Revolt Crushed in Ferguson

The biggest reason the U.S. will never achieve an idealized state of equality is because every time the shit hits the fan the powers-that-be will call a state-of-emergency, thereby crushing dissent.

As Dooley says, "If you want to die young, dream big."


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Yes!

American exceptionalism — perhaps the most prominent of exceptionalist doctrines — is the idea that the U.S. is qualitatively different from and morally superior to the rest of the world, such that it should act and be treated according to its own special set of rules. We’ve seen this kind of logic in action for decades now. It might not be wholly moral to suspend or violate the law and threaten violence against anyone who stands in your path; but if you believe you’re saving the world from communism, terrorism, “rogue states,” dictators, Muslim “extremists,” nuclear threats, or “suspicious persons,” it becomes a lot easier to justify abridgments of rights and abnegation of sacredly held legal and moral codes.

The rest of the story.

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Coming Home to Reality

Mr. Voight, have you ever visited the Palestinian West Bank or Gaza or spoken with Palestinians who've suffered under decades of Israeli occupation? Had you been forced to suffer their fate, your anger would certainly be directed elsewhere. During the last five decades Palestinians have suffered continuous expropriation of their lands, collective punishment, destruction of their homes, seizures of their agricultural land and destruction of their trees and crops, extrajudicial executions, exile, kidnapping, torture, use of human shields, economic blockade and closure, constant invasions and bombing, denial of the right to education or development, massive exploitation and then closure. And contrary to your assertion that Israel has "always labored for peaceful relations," it not only completely ignored its obligations to support full Palestinian autonomy in the Camp David Agreements but invaded and occupied another sovereign country, Lebanon, for 19 years.

The talented but uninformed Mr. Voight is undressed by a pair of scholars.


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One More Time

Nothing to see here...move along.


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Unbelievable

From The Oregonian:

DavidKoller90 "This season is it.  Anything more than one loss and Helfrich needs to go. Games like Stanford and AZ cannot happen this year.  I'm tired of all the hype and excuses"

Wonder if this idiot ever played football?

Oregon could lose two games by tripping over a yard marker and it wouldn't necessarily be Helfrich's fault at all.  Who would a moron like this have as a coach?

Maybe he could pick one out of his ass.

He's tired of the "hype and excuses."

Self-centered much, you fucking dunce?


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P.S.  This entry has been edited for anger issues.

BD

A Day in the Life

"...the news was rather sad..."


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Bombs for Humanity

While visiting Baghdad last year, I was struck by what Iraqis said every time I tried to apologize for the 2003 invasion: “Don’t apologize for that. We needed an invasion to get rid of Saddam Hussein.” And then they would add, “But you do need to apologize for the occupation.”

More from Prof. Elliott Colla of Georgetown University.

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Murder by Any Other Name

Events in Ferguson, MO remind me of how a Portland SWAT team killed a friend of mine nearly a decade ago.

This is from Buddy Dooley's "People, Polemics & Pooh-Pah: Notes from Under the Bar."

The Death of Raymond Gwerder

I met Raymond in 2000 when we worked together at Jimmy Mak's in Portland’s Pearl District. I started at the club about a week before Ray, so I knew the kitchen's routine pretty well by the time he arrived, and it fell on me to show him how things worked on the hot and cold sides, where storage was located, etc.

In his mid-twenties, Ray was no beginner in the restaurant trade. He'd recently cooked at a high-end French restaurant in Northwest Portland, and it was obvious from the get-go that he knew what he was doing.

Within days he was handling both sides of the kitchen with ease. Rushes didn't faze him, he always found something to do when things slowed, and he loved to invent dishes that weren't on the menu for our dinner breaks.

I'd watch him throw a few ingredients together from the line and come up with something entirely unique. He was creative that way, and always insistent that I try whatever he'd concocted. It was usually excellent. I liked Ray a lot. He had a sense of humor and a dry, sarcastic wit, and one soon got the sense that he was extremely smart. Ray was young, but wise beyond his years.

