Clouds of Illusion

14. September 2009 · Comments Off on Clouds of Illusion · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

I am amused to note a lot of amusing new and old media fall-out, after the massive Tea-party inspired rally on the Mall on Saturday – which, depending on which media outlet and which political orientation you read – may have been as many as two million people or just one or two of them walking a million times around the Capitol Building. They were all carrying Nazi symbols, and Confederate banners and getting their hate on, according to some of the more … ahem … outspoken commentators, such as this one, whose illustration for his post takes the absolute cake for condescension and arrogance … although apparently, the Tea Partiers did pick up the trash when they were done, for which I think they ought to get some credit. And no, I didn’t read much past the ‘teabagger’ reference in the linked column. That’s according to my new principle of considering that as akin to the n-word. This Daggatt person is supposed to be “a meticulous political blogger” according to David Brin’s blog at Open Salon, and offer a “ a truly excellent appraisal.” Yeah, that David Brin. Guess he doesn’t get out all that much.

Quite honestly, I am left shaking my head in weary disbelief, reading the picture that is painted of the Tea Party and conservatives/libertarians in general on the leftist blogs and media – in a similar way that I used to be shaking my head at the portrayal of the military, in similar venues. People would write the most astonishing things, insist that every word was true, and the most horrible things were going on in the military – and couldn’t accept that what they were saying wasn’t anything like the military that I actually lived in. You’d think that a military veteran and someone active in the Tea Party would have some credibility with them, for … you know, actually being there, and being able to speak with authority regarding their particular concern … but no. Their minds were already made up – and who should I believe, them or my lying eyes?

Coincidentally, there is another ruckus brewing – fortunately this involves Hollywood and it’s not Kanye West, so it’s fairly minor, rating only a long and amusing thread at John Scalzi’s Whatever. Apparently the pearls are being clutched, over the inability of this film to find an American distributor because – get this! Those fundamentalist American yahoos are just so anti-the-teaching-of evolution that no one will touch a costume drama about Charles Darwin with a ten-foot pole. Oh, spare me the attack of the vapors, people – the grownups in this country who eschew Michael Bay and all his works and his ways eat up this high-toned, historical costume-drama Merchant Ivory stuff as if it were a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and don’t you even try telling me otherwise.

See, both these parties appear to have something in common – besides a stratospherically high estimation of their own superiority – and that is, they think they know something, and everything they read, hear on TV, and at cocktail party chit-chat with their friends all reinforces that thing that they think they know. The producers of “Creation” – or more likely, the marketing guru who they have hired to gin up some controversy, attract some attention, and with luck, snag an American distribution deal, all know that Americans (to quote the acerbic Mr. Scalzi) are knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Creationists. All nice, creative, brilliant and witty Brits know this, and they know this because they read it in their newspapers and hear it on the BBC, and all their nice, creative, brilliant and witty friends say so.

And so it is also with our very own dear media and intellectual elite: they just know that the Tea Party folks are ignorant, racist, knuckle-dragging hicks, who are puppets of (pick one or all) Fox TV, the Republican Party, or the insurance industry, because all the very best people say so, and really … the New York Times say so, and so does NPR. Well, there you go. I think that what these people have done is to create a simulacrum in their own minds of what an American is, or a semi-libertarian conservative Constitutionalist is, which has some tiny and almost coincidental resemblance to what they are, really … and for one reason or another, it’s just easier, or more comforting to believe in the simulacrum.

Well, it’s kinder than thinking they are all just nucking futs, which was my first reaction. Hey, I at least did the courtesy of at least trying to be understanding. I live to serve, people.

A Cold Civil War

10. September 2009 · Comments Off on A Cold Civil War · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Politics, War, World

I can’t remember where the concept was first bruited about – someone else’s blog, probably one of the radical non-ranting centrists like the Belmont Club, Neo-Neocon, James Lileks, or Classical Values. To be honest I have as much of a bad memory for where I read about something or other as I do a dislike for crazy rants, name-calling, straw-man construction and other social ruderies. I’d prefer to hang out, on line and in the real world with thoughtful, fairly logical people, people who can defend their opinion with a carefully constructed arguments and real-life examples and/or references. In short, I’d prefer the company of people who don’t go ape-s**t when another person’s opinion or take on some great matter differs from their own. Well-adjusted grownups, in other words – who are comfortable with the existence of contrary opinion – and do not feel the need to go all wild-eyed, and start flinging the epithets like a howler-monkey flinging poo.

So it’s not like I ever went out there looking for insane levels of contention in venues like the Daily Kos, or the Huffington Post, or conversely, Michelle Malkin, or Kim du Toit. That kind of partisan-ship on both sides … well, it just wasn’t me, I’m not particularly confrontational, I have a real life, and many other interests besides politics, and the Tea Party. I also write a lot, I do a non-political blog at Open Salon, and at TheDeeping, market my books, manage some websites and work for the Watercress Press … and all sorts of other stuff, some of it among people who do not share very much of my political opinions, such as they are. Which, inter alia, according to the last couple of surveys I participated in, put me in as tending toward towards the libertarian: strict constitutionalist, fiscal conservative, guardedly social liberal – look, I haven’t cared for decades what consenting adults do in private, just don’t be doing it in the road and frightening the horses. And you kids – get off my lawn! As regards foreign policy, I’m an unreconstructed Jacksonian, mostly because I’ve read enough history to be fairly clear-eyed about the power of national leaders, city-states and mass-movements of people over the long haul of history. What they are capable of doing, they eventually will do – as the Melians discovered of the Athenians. I believe more in the unspoken power of the community to enforce standards of behavior and decorum, rather than written ordinance, I believe in keeping things simple and uncomplicated. I believe that the United States is a pretty radical construct, almost unique among nations as a Republic, that the Founding Fathers put together an amazing document, and one which ought not to be amended or revised for petty reasons and partisan advantage. I also thought Sara Palin was a good choice for V-P, and that she was a pretty straight-up politician, and the citizens of Alaska had shown pretty good sense in electing her for a governor.

And for these opinions, over the last five months, I have been called a liar, a racist and the next thing to a Nazi, either directly on Open Salon, and Facebook, or indirectly in comments there and elsewhere. It’s getting just a bit wearisome, guarding what I write, biting my tongue, and considering what I may say and to whom, lest what I say set off some horrible diatribe from someone I have heretofore considered at least a friend, in person or on-line. Really, I don’t go looking for knock-down, drag-out confrontations, and if people want to believe three impossible things before breakfast, it’s no skin off mine, as I am pretty sure that it would be a waste of breath using logic to talk people out of a belief that logic never put them into. I had just expected better from the people I had chosen to hang around with, in the real world and on-line.

It’s also getting a bit frightening, seeing all this anger indiscriminately being unleashed among people who weren’t particularly confrontational all along, and to realize how terribly polarized a lot of places and spaces are becoming, fractured along red-state, blue-state lines, along statist and constitutionalist lines, and between people who bitched about government busy-bodies poking their noses into everything and the people who bitched about how there ought to be a law. Historically, it puts me in mind of the period just before the Civil War, when feelings about abolition and secession ran so very hot and high that ordinary citizens on either side of the issues could hardly have a conversation about it, each assuming the worst of the other. And then there came a point when there was no more talking – and it ripped our country apart for five bloody years, and set sullen resentments on the Southern side which simmered for a hundred years and more.

When I first came across the “cold civil war” phrase, all these months ago, I thought it sounded like an exaggeration, like the start of some inter-blog flame war, which would engage the participants as passionately as the North and the South, and amuse (or appall) the rest of us for a couple of weeks. But over and over again, the free-floating anger keeps breaking out in the real world. Early this spring, I repeated a joke to another lady in my Red Hat circle, but we were in a restaurant – and I looked around quickly, to see who was within earshot, and lowered my voice so that no one beyond our table could hear. This was a small thing, maybe even a little stupid – but a cold civil war is made up of small and stupid things. Having an old co-blogger call you a racist, being reluctant to put a bumper-sticker on your car, knowing that friends who still work for the DOD are keeping their heads down and their mouths closed, for fear of repercussions on the job, and being very, very careful in casual conversations … no, not an exaggeration any more. Just a cold, cold civil war reality.

(Regular Commenter Al, from across the pond, had this to say – sorry got caught up in the spam-torrent:

But then…the cries of “socialism” are name-calling on the side from which they’re made, are they not?

Obama is, as I understand it, a socialist / communist / terrorist / black supremacist for passing one piece of $1tn legislation (the bailout) and trying to pass another (the health thing). Both real numbers are lower, but let’s call it $2tn for now.

His predecessor, on the other hand, invaded a country which posed no threat and had nothing to do with what should have been his #1 job (catching Bin Laden) and, in the process, killed off more Americans than Bin Laden had and landed the US taxpayer with a bill estimated at $2tn (including long-term healthcare for those wounded).

So…how come one’s a patriot / hero / statesman and Obama’s the opposite for trying to fix the economy and the fact that Americans pay twice as much for healthcare as other civilised countries but get the same results? And why do I see right-wingers talking about taking up arms as a result? It all seems a bit deluded to me, if I’m honest, so if I’m missing something…

My response is: Well, if your source is the BBC, no wonder you are a bit perplexed about all this… and it’s not about the war, Al. Everything is NOT ABOUT THE WAR!”

On the Uses of Certain Epithets

30. August 2009 · Comments Off on On the Uses of Certain Epithets · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Tea Time

So, I’d put it out there that a liberal commenting on the Tea Parties, or hoping to have some sort of dialogue with a member of a Tea Party, and using the derisive term “tea-bagger” is rather like a white racist using the word “ni**er” in reference to a discussion on civil rights.

Discuss.

Talking about the C-C-Camelot Generation

29. August 2009 · Comments Off on Talking about the C-C-Camelot Generation · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Good God, History, Politics

The title of this post really should read “Talkin’ ’bout the C-C-Camelot Generation” but unusual punctuation in the title freaks out the whole entry, and prevents anyone posting comments.

No – for whatever reason, I was never much enamored of the Kennedy clan, all their works and all their ways, even during the so-called Golden Age of Camelot. Blame it on Mom and Dad, who were moderate Republicans at the time, and politically aware, if not particularly active. Blame it on the fact that we weren’t big TV-watchers, in any sense of the word, blame it on the fact that generally we were resistant to going along with the flow: no, we were never spectacularly non-conformist, we just dug in our heels whenever everyone else seemed to be urging us to go along with the flow. In the words of Granny Jessie, “Would you be jumping off a cliff, if everyone else were doing it?”

