ebogjonson.com

Links for 2008-07-14 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The Snow Lion and the Dragon
history of china/tibet conflict

Links for 2008-07-12 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

endangered elements
gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item.
Serenity Prayer Stirs Up Doubt - Who Wrote It? - NYTimes.com
i thought god wrote it like he did the little flowers

he must be a cialis man

ebogjonson — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:04:16 -0400

Can someone put McCain's head on this guy below for me? Thanks!

Random, but: speaking of pauses...

Context:

Earlier this week Carly Fiorina, one of his most accomplished surrogate liars, brought up how many insurance plans cover Viagra but not birth control. McCain, of course, voted against legislation that would have mandated birth control to be part of insurance coverage. When he was asked for comment, deer in headlights[:]

Q: Earlier this week Carly Fiorina was meeting with a bunch of reporters and talked about it being unfair that insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. And -

McCain: I certainly do not want to discuss that issue. (uneasy laughter)

Q: But apparently you’ve voted against (McCain laughter continues)

McCain: I don’t know what I voted -

Q: Voted against coverage of birth control, forcing health insurance companies to cover birth control in the past. Is that still your position?

McCain: I’ll look at my voting record on it, but I have, uh, (5 second pause) , I don’t recall the vote right now. But I’ll be glad to look at it and get back to you as to why, I don’t -

Q: I guess her statement was that it was unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?

McCain: (after 8 second pause) I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote, I’ve cast thousands of votes in the Senate. I will respond to - it’s a, it’s a (nervous) [full context]

VORM 0010: Obama Loves America Like OJ Loved Nicole

ebogjonson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:55:19 -0400

New Jersey GOP website runs a graphic that says "Obama loves America like OJ loved Nicole." This is a four-fer: Obama as murderer, Obama as incognegro, Obama as lover of white women, Obama as race-manipulator.

Go to the Virtual Obama Racism Museum.

Got a racist image of, about, or relating to Barack Obama that should be included in the Virtual Obama Racism Museum? Send it to ebog at ebogjonson dot com.

i forgot about that one

ebogjonson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:17:59 -0400

"Republicans wear sneakers, too." - Michael Jordan on why he wouldn't endorse Harvey Gantt in Gantt's run for Jesse Helms' senate seat. h/t Christopher Chambers for the reminder.

Links for 2008-07-08 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Slavoj Zizek on japan
what the headline said
Race in D&D Art
what the title said. h/t lks
eldridge+cleaver+sleeve&s=7&nsfw=on&b=Rip+Google%21
sweet. h/t imeekcollaborator
tm08 / Transmediale / call for entries is open
call for entries

attending that deflated racist gasbag's funeral

ebogjonson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:49:43 -0400

According to the LAT:

Vice President Dick Cheney
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
Sen. Elizabeth Dole
former Republican presidential candidate Kansas Sen. Bob Dole
GOP Sen. Richard Burr, sat nearby.
Chris Dodd of Connecticut
Joe Biden of Delaware
Gov. Mike Easley
Cindy McCain

I get a lot of mail from Chris Dodd, asking me to call my congressman or send an email, and as such it was sad to see him on the above list. In much the same way that I refuse to EVER use any of Firedoglake's activism tools or to participate in any action sourced from them, I'll be unsubscribing from Dodd's list and action alerts. There are lots of ways for me to reach out to Congress without having to tacitly endorse Dodd by giving him my data or allowing him to bundle me into an aggregate list of people he can claim to have activated or corralled. As far as I'm concerned, unless you are Helms' bastard child, there's no reason for a progressive to be crying in the front row at his funeral. And even then...

