Open Thread: Show 56
Listen here. Comment below.
Thanks again to AB for the new computer...now all I need is to get Front Page and KaZaa Lite working again...

New Computer
My good friend AB came over today, he was supposed to set me up with a new motherboard but instead showed up with a whole new computer. This thing uses Windows XP so it'll take me a while to get used to it, and I have to get it set up for recording the show, but once we're set, everything ought to go a lot better. So if there aren't any new posts in the next day or so don't be too surprised. Just so you all know. My thanks again to AB for his generous donation.

Happiness
Back when I was in the Air Force, I knew a guy named George. Real nice guy, part of the C&S (Chivalry & Sorcery, one of the offshoots of D&D) group I played with every other weekend or so. George used to tell me about how, when he was in basic training, the drill sergeants (or "Technical Instructors" as the Air Force called them) would get on his case because he always had a smile on his face. Anyone who has ever been through basic training (and I went through two, once for the Army Reserve, and again when I went active in the Air Force) knows that drill sergeants absolutely hate the idea of anyone having a good time. But there was old George, with a smile on his face the whole time. According to him, nothing those guys did to him could ever wipe the smile off his face, and since he always did what he was told to do, they finally just accepted the fact that this was how he was. George was just one of those people who others (who aren't drill sergeants anyway) enjoy being around, probably because George, by his very nature, just made you want to be that way. He wasn't trying to cheer you up, you understand, it just happened. George was happy enough by himself that he really didn't feel the need to try, he just did what he always did. Even on those rare occasions when he was pissed off about something he was still happier than a lot of people I know. I wish I could be so happy all the time, it would do wonders for my blood pressure.

I wish others would be a little more like George. I see far too many miserable people, not just at this job, but pretty much every place I've worked. And unlike George, miserable people want to make everyone else around them miserable. "Misery loves company" is how the old saying goes, and I have worked for some companies where this seems to be the motto: some bosses hate seeing their workers being happy with the same gusto of a drill sergeant. And not just the bosses, but the other workers as well. I haven't done very well at places like that. I take my work seriously, but the work is just that, the work. It's something that needs to be done, and when I'm working I can get very intent upon what I'm doing. I've been known to work through a break or through lunch because I was so fixated on the problem at hand that it either slipped my mind or I just felt I needed to accomplish something before I left. I can aso get very anal about things: where I work now I always take the time to prepare the stuff I need to make the work a little easier. It's not always necessary, but it makes me feel comfortable.

But I don't take the job seriously, and that's a huge difference. When there's something that needs to be done, and I have everything I need to do it, I do it. But if I've accomplished what I am supposed to, or if there's nothing for me to do because we ran out of a part or something, I don't like to do anything. I'll clean up a big mess if there's one where I'm working, but I don't like doing busy-work. Supervisors hate the idea of someone not being physically active every second they're on the job: they hate the idea of someone being "unproductive" even if, by moving around, they're not really accomplishing anything. How much can a floor really be swept? And why should I feel the urge to do so when I just swept it twenty minutes ago, and I am maybe going to sweep it again twenty minutes from now and I am definitely going to sweep at the end of the day anyway. And sometimes the reason that I have nothing to do is because I worked so hard to get to a point where I can rest for a few. I get paid an hourly wage, yes, but I'm there to do a specific job, not to perform aerobics. Supervisors, who get pressured from people above them to keep everyone working, absolutely hate that attitude.

The work is about the work, the job is about something entirely different. I remember an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the android Data was talking about poker. He learned the rules easily enough; what hands were stronger than other hands, and the variations thereof, but when he actually played the game he found that the reality was very different from the rules of the game. It wasn't about who had the better hand, if it was it would be a boring game and no one would play it. Poker is about knowing how to bluff an opponent, learning to read other's expressions to guess what kind of hand they have, learning to control your own emotions so that others can't do the same to you. If the job was just about the work, it would be easy and everyone would enjoy themselves more. But the job isn't just the work. The job is politics. The job is knowing when to speak and when to keep your mouth shut. It's knowing who to avoid, when to be visible, and when to hide when you need to. None of these things have anything to do with the needs of the actual job, but anyone who doesn't do these things well (like me) isn't going to last very long in the workplace. You're lucky to have a job! is the creed a lot of workers live by, it was even one of the main points of the union meeting I went to yesterday, and here I thought the union was supposed to make life a little better for everyone. Silly me. Life is hard, work is a miserable grind and only those who can accept that fact will be able to survive in the world.