Whatever the appeal of Camelot was, perhaps we just had a sense that it was glamour, in the old sense of the word, of a fair appearance created by a magic spell, of something shimmering and marvelous in appearance, cast over an unappealing, and even ugly reality, something tinsel and fake, manufactured by experts to beguile the susceptible. And so it eventually turned out to be, as the spell faded and more and more of the ugliness began to show. The Kennedys were, in the words of P.J. O’Rourke, just a rich, bad, arrogant family who thought the world would be a much better place if only they were in charge – and they ought to be in charge, of course, because they were so handsome, rich and clever. But overweening pride – or hubris, as the ancient Greeks used to call it – leads the proud to their own downfall, and so we have been watching the Kennedy drama unfold for the last forty years or so. Sophocles couldn’t have done any better, although I think only one of those spectacularly overwrought and multi-generational telenovelas could have done the Kennedy saga true justice, in every twist and turn – of trials, divorces, and sudden deaths, dizzying ascents, and the sudden hand of tragedy sweeping the chessboard, of lackeys and lick-spittle toadies, death in war, in accidents and by assassin, sex and drunkenness, dirty political deals and corruption, of unspeakable heartbreak and infidelity, of behaving like a drunken lecherous boor in public or in semi-public, and yet being able to a compliant press draw a nice tidy veil over it. It is the stuff of soap operas, to have a have a daughter with emotional or developmental problems lobotomized and ‘disappeared’ for decades, to have cavorted with movie stars, relatives by marriage, and campaign volunteers, flirted with Nazis in the days when it was (barely) politically possible to do business with Herr Hitler, to have contributed to organizations underwriting terrorism in Northern Ireland, and to walk away from an auto-wreck leaving another human being to drown.

This weekend, the regular media are full of elegies for Camelot, and the last and least of the sons of Old Joe Kennedy, who groomed them all with brutal energy to assume the highest offices in the land, but never got farther than a comfortable berth in the most exclusive gentleman’s club in the land. And so the story has come full-circle, the spell of glamour – if not broken – at least in tattered and unconvincing shreds. As hard as the Kennedy machine, and the Kennedy magic could work, they never managed to pull him much farther than that – and one senses the wheels and gears within are about stripped. The generations of Kennedys following after have barely managed to accomplish even that: not even Caroline Kennedy could talk herself into assuming a vacant seat, not after coming off like a ditzy East-coast Valley girl in television interviews. I think my last word on Ted Kennedy would be what I wrote in a comment at Chicagoboyz last week –

“That’s the failing that people – across the board, politically – can never forgive. Not so much because his initial actions, his drunkenness and stupidity put his car off the road in a relatively shallow body of water – it’s because he panicked, and thought only of himself.
And if he had any scrap of self-awareness, any sense of the obligations that are due from anyone who has a pretense of calling themselves a responsible human being, he wouldn’t have been in the position that he has been, ever since that fatal night.
He must lived the rest of his life knowing that if he had only thought heroically, thought of someone else besides himself, been a sensible, sober and responsible human being – gone to the nearest house and called for help – she might have been rescued in time. He might have been able to live down the temporary embarrassment, had a heck of a lot to explain the next morning but … He was a Kennedy, and one of those-so-called charismatic Kennedy-generation Kennedys, after all, of whom much is expected and a lot forgiven – but no. He thought first, foremost and always of himself, drunk and sober.
What we want, I think, of our politicians, is that they at least make a good pretense of thinking of the better good, and of making a more convincing show of caring abut of the people they make a great show of pretending to care about. Ted Kennedy couldn’t even be bothered, in that particular instance and that particular crisis, and so the very nakedness of that ‘don’t care-think-of-myself’ resonates after all this time.
His older brother, for all you might say about him politically – swam a good distance in a South Sea ocean, towing an injured crewman from his PT boat, after the same was sunk in a collision with a Japanese warship. JFK didn’t leave a friend/crewmate/acquaintance behind. And Teddy did. And had to bear that knowledge for all time.
No wonder he turned into a drunk – if he hadn’t already been one before.”

The Mockery, It begins

22. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Mockery, It begins · Categories: Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Politics, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, The Funny, World

And it burns, it burns us, it does!

Yeah, I saw this at Protein Wisdom. In a perfect world, this would have been on Saturday Night Live. Alas, most funny and deeply sarcastic stuff is on YouTube, these days.

The Politics of Fear

18. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Politics of Fear · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Tea Time

Still – like da Blogfaddah – tracking the fall-out from the raucous and rancorous town-hall meetings about Obama-care. It kind of restores ones faith in the general good sense of the mostly-silent middle, knowing that not everyone is paying more attention to American Idol or whatever the current mainstream TV fixation is. Not everyone drank deep of the hopey-changy kool-aid last November, or listened to the siren-voices of our legacy media, who were mostly on their knees with their eyes fixed adoringly on the One. My faith in that old saw about fooling some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but not being able to fool all the people all the time is somewhat restored. Yes, indeedy – people are paying attention, getting involved in political matters and speaking up, just as we were always told to do by our high school civics teachers, and the plummy-voiced media plutocrats at NPR.

Except that what ordinary here-to-fore-uninvolved people are saying isn’t what the Administration and it’s acolytes wanted to hear, and good lord – are they screeching about that! Nazis and KKKers and haters, oh my! Nancy Pelosi looks like she bit into a breakfast taco and discovered half a cockroach in it, and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership aren’t looking any happier. Henry Waxman looks about to die of dyspepsia … say, does he sleep during the day in a sealed coffin half-filled with Transylvanian soil? Just asking – even when he smiles, he still gives me the creeps.

And the legacy media piling on, along with the leftish or Kossack side of the blogosphere, all screeching together like a chorus of howler monkeys: all those rude and inappropriately-dressed people showing up, asking disconcerting questions and getting in the face of those poor, well-intentioned overworked, innocent representatives who are selflessly only doing their best, and are too busy with their exhausting schedule to actually read the damned legislation. Of course, all those pushy people just must be racists, and organized by the health insurance companies, or the Republican Party, or Fox news, they just must be repeating the lies that Rush Limbaugh told them … really, it infuriating but mostly sad to read much of this, and to also know that the people saying it will in the next breath be congratulating themselves on being so intelligent, independent, perceptive and non-judgmental.

Like J.Lawson, who commended on my last post – and I have also tried to disabuse certain of our internet acquaintances of this kind of delusion, but to no avail. There’s this hysterical insistence that what they say must be so, and after a certain point one just kind of gives up. It’s almost as if they are angry, too angry to be reasoned with. After thinking it over a little more, and digesting comments on blogs like Belmont Club and Neo-Necon, I am thinking that a lot of this anger can be chalked up to fear.

Fear of having been made a fool of, fear of having anchored yourself with chains to a doomed piece of legislation, and to a hollow man in a good suit, fear of embarrassment at having to admit that you made a mistake, and even a good chunk of embarrassment at being outflanked by thousands of ordinary citizens using your own tactics against you. There is also fear of being made to apologize to people you have insulted and demeaned, or of having the dirty tricks you used against others being used against you and yours. And what might be the biggest fear of all, with elected officials and the legacy media who do their bidding, especially when it touches on the Tea Parties: that there is no real leader, that the Tea Party is some huge political amoeba, moving at its own pace and in it’s own time. Imagine that – no leader, to be isolated and cut down with ridicule, no central authority to be corrupted or interdicted. There is no one person or power with a collar and a choke-chain exerting control, as if anyone could control a swarm of bees! While some of us made a hobby out of being local gadflies on some issue or other, most Tea Party volunteers weren’t on anyone’s political radar – so here is this large group of people who came out of apparently nowhere, controlled by no one, and accountable only to our own conscience and set of beliefs. That has got to be as scary as hell to politicians and the commentariat who love them.

Myself, I’m having two scoops of schaudenfreude, with a sprinkling of toasted almonds, some whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top.

The Smell of Napalm…

14. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Smell of Napalm… · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant

Which, according to the deathless line from Apocalypse Now, is loved by the speaking character because it smells of victory … and so am I detecting faint wisps of napalmy odors, now that our elected Congressional aristocrats – at least those of them who have enough nerve to hold an open forum with their constituents – are getting an earful and more from those very constituents. Oh, and the squealing and screeching from oiks like San Fran Nan, and her side-kick Harry-Palms Reid, and their whole amen-chorus in the legacy media is just too rich for words. It’s music to my ears, reading lectures on decorum and civility, the unsuitability of Nazi symbols and imagery, and the evils of –gasp – astroturfing. This from out of the mouths, pens and keyboards of the very people who cheerfully and frequently compared GWB to Hitler, called for his assassination, had no problem with screeching like a cage of howler monkeys at people they had differences with, and over and over again urged us poor ignorant sheeple to get involved, to move ahead politically, and make our voices heard. Double-standards, much?

OK, so an unexpectedly large proportion of the heretofore fairly quiescent and silent middle-of-the road constituency got up to speed, we got involved, organized ourselves and showed up at meetings, demanding answers from our elected aristocrats … and look at where that got us. We scared the ever-loving be-jesus out of a great many local pols who seem to assume they would come home during the break, whip up a quick dog-and-pony show in their home district, bloviate about health-care reform in front of a respectfully submissive audience, and go skipping back to DC having manufactured a pretty little box of consent, all tied up with a tasteful, rainbow ribbon. Whoops – talk about walking into a buzz-saw. Hey, Mr or Ms Congressperson, put town the cellphone, and talk to us – and answer the question! I think about now, most of them would rather put naked in a barrel with a dozen rabid weasels and rolled down hill than take the chance on that … especially since a lot of town-hall attendees are showing up with cameras. Which brings up the old saw about being careful what you ask for, as you may get it. And the other one, about not asking the question, if you don’t want to really hear the answer.

But there has developed somewhat of a down-side to all this. Perfectly ordinary Americans of all ages and political persuasions, exercising their rights as citizens are now are denounced and ridiculed as deranged, ignorant kooks, radical teabaggers, as closet Nazis, puppets of the health-insurance complex and I don’t know what else all, by much of the media and a lot of the so-called intellectual set. I haven’t the nerve, the stomach, or a pair of hip-waders to go venture into Kossack country, or the Huffington Post – just checking out the front page and a couple of links on Open Salon during the last couple of days was enough for me.

Yeah, I post at Open Salon; I have a good few blog-friends over there, as they are not all a raving collection of left-wingers. In fact, many of them are literate, amusing, fairly sane, are excellent and polished writers, and have the excellent good taste to appreciate my own stuff, not that I do much of the in-your-face political stuff there anyway. There was sudden flurry of “OMG-those awful teabaggers are destroying everything that’s good and fair” posts. I went into one comment thread, trying to break it gently to the author of the post that no, the Tea Party that I am associated with is all volunteer, and few of us had ever been politically active in anything much above a church council, that we are funded by donations and our own work, that it doesn’t cost that much to set up a website, or host it either, that we weren’t being directed by anyone but ourselves, or programmed by some sort of mind-control beam directed from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. To no avail – she eventually wound up calling me clueless or a liar and closing the comment threat. I’m afraid that her mind was already made up – there was no point in confusing her with facts straight from a witness with first-hand knowledge.

So, yeah, it’s a bit insulting to be personally called names over this, but there is the light of a faint, guiding star, an Erandil, shining in the darkness – and that is, that we may be turning the tide. We might be on the verge of winning, now that so many ordinary people; old and young, working class and bourgeoisie, libertarians and former Democrats, veterans and college professors are looking at the situation, and getting pissed-off, and insulted, first by our elected aristocracy, and then by a partisan media throwing every scrap of garbage that they can. Way to win friends and influence people, President O, your administration, your friends in Congress, and your house-trained media organs – you’ve stepped right in it now. I don’t know when or how soon victory will come – but it will be sweet, and not a moment before time.

(Later … sigh … comments on this post are frelled because I put punctuation in the title. Reader JL sent the following comment to email, and I thought it so relevant, that I am pasting it in:

I’ve noticed the same thing you’ve noticed about massive, MASSIVE denial
on the left. I left some comments about what I observed at a recent
visit to an ER when my mother fell and hurt (thankfully, not fractured)
her hip – there were two people who passed through the other side of the
bay while we were there who had no insurance, but were given care.

