Healthcare

My first thought - fuck, TPM has big headlines - Senate Passes Healthcare, House to Adopt Senate Plan - fuck that!

The reason you get good language out of the House is so you can fight for a compromise in committee! This is the most progressive House we've had in quite a while, and their public option was good, and the funding was better, and were it the bill, I'd be thrilled.

But all this 'roll over' language, it was getting to me. And then good old Progressive Left Democrat himself, Markos Molitsas on the TV. And his message - keep fighting, heck ya!

Once we have a final bill, and things are set in stone, then we can re-examine that bill. But right now, things can still change. To stop fighting for that change, to me, is patently ridiculous.

Any positive change from here on out is going to be because we keep pushing from the left not because we say, "Good enough. Let’s pass it."

Hear, hear. I'ma call Ellison and McCullom and tell them to stand up for this. Ellison in particular should.

My amazing new avatar

This came from the Mariowiki, where it's someone's user ID.Here's the link.

Robocop's Vocals, Super Pain Ray, Pittsburgh G-20

This is fascinating - the robocop vocals. And the tweetling - is this going to be the audiotrack of the suppression of people's movements?

About the radicalizing right wing

Pandagon? Rocks when it's rocking like nothing. Great writing there. This one - Amanda Marcotte gets this shit backwards.

Here's a big clip. Go read the whole thing

The widespread unwillingness, particularly in the mainstream media, to accept that anti-choicers are rather mean-spirited right wing nuts has led to a disturbing unwillingness to label anti-choice terrorism as “terrorism”. It seems there’s a sense that the obsessiveness of anti-choicers should work to contain their anger and violence, so they only aim at sexually active women and those who provide them medical care---which shows how much our society still devalues women, but that’s a topic for another post. But right wing paranoias are rarely self-contained. People who come in because they’re obsessed with female sexuality are open to being paranoid about Islam, and people who turned into right wing nuts after 9/11 often find themselves slipping into anger over women’s rights, anger they may not have felt before.

There was a lot of hubbub over this guy who brought a ginormous gun to an Obama event, and now it turns out that he’s a member of this church that Pam’s been covering, a church where the pastor is an over-the-top homophobe who has preached that Obama should die. What I want to point out is that the violent rhetoric that drove this man to actually threaten the President with his big gun is very specifically anti-choice rhetoric:

.....you’re going to tell me that I’m supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things—you’re gonna tell me I’m supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he’s in Phoenix, Arizona?

Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.

The New Mob Order

After Bill Clinton was re-elected, American conservatives launched the impeachment campaign that tied up government for most of his second term. Now, with the town-hall meeting disruptions and campaigns like the 'birthers', American conservatives are trying to tie up Obama by destabilizing the rule of law.

Why is reining in bad practices of the insurance industry and cutting their profit margins for the purpose of public health something that triggers a neo-fascist conservative movement? Well, for no good reason at all.

As Hunter at Kos pointed out (commenting on a Ta-Nehisi Coates story)

Now, how it is that a healthcare reform debate has managed to raise a viciously angry, assertively fact-hostile and debate-hostile political climate that brings back national memories of American desegregation seems outright baffling. Except that many of the paranoid healthcare protestors are "teabaggers" as well, and many of those "teabaggers" are "birthers" besides, and the whole parcel is, from polling, clearly a fringe movement based most substantially in the southern states, the only remaining stronghold of the party that contains them. And -- there is no way around it -- America has just now elected the first black president.

The biggest log on the fire, and you can see it so clearly in the birthers - and my blog continues to get hits because I used these words in the title - is we elected a nigger president. (And about fucking time, if you ask me.) You see, the birthers have the idea that if they could only look at Obama's real birth certificate, they would discover that he's ineligible to hold the office of President on account of him being Black, and therefore only 3/5ths of a citizen. But not only is Obama a Negro, he's also smart, savvy, and about to make a level attempt to reign in the excesses of US Capitalism.

Which is the second log on the fire, which we see in the accusations of socialism. They're perfectly right, as are the birthers - Barack Obama's economic policies would, if carried out, somewhat diminish the vicious savaging of our throats (and the planet) by the piranha capitalists that have had the upper hand since Reagan. Since socialism is really defined as "Whatever the Rich Don't Want" I guess that setting up a low-overhead Muni Insurance shop is the equivalent of nationalizing pro sports.

So the racists and the rich get together and form an alliance, and the level of right-wing violence goes up, and the right-wing media aids and abets it, and they try to pre-empt us calling them fascists by calling US fascists.

I went back into the back catalog here because I was sure I'd written about this before. I went and found this, written on November 11 of last year, one week after the election. Fascism, Palin, and Right-Wing Paramilitaries: a glimpse of the near future. The basic thrust was that since they've lost control of the Presidency and the House and Senate, the conservatives will turn to extra-legal violence to gum things up.

