Where is Iraq again?

Jim Inhofe Doesn't Know An Ass From a Hole In The Ground

Geographically challenged? No fucking kidding.

The Washington Independent

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) just cut a reelection ad called "Africa" that highlights -- in his campaign YouTube channel's words -- "his leadership for the African people."

In case you missed it, the ad begins:

Ethiopia. Zambia. Iraq. Twenty-nine intense trips in 12 years to the front -- to the saddest parts of Africa.

Exclusive! Must credit the Washington Independent! IRAQ IS NOT IN AFRICA.

Right on Sen. Inhofe. You rulz, dude. So says The General. Salute!

(No Child Left Behind Act Senator™ from Mattel. “That was such über-pwnage.” Mad skillz. Kekeke!!!)

PAID FOR BY FRIENDS OF JIM INHOFE.
Contributions to the Friends of Jim Inhofe Committee are not tax-deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

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Bullying in Arkansas

Billy Wolfe, target of bullies, Fayetteville, AR, March 2008. photo Angel Franco/The New York Times

“He kept spitting blood out”

Billy Wolfe, 16, has been a target of bullies, since he was 12.

Knocked out, stitched up, left bleeding and bruised lying on the street and the floor at school, his mother has one simple hope: "I pray to God every day they don't kill him," said Ms. Wolfe. "Because of all the things that have happened I honestly don't know if he's going to be O.K."

The New York Times

A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he’s going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.

The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold.

Whatever the reason, addressing the bullying of Billy has become a second job for his parents: Curt, a senior data analyst, and Penney, the owner of an office-supply company. They have binders of school records and police reports, along with photos documenting the bruises and black eyes. They are well known to school officials, perhaps even too well known, but they make no apologies for being vigilant. They also reject any suggestion that they should move out of the district because of this.

Judging by school records, at least one official seems to think Billy contributes to the trouble that swirls around him. For example, Billy and the boy who punched him at the bus stop had exchanged words and shoves a few days earlier.

But Ms. Wolfe scoffs at the notion that her son causes or deserves the beatings he receives. She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up, and why school officials are so reluctant to punish bullies and report assaults to the police.

The Wolfes are not satisfied. This month they sued one of the bullies “and other John Does,” and are considering another lawsuit against the Fayetteville School District. Their lawyer, D. Westbrook Doss Jr., said there was neither glee nor much monetary reward in suing teenagers, but a point had to be made: schoolchildren deserve to feel safe.

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Jill is absolutely on the mark.

Brilliant at Breakfast

This just breaks my heart. As someone who endured my share of bullying when I was a kid, from being psychologically tormented by a troubled kid who was Catholic and delighted in telling me I would go to hell when I died to the boy in fourth grade who used to hit me every day to the time I was asked by a high school principal what I did to make so-and-so angry, I'm appalled that more than thirty years after I finished high school, nothing has changed.

That schools are still blaming the victim because they don't know what else to do is reprehensible. And the prevalence of social networking web sites make tormenting misfits an even more efficient operation.

I think back to the recent case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide at the age of thirteen after a boy she liked had turned on her, and the boy turned out to be a fake MySpace account set up by the parents of a girl with whom she'd had a falling out. And I wonder what on earth parents and schools in this country are doing when they want to put every kid whose brain functions differently on medication, but when you have actual cases of kids being tortured by their classmates, the schools blame the kid being victimized and the parents look the other way.

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The same thing happened to me.

Group News Blog

I Know and You're Stupid
Ass Kicking 101: Age Nine

I got my first serious beating at age nine (not counting Dad and any of the times he beat the shit out of me.) It was downtown at the Temple of Music and Art after choir practice. At nine I was in the Tucson Boys Chorus, working my way up towards the Touring group which I wouldn't make till I turned thirteen after a year spent living in Europe. I attended church regularly and was to all outward appearances a good boy. Boy were appearances wrong.

The problem with genius is simple. Genius plays by its own rules. Yet lives in the world with others. I tested out in the 160's both as a kid and then in my late teens on the adult tests. Certainly there are many people more adapt at solving intelligence tests than I am, but so far as relating to people who are "average", I didn't have a clue for a long, long time. Till I figured out how to put a stop to the bullying, people tended to beat the shit out of me because I was socially clumsy and freely volunteered my opinion that not only was I right, but everyone else was stupid for not seeing life my way. *laughs*

Dad forgot to pick me up on time so I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually two older kids, teenagers, showed up down in South Tucson where we rehearsed. After questioning me for a bit, they started to hit me. I was different, that's what mattered. My answers were off; I knew too damn much for a freaking nine-year-old and didn't yet know how to hide it. (Sometimes I still don't.) So they hit me. First a little, then a lot. Didn't matter what I said. Didn't matter what I knew. Only mattered that they were bigger and stronger. They beat on me with fists, boots, belt buckles, rocks, whatever was handy, for close to forever. Had me cornered all the way upstairs back where no one could hear me scream. It got dark as they kept it up. Eventually I wore out their fists on my head and they left.

Dad got there several hours later. I was huddled under a lamp post, waiting. Bloody. Not crying.

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What is happening to Billy is wrong.

He is a strong young man to be standing up to this. I applaud his parents for suing the bullies directly, and hope they soon sue the school district as well.

The refusal of the school administration to deal with these attacks is wrong.

Bullying is wrong -- verbal, sexual, classism, racism, and physical.

Attacking someone because they're different is wrong.

All of these are forms of violence against people.

All bullying (violence) is wrong, both individually and in mobs.

Anyone who participates in mobbing or bullying is wrong.

Anyone who watches mobbing or bullying and doesn't help stop it is wrong.

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Montana High School Cancels Nobel Laureate Talk

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Republican Town Refuses Global Warming
Lecture for High Schoolers

There is a reason there were dark ages.

Some people are proud of being stupid.

Some people refuse to learn.

Always, some people line up with pitchforks and lighted torches to burn intelligence to the ground.

The Enlightenment was a long, hard time coming. And in places such as Choteau, Montana, complaints from conservatives were enough to get the superintendent to cancel a lecture to 130 high school students from Professor Steven W. Running, Nobel Laureate.