That I wasn’t believed would be putting it very mildly. They simply
cannot believe that their view of the world may be in error – no matter
what evidence is shoved in their face. Even the existence of my mother
was called into question – and this on a ‘feminist’ blog.

(The left is kind, compassionate, and caring. It says so on the label.
Package contents may vary considerably from label descriptions.)

I wasn’t saying the right things – therefore I HAD to be lying, trying
to deceive them. But why? Why would THEY think they were so important
that someone would bother coming on the blog to try to hoax ’em?

I finally found a good description of what’s going on with some of the
more rabid left – it seems to be a combination of paranoia and
projection. Dr. Sanity (she used to work with NASA, btw) has an
interesting post on it here It’s a long one, but worth the time to read.

There has been a series of bizarre conspiracy theories emanating
from anxious leftists for the past 8+ years as they have desperately
attempted to keep the holes in their ideology plugged; and thus
preventing any **reality** from washing over them or flooding their
cognitive processes.

Every time a leak in that ideological dike appears, the
postmodern-progressive-paranoid chewing gum is brought out to plug
it up. The TNG memos were a clever plot by Karl Rove. The Bush
Administration was behind 9/11; Katrina was allowed to destroy New
Orleans because Bush hates blacks. George Bush is about to impose a
theocracy on the unsuspecting U.S. Pat Tillman was murdered because
he wanted to meet with anti-war activist Norm Chomsky. Sarah Palin
is not the mother of Trig and faked her pregnancy. The list of the
paranoid delusions goes on and on and on.

Taken as a whole, they are evidence of an ongoing and determined
refusal to face reality–because it is a reality that threatens the
belief systm of a very large section of the American population.
Without the delusions and conspiracies concocted by the always
creative political left, their whole house of Marxist cards will
come crumbling down.

Some have said that Unwillingness To Face Reality And Its
Consequences is the most serious mental illness of our time; and that is most
certainly true.

The post I referred to on the liberal blog is here – my
posting name was JLawson. I’ve tried posting a couple of other times
there, but my comments disappear in moderation. Oh well.

The left do not want to see that they’re not what they think they are,
or that their ideas aren’t as good as they believe them to be. They
prefer to believe that government’s got a whoppin’ big credit card, and
they can spend as freely as they want without ever having to pay
anything. They prefer to believe that anyone who DOESN’T believe as
they do is evil – not just wrong, or mistaken, or simply offering a
different opinion – they’re EVIL with a capital EV. And sadly, all too
many of them have made their way into our elected aristocracy – and with
their elevation to that lofty position believe that suddenly they’re
beyond their responsibilities to those who put them there.

So, like you, I’m VERY encouraged by the Tea Party phenomena. You’re
right – they ARE scared about it – and if they weren’t they wouldn’t be
trying so blasted hard to discredit them. Same thing with the town hall
meetings – you don’t go through the time and effort and expense to
coordinate and transport your people to block out folks who you think
are being ineffectual – you allocate your resources to take care of a
perceived threat – and the more resources you allocate are a significant
indication of how seriously you take the threat.

The left is scared. Of the right, to be sure – but I think also
somewhat of their own freedom. With no one to basically tell them ‘No’,
what they’re doing now, unfettered, is what they’ve wanted to do for
decades. The results are not what they were hoping, but they have no
ideas other than what they’ve dreamed of for years, so they’ll press on
no matter the cost. But people simply won’t stand by and be silent.
The left realizes they’re waking up the folks they’d rather keep asleep
– but there’s no way to stop it. All they can do is hope for the middle
and right to hit the snooze alarm one more time…

Because if we really wake up – they’re screwed as far as a social
movement goes.

Good luck, and keep up sounding the alarm!

JL

Memo: The Coming Tsunami

10. August 2009 · Comments Off on Memo: The Coming Tsunami · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant

To: Various
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Current Events WRT Tea Parties and Town Meetings

1 – Madam Speaker “San Fran Nan” Pelosi – The kindest way to account for seeing swastikas being carried by members of the crowds at various so-called open town meetings may be that too much botox numbs mental processes as well as facial tissue. That, or you were mixing up Nazi emblems with people who had actually fought Nazis. Or perhaps you were having flashbacks to anti-Bush demonstrations. Or that the signage compared the administration’s proposed health care plan to the Nazis. In any case, Madam, you are suffering from an irony deficiency.

2 – For Whom It May Concern – (Which seems to be much of the domestic legacy-media commentariat, as well as the current administration, and the leadership of the Democrat party) For the thousandth time, no; no one is paying any of us in the San Antonio Tea Party for our activities. Nope, not a penny. We are all volunteers, and all of us have taken time from our real jobs to educate ourselves and others, to plan and organize events and protests, and to stand on the streets with our charmingly individual and hand-made signs. There is no right-wing avatar of George Soros playing Daddy Money-Bags. And if there is, perchance, can you tell me where to file my time-sheets for my hours since about mid-March? Thanks.

3 – And Also for Whom It May Concern, Most Especially Including Janeanne Garafolo –
(Janeanne, you lying slut … sorry, flashback to SNL, back when it was funny) It is not about having a so-called black man in the white house. Frankly, the color of his skin doesn’t seem to particularly bother anyone I’ve had communication with in the last few months, either online or in the so-called real world. It’s more the content of his character, his public statements and actions, his origins in the Chicago Political Machine (than which there is probably no equal for naked corruption) the relative thinness of the resume, and the inexperience at anything but community organizing. I have to say he’s been a genius at organizing my particular community, so mad props for all that. It’s just that the community didn’t turn out to be organized in quite the way or to the degree that his administration and his starry-eyed fans probably intended. Hey, life is full of these little disappointments. (Say, Miss G. – can you wash your hair for your next media interview, and maybe put on a long-sleeved shirt? The tats and the oily locks do nothing for your appearance, and frankly, it probably revolts other people besides me.)

4 – Various Television Commentators – You know who you are, all of you sniggering over using the phrase “teabagger” in reference to Tea Party protests and events. Newsflash – doing a Beavis-And-Butt-At-A-Frat-Party on nationally broadcast news or commentary programs is not all that funny. To the grownups watching it, if any; increasingly, fewer and fewer of us are.

5 – To the Obama White House – About that email address to report “fishy” conversations and emails going around between neighbors and friends? I’d make a joke about the Fish Police, but asking citizens to inform on each other is just a tad too far. Enjoy the deluge of emails and faxes though – and I have already denounced myself. I may go back and do it a couple of times more. How much more will your server be able to handle by the time everyone gets to work on Monday is anyone’s guess, but I hope to see amusing speculation in the comment section.

6 – To the Service Employee International Union – Texas has a widely popular and widely-exercised concealed carry law, so roughing up on Texas Tea Partiers who have attracted your ire at any future events, protests and town hall meetings may have interesting consequences. No threat – just an observation.

7 – To our locally elected officials – Yes, as a matter of fact, we are having fun playing “Where’s Waldo” with y’all, in finding out where you will be holding your events, and getting out the word to your constituents … that is the ones not carefully picked by your office to attend. Look, we know all about how consent is manufactured, tastefully gift-wrapped and tied up in a pretty pink bow. You want to go back to Washington at the end of the recess and tell everyone there you had a town hall meeting with your constituents and they’re all on board with Obamacare, yessir, yessir, three bags full … but it’s fairly clear that after recent meet ‘n’greets you’d rather be stark-naked in a small room full of giant scorpions than actually meet with real, live, concerned constituents and make a calm, rational case for Obamacare. Have a fun recess – we’ll be seeing you in Washington on September 12.

Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom

PS – Are there any sane Democrats in Congress at all? Anyone who can see that insulting and dismissing at least half the electorate as unpatriotic and ill-informed is to be pouring gasoline on a bonfire, and adding a couple of buckets of C4, just to make sure? Seriously, isn’t there one sensible Democrat, standing back, shaking his head and saying, “Umm … that is so NOT a good idea.” I’d like to know his or her name – really.

Talking About Revolution…

06. August 2009 · Comments Off on Talking About Revolution… · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Politics, Rant, Working In A Salt Mine...

Really, the title of this ought to be “talkin’ ‘bout revolution” but WP does not handle apostrophes or any other weird punctuation in titles for posts. It tends to frell comments, but comments are frelled anyway, but against the moment-hour-day when they are unfrelled… old habits.

Anyway – my point, and I do have a couple – is that a certain shake-up to the established order of several things has been in progress over the last couple of weeks. And having had some small part in bringing a tiny corner of it to pass, I have to say that I am sorta thrilled. And relieved, and reassured … and laughing my ass off at the reaction to the Obama-as-Joker poster. I first saw it early this week, and called in Blondie to have a look: it was disturbing, subversive, and very much to the point, which is good, and going viral, which is even better, because it has tapped into a rich vein of untapped derision for our very own “Dear Leader”. It’s not the first crack in the perfect façade, but it’s the breakout one … and watching the very same people and publications who thought it was just jake to have GW Bush parodied as an ape, a vampire or a NAZI melt-down in hysterics is absolutely rich. As in two-scoops of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey with some whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top rich. Talk about an intellectual glass jaw, and people who can dish it out but can’t take it. Not everyone adores the Dear Leader, people – adjust. Let the derision flow, freely. It’s good for the body politic, and for the last eight years weren’t these the same people claiming that dissent was patriotic?

So, the town-meetings held in their home districts by our resident congress-critters are meeting with … shall we say, a somewhat less than cordial reception? That almost universally, the congress-critters are meeting up with constituents who are angry, frustrated and have a mind – as citizens of a free republic – to voice their opinions instead of having said opinion manufactured by so-called public interest groups and lobbyists. And that the congress-critters are having their feewings hurt, by people yelling at them for not reading the damn bill, or the stimulus bill before it. OK, all with me, and all together: Awwww! Tough titty, said the kitty. Deal with it, congress-critters. Remember, we hired you, through elections to work for our best interests, and we actually might have a strong opinion on what that best interest is. Don’t let Washington and the life of privilege inside the Beltway go to your head.

Apparently, some of the brighter sparks in the Democrat Party establishment (Ooops, almost called them the House of Lords!) are sure that everyone protesting current administrations dictates and policies must be hirelings of some anti-national health-care org, or maybe the Republican party, or some malevolent right-winger mirror image of George Soros, or someone. If this is true, can they tell me where and to whom I should turn in my time sheets for work performed over the last five months? And should I charge varying rates for general secretarial work, as I would for drafting news releases, doing radio interviews, and standing on the sidewalk, holding a sign in front of a senator’s office. Can I also charge for prep-time, for TV interviews? What about hastily cleaning up dog-poop in my garden, so that KENS-5 can do a quick stand-up interview? Does that count? Maybe I should have hired someone else to do that, and spread around the wealth a little bit? Let me know, in any case

Finally, a commenter over at the Belmont Club pointed out that maybe it is time for a middle class revolution – our natural elites, of the upper classes in everything – appear to have abandoned everything but the appearance of a democratic republic. Our so-called leaders are happily looking forward to being the oligarchs, feudal nobility, or nomenklatura in whatever would come next, secure in their superiority and their natural ability to rule. Nothing would appear to excite them more than am ability to discipline and silence those uppity lower-classes, that rabble who have the nerve to think they can run their own lives, when really … they didn’t go to the elite schools, know the right people, speak with the correct upper-class accent and mouth the politically-correct verities. It’s up to the remains of the middle class to do it – the poorer are already choke-chained and leashed, with the necessity of earning some kind of living, or by whichever power which controls whatever subsidies they receive. It’s left to us, while we still can, before the serf’s collar is riveted around our necks, and we are no longer free citizens, controlling our own lives and our own property; but rather a species of two-legged, talking sheep, to be sheered whenever the rulers feel the need to pass another subsidy to a well-connected member of it’s own class.