Not to long ago, one of the fellows who would have been at one of these townhalls took himself out of the running. Jim Adkisson went out and shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee. When these folks in the townhalls just claim to be using their freedom of speech, while they prevent the democratic process from happening, think about this man's manifesto. This is from his 'suicide note'

Know This If Nothing Else

I: This was a hate crime
I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country and these liberals are working together to attack every decent and honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them.

II This was a Political Protest
I'm protesting the liberal Supreme Court Justices for give the terrorists at GITMO constitutional rights. I'm protesting the major news outlets, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS for being the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party. It's criminal what they're getting away with. They're traitors. They must be stopped. I'm protesting the DNC running such a radical leftist candidate. Osama Hussein OBama, yo mama. No experience, no brains, a joke. Dangerous to America. Hell, he looks like Curious George!

III This was as Symbolic Killing:
Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate, and house, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the Mainstream Media. But I knew these people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals and high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Some one had to get the ball rolling, I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It’s the only way we can rid America of this cancer, this pestilence!

Well, Jim, looks like you might have gotten that ball rolling.

Win the election for Paul Wellstone

I am happy and sad that Al Franken took the oath of office on Paul and Sheila Wellstone's bible.

The moment was the Wellstone memorial. The chapter in Frankens Lies and the Lying Liars about that event is perfect. Because the Coleman forces used their dirty tricks to smear the campaign of Senator Wellstone.

And thereby they benefited by Wellstone's death.

I think that the planecrash was sketchy as hell. Cold and quiet. Remote woods. The Wellstone campaign, starting to pull away after Paul took the risky vote against Bush's war. Remember, 2002 was the year that the invasion of Iraq saved the Republican's electoral bacon. The war was about to become bloody. The woods were bloody.

Norm Coleman benefited from the death of Paul Wellstone. Norm, who was beloved of Rove and Cheney. Cheney, who was spending a lot of time in those undisclosed locations. Doing what? Planning what? Pulling a Michelle Bachmann? "I'm not saying that Wellstone was assassinated, I'm just thinking someone should take a look..."

And so now Al used Paul's book to take the oath on.

I think it was magic today, magic that was connected to the debt of blood. The debt of blood that had stained Norm Coleman's senate seat, which is now Al Franken's. I think something is at rest now.

And just as Senator Coleman moved into Senator Wellstone's University Avenue office, Al Franken gets the fancy Washington Senate office they were holding for Coleman, on the off chance he would get the seat. So the perk that 'rising star' Coleman got now goes to the nice boy from Saint Louis Park who is Senator Al Franken. Good going, Al. We finally won the election for Paul Wellstone - it just took a while.

Icky Bill

This is an example of hatemongering propaganda.

Star Trek 2009 Part Two

Once again - this is full of spoilers. Beware!

CHARACTERS

Spock rocked. I think his character was far more the driver than Kirk's, and he got balls. Literally. I LOVE that he's Uhura's lover. His 'mother' moments were ehh, but overall the character who did the most growth and was generally the most compelling.

Kirk was fine. The role was pretty amusingly written, and the kid did fine at it. He was way more bloody than the original - that's the Dark Knight phenomenon - and I swear, he was hanging by the edge of a cliff so many times it's a motif. And if it's a homage to Kirk's kid hanging by the edge, or the I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU it wasn't that good. I thought he was too much of a horndog, but he was compelling a lot of times, looked amusing a lot of times, fit the role pretty well. I thought it was kinda lame to have him be in black the whole movie, basically. "It's like Kirk, but with a dark edgy edge!" "How we gonna do that?" "He'll wear... black!"

Uhura rocked. Hot, strong, making out with the Vulcan. Skilled. I might have missed something in the role, but I don't think it was misogynistic. I kind of think it was too bad they gave her long straight hair - like the recent post at Racialicous on Storm in the X-Men not being really black. There was a woman with the afro on the ship - they panned past her during combat; she had a command yellow uniform on. But the character was cool. I do wish she'd given the last punch at the bar fight scene when she and Kirk met.

Bones was bearable. He'd been written out of the canonical triumvirate in favor of Uhura, so he didn't get the same character development treatment and that was too bad. His delivery of the "I'm a Doctor, not a..." line was stilted, and when you make a movie, you can re-shoot the stilted lines until they get them right. The diseases stuff that got Kirk onto the Enterprise was funny, and he has a certain amount of hearty southern character.

Sulu for the win. The initial 'oops' moment was not so great, but the fencing was awesome. He wasn't Takei but he was Sulu, just as well as the new Spock was Spock. (A different Spock, however.)

