...Say it!... Say it!... Say it!

Back to the real world after a wonderful vacation at the Washington coast with my family. From the sound of it we picked the perfect week to get out of town. 100 degree plus weather is atypical for Oregon. Six days in a row of that weather is unheard of. Yeesh.

There's a lot of crap going through my head right now. Frankly there's too much going on in the world to write about. I'm just going to share a memory that's forced it's way to the forefront of my thoughts as I've been reading about the faux industry-sponsored protests greeting democratic congressmen back in their districts for townhalls.

On July 23, 1994 I was at this rally (*) at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland. I had waited for several hours in 100-degree heat to see then First Lady Hillary Clinton speak as she kicked off the Health Care Express in the Clinton's doomed effort to modestly reform the health care system in this country.

Clinton was the key note speaker and the reason I was there. I really liked both Clintons and was eager for a chance to see either of them speak live. From what I had seen on the news I knew she had a commanding knowledge of health care and an ability to put a personal perspective on that complex issue. Unfortunately I didn't get to hear a word of what she had to say.

As soon as she took the stage a group of tractor rigs that had been circling the square for hours began blowing their air horns. Unless you were very close to the stage or the speakers you would only catch snippets of what Clinton had to say. (On a related note I had much the same experience a year or so later when I went to see Vice President Al Gore speak at PSU and some wingnut about 10 feet from me spent the entire speech screaming, ruining the experience.)

I struggle with this issue in the context of the First Amendment. On the one hand I loathe the sort of selective crowd control that became commonplace under the Bush administration. Does a bumper sticker on your car, t-shirt, sign or even a provocative question to the president when handed a microphone by organizers really mete expulsion and an arrest? Most of us would probably answer "no" to that question.

When you break it down isn't the difference between those who would shout down a congressman talking to his constituents about health care or a First Lady speaking at a rally and those who would wear an anti-Bush t-shirt to a Bush speech the difference between exercising one's right to free speech or trying to keep others from exercising that same right? Bush supporters may not have enjoyed having to stand next to somebody in such a t-shirt but at least they still had the chance to hear the incoherent babblings of the chimpanzee they lionized.

Does the First Amendment protect the right to shout down those you disagree with? Conservatives and their toadies on the court seem to think so. Much of the continued torpedoing of campaign finance reform laws on First Amendment grounds are based around this idea.

Personally I see shouting down the opposition, whether it's through smothering their message via the airwaves or yelling to the degree that they can't be heard, as a violation of their basic right to free speech. It makes speech solely the province of those who can afford it or those who are willing to be the biggest bullies.

In a larger sense our democratic society cannot function unless all participants are willing to listen. Those that are fighting against health care reform shouldn't be included in the debate at all unless they're as willing to hear as they are to be heard.

(* For bonus fun read through that contemporary account of the rally and see if you can catch the reporter's unmasked disdain for the event expressed through phrases like "...the populism has been carefully crafted." Then, as now, the establishment press tries to make it look like those that want to reform health care are just a front for powerful and shadowy forces. Of course then, as now, the exact opposite is the case.)

The Wagon Queen Family Truckster... You think you hate it now, wait 'til you drive it.

I'm currently up at Cape Disappointment (where Lewis and Clark ended their journey but I'm not sure if it was before Lewis found out Clark was secretly Superman) enjoying the beautiful weather with my family. The campground has a wi-fi connection but I forgot the damn wire to connect our old digital camera to the pc to upload pictures. When I get back I'll put up some really great shots we took hiking.

If you'll excuse me I have a patron cigar and a margarita calling my name.


Toodles,

Dean

Let him rave on, that men will know him mad.

Wow, just... wow.

I'm a big believer in trial by jury but occasionally you get some ignorant yahoos that make some pretty ridiculous decisions. This trial is a glaring example of such a case.

Yes; I wasn't in that courtroom listening to weeks of testimony. I'm not privy to all the information the jurors had to reach their verdict.