Which brings me to my ultimate point. Digby reminded me of this article by Mark Ames about how Americans vote, all too often, out of pure spite. "Real People", as BChan so adroitly put it, live in the "Real World" of the flyover states, while the "liberal elite" live in some fantasy world on the coasts. It's perfectly all right for he and others like him to decry John Kerry as one of the "rich elite" while never thinking about George Bush in the same way, as if Bush never lived a life of privilege. As long as Bush is killing people who are trying to kill us, he's got my vote is his reasoning, despite the fact that we haven't killed or neutralized nearly enough of the people who are trying to kill us, and, in fact are creating more. Ames explains it thusly:

...non-millionaires who vote Republican, the so-called "Reagan Democrats," know that the country is not theirs. They are mere wage-slave fodder, so their only hope is to vote for someone who makes the very happiest people's lives a little less happy. If I'm an obese 40-something white male living in Ohio or Nevada, locked into a permanent struggle with foreclosure, child support payments and outsourcing threats, then I'm going to vote for the guy who delivers a big greasy portion of misery to the Sarandon-Robbins dining room table, then brags about it on FoxNews. Even if it means hurting myself in the process.

This explains the mystery of why Bush still has a chance of winning in November, even though most Americans acknowledge that his presidency is little more than a series of slapstick fuck-ups with apocalyptic consequences. Inspector Clouseau meets the Book of Revelations. Close to half of this country will support Bush simply to spite that part of America that it sees as most threatened by the Iraq debacle. If the empire ends up collapsing into that filthy, sizzling hellhole in the desert, if more terrorists are created to help set off dirty bombs in Manhattan or Los Angeles, our spiteful voter has a real chance of finally achieving some empowerment.

It's simple mathematics: Bring down the coastal elite and the single 40-something Ohio salesman might actually matter. And if they're not brought down, but instead remain in a constant state of indigestion over policies that could ruin them at any time? Well, that's still better than nothing.

Some people get happiness by bringing other people down. They enjoy it, it gives their lives some meaning. Listen to a right-winger on the radio, look at Dick Cheney's sneer or George W's smirk. The only pleasure they get is making other people's lives miserable, because, I suspect, even with all their money and power, they're miserable too. The same is true of people like Saddam and Osama bin Laden: how happy have they ever been, and how miserable is Osama's life that he managed to convince other miserable people to fly a plane into a building? I can't imagine anyone who was truly happy doing that.

On the other hand, did you ever see Bill or Hillary Clinton on TV or give a speech? They look happy. Even in the face of such enormous hatred focused at them, they never seem to let it get to them, at least not publicly. I remember a clip of Bill Clinton at a podium with former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, laughing his head off, a real, honest, guffaw that wasn't in any way phony or political. I don't even know what it was he was laughing at, maybe Yeltsin cut loose a fart or something, but it was a genuine, from the heart moment. I can't imagine seeing Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld laugh like that, I don't know if they're even capable of it. It makes me sad for them, really it does, because I can't imagine that the kind of happiness they get from "stealing money from grandma" possibly is anywhere near the kind of pure joy Bill Clinton felt for that one, brief moment.

The New Deal was more than just being about saving the country, it was about making people happy. People who earn enough money so that they're not stressed out over bills and rent tend to be happier people. Not everyone felt that way, of course. There were plenty of people who hated FDR with the same passion that some people hated Clinton. But they couldn't do anything about it. FDR was elected four times and there was never any question about whether he won or not. There's always been a group of people that hate the idea of others being happy, especially when they realize that others are being happy with their tax money. So they'll go out and vote for people who will make life more miserable for others whether they deserve it or not. Life is hard. Deal with it. But there are plenty of others who see happiness, and the pursuit thereof, as what makes America unique. It's why we became the envy of the world.

Sometimes I think I'm a failure because I don't have a lot of money, and I wonder why that is. I'm not lazy or stupid, but I guess I'm less willing to put up with that miserable grind than others are. I know for a fact that I have lost jobs because my boss didn't think I took the job seriously enough. Did it make them happy to fire me? Would it make them happy knowing they've hurt me financially? I lost one job because I told my district manager (my bosses's boss) that I could do his job. I didn't say it in a mean way, like I thought he was incompetent, it was just a simple declaration: I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. But he was furious and I still don't understand why. Maybe he didn't like the idea of a mere salesman talking to him like that. Maybe I didn't show the required amount of subservience. Did it make him any happier firing me? Did it do any good for the business? Was it just too much work for him to try to find a place in the company where I could do the most help? I guess I'll never know, especially since I found out that, a couple of weeks later, he got fired himself.

I want to be happy. If I feel stressed out a bit and need to take a day off every now and then, I don't mind losing a day's pay because that chance to gather myself is more important to me than the hundred or so dollars I would earn at work. When I was a manager, I tried to make it a workplace where people can be happy, and I succeeded. As I have said before, it was the best job I ever had, I might even try to open up my own business along those lines. BChan always says that you should work for the hardest boss there is, yourself, and I agree to a point, but there's people out there who just aren't capable of that, and there are people in the world who want to make these people suffer because of it. And not all of them are rich executives. We take our jobs way too seriously, and don't take being happy seriously enough. The angry people will always be with us, because being angry is a part of human nature and a little anger isn't always a bad thing. But neither is a little happiness. I hope we learn that lesson again, soon.

