See No Evil

The poster is awful in so many ways. Craig looks more like evil personified than Mikael Blomkvist but why is he wearing two layers of clothing while Mara wears nothing? Why does he appear to be protecting her when it's Salander who saves Blomkvist? Who wrote the horrid text and what the hell does it mean? Salander's unwavering sense of justice may qualify as vigilantism but the women for whom she seeks justice have been failed by the system and everyone else.

This poster is a shameful distortion of the book and more important, it is a perfect example of how feminism has been distorted and coopted by Madison Avenue, Hollywood and the rest of corporate America.

 I don't believe for a minute that feminism, with all it's imperfections, was in any way about freeing women to choose to be exploited, to choose to dress like sexual objects or streetwalkers, to choose to emulate the worst behaviors of men.

Why I

WON'T

Really, could this not have been taken in the 50's?

When I first moved here twenty-three years ago I felt I had gone through a time warp. I used to describe my new neighbors as a bunch of Donna Reeds because they all seemed to living in the 50's. Things haven't changed much but the kids have grown up and some of the women are moving on to new careers and in Gwyn's case, becoming more serious about the family hobby, politics.

One reason I won't vote for her: too many family members already in politics. She uses her first name, alla "Hillary", as she does because her brother-in-law is also running for office (and maybe another Mannion too). Her husband's step-mother is the mayor of Syracuse.

Another reason is that I can't personally support a woman who has six children in this day and age. I just can't. The same is true for someone who works for military contractors and is pursuing an MBA post 2008. Again I can't go there.

Bottom line is that I see Gwyn Mannion as prime example of why I'm no longer registered as a Democrat.

And then there's that family photo she's been using in her campaign materials.

In the text she lists the names of the six kids and adds, "Also have a golden retriever named 'Jack'". (Look at 'em. Would they have anything but a golden f***ing retriever?)

So who's the young man on the far right? There's no mention of him in the text, not even any mention of The Fresh Air Fund. 

Let Them SEE Cake!

Years ago soap operas provided women with a respite from their daily chores even as they hawked the soap and other products. I'm not sure what they're about now, I'm not a fan, but I suspect they're a diversion that may be even more welcome as more and more people don't have a job to go to.

Nevertheless what really strikes me as odd is that ABC is replacing one of the soaps with another food show.

An estimated one in six Americans experience hunger in any given week, many of them children. I guess if the poor don't have anything to eat the corporate creatures will give them images of food to feast their eyes on.

Self Annihilation Apace

from Reuters this morning:

Soaring radioactivity deals blow to Japan's plant

I think one of the great mysteries of the century will turn out to be how it was that the rest of the world didn't even try to force Japan to bury this thing after the first reactor blew. Modern man has truly 'evolved' into a thoroughly suicidal creature. I feel like a passenger on one of the planes that was flown into the Trade Center.

Egypt

Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

The future is all but certain but to see the people of Egypt oust a dictator after 30 years of rule is a gift to the entire world. And they did it without guns, without violence.

Holding My Breath

Orwell's America

Unmanned drones, controlled by Air National Guard

from Hancock Airfield, will fly over the Adirondacks

"If you feel like you’re being watched while floating in a canoe or driving along some lonely road in the Adirondacks this summer, you might be right." But not to worry, "the New York flights will not be armed and should be undetectable by those on the ground."

An Evening With Harry Belafonte

Michelle Gabel/ The Post-Standard

He spoke for almost an hour, no notes, he held the attention of his audience the entire time. Eighty-three years old and the fire burns as brightly as ever. He told stories, some funny, some poignant, he talked about his friends and connections in Syracuse and the Onondaga Nation, he talked about his life of activism and his disappointment in the changes of the past thirty years.

He asked over and over again how activists had missed the turning of the tide. I suspect he knows but that he didn't believe his audience wanted to hear it voiced even by him. It was there though in what he didn't say, the names he didn't drop but could have: Clinton, Obama, Biden, Emmanuel...

