And yet, as many health-care experts have pointed out, quite persuasively, you may not need a public option to achieve some of key goals of reform. And there is one country, as TNR's Jonathan Cohn writes, that is a model of how to do it: The Netherlands:

Liberals, understandably, are in agony. But they can take at least some comfort in looking overseas -- where one tiny country has managed to build a popular and successful universal health care program based entirely on private insurance. That country is the Netherlands, which several years ago overhauled its health care system and achieved most of the goals the liberal reform movement holds dear: near-universal coverage, affordable insurance, and quality health care.

Under the new system, the Dutch government has required that everybody gets insurance; in return, it makes sure insurance is available to everybody, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions or income. Although the government finances long-term care through a public program, it has turned over the job of providing basic medical coverage exclusively to private insurers, including some for-profit companies. Surveys show that the Dutch are happier with their health care than are Americans -- or the people of any other developed country, for that matter.

The "catch," as Cohn notes, is that health care in the Netherlands, however private, "operates more or less like a public utility."

Read the whole piece. It's an interesting model, and a viable alternative, though perhaps unworkable in the U.S., given the general reluctance to reform industry as vigorously as would be required. Still, with the public option in trouble, and with the distinct possibility that whatever reform package is passed will not include it, it may be time to start looking for next-best approaches, if we haven't already, that would, at the very least, be steps in the right direction and that could, eventually, lead to the sort of universal public system many of us desire.

Depressing

By Creature

Even Chuck Schumer's watered-down public option could not pass the Finance Committee. I just don't get these people. Really, I don't.

More on fairness

By Carl

Barbara Ehrenreich made me late for work this morning.

No. Really. OK, a movie she was in that was playing on LinkTV made me late. And if you missed my side note yesterday, The American Ruling Class is one more reason to support LinkTV.

You may know Ehrenreich from her writings in Time Magazine. If you're a with-it Progressive, you know her books, like Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America

Which brings me to this morning's appearance on LinkTV. The American Ruling Class is a mythical tale of two young men -- one rich, one poor -- graduating an Ivy League college, and being presented with the crossroads of choices: sell souls to Goldman Sachs and make a lot of money, or keep your souls and give back to society. It is, in short, a study of the American oligarchy. Or plutocracy. Whichever terms you feel best fits. Who rules America, really?

Back to giving. I didn't get to watch the whole thing... late for work, remember?... but I did catch a critical scene for the purposes of this blog.

Lewis Lapham (the film's protagonist and its writer) squires one young man to breakfast at the IHOP. There, they encounter Ehrenreich, working as a waitress, struggling to make ends meet on minimum wage and tips, already a hundred dollars behind on her rent budget for this month.

She sits down with Lapham and one young man, and makes the most astounding observation. Yes, many of the wealthy "give back" to society, to the tune of millions of dollars each year.

But look at what the working poor give to society: cheap labor.

A billionaire who gives away a million dollars a year is giving one-tenth of one percent of his net worth. Even a "good Christian" making a hundred thousand a year and tithing ten thousand is only giving away ten percent of his income.

But the working poor?

In order that you can have cheap lettuce, or mass-produced sneakers, or convenience stores open around the clock, they give 100% of their livelihood, often at a dear cost to themselves. Working two and sometimes three jobs, they struggle and fight to survive so you can have goods to buy on eBay, or cereal on your grocer's shelves.

We owe these people something. Why?

Look, throughout history, even slaves got some form of healthcare coverage, at the very least adequate to keep them working the fields for the master. It was cheaper to heal them than to buy a new slave and integrate him into the farm culture. Even slaves got some form of education, because it was more efficient to communicate with someone who could speak your language.

Slaves got got food and clothing and water, and a place to sleep. Granted, it was far from adequate, but today's working poor don't even have these guarantees any longer. Lose your job, lose the apartment or trailer you are living in, lose your money for food and clothing, and forget about insurance! If you're making $10,000 a year and insurance costs (minimum) $1,200 a year, who in their right mind would buy insurance?

The American Ruling Class (released in 2005, ahead of the housing bubble burst) notes the staggering amounts of money that Americans earned in the 1990s and early '00s, but also notes that most of the jobs that wealth created were low-wage, no benefit jobs that were almost guaranteed to ensure a serf class, forced to tolerate the most ignominious working conditions in order to bring you your iPod.

We owe them a lot. We owe them our lives and lifestyles, and it's about time we started paying them that debt.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Craziest Conservative of the Day: Andy Williams

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, Andy Williams, the singer. You know, "Moon River," all that crap. Well, it seems that the crummy crooner is a life-long Republican, and, quite clearly, a crazy conservative. As the Telegraph is reporting, he recently told the BBC's Radio Times that:

Obama is following Marxist theory. He's taken over the banks and the car industry. He wants the country to fail.

