Many of us didn't want this to be so, myself included. There was something exciting about large "communities" like Daily Kos when I first found it, and the addition of diaries served to make it seem more like a real community, but without all that pressure to dress like everyone else or go to the same restaurant, like we have to deal with in the meat world.

Of course, without superficial things for people to build cliques around, they found other things, and as that blog (and others of the big boy bloggers) became more closely alligned as a "netroots" army aimed at helping the Democratic Party, those cliques began to enforce a MESSAGE conformity. The latest version of this went up last night at DK, with the usual bullying and use of the silly rating system to try to use community shunning to reinforce group behavior.

Frontpaged at Booman Tribune (thanks Susan!)

"He feels it, Kurt, you see? He feels pain. "

Kurt replies, "ah hell, he volunteered."

I can't believe what I watched last night.

Homecoming, Joe Dante's entry into Showtime's Masters of Horror, is a black humored takedown of Bush's criminal war, the media and the religious right. Basically, a winger advisor comes up with the bright idea that he wishes dead soldiers could come back to tell peaceniks that they died for a worthy cause.

Once, a few years ago, I was waiting to pay at a small little market near my old apartment. In front of me there was a guy paying, and then behind him a woman with two young boys. One about four, the older one about seven. This was a small market, and they were pushing and shoving and play fighting, oblivious to the world around them. A stockboy came in with a teetering stack of boxes on a two-wheeled cart, his arms shaking with the strain as he tried to ease past the two boys without hitting them. His mother paid no attention to the man's plight, so I finally said, rather sharply, "boys, could you step aside so this man can do his job?"

It is easy, here in the land of the Personality Cult and "There is no 'I' in team" and office environments plastered with motivational posters to blame the system or our "leaders" for the sorry state this culture festers in, but that is too simple, a cop out. How easily we forget, or run away from, the idea that this is a government of We the People .... David Sirota sums up the real problem:

The disease is simple to understand: It leads the supposedly “ideological” grassroots left to increasingly subvert its overarching ideology on issues in favor of pure partisan concerns. That may sound great at first glance. Democratic Party officials always talk about a need for “big tent unity” and subsequently try to downplay ideology. But as a trait of the grassroots and not just the party, Partisan War Syndrome could be positively devastating not just for issue advocacy, but also for Democrats’ political aspirations as well.

Oh, this is just WAY too fucking funny, in a black humor sort of way:

Does it matter that David Ludwig -- the 18-year-old alleged killer of his 14-year-old girlfriend's parents -- was a huge fan of hardcore Christian rock?

Nov. 24, 2005 | On the night of Oct. 6, David Ludwig, 18, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Kara Beth Borden, went to church. There was no sermon, though -- at least not a traditional one. David and Kara were at the Lancaster Bible Church in Manheim, Penn., for a Christian rock concert. As the punishingly loud guitars of Audio Adrenaline and Pillar strained the limits of the church sound system, the kids screamed and pumped their fists and banged their heads. "Pillar and Audio A rock my face off!" David wrote on his blog the next day. Kara spent almost all the money in her pocket on a Pillar sweatshirt. She was wearing it the morning of Nov. 13 when, police say, David shot and killed her parents and fled with her at his side. (google cache of his blog here).

Damned kids and their rock ... oh, wait ... SAVED kids and their BLESSED rock music!!

... I'm gonna dig myself a hole

Gonna lay down in it 'til

I satisfy my soul

Gonna let the world pass by me

That's about how I used to feel after the noon rush on this day every year. Just ... let ... me ... hide.

On THIS Black Friday, only the second year I'm not rushing around through crowds after over twenty years as a retail clerk, manager and/or buyer, I'd like to put in a word for those long-suffering folks confronting voracious Americans on this most holy of days in the United States of Mammon.

Show them some damned thanks, would you please?

The war on women takes another beachhead, this time in Indiana:

Ind. Court Upholds Abortion Waiting Period

The Indiana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a law that requires women seeking an abortion to get counseling about medical risks and alternatives, and to wait at least 18 hours after the session before going through with the procedure.

The court ruled in a 4-1 vote that opponents of the law could not pursue their lawsuit, which argued that privacy is a core right under the state constitution that extends to women seeking to end their pregnancies.

Silly girls, you obviously haven't THOUGHT about what it is you want to do. Here, dear, take a look at some gruesome photos and listen to a person give you state-mandated details about the procedure, then go home and think about it for a couple of days.

Jeralyn Merritt blogs a chilling quote from this piece in the Denver Post, written by civil rights lawyers John Holland and Anna Cayton-Holland:

Four years later, many just want to die. They starve themselves for long periods of time and attempt bloody suicides. The government responds by forcing tubes down their throats. People are trying to kill themselves to get out of custody, because they have no legal recourse. "They won't let us live, but they won't let us die," one of our clients explained.

It's increasingly unnerving how many aspects of dystopic stories and novels of decades past are coming true, and this passage reminded me immediately of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It opens:

So party insiders they can make anonymous attacks on their own Party Chairman.

There is a grave and growing danger that will undermine the spirit of "teamwork & morale" that our military units need to operate effectively in battle:

Group Trains Air Force Cadets to Proselytize

A private missionary group has assigned a pair of full-time Christian ministers to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where they are training cadets to evangelize among their peers, according to a confidential letter to supporters.