The New York Times

Dr. Running was a lead author of a global warming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 400-member United Nations body that shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. But when some residents complained that his presentation here would be one-sided because no opposing view would be offered, the superintendent of Choteau School District No. 1, Kevin St. John, canceled it.

Dr. Running was surprised.

“Disbelief was the primary reaction,” he said in a telephone interview. “I’ve never been canceled before. But it was almost comical. I had a pretty candid discussion with the superintendent and the school board, and they said there were some conservative citizens who didn’t want me to speak.”

Mr. St. John said that numerous residents had complained to school board members and that they in turn had suggested that the program be called off.

People on Main Street here were divided over the cancellation. Melody Martinsen, the editor of The Choteau Acantha, a local weekly, said that while she rarely received letters to the editor, “this week I have nine and seven are on the subject, and they are all chastising the school board.”

Kirk Moore, the owner of a farm and ranch store, is a school board member who favored canceling the talk. But he declined to say why. “No comment,” Mr. Moore said. “Go talk to the superintendent.”

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The Republicans legacy leaves our children further and further behind every first world country... in science, math, technology, preparing for an uncertain future.

We sent men to the moon on man-made fire. Now children in Montana are taught to be afraid of the lightening.

Bushism and Republicanism has failed our nation, has failed our children, has failed our planet, has just plain failed. Anyone with the sense of a dog avoiding a skunk knows what's been happening the last seven years is just plain wrong.

Telling children they can't hear a Nobel Prize winner is wrong. It's against everything this country stands for.

Shame on that superintendent and that school board, and shame on Choteau, Montana for being so out of touch with basic American values.

It's just plain wrong.

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Unusual is not the word I would use...

Joppatowne High School in Maryland has formed an unusual partnership with the federal government to build a curriculum to train students for careers in homeland security.

Heard this report on NPR about making a curriculum around Homeland Security with the help of the federal government. After I recovered from the chill that went down my spine, I started thinking what a very bad idea this is. It smacks of recruiters on school grounds. They bring around fancy equipment, and make the world sound all scary and dire. They attract the bullies right from the school grounds... great. I wonder when they will add in the "HOW TO TAZE 101" course.

The woman interview scared me when she made some comment about how this was good because many of their students couldn't go to college so homeland security work would be a good alternative for them. I mean, there is NOTHING wrong with not going to college but I don't exactly think we should be drafting kids who don't like school to get all jazzed up about confiscating my toothpaste at the airport.

And then there is the politics, as the gentleman said in the interview- who's view of security is being taught here????

WTF

Keep an eye on this one folks, I am sure this is just the beginning. If it rears its ugly head in your school district make a fuss! It is not enough that they are running things in our time, but they are so determined to create long term damage. This is why we need progressives running for school board and other important local posts. God help us.

UPDATE
link to the scary school curriculum page.
and a take on the topic over at Mother Jones and this upbeat view on the "growth opportunities" of this new career segment over at USA Today

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Teech...Yur Chilldrun Wel

As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap...

I feel like some sort of silver-suited, NASA-helmeted character at the end of a black-and-white “Twilight Zone” episode, walking a band of similarly garbed “survivors” through the rubble of a bombed-out world many years in the future and describing in deep, grave tones “the moment we doomed ourselves” when I even think to write on the seemingly far-fetched theme rolling around in my mind in recent days. But what makes the theme truly frightening is that it's not some dystopian future I find myself analyzing. The time is now. A scary, “Twilight Zone”-ish now that we've brought upon ourselves...

...A now where intelligence, a high-functioning, critically-thinking brain and all that a powerful intellect can bring—well-reasoned solutions to world problems, challenging art and culture, and...the resulting desire of more and more people to aspire to said brilliance—in frowned upon. No—not just frowned upon, but openly discouraged and disparaged. Mental acuity and the thirst for knowledge is not to be rewarded—rank stupidity...willful, rank stupidity is rewarded. The time when not being afraid to be a buffoon in public was a piece of performance art, relegated to comedians and pratfalling actors going for cheap laughs is gone, and the pool for naked displays of idiocy has deepened and widened to now include politicians, analysts and news reporters—virtually anyone who in the past one could have looked to in the hopes that you could actually learn something from them.

It turns out that ironically, you can actually learn something from them—but that something is just how low the standards for knowledge are these days.

I suppose I could take the nutbar, philosopher view of things and chalk this celebration of stoopid up to “our overly P.C. society”, where we dare not offend or project shame on those who come to the table with the “less-than-optimal”. That tortured line of reasoning would almost pass muster as an interesting, albeit kind of twisted logic. But its inherent flaw is the simple fact that most of the knuckleheads that would argue such a point are the very celebrated dolts in question. How's that for elliptical? I said here last week:

“It's all you ever need to know about these people. Idiots. And proud of it. A badge of fucking honor, this glittering stupidity, and the utter lack of a thirst for knowledge.”

Bartcopfan noted in comments: “Idiots. And proud of it. Thank you for capturing the Bush misadministration in five simple words.”

God, but I wish it were just his administration, but that's just the power structure's manifestation of the bold, new stupid. The movement's effects go far deeper and with more effect than you know.

What is the hereditary legacy of this embrace of willful idiocy? Suffer the little children. (Via Sullivan)

A teacher laments:

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11. The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

Somewhere a creaking sound is heard, with the faint ruffle of dry skin peeling back against bone, and Dick Cheney smiles his best “gotcha” smile. Big time.

When one is left to one's own devices, and simply learns from the rough curriculum of whatever the hard world tosses at you from day to day—that level of ignorance can be forgiven. You really can't fault a person for working with just what they have, even if just what they have is less than the best. Spinning straw into gold has as of this writing not yet worked.

But the fool who is happily mis-educated and mis-informed, and spreads that mis-education and mis-information when he or she has what is correct, and true, and obvious right before him...when that person opts to run against the grain of fact and proof and not only crow about 2 + 2's equalling 5—but will then toss away every sane bit of reasoning to try and convince you why 2 + 2 equals 5—that fool is not to be forgiven.

He is to be fought—thrice as hard as he fights against truth.

