Two If By Sea

Didn't we fight a revolution so we could ignore these people! It's only been a couple of days, but I'm already tired of listening to the British complain about our less than happy feelings toward British Petroleum. What do they expect? Are we supposed to shrug our shoulders, say stuff happens, and ignore BP's mixture of stupidity and arrogance because lots of Brits own BP stock? Come on! If anything, I wish President Obama would talk less about kicking British ass and spend more time actually dirtying his shoe on Tony Hayward's behind.
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I'm 55, and I can't ever remember a time when the British and the other Europeans haven't been lecturing us. It's always the same; Americans are stupid, Americans are naive, Americans need to shut up and learn from superior Europeans. Well lets look at the historical trend of the last 100 years. The general legacy of European imperialism, especially English imperialism created one problem after another, in every corner of the world. Now I'm not saying that we Americans have always done the right thing, but I would point out that we've spent trillions of dollars, and sacrificed thousands of lives trying to solve those problems. The United States did not conquer the world, rob, steal pillage, rape, loot, and betray Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania, and any other bit of land they could lay their greedy hands on.

My Civic Duty

Well, I did my civic duty; I voted. It's been a day, and I've got to stop being lazy about my political writing, so if nothing else, it's time to throw out a few thoughts on yesterday's elections.
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Of course, it's California that I'm most concerned with. As a Democrat, there wasn't much suspense in who my party would nominate in the two big races. Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, for all intent and purpose, ran unopposed. Some of the down slate races had names that might be real powers in the future. Most notably the two San Franciscans, Gavin Newsome and Kamala Harris. On the Republican side...well, what can I say. Multi-millionaires, Meg Whitman (A billionaire, actually.) and Carly Fiorina won. It will be fun to see how two candidates who went after the immigrant community (Supporting Arizona's new anti-immigrant law was the new standard for this year's Repugs.) will fare in a state with soooo many Hispanics. Not well, I suspect.
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Both Fiorina and Whitman tout their business backgrounds. I'm not quite sure why Carly does, considering she was fired for running Hewlett Packard into the ground. At least Whitman has been successful at her various corporate gigs. Both ladies love to point out that government doesn't create jobs, private enterprise does. As the big corporations give, so do they taketh away. In the case of Carly, she fired 30,000 American workers and outsourced their jobs to China. Meg wasn't much better. Before she ran eBay, she ran Hasbro. Under her leadership, the children's toy manufacturer also shipped jobs off to China. At least she provided jobs for lots of Chinese children. Such little fingers, so good for making Mr. Potato Heads. Of course, I will say this. The 80 million that Meg spent from her own pocket was an economic shot in the arm for California. At least I think she didn't outsource any campaign jobs.
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As anyone who has ever read either the original (See my first post for an explanation.) or the current version of The New Common Sense knows, I'm not a big fan of the initiative system. We Californians, through the ballot box, have pretty much banned political parties. (Maybe.) Our newly approved top two primary system, where all candidates run on a single non-partisan ballot, followed by a run-off of the top two, doesn't make much sense to me. The whole purpose of having parties is so that people, or coalitions of like minded people, can chose candidates to represent their own political philosophy. The backers of the proposition claim that it will eliminate extreme candidates and give us centrist choices. I don't want centrist choices. I want a supporter of labor unions, single payer health care, a true national pension system, stronger environmental laws, and a strong opponent of unlimited military spending. Oh well, I doubt it will survive court challenges. At least I hope not.
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Just when I thought that we Californians were powerless to resist the siren call of corporate sponsored propositions, we went and rejected prop. 16, sponsored by PG&E, which would have granted the utility near monopoly status, and prop. 17, sponsored by Mercury Insurance that would have royally screwed car owners come insurance renewal time. Small miracles. I guess the outlay of millions of dollars of corporate cash can't buy a victory after all. Carly, Meg, are you listening?
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My two favorite, non-California elections, were in Nevada and South Carolina. In Nevada, Tea Party candidate, Sharon Angle won the Repug primary and the right to oppose Harry Reid for his U.S. Senate seat. Let's see, her ambition is to get rid of Social Security, medicare, the EPA, the Department o Education, and maybe ban the consumption of Alcohol. That will go over big in Vegas. And South Carolina...Democrats are crying foul over the nomination of unknown Alvin Greene to run against ultraconservative, nut case, Jim DeMint. Just because Greene is an unemployed veteran without a college degree, who lives in his parents house, and may be charged with a sex crime at sometime in the near future, they think they've been robbed of the chance to defeat DeMint. The main stream candidate probably wouldn't have beat DeMint, so why not nominate Greene? Who knows, South Carolina is just crazy enough that Greene might have a chance. If nothing else, his unemployed status might win him the unemployed vote, and in South Carolina, that's a lot of people.

