Greetings from Kudzu Nation

At left: Kudzu colonizes riverside on the Swamp Rabbit Trail.


My profuse apologies for the unannounced blog break. At first, it was a real live recreational break, complete with hiking my favorite section of our beloved Swamp Rabbit Trail ... and then our electricity went FIZZLE... and so did we.

Nightmarish!

After the storm this week, we were without electricity for a whole day. (Some areas got it much worse, too.) If you think that's easy in South Carolina summer heat, think again. We were careful to stay STILL and QUIET ... and I soon figured out the reason for the well-worn stereotype of southerners acting/talking S-L-O-W is likely because they were simply too hot to move for hundreds of years.

Made sick from heat, I barely got the laundry done. Thankfully, I think we've recovered now. (It took me a very nice birthday party to completely recover, but I have!)

Mr Daisy forced me to go see X-MEN FIRST CLASS, which wasn't half-bad. The black man sitting next to me buried his face in his hands when Darwin bought it early. Then he placed his head on the shoulder of the woman next to him, as if to weep. Yeah, the sole black man gets knocked off early, way before the bang-up finale, in which the X-Men stop the Cuban Missile Crisis! (and all this time you thought it was Bobby Kennedy!) I like to think I would have noticed this without my movie-neighbor's reaction, but it is possible I wouldn't have, so my hat is off to him for bringing it to my attention.

Why do they do that? The old Star Trek TV-series used to do that, too... if there was a black guy in the landing party, you could expect the aliens to eat his innards first!

Left: Kudzu eats tree.


Delinquent in blogging, at least I've been collecting some pretty good links, so have at it:

:: Possibly, the blog post title of the year: Republican Senator Says “Fuck It”, Legalize Gay Marriage (Jezebel)

:: Asshole New Jersey governor Christie declares to voters that it's "none of your business" if he sends his kids to private school while enthusiastically gutting public schools... and if you thought otherwise, New Jersey folks, since YOU are paying his salary, well, he sets you straight in no uncertain terms. ((((fumes))))

:: My Ex-Gay Friend (The New York Times) Fascinating article about queer-theory junkie who turns into a fundie. This is the money quote:

It all sounded very much like the Michael I knew at XY, a young man who was fascinated by queer theory — namely, the idea that sexual and gender identities are culturally constructed rather than biologically fixed — and who dreamed of a world without labels like “straight” and “gay,” which he deemed restrictive and designed to “segment and persecute,” as he argued in a 1998 issue of XY. Though he conceded back then that it was important “to stay unified under a ‘Gay’ political umbrella” until equality for gays and lesbians had been achieved, Michael preferred to label himself queer.

As Ben and I reminisced, I couldn’t help wondering if Michael’s new philosophy might, in a strange way, be a logical extension of what he believed back then — that “gay” is a limiting category and that sexual identities can change. Ben nodded. “A radical queer activist and a fundamentalist Christian aren’t always as different as they might seem,” he said, adding that they’re ideologues who can railroad over nuance and claim a monopoly on the truth.

:: I have repeatedly attempted to blog about the whole Boeing fiasco in South Carolina, but every time I start a post, the situation just mushrooms further. I think I have finally found an article that explains it succinctly: 'Boeing retaliated' (Charleston Post and Courier):

Republicans on the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee questioned why the Democrat-controlled National Labor Relations Board sued Boeing over its decision in 2009 to locate the plant in North Charleston.

Democrats questioned if Boeing retaliated against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers by putting the factory in mostly non-unionized South Carolina to avoid costly labor strikes.

On the hot seat during most of the nearly four-hour hearing was NLRB acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, who reluctantly agreed to testify after being threatened with a subpoena.

"We believe the evidence will show that Boeing retaliated against its employees," Solomon said. "The decision to build a second line in South Carolina was in retaliation for the employees' right to strike."

And for you geeks who require labor-law details, please check out this post from the SC Green Party blog: NLRB and Labor Law: Discussion on C-Span

At left: Kudzu eats hill.