The sneering at knowledge and logic as an undesirable attribute has long been with us. It's a bedrock principle of faux populism. The clearest and perhaps best dog-whistle of that theme that I can immediately recall is the late Alabama Governor George Wallace's squalling against “outsiders and interlopers” in the South's illegal segregationist doings. He practically spat the phrase “pointy-headed intellectuals” as if it were a poison-dipped dart at his more thoughtful critics. The smarts-hating mantle was handed down to the Bryllcreemed buffoon Reagan who pushed charm over cerebral cortex with a wink and a Beverly Hills swagger. There was a bit of an executive branch break with the crafty Bush 41 and the wonky Clinton/Gore administrations, but what was happening at the congressional level was a mountain's thrust from the ocean floor, causing a stunning sea change. It took years, but the culmination was in 1994 when the GOP's “revolution” hit. The political “children” of Wallace and Reagan stood there, signing off on their “Contract With America”, starry-eyed and all a' quiver with anticipation over the undoing of every helpful law save for gravity. And they would use their fact-free anti-knowledge—so proud and confident in their coordinated, blast-faxed exhortations—against common sense.

“Global warming isn't real”, the reason-rapers will shake their fingers at you and hiss, as the massive polar ice shelves come apart and melt away like so many ice cubes in a tall glass of thirst-and-debate-quenching grape Kool-Aid. And they want as many people as possible to drink up, and refill—drink up and refill on that Kool-Aid, to the point where they only feel the icy, drugged liquid going down, numbing the body's feeling heat blister the skin, and blinding the eyes from seeing fields scorch and the oceans boil.

“Gay marriage will lead to the end of marriage as we know it! Blasphemy! Bestiality! Box turtles!”, those same reason-rapers rail, all a tremble over the sanctity of unions between men and women, wild-eyed and pointing at a fire in the sky as allowing anything else would compromise what goes on in heterosexual folks' bedrooms. It could bring on those dreaded “youthful indiscretions”, and cause otherwise stable husbands to ditch their wives on recovery beds as they reel from chemotherapy! Make 'em sport diapers and engage in odd baby-play with marriage-smashing interlopers, or “gasp!”—dress up like prostitutes in vinyl skirts, fishnets, heels and fake breasts and offer themselves up for money. We should thank our holy, Jebus-kissed stars that it hasn't happened yet. “Whew!”

“Man and dinosaurs co-existed! The planet's 6,000 years old! Fossils? Schmossils! All is as God made it in his amazing six-day Shrinky-Dink™ machine, and the only evolution there has ever been is our developing tough bottoms of our feet from propelling and stopping carved stone vehicles!” Oh yes, the the reason-rapers'll moan that too. Moan it in the face of ancient ice cores, ruins of ancient cities, and prima facie scientific evidence that the age of things unearthed flies in the face of religio-“science” and wooly-mammoth-fur fuzzy-math claims otherwise.

Why do they fight so vigorously, and so maniacally against facts?

Because the desire has always been to open that “crack in the door”, small as it might be—allowing for false and forced “objectivity” to hopefully create that glimmer of doubt in truths, especially inconvenient ones, and turn truth itself into a thing that can actually be commodified. A thing you can barter away. And once you can barter away truth—don't think for a second that what comes next is not the unintended result—you can freely substitute emotion, “truthiness”, and fact-esque positions that can be changed at the whim and to the benefit of who's presenting them. Get enough people to swallow those shiny lures and you've got an “army” to do battle with. They will move to the polls when you want them and how you want them. Your shock troops. Your pawns.

The GOP “elites” that these people look to as demi-gods then laughed up their fucking sleeves at their truth-swapped minions, all the while ignorant of the whirlwind they were about to reap.

You see, when you celebrate stupid, promote stupid, and then superficially reward stupid by placing it at the tiller (while the real powers dictate the course below decks), those proud, dewy-eyed supporters get it in their crazy heads that there's no shame in being “bag of hammers” dumb. You create an atmosphere where it's hip to be a dip.

It begets the likes of a proud, dim-witted, but still somehow-promoted Sherri Shepherd in your face every day with her half-cerebrumed idiocy. All flat earths, and nothing's having existed before Christ.

It begets a Dana Perino—a vain, easily-agitated twit whose job is apparently to smile and flutter hands gracefully over Bush policy like a QVC studio model, when her job is to articulate and explain presidential positions, while having not a goddamned clue about what makes the world around her tick.

It begets a grunting shallowbrow like a Sean Hannity, an ill-educated Play-Doh Fun Factory™ of a pundit who will read any talking point placed before him—a “Ron Burgundy” minus the irony and mustache, who the day he has an original thought based on mulling over facts and actual reason will probably suffer an aneurysm loud enough that Joe McCarthy'll hear the ‘pop”.

And ultimately it begets the chilling rise of a Mike Huckabee in the GOP power structure. A man who doesn't believe in evolution, wants a servile female populace, and holds 1950's-era hygiene film views on AIDS doesn't find himself elevated by sheer magic. The idiot army craves a regent, a leader who really believes in teh stoopid...fervently.

It all started with the steady snowfall at the top of a steep, slippery hill—Wallace's and Reagan's dusting the ground with their sneering, divisive anti-intellectualism. And the snowball was formed from the dusting with the ascent of a idiocy-celebrating congress in '94. The fatal roll down the hill? 2000's elevation of the smirkingly dim George W. Bush to the presidency, gathering momentum and size, bounding and crushing sense and sensibility in it's path.

“It's hip to be a dip.”

Paris Hilton's “continuing celebrity in spite of a giggling admission of brainlessness, Jessica Simpson's chicka-tuna, and Sherri Shepherd's sharp-edged, hopelessly young world. John Cornyn's hard-shell horniness, and Sean Hannity's daily paean to the wordless-without-his-master's stupid-words, Mortimer Snerd. All hail The Flavor of Love and The Kardashians! Clink your glasses to beating “teh ghey” out of you, rambling, vacuous beauty contestants, family dogs gleefully tied to car roofs, pud-pulling pundits who accuse U.S. soldiers of atrocities against the Nazis at Malmedy, and by God—the fever-dream re-imagining of right-wing fascism into some sort of cloaked forerrunner of modern progressivism.

Clink your glasses to all of that, and then wonder no more why we should actually gag a little bit when we mock so-called “backward” cultures beyond us.