"Don't like him at all," he also said. "I think he wants to create a socialist country. The people he associates with are very Left-wing. One is registered as a Communist."

First, whatever happened to not criticizing your country when you're abroad? Didn't the Dixie Chicks get death threats for doing just that?

Second, Obama associates with one Communist? Is that really the extent of the scary Red Menace? So what?

Third, Williams is, evidently, a moron. Obama is a Marxist? Really? Does Williams even know what Marxism is? I suspect not. (Obama is trying to save American capitalism from its own despicable excesses not by replacing it with socialism but through additional regulation to preserve the primacy of the market.) The temporary takeovers of the auto and banking industries are not about nationalization but about trying to stabilize the economy at a time of historic economic crisis. I can only assume that Williams would prefer that the banks fail, which would ruin the economy completely, and that the auto industry collapse, putting tens of thousands of people out of work.

Fourth, it's quite a charge to suggest that Obama wants the country to fail. Obviously, there's no basis for it, but a moron like Williams no doubt buys extremist right-wing propaganda with glee. He is essentially accusing Obama of treason, but is it not treason to make that accusation, not least to a foreign audience?

Fifth... oh, what's the point? Enough of Andy Williams.

To put it nicely, he's clueless. To put it bluntly, he's fucking stupid.

1984

By Creature

Atrios:

It's difficult to really know how to think about a political movement for which advocating torture becomes an applause line, and this is treated as perfectly normal by The Villagers.

George Orwell:

...and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious.

Capt. Fogg and right-wing insanity

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Our assistant editor and co-blogger Capt. Fogg will be away for the next week and a half or so and will not be posting during that time.

As fans of his know, not to mention the various trolls who engage with him at their peril, one of his truly favourite things to do, and he does it often here at The Reaction, is to expose right-wing insanity in all its horrendous and destructive glory. And so I think he would like this piece on the fucked up insanity at the Eagle Forum's "How to Take Back America" conference, by The Washington Independent's David Weigel:

The "How to Take Back America" conference was no place for soft critiques of the Obama administration. It was a weekend of speeches and training sessions that were laden with doom, cries of mounting fascism, and long prayers for salvation. It was the kind of event where [Phyllis] Schlafly, a conservative icon who's often seen as a leader of the movement's far right flank, could take the role of a pragmatist, sticking to the sort of criticism of the Obama administration that might appear on Fox News and asking activists to elect a Republican Congress in 2010. And Schlafly succeeded in bringing big Republican stars to the conference. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) was the biggest draw, but six members of Congress attended, too – Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), and Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). Several 2010 Republican candidates hosted workshops, including Ed Martin and Vicky Hartzler, both running for Democratic-held U.S. House seats in Missouri. But some of the rhetoric went beyond partisan politics. At worst, the speakers argued, fascism was on the horizon. At best, this was a pivotal time in a war on Christian values. Some of the speakers split the difference.

These are certainly stars on the far right, but, increasingly, they stand for a huge chunk of the Republican Party. It would be easy to write off a conference of grotesque fearmongering, with the explicit message that Obama is just like Hitler, as irrelevant nonsense, but, however nonsensical it may have been, it was certainly not irrelevant -- not given what has become of conservatism in America, with its tea parties and lies and reckless smear campaigns, all of which could induce violence, if it hasn't already. (Is the point to warn the country that Obama is a fascist... or a socialist... or whatever the smear of the day is... in order to win elections... or is it to stir up violent opposition to Obama, all that he supports, and all that supports him? Or is it both? Because if it's the former, it's also, whether these manipulators like it or not, the latter as well.)

But where is the Republican/conservative outrage? Why aren't Republicans/conservatives coming out against this madness? Why aren't the sane ones, however many are left, trying to take back their party and their movement? I suppose some are, and yet the bloodthirsty vitriol continues to spew forth all across the land, on Fox News and in right-wing op-eds, at town-hall meeting and at extremist ideological havens like the Eagle Forum. It is reckless, it is irresponsible, it is disgusting, and it is deeply, deeply alarming.

Bracing for disappointment

By Creature

With the public option up for a vote today in the Senate Finance Committee I'm ready to be disappointed, but hoping to be pleasantly surprised. If Max Baucus can pull himself away from his health industry base just long enough, the public option stands a chance.

And, hopefully, ads like this will make a difference:

The truth about Roman Polanski

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may know, famed Polish-French director Roman Polanski was recently arrested in Switzerland. In 1977, he was convicted in the U.S. of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" (a disturbing euphemism). He has been on the run ever since, avoiding extradition in Europe while continuing with his career.