American Communism Part Two
And speaking of which, why does anyone believe anything they see on the news any more? It's getting to be like Pravda, you look at it and go, "huh?" Atrios transcripted a Daily Show segment that nails it right on the head: what the news is doing isn't journalism, it's gossip and propaganda. Most people think that one plus one equals two, but some think it equals three. We'll have our panel of experts discuss this issue after this break. Kerry's service record is a perfect example. The Swift Boat Liars For Bush are just that, liars. The official record paints a very different picture, and if the "professionals" in the news had dome some simple research they could have seen immediately that the charges these people are making are completely false. But that's not what you'll hear from our well-paid news celebrities. There are bloggers out there doing much better work for no pay at all, what does that have to say about the state of news reporting in this country?

American Communism
I had a friend who was based in Berlin back before the war, when it was two cities. Occasionally, he would get permission to go into East Berlin where he shopped for model kits of Soviet spacecraft (model kits were his hobby). "The remarkable thing about Communist countries," he told me, "is that it doesn't matter which store you go into to buy these things, they all sell the same exact products at the same exact price." Doesn't it seem like things are getting that way here in this country? Go to any mall in the country, they all have pretty much the same kinds of stores selling the same kinds of stuff at about the same prices. A mall in Peoria looks pretty much the same as a mall in Denver. Suburbs are like that, too...they all pretty much look alike: the same quickly-constructed houses, the same lawns, can anyone really tell the difference between a Chicago suburb and a New York suburb?

I used to work for a small pizza place in Orlando called Roman Coin Pizza. They were, as one of our customers put it, "The best goddamn pizza place in Orlando!" They went out of business in part because the Orlando Navy Base (their primary customers) was slowly being shut down, but their business was suffering anyway because they couldn't compete with all the bigger chains. A Dominoe's Pizza tastes the same in Peoria as it does in Denver, so when a sailor orders a pie from them he knows what to expect. It's hard for smaller, local places to fight that, with their much smaller advertizing budgets. The chains also aren't allowed to deviate from the formula set up by the company: one guy I know who worked for a different pizza place was using a slightly different formula, and there were times when people called in to make sure he was the one making the pizza before they ordered it. They always did better business on those nights. So when the company found out about it, they promptly ordered him to use the formula they had thought up in some executive board room. It wasn't about the pizza, it was about the control.

In one of his screeds, Jello Biafra points out that for all the talk about America becoming "The New Nazi Germany", we're really closer to Soviet-style Communism: "at least under the Nazis, the trains ran on time...can you get the trains to even work at all?" I don't entirely agree with him, I still think we're currently a fascist nation, but it's a uniquely American fascism (we've seen so many documentaries about WWII that we're led to believe that killing Jews is the primary factor in determining what a fascist nation is: if we're not killing Jews, we must not be fascist). But he's right in that our social infrastructure is falling apart: too much emphasis on roads (and too many of them not built well enough). Not enough emphasis placed on public transport. Even BChan is with me on that, he and I both share a love for rail transit which is sadly lacking in this country. See, there are things even the most diametrically opposed people can agree upon. Corporate hegemony is little different than Soviet hegemony, our choices are still limited. And the more the McWalMarts we have, the more you see us looking like East Berlin.

Open Thread: Show 55
Listen here. Comment below. Be happy!

A Moment Of Truth

''Anyone who isn't here to buy something will be arrested!''

Open Thread: Show 54
Listen here. Comment below.

Kerry's not going to win...His popularity is illusory, because the people who grind out the news on TV and in the major papers are all East/West Coast big city liberals who have a vested interest in seeing that he wins. But he won't. Out here in Flyover Country, where the Real People live, nobody's buying his BS. To us, he looks like another pompous blowhard with a Yankee accent and a $500 haircut. The only people here in Texas that I know are supporting him are college students, government employees, and the AARP types.
-BChan, in the comments section below.

I tolerate a lot of stuff from BChan because he's an old friend. But I can't let a comment like that go by without a rebuttal. The idea that some people are not "real" implies that they don't deserve the same rights as we all do. And since BChan has a habit of making such inflammatory statements, until I receive a public clarification from him to the contrary, I am going to assume that this is what he means. Because statements like that, statements that dehumanize an entire group of people, are how holocausts get started. And while I am more calm about it now than I was when I was recording the show, what I said about banning him from the site stands. Because by his definition, I am not a "real person" and I won't let anyone participate on my blog who doesn't think I'm "real". BChan, you have 48 hours from the time of this posting.

Oh yeah and it better be sincere, too...no smarmy, left-handed commentary. I'm not kidding.

