Tina Dupuy

In case you missed some of the lowlights of the 20th century, one Florida charismatic pastor is trying to bring them back. Yes, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville is planning a Koran burning for the ninth anniversary of 9/11. His church, the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center, plans to show their contempt for the Islamic holy book, a tome the pastor admits he’s never read, by using it as fuel for a bonfire.

While the debate about books by those who read had been centered on the iPad versus the Kindle – Dove World’s debate is the bible versus the kindling. Which makes bloodletting suddenly seem forward thinking.

If you thought the Twilight series cornered the market when it came to a lack of literary subtlety – think again. Here we are in 2010 talking about burning books.

So what if a small religious group is on a quest to quash copies of other religious books? Why is that such a big deal?

This biblio-barbeque will be covered by the international press because it’s a train wreck of a bad idea; therefore, Pastor Jones will be our face to the world. Mine, yours – Americans in general. Yes, a preacher to a flock of nearly 50 will be the guy who Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Atheists from all over the world will identify with America. Everything about our country is about to be boiled down to a picture of a heap of Korans smoldering. Shock and awww.

It’ll be, “Americans burned the Koran.” And it’ll be true.

Never mind that we have soldiers on the ground in two Muslim countries. Remember in 2005, the first scandal of Guantanamo Bay involved the alleged desecration of detainees’ Korans by guards. That caused outrage across the globe. Way to support the troops, buddy.

Other than a pointless, smoke-filled flip off to the second largest faith in the world, does the torching of media these days do what its purveyors want it to do?

The Ancient Library of Alexandria was burned by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C.E. The loss of its contents arguably set back technology and culture for millennia. The conquistadors destroyed Mayan codices of their history and religion, obscuring the ancient Mayan culture indefinitely. The Mongol invaders massacred the Library of Baghdad resulting in the death of a massive “house of wisdom.” These events forever altered history mainly because they took place before the printing press.

After the printing press and the creation of multi-copied media, book burning become just a showy homage to the brutes of the past.
Libricide is an act of overt hostility. While Pastor Jones told the New York Times that he hopes this event won’t lead to violence, he’s planning a violent act. Author and professor Rebecca Knuth studied book burnings in Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait, China and Tibet. She concludes libricide often precedes genocide. Needless to say, this is not an act of “furthering the dialog.” You don’t exactly make the case for how your religion is the one of peace while you’re lighting things on fire.

Maybe Dove World has tapped into the conventional wisdom that you can never go wrong blaming the media – a literal shooting of the messenger. A book is a symbol. So the tactic preferred by the Nazis and Conquistadors alike is still alive as a tone-deaf attempt at cultural criticism.

John Lennon said his band was more popular than Jesus, so Beatles representations were treated like 17th century witches and burned at the stake. In the 1980’s metal albums were thought to bring 1980s teenagers to Satan so they also were torched. Harry Potter books have met a similar fate. Did this eradicate the subjects? No. Do public displays of pitchforks and torches make them any less popular? No.

On the contrary, since the creation of copies and more recently the Internet, Dewey Decimal Demolitions and Album Atom Rearrangers seem to make the subject more popular and maligned the source of the spark.

So as all Muslims are apparently judged by their extremists who on 9/11 crashed planes into buildings – all Americans will be judged by our extremists who on 9/11 burned Korans into ashes. Muslim-Americans are in an awkward position.

But most notably it means the Muslim world and Americans are about to have more in common than they thought.

See video: Burning Books

Right after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a dry cleaner’s storefront was vandalized and set ablaze in Modesto, California. The reason? The business was named “French Cleaners.” The French government took a strong anti-war stance regarding the preemptive invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. They said they would not join the Coalition of the Willing. Republican congressmen Robert W. Ney and Walter B. Jones, Jr. then rallied to make French Toast and French Fries less “wimpy” and championed new names for the fried fares. “Freedom toast” and “freedom fries” were soon available in the House cafeteria. Ironic since the French helped us win our freedom from England in the Revolutionary War.

The French Cleaners became a victim of a hate crime because the French were personae non gratae. Enemies of America! You’re either with us or against us – and the French were against us!

Of course, the Modesto French Cleaners owner is Pierre Frik, a Middle Eastern man from Lebanon. Frik admitted he thought he might end up a target because he was Middle Eastern – never guessing it would be because the name of his store contained the word “French.”

Which leads me to urge the following: Let our paranoia be accompanied by just a little research. No, I’m not promoting some “kumbaya – stop the hating” message. No “can’t we just all get along?” query. No, the economy stinks. No one should be expected to love everybody. We’re hurting. Instead, this is a plea to get the hating straight so at least we have the accurate thing in our crosshairs.

For example: In May, Arizona passed a law banning ethnic studies as part of its pandering to the election year anti-immigrant fervor. Following the “fear of outsiders” theme, the next national news story out of Arizona was about a pair of escaped convicts at large, John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch. The two were described as “fiancée-cousins.” So, which is more of a threat: learning about other cultures, or refusing to marry outside your family?

If any state should be teaching multiculturalism, it’s the one which launched the phrase “fiancée-cousin” onto America’s headlines.

A Pew Poll recently found that 18% of Americans think President Barack Obama (who bucked a 20 year trend to have a name that wasn’t Bush or Clinton) is a Muslim. The U.S. just spent a trillion dollars “liberating” Muslims in two countries and helping them democratically elect leaders. You’d think we’d all be super pro-Muslim judging by our national budget. But no, “Muslim” has a negative connotation because of terrorists on 9/11. Christian terrorists have “nothing to do with Christ” – but Muslim terrorists must be BFF’s with everyone of the Islamic faith.

Believing Obama is a Muslim shows how little we understand about actual Muslims. Some have rightfully pointed out that Obama drinks alcohol (remember the Beer Summit?) and eats pork, both of which defy the teachings of Islam.