Polanski has many fans and admirers, of course. I especially like Chinatown and The Pianist, though I generally find him grossly overrated. (Knife in the Water, his early "masterpiece," is pretty good, but most of his films have been mediocre or worse.) But, with respect to his disturbing crime, he also has many apologists. WaPo columnist Anne Applebaum, for example, who wrote on Sunday that his arrest was "outrageous." (Although what she failed to mention is that she's married to Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and that the Polish government with Sikorski directly involved is lobbying the U.S. to dismiss the case against Polanski, an obvious conflict of interest. So much for her credibility.) Hollywood has also rushed to his defence, unsurprisingly. (If the case was politically motivated or mishandled, or if Polanski is actually innocent, let the evidence be presented in a court of law, not in the faux court of the pro-celebrity press.)

Thankfully, there are others who are having none of it. I'm not sure if Polanski should go to jail or be subjected to some other punishment (what that could be, I don't know, as community service or a fine hardly seems right), but it does seem to make sense for the U.S. to press ahead with the case. As WaPo's Eugene Robinson put it yesterday, Polanski "doesn't deserve a happy ending."

But let's get back to what really happened in 1977. Kate Harding has the sordid details at Salon -- read them, then apologize for Polanski, if you can -- and is, I think, right about this:

The point is not to keep 76-year-old Polanski off the streets or help his victim feel safe. The point is that drugging and raping a child, then leaving the country before you can be sentenced for it, is behavior our society should not -- and at least in theory, does not -- tolerate, no matter how famous, wealthy or well-connected you are, no matter how old you were when you finally got caught, no matter what your victim says about it now, no matter how mature she looked at 13, no matter how pushy her mother was, and no matter how many really swell movies you've made.

*****

The reporting on Polanski's arrest has been every bit as "bizarrely skewed," if not more so. Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted.

But "twisted" is what we're getting. Whatever you think of the cinema and celebrity of Roman Polanski, it is the truth that should matter most, including the truth about what happened over three decades ago.

SOPHIE MONK - Looks Hot in Black !

Whoops, this never happens when I go to the beach !


THE NILES LESH PROJECT - All Rights Reserved 2009

Barry Crimmins on Mackenzie Phillips

By J. Thomas Duffy

With the homefront situation, I have not been nearly as on top of this story, the horrible, sad tale of Mackenzie Phillips' stolen childhood at the hands of her drugging, raping father, as I would have liked.

Just as sick are the people making jokes about it, calling her a liar, attempting to deny her pain.

One person knows all to well about this subject, and he weighed in, most excellently, this past weekend:

Barry Crimmins: "No laughing matter"

For instance, actress and singer Mackenzie Phillips' recent disclosures of her childhood horrors certainly brought up issues that we need to discuss: incest and child abuse. They are nervous subjects and they've resulted in a lot of nervous jesting. I've seen a variety of such jokes from friends and colleagues in the humor rackets, mostly via the Facebook social networking site.

When challenged about compounding this sordid mess with salacious comments, some of the skittish quipsters have been quick to blame the victim. After all, hadn't she "admitted" that she had a consensual sexual relationship with her father, the late musician John Phillips, well into her adulthood? Isn't she at least partly culpable? Besides, she's a celebrity so that makes her fair game, right?

Wrong. Mackenzie Phillips was given about as much of a chance to survive in this world as the average Brazilian street kid. The main difference between Mackenzie and those poor urchins is that they were abandoned to the street while her own father paved a boulevard of depravity right through his daughter's home.

John Phillips began drugging Mackenzie with cocaine when she was 11. Eventually he commenced shooting her up with heroin. On one of those occasions, when Ms Phillips was in her late teens, she "came to" while her father was raping her. After that she said she began to have "consensual sex" with him. But it was not consensual because she did not give informed consent. How could she? The only information she had to go on was that it was apparently appropriate for her to be in a drug-induced stupor as she was sexually and emotionally exploited and abused by her father and whatever other scumbags happened to pass through what should have been her safe childhood home.

Go read the entire piece, it's powerful.

Then again, Mackenzie Phillips may not be as hot in the news now, since Roman Polanski is building a fan club, looking to get him off his 30-year fugitive status for running away from paying for his child rape crime.




(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Fairness

By Carl

I was walking around my neighborhood at six AM today, and sort of mulling life, as my iPod died on my walk. I had a thought, rather a series of thoughts, and wanted to share them with you on this, Yom Kippur.

I guess this train of thought was triggered by watching LinkTV's presentation of an address by author and journalist T R Reid regarding his world tour surveying healthcare abroad.