When we celebrate dumb-assery from the top down, (as shown in the post's graphic) we reap what we sow as a nation. The willfully dumb politicos, dumb pundits, dumb news and dumb pop culture creates a critical mass of ill-informed-ness, spewing a cloud of foolishness the powers-that-be can no longer contain to manipulate their sheeple to blindly do their bidding. No, it's beyond that now. It spreads to where we see the recent history-dumb kids Sullivan ruefully noted.

The kids. The future...wrecked at the dock before it can even get under way.

At today's press conference, Bush warned against weakening his precious, paper-tiger “No Child Left Behind” act.

I laughed for a second at his fervor in its continuing...and then a parsing of the language itself hit me cold.

Do you leave no child behind by moving everyone forward together?

Or do you actually leave no child behind by holding them all back as a group?

He never really does elaborate on the slogan's true meaning.

But why bother...when actions speak so much louder than any words.

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Guzzle It

Man Drinks Liter Bottle of Vodka in Airport Line to
Defy Airport Security Rules -- Almost Dies of Alcohol Poisoning.

The word MAN is redundant is the above sentence.

Seattle PI

BERLIN -- A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing a liter (two pints) of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new carry-on rules, police said Wednesday.

The incident occurred at the Nuremberg airport on Tuesday, where the 64-year-old man was switching planes on his way home to Dresden from a holiday in Egypt.

New airport rules prohibit passengers from carrying larger quantities of liquid onto planes, and he was told at a security check he would have to either throw out the bottle of vodka or pay a fee to have his carry-on bag checked as cargo.

Instead, he chugged the bottle down - and was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function, police said.

Thursday in I Must Be Right Even When I Know I'm Wrong, I said

Group News Blog

People need to be right.

People need to be right so badly we (me too) will stick with being right even when we know we're wrong.

People need to be right no matter what it costs them. And it costs them. Their reputation, love, money, their health. People die in order to be right.

Bush is unengaged.

By every account I've heard, he believe history will vindicate him.

US News and World Report

In a recent meeting at the White House, Bush told visitors how Lincoln (whose portrait he has installed in the Oval Office) persevered in the Civil War despite many defeats on the battlefield, tens of thousands of casualties, and doubts among Northern voters that the conflict could ever be won. As the campaign of 1864 approached, Bush related, Lincoln admitted privately that he didn't think he would be re-elected, but pursued his policies anyway. Bush also described how Lincoln pressed on despite his grief when his beloved 11-year-old son Willie died in February 1862. The visitors came away with the conviction that Bush sees himself in Lincoln's mold more deeply than ever.

To Bush's critics, the incident is unsettling. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, noting that the president has also compared himself to Harry Truman, told U.S. News: "This is delusional-comparing the equivalent of Warren Harding to two of our greatest presidents!" Adds presidential historian Robert Dallek, author of Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power: "He may come across to some people as a man of principle, but a great majority see him as stubborn and unyielding. ... And everything he touches turns to dust."

This is all nonsense, according to senior White House officials. They say that Bush isn't delusional at all and that history will vindicate him, just as it vindicated Lincoln and Truman. "He believes the correctness of his policies-including the war in Iraq-may not be recognized for 10, 15 years," says a Bush adviser. Adds another confidant: "If something reaches his level, it tends to be bad news, but he keeps it all in perspective, and there's no equivocation."

Equivocation.

Equivocation?

Hmmmm. Google is our friend.

Wikipedia

Equivocation, also known as amphibology, is classified as both a formal and informal fallacy. It is the misleading use of a word with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time).

Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:

A feather is light.

What is light cannot be dark.

Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

In this use of equivocation, the word "light" is first used as the opposite of "heavy", but then used as a synonym of "bright" (the fallacy usually becomes obvious as soon as one tries to translate this argument into another language). Because the "middle term" of this syllogism is NOT one term, but two separate ones masquerading as one (all feathers are indeed "not heavy", but is NOT true that all feathers are "not bright"), equivocation is actually a kind of the fallacy of four terms.

The fallacy of equivocation is often used with words that have a strong emotional content and many meanings. These meanings often coincide within proper context, but the fallacious arguer does a semantic shift, slowly changing the context as they go in such a way to achieve equivocation by treating distinct meanings of the word as equivalent.

In English language, one equivocation is with the word "man", which can mean both "member of species Homo sapiens" and "male member of species Homo sapiens". A well-known equivocation is

"Do women need to worry about man-eating sharks?"

where "man-eating" is taken as "devouring only male human beings".

In literature we find:

Wikipedia

An ambiguous grammatical structure in a sentence.

Some examples:

Teenagers shouldn't be allowed to drive. It's getting too dangerous on the streets.

This could be taken to mean the teenagers will be in danger, or that they will cause the danger.

I once shot an elephant in my pajamas.

A famous quotation by Groucho Marx from the comedic film Animal Crackers, it is unclear if the speaker shot the elephant while wearing pajamas or if the elephant was in the speaker's pajamas.

• Dog for sale. Will eat anything. Especially fond of children.
• Used cars for sale: Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first!
• At our drugstore, we dispense with accuracy!
• Eat our curry, you won't get better!
• (Professor to student, on receiving a fifty-page term paper): "I shall waste no time reading it." (Often attributed to Disraeli)
• No food is better than our food.

Apart from its use as a technical term in logic, "equivocation" can also mean the use of language that is ambiguous, ie equally susceptible of being understood in two different ways. There is usually a strong connotation that the ambiguity is being used with intention to deceive.

This type of equivocation was famously mocked in the porter's speech in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which the porter directly alludes to the practice of deceiving under oath by means of equivocation.

"Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven."

(Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3)

See, for example Robert Southwell and Henry Garnet, author of A Treatise of Equivocation (published secretly c. 1595) — to whom, it is supposed, Shakespeare was specifically referring. Shakespeare made the reference to priests because the religious use of equivocation was well-known in those periods of early modern England (eg under James VI/I) when it was a capital offense for a Roman Catholic priest to enter England.

A Jesuit priest would equivocate in order to protect himself from the secular authorities without (in his eyes) committing the sin of lying. For example, he could use the ambiguity of the word "a" (meaning "any" OR "one") to say "I swear I am not a priest", because he could have a particular priest in mind who he was not. That is, in his mind, he was saying "I swear I am not one priest" (eg "I am not Father Brown who is safely in Brussels right now".) This was theorized by casuists as the doctrine of mental reservation.

