De-Funked

As they said in one of the Portlandia out-takes, Mo Comment is Over!

Once upon a time, I had this blog called Mojourner Truth, and it grew so eclectic that I figgered it should spin apart, fling itself in various more cohesive directions. I knew at the time that some would work, and some would not. Bombastic though I am, there is not enough energy in me to maintain frequent posting at a food blog, a place blog, a culture blog, an urban homestead blog, and maybe a blog or two that never even got out of my skull-space. Politics being a sporadic but constant (an archaeologist's view of time permits such paradox) obsession of mine, it only makes sense to fold it back into the mothership. 

Besides, nobody was looking at this. Nobody wants a diatribe procrastinated in our modern instamatic news cycle. In fact, why the hell are you here? How stale is this post anyway? Turning up here is a cry for help, a sign that you need an intervention. Leave now.

Stripped Constitution: The SCOTUS Scrotum Decision

For what may be the first time, I find myself siding with a BMW owner,...and dealer,...from New Jersey. The endtimes may indeed be near.

What could trigger this? The Supreme Court of the United States yesterday handed down it's decision on a case brought by a man who thought it was unreasonable that the jail he was brought to, having been mistakenly arrested for a long-since paid court fee,* subjected him to repeated strip searches.

Did that last sentence in the footnote get your attention? Elsewhere, the Post is wagging an allegedly liberal finger at Pat Buchanan for saying it's OK to be wary of (and, it follows, to shoot) black guys in hoodies, but here, there's no mention that the victim of an unreasonable search is black until deep into the story. Of course. But my topic lies elsewhere today, so the sad routine of racism in our country once again gets passed over.

Back in the hallowed halls of justice, a 5-to-4 majority figured that it is perfectly acceptable to require strip searches. Anyone entering the general population of any correctional facility can be required to lift his balls, spread ass, and turn around. I do not know whether the decisions specify whether a warden can issue the "spread your vagina" command, but it sounds like it, as long as he obeys the letter of the law and looks but doesn't touch. This happens to be the same rule that governs strip clubs, and one wonders where the 5 gentlemen in the majority derived this theory.

I jest, and am further tempted to riff on the Teabag Party-ish decision in a case featuring a nutsack. But the ongoing erosion of the right against unreasonable search and seizure is dead serious. During the Bush II administration, the assault personal liberty bulled through the china shop of our Constitution, and thus far Obama has showed little will to do more than sweep the shards out of sight. The narrow majority imposing the legal theory that it is reasonable to strip search everybody, to have them pose and manipulate genitals, that majority relied on Bush appointees.

Who offered Anthony Kennedy (so often termed the "swing-vote" because a Reagan-appointed conservative seems so liberal these days) as the front man to write the main decision. We are sufficiently deep into this post now that I may reveal the buried lead: the rationale for this decision has more to do with the profit motive of privatized government functions than just about anything else. The expansion of State power here is fairly minor compared to what they already get by with.

Kennedy reasons that with 13 million or so people arrested in this country every year (eat yer heart out, Stalin), "unreasonable" refers not to the strip-tease search, but to the expectation that a correctional facility might have to slow down processing to exercise judgement. Yes, this will apply to the remaining government-run jails and prisons (who, after years of massive cuts in public sector spending may see some benefit in streamlining), but this decision is the spawn of the prison industrial complex. Wherever there are efficiencies to be gained, such as avoiding dependence on a minimally-compensated guard to discern between gang-bangers and first-timers, there is profit to be made (and maybe some side money on the strip search videos for entrepreneurial guards). Small perhaps, but in economies of scale it still matters. If the Bill of Rights obstructs such rationalization, it should be pared back. Ergo Kennedy's bizarre reversal of whose "unreasonable" holds sway.

I am just a citizen, and you may be one too. Not so long ago, we had a right to expect that even if the police had an interest in us, they needed things like warrants, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion to listen to our private conversations, open our mail, or search our persons. No more. The State (or in its stead, a corporate employee) can do everything short of entering my ass and yours. Poindexter may have been briefly chided, but the NSA taps all telephone and computer communication on the off chance it may turn up something, sorta like Google. The post-911 reality is that based on intrusions considered unconstitutional for two centuries, any of us can be disappeared into a federal or corporate or third-country cell and never be heard from again. I wish this were hyperbole, but it it not. At most, it is unfulfilled potential. And with Dick Cheney still eligible for the presidency and in possession of a new ticker, that's some scary potential.