(SIDE NOTE: If you can give, this is a good time to donate to LinkTV, a network dedicated to bringing you perspective and analysis of the news that you won't get from mainstream media)

Reid consistently pointed out that, logically, it is impossible to frame the current healthcare crisis as anything other than a moral question: Is the healthcare system fair? What is the ultimate responsibility of a government to its people if not to ensure they have long and productive lives?

He has a point: for all the flaws inherent in other country's healthcare systems, most notably the long waits for elective procedures in Canada's Medicare system, they are at their lowest common denominator, fair. The length of time a rich person waits under Canada's Medicare system (which was LBJ's model for his eldercare system) is the same as for a poor person.

It is, at heart, an ultimately fair system. Yes, if a rich person can afford to, he or she can opt to fly to the States and pay for knee surgery or to see an orthopedist, rather than wait a couple of weeks in Canada. But Canada also doesn't extend this triage function to life-threatening conditions: if your heart is on the fritz, you get seen immediately, rich or poor.

Fairness. It never has to be justified. But unfairness does.

And somewhere in the dark of the night of my sleep, this thought nagged at me, and I began to have an insight into human beings.

When we behave badly, we have to rationalize ourselves. We have to justify that behavior. We have to make excuses.

Fairness is inherent. Fairness is obvious. Fairness needs no excusing.

Just like getting up off the couch and taking a four mile walk needs no rationalization. It needs nothing other than "I wanted to stretch my legs."

Sitting on that couch for another hour, that requires rationalizing. That requires excusing: "It's raining. I'm tired. It's cold."

Or to put it another way, when was the last time you had to explain to a cop why you were going under the speed limit?

Good behavior is what it is: Bonnum commune communitatis. Bad behavior needs to be explained, excused and forgiven.

Back to healthcare then: what rationalizations would the corporatists give for the current state of healthcare in America? That it makes a profit for the shareholders of insurance companies?

Is that fair? Is it fair that the CEO of Oxford or CIGNA or Blue Cross earns a fat little bonus at the end of the year while people without insurance, some 700,000 each year, are forced into bankruptcy and 200,000 people die of treatable and preventable illnesses, all because insurance companies have to protect that precious little dividend and that precious little stock price at the expense of a healthier citizenry?

This is not about socializing medicine, either. For example, America generally operates under the German healthcare system, developed by Otto Von Bismarck over a century ago. Private doctors, private insurance, private hospitals, except costs are controlled. For example, Japan, which has 3,000 health insurance providers, cap administrative costs at 1.5% of premiums, meaning insurance companies have to spend 98.5% on insuring patients. Canada caps costs at 6%, and that's with a government health insurance.

American insurance companies bank 20% of premiums as "administrative costs". That's an awful lot of forms to fill out! And the Japanese spend about $3,500 per annum on healthcare and insurance. Americans spend $7,500.

And no one in Japan files bankruptcy because of medical bills.

Fairness. It never has to be explained, it never has to be justified.

It only has to be experienced.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Democracy in Deutschland, revisited

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Four years ago, I wrote a six-part series here at The Reaction -- "Democracy in Deutschland" -- on the German federal election. It was a fascinating election and a fascinating time in German politics, culminating in the creation of a so-called "Grand Coalition" between Angela Merkel's center-right CDU (along with its Bavarian sister party, the right-wing CSU) and the incumbent center-left SPD, with Merkel the new chancellor. Surprisingly, perhaps, the coalition of the country's two leading parties proved to be fairly stable. Back then, though, things were not so clear, and the long post-election period of uncertainly was filled with talk of alternative coalitions, such as a possible red-yellow-green "traffic-light coalition" of the SPD, the neo-liberal FDP, and the Greens, as well as of a black-yellow-green "Jamaica coalition" of the CDU-CSU, the FDP, and the Greens. (As elsewhere, such as in blue/red America, each party in Germany has a colour that is specific to it.)

Make sense? No? Well, go back and read the series: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

Or not, because things are much clearer now, with Merkel's CDU-CSU alliance pulling off a decisive win over the SPD and the smaller parties:

Chancellor Angela Merkel has been returned to power in Germany, with forecasts showing her conservative bloc on course for a clear election victory.

Mrs Merkel told supporters they had achieved "something magnificent", but said she wanted to be a chancellor of all Germans at a moment of crisis.

Mrs Merkel's bloc now looks set to form a centre-right alliance with her preferred partner, the pro-reform FDP.

*****

Projections by national broadcasters, based on partial vote counts and exit polls, gave Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrat CDU/CSU bloc 33% of the vote, with the Social Democrat SPD at about 23% -- its worst result since World War II.

The Free Democrats took about 15%, the Left party 12% and the Greens 10%.

Analysts say the combined 48% for the CDU and FDP should allow them to form a stable majority government in Germany, Europe's largest economy and the biggest member of the European Union.