Cowards

It just outrages me that someone who got five deferments during Vietnam and said he had 'other priorities' at that time would say that. When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil. He'll be tough, but he'll be tough with someone else's kid's blood.
-Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)

Sen. Harkin was referring to Mr. Cheney's comments about John Kerry's remarks on how we should pursue the "War On Terror". America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive, says Mr. Cheney, mocking not just Mr. Kerry, but Mr. Bush and himself, because they both have used the word "sensitive" to describe the situation in Iraq. But as Juan Cole rightly points out, that makes Mr. Cheney more of a hypocrite than a coward.

But Mr. Harkin is right to call Cheney a coward, just not for the reasons he brought up. Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush, in fact pretty much the entire Bush administration and the GOP leadership are cowards because they are bullies and tyrants, and all bullies and tyrants are essentially cowards. They wrap themselves with power because the only way they can make people do what they want them to do is by forcing them or scaring them. And making people do what they want them to do is the driving force behind them, it's what gives their lives meaning and purpose, it's what fills them with self-worth. That's why they ridicule combat veterans like John Kerry and Max Cleland. That's why they feel free to insult our allies overseas. That's why they approve of the kind of torture that went on at Abu Ghraib. That's why they do everything in secret, because they're afraid of what would happen to them if people knew what they were really up to.

This is also how corporate America does business, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that an ideologically corporate government behaves the way it does. Look at your workplace, especially if you work in a large manufacturing plant as I do. How much easier would your job be if some very simple changes were made, yet they never happen? Is there a prevailing attitude that the supervisors, middle management and upper management seem to care less about the smooth operation of the plant than they do in preserving their own positions? How often to they openly say they plan on doing something and it never materializes? How many times are lower-level employees punished or even fired because of pointless or contradictory workplace rules that are randomly enforced? Is there a workplace in America where this does not go on?

Unfortunately all too many of us enjoy being pushed around, partly because we think we deserve it or that we're powerless to stop it, partly because some hope, one day, to be the ones doing the pushing. In my short experience as a manager, when I ran the photo lab, I made a conscious decision not to be like every other boss I had ever had. I made it clear to my employees what I expected of them and what they can expect of me, and I didn't micro-manage them or get on their case for meaningless bullshit. In return they did a good job for me and made my work that much easier. It was the best job I ever had and I wish I could have continued. It would be nice if I could be a middle manager at Siemens, but even though I have the organizational skills to be a good middle manager, I know that the real work has more to do with inter-office politics than any skills I have. The middle managers are pressured to produce, and they in turn pressure and intimidate the workers. In the end you have a shop where no one really feels like they're a part of a team, they're just there to do a job and keep their mouths shut. It's like that all over, everyone knows it, but getting something done about it seems near impossible. My problems with moving into a higher position within the union are the same, the leadership cares more for their cushy positions than they do for working conditions at the plant. And they wonder why they get so few members.

In the end, though, bullies always wind up losing. Throughout history we have seen examples of bullies and tyrants being overthrown, far too many examples to list here. What, you wonder, are the current bunch thinking if they believe that what they're doing in the long run will be good for anybody, including themselves? That's the thing: they're not thinking. To them, everything is just a test to see how strong they are, how big an opposition they can defeat. As I said, it's the only thing that gives them self-worth, it's the only thing that proves their manhood. The fact that their attacks against Mr. Kerry are getting more and more shrill shows how scared they are. If we're lucky we can stop this group before things really get out of hand, though it's possible that it may be too late already. These people hate the thought of giving up power, and they'll do anything to prevent it. And I'm a little worried at what they might do if they really believe that the jig is up.

Bullies and other cowards will always be with us, it's something we're just going to have to learn to accept. We might defeat them now but they'll be back, and we have to be ready for them. It isn't easy for us, because we don't think like they do: most of us would rather live our lives in peace and freedom, but unfortunately vigilance is the price we have to pay for that freedom. And we are learning again that we have to be vigilant against cowards both abroad and here at home.

Lost Weekend
Yes I know, no posts at all this last weekend, and no new show on Sunday. The wife was in the hospital again. I won't bore you with the details but suffice to say she needs some surgery and that won't happen until her body stabilizes enough to make surgery safe. She's home now, they basically just give her some stronger pain medication, which means she's back to taking pills and sleeping...

My father and brother survived the big storms in Florida, though they've been without power for a few days now, hopefully things will be back to normal there soon.

Anyway, I'll have a new show up on Thursday and should have a post or two up today and tomorrow...