:: And just in case you wondered why our schools always place last (or near last) nationally? Greedhead Republican swine, especially the current governor:
Haley: $105 million should go for tax cuts, not schools. (The Columbia State)

Gov. Nikki Haley threatened Wednesday to veto a state Senate proposal to add $105 million to the state’s K-12 education funding, saying the money should instead be used for tax cuts or to pay off state debt.

Haley also said that, in the future, anytime a three-member panel of state economists increases its estimates of how much money the state will bring in, as it did last month, that money should go for tax cuts, rebates or to pay off state debt.

That position is certain to endear Haley to her Tea Party supporters, who say they are taxed enough already.

But it will upset others who say that, after cutting billions from the state’s general fund during the just-ended Great Recession, recovering state revenues should be used to restore services that were cut or can justify more support.

:: Announcing a South Carolina demonstration against the Libyan intervention, which our Senator Lindsey Graham thinks is just great great great. This has been organized by the Carolina Peace Resource Center:

Saturday, June 25 · 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Location: Five Points Fountain (Greene & Harden St.)
Columbia, South Carolina.

This is a great location, since you can shop afterwards at Hip-Wa-Zee (Hi Leslie!) and Loose Lucy's. Only a dullard could resist! Be there or be square! (Yes, I sometimes miss living in Columbia, which I did for about 7 months.)

And finally...

NO MORE Law and Order Criminal Intent after this weekend?!? (((screams in agony)))) NOOOOooooOOOO!!!!

They are taking one of my favorite binge-drugs away.

Random complaining

I don't like:

...people who live in apartments and insist upon owning gigantic dogs that can't be exercised on a damn patio, so they bark all day long from boredom.

...southerners who claim various pot-luck offerings are vegetarian, but when pressed, admit said vegetable was fried in bacon grease.

...people who say the radiation in Japan is waaaay over there, so don't you worry yourself over it. The earth doesn't turn and the air never blows and water all stays in one place, so there's no way radiation can spread... oh, wait.

...de-clawing kitties. DON'T DO THAT. And I have the torn-up couches to prove that I don't believe in it. But I can also attest that torn-up couches are a small price to pay for well-mannered, happy felines.

...the way Farmville is always trying to separate you from your credit card, to purchase much-ballyhooed "Farm Cash"--with which you can buy cartoon lakes and donkeys and other dopey shit you don't need... hey, it's just like REAL LIFE!

...And finally...(((drum roll))

Male "enhancement" ads, like the endless infomercial I am listening to right now, wherein a dynamite sex-supplement promises to make you BIGGER and BETTER. It's probably just L-Arginine, an amino acid that can be taken by itself in large doses; up to 3 grams safely. (Works on women too! :D ) And it's lots cheaper than these TV-boosted supplements, which likely include Yohimbe, something that can adversely affect men with hypertension. (The difference between simple L-Arginine and these hotshot supplements can be as much as 100 bucks, so buyer beware.) I also hate the Viagra commercials for using the legendary and fabulous song "Spoonful" in the ads. The not-so-subtle racism of using a well-known black blues song directed at suburban white men with nice cars (not to mention the comprehensive medical insurance that covers these pricey Rx drugs; some insurers don't) seems a little obvious: If you take Viagra/Cialis/etc, you will be as sexy as black men, seems to be the significance of the blues-man message. And then there is the additional subtlety of the title and concept: you only need a spoonful of Viagra.

But even without music, all the winky-winky stuff in the ads (any moment can turn into a Cialis moment!) is offensive and junior high school. Yes, we all know how we get horny just by hammering nails (think about the Freudian implications of that for a second) and hanging out with the mister, as he does his manly household tasks. And then, a knowing look is exchanged, pecks on the mouth, and they leave the room together, arm in arm. We all know that our sexual experiences are EXACTLY like that, now don't we? (((rolls eyes)))

I do appreciate that the women in the ads are the same age as the men. In fact, these ads might be the only place on TV that this is true! Mostly, hot new actresses are paired with older, non-hotties. (Think about LAW AND ORDER and the age disparities.. gray hair and such are standard, but the women are all young.) This is true in movies as well. What can we surmise from this?: That BigPharma is aware they should try to be realistic in these ads--no Lolitas anywhere. And besides, maybe that is intimidating to older men? Or do they (as I suspect) just find the idea silly? (All they want is some familiar intimacy with the wife, not the babysitter.)

