Techno hubris and organizational hubris

Wolcott points to this terrific site: Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler who writes about our society's mindless and baseless optimism and the coming dark age:

I notice lately that there are two kinds of hubris operating among the 'forward-thinking' classes in America (which is to say, those who are thinking at all). One I call techno-hubris. It represents the idea that there are really no limits to our powers of innovation and it is obviously the product of our experience in the past century, especially of our victory in World War Two and of the 1969 moon landing. The other kind is organizational hubris, the certainty that we can organize our way around the oil bottleneck, global warming, and population overshoot. What both modes of thinking have in common is that neither recognizes the probability that we are moving into a period of discontinuity, turbulence and hardship. Both modes of thinking assume that we can negotiate a smooth transition from where we are now to a new-and-improved human condition.
There is a remarkable consistency in the delusional thinking at every level of American life these days. When Americans think about the future at all, they seem to think it will be pretty much the way we live now. The buyers of 4000 square foot McHouses think that they will be able to continue heating them with cheap natural gas, not to mention commuting seventy miles a day. The stadium builders assume that major league sports will continue just as it is today, with chartered jet planes conveying zillionaire athletes incessently back and forth across the continent. The highway engineers and the municipal planners are focused like lasers on providing more roads and more parking spaces for evermore cars. The architects are designing more skyscrapers, despite the decrepit condition of the electric grid and the frightful situation with our depleting natural gas supply. We're so confident, so sure of ourselves.
When you combine the seven deadly sins with high technology, you get some some really serious problems. You get turbo-sins. It's dreadful to imagine what goeth after turbo-pride.

Great stuff, what? He is one of those writers who says what I realized I was thinking when I read what he wrote.
And here's more:

Herbert Hoover was vilified for doing nothing about the depression that followed the stock market crash. When we look back on the years of George W. Bush we will marvel at his failure to lead, especially his failure to inform the public that our habits of daily life would have to change, that we could not continue to burn twenty million barrels of oil a day, and spend money we hadn't earned; that we desperately had to reform our suburban land development habits, that the WalMarts and other predatory corporations had to be restrained in their systematic destruction of local economies, that our railroads needed to be rebuilt, that our borders needed to be defended, that our local small farmers needed to be supported, that our industries needed to be re-scaled and retained here, that corporate chiseling had to be policed, that finance had to be qualitatively different than a craps game in some casino.
The Hooverization of George W. Bush has begun. Only it will go much worse for Bush. His fall could be so hard, swift and awful that he may not be allowed to finish his second term. That's how stunned the public and even their entrenched oligarchical elites will be as the economy tanks and our national life begins to unravel. The Republican majority will go down with him, including such arrant villians as Tom Delay and the hosts of corporate CEO chiselers who sold out their workers and their country. They can pray all the want. It won't help.

So what can we all do to protect ourselves in the coming dark age? Well, I don't think I'll be moving to the country to live off the land -- my dad was a farmer, and living off the land is just too hard. But it sounds like we should do whatever we can to get out of debt and mortgages, to simplify our lives, and live off the grid as much as we can.
And hoard stuff -- like pepper, yeah, pepper is good . . .

The Choice

This is why there is no law or rule or religion which should cover these decisions. It must be the woman's own choice, painful as this choice can be -- Hard Labor

Sister Gatling Gun of Mindfulness

You might notice a new link to the right, to Unitarian Jihad First explosed to the world by the San Francisco Chronicle, it is spreading all over the progressive blogosphere as the rolling waters of reasonableness overwhelm and smooth out the right-wing ruts of righteousness.
The Naming Committee has given me the UJ name of "Sister Gatling Gun of Mindfulness" which I will wear proudly as a sign of membership in the vast centre-wing conspiracy. And you, too, can get your own UJ name, just click on the link.
Here is the UJ creed:

We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.
Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.
We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) . . . We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.
People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