Bush is described by his aides and confidants: "He keeps it all in perspective, and there's no equivocation."

Um, no.

His aides and confidants clearly mean that Bush doesn't change his mind, that Bush takes a position and holds it, no matter what. He is determined to be right, no matter the cost, certain that history will vindicate him regardless of the evidence.

He may well -- the evidence would suggest -- go to his grave believing this. To do otherwise would invalidate his entire life.

But his aides are wrong. Bush is indeed, the great equivocator. His aides -- just as Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino doesn't know the difference between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis -- don't know (or don't understand) the difference between equivocation and being determined.

One is using words to deceive. The other is taking a position and holding it.

Bush constantly uses words to deceive. Karl Rove taught him. From why the Supreme Court should order Florida to stop counting the votes, to why the United States should go to war with Iraq, from why he's not talking about Karl Rove's act of treason, to why black and poor people should have I.D.'s to vote... George W. Bush does nothing but equivocate.

He doesn't change his position. But his reasons -- they change like the AMPTP trying to explain to the writers there's no money in the internet so they shouldn't get two and a half cents on the buck, while at the same time, telling network and studio stockholders they're going to make over a billion bucks on this internet thingy.

Why am I not surprised Aides to the President not only don't understand basic vocabulary, they have the usage 100% back-ass-wards?

People want to be right at any cost, even if it kills them -- or others.

Doesn't matter if you're a 64 year-old man sucking down vodka in the airport and almost killing yourself suddenly, or a 61 year-old man ordering surges into Iraq after firing every General who told you it wouldn't work, and killing a lot of troops and Iraqis, suddenly.

It's all about being right at any cost.

Guzzle it baby. Guzzle that self-righteous 'I know someday somewhere for something, they'll put up a statue in my honor' feeling.

Suck on it till you choke.

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Testing...One, Two, Seventeen?

(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

No Dana, The S.A.T.'s are not those nights of the month you go out and do your shitty karaoke...

We here at The Group News Blog like to consider this place a variety of things. Sometimes it is a pulpit from which to rage at injustice, and sometimes it is a contemplative oasis where one can ponder the events of the day. It can also be at its best, a place for learning. A school if you will.

And as recent days have informed us, having an education can save your life—or save you from utter embarrassment.

Take White House Press Secretary Dana Perino for example. Now, I fully admit to being a bit harsh on the daft-assed conserva-spokes-bot White House press secretary, as many others have been. But, I'd like to perhaps make this grand-mal gaffe of hers into a positive thing—a teaching moment. So I conferred with my fellow educators and administrators here at GNBU—The Group News Blog University, (“Collegium Ex Cogit Asellus”) and we have decided to help Dana out, showing her the way through the thicket that is Contemporary American History 101.

But before the teaching can begin, Dana's depth (or shallowness—take your pick) of knowledge of the subject must be plumbed, and the best way to do that is through an evaluatory test. The questions were chosen with great care and sensitivity to Ms. Perino's well-documented gaps in historical expertise, but we believe that they are fair, and should give a clear insight into just how hollow-headedly dumb where she appears to need work.

The questions are as follows, in addition to the actual GNBU test paper available for you the reader to peruse above, after you click to enlarge it.

No...no, Dana, if you click your pen, the test paper will not get bigger—that only works on computers. (BEAT) No dear, if you click a pen, the computer won't get any bigger. Working a mouse makes the computer page bigger. (BEAT) Um...no. If you used a rat the page would not get really, really big, I...you know what? Let me see what you put down for Question #1. Let's see here...(BEAT)

Oh Goddamn...

EXAMINATION IN LATE 20TH CENTURY HISTORY 101

1.) Sputnik is:
a.) A famous Soviet defector
b.) The first man-made satellite put into space
c.) The sound President Bush made when he coughed up that chunk of pretzel.

2.) Which of the following best describes “Brown Vs. Board of Education”?:
a.) Plaintiff and defendant in the landmark school desegregation case
b.) Lawsuit for disability access access to public schools
c.) The two fighters involved n the famed “Thrilla in Manila”

3.) “Houston, we've got a problem” refers to:
a.) CB code for “Bad weather up ahead”
b.) The “mayday” phrase used by Apollo 13 astronauts when a
mechanical failure threatened them in space, and Mission
Control needed notification.
c.) What Whitney's crack dealer said when she came up two dollars short on a buy

4.) Complete the following—“James Earl Ray”...
a.) Assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
b.) Assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
c.) Was the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars“

5.) Saigon is:
a.) The setting for a bad musical about the Vietnam War
b.) The former name of Ho Chi Minh City, and a center
of conflict in the Vietnam War
c.) What Estelle says to anyone who calls looking
for “Sy” after he's left the house.

6.) Which of the following best describes Chappaquiddick?:
a.) The name of a tribe of Native Americans
b.) The location of a scandalous incident involving Sen. Ted Kennedy and a dead female office staffer.
c.) A lip balm used specifically after rigorous oral sex

7.) Complete the following—“The Six-Day War...”
a.) Was a brief, but boundary-changing battle between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan
b.) Took place in the late Spring of 1967
c.) Was just a bit worse than the Five-Day War

8.) The Watergate Crisis was:
a.) A contributing cause of the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon
b.) An early 70's constitution-threatening political scandal involving the President,
many members of his cabinet and their illegal subverting of the law
c.) Really bad, but a couple of cans of Drano™ cleared it right up

9.) Who was Huey P. Newton?
a.) A prominent Reverend in the Civil Rights Movement
b.) The leader of the militant Black Panther Partty
c.) Dewey and Louie Newton's triplet sibling.

10.) “Woodstock” is...
a.) A culture-changing music festival taking place in 1969 in Bethel. New York
b.) A small, yellow bird character from Charles Schulz' reknowned “Peanuts” comic strip
c.) A risky rainforest lumber investment portfolio

A-a-a-annnnnd...PENS DOWN! Pens down, class. Right now. (BEAT) What the? Ohhhh..mannnn...
(Sound of cell phone dialing three numbers)

Hello? 911? Could you send an ambulance, right away? One of our students has stabbed themselves in the leg with a ball-point pen. Yes...her name is Dana. Capital D...a, n, a...

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Rowling Outs Dumbledore

Let The Fan Fiction Begin! Er, Let More Be Written.