The SPD did very badly, just eight points ahead of the FDP, but note that even the CDU/CSU only won a third of the vote and that the governing coalition, however stable, won't even have a majority of seats in the Bundestag, the federal parliament. (Germany uses a proportional representation electoral system. The number of seats a party wins is generally proportional to the percentage of votes it gets.) This is because the Leftists, a party of former SPDers that even the SPD has rejected, did exceedingly well, pulling ahead of the Greens, the SPD's traditional coalition partner. To be sure, the 48% for the CDU/CSU-FDP is significantly more than the paltry 33% for the SPD-Greens, but it's pretty clear that the country remains deeply divided. The election wasn't exactly an enthusiastic endorsement of Angela Merkel, however much she may think, or spin, that her win is "something magnificent."

William Safire (1929-2009)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

William Safire -- Nixon speechwriter, New York Times columnist, and conservative intellectual -- has died at the age of 79.

I'll admit, I never much cared for him -- or, rather, for his work:

Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.

Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie. But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a lot of powerful people squirm.

Well, fair enough, he certainly was more of a "contrarian" than most on the right, and he was certainly, at times, admirably independent in his thinking, and he did, I suppose, make some "powerful people squirm." But he was also, to the end, a Nixon apologist and, even with the GOP lurching ever further rightward, a dedicated partisan. Sure, he was more pleasant, less insane, and far more intelligent than the Glenn Becks and Sean Hannitys of the world, and that made him appealing both in print and on Meet the Press -- he was sort of like David Brooks, a conservative liberals could actually respect and occasionally agree with -- but his apparent reasonableness, and his broad appeal, only made him, in a way, more nefarious. However independent, however flexible, he was an ideologue, and, in a way, an effective propagandist for conservatism, if more Nixonian than the extremism of the movement today, a Republican even when the Republican Party should no longer have appealed to him. I think the same of Brooks and the same of George Will, another old-style conservative in the heart of the liberal media establishment, or what used to be, though Brooks remains a neocon and Will remains more of an ideologue than Safire ever was. Both have Safire's appeal, but, as with Safire, it would be wise not to let appearances get in the way of better judgement.

Still, Safire was always a good read, always provocative, and, more often than not, a valuable contributor to the public debate. Conservatives would have done well to have taken him more seriously, and the rest of us, I think, should have done the same. Even to those of us who generally disagreed with him on pretty much everything, he offered a great deal, often irritatingly so, and we knew, or at least I can say that I did, that he was often a deeply perceptive thinker who at the very least compelled us to reconsider our assumptions and opinions, and even our firmly held beliefs, and, I think, we were all stronger for it in the end. Political preferences aside, isn't that what you want in a columnist at a major newspaper like the Times? Safire frequently went too far, and I can't say that everything he said and wrote fit this noble purpose, far from it from my limited perspective, but at least he wasn't one of those pundits who only tell a narrow fringe what it wants to hear and who lash out at everything else. We all know there are far too many such pundits today.

And, of course, he was, most admirably, a linguist, a defender of the English language at a time when it was, and is, being torn apart. I learned not to split infinitives from my father, and I don't, but Safire taught us all, in his own distinctive way, to use language properly, to speak and write according to rules that ought to remain in force, and to stand firm against the dumbing down of society through the erosion of linguistic standards.

To boldly go? No, never. William Safire will be missed.

MATT DAMON PUNKS ADRIAN GRENIER !

Most likely a fake but I luv Celebrity F - bombs !


THE NILES LESH PROJECT - All Rights Reserved 2009

Truth in Comics

By Creature



If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

Grand Old Unpopularity

By Michael J.W. Stickings

John Amato makes a good point. For all the talk about Obama's declining approval ratings, and about the overall unpopularity of the Democratic-led Congress and Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, shouldn't more attention be paid to the massive unpopularity of the Republicans? After all, their numbers -- as a party, as well as for party leaders like Mitch McConnell in the Senate and John Boehner in the House -- are abysmal:

Mitch McConnell is polling at an 18% approval rating. That's eighteen percent. John Boehner is polling at 12% approval rating. Just think about that one. And it doesn't take much to make him cry. Mitch and Boehner are viewed less favorably than Dick Cheney was during the dark days of the Bush administration. Why don't we hear about that on teevee?

The overall approval ratings of Congressional Republicans is 17% as a party! The Dems are taking their lumps over this chaotic time, but nowhere near the kinds of wounds the GOP are suffering. The media make it appear that all these teabaggers are rallying around the RNC and the country just loves the Beltway elites' favorite party, but that's not true at all.