But into the Book of Racial Grudges, Dodd! Right next to Hamsher!

yep

ebogjonson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:21:31 -0400

You can think about a song - a good song - as a miraculous moment when all the dissonances that frame a person’s life drop out of sight long enough to see how it looks without them. So when a band you like hits that groove, sometimes all you can do is listen, because that moment will be leaving. - jace

bedwetter

ebogjonson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:59:42 -0400

Shorter Joe Lieberman:

You're next

Transcript Joe Lieberman:

LIEBERMAN: That’s up to Israel obviously, but I would say that obviously Israel is first in the line of Iranian fire. And it represents an existential threat to Israel. But you know who is next? The Arab countries in the Middle East and they’re worried about the Iranian program and want us to ask strongly to stop it. And we’re next! Because Ahmadinejad in Tehran constantly leads the mobs in shouts of death to America. And they mean it.

Youtube Joe Lieberman:

Joe Lieberman Existential Threat Undergarments:

h/t Think Progress

jesse helms finally goes to hell

ebogjonson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:49:16 -0400

May he rot there for all eternity.

Also: fuck-you-very-much to the live conservatives who are getting all misty eyed about Helms. Everyone has a mother, and the prohibition against speaking ill of the dead is intended to protect the families of fallible human beings from having to have their loved one's foibles thrown in their face during their time of grief. It most meaningfully applies to private or social forms of asshattery, like the neighbor who lived on the floor above you and liked to move his furniture around in the middle of the night, not to decades of unrepentant bigotry and aggressive segregationist activism at the highest levels of government. Being an elderly gent who double pats his wallet when certain types of people get on the elevator is a foible. "Being Jesse Helms" is a synonym for the cold blooded advocacy of the worst and most disgusting politics of the last seventy years.

If our media and public institutions told the truth there would be no need to waste breath, ink or pixels on Helms' death, but instead we get this from the President of the United States:

Throughout his long public career, Senator Jesse Helms was a tireless advocate for the people of North Carolina, a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty. Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom. And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side.

Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called "the Miracle of America." So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: "The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven." Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life.

I'm not arguing that anyone pull a Fred Phelps at Helms' funeral, but this idea that we should refrain from saying the obvious about Helms is the worst kind of self-defeating bullshit. It reflects a fantasy of community where the shitbags at the National Review get to a praise a man they know full well maintained a deep and abiding hatred for huge numbers of his fellow citizens, this as those citizens are expected to sit on their hands and hold their tongues out if some tendentious notion of respect. Not today.

Obsidian Wings has a nice list of rememberances - some bogus, some not - of that now deflated, noxious gasbag Helms:

"Helms warned that, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced."

He suggested that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist dupe and refused, even decades after King's death, to honor the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

He dismissed the civil rights movement as a cabal of communists and "moral degenerates."

As the movement gathered strength -- and as murderous violence against activists in particular and African-Americans in general increased -- Helms menacingly suggested to non-violent civil rights activists that, "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights.""

A personal favorite, worth remembering when you read things about how courteous Helms was in person:

"When Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first African-American woman to sit in the Senate, Helms followed Moseley-Braun into an elevator, announcing to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch: "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries."

Then, emphasizing the lines about how "good" things were before the Civil War ended slavery, Helms sang "Dixie.""

And another:

"His disdain for people of color (exemplified by his "humorous" habit, in private, of referring to any black person as "Fred") continues to find ways of expressing itself. He is the Senate's most reliable opponent of any measure aimed at securing the rights or improving the conditions of African-Americans. In 1994, when Nelson Mandela visited the Capitol, Helms ostentatiously turned his back on him."

Humorous? Referring to any black person as "Fred"??

And (Helms himself, h/t Majikthise):

“No intelligent Negro citizen should be insulted by a reference to this very plain fact of life. It is time to face honestly and sincerely the purely scientific statistical evidence of natural racial distinction in group intellect. ... There is no bigotry either implicit or intended in such a realistic confrontation with the facts of life. ... Those who would undertake to solve the problem by merely spending more money, and by massive forced integration, may be doing the greatest injustice of all to the Negro.”

And:

"I was a senior when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Roughly 2,000 of us joined a vigil on the quad for several days. (...) Jesse Helms came on the television and said that all of the students sitting on the quad at Duke should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to "marry a Negro" (Duke students were practically all white in those days). Unless the student's parents approved of that prospect, Helms advised, he or she should go back to class."