It's true. No less an authority than J.K. Rowling herself, with a poke in the eye to Christian groups who allege her books promote witchcraft, outed Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, gay master wizard, and in love with...

Well, let's let Ms. Rowling tell you.

Associated Press

Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."

"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."

Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.

Rowling, finishing a brief "Open Book Tour" of the United States, her first tour here since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority."

Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

Let the news go forth.

Someone call for my Owl.

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Girl's School

I want my three daughters to be children again so they can attend this school.

Especially my oldest, Avian, 20, who played really really rough, excelled in sports, sucked in academics, was oh so social, and never defined herself as her Self except in relation to boys.

Oh how I wish she'd had a feminist education.

Oh how I wish all girls did.

Hat tip Feministing.

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UC Berkeley, Now on YouTube

The University of California, Berkeley, announced Wednesday, October 3, it is making entire course lectures and special events available, free, on YouTube.

UC Berkeley Press Release

UC Berkeley is the first university to make videos of full courses available through YouTube. Visitors to the site at youtube.com/ucberkeley can view more than 300 hours of videotaped courses and events. Topics range from bioengineering, to peace and conflict studies, to "Physics for Future Presidents," the title of a popular campus course. Building on its initial offerings, UC Berkeley will continue to expand the catalog of videos available on YouTube.

"UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life - academics, events and athletics - which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community," said Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education.

UC Berkeley has been a leader in the open-source video movement in higher education since fall 2001, when the campus's Educational Technology Services (ETS) launched webcast.berkeley.edu, a local site that delivers course and event content as podcasts and streaming video.

In April 2006, UC Berkeley launched its audio podcast program, making audio content available as free downloads through webcast.berkeley. On pace to deliver 86 full courses and more than 100 events, amounting to more than 3,500 hours of content in 2007, the program has expanded dramatically since delivering 15 courses in its inaugural year.

The YouTube Channel is UC Berkeley. There are a series of tabs across the top. Page through them and jump from Courses, to Events, to Campus Life.

Cool stuff. Don't have access to a world class university? Now you do. (And yes, MIT OpenCourseWare has had all of their stuff available for years.)

Just not on YouTube.

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Free To Be...An A-S-S-H-O-L-E

“IDEA FIGHT!”

I spent much of yesterday at the doctor's office, getting a softball-incurred knee injury looked at (Grade 1/borderline 2 MCL sprain), just off Gramercy Park here in NYC. The weather...was glorious, albeit with a sky in that perfect shade of sapphire blue, and eerily cloudless like 9-11's was. But nonetheless, it was simply a remarkable day out—that time of the year...when the sun's angle is just so—blinding and direct at the peak of the day...brightening all its rays touch, and making everybody look that much younger...and more vital.

Everyone who passed my gimpy ass on the street seemed to look young, and fresh, and full of promise.

In fact, they all were young, and fresh, and full of promise. It took a minute to realize (Tylenol with Codeine will do that) that I was standing in the midst of a multitude of young adults making their way to and from Baruch College about a block away.

I used to hang out at Baruch on Thursday afternoons and evenings in my collegiate years for the parties. Off-the-chain jams. Step shows, Black fraternity throw-downs in the “Oak Room”, All-out debauchery-oozing mega-jams in the main lobby—oh my God! We had a ball! Not just at Baruch, but at F.I.T. a few blocks west, in the “D” building on Friday nights, and then Uptown for the jams at Columbia's parties at “Earl” Hall (a noise often heard in the restrooms there after too much drink) and “The Plex” downstairs pub. My school was a horrific party school, with Deejays “spinning” cassette tapes by Bic lighter-light, and no mixer! So we—my gang of friends and me—hit all the schools—up and down the eastern seaboard. Howard. Boston College. Rutgers. Harvard. Fredonia. You name the school, we hung there awhile—soaking up the college ambience that much more, as we went for quantity partying just as hard as we did for “quality”.

College was on my mind big-time yesterday as I watched the kids—and yes, more than a few of the pretty young girls— hustle on by. I thought of my son, who'll be going off to school next year (which kinda chilled my libidinous co-ed thoughts). And then, I saw a clutch of students moving in an angry wave with signs under their arms. The one in the lead was checking his cell phone and barking “Come on! Come on!” to those behind him—and I realized who they were. They were members of the school's Hillel Jewish organization—in my fog, I'd initially missed their yarmulkes and didn't immediately register the words on their picket signs. They were apparently headed uptown to protest the presence of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Columbia—and moreso in the city proper.

They were movin'.

And you had to get out of their way quick, because they were in a hurry. There was one huge kid, in a dark blue and white striped polo shirt—and stood about six-foot-four, 250 lbs easy. A man-mountain at the edge of the wedge, holding two big signs under a redwood-like arm, and he was not playin'. He was clearing the way with his shoulder. Boomp! Boomp! Boomp!

“What the hell is your problem? Asshole!”, one woman he almost knocked off the curb yelled.

“You see us comin'.”, the burly kid said. “You need to move!”

Boomp! Boomp! Boomp!

I tottered my lamed-up ass out of the way, but barely, as the kid nearly clipped me with one of the big signs he was toting.

The woman he plowed into was still seething as the group swept along.

“Fucking asshole!”, she yelled one more time as she moved across the street.

I laughed to myself because I remember specifically that I never heard that word—“Asshole” used to describe people more than I did in my college years.

The institution was apparently, full of 'em.

Which got me to thinking about college, and collegiate activism, and the whole “dude got tasered at the Kerry speech” thing at the University of Florida that had so many people in an uproar last week. I actually was going to comment on it shortly after it happened, but then...the story deepened as more and more facts came out about it.

It turned out the kid, 21-year old Andrew Meyer was something of an inveterate gadfly. And a proud, nearly professional heckler. He proudly says so in his own words here in an article entitled “I Pissed Off Ken Griffey Jr.”:

I pissed off Ken Griffey, Jr.  Before I explain how, let me repeat that for a second: I pissed off Ken Griffey, Jr.  So here’s what happened:

I went to see the Marlins play the Cincinnati Reds on May 31, 2004, and sat eight rows behind home plate.  My real seat was way up in the upper deck, so I was practically forced to sneak into a better section. Anyway, in the top of the seventh, Sean Casey came up to bat with a man on first and one out.  Before I delve into my tale, let me give some background info.