In reality, Sharia Law, the sacred Law of Islam is completely opposite of how Obama’s kneejerk critics describe him. “Radical leftist” doesn’t fit with being a “secret Muslim.” Nor does having an “extremist” Christian preacher like Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Nor does calling yourself a Christian and attending a Christian church. Oh sure, Obama is a sleeper cell: soon, 19 months into his presidency, he’s going to decree that girls not go to school and we have to stone adulterers. He’s a closet foreigner tyrant who will make us all bow toward Mecca. So, what’s the hold up? Is the bill being stalled in the Senate or what?!

You know what tyrants don’t do? Let you call them tyrants.

Of course, Obama’s legitimate critics say he has yet to close Guantanamo as promised, and there are still killings of alleged terrorists without trials.

Criticizing our elected leaders is part of being American. But using innuendo to try and make our president un-American delegitimizes the whisperer. It lacks logic and, therefore, credibility.

All I’m proposing is this: Ask some follow-up questions before burning in effigy. Are there French people who actually own it? Do we happen to have the same grandparents? What do you mean by “secret Muslim?”

Otherwise, let’s all shake our fists until more of us are employed.

See video: Cultural Studies in Arizona

The MSNBC documentary series Lock Up ran a story earlier this month about a Maricopa County Jail inmate charged with identity theft named Cecil Kunkel. The 29-year-old Kunkel has a swastika tattooed on top of his “skinhead.” He’s covered in “white power” slogans and imagery. The only ink-free spot on him is an empty space in the shape of another swastika over his heart. The crew first finds him spending time in the hole as disciplinary action for refusing to house with black inmates. When asked why he refuses, Kunkel says, “Because it’s wrong…nothing personal – it’s just the way it is.” In the next scene Kunkel is caught on camera beating an African-American inmate who is, of course, smaller than himself.

Filmmakers for the series interview a close family friend of Kunkel’s, also locked up in Maricopa County. When asked about Kunkel by the producer, the self-proclaimed cousin offers, “He’s not a racist.”

Yes, here is Kunkel – being documented on national television proudly boasting about being a criminal, who has more Nazi ink than a copy of Mein Kampf – and the person closest to him doesn’t want Kunkel to be vilified by the term “racist.”

The whole conversation about race has turned into a rigged game of Whac-a-Mole where every time you hit a mole with your tethered mallet, the mole declares, “I’m not actually a mole, and how dare you use such a horrible label to describe me and my mole-like actions, appearance and affiliations.”

Denying racism while being overtly racist isn’t a new thing. In the hilarious 2001 book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, British journalist Jon Ronson spends time with the KKK during their attempted image makeover. Not using the “n-word” was part of the New and Improved Klan. Yes, the Klan wants you to know it’s no longer anti-non-whites…just very pro-hood.

Making a living promoting a fictional idealized version of 1950’s morality while having saucy nudie pics on the Internet, Dr. Laura Schlessinger last week felt she suddenly needed to move us all forward about how an affluent white woman should be able to use the “n-word” with impunity. Dr. Laura said the slur on her syndicated radio show – some 11 times. Then the melba toast ideologue decided to become the arbiter of what’s funny and said to the caller, the black wife of a bi-racial couple, “If you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor, don’t marry outside of your race!”

After taking such a definitive stand, Dr. Laura apologized the next day. See, she’s not a racist.

Racial agitator Andrew Breitbart is best known for promoting the heavily edited Sherry Sharrod video to show, according to him, the racism of the NAACP. That ordeal resulted in the firing of Sharrod from the USDA followed by the discrediting of Breitbart after the complete unedited video was released. And guess what? Breitbart is also not a racist. Sure, almost every one of his slanted stunts, including the one that brought down the community organizing group ACORN, targets black people – but that’s just a coincidence. How dare you imply race has something to do with it – such a horrible slight!

The right-wing is now frothing at the mouth over a Muslim community center within walking distance (as are most things in lower Manhattan, including a couple of existing mosques) from where the Twin Towers used to stand. President George W. Bush at least gave lip service to the Muslim community’s being “peaceful,” but now he’s an embarrassment. So the GOP thinks they really have a winner in denouncing and “refudiating” American Muslims with their goals of occupying buildings. The subtext is that all Muslims are terrorists. This goes along nicely with Republican leaders attempting to make all Latinos into job-stealing, people-beheading, baby-dropping threats to national security. If you whittle down enough groups of people, you do eventually make a point. A pointed neo-Republican talking point.
But the GOP isn’t racist.

Yes – hatred, intolerance and discrimination based on race are no longer racist. So surprisingly, the next wave of the Nixon-founded Southern Strategy is no longer “racist.” Pandering to our darkest fears about “the others” coming to our side of the island to kill us is, also, officially no longer racist.

Perhaps the term “post-racial society” is a typo. What they mean is “post-racist.” Racism no longer exists because the word for it is too offensive to those who practice it. Nice twist.

It takes a certain kind of fortitude and leadership to take a strong stand against a small group of children. No, I’m not calling Congress “children.” Well, not directly. I’m referring to the barking by Republican leaders to repeal the 14th Amendment, which is interpreted to mean everyone (with few exceptions) born in the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen.

So far there have been calls for hearings to look into the issue. House Minority Leader John Boehner, shockingly even more tanorexic this week, said on Meet the Press, “It’s worth considering.”

Really? It’s really worth considering?

The Republicans’ “solution” for illegal immigrants living here is to make more people living here – illegal?

There is no hard data on actual “anchor babies.” It sounds widespread because it’s repeated often. There are only anecdotal claims. People in the immigrant community deny such a scheme exists. You don’t get citizenship from giving birth to a citizen. Illegal immigrants are having children because that’s what humans do. So “anchor babies” are the new “death panels.” And we’re talking about amending the entire constitution to ward against a conspiracy theory.

“I don’t think the founders understood when they did the 14th Amendment that they would create a circumstance where people could fly into America, all over the world and have a child and that child would have dual citizenship, fly back to their home countries,” said Republican Senator Jeff Sessions in an interview with ABC News.