Life At The Bottom
I had an epiphany last week or so. Epiphanies don't come to me as often as they once did, they become more infrequent the older and more cynical I get. But this particular one caught me off guard in a way no other epiphany had. I was in the midst of a big production run at the shop, thinking about some of the usual stuff about work, about how simple things could be done to make it a better place to be, and about how it seems that things will never change. The owners don't really care, the union leadership is more concerned with hanging on to their own positions than with the real issues of the workplace, and all too often the workers themselves seem content to make things miserable for others just so they can get a laugh out of it. And it occurred to me, no, it hit me in the head like a 2x4, that the main reason nothing changes is because nothing is supposed to change. I mean, it's nothing I hadn't thought about before, nothing I hadn't known already, but for a brief moment it became crystal clear, this is life at the bottom. This is life for the overwhelming majority of people in the world, most of them wouldn't have it any other way, and it has been that way for thousands of years.

Again, that's nothing that hasn't occurred to me before, but sometimes you can know something and then know something. I don't know how to explain it any better than that. My attitude up till now has been (and still is) that this may be life at the bottom, but that doesn't mean it has to be miserable. The Bush administration and its primary financial supporters certainly want to make things worse for us, partly because they're greedy bastards but also because they really don't care about any of us: to them we only exist to help make them rich. And perhaps the day will come when it will be decided that people like me simply are not needed and we will be done away with, either by killing us outright or by attrition or by some method I can't even imagine. When you're at the bottom, like I am, and your life depends upon others for you to get the things you need to survive, that's the way it is. Oh, from time to time, working people have asserted the real power that they have (What industry can function without them? What business can survive without customers?), and sometimes things get better (American liberalism from 1932-197x) and sometimes things get worse (communism in any form), but in the long run the only real difference from us and slaves and peasants throughout history is that we have things like cars and air conditioning and running water, and in some places of the world they don't even have that. Just because we can go to the supermarket and choose what kinds of food we buy or can buy a car doesn't mean we are totally free: we still have to go to work for a living, and very few of us work in a place we actually enjoy. Some even take it as a kind of code of honor that they are doing something distasteful to earn a living, and in fact some think we ought to do something distasteful, to enjoy oneself is to be weak.

Let me ask you all a question: if you didn't have to work, that is, if all your basic needs such as food and clothing and shelter were somehow provided for, what would you do? I know what I would do, I'd quit my current job in a heartbeat and spend more time on the blog and the radio show, making it better and doing it more often. That's why I'm urging you to email Air America Radio so that maybe they will hire me on and I can earn money doing something I enjoy. I certainly think I've earned it. I've always said that the best possible life anyone can have is to be able to do something they really enjoy and make enough money at it so that they can pay the rent and the bills and still have money left over for entertainment and retirement. You can't have a better life than that. Even the idle rich are slaves to their money, a chain at one end is a chain at the other, and while they never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, they're not necessarily happy. And of course there are things below the bottom: homelessness, debilitating injury or illness, insanity, things that prevent you from participating even in the purgatory of the working poor. I'm right at the edge of that life, myself, and there are a lot like me, one or two paychecks away, as they say. And if it weren't for me, my wife would be there right now, she's not well enough to work a full-time job and she may never be.

But there is a difference in my attitude now; sure I still get upset when stupid stuff happens at the shop or when my fellow workers act like idiots, but not nearly as upset as I used to get. I understand now, in a way I never understood before, that this is the life most of my fellow workers have chosen for themselves, and the best I can do is to is to help out where I can and learn to accept what I can't change. I'll still continue to be a member of the union, and I'd still like to move up towards the union leadership, but frankly it's plain to me that the current leadership, especially the local President is only interested in their own position. But that doesn't mean I can't put them into a position to make changes because they feel pressured to, and I have discovered that you can do precisely that. I have no desire to get that much power in the union anyway, I don't think I have it in me to be an executive, but I know I will make an excellent shop steward and that's all I need. In the future things may be different but I'll worry about that when it happens. If I can somehow be made a steward I will enjoy my job better because I will be able to help out just a little bit more, which will make me feel better about myself and my job. Hey I know, it ain't much, but when you're living life at the bottom, you take whatever victories you can.

Open Thread: Show 53
Listen here. Comment below. My thanks to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

The End Of The Nation-States
Last night I watched President Clinton on the Daily Show. He was plugging his new book, My Life which is still sitting at the top of the NY Times bestseller list (hardcover nonfiction) as of this writing. President Clinton also spoke, as he often does, of the coming global society, where we move from an interdependent society of nation-states to an integrated society with a single global economy and, eventually, a single global government. It's going to happen, people, so you best get used to it. Human society simply cannot survive as a series of independent nation-states fighting with each other over the world's resources. The United States, I believe, is the last of the great nation-states. We have, not only the greatest military in the world, but the greatest military in human history, but we still face the same problems every other great nation-state has faced: conquering is one thing, occupying is another. So when we ultimately fail (and we will ultimately fail) in Iraq, the days of the great nation-states will finally come to an end. The European powers, scarred as they have been by countless wars over thousands of years, understand this far better than we do. In the end, France, Germany, China, the US, all nations will be a part of something greater, as our individual states are part of the greater United States. I'm not saying it will be a utopia and a paradise, far from it. Human nature being what it is, you can expect a lot of bloodshed before we finally realize that bloodshed is not the answer.

