Month: March 2010

This is a difference I’ve had with Chris Bowers and a lot of other progressives since the primaries. Now, the term Bowers is using here is ‘hippie-punching,’ which probably originated with Duncan who likes to simplify for effect. I can’t do an etymology of the term right now, but I believe it was originally used in the context of anti-war demonstrators. When Democrats engage in hippie-punching it is usually to distance themselves from pacifists. You know, Obama famously said he is not against all wars, just stupid wars. Depending on your point of view, he could have been dismissing sandal-wearing, give-peace-a-chance granola-chompers (I’m not like them), or he could have simply been stating his position clearly and concisely.

But both Chris and Duncan used the term today to refer to Obama’s announcement on offshore drilling. For Bowers, he specifically highlighted this segment of Obama’s statement:

Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates between right and left, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place. Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again.

Chris hears this as an insult to the left:

Rather than trying to placate green groups, President Obama is playing up how he is charting a unifying course of moderation in opposition to those groups. Much like Blanche Lincoln, he protrays himself as an independent, nonpartisan voice standing up to environmental extremists on behalf of his constituents.

He didn’t literally call anyone an extremist…not business leaders and not environmentalists. He did call the old debate between those groups ‘tired,’ which I can certainly see as somewhat dismissive. But, my ears hear something completely different.

I hear a savvy politician explaining that he needs to cut a deal to get anything done, and that anyone who insists that drilling is a sufficient solution or who won’t allow for any drilling at all is taking a position that falls outside of the realm of what is politically possible. He’s trying to treat me like a grown-up, not pander to me. But he’s also making the best of a compromised situation by making a virtue out of it. Maybe it’s just that my feelings aren’t easily hurt, but I enjoy watching politicians at the top of their game. I used to love watching Bill Clinton do his State of the Union address because it drove the Republicans crazy and he was really effective at communicating with the middle. Sure, I cringed a lot when he “punched hippies,” but it was all for the greater good.

I guess this all comes back to the long-running debates over Lakoffian framing and moving the Overton Window. I always thought those were bullshit issues, and that actual organizing and party-building were what mattered. Every word out of the president’s mouth isn’t, and shouldn’t be, an effort to counter Republican messaging and move the national mood in a more progressive direction. Sometimes, the president just needs to make the best case for what he’s doing. It isn’t personal, and it shouldn’t be taken that way.

I think I see the game that is being set up here. I mean, like John Kerry, I can do the math. But, on the other hand, any plan that relies in good part on the good faith of Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman isn’t something I’m going to invest in. I’d like to believe that they are serious and can be effective, but I just can’t bring myself to believe it.

Family Man’s new puppy Lucy (more photos here).

I have been following The Heathlander for some years for his insights and grasp of knowledge about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, much of it requiring a vigilance of on-going developments, like the Netanyahu take over of the Israeli government, and just where he, as a right wing Likud prime minister, intends to take the peace process. Of course, that path involves the Palestinians. With Netanyahu’s recent commitment to the two state solution, something Likud is avowedly against, it is to everyone’s interest just how he intends to balance these contradictory goals.

The Heathlander came up with the answer in this piece called Proximity talks, dated 26 March 2010,

Israeli Vice Prime Minister, Minister for Strategic Affairs and close Netanyahu ally Moshe Ya’alon explains that Netanyahu’s attempts to resume “indirect negotiations” with the Palestinian Authority are just a “maneuver” designed to “create the illusion that an agreement can be reached”:

“And I say so out of knowledge,” Ya’alon told Yediot. “Nobody in the forum of seven [senior cabinet ministers] thinks that we can reach an agreement with the Palestinians.” Yediot Ahronot reports (print version, translated from Hebrew):

Q: So why all these games of make-believe negotiations? It’s possible to announce that we will not reach an agreement, and that is all.

YA’ALON: Because in the political establishment there are pressures. Peace Now from within and other elements from without. So you have to maneuver. But what I’m saying now has to be given over to the Americans, and I hope that they will understand.

Some of what we have to do is maneuver with the American administration and the European establishment, which are also nourished by Israeli elements, which create the illusion that an agreement can be reached.

Ya’alon disclosed that Netanyahu has made clear that he intends to increase settlement activity as soon as the freeze expires. “The prime minister reiterates all the time,” Ya’alon said, “and also brought a decision to the security cabinet that says clearly, that immediately after the freeze, we will continue to build in Judea and Samaria as we did before.”