Nope, not at all. Republicans claim to be optimistic about 2010 -- and they may very well be able to reduce the sizes of the Democratic majorities in Congress (though it's still a long way off, and I think Democrats will benefit from a recovering economy and, let's hope, health-care reform) -- but it's not like the country has abandoned the Democrats, and certainly not that it has embraced the Republicans.

In general, while Obama's numbers remain fairly high, there is widespread cynicism among the American people, some of it justified, and much of it is being directed at the country's political institutions, including those in Washington, most notably -- much to their discredit, given that the people elected them -- at their own elected officials. At the moment, the people don't care much for the politicians, or for either party, though that's nothing new. Anti-politics is built into America's DNA, and what has made it worse in recent years (decades) is not just corruption and criminality in the political class but the all-out assault on government by the right (which continues with the teabaggers, of course, as well as with the likes of Glenn Beck and his ilk, though anti-government rhetoric is widespread in the GOP and throughout conservatism), as well as, I must regretfully add, the growing civic irresponsibility of the people themselves.

But it's all relative, and, right now, the Republicans are doing far worse, if these polls are to be believed, than the Democrats. The problem is that the media aren't reporting this to the American people. Instead, they continue to hit Obama and the Democrats with declining approval ratings, ignoring the fact that, while low, the Democrats' numbers, and especially Obama's, are significantly better than the Republican ones.

The preference of the American people, however cynical and irresponsible they may be, is clear.

Murder in Kentucky

By Mustang Bobby

More details are emerging about the death of Bill Sparkman in Kentucky.

A part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago.

The word ''fed'' was written in felt-tip pen on 51-year-old Bill Sparkman's chest, but authorities have released very few other details in the case, such as whether they think it was an accident, suicide or homicide.

Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was certain from the gruesome scene that someone killed Sparkman.

''He was murdered,'' Weaver said. ''There's no doubt.''

Weaver said he was in the rural Kentucky county for a family reunion and was visiting some family graves at the cemetery on Sept. 12 along with his wife and daughter when they saw the body.

''The only thing he had on was a pair of socks,'' Weaver said. ''And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something.''

It would be jumping to conclusions to assume that he was killed because he was working for the U.S. Census, even though his ID card was taped to his body. This part of Kentucky is known by law enforcement to have hidden marijuana fields and meth labs, so it could have been that Mr. Sparkman stumbled upon illegal activity while in the performance of his census duties. Whatever the reason, it's a federal crime to murder a federal employee in the performance of his or her duties, so if the perpetrators thought they might be scaring off the feds with this gruesome warning, they were wrong.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

What do Jon Kyl and the Republicans have against mothers?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There was much ado yesterday about the exchange between Republican Sen. Jon Kyl and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. I even tweeted about it. To refresh your memory:

Kyl: "I don't need maternity care..."

Stabenow: "I think your mom probably did."

Stabenow's interjection was both funny and poignant, but the focus should really be on Kyl's comments. As Steve Benen remarks, "Kyl's argument is worthy of derision":

In the hopes of making insurance cheaper, Kyl is comfortable with not covering basic maternity care. The status quo -- only 21 states require insurers to provide maternity care benefits -- is just fine with the #2 senator in the GOP leadership. If discriminatory practices boost industry profits, it's just the free market working as it should.

Kyl's measure was defeated, 14 to 9. That nine Republicans voted for it says a great deal about how the GOP is approaching the reform debate.

In other words, Republicans are against even basic care for new mothers. Not only are they not interested in compromise, they're actively working to preserve the injustices and failures of the existing system. And they're "approaching the reform debate" by being against reform altogether, unless it's reform to enhance the status quo.

He shoots... he scores!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Not much blogging from me tonight. I have the draft for my very serious, very competitive fantasy hockey league in half an hour -- we're now in our eighth year -- and I'm doing some much-needed prep.

I have the #1 pick. I'm a huge Sid Crosby fan, and I like Malkin, too, but I'm going to have to go with Alexander Ovechkin, the top offensive threat in the game. But do I really want to spend my year rooting for Ovy? I suppose so. I'm in it to win, after all. (Though, when it comes to hockey, I want nothing more than my beloved Habs to do well this year.)

But then I don't pick again until the end of the second round, #24. Maybe Staal, maybe St. Louis, or maybe, just maybe, a top blueliner like Lidstrom or Chara. We'll see.

Alright, enjoy your evening, everyone. I'll be back with the political stuff later.

Mark Tapscott, delusional partisan idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Seriously? Seriously. There really is such idiocy out there:

If nothing else, the Obama eruption in American politics is steadily revealing the stark reality behind the progressive movement -- the totalitarian temptation is always there and, for more than a few, possessing the official power to compel sooner or later becomes irresistible.