None of that changes the central fact of this case: this couple through the process of faith healing allowed their 15-month-old daughter to die a long, painful death from pneumonia. Take religion out of the equation- at it's base this is case of neglect and manslaughter.

Still want to give the jury the benefit of the doubt? Read this account of how the jury reached their verdict and tell me if you still feel the same way.

Here's juror Ken Byers account of the process:

"Trying to come to a consensus was trying to understand each others' viewpoints," Byers said. "And trying to say what's reasonable for me might not be reasonable to somebody else, or vice versa. That was pretty much the dynamic."

Huh? I was under this odd misunderstanding that the purpose of a jury was to listen to the facts of the case as presented and then consider those facts within the context of the law. Apparently the job of a jury is instead to come up with some happy consensus, sort of like a neighborhood association voting on what Christmas decorations are and are not appropriate. Silly fucking me.

BTW- the article mentions Byers went into the trial leaning towards guilty. Nothing in the article other than his empathy for other jurors who were sympathetic to the Worthingtons explains his change of heart. Fuck him for not standing by his convictions or the facts.

Thanks to these geniuses on the jury more Oregon children are going to die for no good reason and more jackasses are going to try and use their faith as a trump card when they do something to harm, through action or inaction, those that they're responsible for protecting.

If I sound angry about this that's because I am. This jury failed.

I had a most startling dream. You were trying to to tell me something.

I was gonna write some deeply insightful plea for continued exploration of space on the anniversary of Apollo, but instead let me just lament that I didn't make it to Trek in the Park this weekend and don't look to have the time next weekend as we're off to the coast to go camping.

I've read mostly good reviews for Atomic Theater's live reenactment of the Star Trek episode "Amok Time" with only one dissenting jerk bitching that Portland "tries to hard too be weird." It's not that Portland is trying too hard, it's that the rest of y'alls cities aren't trying hard enough. Put your backs into it guys!

For the record: I'm pro-space. To be more precise I'm pro-manned exploration of space. They're all sorts of reasons for this but mostly it stems from my humanism. I believe that man needs challenges (science/ exploration) or he makes up challenges of his own to occupy his time (war.)

One of the most deeply moving things I've ever read was a piece Carl Sagan wrote in Parade magazine during the height of the cold war. He passionately laid out the case for a joint mission to mars with the then USSR. I would like to see the same industry we apply to fighting wars to feeding the people on this planet, curing all of the horrible diseases that plague us, saving the environment and exploring the unknown instead. That's the dream that makes me smile.

Here are some wonderful stories of where people were on the date we landed on the moon written by famous science fiction writers. What humans imagine they can eventually do. Let's do a little more imagining of a world that looks like Star Trek and a little less blowing shit up.

Dean

Also- RIP Walter Cronkite.

I'll take "The Penis Mightier" for 100, Trebek.

Or is the pen mightier?

I heard the rumor that Dave Chappelle was going to do a free show at midnight in Pioneer Square via Twitter. I briefly considered heading down there but I really haven't been home much as it is with work taking up most of my time.

Because of the sound issue (Dave brought a small, battery operated mike and amp) when close to 12,000 people showed up I'm glad I didn't. Odds are I wouldn't of caught a word he was saying.

That doesn't take away from the coolness of the event and Chappelle in general for trying to pull it off.

In a broader sense I really am rethinking my disdain for Twitter. Between the recent uprising in Iran and now this I do think there is potential to really move people to the streets. Can you imagine how Twitter would've changed the anti-war movement in the run up to the Iraq war?

It's almost like the fear that online social networking would detract from real world interaction is not only wrong, but wildly wrong. Twitter has the power to bring people together in the real world. That's pretty incredible.

Next time we'll have a foolproof coffin.

There is no God.

It's that every now and again - not often, but occasionally - you get to be a part of justice being done.

Do you remember when AIDS was held out by fundamentalist types as proof of God's disapproval of homosexuality? How in the 80s all evidence that AIDS wasn't exclusively a gay disease was lost on those types?

I wonder how the Pat Robertsons of the world will react to the amazing news that AIDS may actually hold the cure for lung and other types of cancer.