One of the things I hope for in the coming global economy is a standardization of wages for working people to prevent countries from doing what we are doing: moving jobs to where labor can be had for a percentage of what we pay here. While companies have the right to locate a business in an area that's profitable for them, the decision on where to put it shouldn't be based on how little they pay people, or on what kinds of tax breaks they will get from the local community. This kind of global standardization will help working people in the long run.

Now it may be that we will change to a completely different kind of economy, for example something like my nemesis BChan brings up where everyone is in some way a property owner. As far-fetched an idea as that sounds to me, I could accept it as long as everyone is capable of supporting themselves. Either way, the world as we know it is going to change, and change for the better. It won't come soon and I think I can pretty much guarantee that things will get worse before they get better, but they will get better. The days of the nation-states are coming to an end, and it's time we started thinking about it and preparing for it.

Like Children
I had a day off today, and I did something I don't usually do a lot of these days; watch some TV. No, I didn't watch any news programs, I pretty much blot all of them out...whatever news I need I get from the net, whether it be "traditional" sites like the New York Times or the new media: the blogosphere, which is actually doing a better job of reporting the news, especially sites like Juan Cole, which is covering events in Iraq in more detail than CNN or NBC or any of the other worthless "professional" news outfits.

Anyway, what I was watching mostly (or, should I say, what I had on in the background while I was screwing around on the computer) was a program about battleships on The History Channel, which I had kinda sorta seen before in bits and pieces. The particular episode that got me thinking was talking about the beginnings of the First World War, particularly about how an emerging, industrialized Germany decided it needed to build a whole shitload of ships to challenge Great Britain's supremacy of the sea, and of course once they started building it, they needed to have it out, which they did at Jutland. But that was the last major sea battle between the Germans and the British during the war, and thousands of brave men on both sides lost their lives in a pointless battle waged for no other reason than national pride. Germany and Great Britain surely could have found some common ground, but neither country was interested in anything more than an outrageous attempt to prove "whose got a bigger dick".

And it occurred to me, as I was watching that, how much waste and death there's been in human civilization for reasons similar to that. For more than six thousand years humans have been killing, oppressing, or enslaving each other for no other reason than one was stronger and it simply could. I don't think there's been a period in history where that hasn't been happening on a small or large scale anywhere in the world. But there was a time for us, in this country, when we thought we really had a chance to change things for the better. Sure we still had wars in Korea and Vietnam, but we also had the Peace Corps, and we helped to create the UN and work within it to make the world a better place. And for the most part, we succeeded, even when it disagreed with us or thought we were somewhat boorish and obnoxious, we were the example that many around the world looked to. We enjoyed life and we wanted to make the world a better place.

But the dark side of us was still there: removing an elected leader from Iran and putting the Shah in power. Cozying up with dictators like Marcos and Pinochet. Denying blacks the right to vote. Denying work to those accused of even knowing people who had once been a member of the Communist party. And now this. It was this article on Digby that got me to thinking about what sad shape the country is in when such immature, childish comments like calling John Kerry "French" get play in major news outlets. Where are the grown-ups who were supposed to be in charge? Not in the current administration or the so-called "professional" media, I can assure you. It's an attitude I see in so many places, an attitude I have been aware of since elementary school, when the first bullies made their presence known. I used to think that as we grow older we stopped being that way, but for years now I've known that that simply isn't true, and recent years have made things far worse.

9/11 should have been a wake-up call to the partisans in the Republican party, a message that there are some things that still require us to be the grown-ups they claimed to be. But instead they just used it as yet another excuse to savage and ridicule those that disagree with them. It's an attitude that has been played out on the world scene for over six thousand years, and as of yet no one who has espoused that attitude has done the world, or even themselves, any good. Yet we never seem to learn. We think the current situation is unique, that somehow we can do the same things that others have done for thousands of years and expect a different outcome. What, future generations will ask of us, as we asked the people of Japan and Germany only sixty short years ago, were they thinking?

In the documentary about battleships that I watched, there was an extraordinary story that I knew nothing about previously. Near the end of World War I, when it was apparent to the German government that they were going to lose the war, high-ranking members of the German Navy, without the knowledge of the Kaiser, were planning on a final sortie against the British, a battle to the death so that the fleet would go down honorably. But the sailors refused: they mutinied. They refused to put their lives on the line so that those in high places could play with their toys. They were simple working people like you and I, they had families to support, friends to be with, lives to lead that had nothing to do with the ambitions of "their betters". They wanted no part of it, and neither should we. Perhaps one day, a war will be declared and the soldiers on both sides will simply refuse to fight. The leaders can rant and rave all they want, but in the end if we all decide that we've had enough of this petty, senseless, bullshit, then maybe the cycle will be broken and we can finally move on to newer, different problems. Maybe then we can all stop acting like children.