If the Republicans get their hearings let’s start with how the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, about 70 years after the death of the first president, Founding Father George Washington. The “founders” did not write the 14th Amendment.

Just so we keep our basic “founders are sacrosanct” civics straight.

What the founders did write was Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution regarding Treason. The document lays out the implications of treason, then says, “…but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”

“Corruption of Blood” was an English law stating that if your parents committed treason, you were also stained. Meaning, you’re punished for the sins of your father or mother. But according to our founders, not in this new country. No. In this country the American Dream pivots on doing better than your parents by the will of you and your metaphor-worthy bootstraps. In this country it (theoretically) doesn’t matter from where or from whom you came, the dream can be yours, too.

I was raised in foster care. The state not only protected me from my parents, they were my parents. The wrongdoing, political affiliation or immigrant status of my biological family was never an issue because I was born here – and that’s just not America. There are a myriad of places where it matters who your parents are (college applications, scholarships – dating), but the state was concerned only with my welfare and wellbeing – completely indifferent to the shortcomings of my parents when it came to how I was treated. Besides, it’s impossible to have the “rugged individualism” narrative going if our citizen rights are tied to mommy and daddy’s documents being in order.

I benefited from a humanistic policy that was not wrapped in the myopic frenzy of political theater. If we could all be so lucky.

Now, to drum up hysteria about this alleged rash of pregnant Mexican border hoppers, the GOP’s idea is to change the Constitution so that being without papers is treated more harshly than treason. If your parents betray the country – you’re safe. But if they stay past the expiration of their student visa – buh-bye, kiddo! For being a party who rails against government bureaucracy their idea is a triplicate form of fear-baiting from the department of half-baked.

Is the Republican Party really calling for taking away children’s rights? Are they really “looking into” the government’s punishing kids for decisions their parents make? Do we really want lineage to be a deciding factor for civic life? Of course we don’t. We’re Americans. We’re a nation of coming-from-somewhere-else’s. We’re a nation of starting over, trying again and re-inventing ourselves.

Most importantly, we’re a nation that protects children – regardless of who their parents are. Even if their parents are politically desperate Republicans.

It’s not that Republicans aren’t hypocrites – it’s more that the label just isn’t an effective dig. First, hypocrite is a fancy foreign Greek word like amnesty, ethics or Europe – how is that going to appeal to Republicans? Second, espousing virtues you don’t personally have to live up is basically the point of being a Republican.

Talker Rush Limbaugh, speaker for Republicans everywhere, famously railed against drug users and called for harsher sentencing for possession when it was fashionable in the ’90s. Then in 2006 Limbaugh was arrested and went to rehab after losing his hearing as a direct result of his long-term drug addiction. Needless to say, he’s cool with hypocrisy. He even thinks hypocrisy a good thing. During South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s “Appalachian Trail” love affair last year, Limbaugh defended the Republican politician, telling his audience, “Hypocrisy shows that there are moral values in a culture. Without moral values in a culture it would not be possible for anyone to be a hypocrite.”

Yes, according to self-proclaimed personal responsibility advocate Limbaugh, personal choice doesn’t make you a hypocrite – society does.

Calling a conservative “hypocrite” is like calling a progressive “liberal”: It stings, but they don’t actually understand why it’s supposed to be offensive. The GOP doesn’t see self-contradiction as a moral shortcoming. They see people who don’t agree with them as a moral shortcoming.

Take closeted homosexual GOP lawmakers who stand with their party and vote against gay rights. I’d list them all by name but I have a word count limit and it’s widespread (er stance) enough to be a cliché. Does it really hurt them to be called hypocrites? No.

Take the canard that Republicans are somehow FOR the government getting out of our lives. That’s unless we look like we could be Mexican, or we’re a woman of childbearing capability. Then it’s the government’s job – responsibility – to get up in our business. Is it effective to call them hypocrites? No.

Take Fraction Governor Sarah Palin who spends her free time telling President Obama how to do his job after she quit hers during the greatest economic downturn her state has ever faced. Not to mention her daughter, the unwed teenage mother Bristol Palin, who is now a paid advocate for abstinence. Do they care if they’re called hypocrites? No.

Fox News rails against the “mainstream media” while bragging about their high ratings and now a front row seat in the White House press briefing room. Republican leadership castigates Democrats for high unemployment rates while stalling the jobs bill. Not to mention Republicans floating the myth that the biggest donor to the Obama campaign was BP when the bumper sticker/rallying cry of the 2008 RNC was “Drill, Baby, Drill.” Does calling them hypocrites somehow stop this? No. Does it make them consider these positions to be flawed? This is about national security! Do you hate America?

No, using the word “hypocrite” should really be stopped altogether. It’s become a meaningless insult like “Nazi,” “bias,” or “environmentalist.” It actually has some spray back onto its user anyway. Basically pointing out someone is a hypocrite makes you sound like an angsty emo tween. It’s a word we learn in junior high to apply to grownups.

Instead of “hypocrite” I recommend the word “fraud.” It sounds bad. Fraud is illegal. Fraud is immoral. And it’s an accurate way of describing hypocrisy without sounding like an irate Justin Bieber fan.

Plus, we’re faced with a GOP who have appointed themselves as deficit hawks, but who are now for renewing the Bush Tax Cuts. These tax cuts added to (wait for it) the deficit – that’s why they’re going to expire. The only way the original bill could pass through reconciliation was for the Congressional Budget Office to have it expire in ten years. Will renewing these tax cuts add to the deficit? Just a couple of trillion dollars. Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan was asked on Meet the Press this week if he agrees with Republican leaders who say that tax cuts pay for themselves. His answer? A curt, “No, I do not.”

What does that mean? It means Republicans are FRAUDS when it comes to being deficit hawks. See how easy that was?