-----------------------------------

Now, you have to know this about me: I am huge Marlins fan, and a born heckler. My purpose in life is to badger, jeer, and cajole professional athletes. I have angered two other All-Star baseball players, Bobby Abreu and Odalis Perez, on separate occasions. I have booed singers that mess up the national anthem. Heck, I’ll even heckle other hecklers if I don’t care for their stuff. What happened during this particular game was destined to be, the paths of Griffey and I on a collision course.

-----------------------------------

“WALK CASEY TO GET TO GRIFFEY!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “WALK CASEY TO GET TO GRIFFEY!”

I now not only had the attention of my entire section, but Griffey himself turned an eye in my direction, and began to stare. I was on my feet, and he spotted me immediately. I was nowhere near done with this.

“WE WANT GRIFFEY!” I screamed, deliriously. “WE WANT GRIFFEY!” There was no question about it now. Griffey was staring me down, angry.  Instantly I realized what I had done. I had twisted the lion’s tail, awakened a sleeping giant, rousted the dragon from his lair.

-----------------------------------

Ball one. I began to squirm in my seat. Ball two. When the umpire called that second ball, I knew down in my gut everything that would happen next.  Casey walked on four pitches. Griffey walked to the plate, still glaring in my direction. The pitcher winds, delivers --- Strike one. 
“That’s right Griffey! You’re nothing!” I yell. Griffey knocks the next one out of the park. As he rounds third, he points right into the stands behind home plate, right at me.

Let us all join in with that angry, plowed-through lady crossing the Lexington Avenue. Say it with her, now: “Asshole!”

Then I come to find out that Kerry, in trying to defuse the situation with the kid over-running his question time, actually deferred to Meyer, thinking that just letting him have his say would eventually lessen the tension in the room and cool things out.

As Charlie Murphy said of Rick James learning his lesson, “Wrong! Wrong!”

And then I saw the entire video of the incident, where Meyer clearly was set on a path of being as annoying as possible, pissing off everybody around him, and then, pretty much dicking around with the police when it was clear that they too were out of control.

I ingested these facts, and filtering them through my own experiences at teach-ins, rallies, Q & As, and then, dealing with Five-O, I came to the following conclusions.

One: Part of the greatness of America is its freedoms. Of speech. To dissent. And...the freedom to be an asshole, which Meyer evidently exercises with the zeal of a scrawny kid in the basement mirror with a brand new “Bullworker”. He is undoubtedly an asshole, and has every God-given right to be one. Unfortunately, when you exercise that right, for it to be effective it has to impact someone else—people outside of just you. And a side effect of that impact is that it causes people, like that lady knocked into the gutter, to dislike you, and yes...often look the other way when someone decides to kick your annoying ass. Which is what happened to Andrew Meyer that day at Florida State. I've seen knuckleheads like him engender so much ill-will in an assembled crowd that the crowd itself has been moved to beat down the offender.

I remember being at a Q & A on Blacks in Journalism in the 80's at The Cooper Union art college. The panelists were Black talk radio host Bob Law, a female Black conservative apologist named Applewaite, (who Law kept intentionally malaproping as Applewhite) and a journalistic idol of mine, the great Jimmy Breslin. It was a pretty spirited affair, but it got crazy when one hard-case nut took over the mic. He asked one question. Then two. Then three. Before you know it, it was six or so questions, each one more breathlessly asked than the last, and twice as crazy each time. There was a line of people behind him waiting to speak and they and the crowd began to boo the boor, who would not. Let. Go. Of. The. Mic.

Breslin, sensing the tension, stood up and implored “Let him finish. Let him finish! Fella's got an opinion just like the rest a' you. Let him get it off his chest.” But dear Jimmy clearly didn't realize he was dealing with a professional, inveterate nutbar, who went on for a couple more minutes pontificating, and then invoked in one fell swoop while screaming, black helicopters, the meaning of the all-seeing eye on the dollar bill, and...the Illuminati. As the crowd now wrestled with the gadfly for the mic, Breslin stood up again, thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and said while sighing, “And now buddy...you are on your own”. With that a few people grabbed the mic stand, and a few grabbed ol' Gregor Kookypants, separated the two, and hustled the dude up the aisle, and outta there like the Klan-lovin' pol at the end of “O Brother, Where art Thou?”

Was it uncool to do? Yes, it was. Was he asking important questions? Some were. Some weren't. But he was certainly unmaking friends with every second-hogging, crazyfuck word. Was he being an asshole? Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. And once people tab you as an asshole, you move yourself into dangerous territory in terms of getting the benefit of the doubt from people when the shit goes against you. It ain't fair...but it is human nature.

And speaking of human nature...

Two: Another part of America's—actually the world's— greatness, is the way we are not limited by station in terms of behavior. Anyone... can be an asshole. Including cops. And the cops who tazed Meyer were assholes. Maybe the worst kind—namely authoritarian assholes. Occupations that place people in hierarchal positions over the bulk of the populace tend to attract those types. And because of that, when you get an guy acting like Meyers in a place where you have authoritarian assholes nearby, well...it's a cocktail for taze-saster. Give John Kerry credit—he was the most sane person there, trying to de-fuse things by letting the kid expend his wind. But, like Breslin, he didn't realize he was dealing with a 200,000 BTU blower jacked into a high-tension line.

Asshole met assholes when the cops and Meyer collided—and in that battle, the assholes with tasers almost invariably trumps the “proud, nearly professional heckler“ asshole with a big mouth and bigger attitude. His idiotic, tweaking “Dont taze me bro'!” appeal to the cops was a stupid-ass move—especially in light of how anyone with common sense knows how Five-O plays when you fuck around with 'em like that. And his spastic physical resistance? Well...that's just making the authoritarian with a weapon's job that much easier, isn't it? Jesse and Sara make that point clear in these prescient posts from a month before “bro got tazed”. The initial dudgeon over this “injustice” on both sides of the aisle was tempered as soon as the facts began to get out, but that still leaves us with one undeniable fact to chew over.

The cops were waaaaaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaaaay out of line, and there wasn't a Goddamned thing John Kerry could do about it at the time, beyond what his job is—to be statesmanlike.