Until such time as all dissenters get the Gitmo treatment, our main worry is that we become profit generators for the prisons. Like maybe the repeated food-thief who gets a lengthy third-strike sentence. Or the mentally ill guy shunted from now-defunct public sector services to incarceration. Or a woman with a "marijuana joint" doing time due to our modern Prohibition, which is seen as pointless and unsupportable even by conservatives like Pat Robertson. I cite him not because I respect his opinion, but because it is instructive that not even a guy who will argue that disasters are his god's wrath over gayness wants to try and make sense of the war on drugs. Pat doesn't seem to understand the primacy of profit, or else he'd see that that war on drugs makes perfect sense if you run a prison corporation.

So here I am, taking sides with a BMW guy and a televangelist. Strange world. A world in which a guy can be locked up for seven days on a demonstrably false charge, and file suit about having had his sub-scrotal region examined (the week in jail for no reason being so routine for a black man these days that is passes without remark). And lose the case. A world in which I am a little scared to type musings that an Obama re-election could switch the balance of the Supreme Court, lest Echelon or Carnivore or whatever the new system is decide to get Mo to Gitmo. But I did. Next year I may not have that freedom.


* From the Washington Post story:
"He spent seven days in jail because of a warrant that said, mistakenly, that he was wanted for not paying a court fine. In fact, he had proof that the fine had been paid years earlier; he said he carried it in his glove box because he believed that police were suspicious of black men who drove nice cars."

Hope(?)

At first, the news looked stunningly hopeful, a sign perhaps that Americans are not as angry and mean as their representatives seem to be.

As is often the case, this breath of sane humane politics emanates from Elizabeth Warren. She is running for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts against it's partial-term incumbent, male model Scott Brown. Against all odds, the two agreed to limit negative and attack ads in the campaign by pledging to pay penalties when organizations produce such ads. When a PAC attacks, it's favored candidate pays a price; it's a classic case of economic disincentive for bad behavior.

This week, Brown agreed to pay $1,000 dollars in penalty for an American Petroleum Institute ad. His campaign said that the ad did not really fit the criteria of the agreement, but that they would pay anyway. Before you give them too much of a pat on the back, remember that a kilobuck cannot possibly be half the value of an ad campaign in the Boston media market. But, it's something.

Cause for hope, even.

But perhaps an even more heavily discounted hope than Brown's penalty. The story was carried in the Washington Post (really, right here), where more than a few political junkies are known to congregate. Sadly, two days after it was posted, the story had garnered just 12 comments. This in a paper whose political articles often get thousands of comments.

Apparently, a story about civil discourse is not so inspiring. In a nation with over 100,000,000 people eligible to vote, a story about a breakthrough in politics got a dozen comments. From 8 individuals. Four of the comments are a peripheral argument about corporate personhood. This is closer to the level of interest appropriate to this blog, not a major international news outlet, the paper of record in our nation's capital.

But, I remain hopeful. The stories that get thousands of comments--were you to weed out the diatribes--may not get all that much more attention. Go the the article (click here if you are up-scroll averse), and give hope a chance with your comment, your tweet, your like, your digg, whatever it is you use to applaud. Give hope a chance.

TransVirginianal Talibaptists

I used to half-jokingly say that my move to Olympia was by way of seeking political asylum. But seeing as I came from Virginia, it is no joke.

It was bad enough that the district I left if represented in the US Congress by that hateful conniver Cantor, but the subsequent complete Republican domination of the state legislature--the oldest instrument of democracy in the country--has resulted in a frightening Talibaptist regime that threatens liberty to a degree that would have had the exalted founding fathers up in arms.

This week's news is that the Governor urged his party to back off a bill requiring ultrasound and a waiting period for anyone seeking an abortion. This happened only after protests in the capital city, as well as shock, ridicule, and criticism nationwide. More to the point, it happened after the Gov realized it could hurt his vice-presidential aspirations.

Because even in the Old Dominion, it turns out that state-sponsored rape is not easy to defend.

Rape? Too strong a language, some say, including the embattled Democratic minority in the Virginia legislature. When a medical professional in their midst looked at the bill and thought that the only way to fulfill it's requirements was to insert the ultrasound probe into a woman's vagina, he raised objections obliquely, as this snippet from the Washington Post* describes:

Northam consulted with medical experts, who confirmed that a vaginal probe would be needed in the early stages of pregnancy.

So when the measure came up for a vote in the Senate on Jan. 31, Barker and Northam raised the issue during the floor debate — but delicately. They used the words “transvaginal” and “internal.” But they didn’t use startling terms such as “vaginal penetration” and “state-sponsored rape,” which eventually came to dominate the debate.

Mindful of the teenage Senate pages sitting in the chamber, Barker said, they wanted to be sensitive with their language.

