The Distant Ocean

Have much sex your sex!

A few days ago I wished you all a happy new year.  And I meant it, I really did.  But at the same time I thought, that's a pretty pedestrian sentiment, isn't it?

Then yesterday a mysterious woman wrote to me and implored me to "have much sex your sex."  Now, I didn't know this woman, but she was clearly concerned for my welfare and filled with a concise wisdom.  So I pondered it.  And you know what?  I like it.  I think this is a new sentiment for a new age.  I think it should become like the "aloha" of the English language—something you can use instead of either hello or goodbye.  Try saying it to someone you know, or even better, someone you don't know; it's impossible to say it without feeling a genuine sense of goodwill toward them.  I think if this catches on, it could advance the cause of world peace more than a thousand UNs.

So I'm revising my new year's wish.  I still hope your 2008 is happy, of course, but as Tiny Tim said—or should have said—have much sex your sex, everyone!

If it was good enough for the Nazis...

White-hatted hero lawyers take on human-shaped bag of evil John Yoo:

A man who was held in isolation for more than three years before being tried and convicted of aiding terrorists filed suit Friday against the UC Berkeley law professor and former Justice Department official whose memos justified inflicting physical and mental pain during interrogations.

Military officials relied on John Yoo's writings in subjecting Jose Padilla to prolonged sensory deprivation, sleep interruption, stress positions and other techniques designed to break his will, Padilla's lawyers said in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco. ...

"John Yoo was central to the justification and creation of the torture system," Jonathan Freiman, an attorney at a Yale Law School human rights clinic who represents Padilla, said in a statement. "What Yoo seems to have forgotten is that lawyers are not above the law."

Nazi lawyers and judges were tried and convicted at Nuremberg, which sounds like a good precedent (and fitting historical company) for Yoo.

Whales are all like: thanks, lawyers!

I spend a lot of time thanking lawyers around here, and this time around there are entire pods of cetaceans joining the chorus, as the National Resources Defense Council and the California Coastal Commission win another round over the Navy:

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Thursday ordered the toughest set of restrictions ever imposed on the U.S. Navy's use of mid-frequency sonar off the Southern California coast as part of a protracted court battle to protect whales and other marine mammals from underwater sonic blasts.

The order was the first time the judge has spelled out specific rules the Navy must follow to avoid a court-imposed ban on training missions with a type of sonar that has been linked to the death and panicked behavior of whales and dolphins.

(I've got no illusions about the NRDC, which has a checkered past, but they're on the right side this time around.)

I don't think I can possibly harp on this too much: it's in the legal arena where some of the most important victories are being won on human rights, civil rights, the environment, and other critical issues.  Protests and letter-writing campaigns are important, but lawyers can drag the government into court and force it to change its behavior—and that's a beautiful thing.

(See here for the first installment in this series.)

Somebody please pull off the mask

Mike Huckabee last night:

Our challenge is ... to make Americans once again more proud to be Americans than just to be Democrats or Republicans.  To be more concerned about being going up instead of just going to the left or to the right.

Kodos (or was it Kang? I can never tell...), 1996:

My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball. But tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!

Prepare to enter the dark times

Dennis Perrin, who apparently spends more time reading liberal blogs than any person who values their sanity should even consider, shares this mind-blasting, steaming pile of joy from the American Prospect's Ezra Klein:

"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence."

(Need a shower now?  Don't worry, we'll still be here when you get back.)

If you ever wanted proof that Obama is one of the most dangerous politicians around, there you have it.  As president he could wipe an entire country off the map and it wouldn't even begin to penetrate the glaze over these people's eyes.  They'd still just feel so darn good about themselves!

I didn't include any of Dennis's vivisection of Klein and other fundamentalist Democrats, so you can have the pleasure of reading it for yourself.  I can already tell I'll be spending a lot of time seeking refuge at his site in 2008 as the insanity peaks.

UPDATE: Don't miss the comments in response to Klein's posting—especially the brilliant one about "Glory to the Obamessiah!"

BUT, A RAY OF LIGHT: Amy Goodman interviews Frank Cordero, part of a group of people who've been working to keep the spotlight on the war in Iraq (and other issues that actually matter) by occupying the offices of Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney...and Barack Obama.  More power to them for doing it right as the delusions are cresting.

The awesome power of the Chomskyites

I'm currently reading What We Say Goes, a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky.  A few months back I saw a review of it and almost coughed up a hairball when I hit this part:

People who hold a particular view of the mainstream media seem to find it inconceivable that I might actually, as Alice told the March Hare, mean what I write and write what I mean.

And for this, I blame Noam Chomsky. Not that everyone who holds a nasty opinion of the media has read his work or understands its subtleties. But he has given the caricature of the lying journalist so much academic legitimacy that arguing against it seems almost pointless. It's a given now, so much so that he can get away with speculating about what other people think.

This damages Chomsky's authority. The book isn't so much a conversation as a sermon to the converted. The title of the book, What We Say Goes, is a piece of dramatic irony: the "we" is meant to refer to the United States, but it could just as easily refer to Chomsky and his followers.

I'll bet you're thinking just what I'm thinking: how did she find out?  When I was initiated into the Chomskyite Cabal I was told that the hand of influence was always wielded with the deepest subtlety, lest the sheep understand that their reality is but an artifact of the Great One's design.  But apparently one of the unwashed has penetrated the sacred mysteries and uncovered our awesome power.  This could throw a real monkey wrench into our ongoing project to redefine "terrorism" as "anything the United States does," which before this revelation I think all of us would agree was destined for even greater success than the "all journalists are big fat liars" project.  Oh well—we may have to wait a few more years on that one now, but since what we say goes, it's only a matter of time.

I haven't gotten far enough into the book to give a review yet.  So far it's as informed and informative as you'd suspect, though familiar ground if you've followed Chomsky's output over the past few years.  For anyone who needs it, my recommendation for the best single Chomsky book to read would be Understanding Power (whose excellent online footnotes exceed the size of the book itself).  It covers a broad range of material, and very accessibly, since it's a collection of transcripts of Q&A sessions and so the conversational format prevents Chomsky from hitting the depths of inscrutability he sometimes reaches in his own writings.  It's also easy to read in short stretches, and as an extra added bonus, this is one of the few times I know of that you'll hear Chomsky use any of the seven words you can't say on television.

Happy new year!

To everyone who makes a point of stopping by here, whether hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, I want to wish you a happy new year.  I also want to thank you for taking the time to read, and—especially—to thank you for sharing your own thoughts when the urge strikes.  I'm always curious to know what people are thinking, and one of the best parts of writing here has been getting a chance to hear other points of view.

Here's hoping the year sees this wish turn into a reality, for all of us; I'd say we've got a good one coming to us by now.