Just consider the title of Tapscott's piece: "Beware the Stalin in progressive hearts?"

Progressives are Stalinists? Why, because they think that government should be more than just a complete non-existence, surfacing only to torture detainees, spy on American citizens, and hand out corporate welfare? What, exactly, is the evidence, that "the progressive movement" is totalitarian? Or does Tapscott believe that Obama is secretly setting up gulags?

Oh, sure, Tapscott excuses some "folks" on the left who haven't been overcome by Stalinism, but his message is clear, and it's a message that many on the right, including more popular fearmongers like Beck and Dear Leader Rush, are pushing.

He's our Idiot of the Day, and I'm sure you can see why. If you can't, just head on back to the GOP idiocracy whence you crawled.

The plots thicken

By Capt. Fogg

I don't know why, but since the Vietnam era, the hawkish types seem to have preferred the world "embolden" to the more conventional "encourage." It may be simply that we prefer not to use the word "courage" when talking about our enemies, but figuring that one out is beyond any area of expertise I might pretend to. None the less, the Cheneyesque assumption that Obama, by being Obama, the liberal/fascist/Commie/Muslim born in Kenya and Indonesia will spur or "embolden" Islamic enemies to attack us to a greater extent than the refulgent presidency of George W. Bush did, is sure to be in the news again.

The last few days have seen the arrest of people involved in credible bomb plots, including the attempt to blow up a skyscraper in Dallas, Texas. Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Jordan was arrested after he dialed a number on his cell phone that he had been duped by Federal Agents into believing would detonate a large bomb. He had been under close surveillance for some time.

This follows on the heels of the arrest of Denver resident Najibullah Zazi as part of another bomb conspiracy that had advance to the point of assembling the chemical components. Both of these plots were foiled by what seems to be good police work and not anything resulting from the massive powers given to the president by the infamous Patriot Act.

It would be hard to justify the opinion that the 2001 attack was a one-shot deal not to be repeated and it's been a no brainer to predict that the next attack wouldn't involve hijacking airplanes. Although Zazi may have received training in Pakistan and Smadi claims to be a "soldier of bin Laden," these plots may have less to do with anything hatched at the top levels of some central organization than with the more diverse worldwide culture of anti-Western hatred. It's hard to say these attempts wouldn't have happened if Afghanistan had been cleansed of the Taliban or Qaeda training camps. Of course the threat remains vanishingly small to any individual but it's important to note that Smadi wanted to blow up Wells Fargo as a blow to our banking system -- and it would have been.

But again, the FBI seems to have done its job and without waterboards or Transylvanian castle dungeons or reading the mail of the Quaker churches and without bombing any country back to the dark ages and this makes the idea that Obama has disabled our ability to deal with terrorists less of a credible talking point.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Quote of the Day: Nancy Pelosi on the "trigger"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Speaker is right, "a trigger is an excuse for not doing anything."

I suppose there could still be a meaningful health-care reform package without a public option but with a so-called "trigger" that would put a public option in place only if certain thresholds weren't met (that is, if reform failed to achieve certain desired outcomes, such as greater accessibility), but, to me, it's still a bit too early to concede on the public option just to appease a single Republican, Olympia Snowe.

The Democrats would do well to continue to push for a public option, a robust one, and to try to pull the party together to pass reform on their own, given ongoing Republican opposition and obstructionism. With majorities on both sides of Congress, there really is no excuse for doing nothing.

Are the Blue Dogs coming around?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well... maybe:

Blocking a public health insurance option is a relatively low priority for conservative Blue Dog Democrats, according to an ongoing survey of its members. The fading House opposition could clear the way for the public option to move through the chamber.

Although this is a positive sign that Democrats are finally coming together -- which is what many of us wanted coming out of Obama's speech a couple of weeks ago -- it's not the House that's the problem, it's the Senate. And, there, there are still the likes of Nelson, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Lieberman to contend with, centrists of a sort who object to the very idea of a public option, and whose votes are needed if Democrats are to defeat a Republican filibuster (and if reconciliation is off the table, as it may very well be).

Still, let's allow ourselves some optimism here. With the Blue Dogs as a whole softening on the public option, there may very well be a real move towards party unity among Democrats. And if the Blue Dogs are coming around, maybe those Senate centrists will, too.

Maybe.

At the very least, it now looks better than ever that a meaningful reform package will be passed, one far more liberal than many of us thought possible back during the dark days of August, when Republican lies seemed to have the upper hand.

Kirk (D-MA)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has tapped Paul Kirk, not Michael Dukakis, to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat until a special election can be held on Jan. 19.