Memorial Day

I've always had mixed feelings about Memorial Day. It's hard to imagine just how much worse our world would be if it wasn't for the United States military, Franklin Roosevelt and to a lesser extent, Harry Truman. Unlike most of the people I know who share my left wing political philosophy, I don't have anything against the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think those attacks preferable to an invasion of Japan...and as for those who argue that a negotiated peace, with the Emperor preserved on the throne of Japan, with his imperial powers intact, well they are just plain naive as to the true nature of Japanese militarism.
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But, I also think that our success in World War 2 has left far too many people in the United States thinking that wars are won on the battlefield, that the enemy surrenders to our will, and that all of our actions are true and just. War just isn't that simple. When I was a child, our high school history teacher taught us that in World War 1, our brave soldiers ended, at least for a couple of decades, the threat of German aggression. With age and scepticism, I find World War 1 as the last gasp of European imperialism a far more plausible explanation for that particular conflict. The sad fact is, most wars are far more morally ambiguous than World War 2, and many wars end, not in clear cut victory, but when both sides decide that it really isn't worth it to continue the fight.
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And that's one of the things that I don't like about Memorial Day. It's not just a time of remembrance. We don't just honor those who sacrificed their lives in war. We demand that our war dead did not die in vain. I'm sorry, but since the inception of Memorial Day, almost one million Americans have died in our wars, and many of them have died for nothing. Right now we are fighting two wars. While I realize that there may have been alternatives, I do view the invasion of Afghanistan as a reasonable response to 9/11. The Taliban may not have been aware, specifically, of the attacks before hand, but clearly the Taliban was aware that Al-Qaeda was using their country as a safe base for terrorism. Iraq, on the other hand was a war of choice. Not only have 4,000 plus Americans died in vain, but we've also crippled our economy for decades with the huge financial cost of dealing with a country that was little more than a minor irritant to us. On Memorial Day, it might be wise to remember the obscene stupidity of some of our wars, and not just the sacrifice made by some of our soldiers.

Floyd Landis

I spent last Saturday at the Tour of California Time Trails, in downtown Los Angeles. Knowing that it would be foolish to try and drive, and park, for the day, I took the subway from North Hollywood to the 7th Street Metro Station and walked to the start line, and despite arriving an hour early, not finding a good spot to see the action. And so, I worked my along the route. As the racers began to ride by, I stopped and watched, and then continued along until I was at the one hill on the course, in downtown. With the riders making two circuits, out and back, I could stand there and watch them climb up, and then speed down. I had hoped that Levi Leipheimer or Dave Zabriskie could make up the needed seconds to move into the lead, but Australian Michael Rogers kept the gold jersey, and would end up winning the Tour. Among those attending the time trails was Floyd Landis.
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At the risk of inviting a lot of ridicule, I find Landis' earlier claims of innocence far more credible than his recent confession that he doped during the Tour de France. In the first version of The New Common Sense (For an explanation, see my first post.) I wrote that, while I eventually came to believe Floyd Landis, the issue of his guilt or innocence was of secondary interest to me. What I really found fascinating was how a rider could loose his championship, his team, his income, and his reputation via such a flawed testing system. I'm not writing this to re-argue the case. Anyone with the time and patience can look up all of the evidence supporting Landis' claim that he was unfairly convicted. Just the fact that the testing equipment was running the wrong software, and that the manufacturer was willing to admit that, because of that basic mistake, all tests results were unusable, would have been enough to have Landis' case tossed, if it were held before an American court of law.
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As I've read the stories, of how Floyd tried to blackmail Lance Armstrong, threatening to name him as a doper if he wasn't offered a position with Radio Shack, I've now come to believe that Landis is going mad. Yes, I know, a reach from a cycling fan who has never really believed in psychology, but I have to wonder about a man who has lost everything, both professionally and personally, who has done his time, and is still being pushed aside by the sport. Is Floyd Landis telling the truth about Armstrong, Hincapie, Leipheimer, Zabriskie and the others he has named, or is he trying to destroy American cycling, the way American cycling has destroyed him? Basso, Millar, even Ricardo Rico have been able to get on with their post doping careers, while Floyd Landis is shunned, while the teams who are willing to sign him, all seem to suddenly find themselves relegated to the back of the peloton. Is there anyone out there who thinks that the Bahati Foundation Team was less worthy of a spot at the Tour of California than Jelly Belly and Kelly Benefit Systems? I wonder.
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No, I'm not defending Landis' behavior, nor am I defending the use of PEDs in sports. I am however, pointing out that it's very easy for old men with no other job qualifications than an exaggerated sense of self importance, to both exploit athletes, and then throw them aside when it suits them. Floyd may or may not have won the Tour de France with the help of a testosterone patch, but if he did, I would suggest that the team owners and event sponsors have as much interest in seeing athletes put in impossible performances as any athlete does. It's time for the Olympics, WADA, and all of the rest, to step aside for a new structure in professional cycling. Cycling needs a separate organization, not dissimilar to NASCAR to set up the events. It needs an ownership group empowered to negotiate contracts and reasonable doping controls, with reasonable penalties. But most of all, cycling needs a true riders union to look out for the best interests of the riders themselves. A union with the power to call a strike and cancel the grand tours, if necessary.