When I met Ray, I was going through an extremely rough time. A relationship I was in had crumbled and I had fallen into a torpor like none I'd experienced before. Ray and I talked about my condition as I struggled to pull the pieces of my life together. I was a wounded, middle-aged man, and Ray was a kid. He was giving me advice in a kind of father and son role-reversal scenario.

We started hanging out together after our shifts and he'd lambaste me for beating up on myself over a woman whom he reasoned wasn't worthy of my interest. He didn't know the woman, but he understood that if I was hurting that bad she couldn't possibly be worth it. We talked about his situation as well. He loved a girl, he told me. He was succinct. He said he'd like to kill her.

I knew he wasn't serious. He'd simply found a way to handle the pain the relationship had caused him and he, too, was trying to move on. It was blustery and funny, as Ray attempted to shatter the darkness that had surrounded me.

I was stuck, and Ray grew impatient.

But Ray kept at me, using the usual pop psychology one uses in such matters. Get over it, he said. Don't let it ruin you, man!  Don't be stupid about it; there is nothing you can do! On and on, Ray had the answers. He knew I didn't.

I was a mess and Ray knew it. He said, man, take a trip up to Seattle with me. He told me his sister lived there and he was going to visit. I should come along, take my mind off things, meet his sister, and hit Seattle's night life.

I turned him down. Whatever it was I needed, I knew I was in no shape for a road trip.

My work suffered, I had a fight with a co-worker, and Jimmy Mak got pissed off and messed with my under-the-table wages, robbing me essentially.

I walked away from the place.  Jimmy Mak  called: "Where you at? You're late..." I never went back. Things had snowballed into misery.

I found my next job, returning to a place I'd worked before I fell into my destructive relationship, and I tried to keep it together.  Ray dropped by many times to visit while I worked. We hung out. Ray soon quit on Mak as well. He also found the guy to be a jackass.

The food business is highly transient. People come and go in jobs. The wages are poor, people don't always consider the job as a career, people are always looking for a way to move on, a way out.

Ray and I lost track of each other, migratory restaurant workers, and years later I'd started taking a few classes at Portland State to test myself. Could I still read?  Could I, at age 53, do the work?

I ran into Ray one morning in 2004.  We were walking through the campus Park Blocks in opposite directions

Ray was studying biology at PSU. Good, I told him. He had talked often about his desired work. Science was everything to him.  He loved biology more than anything else.

A year later, Ray grew depressed, somehow got his hands on a gun. Maybe he had it all along, I don't know.

He was threatening to use the gun on himself and talking on the phone to a Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) negotiator outside his home when he decided to go back inside. Maybe he was going to put the gun away. Maybe he was going to shoot himself. Nobody knew.

It didn't matter either way. A SERT sniper shot Raymond Gwerder in the back. Ray died 23 minutes later in the hands of the EMTs.  The cops hadn’t tried to save him.

Another crazy depressed kid. It didn't matter.

I think about Ray a lot. One day long ago he may have talked me out of doing something really stupid. But then he let life grab him by the balls, too hard, too rough, and he got a raw deal. The pop psychology didn't work for Ray on Ray, this terribly bright young man.

Leo Besner, a SERT sharpshooter, shot Ray in the back.

The police ended up promoting the shooter five years after the shooting.


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Ronson on TED

I thought his was an interesting TED talk.  You might enjoy it as well.

"...pursued or declared a failure..."

If only...

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Frank Deford

It's true, the news/propaganda section of NPR is functionally no better than FOX.

Minor variables exist, but they're meaningless and purposefully fraudulent.

The cultural and entertainment aspects of public radio have a place in my world, I admit.  I enjoy numerous of those types of programs.

But the news analysts, the pundits, the old-hands that are comfortably lodged in public radio's power structure lost credibility long ago.  Listening to them is like listening to a broadcast-reading of a piece of fantasy literature.