The CARS in the ads, and the fact that Viagra now sponsors NASCAR, well, that shouldn't be surprising. PERFORMANCE is a big word in all advertising related to men: Stereos, cell phones, cars, musical instruments, razor blades, athletic shoes, all promise various wonderful levels of PERFORMANCE, a word you rarely hear in commercials for women's products.

Now, I wonder why that is.

On feminist collaboration with the state

As a veteran of the Watergate era, which I obsessively studied as a young pup, I am so deeply cynical and skeptical of our government, that I initially did not even believe these alleged rape-victims of Julian Assange truly existed. I am still profoundly skeptical, until I see an interview with Barbara Walters or equivalent. (I'll settle for a big blue dot over their faces, as was necessary for Patricia Bowman.)

As I have written before: Deja Vu all over again. The disintegration of the leftist/liberal coalition is in full swing. Obama is a one-termer, as was Jimmy Carter. History repeats itself, almost to the letter, but I can't quite figure out if this is the tragedy or the farce?

When I get confused, I flash back to 1979 and the disintegration of the 70s coalition. And then, it all makes sense.

Feminism was wild, woolly, crazy, brash, overbearing. The refrain was: I am woman, hear me ROAR. Not purr. Not blink our waterproofed-mascaraed eyes and meow nicely. ROAR. As the 80s dawned and Reaganism took over, roaring not only rated patriarchal punishment, but outright banishment. Get with the program, bitches, was the new refrain. 70s feminism became an embarrassment to the new careerist women of the 80s, who bleated incessantly, I'm a feminist but I love men! I love men! I don't hate men! I'm a feminist, but... and then finally FEMINISM as a term, as a philosophy, as a politics, was banished, too.

And something happened.

This phenomenon was first controversially chronicled by a woman I have since been told is "anti-feminist"--which is odd, since she was one of the few women who seemed to understand what the hell was going on. I refer to Katie Roiphe.

From The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism by Katie Roiphe:

The image that emerges from feminist preoccupations with rape and sexual harassment is that of women as victims, offended by a professor's dirty joke, verbally pressured into sex by peers. This image of a delicate woman bears a striking resemblance to that fifties ideal my mother and the other women of her generation fought so hard to get away from. They didn't like her passivity, her wide-eyed innocence. They didn't like the fact that she was perpetually offended by sexual innuendo. They didn't like her excessive need for protection. She represented personal, social and psychological possibilities collapsed, and they worked and marched, shouted and wrote, to make her irrelevant for their daughters. But here she is again, with her pure intentions and her wide eyes. Only this time it is feminists themselves who are breathing new life into her.

Self-described feminists ran to the state, to the patriarchy itself, to local police forces and courts that had never given a shit about women, to punish other men. Without apology. In fact, quite proudly. No political equivocations or similar excuses were given, i.e. we need mean guys to police other mean guys. Battered-women's shelters became beneficent arms of the therapeutic culture; police were suddenly seen as the good guys, keeping an eye on those other dangerous, brutal men. (The most horrific suffering in these situations came from battered women married to police officers, since those particular men had easy access to locations of safe-houses.) Radical volunteers at these shelters, even women who had initially organized them (such as Sue Urbas, R.I.P.) were suddenly persona non grata in the places they had started themselves. The experts and the social workers, acting as arms of the state, stepped in. (You can almost hear John Wayne: We'll take over now, little lady.) And they did. By the end of the 80s, they were in the process of doing the same thing to Alcoholics Anonymous and various other self-help organizations. The state, massive apparatus that it is, does not take well to being left out. And men, in particular, were NOT going to be left out of the project, any project.