And:

"As a television commentator before running for the Senate, Helms said, "Dr. (Martin Luther) King's outfit ... is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior." He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.""

Later, his views had not changed. (This is a transcription of a video; it doesn't say when the interview it shows is from, but I'd guess the late 80s or 90s, from his appearance. It's the video linked under Martin Luther King.)

"I thought it [the Civil Rights Act] was very unwise. It was taking liberties away from one group of citizens and giving them to another. I thought it was bad legislation then, and I have had nothing to change my mind about it."

And:

"Appearing on “Larry King Live” in 1995, Jesse Helms, then the senior senator from North Carolina, fielded a call from an unusual admirer. Helms deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, the caller gushed, “for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers.” Given the rank ugliness of the sentiment — the guest host, Robert Novak, called it, with considerable understatement, “politically incorrect” — Helms could only pause before responding. But the hesitation couldn’t suppress his gut instincts. “Whoops, well, thank you, I think,” he said."

One of his home state papers sums it up:

"Helms was an unceasing foe of the 20th century's social movements -- the drives for equality by blacks, women and gays. While others saw groups striving for a piece of the American dream, Helms saw threats to the social fabric.

Along with former gubernatorial candidate I. Beverly Lake Sr., Helms was a leading voice for segregation in North Carolina. Unlike other well-known segregationists, such as Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Thurmond, Helms never repudiated his views or reached out to black voters.

He portrayed the civil rights movement as being planned in Moscow, dismissed Martin Luther King Jr. as a Marxist and a pervert, and called racial integration a phony issue."

Links for 2008-07-05 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Arab Media & Society
article on hizbullah media campaigns
Arab Film Distribution: Home Page - Films, Videos, and DVDs from the Arab World, Middle East, and North Africa
DVD source for films about the middle east

Links for 2008-07-03 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Unequal America (July-August 2008)
Causes and consequences of the wide—and growing—gap between rich and poor
Baby-Sitting the Economy - By Paul Krugman - Slate Magazine
everything u ever wanted to know about macroeconomics, explained with babies

Links for 2008-07-02 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Findings - Deep Down, We Can’t Fool Even Ourselves - NYTimes.com
experiments in moral hypocrisy

Links for 2008-07-01 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

CellFlix Festival // Ithaca College
movies shot on cellys
Marc Aronson: Face the Facts on Slavery
afro-globals?
Brad DeLong's Website: From National Review's Archives
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct.
National Portrait Gallery | Ballyhoo! Posters As Portraiture
pvt joe louis sez...
About Us | D.I.Y. Dharma
buddhist resources

VORM 0009: not the white house no more, deux

ebogjonson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:19:02 -0400

Tee shirt sold on conservative site explains they call it the White House for a reason.

Go to the Virtual Obama Racism Museum.

Got a racist image of, about, or relating to Barack Obama that should be included in the Virtual Obama Racism Museum? Send it to ebog at ebogjonson dot com.

VORM 0008: Swing State Noose Tee

ebogjonson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:12:29 -0400

Tee shirt sold on conservative site depicts noose with the words "Swing State."

Doesn't depict Obama directly, but does depend on the existence of a black presidential candidate in order to scan legibly and timely, thus referencing/threatening Obama and his supporters.

Go to the Virtual Obama Racism Museum.

Got a racist image of, about, or relating to Barack Obama that should be included in the Virtual Obama Racism Museum? Send it to ebog at ebogjonson dot com.

VORM 0007: not the white house no more

ebogjonson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:53:36 -0400

Wayne of wayneandwax sends this along the old-fashioned way: via email!

The source of the image is obscure, although Andrew Sullivan offered it up on his blog as an example of anti-Obama slurs. Wayne also points out that this image is actually (as WW aptly described it) "a ginned-up version" of this cartoon.