Yes, by all means, protect those tender ears. Let them find out later when they try to terminate the bastard child of some Family Values Republican senator who fucked them. The fact is, the bill would force a woman to have a foreign object inserted into her vagina, whether she wants it or not, simply because she wanted a legal medical procedure.

It took a woman in the legislature to acknowledge the tyranny, and to propose that it be administered fairly across gender lines. (Because that's how deep the problem is in the Commonwealth, that the fix to injustice is to broaden its scope. I know she was trying to highlight absurdity, but what if the amendment had passed, would women be any better off?). Here's more from the Post:

Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) certainly got the point. In an effort to highlight what she considered a gross personal intrusion, she proposed an amendment requiring that men get a rectal exam.

“Prior to prescribing medication for erectile dysfunction, a physician shall perform a digital rectal examination and a cardiac stress test,” declared the amendment, which the Senate clerk read aloud on the floor.

The amendment failed, and the ultrasound billed passed. McDonnell, in a break from his usual practice, announced that day that he would sign the legislation.

So yeah, that's what it has come to in the state where religious freedom and the Bill of Rights began. McDonnell has backtracked, at least as long as his name is bandied about as a potential running mate to Romney. If Santorum wins, though, he may be able to once again support state-mandated rape.

Oops. I said the R-word again. Can I not euphemize with "trans-vaginal," or some other sterilized substitute?

No. If there were some medical necessity, I would not object to legal requirement of a particular procedure, like making surgeons wash their and and use sterilized instruments when cutting someone open. (Ironically, there are those in the religious right who object to forcing true believers to avail their unsuspecting kids of medical technology, but I digress.) But there is no medical necessity here, and furthermore the zealous foes of abortion would happily outlaw the procedure even when it safeguards a mother's life. A woman may want to terminate a pregnancy brought on by rape, but she would have to be violated again. A woman may recognize that she cannot give the child a decent life, that it may be born addicted to drugs, that it is likely to end up a ward of the state, or homeless, or incarcerated, but she would still be forced to go through this humiliation.

Freedom-loving Americans seemed outraged when an Egyptian woman, detained by the military there, was forced to undergo an intrusive "virginity test," recognizing it as a thinly veiled rape. But even there, in a country dominated by a religion we like to think is more unjust to women than Christianity, the courts spoke firmly and directly against such assaults. It makes me sad that in the state where I was born, Talibaptists are not even satisfied to not just let such a heinous violation occur in some rogue facility, but demand that it be the law of the land.

The Virginia Republicans appear to have backed off for the moment (the more aware among the caucus appear embarrassed by the bill), and have even temporarily abandoned their quest to bestow life-protecting "personhood" on a fertilized zygote, but it's hard to believe that they will give up. Lost in the reporting, which focuses on omission of the rape clause, is the fact that while women will now be able to refuse the rape, they must still undergo the ultrasound and the waiting period, this despite the fact that most citizens of the state are against the bill. In the end, the state is still mandating a medical procedure (but will not pay for it), even though the professionals say that the "jelly on the belly" ultrasound cannot achieve the legislated aim (determining gestational age) early in a pregnancy.

But pay no mind; the more deluded and coercive the Righteousness, the more persistent it is. They will continue pushing, sure that while it is OK to send people to war and death row, the Right to Life justifies any means. Should they ever erode the right to personal reproductive choice so completely as to prevent abortion, they will move on to other tyrannies. Tragically, "Sic Semper Tyrannis" has become a sick joke. I only hope that enough Virginians who cherish freedom have not joined the diaspora, and will keep these tyrants in check.

* Yes, Virginia, I know, the Post is a liberal rag unworthy of reading. But I tried to look this up in the Richmond Times Dispatch and got tired of waiting as an ad site loaded. I will admit that the Post, like so many alleged news organizations these days, spent most of its time talking about perceptions, and linking to comedy skits, rather than examining the nitty gritty, or at least, as Mencken advised, afflicting the comfortable.

The Square Root of Rubiks Cube

Two-thirds of my life ago, halfway through high school, people started showing up with a cube, each side a nine-square array of a single color. Or at least, that's how it looked when you bought it. The sub-cubes moved, and the aim was to have it scrambled, then work your way back to one color per side. There are about 43.25 quintillion positions possible, so getting there by randumb luck could take a while, so the toy appealed mostly to puzzlers.

At least initially, but upon entering the American market, the company that licensed it of course wanted it to be the next Big Thing, the toy hit of the early '80s. And for that to happen, it should not test consumers' patience or make them feel like idiots. And so began the stupidification of the Rubik's Cube.

I had a friend who had the Cube. No rube was he, but also not a genius, or even especially dedicated. He was, however clever enough to want to look smart, aware enough to know that there was a book that explained how to solve the cube, and rich enough to buy said book. (I should explain to the kids that there was no internet in that benighted decade--books were how we learned back then.)

