"A Very Herring Christmas"

Happy happy! Fresca, Lucinda and friends made this wonderful film. We're off early this morning to beat the winter storm.

Gen. Shinseki to head Veterans Affairs, or "Eric was right!"

Obama has named retired General Eric Shinseki to be the head of Veteran's Affairs. What an excellent choice! Here is a clip from the award-winning documentary No End In Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos, which reminds us of Shinseki's principled stand before the invasion of Iraq, and the disastarous consequences of a war declared and led by people with NO military experience!

My father spent fifteen years as a doctor in the Army during the Viet Nam war, performing surgery on the seriously wounded, and I grew up surrounded by the awareness of life-threatening injuries and the long and painful recovery from them. I lived for years in Berkeley where veterans of the war often ended up living on the streets because of inadequate attention to their needs. This, along with my study of U.S. military history in Latin America (both covert and direct), have led me to despise the political leaders who have ordered or condoned such actions with little regard for the cost to military personnel and civilians. It has also led me to have little patience for the public and media support of the seven years of this ill-advised war. The scandals about the shoddy and substandard service given to veterans under the Bush administration, are a national shame.

It is precisely for that reason that those who serve in the military as professionals with integrity are needed to help us fix this mess. I note with interest that this career military man (West Point, etc) has an MA in English literature from Duke University). I wish I could find out more information about that! My cynical army-brat heart feels hope that this appointment will bring substantive change.

James Fallow gives us the details on how Shinseki warned civilian leaders that if we went into Iraq we would need to have hundreds of thousands of troops to ensure security and control. When he retired, four months after war was declared, he had been publicly rebuked for this stand. As he demonstrated in his Atlantic Monthly articles at the time, (collected as Blind Into Baghdad, an excellent account of how we screwed up the beginning of the war that never should have started in the first place) Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who were in favor of a fantasy video-game style army, publicly rebuked and attempted to humiliate him. I say attempted, because Shinseki has shown exemplary integrity in refusing to ever comment on the conduct of the war, never earning a penny on the pundit circle saying "I told you so" or in any way bad-mouthing the institution he served for decades, having been wounded in Viet Nam. All this in spite of, or rather because of the fact that he had an uncle who served in WWII as one of the many Japanese-American soldiers who served in spite of the fact that the U.S. had interned them and their families in camps.

Let us hope that this former Army chief of staff, who enjoys the respect of his Army colleagues, will be able to do what it takes to shake up and modernize Veterans Affairs in such a way that all those whose bodies and minds have been shattered by their war experiences receive the care, support and understanding they and their families need.

All the way from Marin County, M.C. Yogi!

MC Yogi has a song for Obama "Vote for Change" that I really like:

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.


Lyrics:

M.C. Yogi

VOTE FOR HOPE

chorus
Change begins when we believe / in a brighter day a better way to succeed / together we can make it better you and me / so we can be safe and prosperous and free

Ladies and gentleman beautiful intelligent / friends of all ages races and measurements / us citizens world wide residents / what ever your religion is or sexual preference / there’s no separateness one things connecting us / the planet we inhabit plus all the different elements / that’s the reason why we need a new president / someone who understands interconnectedness / and won’t go to war based on false evidence / who’s not addicted to oil and aggressiveness / who believes in global warming and he’ll fight pollution / instead of shredding and abusing our constitution / the candidate in 08 that we’ll be choosing / is Barack Obama cuz he’s gonna offer real solutions / lets get involved and offer all our contributions / vote for hope join the movement of the revolution

chorus
Change begins when we believe / in a brighter day a better way to succeed / together we can make it better you and me / so we can be safe and prosperous and free