Q: Will we evacuate settlements in the end?

YA’ALON: I do not accept that. What has happened to us in recent years obligates us to stop with everything connected to withdrawal.

Meanwhile the press is wetting itself over Obama’s alleged walk-out of his meeting with Netanyahu. Whether that happened before or after the `massive arms deal`, we’re not told.

As Tony Karon writes,

“Israel’s leaders, and its voters, have amply demonstrated that they will not voluntarily relinquish control of the Palestinian territories as long as there are no real consequences for maintaining the status quo. Sure, you can tell them that the status quo is untenable, but the whole history of Israel from the 1920s onward has been about transforming the impossible into the inevitable by changing the facts on the ground. Building settlements on occupied territory in violation of international law after 1967 seemed untenable at the time; today, the U.S. government says Israel will keep most of those major settlement blocs in any two-state solution. It is precisely in line with this sort of improvisational logic that Sharon calculated he could hold on to the settlements of the West Bank if he gave up the settlements of Gaza; the same logic allows Netanyahu to say the words “two states for two peoples” while always winking at his base that he has no intention of allowing it to happen…

…progress in the Middle East will not come until the U.S. changes Israel’s cost-benefit analysis for maintaining the status quo. The only Israeli leader capable of accepting the parameters of a two-state peace with the Palestinians, which are already widely known, is one who can convincingly demonstrate to his electorate that the alternatives are worse. Right now, without real pressure, without real cost, with nothing but words, there is simply no downside to the status quo for Israel.  Until there is, things are unlikely to change, no matter the peril to U.S. troops throughout the Middle East.”

So what can we make of this acknowledgment by one of Netanyahu’s closest allies, the Vice Prime Minister, and Minister for Strategic Affairs?

This post about the Likud Charter by mainstreet (MyDD) reveals that Likud’s real intentions are “to wipe Palestine off the map” and there is no reason to believe that Netanyahu has changed that goal. It provides the basis for understanding all future negotiations between the Netanyahu Likud government and the Palestinians.

Observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often talk about the Hamas Charter, and the earlier PLO Charter, but no one speaks of the Likud Charter, the Bible of Israel’s Likud party now in power, which intends to wipe Palestine off the map. But that is precisely what has been happening for the past 60 years.

The Likud Charter

PEACE AND SECURITY chapter of the Likud Party Platform

1. Declaration of a Palestinian State: A unilateral Palestinian declaration of the establishment of a Palestinian state will constitute a fundamental and substantive violation of the agreements with the State of Israel and the scuttling of the Oslo and Wye accords. The government will adopt immediate stringent measures in the event of such a declaration.
2. Settlements: The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria [West Bank] and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.
3. The Permanent Status: The overall objectives for the final status with the Palestinians are: to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of a stable, sustainable agreement and replace confrontation with cooperation and good neighborliness, while safeguarding Israel’s vital interests as a secure and prosperous Zionist and Jewish state.
4. Self-Rule: The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs.
4. Jerusalem: Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem, including the plan to divide the city.
5. The Jordan River as a Permanent Border: The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan River will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel. The Kingdom of Jordan is a desirable partner in the permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians in matters that will be agreed upon.
6. Security Areas: The government succeeded in significantly reducing the extent of territory that the Palestinians expected to receive in the interim arrangement.

The Likud Charter wipes Palestine off the map for good, leaving the Palestinian people in a kind of limbo, which some (like Jimmy Carter) propose is nothing less than an Apartheid existence, a collection of bantustans, within an Israel that extends from the Jordan River to the sea, not unlike what existed for Black South Africans under the Afrikaaner government in the 1980s.

What more is there to say?

I guess Armando is desperate for attention. He doesn’t have an opinion on the president’s announcement today on Energy Security, but he’s pretty sure that the “progressive position” on off-shore drilling is to oppose it. I, and certainly Steven, am willing to grant that. I’d also agree that the “progressive position” is to oppose clean-coal technology as a farce and nuclear energy because of the problem with waste. Increasing production of coal, nuclear, and offshore oil is not part of the progressive vision for America. And it’s not part of Obama’s agenda, either.