Scads of cads bought the book, then showed up and showed off how quickly they could "solve" the cube. Soon enough, even the half-bright denizens of the high school halls knew that these charlatans were just going buy the book, and were nothing special. But Americans with money will not be written off lightly, and when fake-solving the cube did not prove impressive, rubbed others' noses in their impecuniousness. Solving the cube through wits alone was a sign of poverty. I kid you not.

The Rubik's Cube became a tool for showing off on a grander scale as well. Tournaments were organized. The joy of solo solution gave way to speed. America's capitalists took pride in the fact that despite it's invention by a commie, it took the U S of A to turn it into a blockbuster. Erno Rubik was from Hungary, but the name sounded Russki to most Americans, and the few who knew better congratulated themselves that Hungarians worshiped blue-jeans and would have gladly thrown off the Soviet yoke given the chance (or, given the US military support that had been implied when they actually did attempt rebellion, but that's another story). By and large, though, it felt like an appropriation of Eastern science for Western profit, which during the Cold Ware conjured a victory on par with our scoring the Soviet-effacing humor of Jakov Smirnoff. Which again, is not a joke.

So the Rubik's Cube became the Big Thing, until it was supplanted by Cabbage Patch Dolls or something equally brilliant. Wikipedia claims it was advertized as having "billions of positions," which is both 10 orders of magnitude too small and completely reasonable, given the target audience's sub-Soviet numeracy and enthrallment with Carl Sagan. It didn't matter how many positions the damned thing could take, since people tended to go buy the book or toss it into the oblivion drawer.

Meanwhile, the un-square had moved on to something more interesting.

I Like Ike (tax-wise, anyway)

The reward I get for stopping to do some research is that not only do I get side-tracked and write other posts, but the one I put aside gets buried. So here's a mid-January post to tell you about a post that I just finished, but which blogger puts back in early December, when I started it.

The post is called "I Like Ike," and is about the sad fact that over time, GOP administrations look better and better, as each new one sinks lower and lower.

It's filed back here.

Golf and the Gulf

Yesterday, the news was abuzz with Mitt Romney's latest gaffe. He was talking about how much he loves firing people. What he meant was that people should get to choose their health insurance provider, but coming from a guy who made a lot of money buying companies, gutting them, and sending jobs overseas, it was a stupid thing to say. His competition, including the smarter of the Mormons running for the GOP nomination, is already using these words against him.

Personally, though, I found another comment of his more irritating, without even taking it out of context:

"[Obama] set the bogey for himself. He said, look, I'm going to borrow $787 billion and I'm going to get the economy going and keep unemployment below 8 percent." (January 9, 2011, campaigning in New Hampshire, copied from NPR transcript)

Yep, "set the bogey." Mitt being Mitt, this had nothing to do with Mitsubishi or Messerschmidt fighters bearing down on him; he was breaking out in golf-speak, the language of the 1%. Maybe New Hampshire voters are into that, but I kinda doubt it. Golf is the game of the elite, the milieu that replaced smoke-filled rooms several decades ago, the alleged sport that requires the least effort possible, and comes with servants. Rich guys tooling around in carts, quaffing beverages, telling stupid jokes, and generally enjoying themselves while the masses are kept safely outside the club. Golf was the last sport to allow non-whites to participate, and country clubs centered on golf remain to this day places teeming with the melanin-poor and asset-rich.

To use golf metaphors is to reveal oneself as out of touch with the vast majority of voters, clueless and heartless. To characterize the fraction of Great Recession federal spending that most directly benefited the working people of this nation as a handicap ('bogey' means being one step behind the pace, in case you are one of the 250,000,000 or so people in the US who does not know what it means) betrays Romney's rich-boy prejudice. A trillion dollars to bail out Wall Street? Not a problem. Many more trillions in low and no-interest loans to major financial institutions (who somehow failed to pass it along)? Sound policy, nothing for a financier to complain about. But Obama getting a sub-trillion amount to build roads (roughly half what economists said it would take, but better than nothing), fix schools, and pay public sector workers? That's a loss in Mitt's book.

Nobody else seems to have taken note. Golf is so accepted a form of social intercourse in the beltway that the politicians don't recognize any problem. The main media see the game as a chance to get off-the-record candor. The lobbyists and corporations that benefit from the vast majority of federal spending rely on golf outings in exotic and exclusive locales as tools of the trade (no welfare moms get to take Obama out for a round and pitch the case for aid).

So Mitt, keep talking golf. Let your words speak of the gulf between you and We the People.