Different verse, same as the first

I added The Poorman to my list of links because I found I often laughed at his posts. But here is one that is not so funny.
He links to the WP story about that judicial conference that just about everyone in the left blogosphere is writing about today with many good insights and conclusions. Here's what The Poor Man says about Mandate Madness!: ". . . it's the same folks it was thirty, forty years ago, and they've dusted off all the old talking points . . . it's fags now, fags and immigrants and heathens, dear, because kikes and niggers went out with Beatle boots . . . the hour is getting late. Everyone in America had a pretty tough day on 9/11, and in the days and weeks and months that followed . . . a lot of people found certainty and security by making themselves believe that the universe had suddenly become a totally different place, where the President . . . had become this messianic figure, capable of resolving the world's most tortuous and least resolvable problems with one neat and decisive stroke . . . such a great and good man requires great and diabolical enemies, and these enemies became anyone who doubted - liberals, Democrats, foreigners, reporters, academics, professionals, whoever. It makes you feel better. It's intoxicating. But it doesn't have much relation to reality. When reality conflicts with fantasy, you can either abandon the fantasy, and deal with the hangover that follows, or pull the soft, warm covers over your head. And the harsher the reality, the nastier the hangover, and the deeper under the covers you hide to avoid it. But the hour is getting late, now, and you would do well to take off the beer goggles and see who you’ve been sharing that bed with."

Good, Bad, Ugly

Good: Well, Georgie must be so proud. Here are those adorable Iraqis demonstrating just like grownups do. Are they thanking America for overthrowing Hussein, on the second anniversary of the fall of Baghdad? Not exactly -- actually, the tens of thousands of demonstrators were there at Al Sadr's instigation, to demand that America get out of Iraq. "Mahdi Army militiamen searched people entering the demonstration area as Iraqi policemen stood to the side. Protesters burned the U.S. flag as well as cardboard cutouts of Bush and Saddam. Three effigies representing Saddam, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- all handcuffed and dressed in red Iraqi prison jumpsuits that signified they had been condemned to death -- were placed on a pedestal, then symbolically toppled like the Saddam statue two years before. Others acted out reports of prison abuse at the hands of American soldiers . . . "
Bad: Time's Joe Klein who just wrote another column critizing democrats and their boring old "culture of law" meme. As Digby writes: "We're not in favor of inflicting particular religious doctine on those who don't believe and we don't think that the government should intrude on purely private matters. If that's a 'culture of law' count me in. There must be some kind of computer program you can buy in DC that scolds Democrats like a drunk and bitter stepmother no matter what the circumstances. If there isn't, I'm going to invent one so that Joe Klein can spend even more time kissing the flatulent asses of sanctimonious Republican gasbags who insist that James Dobson and his zombie nation represent 'real' America."
Ugly:

Just another one of Nick Anderson's great Pulitzer-winning cartoons.

Whose court would you rather be in -- Kennedy, or Delay?

And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty
These people are mentally ill.
They need help. Now. They need to go away to the funny farm for a while or take a pill or talk to a good psychiatrist, or all three.
It isn't the judges that need to be stopped. It is these people.
Now they think they're going to impeach a Supreme Court Justice because he dared to change his mind on juvenile executions between 1988 and now, to write the majority decisionto stop the execution of teenagers, a practice which every other country in the world, except Somalia, has already abandoned. And they think it is outrageous judicial overreach to even mention in the decision that the US is lagging behind every other country on the planet in this regard. How uhpatriotic. Maybe its not the decision, its the implied insult they're reacting to -- gee, you mean you think some of our state legislatures are twenty years behind the times, led by a bunch of rednecks? How dare you insult our good ole boys!
Not only that, but Kennedy had the temerity to write that juveniles, because they were younger and less mature, should be given the chance to grow up -- "the state cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity". Well, age hasn't helped to bring maturity to the people attending this conference, has it.
And in the same issue of the Washington Post is an article by a judge talking about violence toward judges, including references to the recent violence and to earlier mail bombs. Judge Roth wants congress to give more funds to the US Marshalls Service to protect judges better. Well, how convenient -- the wingnuts now know that all they have to do to intimidate judges is to dismantle the US Marshalls.
Problem solved I guess.
Or else they can adopt the Stalin solution they kept talking about at the conference -- "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem" The Supreme Court had better keep checking its mail.
It would, I suppose, be too much to expect that Bush would issue some kind of statement condemning these wingnuts -- they are, after all, his base, and so he must not dare to tell them they're wrong.
Besides, they might turn on him, next.
UPDATE: Digby has more. "It's not that these judges are "liberal activists" --- the main players in the Schiavo matter were conservative republicans, for God's sake. It's that the Republican legislatures both state and federal want to blame the judiciary for the fact that they cannot deliver on these repugnant, unamerican, demands from their extremist religious right constituency. They want something that . . . Republican judges and Democrats all agree is unconstitutional. They want to destroy an independent judiciary so they can pass unconstituional laws on a purely partisan basis with no review."