The president wants to pass a bill that addresses climate change. The House Cap & Trade bill is dead-on-arrival in the Senate. The Kerry/Boxer bill (pdf) forms the template for passing something in the upper chamber. The question before us is not whether or not we should be for offshore drilling. It is whether we are willing to make a compromise on offshore drilling to get most of the positive elements of the House and Senate bills enacted into law.

I can say that I am open to the idea without endorsing such a tradeoff. Without seeing the deal on the table, I can’t say whether I agree with it. What I do know is that no climate change bill worth shit is going to pass thru this Congress without making some major concessions to the energy industries and the states and politicians who protect those industries. Obama’s announcment begins to give a clear picture of what those concessions will be. But his announcement isn’t triangulation. His agenda is passing the climate change elements of the bill, not the carbon producing elements. This isn’t school uniforms, and Armando knows it.

I keep seeing polling that shows that people aren’t just dissatisfied with Congress (which is normal) but that they are angry with their own representatives (which is not). Yet, I don’t see a whole lot of vulnerable incumbents, aside from those who come from swing districts and are always somewhat vulnerable. Everyone is focused on the Democrats taking losses in November, but if people are so P.O.’d with their reps, shouldn’t we be seeing some Republicans (to use some Palinesque imagery) in the crosshairs?

I think DCCC chairman Van Hollen should be expanding the field. And pollsters should poke around and see if they can find some unexpected weak spots.

Bret Stephens takes disingenuousness to a new level today in the Wall Street Journal. Stephens examines some of the writings of Sayyid Qutb and concludes that Lady Gaga is much more of a security threat to the United States than Israel’s permanent settlements on Palestinian land.

Sayyid Qutb may be familiar to you. Qutb was an Egyptican poet and intellectual who spent some time in the United States (1948-1950) studying education at what is now the University of Northern Colorado. He found American women to be immodest and our culture irredeemably materialistic. After returning to Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood but was implicated in an assassination attempt on Nasser and spent most of the rest of his life in prison before he was finally executed in 1966. He was allowed to write extensively in prison, however, and his philosophy was a major influence on both Usama bin-Laden and his partner in crime, Ayman Zawahiri.

However, it is absurdly reductive to jump from Qutb’s distaste for American materialism to the conclusion that bin-Laden and Zawahiri attacked our embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, and Pentagon and World Trade Center because they were offended by our scantily-dressed women. It’s also a logical fallacy to argue that Israeli settlements don’t present a problem for American security and foreign policy simply because al-Qaeda’s leaders have a hang-up with “round breasts…full buttocks…shapely thighs, [and] sleek legs.” The complaint we’re hearing from our military leaders is quite different.

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow … and too late.”

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.”

Last time I checked, Arab leaders are no fans of al-Qaeda and no opponents of the pleasures of Western Materialism. I doubt any Arab leaders are revolted by Lady Gaga and I am certain that none of them are going to countenance terrorism against American civilians or installations because of the immodesty of our people.

Are there some Muslim lunatics out there that would want to attack America even if we didn’t support Israel’s illegal settlement policy? Sure. But that’s not the point. The point is that Israel’s policy is a recruitment tool, that it arouses intense anger towards America from Muslims of all stripes (from liberal fans of Lady Gaga to radical jihadists in Waziristan), and that it makes Arab leaders reluctant or unwilling to work openly with our government.

These efforts to paint all Muslims as irrationally angry with Israel and America, and to absolve Israel (and ourselves) for any responsibility for the anger that exists, is dehumanizing to an entire culture. It’s actually a cynical effort to dehumanize Americans by making us hate Muslims in return so that these lunatics can kill them in droves without having to make a single concession to the Palestinians.

It’s really simple. The settlements do not make Israel safer and they make America a target and a pariah in the region. So, why do we allow Israel to put us in this position? What’s in it for us?

America can guarantee Israel’s security within its own internationally recognized borders. Isn’t that a better deal that what Israel has right now?