L’Affaire Gates

03. August 2009 · Comments Off on L’Affaire Gates · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, World

Well, now that all the gourmet beer has been drunk and all the initial dust has settled, I guess it may be OK for me to venture out of hiding, and as a person of decided pallor, to venture some kind of opinion. May as well, since darned near every other sentient being has, in the last week or so. Kind of comic, watching a distinguished and famous gentleman and possessor of skin of a year-round dark-tan color, as well as a professorship at a prestigious university – and boasting the instant and unreserved support of everyone from the chief of police of his fair city to the President of the US – carrying on as if he was a 1960’s Civil Rights marcher being whomped on by Bull Connor’s cops. So amusing, watching a grown man acting like a wanna-be street badass picking a fight, in the total assurance that the person he is picking the fight with won’t actually dare respond.

And the fact that the policeman in question – like me, a person of pallor, and probably a veteran of forty years’ worth of indoctrinating lectures on tolerance and diversity, and respect, and judging others by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin – behaved professionally throughout, and moreover seems to have the trust, and respect of his colleagues in the force … well, that’s pretty damn amusing, too. Thank god one of the participants in this little fandango acted like a mature, well-adjusted and responsible grownup.

Kind of puts the cherry on the top of the whipped cream on the sundae, how we were going to be all cool and post-racial, once a man who – if you kinda tilted your head sideways, squinted and used some imagination – could reasonably call black … Black with a capitol B, that is. Who is actually the son of a Kenyan bigamist, and a seriously mixed-up white anthropology student, who was raised by white grandparents in Hawaii, and educated at an upper-crust private school and a secession of equally upper-crust universities. He seems to have magically and effortlessly floated up to higher and higher levels in academia, local and national politics, without any exhibiting any notable talents or specific skills, other than that of standing there and looking gorgeous. No, it is perplexing, and the apotheosis of Barry O. brings to mind the crack made about a relatively undistinguished 19th century British politician: “Canning in office is like a fly in amber. Nobody cares about the fly: the only question is “How the hell did he get there?”

No, the current resident of 1600 Pensylvania Avenue is not by any means straight outta Compton, although he has been taken quite to the hearts of many who are, or wish they were, or hoped that other people would think them so. Basically, Ms Dunham-Obama-Soetero’s little boy Barry has the unqualified, unquestioning and enthusiastic support of 97% of that segment of the American public defined as black or Afro-American, or whatever the hell the current racial designator is. And that may be the soil from which the poisoned tree grows, and where the problem begins, when considering L’Affaire Gates. I can’t say it’s never been a problem for elected officials who came out of various ethnic minority groups, to think of the welfare of their own groups first, and then of the wider constituency . Human nature works that way; mostly you are drawn to, and have much more in common with people who have the same background, the same values and pretty much the same experiences. But in the military I know – and in politics I would hope – that in order to best serve the nation, it is one’s duty to transcend that. It’s been a given in the military for at least the last three decades and more, that there is no black or brown, or yellow or white – there is just Army green, Air Force blue, Navy/Marine whatever. It has to be that way for the military, and it may come to having to be that way for our presidents, legislators and judiciary.
See, there are people who do a job, and do it either well or not so well, and who just incidentally are black, or Hispanic or whatever. Whatever their color or ethnicity is … it’s just an aspect of them, not at the center of their being. Where you get into dangerous waters is when this particular aspect is at the center of all, for certain politicians and activists. That’s the core of their character, the center of their self-image, it’s bread and butter, meat and drink – they could no more set aside that aspect than they could chop off a limb or two. A long time ago, when Jesse Jackson wasn’t half the philandering self-parody that he appears to be today, he conceived the bright idea to run for higher office than just all around racial busy-body. And I thought at the time – no, it would never work.

He is Black, with a capitol B, not black with a small-b, like then-Los Angeles Mayor (and former police officer turned lawyer) Tom Bradley. Say whatever you liked about Mayor Bradley, he was a serious and dedicated public official, who went on transcending color for what seemed like forever. You could picture him campaigning for office anywhere, with anyone, while I couldn’t really picture Jesse Jackson kissing white babies with any particular enthusiasm. I think that during the 2008 presidential campaign, that a lot of people – of all races but mostly white – rather hoped that Obama would prove to be an Tom Bradley … and not another professional race-hustling Black-with-a-capital-B-what’s-in-it-for-me-and-mine-sleaze-bag like Al Sharpton.
And that’s the unintended fallout from L’Affaire Gates, you see; that increasing numbers of people of pallor who gave the President the benefit of the doubt, or who just hoped against instinct for the best, are now looking him over and thinking … Nope, just another Al Sharpton, just another racial huckster with a smoother manner, a glossier education, slicker friends and a much more expert tailor. And I have detected fearful speculation here and there in the small tidepools at the edge of the great sea that is the blogosphere, that if the Yes We Can-man really, really karks up the office of the POTUS and by extension the rest of the United States – our economy, our medical care, our employment and subsequent electoral and judicial processes, it will be a cold day in hell before another person of color of his particular perceived ilk, either with a capital B or without, would ever be considered. No, very few people will ever be so crude and racist to come out and say so, up front – we’ve all had thirty years of lectures on that very subject from the properly accredited diversity experts on what is acceptable to say and do WRT to race, in the arena outside of our own thoughts and our private circles. Nope – it would never be overt, in public and out there. But I know the thought is out there. And I also know the threat of being called a racist for saying so is getting pretty damn hollow.
And here’s another uncomfortable thought – if the Black with a capital-B, post-racial, Yes-We-Can-man goes down, who goes down with him? Legacy media? Possibly, unless they can shift gears fast enough. And the Black-with-a-capital B support system, all those celebrities, activists, intellectuals like the thin-skinned Professor Gates? All of those who cling to solidarity with someone whose skin-color is somewhat like theirs, regardless of the content of character, or the results of his policies? That is an interesting thought, isn’t it?

(Comments seem to be frelled at the moment – but have a go. If you can’t post comments send me an email, and I’ll post them at the bottom of this post.)

Later – Comments still hosed: Danny H. sent me the following comment – Hiya Sarge. comments seem to be hosed so just wanted to let you know that was some great commentary. Thanks

All the News

18. July 2009 · Comments Off on All the News · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

… that’s fit to ignore in the desperate hope that it will go away. So here there was a big Tea Party push on yesterday, to have moderate numbers of Tea Party protesters show up in the street at the local offices of every elected federal official in the land at around midday. Not an inconsiderable effort, considering that it was nationwide, in the middle of a working day, and that most of the people making that effort – at least those of us in San Antonio – have day jobs. Perhaps the hours are flexible, or maybe not – but we all have day jobs. And there were no less than five offices in Greater San Antonio to cover, but we had enough people to send to every one, no need to make a progressive protest from one to one to another. Me, I went to Charlie Gonzalez’ office, in the Federal Building on Durango; it’s my second protest there. At this rate, the policemen routinely on duty there are getting to be old pals with the Tea Partiers. I met about thirty other people there, nice assortment of ages, good mixture of Anglo and Hispanic, including one lady who came with her sister, visiting from out of town who wanted to get in on the Party, and her school-aged daughter. She abominates Charlie Gonzalez, by the way – she has communicated quite often with his office, and received nothing for her pains but mealy-mouthed evasion in print.

So, gather with the flags and signs, stay on the sidewalk and in the shade as much as possible, the guy who organized it had thought to bring a cooler with ice and individual water bottles, and five of us went in to present our petition and a list of questions to the staff in his office. The good Congress-critter was not there, of course. I have to say that although his staff really couldn’t answer any of the questions – the office-manager elected to deal with us had that barely-veiled panicky expression of someone without any real authority or guidance shoved out in front to deal with an unexpected development, and kept referring us to his Washington staff for answers. They were at least courteous and polite. We were not received as the Tea Partiers in St. Louis, where Senator Claire McCaskill’s office staff rolled down the blinds, locked the doors and called the cops — way to treat constituents, people.

(I guaran-damn-tee that every one of those people, their family members, friends and neighbors will remember how they were treated, when election time rolls around, Senator. Word to the wise, and better have a nice sit-down come-to-Jesus talk with your office staff, too)

We fielded about the same numbers to the other federally elected official’s offices in San Antonio– that of John Cornyn, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Ciro Rogriguez and Henry Cuellar. From a quick scan of reports and updates on Da Blogfaddah, that looks about par, for protests all across the countryside; mainstream big media news is absent – bizarrely so, considering the cumulative numbers of people, and the numbers of events. Last night, elements of the SA Tea Party was burning up the e-mail, trying to figure out why there was no coverage; not at any one of our events. Nada, zip, zilch, although I had sent out three different releases over the three days before the protest: I know that they were received, and I know that we have gotten coverage before; I had a call from the Spanish-language channel, Univision almost immediately, and someone from KENS 5 called on Thursday morning, who didn’t leave a message and never called back. Perhaps this reporter – about the only newspaper reporter I could find through the miracle of google might have the right explanation of this curious turn of events.

Or, on the other hand, it could be one of those untouchable things like the l’affaire Swiftboat, of the 2004 Presidential campaign, when John Kerry’s wartime Navy comrades all emerged, almost to a man portraying him as the Frank Burns/Eddie Haskell of the Vietnam era Navy Swiftboat service. That was all over the internet, all over the milblogs, and a matter of most lively discussion, barely a word of which emerged into the mainstream print and broadcast media for months.

Still – exasperating to contemplate: simultaneous grass-roots rallies of ordinary and normally non-activist citizens, all across the country – and nary a word in the traditional media. But let ACORN or Moveon.org belch heavily … and like a cheap plaid suit, the camera crews are all over them instanter.

Thursday Random Assortment

16. July 2009 · Comments Off on Thursday Random Assortment · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Military, Politics

(Insert ritual apology for apparent disinterest in providing rich bloggy ice-creamy goodness in the way of posts in the last week. Sorry, blog-fans, beat to a crisp, and not for lack of material. Just … well, beat to a crisp and the necessity of earning a living, mixed in with a greater-than-expected number of duties post 4th of July Tea Party…)

Well, I deduce that the income stream for the Southern Poverty Law Center must be drying up, so a new money well must be drilled, somewhere. Dammit, folks, there must be a rich vein of rampaging white bigots somewhere that we can raise a fresh alarm about! Don’t you people realize, we have offices to support, and salaries to be paid! So after much ado, they find no less than forty saddoes on a white-power website who claim to be members of the US military … well, leaving aside the fact that people on the internet can claim any damned thing they like, forty out of what… something like two million active duty and reservists, doesn’t seem like a threat worthy of a whole new massive fund-drive. Now, if Mr. Dees would like to drill farther down, in his mad search for racial extremists who just happen to be members of the military, and consider members of – oh, I don’t know, La Raza and the Black Muslims spring to mind; he might then find numbers worthy of a full-court-press as far as fund-raising goes. Or maybe not – the military has a way of kicking a lot of racist attitudes out of individuals, a peculiar capability of which Mr. Dees seems to be fairly ignorant.