Finger bites back

Finger-in-chili accuser has litigious history Some people have just amazing bad luck, don't they?

Mulroney's Irish eyes are smiling

The Globe and Mail: Scandal battering Liberals, poll shows This should win an award as the least surprising headline of the week.
It may be that not every accusation about corruption and passing around envelopes full of cash will prove to be true, but there are just so many of them that even if only half are true, its still a huge number. It all reads like a Sopranos script.
When Harper told the commons earlier this week that the Liberals had lost the moral authority to govern, I felt I could agree with him -- even though the scandal should not be blamed on Martin, it will be, and the history of democracy is littered with the corpses of politicians who had to fall on their swords because someone else couldn't keep their hands out of the till.
Mulroney, I'm sure, will not be able to stop himself from at least a tiny gloat or two -- and he's entitled, after all the misery he went through. I'm not sure that the Conservatives will be able to convince Canadians that they have earned that moral authority to govern -- I guess we'll have to see what kind of campaign it is -- but it looks like the conservatives will be able to use that same commercial, the one with the janitors sweeping up the money in the Parliament buildings.
And I will be profoundly disappointed if the writ is dropped before the Gay Marriage legislation gets passed.

We're trying

The Abstract Factory: In which Jonah Goldberg performs feats that bend the laws of space and time I guess right-wing wunderkind Goldberg wrote a column about why so many university faculty are self-described liberals, and it was all wrong, of course. In writing about the stupidity of Goldberg's arguments, computer science grad student and blogger Abstract Factory reports a greater truth:
"Now, this would merely be an occasion for a hearty laugh at the village idiot's expense, if not for what it represents in its broader media context. The fact is, Goldberg doesn't care in the least whether what he says is true and well-reasoned, and neither do his backers and readers . . . Goldberg's function is to spew forth some roughly grammatical stream of words that appear to reinforce conservatarian ideology, so that his readers can listen, nod, and feel vindicated in their beliefs. And --- this is what's really maddening, all the outrages I've brought up wouldn't matter in the least except for this point --- virtually all right-leaning commentators, running the gamut from David Brooks to Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Reynolds, whether consciously or not, perform roughly the same function, and they're wildly effective. The entire right-wing movement is like a hovercraft floating on the perpetually roaring whirlwind of sub-rational, self-reinforcing nonsense that gusts through the minds of its adherents. It goes on and on and on, and nobody stops the people who feed it; most of the time, nobody with a prominent voice even stands up to them and calls them on their nonsense. For writing this column, and numerous other pieces of garbage like it, for filling people's minds with offal, Jonah Goldberg will never face judgment; he'll die peacefully, with a fat bank account and a kid gloves obituary."
Emphasis mine.
Well, AF, we try, oh how we try. We're not going gentle into that good night. We'll blog, blog against the dying of the light.

"Nice little country you have here, folks"

Gilead
Nice little country you have here, folks.
It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.
We're not just talking to those judges anymore, you know. No, its the whole damn country that has to get with the program now. And right quick, too. Or else we might just have to do a little headbanging.
Starting with those "living constitution" judges, of course, the ones who think they can overturn one of OUR laws just because they SAY its UNCONSTITUTIONAL. When we pass a law that outlaws abortion, we don't want any judges around anymore who think they can overturn it just because it isn't fair.
But we've got to go a little further than that -- there's all those bloggers, damned traitors. Bunch of whiners. Who the hell do THEY think they are, anyway? And those anti-war protestors -- have to keep them out of sight. And anyone who thinks they have the right to ask our George a question, or wear a t-shirt with a slogan on it, or put a bumpersticker on their car, well, they've toast, too. Its really the Democrats, all of them, that are the problem with this country. The country just has to get rid of them, that's all, and let Georgie do what he knows is best -- or what WE TELL HIM to do. Whose do you think is running this country now anyway?
We're going to turn you all into decent, God-fearing Christians if we have to break every bone in your body to do it.