No Code
Re: Atrios:

Whatever code of ethics there may have been in the past in journalism, they no longer exist in these days of media celebrities. These people are paid huge sums of money, far more than any of us, and the risk of losing that is far to great to risk on anything resembling moral behavior.

Russert, Matthews, Blitzer, all of them, live in a very different world than we do. Their money insulates them from what we, as working people living paycheck to paycheck, have to go through on a daily basis. Some, like O'Reilly and Novak, have a personal stake in protecting the current administration and have no qualms about doing and reporting the most vile things in order to perpetuate the current regime.

We should keep an eye on them and point out their lies (as we have been doing) but we should stop taking them seriously as journalists.

Some Whining
In the last three years or so, among those blogs that are considered to be "left-leaning", Atrios and Daily Kos have emerged as the leaders. Not that there aren't sites that get as many hits as they do: bartcop, for example, gets as many hits as either, but in terms of influence, Atrios and Kos are numbers one and two, respectively. And therefore it has become important for a smaller blogger, such as myself, to use them as a means to attract attention. If I had the money, I might simply purchase an ad on their blogs, but I don't have that kind of dough. The biggest difference between the two is that Kos is more of a multiple blogger site, Atrios gets some help when he's away but otherwise he pretty much rules the roost. Kos has several people who post regularly on the main page, which of course makes it easier on him. The need for bloggers to post regularly is big, because the more often they post, the more often people will visit their site to see what's up. I do post occasionally on Kos, in the diary section, and when I have a chance I drop a comment in the comments section of either, and whenever I do it boosts the number of hits I get, which I like a whole lot; I mean, what's the point of writing if no one is reading, right? It kind of defeats the purpose of having a public blog if no one reads it.

It helps, also, if Atrios or Kos reads your blog regularly they will occasionally mention a column and link to it. This means a lot to a blogger, as more hits means more influence, and even, perhaps, some money. I still remember when Atrios asked for a little help getting a laptop, and he raised $3600 on a couple of hours, and on top of that someone bought him the laptop he wanted. That kind of money would mean a lot to me, but even though I have been blogging for maybe three years now (if you include my former blog, Pax Liberalis), and have been doing internet radio for almost as long (both with the Joey Joe Joe Show and the Cup O' Joe Show, I don't get nearly the kind of attention these guys get. Of course I don't do the same things that they do, but still, I only get 60-80 hits a day. And if that sounds like whining, you're probably right. I have always had a problem with marketing myself, and it occasionally bugs me that I don't get more attention than I do. I admit that, because I don't think there's anything wrong with admitting that. I also admit that I'd get more hits if I spent damn near all day at the computer posting comments on these sites and drawing attention to myself, but when you work a regular job that involves leaving the house and not having access to a computer all day, the time to do that is simply not going to be there.

I am happy with the regulars who show up, especially the ones that comment: Vince, Steve, John, Adm. Howard, and even righties like Ross and my old nemesis BChan, they make the board a more interesting place. But I wish Atrios or Kos would drop in every now and then and highlight one of my articles. I mean I don't post as often as some but I have some damn good stuff here from time to time. And of course the radio show has a pretty good following as well. It would be nice if, instead of 60-80 hits a day I could get, oh, 600-800 hits a day. That would be cool. I have been thinking about how to go about doing that, and I have some ideas along those lines that I won't disclose publicly, but if anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to comment below.

And of course, it would still be nice if the big guys somehow read this thing once in a while. They might actually like it...

No New Show Sunday
Because of the events of the past few days I won't have a new show this Sunday. Show 53 will be done in time for Thursday.

Update
My wife is home from the hospital. She was hoping that, while she was there, she would be able to get some other health issues taken care of, but while her condition was stable, it was not quite ready to handle the surgeries she requires. Therefore they had to discharge her. She is in good health and hopefully she will be able to get the help she needs in the near future. Thanks to everyone who commented, emailed, and/or called to check on her condition.

Dear NY Times
Re: Rolling Down the Highway, Looking Out for Flawed Elections

To The Editors:
That Diebold (and other companies) have been marketing insecure software has been known to some of us for years. What we also know is that many of these companies are headed by people with strong ties to the Bush administration. Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," according to a fundrasing letter he sent to Ohio Republicans in August of 2003. But this news, which is certainly worthy of the front pages, has been either buried or outright ignored by the so-called "professional" media. Instead, amateur bloggers, maverick filmmakers, and devoted citizens like Ms. Harris are doing the job the Times and others should have been doing, and should be doing right now.