Speaking of the military, now there’s a push on to ban smoking entirely? Hey, good luck with that. Note – I do not smoke, never did smoke, was never event empted to smoke and the smell of it drives me mad, but seriously, are these nanny-state types picking on G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane just because they can? Ohhh, here’s a captive element we can screw around with for their own good, and because it makes us feel well in control of lesser mortals.

Sarah Palin, resigning from the governorship of Alaska … I dunno, but I don’t think she should be written off as a dead duck, just yet. She drives the elite political/media establishment seriously nucking futz, which is good for the rest of us, pointing and laughing at their spasms of incoherent temper. Leading the Tea Party insurgency? Eh – I don’t think it’s a good idea to pin our homes on one person, one shining leader on a white horse out in front. Seriously, they’re too good a target. I like better the idea of a thousand anonymous leaders, all moving in more or less the same direction. Relentless, swift-moving and unstoppable, too many for the usual media attack machine to concentrate fire upon: We are all Spartacus. No one holds a leash on us, we are beholden to no political combine, the usual political observers have never heard of us in a meaningful way until now. Spartacus – that’s the way to go.

Oh, and if anyone has read the Adelsverein Trilogy, and loved it, can you post a review on Amazon.com? Pretty please? Reviews – even just short ones – generate interest, which generates sales, which move me closer the day that I can quit the hell-hole. (And spend more time working on the next book!) Thanks!

Hot Time, Summer in the City

23. June 2009 · Comments Off on Hot Time, Summer in the City · Categories: General, Iran, Media Matters Not, Politics

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting burnt and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

The irony, my god the irony, so dense and thick it practically drops through the earths’ crust and heads straight for the core; that injured anti-administration protesters in the streets of Tehran are being encouraged to take shelter in various foreign embassies. And I daresay that ours would have been one of them, that is, if we still had a functioning embassy in the Iranian capital. And always assuming that our State Department would have grown a pair and decided to do the decent thing – always a bit of a stretch as far as Foggy Bottom is concerned, admittedly.

One gathers that it’s not that any of those who were running for office in the contested Iranian election were expected to be much of an improvement – just the best of a bad lot, and maybe someone just a little bit less worst. And one way and another the same-old-same-old ritual shouts of ‘death to America, death to the Jews’ and sadly, the funding of Islamic militants like Hezbollah would continue without much diminution, regardless of who among the mullahs was really in charge.

That being said, it’s hard to watch some of the video, and read some of the tweets, emails and blog-posts filtering out of Iran and not feel some sort of instinctive sympathy for the outrage of citizens, upon seeing an election being casually, openly stolen, and having their very understandable outrage and objections over this unfortunate turn of events being dismissed by a grubby little thug, essentially saying: “I won.” (The corollary being, “You’d better sit down and shut up about it, you unpatriotic and ignorant little gits – we know what is best for you!) And then, adding injury to insult, to be set upon – once again – by foreign bullies with clubs … well, as I said, the irony of it all. And not just that particular irony, but that word and image of this is filtering out through cellphones and twitter, through email and all the rest of the electronic volunteer citizen’s media … not with press releases and statements from the usual suspects, and press conferences where the usual anointed spokesperson stand up in front of the anointed and properly gilded media representatives (oops, I nearly said gelded… well, that’s what living in Texas will do to you, straight to the biological, domesticated-animal comparisons). The spontaneous, real-time, real-life video is heartbreaking; the evidence of what happens when citizens reach their limit and are pushed beyond it … yes, the bad little lizard part of my brain is wondering what would happen if the penalties for loudly protesting in the streets (or on the sidewalks of the city) involved out-of-town thugs with clubs and permission to beat the heck out of whomever they feel like beating up.

And what if it began to happen here?

The News Making Machinery

10. June 2009 · Comments Off on The News Making Machinery · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Local, Politics, Tea Time

I am reminded this morning of the old axiom about law and sausage – if you are fond of either one of them you’d best not watch either one being made This also applies to news; if you are a consumer of it, you just don’t want to watch it being made. And also of the other understanding, so often noted by bloggers recently: that would be the one about how one can be intimately involved in an event, or even just present at it – but the way that brief snippets are presented afterward by the news media present something so different from what you experienced.

All righty, then – yesterday, elements of the San Antonio Tea Party had a protest in front of Senator John Cornyn’s office in downtown San Antonio: basically, our aim was to encourage him to step up to the plate when it came to reviewing Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s fitness for the Supreme Court.

This was how the story played on one local news channel which covered it:

And the local Fox affiliate (which doesn’t have the video portion of the story in easily linkeable format wrote it up this way, on their website:

“The confirmation hearing for supreme court justice nominee. Sonya Sotomayor is now set for July 13th. Here in San Antonio, those in favor and against her nomination confronted each other in front of Senator John Cornyn’s office. As Yami Virgin shows us. The exchange got so heated police had to get involved.”

Yep – for about ten minutes we had a dueling bullhorn thing going on, between our group and about three pro-Sotomayor partisans; one of whom was, so one of the policemen told me, a professional protester of long-experience and an even longer arrest record. And yes, they did step in and tell us all very firmly to stop it with the bullhorns. Not that it stopped the protest in the least, for despite how the news channels framed it – the protest went on for another hour or so, albeit at a lower decibel level.

And where, you ask, was your fearless media rep, Sgt. Mom, in all of this? Oh, yes – I was there too, not that there is much evidence on the final edited video coverage on either of the news reports, and yes, I did look for any evidence that I was. I’m not completely without vanity, you know, and I had dressed up a bit. I did spend a good few minutes in front of their cameras. Efficiently, both camera crews taped me, side by side; which was nice, as I didn’t have to repeat myself. I was speaking in quiet and reasonable tones, outlining the various reasons that we had for doing this, our very real reservations about Justice Sotomayer’s ability to be fair and impartial, given her record in various cases, and her associations and assorted public statements. And yes, Senator Cornyn is theoretically one of the good guys, but we wished to remind him of who he worked for, that we were constituents with issues that we wanted to see addressed, and apparently the only way to get the attention of Washington insiders these days – as well as that of the legacy news media – was to make a fuss on the sidewalk.

All of this, as I said – in quiet, respectful and measured tones… none of which wound up being included in the finished broadcast stories. Of course; passion and raised voices draw the eyeballs, shedding lots of heat and not much light on the subject.

I have better hopes for serious consideration from the two guys with the cable access show, who spent some serious time with everyone – even taping a long dialog between one of our members and one of the Sotomayor partisans, a conversation which was conducted with decorum and which will probably turn out to be much more informative, all the way around.

Oh, and we did present a petition with a great many signatures to one of Senator Cornyn’s assistants – a young man who seemed to be acquainted with the concept of ‘mau mauing the flack catchers’ if not the actual literary reference , so it wasn’t all a wasted effort.

Things Happening Too Fast to Count

05. June 2009 · Comments Off on Things Happening Too Fast to Count · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Well, that’s me – life in the fast lane, as it is, what with fifteen hours a week of soul-numbing drudgery at the call center, or as I refer to it “the Hellhole” (all apologies to anyone who now has the earworm from This Is Spinal Tap now firmly stuck in their consciousness for the rest of the day. No really, I live to serve.)

BTW, I can’t see my way to quitting, just yet. As horrendous as working there is – it’s reliable. Unless and until the monthly royalty checks for the Adelsverein Trilogy and Truckee about double and do so on a reliable, month to month basis. I can’t afford to slice up my nasty plastic employee badge and walk away – as tempting as the thought might be. With the economy apparently circling the drain and certain large corporations getting ready to tank worse than the Titanic … well, a regular job, however unpleasant, is not to be sneezed at. And as I keep reminding myself – it’s only fifteen hours a week.

But it’s fifteen hours away from time I can work on Watercress Press stuff – I have a horrendously complicated memoir, two huge binders full of not-very-well-organized pages (typewritten, mercifully) to work on … and now and again I have a mad wish to squeeze out another couple of hours to continue on the next book, or to market the current lot a little more vigorously. I have a book-club meeting in Beeville on Monday, and a pair of events in July in Fredericksburg … but I can’t even begin to think about that because of the most horrendously looming project…

Tea Party Hearty.

The San Antonio 4th of July Tea Party is going to be at the Rio Cibolo Ranch, a little east of town on IH-10 … and all of us who worked on the Tea Party on Tax Day, have been looking around in the last couple of weeks to try and figure out – well, not how could we top it, but at least equal it. Or come close to equaling it, and yes, we have spent hours and evenings in meetings working on this; how to re-organize the website, how to re-do our media efforts, how to reach out to the local media (and grab them by the short-n-curlies), and how to even begin to keep level of events and the proposed legislation that looks to be fair raining down upon us. It looks to be, sometimes, as if there is a sort of legislative hailstorm of laws approaching us – laws considered at every level, laws now in committee, under consideration, or proposed, each one more potentially damaging than the other, each one seemingly carefully crafted to favor someone involved, to the detriment of someone else, each of them with an apparently harmless intent, but with a vicious sting buried within it’s heart. Like that ghastly CPSIA law… where to start? I had the feeling three or four years ago that there was something malign lurking, some deadly danger, but I didn’t think it would be our republic being nibbled to death by ducks, or at least, some ghastly, self-serving political class of elected aristocrats, out to better themselves at the expense of the nation.

Oh, yeah – and the US is not a Muslim nation. Just thought I’d throw that in. Jeese, who is writing and fact-checking the Obaminator’s speeches these days? What desperately awful institute of learning did they pass through – and I use the word in the sense of fecal matter passing through an intestine. Like I am going to sit by and watch my country turned into something like Argentina under Juan Peron, while the old-line media establishment ooohs and ahhhs. Have a nice weekend – think of the musical that will be made of this in a couple of decades.

Quick Before They Pull This

22. May 2009 · Comments Off on Quick Before They Pull This · Categories: General, Politics, sarcasm, Tea Time, World

Very apt little parody — enjoy, while you still can! OBAMA MAN!

Riding the Wave – Tax Day Tea Party Wrap Up

03. May 2009 · Comments Off on Riding the Wave – Tax Day Tea Party Wrap Up · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Tea Time

Those of us on the Tea Party planning committee knew it was going to be huge, even if attendance at it only met the minimum SWAG (semi-scientific wild-ass guess) – which early on, we set at four or five thousand, if it didn’t rain and with no celebrities. We had an RSVP meter on our website, which eventually topped out at nine thousand planning to attend. At the final executive meeting, Easter Saturday, we agreed to go ahead and secure an overflow site on Hemisfair Plaza. At some point, to be left to the SAPD on-scene, we would start directing partiers there. We had made arrangements for portapotties and a jumbotron or two, but pretty much forgot about it in the press of everything happening in Alamo Plaza. Our bad – when we compared notes afterwards, none of us had been able to make our way over there; I sure as heck didn’t have the time on Tea Party Day.