So how does CTMP halt cancer progression? Using biochemical analysis to analyze the expression levels of certain proteins, scientist found that overexpression of CTMP shut down not only Akt signaling but also protein synthesis, proliferation, angiogenesis and cell cycle progression of lung cancer cells while normal cells were not affected. Not only was lung cancer progression halted in 9-week old mice but the authors of the study found that cancer cells died from apoptosis.

Unlike chemotherapy which preferentially affects cancer cells but still has deleterious consequences to normal tissue after prolonged treatment, lentiviral mediated gene therapy “surgically” targets tumor cells while sparing normal tissue.

"God's Wrath" just might end one of the most horrible diseases ever to plague man providing incalculable good to the world.

If there was a God it's almost as if he goes out of his way to make the Pat Robertsons of the world look bad. Hmmm.

You, you with the banjo, can you help me? I seem to have lost my sense of direction!

I hope y'all had a great holiday.

I had an absolutely wonderful 4th of July with my family. We had a little picnic out at my grandparent's place where my mom lives now, just like when we were kids. The day consisted of mass quantities of burgers, homemade blackberry wine and catching up with family.

At one point my mom's boyfriend got out his tractor and hooked up a flatbed trailer and gave tours of the makeshit golfcourse he'd cut in the lawn. Watching the uncles, aunts and cousins hang on for dear life while laughing their drunken asses off tickled me to no end.

But the absolute high point of the day was a musical surprise my 15-year old daughter sprung on the family.

To back up a bit- when we were kids my grandfather would break out either his ukelele or banjo and play old tunes while the whole family would sing along. Grandpa was in the navy in WW 2 and while he was in Hawaii he'd even formed a little band and recorded a couple of tunes on phonograph.

Just recently grandpa's banjo turned up and my daughter, who is very muscially inclined, decided to teach herself how to play it.

So she gets out this beautiful instrument with pearl inlay that was made almost 100 years ago and asks us what we want to hear. "Whatever you know how to play," we told her.

She starts strumming, the tune sounds familiar but tough to place until she begins singing:

It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed

'Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one's gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight

Believe it or not this song works surprisingly well on the banjo. We almost bust a gut we were laughing so hard.

Alright, alright, Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog. What's Goofy?

Via Digby I think Senator Bernie Sanders has hit on the right question with regards to what form health care reform takes in the senate---

So I think, with all due respect to Max and his hard work, it's the wrong strategy. I think the strategy should be to say to all 60 members of the Democratic caucus that even if you don't want a public plan in the final bill, you should commit to ending the Republican filibuster. You don't need 60 votes to pass legislation. You need 60 votes to end the filibuster. And if we do that, we can get a strong public plan that will be real change.

...

Look, the Democrats said give us 60 votes so we can come up with something. They gave it to us! I'm not a Democrat, I'm an Independent, but I caucus with the Democrats. They gave us 60 votes. So how many do we need? Seventy? Eighty? I understand that there are some Democrats, without ascribing motives, who are not comfortable voting for a strong public plan period. But I think it is not asking too much that they vote against the Republican filibuster.

We need to stop asking pinheads like Lieberman or Nelson whether they prefer the public option, full on single payer or the do nothing solution all the senate "moderates" seem to be leaning towards. Their answers are as empty as their souls. If they're going to vote against the final health care reform bill because they remain industry whores that's their choice.

The real question is how they'll vote on cloture, not what sort of health care reform they'll support. That's how we're going to seperate the men from the boys. Or as in this case the men from the spineless weasels.

Gentlemen of the court, there are times that I'm ashamed to be a member of the human race and this is one such occasion.

I'm long past being disgusted that conservatives regularly root for millions of their fellow Americans to be killed by terrorists but still remain stumped on the complete absence of logic behind this idea. Apparently the formula is something along the lines of...

Major terrorist attack while Republicans are in charge = country will turn to Republicans to protect them.

On the other hand...

Major terrorist attack while Democrats are in charge = country will turn to Republicans to protect them.

Heads they win, tails we lose.