Booman wrote recently in his post Shooting Yourself in the Foot:

For decades conservatives have worked to see that blacks and latinos are undercounted in the Census. Now they are voluntarily disenfranchising themselves by refusing to send in the forms. Should we be happy about that? After all, it could cost them seats in Congress and votes in the Electoral College, and it will mean more federal dollars are available for blue and purple areas of the country. But, the thing is, the Census is supposed to accurately count the population of the country, and political power is supposed to be divvied up on the basis of a real assessment of the country’s demography. So, no, I am not happy that the most conservative areas are the least responsive to the Census, even though it serves my narrow political interests. You can’t cure stupid, and I will weep no tears for these folks, but I am not happy to see a new strain of irrational paranoia taking root in the reddest areas of this country.

It’s dangerous.

Get real.

The “census” is as broken as is the rest of this system. Trust a broken system? Why? Minorities and the poor in general have always known the truth of the matter, and I know for a stone fact that the majority of people that I have met in my 40+ years of urban semi-ghetto living would no more fill out a census form or open a door to a stranger than they would tell a policeman that yes, they did smoke some pot once in a while.

“Irrational paranoia?”

How about William Burroughs’ definition of a paranoid?

“One who is in possession of all the facts.”

Yup.

I am a fan of rational paranoia, myself.

You know…like the kind of “paranoia” that any sane German during Hitler’s run or Russian during the Stalin reign might have felt?

Lived by, actually.

Survived by.

Yup.

What’s that you say? This is not Communist Russia or Nazi Germany?

Right you are.

It’s digitally surveilled and hypnomediaed-out MediaAmerica.

Who needs informers when you have digital eavesdropping?

In fact…who will need digital eavesdropping once everyone is TeleBorged?

Unless…

“We’re all in it together, kid.”

Yup.

Read on for more.

We have a corporate-run government that is hostile to the needs of the people. Simple as that. The machine comes first, people second. Not only is it hostile to the people’s needs, it is incompetent as well.

The census is part of this non-functioning government. And it is also broken.

Read it and weep.

Can the Census Count to Ten?

If you can count to ten or watch television, you probably know that it’s a Census year.  And if you can count to ten, you should go work for the Census – they could use you.

I’m a little worried here.  The Census Bureau is charged with counting 300 million-plus Americans, and from where I sit, I think they’re gonna have trouble counting their own fingers and toes.

In early 2009 I applied for a job with the Census.  At the time I was living in Rockland, Maine.  I completed and submitted my Census employment application, and I scored what I thought was a reasonably decent 98 on the pre-employment test.  A few weeks after all that I moved from Rockland to Bangor, and I called the Census and informed the Bureau of my new address and phone number.  No problem, I was told, it will be taken care of.  Like a fool I believed this.

Months went by and I didn’t hear from the Census, so I decided to give them a call to make sure my address change had been duly and properly recorded.  It hadn’t.  So I tried again, and made a note in my calendar to call back a week later to make sure I had succeeded with this second attempt to change my address of record.  And so it went, week after week.  I ended up calling a total of ten times.  Seriously.

I spoke with Kim in the Bangor office – she was very nice.  I spoke with Donavon in the Augusta, Maine office – he too was very nice.  I spoke with Don in the Bangor office – great guy, very helpful.  Or seemingly so.  I spoke with a guy in the Augusta office who said he had my file in his hand  right then, as we were speaking.  He said he would send it on that very day.  He didn’t.  Nor did he the next day.  Nor the day after that.

Bangor told me to call Augusta.  They gave me a phone number for Augusta.  How helpful!  The phone number was no longer in service.  Seriously.  The next time I spoke to the Bangor office I told them the Augusta number they were giving out didn’t work.

I was then told that in order for them to send my file from Augusta to Bangor they had to first send it to Boston.  But of course!  I always go from Augusta to Bangor via Boston.

Finally they called me for a job interview.  After having possession of  my application for more than a year, they called to interview me at 5:10 p.m. on a Friday.

For months  I had been trying to recruit two people for a pinochle trio in my new home of Bangor, and I had finally succeeded.  We were ten minutes into the first meeting of the brand spanking new Bangor Pinochle Club at Paddy Murphy’s wonderful Irish pub and eatery in beautiful downtown Bangor, and I was three quarters of the way through a pint of Geary’s Hampshire Special Ale, the best beer brewed in the great state of Maine, when my cursed cell phone rang.  Normally I wouldn’t even have that infernal contraption turned on after 5 p.m., but I had forgotten to turn it off.