Monday and Tuesday, after Easter was just flat-out insane; I think I did a call-in to most of the radio morning shows, with updates about what was happening. I did venture over to the public radio station where I used to work, otherwise it was phone-in. And three print media interviews… and it’s all a bit of a blurr now, but on one day I had three stand-ups for local news – for which they were all so eager that they hied over to the house to do a stand-up in the garden. Well, too of them did, KENS-5 set up in the street; the neighbors were curious, I am sure, but too well-mannered to come over and ask what the heck. And one of the cats yacked up on KSAT-12’s extension cord. (At least, I hope it was cat vomit, and not from the other end…)

There were so many more things that we could have organized, so many more people we might have brought into it – but it happened so fast, especially over the last four days that we had barely enough time to make an immediate decision and move on to the next three or four items screaming for attention. I still have a list of things screaming for attention at a slightly lesser decibel level, such as a pair of very apt cartoons, done up as posters, which we used for the media center, and for which I still owe a thank-you email… it just never stops. Apparently I am a political activist now. Or as Robin and the others keep pointing out – community organizers.

I knew it was going to be a long day when we headed downtown, and heard an update on the Tea Party on the car radio… which brings me neatly back to where I started this epic, with a walk-through of Alamo Plaza, and helping to assemble the media badges, at desk in the Menger Hotel lobby. I walked back to the Emily Morgan with a thick handful of them, held by their elastic leashes, set up to hand them out at 2 PM to the anticipated descending media hordes. It was about noon by the time I finished with that, so I went with one of the photogs to grab a hot sandwich and fries at a funky little restaurant on the Plaza, just across from the Menger where all the important celebs, VIPs and members of the committee were probably eating something a lot more higher end, culinary-speaking. Back to the Emily after we were finished – the Plaza was even more crowded, and I could hear amplified music, an electric guitar and wild applause. It seemed that they were testing the sound system, with Ted Nugent’s assistance – he was out there, goofing around, even though it was still only mid-day, the streets weren’t even blocked off. It was getting crowded, too – one hour to go until the media people came to pick up their passes, two to the press conference, three until the start of Glenn Beck’s broadcast, five until our own event.

There was a crowded room for the presser – just Robin, and Eric G. and I on one side of the table, and a room full of press, cameras and laptops on the other. I think we may have run out of chairs, for the first five minutes or so, until the major TV media reps got the couple of seconds they needed, folded up their tripods, bagged up their gear and left. No surprises among the questions, pretty much what we had expected. Robin expounded on the almost-by-now-standard accusation that the Tea Parties are astro-turf; a false front for some shady corporate or political party. No, calmly and rationally, one more time – none of us were ever politically active before, all of us have day jobs, and we were brought to participate in the Tea Party for various reasons, but the insanity of a cripplingly large stimulus package passed by legislators who hardly bothered to read the darned thing proved to be the final straw.

One hurdle safely over – I thought I would go upstairs to a room at the Emily taken by a friend of ours and put up my feet for a while. Blondie and I had a key-card for it, so we could leave our purses there. The room had a view of the Alamo grounds and the Plaza, from eleven floors up, and even with the windows sealed I could hear the cheering from down below. Reconsider original impulse – I would circulate, and take some pictures for myself, with Blondie’s digital camera, and get a sense for myself of how it was all coming together. I meandered through the Alamo Gardens, across the famous front of it, and into a long pergola, behind an arcade that lines the Plaza; a fair number of people, not terribly crowded. I came out of the Alamo Gardens across the street from the Menger Hotel.

Not being an aficionado of protests and political action projects I have nothing much by way of comparison, but it felt rather like a rather jolly block party – but with signs and banners. Everyone seemed to be polite, and having a wonderful time, discovering how many other citizens felt just they same way they did. There was one strange man with a bible in one hand and a sign of the “Repent or you are DOOMED!” variety in the other, shouting a blood and thunder sermon at the top of his lungs. Everyone seemed to be ignoring him, and I overheard someone in the crowd say that he was a regular; anyway, his voice gave out after fifteen minutes. A number of people noticed my committee badge and thanked me and the other organizers for having thrown such a nice party

The crowd became thicker, the closer to Glenn Beck’s stage that I got. I gave it up, by the entrance into the Hyatt. There was just no going any farther; people were standing so close together that it was impossible, not unless I wanted to push and shove. One of the photogs later said he was stuck for half an hour in the dense crowd there. I went back the way that I came, towards Ripley’s and the bandstand in front of the Menger. About halfway there I found three guys, one with an Obama shirt having a shouting match with another Tea Partier. For all that we were worried about agent provocateurs picking fights with other Tea Partiers, filming the results and winding up on YouTube as brutal reactionary racist KKK thugs beating up on some innocent counterprotester; these three were the only ones. Sigh; well, here I was, one of the committee members – better look like I had some authority over all this, in my best Catholic high-school principal style. It hardly seemed necessary to remind the people standing around that well… the Obamanauts were trying to provoke a reaction. Just about everyone seemed to know that already. Politely pointed out to the shouting Obamanaut that he could perhaps win over more agreement with his views if he stopped shouting, actually read the Constitution, and engaged in calm and rational discourse… and could everyone please recall the manners that their mama’s taught them? They did appear to have a confederate in the crowd with a video camera; another committee member said that I did show up on a brief and thankfully boring YouTube video. Other reports have them giving up and going away shortly afterward. Ah well – just recall, dissent is patriotic.

Just before six, Blondie and I and some of the other speakers – the non-celeb ones and some committee members and their families- assembled in the lobby of the Emily Morgan, to be taken from there through the crowd to the backstage area. We did have a law-enforcement escort, an off-duty county sheriff who looked for all the world like a huge concrete car-bomb protection bollard dressed up in a black suit and cowboy hat. We threaded through a couple of barriers, across a raised planting made bumpy with tree-roots and into an area behind the stage, which was only a little less crowded than the area outside of it. No place to sit, except on some leftover staging. Someone brought us bottles of ice-cold water – and there we waited and talked, and looked nervously at the stage from the back. Someone pointed out Janine Turner, with her middle-school-aged daughter, sitting with Matt Perdue on the staging along with the rest of us. It turned out that she was a last-minute addition to the program – eh, what the heck. She had a draft speech, which Robin asked me to check out. Otherwise, it was something like the military; sit around and wait. She is a very pleasant and unpretentious person, by the way; also physically very tiny. I had never known she was from Texas – Matt and I talked about books, and the weird coincidence that I had written about his great-grandfather in Book 2 of Adelsverein.

The seriously celeb speakers – Glenn Beck and Ted Nugent – came in through another passage-way through the crowd, from the Menger, practically swamped with security… that is, large, tough-looking gentlemen with earphones, speaking quietly into their sleeves. They were delivered to the back-stage a few minutes before their appearances, and lingered a little bit afterward. I had the feeling that we were all just sort of a blur of faces, passing in front of Glenn Beck. He was hurried away by his bodyguards, but Ted Nugent hung around for a bit longer. It seems very odd to say that he has charisma, but he has, and also the gift – when he is with other people – of seeming to be very intensely focused on that individual. Blondie and I talked about this, and with some of the other committee members who also talked with them both, and they all agreed. When he talked with anyone, even briefly as he scribbled an autograph – he was just overwhelmingly interested in you. On-stage in front of an audience he was just magnetic; he seemed to draw in the energy of the crowd and feed it back to them, amplified up to the max – and that this was something that he lived to do. In a strange way, it was the class clown, grown up; Oh, there is a crowd! I must get in front of people, entertain them, excite them, make them cheer! It was actually kind of endearing – and he did get rather carried away, and uncorked some pretty uncensored language, permanently bollixing any of our claims to be a strictly family-friendly event. But even the most strait-laced members of the committee seemed prepared to be indulgent about this – I guess they felt the endearing-class-clown vibe as well. Curiously, one of our non-celebrity speakers, Katherine Moreno seemed to feed on the audience in the same dynamic way.

Ah well – it took me almost longer to write about it, than it did to happen, from start to finish. My feet hurt so much that night, from walking around in boots – next time, I swear, it’s running shoes for me.

And there will be a next time. We are finalizing our location – a destination ranch, in a loop of the Cibolo, with a grove of trees, some ready-built stage venues and a herd of longhorns. Think of it as Woodstock, Texas-style. The April 15th party was just the opening shot across the bows.

A Rose By Any Other Name

03. May 2009 · Comments Off on A Rose By Any Other Name · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, sarcasm, Tea Time

So, there we were, a good part of the SA Tea Party executive committee, sitting at a picnic table under a shady tree, at a site which we were touring with an eye towards making it the venue for our great 4th of July San Antonio Tea party Blow-out, when one of the other members had a story to tell.

She was at a bar the other night with a friend of hers – (what? You thought we were all a bunch of prudes and blue-noses? Honey, this is Texas; Football Friday night, bar Saturday night, church Sunday morning. Life is a wonderful thing, you have to live it in the right proportions!)

– Anyway, she and her friend were stragegizing about the event, discussing who we could get to come and speak, and who else might come and entertain – not without mentioning a lot of big names – and all the while, there was a guy sitting next to them at the bar, eavesdropping like mad. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any more; he said,

“Hey, what are you – some kind of political activist?!”

And she turned right around and answered …

(wait for it)

“No – I’m a community organizer!”

Party Hearty in San Antonio, Part the Third

26. April 2009 · Comments Off on Party Hearty in San Antonio, Part the Third · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Politics, Tea Time, Veteran's Affairs

We had basically concluded that Alamo Plaza would be impossible to get as a venue site; perhaps Fox would be able to gain permission to broadcast from there, but our Tea Party would probably be best held nearby, perhaps at Alamo Stadium. We were checking out other urban venues as well, but when Robin announced this and explained some of the difficulties in securing the Plaza, an attendee at the open meeting leaped up and challenged him; Hadn’t we even tried? Who had we talked to, in securing permits – didn’t we even KNOW anyone? This was Matthew P., who insisted forcefully that it was quite possible, and that he could do it. Matthew looks a bit like General Grant on one of his dyspeptic days. But he has all of Grant’s iron stubborness; he was all for the Tea Party, and all for having it on Alamo Plaza, and he knew just the people to talk too. So we kept his name and telephone number, and Robin told him to go for it, and to coordinate with another key volunteer, Eric G., the lawyer better known among us as The Other Eric. In the mean time, Eric A., the video producer had another stroke of genius – as many of the volunteers on the committee would meet him on Alamo Plaza Monday morning, and he would do a quick guerrilla shoot of us inviting Glenn Beck to come to our Tea Party – it turned out that this was not needed at all, as it appeared that Glenn Beck committed himself that morning to coming to San Antonio.

And by Friday, April 3rd, we got the word from Matthew P. and Eric G. that the miracle was done; we had secured the Plaza – with about a week and a half to go until the Tea Party. Matthew P. would coordinate between the City of San Antonio and the Fox people, Eric G. would handle all the considerable legal stuff … and Dee M. and Jerry H. would manage fund-raising. Keep it in mind that most of us only met face to face for the first time around the last of March and the beginning of February.

We had barely enough time to take in this news – ten days to sort out all the logistics, which were enormous, and to raise the funds to pay for the necessities. I think it was that Friday morning that I spent about an hour on the phone with a woman who had organized many such events downtown. She couldn’t be involved to any extent in the Tea Party, because of her own full-time job, but she expounded forcefully on several aspects that we had never considered until that moment: barricades, and security, crowd control, securing places to park jumbotrons, which would mean another permit, of security badges for our personnel, of me as the media representative being constantly available to the minions of the press. I took notes, lots of notes, and went to Robin over the weekend with them; we needed someone dedicated to event-planning, someone who had done massive events. I had only done one, years before, and in the military at that, and with six months to pull it off. I’d be out of my depth on that and knew it.