Americans hate taxes. It’s not a right or left issue. It’s not a Democratic or Republican issue. It’s not an old or young issue. It’s strangely not even a rich or poor issue. It’s an American issue. It’s our biggest peeve. We all agree on some level: Our country is great, but we feel very cranky about forking over our money to the government.

This is an odd character trait in Americans. For example, we happily pay for cable even though television is free – we clearly have no problem signing up for more bills.

The average American credit card debt is around $10,000 and the average APR is 14% – we clearly have no problem doling out loads of cash with nothing to show for it.

We don’t even pay out that much of our income to the government when compared with other industrialized nations. An average family with children pays about 20% of their income to taxes. For singles it’s 37%. Belgians pay close to 55%.

But Americans hate taxes. We always have. We hate even the idea of them. We want to believe freedom and taxes absolutely contradict one other. Like improv and comedy.

Other colonies of Great Britain (e.g., Canada and Australia) simply asked for their independence. But not us. Americans were so outraged about the King’s raising taxes we started a costly and bloody revolutionary war lasting nearly a decade.

Yes, it all started with a tax hike. “No more taxes!” is the original American battle cry. In a way, our country’s birth was a giant scheme to avoid giving up a fraction of our salaries to bureaucrats.

We simply despise taxes.

Taxes are so loathed by Americans, politicians have to come up with new phrases in order to talk about them. That’s why “fees,” “tariffs” and “tolls” are used to “balance deficits,” instead of just putting it plainly: Taxes are needed to fund the government. It’s an attempt to make taxes palatable to American sensibilities. This prettier word tactic is combated by calling anything you disagree with the ominous “hidden tax.” A hidden tax is something lurking in the bushes that can jump out and bill you. Very scary.

Notorious tax-phobe Grover Norquist requests conservative candidates sign his heavy-handed pledge not to raise taxes. He wants them to be like 1981’s tax-cutter President Ronald Reagan. Not like 1982’s, 1983’s, 1984’s, 1985’s, 1986’s and 1987’s tax-raiser President Ronald Reagan. Because when it comes to taxes – always accentuate the cuts.

For politicians, raising taxes is taboo.  It’s an unmentionable.

But if you talk with the average weed advocate – er, marijuana activist – er, cannabis enthusiast, one of their selling points is if pot were legal you could tax it.

Yes, a sin tax! A sin tax is what the government puts on things like gambling, booze or tobacco. It’s designed to discourage people from doing it – because taxes are just that revolting. A sin tax is punitive. It’s monetary punishment for being a sinner – quite literally “hell to pay.”

Could pot smokers be the only group in the history of the world to want to be taxed? To hope to be taxed? To specifically ask the government to tax them more?

“I can’t remember the last time an interest group volunteered to be taxed,” admitted councilwoman Janice Hahn of Los Angeles, the semi-legal weed capital of the country.

This might be a first. Historic. A group of Americans are actually lobbying the government asking to give more money to the government in the form of a tax. Weed is rumored to expand your mind in all sorts of unspecified ways. We may have found one of them.

Volumes of political theory have just been challenged. We’re witnessing history here. Someone notify the media!

Once on a flight I ate a cheeseburger-in-a-bag. It was a wonderfully microwaved beefy dough ball of cheesy-type goo. It tasted amazing! Of course, it’s designed to taste amazing. Mission so accomplished. The sandwich had the right amount of fat and salt to appeal to my ancient binge-to-survive-winter DNA. It was laced with artificial scents, laboratory flavors and synthetic colors. It had the proper “mouth feel.” The right size. The perfect temperature. My cheeseburger-in-a-bag was like a friend who had been paid to be nice to me: comforting, as long as you don’t think about it too much.

In short: The meal was manipulated by years of food science and marketing research to manipulate me. The “taste to actual health benefits ratio” was way off. It was more appealing than life sustaining.

It was the definition of junk.

Which is an apt metaphor for the state of cable news in America. Stick with me here:

Watch your average for-profit 24-hour station for one hour. Your pulse will start racing. Something horrible is going down! Something that will kill you and your family and everyone you care about is close and imminent! You MUST stay tuned! There’s something outrageous! That’s why people are yelling at each other! Cable news starts with a story, removes the grain and nuance then mainlines the fury. It’s all high-fructose hyperbole all the time.

Originally there was one 24-hour cable news channel, CNN. Then there were three. Now the three have spin-offs and there are by my count nine (CNN, HLN, CNN International, CNN en Espanol, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and Bloomberg) all vying for attention. That’s 216 hours of programming to fill with the news of just one day. It used to be the formula of Fox News to be a parody of Howard Beale in The Network, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Now all the channels are guilty of the same schtick – doing whatever they can to fling themselves to the top of the heap to make their respective Faye Dunaways happy.

In short: The shows are manipulated by years of psychology and marketing research to manipulate us.  The “entertainment to information ration” is way off. It’s more appealing than illuminating…which also makes it junk.

The literal translation of what locals in Somalia call the man on the BBC who reads the news is “He Who Scares Old People.” For the higher-on-the-dial news shows this moniker is a selling point, if not a requirement.

Because if you’re not afraid, you’re not watching.

Just as an experiment – instead of cable news watch PBS or listen to NPR. Try it. It’s like going from Oreos to oat bran. There’s a sudden withdrawal. You keep expecting someone to yell, shake their fists and proclaim “We’re doomed!” but it doesn’t happen. It seems as if the world might go on – that we have some problems, here they are and here is the context for said problems. No one calls anyone a Nazi…unless they actually served in the SS. It’s very novel and foreign when you’re accustomed to “loud equals accurate.” A study released at the beginning of the year by Shawn Powers at USC and Mohammed el-Nawawy at Queens University found that the more their subjects in the study watched Al-Jazeera English, the less dogmatic they were in their thinking. Participants retained their opinions but were more open to the views of others. It’s like all the studies that find a diet of real food consisting of vegetables and fiber makes you feel better in every way. It’s interesting…and ignored.