The Census wanted to do a job interview right then and there, by phone.  You mustn’t delay, the woman warned, or she would simply go to the next person on the list.  Now there’s some enlightened personnel management.  Keep ’em hungry and pliant!  But I managed to convince  my would-be interrogator to call me back at my home, on my landline, at 7:30 p.m.

So the pinochle club’s first meeting was a little rushed – I lost, Paula won – and I scurried home to receive my phone call.  But the Bureau didn’t call.

The next morning I went for a 14-mile walk along the bony, bonny banks of the Kenduskeag Stream, and I forgot to bring my cell phone.  Naturally the Census called while I was out walking, on a Saturday.  A return number was left on my voicemail.  The number looked familiar.  I called it.  It was out of service.

Later in the day the Bureau called again, this time to interview me for the lesser job of enumerator – the crewleader positions had all been filled by this time.  But it was not the Bangor office calling.  It was Augusta, and they wanted me to work out of Rockland – they were unaware of my move to Bangor.  The caller said he would give his supervisor  my new contact information, but he sounded decidedly uninterested in the project, and mostly he wanted to get me off the line so he could call the next schmuck.  “I don’t know if I’m in a good position to get this done,” the guy said.  “I don’t know whether God himself is in a good position to get this done,” I responded, but I don’t think he got my humor.

The next day I got another voicemail from the Census.  This was from Don, a supervisor in the Bangor office with whom I had spoken previously.  In his message Don said that Augusta had fedexed my file to Boston six days before, but that I still wasn’t in Bangor’s system.  Good thing they fedexed it.

In other words, on March 16 Augusta finally told Boston I had moved out of its area.  Then three days later Augusta called me to interview me for a job, in its area.  And the day after that Augusta again called me to interview me for a job, in its area.

And these people are going to count 300 million Americans with anything faintly resembling accuracy?

This whole country works on the same level.

Up and down.

I have a friend who recently started working as a researcher for an Ivy League school. It took them 8 weeks to get his fucking address right in order to send him his paychecks!!! This is s’pose t’be the smart folks, here.

I have another friend who needed to get certification that he wasn’t a chid molester so that he could teach in part of the NYS school system. (BOCES, for those in the know.  Boards of Cooperative Educational Services.) It was simply a matter of getting his fingerprints taken at a NYC police station and then getting the bureaucracy to certify that he had never been arrested for that sort of act. Now…forget about the whole “Innocent until proven guilty” idea. He had to be proven innocent!!! That’s bad enough. Worse? He had no recourse except not taking the job. More worse? The NYPD couldn’t get their act together enough to give him:

1- An accurate time to come in.

2- Where he could or could not get the fingerprint service based on where he lives and where he works.

or

3- What he should bring when he went to any given police station. (They all had different rules.)

Worst of all?  IT TOOK BOCES THREE MONTHS TO GET IT DONE AFTER HE MANAGED TO GET HIS FINGERPRINTS TAKEN!!!

The fall of the banking and financial sectors?

The fall of American industry?

The ongoing, 50+ year long  failure of he American military and intelligence sectors?

Same same.

Broken.

Incompetent on every level.

Recently here Steven D asked the magic question: Have the Coming Civil Wars Begun? It was about the recent Hutaree bust.

It seems as if the mainstream liberal left thinks that it is simply a bunch of stupid, ugly, redneck losers who are the only ones that despise this system as it now stands.

Leftiness shmoon beware.

Anyone with half a brain remaining in their head after undergoing the massive societal hypnomedia conditioning which is…and has been for 50+ years… part and parcel of growing up in this country knows full well that there is not a shred of evidence pointing to a good reason why any part of this system should be “trusted.” (Read my recent posts “The Teabaggers and The Truth Of The Matter”, “A Song For My Father. And For Joe Stack As Well”, “The Joe Stack Story and the Media-The Dog That Did Not Bark”, and “Joe Stack, Righteous Anger and the PermaGov” for more on this matter if you so desire.)

Answer the census so that we will be accurately represented?

By whom!!!???

Corporate-owned hustlers?

C’mon.

Ludicrous on the face of it.

Be overjoyed that we now have “universal healthcare?”

Of which universe are we speaking?

Healthcare?

Oh.

You mean Thalidomide for the masses?

No thanks.

Nice.

Nevermind.

I’ll pass, myself.

In what universe are you living?

The “Civil War” is just heating up, folks.