I hold this truth to be self evident / it’s time for Barack Obama to become president / that’s why I’m calling to my nation and my generation / this is our moment no more waiting or procrastinating / we gotta make it happen; time for some action / it don’t matter if your black white asian latin / we gotta vote for hope; and steer clear of fear / regardless of the garbage they put in our ears / the talking head on the radio and television / spinning the facts treating us like we’re little children / but even with the propaganda they can’t stop us can they / cuz we know in our souls that we’re gonna stand up / & let our voices be heard word to the people / lets make sure this election is fair and equal / no more illegal war dying on a distant shore / and that’s the reason why Obama’s who we’re voting for / he can restore our reputation in the world / and that’s the reason why Obama’s who were voting for / so we can be prosperous free and feel secure / and that’s the reason why Obama’s who were voting for

chorus
Change begins when we believe / in a brighter day a better way to succeed / together we can make it better you and me / so we can be safe and prosperous and free

Yes we can can

Stephen White, an Obama supporter, made this video with one of my favorite songs of all time, by the Pointer Sisters. I wore that record out.


the polls on FiveThirtyEight: why voters thought Obama won

MNPublius has "the big moment"

Upful

By way of Professor Zero: I am posting this video because it's funky, fun,and upful, and because my mama is for Obama, too!


I am also meditating today on how our very real and legitimate fears in this time of uncertainty, violence, and change can both paralyze us or galvanize us into action. It is tempting to react with suspicion, resignation, cynicism and despair. But I choose not to do so. I am going to have to get over my dislike of door-knocking, find a door-knocking buddy, and get out there.


I watched Ousmane Sembene's film Moolaade on Friday. It's a gorgeous, beautiful, luminous, great film about a community which confronts a deep-rooted tradition that is a source of suffering, and how somehow it becomes possible to think of changing that tradition when the youngest, the most vulnerable, the little girls of the village say no, when they are inspired by the only other woman in the village who has also said no, alone at first, and how their example is met with repression, with brutality, but how their example of resistance inspires others to stand with them and insist that there WILL be change. The film is a powerful work of humanistic art. It is not reductive--it loves all its characters-- but it is also committed to a vision of a better world.

Cultures change; they can change, and they do change. But they change when people stand up and stand together. Our country is confronting, not for the first time, deeply rooted beliefs and practices that cause great suffering: racism, sexism, the corruption inherent in savage capitalism. Our history includes many stories of people who said no, who suffered, but who also inspired and created community, solidarity, and change.

We have to say YES to hope in ourselves before we can say NO to oppression.

Thank you, John McCain! You just helped elect Barack Obama!

Jumped the Shark!
McCain, meet the shark you just jumped.

Q. What is jumping the shark?
A. It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it "Jumping the Shark." From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same.

The term "jump the shark" was coined by site founder Jon Hein's college roommate of 4 years, Sean J. Connolly, in Ann Arbor, Michigan back in 1985. This web site, book, film, and all other material surrounding shark jumping, are hereby dedicated to "the Colonel."

The aforementioned expression refers to the telltale sign of the demise of Happy Days, our favorite example, when Fonzie actually "jumped the shark." The rest is history.

Jumping the shark applies not only to TV, but also music, film, even everyday life. "Did you see her boyfriend? She definitely jumped the shark." You get the idea.

Palin: "But as for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell ya, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me, what is it exactly that the VP does every day?"


Married to an BP oilman;

Advocate of teaching creationism in public schools

Subject of state investigation for her efforts to get her ex-brother-in-law fired and endorsed by corrupt Ted Stevens;

Broke the law by using Alaska's DNR website to advocate against the Clean Water Initiative in favor of polluting mining interests;

Opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest;

Hates polar bears!

And it is insulting:

"it's a slap in the face of other Republican women like Kay Bailey Hutchison, bless her heart, who was forced to stumble through an interview on TV trying to make the case for Palin whom she has never met. There are certainly women in the Republican party who were "in line" for this before Palin. Did the Rovian type advisors to McCain just cynically think that throwing a young attractive inexperienced woman into the mix would satisfy women who long to see a woman president? Women, and Republican women, are not so stupid as to fall for that! It is reminiscent of the Republicans putting up Alan Keyes to run against Barack Obama for the Illinois Senate just because he was black. Voters saw through that pretty quickly."

And they won't like Palin just because she has breasts.