When "journalists" decide that gossip and sensationalism are more important than news that affects, not just the lives of Americans, but the lives of everyone in the world, then we all suffer. Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry will use the power of the Presidency to lead the country in very different directions, and the citizens of this nation deserve to be certain that the President is someone who was chosen by the voters, not by a hacker with a modem.

Joseph Vecchio

SpiderMan LEGO
Completely off-topic, unless you count the idea of how much work went into this. A LEGO Spider-Man battles a LEGO Doc Ock in a LEGO New York. Click any of the links below to see the movie...really high-quality stuff!

Small (56k) - Medium (100k) - Large (300k) - Full Screen (300k)

Update
The wife is still in the hospital and will likely remain there for a few days, maybe longer; they are still running tests, and she needs some surgery anyway, the idea is to get all that taken care of since she's in the hospital already. I plan on being there as much as I can, but unlike the last time, I won't be sleeping in the room with her: I have too much to do here and of course I have to go to work. While she was there, a hospital official helped re-submit the paperwork for her to get on disability, I hope that she is finally accepted, because frankly I don't think she's capable of working ever again: her heart in particular is not very good. But when she gets through all this, if she is finally accepted for disability it would mean money coming in which we desperately need, even at my salary we are having a tough time making ends meet.

Anyway I will try to post updates as often as I can, I am off work until Tuesday so I will have more time to post and maybe even get a show ready for Sunday, but we will see.

When It Rains, It Pours
So OK, I'm at work today, counting down the minutes so I can go visit my wife in the hospital. She's in a nice private room because it was the first one that became available. They still have some tests to run so they'll know more about her condition tomorrow. Anyway, 11 pm comes, the workday finally ends and I'm out the door as fast as I can go, only to find that my right front tire is flat. It had been a little low and I had just filled before I came in, now it was just plain flat. So I go put the donut on...I actually have two of them, so I figured I was well-covered. But the first one wasn't the right size for the rim, so I put the second one on, and start driving home...but thisdonut, I find out, is flat!

However, there is a BP station right there by my work so I drive up to the air pump only to find that the nozzle won't fit the valve on the donut. By now it's been a half an hour and I am royally pissed because I want to go visit my wife, who I haven't seen in like two days. My last hope is that there's just a slow leak in the tire somewhere and I figure I can go to the BP and get some of that flat fizer stuff and refill the tire and get the hell out of there...but then I find where the leak is...by the valve, something the flat fixer won't fix at all.

I go back to the shop, park the car in the lot (which thankfully is watched by security), go inside and call my wife to tell her I probably won't be coming over. I try to call AAA but since I'm not a member (I dropped my membership when I lost my other car, I hadn't had a chance to sign up for it yet) they can't do anything for me...I say I'll sign up again (I was planning on doing that anyway) but they have to call me back to do that and they can't, because the phone I'm using at work is part of a bank of phones they set up for the employees: you can call out but there's no numbers that I know of where you can call in. One of the supervisors gives me a cel phone number to use for them to call on, but it turns out that phone is dead. Finally he takes me to the office so I can use the phone there, which is one where you can call back on. But it's taking forever and I decide, screw it, I'm calling a cab, which I do. I leave the car in the Siemens parking lot (as I said, it's well-guarded) and I will attend to it tomorrow. Meantime I am out $20 for the cab ride home, and now I have to spend money on a tire, two tires actually so I can have a working spare. That means I have to hold off on rent (thankfully my landlord is the forgiving sort) but at least I can get this taken care of. And of course, I still haven't been to see my wife, though I can call her and talk to her on the phone.

This is the sort of shit those of us on the bottom have to deal with all the time: as soon as you get a little ahead something happens to clean you out again. Now I realize that money for a new tire doesn't seem like a whole lot, but to me it's a real pain in the ass because my budget is stretched as it is, even working a full-time job. But that's life for people like me. So my attitude is, spend what you have to spend to get back to where you were: money comes and goes, if you spend your life worrying about it it will just drive you crazy. And since I know for a fact that I am never going to have the kind of money where these sort of things either just don't happen or aren't such a financial disaster, I can just accept it and wait for the next disaster to occur.

But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Open Thread: Show 52
Listen here. Comment below. You heard me.

Personal News
My wife is in the hospital right now with an abnormally high cholesterol level. They are going to admit her so they can run some tests. As soon as she is admitted to a room I will be going to visit her. The last time she was in the hospital I was able to stay in the room with her, but that was a different hospital and I was unemployed then. Show 52 is almost done, so I will finish that off tonight and upload it so it will be available tomorrow, show 53 may be delayed depending on what happens with her. There will also be a lack of posts until the situation gets settled. Just so you all know.

Open Thread: Show 51
Listen here. Comment below. Have some ramen, it's good for you.

Hey
Anybody got a couple thousand bucks to spare? I don't need it for anything specific, just need to get caught up on rent and bills and stuff...Two, three thousand ought to do it. Thanks.