The letter makes clear that the organized evangelization effort has continued this year despite an outcry over alleged proselytizing at the academy that has prompted a Pentagon investigation, congressional hearings, a civil lawsuit and new Air Force guidelines on religion.

After all, why let something pesky like laws and the discomfort of other servicepeople get in the way of some good harvesting of souls?

We hear it often, the assertion that protests at home destroyed troop morale in Vietnam, and that peace protesters "hurt the troops". This convential wisdom, a cultural ointment smeared on any debate about war, seeks to "explain" why the United States lost in Vietnam.

It is, frankly, crap. The photo to the right has the following caption:

Grieving soldier

An American infantryman mourns the death of a fellow soldier in Haktong-ni, South Korea, August 1950.

What does broken morale really mean? Isn't it just a form of grieving, a sudden acceptance or realization that a "noble cause" wasn't worth the cost in blood, in treasure, in lost limbs and shreaded souls? It is a byproduct and a part of all wars, and the protests at home were only one of many reasons for soldier's lost morale in Indochina, reasons as numerous as there are

In some of the good news that came out of Tuesday's election, one of the more heartening was the rejection by California voters of Arnold's parental notification ballot initiative, though I suspect that the rejection was as much or more a reflection of the rising unpopularity of the Governor. In fact, something that Arnold said about the initiative before the election underlines the true reason that such laws are on the books in forty-four states. As quoted in the Village Voice -- Roe v. No, Arnold said:

"I wouldn't want to have someone take my daughter to a hospital for an abortion or something and not tell me. I would kill him if they do that."

There it is, the ugly little core at the heart of such policies: control and the threat of violence.

We've grown up on dramatic presentations of debates, all of us. The Lincoln/Douglas debates are re-enacted every year, with CSPAN providing "coverage". Debate in Congress is very dramatically portrayed in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and now a live scripted debate just scored in the ratings for NBC's West Wing.

No, this isn't another review of that hour (though how thrilling to hear a Presidential candidate proudly proclaim himself a liberal). No, I was reminded more of what is missing from Democrats when they debate, not just in campaigns but on the floor of the House, the Senate and even when appearing on TV shoutfests ... the majority of Democrats are completely unable to express positions with conviction.

NOW, after so much damage has been done: many thousands dead, injured and maimed in a needless war; an American city left in ruins; expanding numbers of Americans sinking into poverty and going without access to healthcare, NOW suddenly these scions of the elite, of entrenched wealth and permagov "public service" are speaking out against the perfidy of the Bush Administration. As Rich Miles puts it:

Drinking in the ruins -

We could argue forever about when it happened: about whether it was the threat of communism; the rapid growth of Evangelical Corpo-Fundamentalism; the courts insisting to white America that it should actually share this country equally with ALL Americans (at which point we started to tear apart everything we were supposed to share), but plainly the shambling horror that stalks the world now is only the re-animated corpse of the nation born of a dream that was the United States of America.

Oh, what fragile and delicate paper-thin epidermis the Bully Right has:

IS THERE NO LEARNING CURVE IN POLITICS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I'm catching a little more of the Rosa Parks funeral on CSPAN right now while I am supposed to be meeting deadlines. I'm trying to get beyond Louis Farakhan prominently in the audience, sitting next to Al Sharpton (his name always should be followed by "Remember Freddie's Fashion Mart?"). I'm trying to get beyond Nancy Pelosi. Hillary Clinton. John Kerry. But then I hear John Kerry do a commercial for affirmative action, tying a current unjust public policy to her quite just bus action. A veiled reference to women having underclass issues here. A veiled reference to blacks who were shut out from voting (OR I MIGHT BE PRESIDENT!--I'm adding this) there. Bill Clinton had to cut out early to make sure New Yorkers get health care....maybe I need to watch the whole thing, but what I have seen has felt a little....Wellstone funeral-like.

Posted at 07:08 PM

I had a good day on Saturday.

It was a beautiful fall day, and I'd had my fill of "Fitzmas", of disappointment, of the howling void that is political discourse in this country right now. I'd had enough of blogging; reading and writing. I knew, like the sun rises and the moon sets, that the Bush Administration would nominate some troglodyte to the bench on Monday, and I knew that the poodle press would follow the new bright shiny ball, press releases fluttering out ahead of their cold-to-the-touch noses like that mechanical rabbit at a Greyhound track.

I couldn't take it anymore, so I ventured out to spend a bright sunny fall day wandering around Milwaukee after getting some long-neglected chores out of the way.

Oh, by the way, this is a record review, but bear with me, because it will take me a little while to get to it, but the music I picked up that day at Exclusive Company near Brady Street was chosen because of the day I had, and the way the world is going. Indulge me while I meander a bit.

Alexander Sanger was in town recently for a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the WI Chapter of Planned Parenthood, and is interviewed by Lisa Kaiser in the latest issue of Milwaukee's independent paper, the Shepherd Express:

Shepherd: What aspects of your grandmother’s legacy are still alive in Planned Parenthood today?

Sanger: Her legacy is everywhere. She was a fighter who had to face down fundamentalist Protestants and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. She was intrepid and fearless and an advocate for those who were in desperate need of her services, who were disenfranchised, poor, girls who weren’t part of the system, who were immigrants, uninsured. These women’s needs are as great today as they were in my grandmother’s time. The services provided by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin as well as in the rest of the country are vital to the well-being of women.