I have to agree with Pam Spaulding here:

"McCain Veep Meltdown: He's Unqualified to Serve".

Worldchanging for human rights

When I was a child reading science fiction, starting in about 1969, I remember discovering the dystopian narratives of John Brunner. He was using what I later would come to understand as sophisticated modernist narrative techniques to extrapolate on the new understandings about pollution and ecological crisis (think Alvin Toffler, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Diet for a Small Planet). I found his novels disturbing because they were bleak, very close to reality, and did not have heroes who saved the universe at the end, instead showing the effects of fear and anxiety on ordinary people living through the accelerating collapse of the world's ecosystem and social structures. One of his novels was called The Sheep Look Up from Milton). I was too young to understand the big picture, but that book has stayed with me, as a prophecy of what could happen if we did not wake up. I didn't see any hope in this angry, all-too-prophetic book.

A couple of days ago, as I was driving to the school board meeting to speak out in favor of the Human Rights Campaign's curriculum to counteract homophobic bullying in the public schools, I listened to radio news headlines that were almost apocalyptic: the death toll climbs from the cyclone in Myanmar and the authoritarian regime is stealing food and aid from the people; reports of the earthquake in China eloquently communicate the pain of all those parents who've lost their only precious child in the rubble of collapsed schools; tornados are increasing in severity, but is it becaue of increasing in severity because of global climate change? the degradation of ecosystmes contributes to the raging wildfires; Bush's lackeys have finally declared polar bears a "threatened" (but not endangered!) species, and admitted that maybe there's something to this global warming stuff after all. Food and fuel prices are rising, and the poorest will be hit the hardest. I feel anger and sorrow. It's tempting to give in to despair. But, as Alex Steffen says, in his manifesto for a politics of optimism "Cynicism is obedience." There is a global movement for change, made of many pieces. Some of them connect at Worldchanging.com. As they say, "Worldchanging: Change your thinking"

Last week, my contribution to the meme of Passion Quilt was a post about how I am passionate about teaching as "changing perspectives." Today I'm joining folks who are blogging about human rights, and I want to think about it in the same way: what do we need to do to change our thinking about our relationship to the planet so that we can make changes for human rights.

I got an email from someone at the The Advocates for Human Rights, (formerly known as the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, but they have grown),letting me know about this event. I clicked their link and it took me to something called "Bloggers Unite:Blogging for Hope, hosted by BlogCatalog.com. If you click there, you can see what other bloggers are thinking and writing about human rights. We are working together for a critical pedagogy of hope.

The Audacity of Hope, from the Mad Law Professor

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Patricia Williams, writing in The Nation

Dream No. 5: Britney Spears is still speaking in tongues, but after Super Bowl Tuesday, we are all able to understand her. She says that were she not a celebrity, not rich, not really-really talented and not white, she'd be doing hard time as a drug offender--and that the average federal sentence for drug felonies is around five years. She points out that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, inching toward the rate at which Stalin threw people into the gulag. She points out that around a quarter of the more than 2 million people in the correctional system are there for drug offenses and that nearly 75 percent of those are black or brown. She says that in California, where she lives, twenty-one prisons were built from 1984 to 1996, but only one new university. She admits that she is a very sick person. She says that there are a lot of sick citizens like her, a lot of depressed, addicted, overwrought, less-than-rational decision-makers, but that they shouldn't be jailed. She expostulates that it costs billions a year to incarcerate drug offenders. She thinks we should spend more of that money on mental healthcare. Because these words flow from Britney while she is wearing a pink wig, a Dooney & Bourke Metallic Mambo handbag and little else, the whole country listens with unusual attentiveness. And lo, there is a roar of political pressure to re-examine the legalization and medicalization of addictive drug use, to rethink determinate sentencing, to stop arresting minorities in numbers disproportionate to the number of passes given Lindsay Lohan, as well as to start a forced re-education camp for the parents of child stars.

Nezua has something to say about hope as well.

and my hat's off to Hillary for these words, even if John Edwards did say them first.