Fine (although I would have preferred Dukakis, who deserves some respect for his significant contributions both to the Democratic Party and to Massachusetts, as well as to liberal-progressive public policy, over the years -- wouldn't it have been so fitting for a Sen. Dukakis to cast a vote in support of health-care reform?)

It's not like Kirk lacks credentials, after all. He was even chairman of the DNC once upon a time. And he may very well be a solid pick.

But did Patrick really have to fill Kennedy's seat with a long-time Kennedy friend and aide, a candidate seemingly being pushed by the entire Kennedy clan? It's like the Kennedys think they have some sort of dynastic right to the seat, and that it's in their power to bequeath the seat to whomsoever they annoint.

Sure, it's just a temporary thing, but something about the whole thing irritates me. Not because I'm anti-Kennedy, which I'm not, but because I object to anything that smacks of dynastic control. Let's hope the selection process to name a Democratic candidate for the special election is less of an insider job, that is, that the Kennedys don't control that process. (A Kennedy won't be running, but they could still wield their enormous influence to control the process.)

Craziest Honduran Ex-President of the Day: Manuel Zelaya

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You were expecting someone else? Of course it's Zelaya. (Actually, I can't name another one.) He's hanging out at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, and, well, it's not good:

It's been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He's sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and "Israeli mercenaries'' are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.

"We are being threatened with death,'' he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him.

For all I know, maybe he's not crazy. Maybe the Israelis really are after him -- though it's always so convenient to blame Israel, isn't it? And maybe he has been poisoned with toxic gas.

But I doubt it.

Here are a couple of hilarious lines from the Herald article:

-- "Witnesses said that for a short time Tuesday morning, soldiers used a device that looked like a large satellite dish to emit a loud shrill noise. Honduran police spokesman Orlin Cerrato said he knew nothing of any radiation devices being used against the former president."

-- "Israeli government sources in Miami said they could not confirm the presence of any 'Israelis mercenaries' in Honduras."

Cannot confirm? Huh. Couldn't they just have said no? Or that Zelaya's out of his gourd?

Maybe it's Zelaya's pitiful state that has driven him this far:

Zelaya, 56, is at the embassy with his family and other supporters, without a change of clothes or toothpaste. The power and water were turned back on, and the U.N. brought in some food. Photos showed Zelaya, his trademark cowboy hat across his face, napping on a few chairs he had pushed together.

Don't the Brazilians have toothpaste?

Poor, crazy guy.

Not that I'm all that sympathetic. But, then, I'm not exactly sympathetic to the other side, either. Honduras is a mess, much like, it would seem, the mind of Manuel Zelaya.

Condoms as metaphor

By Carl

It's taken thirty years, countless dead and infected, and a worldwide push, but it looks as though the very tricky and difficult HIV virus may be giving up its secrets to science:

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- An experimental vaccine prevented HIV infections for the first time, a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for a quarter century.

A U.S.-funded study involving more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand found that a combination of ALVAC, made by Paris- based Sanofi-Aventis SA, and AIDSVAX, from VaxGen Inc., of South San Francisco, cut infections by 31.2 percent in the people who received it compared with those on a placebo, scientists said today in Bangkok. Neither vaccine had stopped the virus that causes AIDS when tested separately in previous studies.

The finding represents a revival in a campaign that appeared to stall just two years ago when use of Merck & Co.’s experimental Ad5 vaccine boosted some people’s chances of infection in a study. The latest result will transform future research, said Mitchell Warren, director of the New York-based AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

31.2% is something, certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it means there's clues in there for a truly preventative vaccine or combination of vaccines.

I'm old enough to remember when sex could be had without any ill effects except maybe guilt. Syphillis and gonorrhea both seemed to be curable, and AIDS and herpes were on a distant horizon.

I've often wondered if the spread of AIDS, HIV, and even herpes was responsible, in part, for the rise of conservatism in this country. After all, when we could ball freely, we tended to be a little more open to new ideas as well as new experiences.

Once sex was clamped down upon, it seemed like everyone's rectums got a little more retentive, a little more conservative. Wearing a condom became a metaphor as well as a reality, forcing people to think back inside the box (um, pun not intended. Mostly.) because outside, alone, naked, was scary and a little dangerous.

Freedom became something negotiable, to an extent. You could be free, but you had to be ultravigilant, and once you had to be ultravigilant, that required an effort and efforts mean people will look for easy ways out.

Like the fox and the grapes, people began to look at sex as if it wasn't important, that sex was OK if it was readily accessible but to actually go out and pursue it became a matter of work. And who wants to work at sex?

So we saw a rise in monogamous relationships, but we also saw a rise in values that hearkened back to the Fifties, to a time when, yes, people had sex, lots of it, but no one talked about it, so everyone assumed no one else was getting any.

I dunno... just a thought.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)