By 1999 and the advent of LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, the whole concept was solidified. The law is Our Friend. The state will bring sympathetic justice to raped women. We can trust them. This pro-state, pro-government propaganda has never abated.

If you grew up during that time, you don't know any different. You believe the government is there to help women. You do not believe that the government has its own agenda regarding feminism and women. If you say such things to young women, they will furrow their brows: but there are women police officers, they say. (Mariska Hargitay is popular for a reason, you know.) The concept of the state as an agent of repression, is utterly foreign to them. To say otherwise renders you some kind of lefty/anarchist nut, or worse, a conspiracy theorist. Not a realist.

As a result, the entire invasion of Afghanistan was given a properly feminist spin: Women are being abused by the Taliban! Of course, we must invade. Mavis Leno and other billionaire Hollywood feminists unabashedly called for military intervention.

~*~

To review: The US government is a repressive, carnivorous force.

Ask the women of: Japan, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan. (I'm sure I'm missing a few interventions; how could we possibly keep track of them all?) And that is only a half-century's worth of military meddling. As I have written here before, the US government has had its fingers in the business of so many countries, only God knows the extent of it. And by giving our blessing to the state, by running to the state to settle our conflicts and making sure Mariska Hargitay and company have jobs and plenty of work to do, we collaborate. As US residents, we can't help some collaboration (if you don't pay the IRS and fund their wars, they will put you in jail for tax evasion), but other, more insidious forms of collaboration CAN be directly avoided.

Yes, the word for today is COLLABORATION.

The feminists who are currently mouthing well-intentioned variations of: Yes, we know Julian Assange has a big red target on his back placed there by the US government for exposing war crimes against unnamed dark women in Asia with (waving impatiently) smart bombs and stuff, but we must hear out the complaints of these (Daisy first believed nonexistent) Swedish white women who are accusing him, because, well... what would Mariska Hargitay do? What have we been TAUGHT to do?

Listen to the women!

Well, I do listen to women. I listen to the victims of US repression and violence. I listen to the victims of rape in other countries, women who claim their country and governments have been totally destroyed by an advanced, high-tech military campaign financed by MY money, MY government, without MY consent. Have you written about that, American feminists? Have you denounced war, made in your name? Have you profiled THOSE rape victims? Have you believed those victims and made them the centerpiece of your political campaigns? And why haven't you?

Certain feminists have actually written more about Michael Moore declaring the rape allegations are "hooey" --than they have against the war(s) and US imperialism against the unnamed dark women of the world, which is certainly NOT hooey. They seem far more upset over Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann saying predictable and stupid guy-shit on TV, than they are about the wholesale rape and assault of entire fucking countries. Because you know, American feminists should have the right to watch TV without being offended! (Since when?) The fact that these feminists are going after two erstwhile progressives, is pretty gross. Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly trash women and feminism every single day, but somehow, that isn't quite as upsetting.

This disgusting state of affairs has made DEAD AIR almost too nauseated to continue. And then, yes, dear readers, Daisy rallied.

What made me rally? I saw a picture. I decided to share it here. The photo above is of one Dorothy Wetzel Hunt.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, does anyone remember Dorothy Hunt, the wife of E. Howard Hunt?

Dorothy Hunt died. Dorothy Hunt was expendable. Just like all those women in Afghanistan are considered expendable. And the women of all the countries I listed above, were also expendable. American women deserve to live in comfort, and goddamn anybody, male or female, Michael Moore or Dorothy Hunt, who stand in the way.

I can only remember one feminist, Robin Morgan, mentioning Dorothy in a poem. Period. No other feminists gave a shit. She was probably a Republican, after all. No question, she was a CIA agent:

Just before Hunt boarded the aircraft she purchased $250,000 in flight insurance payable to E. Howard Hunt. In his book Undercover (1974), Hunt claims he was unaware that his wife planned to do this. In the book he also tried to explain what his wife was doing with $10,000 in her purse. According to Hunt it was money to be invested with Hal Carlstead in "two already-built Holiday Inns in the Chicago area".