Just heating up.

Watch.

Later…

AG

Booman wrote recently in his post Shooting Yourself in the Foot:

For decades conservatives have worked to see that blacks and latinos are undercounted in the Census. Now they are voluntarily disenfranchising themselves by refusing to send in the forms. Should we be happy about that? After all, it could cost them seats in Congress and votes in the Electoral College, and it will mean more federal dollars are available for blue and purple areas of the country. But, the thing is, the Census is supposed to accurately count the population of the country, and political power is supposed to be divvied up on the basis of a real assessment of the country’s demography. So, no, I am not happy that the most conservative areas are the least responsive to the Census, even though it serves my narrow political interests. You can’t cure stupid, and I will weep no tears for these folks, but I am not happy to see a new strain of irrational paranoia taking root in the reddest areas of this country.

It’s dangerous.

Get real.

The “census” is as broken as is the rest of this system. Trust a broken system? Why? Minorities and the poor in general have always known the truth of the matter, and I know for a stone fact that the majority of people that I have met in my 40+ years of urban semi-ghetto living would no more fill out a census form or open a door to a stranger than they would tell a policeman that yes, they did smoke some pot once in a while.

“Irrational paranoia?”

How about William Burroughs’ definition of a paranoid?

“One who is in possession of all the facts.”

Yup.

Read on for more.
We have a corporate-run government that is hostile to the needs of the people. Simple as that. The machine comes first, people second. Not only is it hostile to the people’s needs, it is incompetent as well.

The census is part of this non-functonng government. And it is also broken.

Read it and weep.

Can the Census Count to Ten?

If you can count to ten or watch television, you probably know that it’s a Census year.  And if you can count to ten, you should go work for the Census – they could use you.

I’m a little worried here.  The Census Bureau is charged with counting 300 million-plus Americans, and from where I sit, I think they’re gonna have trouble counting their own fingers and toes.

In early 2009 I applied for a job with the Census.  At the time I was living in Rockland, Maine.  I completed and submitted my Census employment application, and I scored what I thought was a reasonably decent 98 on the pre-employment test.  A few weeks after all that I moved from Rockland to Bangor, and I called the Census and informed the Bureau of my new address and phone number.  No problem, I was told, it will be taken care of.  Like a fool I believed this.

Months went by and I didn’t hear from the Census, so I decided to give them a call to make sure my address change had been duly and properly recorded.  It hadn’t.  So I tried again, and made a note in my calendar to call back a week later to make sure I had succeeded with this second attempt to change my address of record.  And so it went, week after week.  I ended up calling a total of ten times.  Seriously.

I spoke with Kim in the Bangor office – she was very nice.  I spoke with Donavon in the Augusta, Maine office – he too was very nice.  I spoke with Don in the Bangor office – great guy, very helpful.  Or seemingly so.  I spoke with a guy in the Augusta office who said he had my file in his hand  right then, as we were speaking.  He said he would send it on that very day.  He didn’t.  Nor did he the next day.  Nor the day after that.

Bangor told me to call Augusta.  They gave me a phone number for Augusta.  How helpful!  The phone number was no longer in service.  Seriously.  The next time I spoke to the Bangor office I told them the Augusta number they were giving out didn’t work.

I was then told that in order for them to send my file from Augusta to Bangor they had to first send it to Boston.  But of course!  I always go from Augusta to Bangor via Boston.

Finally they called me for a job interview.  After having possession of  my application for more than a year, they called to interview me at 5:10 p.m. on a Friday.

For months  I had been trying to recruit two people for a pinochle trio in my new home of Bangor, and I had finally succeeded.  We were ten minutes into the first meeting of the brand spanking new Bangor Pinochle Club at Paddy Murphy’s wonderful Irish pub and eatery in beautiful downtown Bangor, and I was three quarters of the way through a pint of Geary’s Hampshire Special Ale, the best beer brewed in the great state of Maine, when my cursed cell phone rang.  Normally I wouldn’t even have that infernal contraption turned on after 5 p.m., but I had forgotten to turn it off.

The Census wanted to do a job interview right then and there, by phone.  You mustn’t delay, the woman warned, or she would simply go to the next person on the list.  Now there’s some enlightened personnel management.  Keep ’em hungry and pliant!  But I managed to convince  my would-be interrogator to call me back at my home, on my landline, at 7:30 p.m.