Scotty? Well, he seemed way more Irish than Scottish to my ear, but that could have been because I don't know what lowland Scots sounds like. But I really liked this character A LOT. Like Spock, he'd been ret-conned, so he's not the very military engineer that James Doohan was. But cool. The 'you're a brilliant scientist' thing was awesome. BUT

The one amazing loser was the fucking midget. I apologize to midgets, and I liked the short nonverbal alien when the actor was acting the new Oompa Lumpas. BUT cute little characters like that are anathema. The "Beedee beedee" robot wasn't in Star Trek, he was in what - Buck Rodgers? This is the Ewok, this is the Jar-Jar. This is the marketable stuffed animal character so the under-six set has something to franchise to. That character alone was worth dropping to an A from an A+. (Or actually from an A- to a B+, because anything with a character like that won't be starting from an A+, because characters like that indicate an fundamental poor grasp on reality that would show in other areas as well.)

Whew.

Who am I missing? Chekov. My sweetie didn't remember Chekov from the original show, and this ret-con didn't work nearly as well. "We'll make him an idiot savant, brilliant kid, who's like a Russian chess genius. And he'll talk in an accent." OK - do you do any backstory on this? No - one is left to fill in the blanks. The scene where the voice recognition can't understand him was lame - see continuity errors.

Sarek: Very good. Of course, all you have to do is be stoic for a Vulcan, but you can do it with dynamism or not. Dynamic Sarek.

Spock's Mom: Uhhh - nice tit shelf? Sorry, the tit shelf really distracts. I guess she was Winona Ryder, whatever. Did a 1.5 dimensional job of playing her 1.5 dimensional character.

Captain Pike - good! As someone said - he looks like he should, from the Menagerie. And he gets old. And the final handshake has him in vintage old-skool Federation arm sleeve rank stuff. Except the fan service with the 'creeeeture in his boooody' was lame, and he spent the last chunk all tied up. That he's in the show, however, and does a decent job makes him a plus overall in the 'respect the source material' category.

Romulans: Fail. Sorry, just that. Fail. Orc ears, orc tattoos, orc tech, scary alien orc ship (how that was a practical mining ship is beyond me) and Nero? Good ranting, you're no Khan, it's not your fault they made you the Space Orcs.

More: Plot and stuff. Including list of stupid things.

Star Trek 2009 Part One

For those of you who get this in RSS - this is full of spoilers. Turn back now!

Saw the new Star Trek movie last night, and I wanted to write about it.

Dude, that was sooo cool!

Also - letter grade bobbing between a B+ and an A-. Definitely in the 'Pay full price for it' category - as a matter of fact, pay an extra buck for the Ultrascreen.

So I absolutely loved it, even when it bothered me, and I came away feeling great! Seriously, this movie invoked such a sense for me of the positive, of the crazy utopian post-capitalist integrated society of the United Federation of Planets - it put a spring in my step! Serious.

In the intervening time since walking out - floating out awash in positive endorphins - I've had to come face to face with some stuff. Like the fact that there were really quite some starship-sized holes in the reality, which is always a problem with action-adventure genre movies. The big stupid things like basic physics being ignored, inconsistencies from one minute to the next, stuff like that. And I'll be listing them, see if I don't.

But this is mythic territory. In my grading, I had to admit that I had a full possible letter grade of 'fanboy' that I could give this movie, depending on how well they serviced my fanboy-ness. And in this case, they'd already signaled that they would be changing the reality some, so not to expect full continuity. (The geek term for this is ret-conning, or retroactively altering the continuity of the world.) So if they did well by the source material, a full letter grade boost; if they did poorly, possible minuses.

And, frankly, the original was a three season TV show, with some good writing, some so-so writing, some simple hammy acting doing some simple morality play SF stuff. They do get props for first interracial kiss, that's fine. And they had the liberal utopian stuff I refered to earlier.

The movie also suffers from the Dark Knight phenomenon, which also befell Lord of the Rings. By this I mean the good guys are less good and the bad guys are twice as bad and three times as violent. I attribute this to the long brutal years of Bush, the torture and the warlike nature. Hopefully this will be less the case in coming years, but both of these adaptations feel a need to take the good guys and 'show the bad side' and then to EXXTREME the baddies. However...

Next chapter: Characters

The Field Negro

BitchPhD, where I've guest posted, has got some good race discussions. The reminded me lately of a blogger - the FIELD NEGRO - from who I ripped the following. Amazing.

Monday, May 11, 2009

I will take Rush over the black guy.

"Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh, I think,"..." I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

That was the devil himself disguised as an old white man named Dick Cheney. He was telling CBS News and anyone who would listen that he would rather have a fat drug addicted [alleged]pedophile in his party, than a genuine "American hero", Colin Powell. Wow!

Now I am no political expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I am guessing that if you asked most A-murder-cans who they would trust more to be their leader, they would say the good general and not anyone from the new "axis of evil"; Cheney,Rush, and Newt. Just a thought.