Dumb, but not criminal

My Blahg notes that Conservatives can have stupid ideas too -- Criticism of Grewal continues
This MP apparently thinks it should be OK to give someone a visitors visa if they can post a bond of some fantastic sum like $100,000 -- or, I suppose, they could drop their firstborn male child off at the Canadian airport on their way into the country and then pick him up on the way back.
This pales, of course, in comparison to what is coming out about the sponsorship scandal -- Grewal may be dumb, but it doesn't sound like he is a criminal.

Prizewinner

One of a gallery of cartoons by Nick Anderson, who won the Pulitzer for them.
And while you're at the Pulitzer site, check out the AP photos that the right-wing blogs are making all the fuss about -- "how dare they give the prize to photos which actually show how tough it is for the American soldiers in Iraq?"

Oh, shit

Separatism's unlikely ally
Quebecers were angry enough last spring about the idea that they could be bribed into continued loyalty to confederation by a few garden show sponsorships.
Thus, 50 seats for the Bloc last June.
But now its even worse.
The Toronto Star notes that there is no real secret about what the Gomery inquiry is hearing, publication ban or not. Since 2002 the Star has been publishing stories about the story behind the story of the sponsorship scandal ". . . Liberals took a system they inherited from Brian Mulroney's Tories and fine tuned it until federal advertising, polling and communications contracts worth millions were being used to pay the party's bills in Quebec and beyond."
So let me get this straight -- the Liberals have been saying for the last year that they secretly spent millions in sponsorships because they were trying to keep the country together. But actually there was a secret inside the secret. They were actually secretly spending the money to help the Liberals continue to get elected.
Oh, Quebec will hit the roof. And the rest of us should too.
I suppose Chretien and Galiano could have talked themselves into seeing this as "keeping the country together" by preventing the Bloc from getting elected.
Sorry, folks, that ain't gonna cut it.
The Star writes "Should Gomery find that Liberals were breaking the law as well as the rules not to rescue the country but to hide the costs of campaigns before passing the bills to taxpayers, the already diminished brand will be in the dumpster. For those who care more about the country than the party, the consequences are ominous. Strategists are already connecting the dots that lead from another strong Bloc Quebecois election result to leader Gilles Duceppe's expected defection to the Parti Quebecois, then to the anticipated defeat of Premier Jean Charest's unpopular Liberal government and, finally, to another referendum. Instead of crushing separatism, the Chicago tough-guy tactics used on Chretien's watch have given new life to a cause prematurely judged to be on life support . . . Nor is the rubbery asymmetrical federalism preached by Stephen Harper and practised by Paul Martin reassuring. Facing a strong, impressively deft Duceppe, a weak prime minister would have trouble resisting the transformation of an already loose federation into one worth considerably less than the sum of its parts; or worse. That's the opposite of what Chrétien wanted, intended and spent his long life in politics trying to achieve. But once unleashed, dark forces are hard to control and the genie of the Quebec sponsorship scandal is now wandering free, wreaking havoc. By the time its evil work is done, Jean Chrétien, the life-long separatist-fighter, may find his place in history rewritten as the movement's misguided secret weapon."

"Nice little courtroom you've got here, judge."

Senator Links Violence to 'Political' Decisions
Nice little courtroom you've got here, judge. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.
You know how these things go, judge. Its not me you have to worry about now, its my boys.
You know how they get when they're angry.
And judge, I'm sorry to say you've made them pretty angry with all these constitutional decisions you've been making, thinking that's your job now to tell us God-fearing patriotic American citizens whether what we want to do is constitutional or not. Like deciding all the witnesses who said Terri Schaivo wanted to die were right, and accepting all those doctors saying she was basically brain dead. And before that, telling states they couldn't execute teenagers even if they wanted to. And even telling Texas that they couldn't prosecute gay men for having sex.
You just can't be doing that kind of thing anymore, judge, making decisions like that just as though it was your job. Its not, not any more. You got to just be leaving that kind of decision up to me and the boys, or you'll be sleeping with the fishes. Kapishe?

Sad, isn't it.

Ahenakew: didn't know he was being taped when he called Jews a "disease"
"David Ahenakew says he had no idea he was being taped when he told a reporter that Jews were a 'disease' and he never figured his comments would be published."
Excuse me -- this man was speaking to a reporter, and he had been a politician for, what, two decades?
As noted later in the story, "The Saskatoon StarPhoenix reporter who taped the conversation, James Parker, testified that his recorder was right in Ahenakew's face . . . "