They talk of a world I do not recognize.

NPR, like any big news organization, presents a narrow view, creates narrow choices that suffocate humanity, all the while padding the status quo.

The news is easy, made to order for our mindlessness.  Since most people have to be told what to believe, it makes sense to present them with nothing challenging.  Cokie Roberts is a fraud.

She's reflective of the insider status that controls NPR, the beltway miasma, the ongoing power-elite cocktail party that is D.C.

Whenever I hear Cokie Roberts' voice I simply turn off the radio, because I know what I'm about to hear is going to amount to nothing more than a pure con job, something so divorced from reality as to cause you to wonder--is Cokie Roberts sane?

Or to move on after the headier days of Bob Edwards--is Steve Inskeep a complete moron?

You really want to know the best thing NPR has to offer?  That would be Frank Deford.


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Summer Pervert

When I looked down at the rim of my toilet bowl this afternoon it appeared that a lone fruit fly was resting there.

Then, almost imperceptibly, a second fly appeared and I realized I was watching a moment of post-coital bliss as neither fly wanted to leave.

Both rolled over onto their backs.  I was just happy one of them didn't light up a cigarette.

I'm sure the flies must copulate there all the time, but this is the first time I've ever caught a pair in the act.

I think it was sort of embarrassing for all of us.


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Funk

Ugh, my energy is low today after being high yesterday when I was interviewed by a local writer about my new book and the press in general.

I'm glad I don't have to listen to a tape of the conversation.  I know it would be torturous on my end.

Funny, but I remember when conversations came a little easier for me.  Seems the older I get the less polished of a speaker I become.

Or am I just finally awakening to this weakness that I've had all along?

Anyway, it was like work.  I first noticed my regression a few years back when I briefly had an Internet radio program.  I'd get so damn tongue-tied on the thing that I was unbearable even to myself.

Who would want to listen to that guy?! I argued.

Not sure I said anything worth writing down yesterday, but the journalist said he planned a story.  I tried to answer his quite reasonable questions, but I might have been better off saying, literally, "blah, blah, blah."

We'll see.  I hope it happens because I'd like some of the others involved with the press to get mention. I attempted to point the interview in that direction a couple of times.  In the end the writer will say what he wants to say, of course.  That is what writers do.

Maybe some good will come out of it, keeping in mind that it is not always how or what you say, but often your intent.

My intent is good.


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Dedication

Dedicated to the memory of Robin Williams.


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Confronting the Herd

Big crowds turned out around the world yesterday to protest the Israeli assault on Gaza.

Meanwhile, in Portland this morning I met a throng of bicyclists from who knows where unleashing their bikes for the annual Bridge Pedal 2014.

This is an organized bike ride, mind you.  And it is far less interesting than Portland's famous "naked bike ride."

One thing I've never understood about this gang bang.  Why do people drive into Portland with their bikes attached to their gas guzzlers, unstrap them, and then ride around in a vast circle over Portland's many bridges with a horde of like-minded  health and wanna-be eco-friendly fanatics?

What a goddamn leisurely waste of petrol!  You just drove 100 miles to flaunt your awareness?!

Jesus, if you have to drive your car into Portland with your bike on the roof or bumper just to ride with your fellow sheep why not do us all a favor and ride around your hometown?  Call it a day?

Don't get me wrong.  I like to bike myself.  But if I wanted to go bike around Salem or Bend, I'd bike there first.

Sure I would...

I get the feeling that Portland's utilitarian cyclists, those for whom the bike is a function of their daily lives--a mode of commuting to work rain or shine for instance--avoid this tourist event like the plague.

Another of Portland's almost criminally-stupid events that out-of-towners seem to cherish while the rest of us say ho-hum.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll stick with my theory.  The bike herd is for those trying to fit in, like all herds in general.


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Free Association

For some reason I cannot ascertain this song has been inside my brain all day.

Unless it is because I am reading this novel by Portland author Smith Henderson.

Good book, by the way.



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