We have too much over-processed junk food available round the clock, and we are fat. We have too much over-sensationalized news available around the clock, and we are miserable. More importantly a giant chunk of us are incredibly ignorant. Just as obese people are often malnourished, there are people who watch the “news” constantly and are horribly uninformed. It’s overconsumption of junk.

What’s the result of an uninformed, frightened and hysterical populace? As the saying goes, we get the government we deserve: shortsighted, petty and trend-obsessed. Which in fairness…is great for ratings.

Safe to say, nothing is so bad that a hurricane can’t make worse. Take an existing problem, toss it around in the wind and smack it with flying debris – it’s certainly not going to improve. Shoddy construction is made worse, communication concerns – made worse, a struggling economy – made worse, disastrous Bush presidency – made worse. And now the wonders of deregulation – the BP Oil Spill – the worst environmental disaster in the history of the U.S. – found itself in the pathway of early riser Alex, the first official hurricane of this season.

Alex shut down drilling and clean-up efforts for a few days until it made landfall in Monterrey, Mexico, missing the marshes of Louisiana. Rain instead has plagued the region. The BP Oil Spill is already a current-carried glob of doom. It’s a mass of toxic sludge submerged in the Northern Hemisphere’s hotbed of hurricanes. As usual, we are at the mercy of the winds. We are the subjects of the impending season of storms that rip through our Gulf Coast every year.

In 2007 during a cable interview, Senator Barbara Boxer said, “One of the very important national security threats we face is climate change.” Warmer waters in the Gulf will promise more hurricanes. Oceans will rise from the melting of glaciers. Heat waves will kill crops and damage industries. Famine, floods, tornadoes, drought, violent storms, fires, tsunamis, disease and unrest? Sure, this could be a concern to the security of the nation.

Now, sacked Hewlett-Packard CEO turned California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina used the Boxer clip for an attack ad. Carly, in her curious Jodie Foster accent, said in the spot, “Terrorism kills and Barbara Boxer is worried about the weather.”

Then the self-proclaimed fringe to the “lamestream media” and fraction-of-a-term governor Sarah Palin chimed in on Twitter, “BarbBoxer sez ’greatest security threat’ is WEATHER. Not nukes, or unsustainable debt leading 2 insolvency? Silly Senator, glad theres competition.” [Spaces added.]

Palin is like a militant reformed smoker – she quit her job as governor and now has contempt for all who continue the habit of public service. Silly Senator, keeping oaths are for chumps.

Okay, first off: the “weather” is not the “climate.” The difference between weather and climate is length of time. Weather is the immediate information – climate is the big picture. So it’s like trying to discuss a concern about a decade and Carly Fiorina says you’re worrying about an hour. This is why climate change deniers disagree with scientists – they’re not using the same measurements. If you believed miles were inches, you’d think you were being lied to by eggheads all the time too.

Our climate is changing. And yes, WEATHER is also something which warrants worry: In the last ten years, there were more Americans who died from extreme weather than there were U.S. soldiers who died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined. According to the National Weather Service, during the last decade 5,754 people have died due to weather events such as extreme temperatures, flooding and hurricanes. Compare that death toll with the 5,521 soldiers killed in the two wars we’ve waged since 2001. Truth be told, to date there have been more U.S. lives lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina (estimated 1,800) than there have been U.S. soldiers killed in the war in Afghanistan (1,125).

And as far as Fiorina’s focus on terrorism killing – well, an average of 42 Americans die from being struck by lightning every year. As opposed to – well, almost none from terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11.

Here’s the problem with the Politics of Fear and Confusion: it confuses what to fear. Is terrorism still a threat? Sure. Should we pursue the elimination of terrorism while ignoring all other concerns because it makes politicians seem tough? No – at least not anymore.

This week the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat advisory for the Northeast. Forecasters predict prolonged temperatures exceeding 102 degrees could wreak havoc in cities like New York, D.C. and Philadelphia. Several have already died from the heat. In 1980 during a similar heat wave was responsible for 1,250 deaths.

Why? Because weather kills.

How’s that “worried about the weather-y” thing workin’ for ya?

Edith Shain was 91 years old when she died peacefully last week in her home in Los Angeles. You knew her as the woman in the iconic black and white photo of a jubilant soldier kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day. The snapshot tells an American tale of a war ending and an entire generation of people coupling up – creating the suburbs, a solid middle-class and a stupendous baby boom.

What strikes me about the photo is that they really knew how to end wars back then. For example: they used to end wars…back then. There was a global conflict followed by a resolution. Beginning. Middle. End. Done. Birthrate skyrockets.

Now we have two never-ending wars and Cialis commercials on an eternal loop. How far we’ve come.

The U.S. decided to invade Afghanistan after September 11th in 2001. As troops were being mobilized, Americans preemptively bought yellow ribbons to show support for the mission and the troops. Yellow ribbons also appeared in 1979 during the Iran Hostage Crisis and again in 1991 for the troops in Operation Desert Storm. Then ten years later they were back, displayed for all to see: tied to trees, flagpoles, telephone poles and every pole in between. Our nation was awash in American flags and yellow ribbons. “These colors don’t run!”

The other day I saw a yellow ribbon stuck in a chain link fence. The ribbon was tattered, frayed and sun-faded. The war in Afghanistan is so long it has outlasted the material of the ribbons initially supporting the effort. An original ribbon from this current war is now an antique.

About five years into the conflict yellow ribbon car magnets became a big trend. During that time I was traveling all over the country, and in every pocket of the U.S. were cars, trucks and SUVs with magnets showing support for what had become not one, but two wars. Yellow ribbons were ubiquitous. And then gradually the magnets starting disappearing until they were gone. Individually – one by one – in private, with no fanfare and no media coverage – Americans removed their patriotic yellow ribbon magnets from their vehicles. You don’t see them anymore. Apparently something as temporary as a magnet shaped like a ribbon is not the proper symbol for the war we are actually waging.