So the pinochle club’s first meeting was a little rushed – I lost, Paula won – and I scurried home to receive my phone call.  But the Bureau didn’t call.

The next morning I went for a 14-mile walk along the bony, bonny banks of the Kenduskeag Stream, and I forgot to bring my cell phone.  Naturally the Census called while I was out walking, on a Saturday.  A return number was left on my voicemail.  The number looked familiar.  I called it.  It was out of service.

Later in the day the Bureau called again, this time to interview me for the lesser job of enumerator – the crewleader positions had all been filled by this time.  But it was not the Bangor office calling.  It was Augusta, and they wanted me to work out of Rockland – they were unaware of my move to Bangor.  The caller said he would give his supervisor  my new contact information, but he sounded decidedly uninterested in the project, and mostly he wanted to get me off the line so he could call the next schmuck.  “I don’t know if I’m in a good position to get this done,” the guy said.  “I don’t know whether God himself is in a good position to get this done,” I responded, but I don’t think he got my humor.

The next day I got another voicemail from the Census.  This was from Don, a supervisor in the Bangor office with whom I had spoken previously.  In his message Don said that Augusta had fedexed my file to Boston six days before, but that I still wasn’t in Bangor’s system.  Good thing they fedexed it.

In other words, on March 16 Augusta finally told Boston I had moved out of its area.  Then three days later Augusta called me to interview me for a job, in its area.  And the day after that Augusta again called me to interview me for a job, in its area.

And these people are going to count 300 million Americans with anything faintly resembling accuracy?

This whole country works on the same level.

Up and down.

I have a friend who recently started working as a researcher for an Ivy League school. It took them 8 weeks to get his fucking address right in order to send him his paychecks!!! This is s’pose t’be the smart folks, here.

I have another friend who needed to get certification that he wasn’t a chid molester so that he could teach in part of the NYS school system. (BOCES, for those in the know.  Boards of Cooperative Educational Services.) It was simply a matter of getting his fingerprints taken at a NYC police station and then getting the bureaucracy to certify that he had never been arrested for that sort of act. Now…forget about the whole “Innocent until proven guilty” idea. He had to be proven innocent!!! That’s bad enough. Worse? He had no recourse except not taking the job. More worse? The NYPD couldn’t get their act together enough to give him:

1- An accurate time to come in.

2- Where he could or could not get the fingerprint service based on where he lives and where he works.

or

3- What he should bring when he went to any given police station. (They all had different rules.)

Worst of all?  IT TOOK BOCES THREE MONTHS TO GET IT DONE AFTER HE MANAGED TO GET HIS FINGERPRINTS TAKEN!!!

The fall of the banking and financial sectors?

The fall of American industry?

The ongoing, 50+ year long  failure of he American military and intelligence sectors?

Same same.

Broken.

Incompetent on every level.

Recently here Steven D asked the magic question: Have the Coming Civil Wars Begun? It was about the recent Hutaree bust.

It seems as if the mainstream liberal left thinks that it is simply a bunch of stupid, ugly, redneck losers who are the only ones that despise this system as it now stands.

Leftiness shmoon beware.

Anyone with half a brain remaining in their head after undergoing the massive societal hypnomedia conditioning which is…and has been for 50+ years… part and parcel of growing up in this country knows that there is not a shred of evidence pointing to a good reason why any part of this system should be “trusted.” (Read my recent posts “The Teabaggers and The Truth Of The Matter”, “A Song For My Father. And For Joe Stack As Well”, “The Joe Stack Story and the Media-The Dog That Did Not Bark”, and “Joe Stack, Righteous Anger and the PermaGov” for more on this matter if you so desire.)

Answer the census so that we will be accurately represented?

By whom!!!???

Corporate-owned hustlers?

C’mon.

Ludicrous on the face of it.

Be overjoyed that we now have “universal healthcare?”

Of which universe are we speaking?

Healthcare?

Oh.

You mean Thalidomide for the masses?

No thanks.

Nice.

Nevermind.

I’ll pass, myself.

In what universe are you living?

The “Civil War” is just heating up, folks.

Just heating up.

Watch.

Later…

AG

Crossposted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

Full disclosure: We had never heard of the Republic of Mauritius until the day we bought a ticket to go there.