Meg Whitman, Porn

Every so often, I'll post something that is incredibly obvious that no one else seems to have picked up on. On 9/22/09 I pointed out that Republican California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, while CEO of eBay, allowed the sale of pornography on the site. This made eBay one of the largest, if not the largest, distributors of pornography in the world. It seemed interesting to me that this was being ignored by Republican leadership, considering that the Repugs have positioned themselves as the party of public morality.
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No more. Her primary rival, Steve Poizner, has begun running campaign ads pointing out Whitman's status as one of the world's largest porn distributors. No, I'm not so egotistical to write that the Poizner people got the idea from The New Common Sense, but I will mention that it took them a hell of a long time to make the link.

Yes, but...

I'll try and write more about the oil spill later, but while I'm thinking about this, I wanted to make a very quick point. The United States can't keep expecting other countries to solve our problems. Whether it's a no drilling policy in ANWR, or a possible ban on off shore drilling, (Unlikely) we can't look the other way while the environments of other countries are destroyed so that we can have more oil.

The Goddess, Silent Movie DVD of the Week...

...Or whenever the hell I get around to it.
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It's been a long time since I've written about my love affair with silent movies, and I hope it was worth the wait. Shot in a 1934, in a style that 25 years latter would be associated with the Italian neo-realists, The Goddess, written and directed by Wu Yonggang, stars the luminous Ruan Ling-yu as the Goddess, Shanghai slang for a prostitute. A single mother, with no other way to support her son, she sells herself on the streets of Shanghai. One night, seeking to avoid arrest in a police sweep, she blunders into the room of a street thug, in the English inter-titles, referred to as the Boss. It's only a matter of time until she finds herself as little more than property of this gangster.
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What's most compelling about this film is it's depiction of a woman who, because of her social position, lack of education, and what's seen by Chinese society, as a lack of morals (In one scene, she refers to herself as a degenerate woman.) who has little chance to pull herself out of the downward spiral of her life. It's the love she has for her young son that both ties her to the Boss, who casually threatens to sell the child if she doesn't continue to prostitute herself for his financial benefit, and ultimately, when her son is expelled from his school because of her profession, and the Boss steals the money she had been able to save herself and her son, leads her to murder her oppressor. Like the neo-realists, the Goddess is a stand-in for a suffering lower class, constrained by poverty, exploited by those at the level of the street, as well as societal norms. In the end, the crime she commits liberates her from her pimp, but the prison sentence for that crime, takes her son from her. A son that has been the only fine thing in her life. Sent to prison for 12 years, her son is saved from the orphanage, when the headmaster of the school who had fought, and failed to prevent the child's expulsion, steps in to adopt the boy, and give him the education that he needs if he is to have any chance of a better life than that which his mother had.
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Ruan Ling-yu, a major star of the Chinese silent cinema, like Mary Pickford in the United States, had enough power to really be the true creative force behind her movies. Essentially, she ran the production company. Whenever I watch this film, I'm reminded of the line from Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. "We had faces then." Silent acting, often ridiculed by modern audiences, when done well is a study in the beauty an expressiveness of the human face. Ruan Ling-yu can, in the blink of an eye, go from a subtle, ambiguous pain, to anger to joy, when in the presence of her son. A wonderful actress, who committed suicide in 1935, a year after this movie was made. She was 24 at the time of her death. She made 29 silent films in her brief career. One can only wonder what great movies she might have made in sound films.
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The DVD that I've written about was produced with a grant from Ball State University, in Indiana. I purchased it on eBay. See my blog, www.greatmovieslist.blogspot.com