But among us, we already had a volunteer, Diane E. who had set up a sign-painting party that very weekend – she’s a local realtor and by good fortune, had done some big golfing events… which involved the media, set-up, security, crowds – the whole ball o’wax. So Diane was in play as the overall event organizer, working with Matthew. We had a couple of epic telephone conference calls during that week, which clocked in at well over two hours, and another set of meetings on Palm Sunday, which also went on for hours; who to have as master of ceremonies, who to have as speakers besides Glenn Beck… absolutely no politicians, we had agreed from the start. Not even as VIPs attending, although they were welcome to come and attend, and listen like everyone else.

The financial crunch was alleviated somewhat, by Glenn Beck offering to host a fund-raising luncheon for us at the Menger Hotel on the day of the Tea Party. He had already withdrawn as keynote speaker for our event – which, upon consideration was probably a good thing. This was supposed to be about us, not about celebrities. He would open the event, and then give over to our program of local speakers – and this was when Ted Nugent got into the picture; coming to perform the National Anthem. Just how cool was that going to be? In that case we could handle another celebrity, but the line on politicians was set in cement, no matter how much they asked. By this time, we had all begin to sense that we were riding a wave – best not to look down, just keep going forward.

At the Palm Sunday meeting, we gained another key volunteer – to oversee security. Early on, we had a pair of volunteers who worked in law enforcement, but the way that this event was growing, we knew very well that we would need someone with command experience, and more than that – command experience at large events … and out of the blue, another volunteer, Dennis O., who was an acquaintance of Robin’s. Dennis spent some time talking to me after the meeting, Robin being tied up talking to other people. After my educational lecture from the experienced organizer-of-events, someone like Dennis seemed to have the right skill set; retired LAPD at a fairly high level. He was brought in, just in the nick of time, for a final executive meeting on Easter Saturday.

I would guess that at least part of the reason that we came together so quickly is that San Antonio is a small town cunningly disguised as a large city, and so all of us brought our ready-made acquaintance-network into the mix – and in some cases a pretty fair idea of their skill-set. It turned out that a lot of our networks overlapped and intertangled. Robin knew me through blogging, and knew Dennis through his church; Matthew turned out to also know the lady who gave me the quick course in event-planning, who also is acquainted with Diane… and as it turned out I had written about Matthew’s g-g-g-grandfather in Book Two of Adelsverein; the Fredericksburg school-master Louis Scheutze, who was murdered by the Hanging Band during the Civil War. Topping that off, the publisher of a local construction newsletter who came to help in the newsroom may be a distant cousin of Matthew’s. I am fairly sure if I asked other members of the planning committee about their own networks, it would turn out that we were pretty thickly connected already, through friends and friends of friends and various civic organizations.

(Next – riding the wave at the San Antonio Tea Party, and why Ted Nugent is so darned popular.)

Party Hearty (Part 2)

20. April 2009 · Comments Off on Party Hearty (Part 2) · Categories: General, Politics, Tea Time

It didn’t start out this way – a national event, with news interest from all over, and Ted Nugent coming out to the stage for an audio check around midday, and goofing around, doing a mini-performance for an appreciative crowd. We were going to have a Tea Party, very much like all the other Tea Parties in the six or seven hundred other cities, suburbs and towns that were planning them. We expected having something like the very first Alamo Plaza tea party, which occurred around the end of February, and seems to have gone pretty much unnoticed in the grand national scheme of things. A lot of the foundation work was done on line in February and early March, on Facebook – which was networking those interested in Tea Party protests in the San Antonio area. The San Antonio Tea Party outgrew Facebook about the middle of March, when an old milblogging compadre (and fan of The Daily Brief) got involved. Robin J. is also retired Air Force – he even got a group of San Antonio-area bloggers together for a picnic in McAllister Park a couple of years ago. The other prime Tea Party instigator wanted to concentrate on the Boerne Tea Party, so she offhandedly asked Robin if he would take over responsibility for San Antonio’s. Robin set up a website, drew in some more interest, including that of another military veteran, Eric A. Eric runs what another SA Blogger, the Fat Guy, would call “a tiny bidness”, producing videos – mostly of weddings. Eric whipped together a quick video promo for a San Antonio Tea Party, launched it on YouTube… and managed to get attention paid to it by Glenn Beck, who hinted that he would love to come and broadcast live from Alamo Plaza, if we were going to hold our Tea Party there.

I would like to point out that since I do not watch Fox (or listen to Rush Limbaugh, either) I had managed to not know a single solitary thing about him. The first couple of times his name was mentioned, I had him mixed up with Jeff Beck and I thought in passing that it was rather cool that there was another outspoken conservative rock musician other than Ted Nugent. As someone who will doubtless wind up on Janet Napolitano’s Homeland Security watch-list, I fear I have rather let my credentials as a deranged extremist lapse. I spend as much time as possible in the 19th century, I much prefer classical music and I get most of my news online, through wicked, racist and right-wing sinks of iniquity like Instapundit and Rantburg.

Robin had already emailed me about doing media releases for the Tea Party, and shortly after Eric A. had set off an explosion of interest in a Tea Party in Alamo Plaza – I went to a special meeting of the organizing committee. This would have been on the last Sunday in March. Somehow, I had found myself being the media expert in all of this. This would be the first face-to-face meeting for most of us, having heretofore conducted most of our plotting on line, through emails and telephone calls. There were a couple of gentlemen from the 9-12 Project, who were interested in what we all acknowledged to be a madly optimistic notion to have the Tea Party in Alamo Plaza. I have to confess that we all saw it as a long shot. Fiesta would begin the following day; San Antonio’s massive two-week-long civic blow-out would pretty much scotch any effort to secure the Plaza for a date which was then a little more than two weeks off. There would be permission from the city; the logistics would be a nightmare, Glenn Beck had only hinted at coming to San Antonio – eventually we agreed that realistically, we should look at another venue. We already had secured the use of a small downtown city park, but in the interests of having a larger crowd and somewhat more media interest than we had bargained for, we agreed to consider some other venues; Alamo Stadium and some other places with generous parking and sufficient facilities. Three or four of the attending planning members agreed to check out that availability. There was a public meeting following the organizing committee, on the terrace of a restaurant which was closed on a Sunday afternoon. There were 130 people there – and that was when it all got rather interesting.

(to be continued. I’ll get to the part about Ted Nugent, eventually)

Not Quite Up to This Standard, But It WAS a Heck of a Party

16. April 2009 · Comments Off on Not Quite Up to This Standard, But It WAS a Heck of a Party · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Tea Time, Veteran's Affairs



(Thought all the Trek fans out there would appreciate this version… detailed after-action post to follow.)

Political Aristocrats

14. April 2009 · Comments Off on Political Aristocrats · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Veteran's Affairs, World

This is a thought that I have been kicking around for a while, and I actually voiced it, during the TV interview Sunday morning; that our current political uber-class have become the new aristocrats, and that is one of the reasons that the Tea Party protests have been springing up relentlessly, like mushrooms after a good few weeks of rain. Our permanently-revolving political class has somehow mutated into becoming something of a hereditary aristocracy in the last few decades. I know there were always people who served long terms, or whose families – Hey, John Addams! Teddy Roosevelt! William Henry Harrison, John Kennedy, George Bush! – tended to show up in the corridors of power, over and over again, yea down to the fourth generation. But this current situation has something of a different feel about it to me; not so much an aristocracy of blood, although certain of our current crop are indeed the spawn of professional politicians of yesteryear – but an aristocracy of interests.

They sometimes seem like a mad mash-up of the Soviet aristocracy, during the Stalin era, as outlined in Simon Sebag Montefiore’s “Court of the Red Czar” and the court aristocrats of pre-revolutionary France. Here we have a combination rapacious and self-serving functionaries, viciously defending their perks and the source of their power while giving lip service to the Party of the People… and the vapid, frivolous and completely clueless, dining on $100 a pound Waygu beef, and sending out for gourmet Chicago pizza. From a Washington, DC address… um, yeah, I know it wasn’t all that bad, the chef was going all that way by regular airline and on his own dime. Hey, at least they didn’t send an Air Force transport aircraft for him. Like the old aristocrats at the court of the Sun King Louis, and his ilk; preening and posing in elegant clothing, against magnificent backgrounds, oblivious to the world outside steadily crumbling away at the edges. But those are all superficial things. Tacky, heedless and oblivious to other people may be no way to go through life, but these qualities usually do nothing but amuse or appall everyone else.

Alas, the current political aristocracy are also not just standing there… they are doing things… passing stimulus bills they haven’t entirely read, passing laws which – in the case of one particularly ghastly example – has the ostensible purpose of protecting children to exposure to lead from toys manufactured in China and imported into the US. A bill which was so broadly written and badly conceived that complete enforcement of it will bankrupt or close many boutique toy manufacturers, and home crafts ladies with a tiny but tidy sideline business, empty out second-hand stores of children’s clothing and toys, and gut libraries and publishers alike, either of new books or those published before 1985.

Always remember – they work for us. They are our employees. We hire them, through elections, to look after this stuff for us – as we are… you know, busy with our real lives? Earning a living, paying taxes, raising families…Maybe it is time for a serious talk about this with our various political hirelings.

Think of the Tea Parties as a sort of counseling letter; the last step before we think about getting someone who can better able to handle those duties sent before them.

Tax Day tomorrow. Tea Party also: I’m the one appearing on various local San Antonio TV channels (Fox mostly, other networks as the mood takes them and as their programming people dictate) with a faintly English accent, looking like a gentle and earnest Catholic school principal, urging listeners to live up to what our mothers, the better angels of our natures, and the founders of this Republic encouraged us to do…)
All that… and me, I could really do with loosing some pounds. Over and above that which the camera puts on…

Looking For Ripples

06. April 2009 · Comments Off on Looking For Ripples · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics

That’s me, looking for very specific ripples, and currents, in the vast placid ocean that is the blogosphere, where one twitch by a blog-fish on the far side of that body can be magnified by other blog-fish with sensitive antennae reflected, magnified and passed on, passed back and forth, linked and sent rippling out into the farthest reaches. When I say blog-fish, I don’t really mean a fish, really – fins and gills and all that. I picture something more like a Portuguese man o’war, with all those sensitive tentacles and tendrils hanging down, floating and lurking, waiting patiently for some little current, a change in temperature, some isolated agitation. And there is always something of the sort out there, some little agitation that starts on a discussion thread, and gets linked and blogged, and copied to someone elses’ website, and pretty soon… voila, a tempest. Sometimes the tempest is so huge that it spills over into the political arena and the general mainstream media – a veritable Hurricane Katrina. Rathergate is the classic example for me: the source documents upon which a 60 Minutes story about former President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard was based, were posted online after the story aired, some little things about them which didn’t seem just right were noted almost at once, and all throughout the next day, the storm grew and grew. I spent a lot of time on-line that day, as it was slow in the office where I worked then, and I saw the storm expand, as more and more other experts in obscure fields checked in and commented, and were quoted and linked and… well, everyone knows how that turned out. My point was that someone going on line, and surfing around a bit in the correct quadrant would encounter the outlaying ripples of this coming storm within a very few minutes.