After he spoke, two much younger leaders of the Peace Council took the stage and it was back to the 70's because they didn't understand what Belafonte was implying and they do not understand that they were rendered powerless years ago by the Democratic Leadership Council and its spawn.

How can it be that an 83-year-old is vastly more current than so many people half his age?

Still I'm so glad I had the chance to hear him speak.

Change You Can Stick

President Obama is preparing to sign an executive order in the new year establishing the government’s right to indefinitely detain prisoners without charge or trial. This according to a report by ProPublica. The administration is expected to indefinitely hold at least 48 of the prisoners remaining at Guantánamo. Under the executive order, prisoners would be allowed to challenge their incarceration periodically. ProPublica reports that nearly two years after Obama’s pledge to close the prison at Guantánamo, more prisoners there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.

Not Even Close to Sane

Kristin Davis, former madam, candidate for governor NY

"This has to be some sort of wicked twisted curse, some kind of Greek tragedy or something. After eight years of Bush and his party dragging the country over the cliff, now we are shackled to Neville Pollyanna Chamberlain Milquetoast, who is busy laying plans for tea and crumpets with the tea party mob who seek to annihilate him, and, for many of them, not just metaphorically either.

That means that during the next two years of multiple continuing national crises, we will be treated to standing by and watching some sort of insane WWE political wrestling match between two leviathans: One, which is murderously vicious and represents the predatory elite oligarchy ripping off the country at every turn, and the other, which is pathetically feeble and represents the predatory elite oligarchy ripping off the country at every turn.

America is so over. Imagine how they must laugh at us over noodles in Beijing. I just cringe for this country every day, with each worse-yet news report from the front lines of a political system that makes full-blown dysfunctionality seem like a panacea by comparison. There seems to be no bottom to the well of our stupidity and greed and hypocrisy and insistence on committing national suicide.

Yep, America is surely over. But, goddamit, does it have to be this embarrassing?"

David Michael Green

The Big Question

mstink

In recent weeks two writers have asked the big question.

From David Michael Green:
Once there was a political party in America – the one that did the New Deal and the Great Society – that stood up a bit for the middle class and the poor. But Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have led the Democrats down a different path. Now the party stands for a slightly weaker version of the GOP’s plutocracy protection service. And, it seems, for getting its face bitch-slapped bright red at every possible juncture. Both aspects of the New Democrats are a puzzle, but particularly the latter. What sort of psychology of self-loathing explains how a Clinton or an Obama can be so passive, even when getting handed their heads by the most scurrilous of the creeps on the political landscape, soulless creatures who could be destroyed with the slightest show of self-defense, let alone a wee assertion of political courage?

From James Kunstler:
The bigger mystery in all this is: what happened to reasonable, rational, educated people of purpose in this country to drive them into such burrow of cowardice that they can't speak the truth, or act decisively, or even defend themselves against such a host of vicious morons in a time of [crisis]?

BP's Macondo Blowout

"When Mama's filling up her SUV with little Joey and Lucy in the backseat do you think she wonders for one nano-second how many [creatures] have died to keep her on the highway?"

Gordon Adair in the last episode of
"The State Within"

The Angry Sister

Something to look forward to...

Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano is nothing to
'Angry Sister' Katla

Every time in recorded history that Eyjafjallajökull volcano has erupted, the much larger Katla volcano has also erupted.
The Christian Science Monitor

Wellness

Americans enjoy one of the most luxurious lifestyles on Earth:
Our food is plentiful.
Our work is automated.
Our leisure is effortless.
And it's killing us.

How can it be that I'm in better shape than anyone else in my immediate circle? I'm supposed to be the one who's unfocused, undisciplined, easily distracted, always going off on tangents, given to wildly unrealistic expectations... Why am I the only one among the people with whom I have the most frequent contact who is fairly reasonable about diet and exercise?

How can people who have watched a mother deteriorate in her last years with vascular dementia not choke on the food that is guaranteed to bring them to the same end?