Our pathetic excuse: Lonely Planet doesn’t list it in their Africa book.

When we arrived people seemed shocked to meet two people from the United States — hotel clerks, cab drivers, and street vendors who’ve worked on the island for years said they never met Americans before.

Yet, this is clearly America’s loss because sitting in the middle of the Indian ocean is one of the most incredible islands we’ve ever visited.

We always try to reduce our carbon footprint by traveling via public buses, but in this case a boat didn’t seem like a good option and flights from Johannesburg were extremely cheap. We resisted the urge to splurge on an all-inclusive beach holiday and opted for the more budget hostel pay-as-you-go experience.We had only four days and wanted to make the most of them and interacting with people seemed more interesting than lounging forever on a beach.

While English is the official language, few people spoke it. Bernie’s upbringing in Montreal came in handy as we interacted with people using French. Our cab driver from the airport to Grand Bay, Shivan, told us how safe the country was and how people co-exist harmoniously, “we are different colors, with different cultures, but we live together peacefully here. People are all the same, and we all treat each other that way.” The more we interacted with locals, the more people echoed the same sentiments. The traditional foods we ate reflected this multi-ethnicity melting pot, blending Indian, Creole, Chinese and European influences.

“It’s not like most places in Africa,” another cab driver told us. “You can walk anywhere at night. You can leave your stuff unattended. We don’t have much crime here, people will help you  — not bother you  — and its very rare that they will steal anything from you.”

We asked another local named Richard why he thought it was so safe and he told me that the government took care of it’s people. “Everyone gets a good pension, no matter how long or where you worked; all people get access to health care and free education; and if you’re too poor to own a house then the government builds one for you with electricity for free (and after paying basic rent for seven years, you own it).”

Another person we asked, named Marie, said that Mauritius lacked the government corruption of most African countries, citing it as the reason people visit there over nearby islands such as Madagascar and Comoros. “We have a real democracy,” she said.

In Mauritius, the government is elected on a five-year basis. The last general elections took place on July 3, 2005 in all the 20 mainland constituencies, as well as the constituency covering the island of Rodrigues.

The British left the country after they attained independence in 1968, and became a republic in 1992. According to the 2009 Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which measures governance using a number of different variables, Mauritius’ government earned the highest rank among African nations for “participation and human rights” and “sustainable economic opportunity”, as well as earning the highest score in the index overall. Mauritius came second in “rule of law”, and fourth in terms of “human development” (source: Wikipedia).

Our hostel (Grand Bay Beach Residence), booked via Student Flights (affiliated with Liberty travel in the United States), was terrific value. It is located in short walking distance from the town of Grand Bay and the ocean. The price was around thirty dollars per night, but considering the fact that free 3G WiFi worked on the outdoor deck and taking into account the hours we spent uploading video files and talking on conference calls to the United States on Skype — we got lots of unexpected value.  Things like restaurants and tourist destinations are very expensive on the island, but buying groceries and having drinks in the hotel room before heading out dancing allows budget travelers to enjoy everything without a hefty toll on your wallet. All the beaches everywhere in the country are public for both locals and tourists and that was something we enjoyed taking advantage of.

We drove across the Island learning more about the country’s agriculture, which, next to tourism, is their biggest source of income. Sugar cane is the largest export, and the plots of land growing them stretched for miles. We were told that this crop accounted for a quarter of all exports from the country. We also saw lots of pineapple and coffee being grown.

Yet, an industry that surprised us was the booming hi-tech sector. We certainly didn’t expect coast-to-coast wireless internet (3G) when we arrived (it covers 60 percent of the island and is cheap and widely assessable).  

We also played tourists and visited Triolet Shivala, the biggest Hindu temple of the island. The temple is dedicated to the Gods Shiva, Krishna, Vishna, Muruga, Brahma and Ganesha. This place is also the longest village on the island.

We also saw the “Coloured Earths of Chamarel,” among the oddest sites of the island. There are seven-coloured dunes at Chamarel, the result from the weathering of volcanic rocks. And a short drive away, we relaxed, eating spicy pineapple near the breathtaking Chamarel waterfalls. And we admit, we visited the beaches there as well.

As we boarded the plane, we looked at each other, and said we hoped to visit this magical island again.

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