With all the red-baiting and pundit-driven fear of the U.S. becoming a communist country because we no longer let health insurance companies deny coverage to sick children, we’ve lost sight of an important fact: the Soviet Union – communists – lost their collective red shirts in Afghanistan. The perils of fighting a determined local force whose idea of infrastructure is a bridge to the sixth century proved too enormous for the last super power that fought there.

In fact, Afghanistan is an empire graveyard. It has been for millennia. How about this for a foreign policy: don’t invade a place where the last successful incursion was led by Genghis Khan.

Last week a Rolling Stone article about the war in Afghanistan resulted in the retirement of General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan. The media attention focused on the personnel issue in the chain of command. What was skipped over was the passage about the COIN (acronym for counter-insurgency) doctrine created by McChrystal’s replacement, General David Petraeus. “The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France’s nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975),” wrote reporter Michael Hastings.

That’s right. We are looking at past mistakes and incorporating them into our current conflict – which is like gathering a bunch of defective parts, putting them into your new car and being surprised by the outcome.

So far the war in Afghanistan has cost the U.S. $300 billion. It’s already the longest war America has ever fought. The date President Obama gave for the start of withdrawal is July 2011. The war hawks argue this is too soon.

As if.

You can say many things about the war in Afghanistan but “not long enough” is not one of them.

Maybe those worn-out ribbons are more of a symbol than we planned on.

Before the tar balls had a chance to touch down on the white sands of the Gulf Coast – the message from the oil-soaked Republican Party was clear: “Don’t exploit the disaster…if you’re a Democrat.” But if you’re a member of the GOP, feel free to exploit this endless spill for political gain. Use it as a battering ram against the president. “Obama’s Katrina.” “Obama un-American for criticizing BP.” “The moratorium is worse than the spill.” “Obama isn’t doing enough.” “Government is bad – where’s the National Guard?” So on and so forth.

But don’t try to pass an energy policy in the wake of the biggest environmental catastrophe this country has ever witnessed. That’s exploitive. Crude.

The “don’t exploit this tragedy” knee-jerk catch-all phrase is absolutely meaningless. In American politics, we rule by crisis. There is no political will to act unless something is burning, melting or spewing. We don’t plan for the future – we brace for it. Our policies are all emergency-based. Our country is like someone who won’t pay their bills until they get a shut off notice.

“We can wait no longer! Now is the time!”

The Republican’s hands-off philosophy back when they held all three branches of government enabled a horde of deregulated industries with imaginary blow-out preventers to burst: the banks, Wall Street, the auto industry, the housing market etc. We’ve had to attend to these disasters, one after another. Tipping point after tipping point. Cliff after cliff.

The one issue Obama did address when it was only slightly gangrene was health care. Yet this is also the issue he gets criticized for doing instead of mopping up the Armageddon-of-the-month.

Appointed Arizona Governor Jan Brewer enjoys exploiting a tragedy to defend her disastrous-to-civil-rights immigration law. Have any Republicans admonished her for it? Nope. It’s a showdown – and Obama is IGNORING the crisis! Even though most statistics admit both incidents of violence and illegal immigration at the border had already declined. Even though “securing the border” is as ambiguous and unobtainable as “wiping out terror.” Even though according to Arizona Republic, the Customs and Border Protection, the federal law enforcement agency has an annual budget of $17 billion, doubling what was spent in 2003. “I have repeatedly sent letters to the administration and to the president of the United States with absolutely no response,” Brewer said on Fox News. It’s like calling your elderly relative just to have them bark at you that you never call. I can’t imagine why Brewer would get ignored.

But if a perennial progressive issue turns into a crisis – tragedy is suddenly sacred. A mass shooting at a school? Don’t exploit this tragedy to talk about gun control. Miners killed due to hazardous conditions? Don’t exploit this tragedy to empower unions. Our Gulf Coast lost for a generation because of drilling shortcuts? Don’t exploit this dead gulf or you’ll kill jobs.

The point is: Obama should exploit this tragedy in the Gulf. Not “exploiting the tragedy” is saying the status quo is perfect. Don’t do anything. Just wait out the clock.

Yes, just like the “actions” of the 109th Congress – the last one controlled by Republican majorities in both houses. When the Republicans set the agenda, they met a whopping 242 days in two years, which was 12 fewer days than the 80th Congress, the first to be dubbed a Do-Nothing Congress by President Harry Truman. The 109th had an average of eight months off a year – because nothing celebrates government ineffectiveness more than a gig in congress being a nearly no-show job.

“But if we seize this moment we can rebuild our economy on a new foundation,” said President Obama on his Organizing for America site this week.

Please, exploit this crisis. Make it the reason a spill like this won’t happen again. “The only real solution is to take American ingenuity to get energy in different forms,” Microsoft’s Bill Gates said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Gates proposes spending one percent ($11 billion annually) of what we spend on energy for research and development.

Finally an idea, not just a denial with a chant. “Drill, baby, drill.”

Yes. Exploit this crisis and exploit the clean renewable natural resources inspired by Bill Gates – the country’s nerds.

While perusing the Internet, I came across an article about how to be a more attractive woman. First on the list was to learn how to tell a funny story. “Wit is the key. Be interesting.” When have you ever heard anyone advise a woman to learn to tell a decent anecdote? Never. Encourage women to be interesting as opposed to hot? It was radical! Totally progressive and forward-thinking. Then I realized I misread the premise: it was how to be more attractive to women. The suggestion is well-worn and typical – for dudes.

Here’s the thing: if we still have a need for the word “feminist” then the goal of gender equality has not been reached. No one has to say they’re an abolitionist. It’s just assumed you’re against slavery unless otherwise indicated.

We clearly still need the word – and the concept of – feminism.

The 2010 primary season has marked an unprecedented number of female candidates for national and state offices…according to the hype. Republicans winning Republican primaries across the country is a victory for Republicans everywhere! There are more female GOP candidates this season than ever before. Well, there are four: former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, South Carolina State Representative Nikki Haley and former Nevada Assemblywoman Sharron Angle.