So in my capacity as the media expert for the local Tea Party planning committee, I’ve been quietly snorkeling around, doing google searches on various phrases (the google-fu… it is powerful in this one!), looking for chatter about Tea Parties in general, and the San Antonio one in particular. Yeah, I’m curious, but it would help to know just how unglued that any local radicals are becoming, if we might have counter-protestors or provocateurs. Finding a lot of ranting, or calls for action, cross-linking and commenting on the San Antonio Tax Day Tea Party would be a cause for concern, and something that we would have to be prepared for, in a good Public Affairs professional sort of way. It is always nice to know from which direction the next sh*tstorm will blow in.

And I found… well, not very much at all, among the Kossaks, the Huff-pos, and the Duers. A lot of cross talk and interest on the center/conservative/libertarian blogs, lots of events being planned, and lots of plans being generated and shared. But the leftwards wing of the blogosphere is all but silent. No ripples at all, no storm of interest and awareness building. Oh, a couple of sniggering discussions about a small group of KKK/racist/hater/losers who might have four, or twenty-five show up at their pathetic little rallies, but aside from those discussion threads – hardly any mention. Really, it’s as if they are in a tightly-closed little bubble. And they are, in a way. The various tea parties are getting some local media mention, but very few national outlets other than the Wall Street Journal and our own very dear PJ Media are really going all out to tie it all together. It’s as if it is all happening under the news radar; if you aren’t involved in a Tea Party, or snorkeling around in the center/conservative/libertarian section of the big pool, it’s as if there is nothing at all going on at all. Nothing to see, move on, and lets all talk about-insert name of current tabloid fave celebrity here.

But there is. And it will be big. On April 16, I rather think there will be a lot of stunned citizens (and legislators and major media folks) picking themselves up off the ground and saying, “Did anyone get the number of that 18-wheeler that just ran us over?”

All Righty, Then…

02. April 2009 · Comments Off on All Righty, Then… · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Working In A Salt Mine...

Guess it’s on, for April 15th…

Strictly speaking, my video compadre was slightly exaggerating; we don’t have the Alamo – just the Plaza in front of it. The Alamo is above such partisan matters. It’s a memorial, and even though it was once a church, people can’t even get married in it. The Tea Party will be in the Plaza in front of it.

Me, I am to work, sending out about a kajillion e-mail and printed news releases. Yeah, I volunteered. Must try to recall what Dad said, about doing that.

Swear to the Almighty, about a week ago, when one of the other planning committee members told me that Glenn Beck was getting all interested in this Tea Party thing, I thought they meant Jeff Beck, and thought – “Cool – a rock guitarist who is also a conservative!” Did wonder why he was so keen on showing up at the Alamo, though. I mean, Ozzy Osborne has never lived down his big visit there….

OK, so I never watched Fox, I really was an NPR sort of person, and I’ve spent much of the last three years in the 19th century, anyway. Interesting times, people, interesting times. If, on occasion, somewhat baffling.

(OMG, an Instalanche – just as a reminder, the San Antonio Tea Party’s website is here!)

Off On Another Adventure

30. March 2009 · Comments Off on Off On Another Adventure · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Politics, World

Sorry for the sparse posting of late, and putting off the promised second half of the essay about why I am taking such mean-spirited pleasure in watching the Chosen One, the Fresh Prince of Chicago, metaphorically crash’n’burn right in front of a large and amused audience. Pity he appears to be taking the stock market, the auto industry, and a nice selection of old-line city newspapers along with him… oh, the old Stalinist saying about eggs and omelets may apply here. Where will this all end… it remains to be seen, as the TV reporters standing in front of a Significant Gummit Building always announce portentously, as they wrap up their brow-knittingly serious examination of whatever it is that they have just gotten two or three minutes of local news huffing and puffing about. Probably the serious and potential effect of Lint In Small Children’s Belly-Buttons! This Scourge, If Left Unattended And Without A Lot of Dollars Thrown At It… Think of the Cheeeeldren! (or possibly at the foundation run by the person whose generated news release was just lightly re-written for the news story itself)… Oh, I wouldn’t know about the current local TV news scourge-de-jour, I only watch local news when Downtown is under water, or in danger of being glazed over with ice. Of the national news scourge-de-jour, I have heard vaguely of the ruckus over a sweet little tot in… Florida, was it? Went missing, body searched for by volunteers, mother suspected, name-something-Anthony… no, I don’t watch national channels much either. And although I used to love the various NPR shows – even with their decided tilt… I just got fed up with them, too. When the Bush-bashing and the Obama adoration got to a certain level on Prairie Home Companion – and even on, god save us, Car Talk… well, that was it.

Even before the local public radio affiliate fired me and about fifteen other part-timers, last year… I was seriously considering asking if I could have back every pledge dollar I had ever contributed. I get most of my news from the internet, hopping from story to story, blog to blog, and if I want expert comment, there are another couple of blogs that I will go to, rather than open my local newspaper and consider the maunderings of whatever NY-Times retread or local lamoid who has been so dazzled with an offer of a local byline that they will condescend to dribble away for a couple of paragraphs. (All but TH Fehrenbach… I’d read him. Pity he doesn’t have a blog or something. Maybe he does. I’ll have to check. Nope, no website and no blog – only links to his columns for the newspaper … He’s our local Victor Davis Hansen, just not quite so prolific. By the last couple of columns, it doesn’t look like I am missing much, in having canceled my subscription over a particularly scurrilous cartoon by the on-tap cartoonist Branch, a couple of years ago. It was about the Haditha Marines, and I pulled the plug on the weekend edition within about three minutes of seeing it.)

So, there you go… a fair amount of worry about the way things are apparently headed, under the benign yet feckless aegis of the Affirmative Action President and his boatload of Chicago cronies. I got involved with the local effort to host a Tea Party in San Antonio, through another San Antonio milblogger, the Ranten Raven. Before you could say Jack Robinson, or some other interesting and prophetic phrase, I volunteered… what was it, they used to say, about never volunteering? Yeah… don’t. Too late, I’m in, coordinating news releases, writing speeches and coaching those who have committed to deliver them, coordinating volunteers to have expertise in doing all that, and who have interesting contacts in local media. With luck, and eventually, said local media persons may begin returning phone calls. For this Tea Party may be something big, something splendid and awesome. It’s getting a little frightening; at how fast it has grown – from a handful of people who came to the first planning meeting, to well over a hundred last night… and a hundred or so who were vocal, engaged, and willing to step forward…and to contribute funds. At my estimation, about half were political enthusiasts, who have many years experience in the fray, in support of their various causes – but the rest were new, unblooded and engaged, fresh and energized. So one of them was only a candidate running for city council – sensing the presence of a large body of potential voters, or at least, an audience, although it was definitely comic, watching the way that everyone sidled away from him at the end of the meeting, as he launched into his set speech. All props to paying attention to what is going on locally – but minus-points for not paying a whit of attention to what had been said for about an hour and something; which was, that we all were desperately unhappy with the current lot of our elected officials, albeit at a much higher level than that of city councilperson.

It would appear that the cause of a lot of this interest in the San Antonio Tea Party was the video that I posted previously. It wound up being aired on a national news program of which I know nothing, and excited the interest of a news commentator of whom I had to confess that I also had never heard of. Until this week, I thought Glenn Beck was a guitarist with one of the noisier rock bands… eh, maybe I should pay more attention to this sort of thing… except that I am a writer, and live a fairly cloistered life. I spend more of my time and energy in the 19th century than perhaps I ought to, in these times.

So, Tea Party on the 15th, somewhere in San Antonio. The committee is still working out the venue. But I’ll be there. God knows, I’ll probably be one of the speakers, too. The rule about speakers has been pretty firmly established by the committee. No politicians.

Absolutely no politicians. They will have to come and listen to us. For once.

San Antonio Tea Party Promo

28. March 2009 · Comments Off on San Antonio Tea Party Promo · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Politics

One of the other volunteers helping to put together the San Antonio Tea Party on April 15th put together this awesome spot, for Youtube and other venues:

Just thought I would share: the project is growing by leaps and bounds: we have a planning committee meeting scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

With a Splash of Schadenfreude On the Side

26. March 2009 · Comments Off on With a Splash of Schadenfreude On the Side · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant

Ok, so in the main, I’m kinda torn. Watching the Fresh Prince of Chicago and his administration melt down is pretty amusing, in a sick, sadistic sort of way; I wake up in the morning, and turn on the computer now, and wonder if the State Department has gifted the Turkish Prime Minister with a bobble-headed Mohammed, or presented President Sarcozy of France with a fine selected case of box-wine and a tastefully gift-wrapped tube of deodorant. Seriously, after the cut-rate Box ‘o Movies to Gordon Brown – in the wrong format yet – I don’t think I would be all that surprised to read of the above official gifts being dispensed by the administration of the guy who was supposed to make the whole world like us again, after that uncouth Cowboy Bush. That’s the trouble with being surreal and humorous in these dark times – just when you had thought up something that you assumed was impossibly, comically far over the top – there it is, all over the headlines. The serious headlines, not at the Onion, or Iowahawk.

I have to admit that seeing all the ecstatically worshipping minions of the main-stream press who drank the hopey-changy Kool-Aid all these months ago, waking up with an ‘omigawd, what did I do last night’ hangover… That’s also kind of fun, too. In a grimly amusing, ‘didn’t I warn you not to trim your short’n’curlies with the weed-whacker’ sort of way. Hey, I will get my jollies where I can, and “I told you so” is one of life’s great unsung pleasures. Watching the major media organs collapse like a dirigible with a slow leak is also no end amusing, especially when it happens to be those very same organs who kept banging on about Governor Sarah Palin’s inexperience, as compared to the Anointed One’s sanctified role as a ‘community organizer’. Live by taking political sides – perish from the same. Thanks. My only regret is that in future, I may not have anything packing materiel for stuff to be mailed out of state. A couple of sheets of newsprint were always good for that.

I said, all these months ago, that Barak Obama was an attractive, empty suit, with a pleasant voice, a puppet of Chicago machine politics, with no discernible bad record – and what did you – or 52% of the electorate, or whatever percent actually did vote for him – have to go and do, but elect him, just because he was so cute, with the year-round-dark-tan, glamorous and exotic background and (insert fangirly squeal here) besides, he made such cool-sounding speeches! So now, here he is in office, the ultimate Affirmative-Action candidate/American Idol fave – stuck in a hideously exposed position, under the pitiless lights, with no possible way to vote ‘present’ and go on doing what he seems always to have done – which is to move on. Having had some experience in the real world, I’ve see his like before; the favored golden candidate, one of those charming and ambitious fast-burners who go all the way up, glad-handing and using all the way, and never staying long enough in any position to actually do the job. They generally leave before the damage they have done becomes evident. As the old saying goes, they leave the stink behind them. Alas, this time, he is stuck, like a treed cat, up on top of the highest telephone pole in the land, with no graceful way to come down.

So that’s the thing – I would be amused, save for all the damage that was done, getting him up there, and all the damage that will be done, when he comes down. (To be continued.)

(Note – re-posted to allow comments. There is a bug in our system which dislikes apostrophes in the titles of posts.)

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