Nixon administration figure Chuck Colson told TIME magazine that "I don't say this to my people. They'd think I'm nuts. I think they [the CIA] killed Dorothy Hunt."[2]Also killed in the December 1972 plane crash was CBS News Correspondent Michele Clark and Illinois Congressman George W. Collins.

"This was probably the most investigated airplane crash in history" said Deputy Cook County Coroner John Haigh. [3] National Transportation Safety Board ruled it to be pilot error. [4]

Sure it was. (Holiday Inns! Ohhh, that is perfect.)

And how thoughtful of Dorothy to purchase all that life insurance just in the nick of time to pay her husband's lawyers! What a nice lady.

I have often imagined how Dorothy felt, boarding that plane and suddenly GETTING IT. What was it was like to know you had that giant red target on your back (the same one now on Julian's back) placed there by the US government? This was the entity she had worked for, sacrificed for, and thoroughly believed in. A lot like The Mafia. It's your life, and then, finally, it is your death.

And so, I write this for Dorothy Hunt. We will never know the truth about your death, Dorothy. And I apologize for all the feminists who didn't bother to investigate. Mariska Hargitay-on-the-trail does not apply to everyone.

This is for all the feminists who believed in ((cough)) "pilot error"; all the feminists who shrugged because you had the wrong politics and the wrong husband.

Similarly, we see that liberal white US feminists are currently picking and choosing which victims are more important than others. Millions of victims of US carnage should rightly rate a few more blog posts than Michael Moore acting like Michael Moore, you know?

My question to all of you is: why haven't they?

As I said, I am profoundly skeptical. I see the hundreds of probably-astroturfed blog post replies with all of the not-linked commenters predictably stating RIGHT ON, we are glad you are standing up to Assange the bully-rapist! How many of these posts are by government plants or right-wing apologists? Are you absolutely certain you are pursuing the right course of action? Do you see that you are (coincidentally!) weakening the individual who has exposed the war crimes of the government? Do these war crimes bother you at all; have you READ the Wikileaks documents? Women's bodies are littered throughout. Do you care about them? (And if you do, why have you not written about them and said so?) Julian's organization, Wikileaks, has exposed horrific war crimes. Why are you going after him, with the blessings of your repressive government? Is your attack on Julian ultimately going to endear you to the women of the world, women unfortunate to have been born on the wrong side, women who have been left without running water and whose children have been blown up?

Oh, please.

They are using you.

And they will continue to use you with aplomb and make sure you get lots of attention, blog links and air time. They will flatter your ego and put you on radio and TV. In fact, you can work for the government right up until the moment of your elimination, when you are no longer useful. Ask Dorothy. Ask her as she was standing at that airline desk, her heart pounding, purchasing all that life insurance.

I'm sure Julian has purchased his.

Fred Thompson in Greenville, SC

Republican presidential candidate (and actor) Senator Fred Thompson stopped by the Market Deli on Wade Hampton Boulevard in Greenville, South Carolina, this evening. His canned-conservative political speech was pretty boring, although he was very personable and dryly funny in that down-home Tennessee manner of his. The crowd included a lot of Bob Jones University people, seeing as how the school is less than a mile away. A sign outside the deli instructed us to keep Christ in Christmas.

Everyone was exceedingly polite and well-behaved; there was certainly NO fervor matching the huzzahs, wild applause and carrying-on that greeted Ron Paul's November Greenville visit. Senator Thompson droned on about being committed to the war on terror, reminding us that the terrorists "don't mind if it takes 100 years," causing me to think, please God, let us NOT be at war for 100 years. He spoke fondly of Secretary Condoleezza Rice, promised to preserve Israel (a shameless grab for the BJU vote), made a few folksy jokes, and referred to God several times. (The first thing he would do as president, he said, is get down on his knees and pray.)

I took some great photos, and was momentarily far more thrilled to be so close to a LAW AND ORDER star, than a Senator or presidential candidate.

Yes, I admit it!

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Listening to: Etta James - Don't Lose Your Good Thing
via FoxyTunes