To some this could seem like a feminist victory. It’s a female Republican victory, sure. But being a feminist and being against reproductive freedoms means you are not a feminist. You can say you’re a Mets fan, but if you only want the Yankees to win – you’re not a Mets fan.

The irony is this swarm of candidates, almost all entirely anti-abortion rights (save Whitman) has the feminism movement to thank for their ability to be candidates. Which is like using Twitter to get your message out about the evils of micro-blogging.

This new trend in the Republican Party – putting up women who want to turn the clock back to criminalize abortion – is complicated for feminists. And feminism in its third wave (or so) is already complicated. Yes, it’s great to think of women in power, but not when they’re against women’s rights as their platform.

The anti-choice movement tells women they deserve better than abortion, that they are the ones who have the best interests of women in mind. But treating women like children who need to be told what’s best for them is hardly equality. It’s a step back. And saying not having an abortion is the right choice – is a choice.

A stealthy anti-abortion movement has been chipping away at access to information and services since before Roe v. Wade. Crisis Pregnancy Centers, the first opening in Hawaii in 1967, are fake women’s clinics offering no medical services, only religious-based misinformation and scare tactics to discourage abortion and in many cases premarital sex. They outnumber abortion providers 2-1 in this country.

The Dutch organization Women on Waves provides health services in countries where abortion is a crime. A doctor with the group told me an alarming amount of their calls are from women in the U.S. in desperate situations. Some are from U.S. soldiers who don’t have access to abortion while serving their country, even if they’re raped. This should be embarrassing to us. This should be a concern to thoughtful female candidates and patriots alike.

Currently, an amendment added to the 852-page Pentagon policy bill repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” calls for soldiers to get the same basic health care access as civilians. Civilians with money, at least. This has been called “government funding of abortions” by opponents and “supporting the troops” by everyone else.

Because nothing says “sanctity of life” like serving in a war zone.

The Republican rhetoric about freedom, the sacredness of the Constitution and government not encroaching on your rights all come to a screeching halt at reproductive issues. Republicans are for those platitudes…but with asterisks. To glaze over this contradiction, female anti-abortion GOP candidates have flippantly called themselves feminists. Which is like proclaiming yourself vegetarian while eating a ham sandwich. They’re not feminists. They’re just female. “Being a feminist isn’t a question of plumbing,” author Gloria Feldt said to me.

Yes, this third wave is complicated. But at least it’s interesting.

“Big Brother” is watching you in a very “Orwellian” way. Has been for years. People who have never heard of George Orwell know of the term “Big Brother.” In many ways his dark vision of what the year 1984 would look like is prophetic. For example, his novel 1984 takes place during a never-ending war while technology is aiding an over-reaching government. I read that in the New York Times yesterday.

Orwell was right. He was dead on. Spooky.

EM Forster is best known for his novels Howards End and A Passage to India. Less well-known is a 12,000-word science fiction piece, an allegory about technology titled, ”The Machine Stops” written in 1909.

Forster’s gloomy tale takes place in a future where all the world’s people have become hermits, content with no longer physically touching others, opting instead to live in solitary with the aid of The Machine. “There are no musical instruments and yet…this room is throbbing with melodious sounds,” he writes. The protagonist Vashti lives in a small climate controlled room, illuminated by neither lamp nor window. She has thousands of friends. She even lectures on “Music during the Australian Period.” It all takes place through The Machine. The catalyst is when her son wants to see her in person instead of through the “blue plate.” People don’t travel above ground anymore. The atmosphere is barren and brown. And Vashti doesn’t care for “air-ships.”

Basically he predicted central air, the Internet, video conferencing, television, radio, global warming and commercial air travel.

Forster was right. He was dead on. Spooky.

“The Machine Stops” was penned a hundred years ago. For a historical perspective, the first radio was not installed in the White House until 1922, yet a Victorian like Forster imagined modernity amazingly close.

I first read this short story ten years ago. It was before I became a telecommuter, before MySpace – before Google was a verb. Now I have days where I feel like Vashti, isolated in my pajamas revering The Machine. “The Machine, feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being,” wrote Forster.

But the story is also a poignant criticism of technological advancement. The current struggle between “old media” and “new media” is one of reporting versus the digesting news. One hundred years ago a lecturer in Forster’s tale pronounces, ”Beware of first-hand ideas! First hand-ideas do not really exist…Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from the disturbing element – direct observation.” It’s a rundown of blogging versus journalism.

It’s not just that Forster foresaw the Internet, but he guessed rightly how it would be used. In this fable of the future what values most are ideas – they are the new commodity. Talking to her son Kuno about his desire to see her in person through The Machine is private, until Vashti turns off her isolation switch. “The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Had she any ideas lately? Might one tell her one’s own ideas?” He’s describing online communities. He’s describing Facebook. He’s describing Twitter.

“We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now,” Forster wrote. “It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. “ Of course, as I write this, my “machine” chimes with the siren call of new emails, IMs and tweets tempting me to distraction. To quote Vashti as she tried to comfort herself while on the air-ship, ”O Machine! O Machine!”

The term “deep water” usually means you’re in trouble and “horizon” is what lies ahead. So the ill-fated drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, is aptly named.

Doom has arrived on our shores and our prospects are tacky with tar balls.

The geyser of crude, a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico, exposed America for what it is: bent over a barrel of oil.

The party that defiantly and happily chanted “drill, baby, drill” at their 2008 convention has been content to obsess about the Joe Sestak job offer story in lieu of drilling, baby, drilling. Why aren’t they defending their bumper sticker? With glee they’ve been chasing the hope something illegal happened in the White House so they can pounce on possible political gain in the middle of a the potential loss of our Southern shoreline to sludge. Republicans, with their 30-year menagerie of sound bites railing against government interference with business, have not surprisingly stayed away from direct action on this front. Except for Governor Bobby Jindal, who now publicly wants federal help instead of shaking his fist against the stimulus and then posing in photos handing out those government checks.

That size-of-South-Carolina amorphous blob of crude is the realization of Republican values: no regulations for drilling our way out of an energy crisis. It’s the rainbow connection!

Then the new darling of the right-wing, Rand Paul “shrugged” and said accidents happen and criticized President Obama for being “un-American” for coming down too harshly on BP. Then the old darling of the right-wing, Sarah Palin, whose husband worked for BP for 18 years, didn’t recuse herself from discussing the issue as a paid Fox News contributor because of a potential conflict of interest. Instead she accused Obama of being the one in bed with the oil companies. Which is so ridiculous it’s like Sarah Palin being the person to accuse Obama of being in bed with the oil companies.

Overnight, on Day 39, cable news put up neon graphics that it’s Day 39! Now the press is paying attention. CNN ran stories about how this spill is going to hurt BP’s image as a green company. Because this spill is a PR issue like terminal cancer is a problem with morale.

Suddenly 25 times more oil is coming out of the blown well than BP initially reported. Suddenly the press needs someone to blame. BP, Transocean and Halliburton get passed up for the government response. There is no response that would have saved the Gulf. But context doesn’t matter. We need a bullhorn moment to broadcast. That’s Obama’s failing: no bullhorn. Bush’s bullhorn was…well bull (Osama Bin Laden will die of old age). But we need to see the leader of the free world not being thoughtful – we need action. We need Obama to clean off some tar-covered birds! Why isn’t he in a flight suit err wetsuit!? He’s clearly not doing enough!

The oil companies in this snap shot are in arrested development. In the 1930’s some estimated we’d run out of oil in 10 years. Yet here we are. They’ve innovated to find more oil and effectively kept innovation from making them obsolete. It’s a marvel of modern lobbying, marketing and engineering. But are we out on the streets protesting them? No, we’re having a Tea Party about government tyranny.

The BP spill exposed that we’re still commuting in eight cylinder singly occupied vehicles, hopped up on plastic goods and scoffing at high-speed rail projects. Our government is representative – we haven’t clamored to get off oil. If anything we’ve threatened to riot for having to pay too much at the pump. Because of our myopic need to not alter our way of life – the Deepwater Horizon has altered our way of life. There’s a state-sized slurry of death floating around in the ocean and it’s just the price of doing business.

Calls for more drilling in the wake of the BP Oil Spill are as sound as a junkie shooting up into an abscess.

Louisiana Congressman Charlie Melancon said that these are not just Louisiana’s wetlands but America’s wetlands. And I would add that it’s not just endangered pelicans covered in debilitating oil – we all are covered in debilitating oil.

There are no democratically elected leaders in the Christian bible. I know – it’s shocking. But, if you catch the rhetoric pertaining to the US Constitution, you’d think the Ten Commandments are its bullet points. They’re not. The whole idea of a representative democracy (a Greek word) comes from Ancient (think then-solvent) Greece. The leaders in the bible were all kings and/or tyrants and the Bill of Rights is nowhere in the New or Old Testament.

Simply: Democracy isn’t biblical. But neither is the combustible engine, CAT scans or GPS – it doesn’t make them any less awesome.

So when fly-by-night pontificators, the loudest being the scholarly Sarah Palin, claim this country’s laws are ordained by God via the bible, she needs to show her work – because freedom of the press, due process and freedom of speech are not through-lines in biblical teachings. Nor is the citizenry bearing arms.

“Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant – they’re quite clear – that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments,” Palin sputtered on FNC earlier this month.

Evidently, just because it’s “protected speech” doesn’t make it “factual.”

When you break it down, three of the Ten Commandments are universal laws with zero controversy (do not murder, do not steal, no false witnessing). The teetering point to make half of the most widely accepted version of the Ten Commandments actual laws have been fought over by the states. Blue Laws, laws prohibiting things on Sundays based on the Commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, are still on the books in some places. They’re some of the sillier laws in the country. In Texas you couldn’t buy anything on Sundays you could do work with. So hardware stores had to put blue price tags on things like hammers up until the law was overturned in 1984. There are still places where you can’t buy a car on “the day of rest.” Let alone booze.

Talk about over-reaching government dictating what businesses can do.

Other attempts to pass laws to abolish cursing, an interpretation of using the Lord’s name in vain, have been tried. The most amusing one was by the real Victorian-era sheriff of Deadwood, South Dakota, Seth Bullock. He cracked down on cussing in his rowdy mining camp only to have the most curse-laden HBO show in the history of television about it 140 years later. Then adultery is still illegal in some states while the Supreme Court overturned sodomy laws in 2003.

So to recap: Three of the Ten Commandments are covered by federal laws and three are laws in some states. But the other four are nowhere to be found in US law.

Which from a statistical stance sums up the debate about religion and our government: a third of people think this is and should be a Christian nation, others waffle yet most think it’s not a good idea in practice.

In fact, none of the Ten Commandments are in the US Constitution. The Constitution is the charter of the government outlining the rights of the people and the limits of government. Comparing the two is like apples to a red herring.

“The Constitutional protections are on what they [the Founders] thought was right and wrong, and what they thought was right and wrong is based on the Ten Commandments,” claimed Bill O’Reilly on his cable show.

The question is: do we really want to live in a country that makes not honoring your mother and father a crime? Is it wise to have a law mandating you can’t have any other gods or make false idols or covet your neighbor’s spouse? The Founding Fathers (ahem) clearly thought it wasn’t.

Why, if you want America to be more religious, do you need to co-opt history to accomplish it? Have the courage to stand up for your convictions without creating fiction about the founding documents. I don’t agree with the Founding Fathers about everything (slavery, women’s rights, native peoples rights). But that doesn’t make the US Constitution, in my eyes, any less of an amazing feat for humanity.

So go ahead and stand up for your faith and be proud. But lying for it is, ya know, after all – bearing false witness.