Oh yes, and that the “victim” here is now known to get off on fucking with powerful forces he thinks will never call him on his antics. He gleefully cited how he had “twisted the lion's tail”...without noting that to do so, you have to reach into the lion's cage to do it.

Considering that nothing good was gonna come of this divine, and destructive confluence of assholery on campus, he's lucky he didn't draw back a nub.

As for the “Po-Po”, my father used to say, “Give an idiot a hammer, and everything becomes a nail.” These idiots should never be given anything more lethal to carry than squeaky, clown hammers as they've proven themselves to clearly be undisciplined public menaces.

I think back to one of those crazy Baruch parties. Just off the Goddamn chain. It made Delta House keggers look like a DAR tea social. Debauchery? Hell yes. I should know. I had a girl sitting on my shoulders facing me as I balanced her there while...“dancing”. A janitor or someone who didn't get his bottle of Crown Royal as a secondary perk from the party throwers had called Five-O on us. And someone from downstairs relayed the message. “Po-Po” was in the house.

I slipped the girl off my shoulders. My buddy “L” put his shirt back on—and found the shirt for the toplesss girl he was dancing with, tugging it on her quickly. Weed was chucked into punch. Clothes tugged back on. The girls go-go-ing in their lingerie atop the huge marble mantle hopped down, and back into their Calvin Kleins.

Five-O came in to find...nothing. Just people standing around barely moving as the music was turned down low.

And then, just after the lead officer asked “What had been going on here?”, and “We got a complaint that you people were going berserk!”, you could hear a pin drop, save for the music—which was The Sugarhill Gang's “Rapper's Delight”. The officer yelled “So, there was nothing going on here? Nothing at all?”

To which the reply was the line in the song still playing in the background.

“Well there's a time to break, and a time to chill—to act civilized, or act real ill.”

And about thirty people just burst out laughing at once.

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Electrocuting Barbie

Best Science Project EVER

Young jesseratfink is a girl out of my own twisted heart.

She writes:

instructables

Barbie Doll Electric Chair Science Fair Project!

This is a science fair project that I did in middle school and completely disgusted the entire female staff of Benton Middle. The purpose of this project is to show how the electric chair works and discuss basic electricity - currents and conductivity.

This is perhaps not the most politically correct science fair project, but it definitely gets attention. And although it is more based on presentation than science, most people find it very interesting to learn how an electric chair works. :D

[She goes on...]

Step 5 Now, strap your Barbie into the chair.

You'll want to make sure she's dressed and her head has been shaved, as well! We want this to be accurate.

[More...]

Now the electric chair has been phased out for the most part. As of writing this instructable, Nebraska is the only state left that uses the electric chair as its primary means of execution. Other states still offer the chair, but prefer to use lethal injection. This is most likely the result of many botched executions. There have been several cases in which an electric chair has severely burned and bloodied the condemned. Men have withstood the one round of voltage and suffered until they died during the second. The numerous horror stories far overshadow the properly carried out executions!

A liberal! She's a liberal.

Hee hee.

What were your favorite science/school projects? Freak out anyone?

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

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Oakland

I read Steve Gilliard's "I'm a fighting liberal" and wept.

Gilly so nailed the heart of what I wished I could have said. My daughters ask me now why I am who I am, as do my friends.

Oakland. I am who I am because of Oakland.

East, Central and South Oakland are death zones. The 8th most deadly city in the US, 557 killings in five years, 148 last year alone. Nothing has changed since I worked there in the late 1980s as a paramedic.

People still shoot each other on the freeways. Literally just driving through town you can be killed. They shoot each other in West Oakland (the poorest section) over crack and hookers. You can still buy a blow job for twenty bucks, same as you could 20 years ago. That's an increased value for you Johns wanting to drive down to West Oakland. And the truly funny part is, there's always some fool who will.

Central Oakland has... You know, I still haven't figured out why the hell people kill each other in Central. They did and they still do. East Oakland is gang country. Bangers take automatic weapons and shoot each other if you look sideways at them. Or security guards in apartment buildings. Three dead at a time, blood so deep it slabs over. And flies. Flies everywhere.

What can be done? Nothing, doncha know. Surely you know nothing can be done.

The killing is all in one area. 880 to the west, Highway 13 to the east, Oakland city limits south and Berkeley to the north. One of my best friends lived in Oakland for years, up in the hills, safe as can be. Never went down in the dangerous part. The homes in the hills sell in the millions. Great schools and terrific food. Drop down three miles and get your head blown off.

Too many people in too small an area, no education, no teachers, no health care, no expectations, no societal contract, no one outside Oakland actually gives a damn. Just a bunch of welfare savages killing each other and what can you expect?

Except that isn't it you see. Well you don't; that's the problem.

We used to park our paramedic rig under the underpass on New Year's eve just before midnight to make sure the bullets raining down from the celebratory gunfire didn't hit us. Sometimes our jumpsuits were so blood-soaked we'd switch to scrubs at Highland which is a problem when you're out on the freeway sliding through broken glass upside down to get to a child trapped in a car seat. Scrubs are thin. They look good on television but they don't work well in the street.

"If it bleeds it leads." Why? Blood and drama sells newspapers, gets people to tune in their television, witness the SF Chronicle's series on how Oakland is screwed up because they've got so many homicides. It's great, wonderful, well written and amazing. They've got their facts right. You should read it and let yourself be moved. Really you should.

It's a big fat lie.

The Oakland I know is wonderful, filled with beautiful people trying to live their lives with joy and happiness. They're not dopers or hookers, criminals or gang bangers. Their homes are clean, their bills are paid. They have jobs, go to church, and make damn sure they know where their children are. So why the bad rap?

Because it's easier to write people off with dramatic newspaper stories and bloody television pictures than do the work necessary to find out what's wrong and fix it.

What does Oakland need?

Oakland needs what every big city inner city needs. Good schools. Money to pay great teachers to educate their students. Health care including preventative care, sex education, birth control and abortion. Child care for free or at reduced rates. Care for the elderly and infirm. Care for the mentally ill and disabled. Training for those out of high school including how to enter the work-force and the skills they will need. Jobs.

Oakland is in the middle of a high-tech corridor. Alameda and Berkeley bump it and Silicon Valley is just across the Bay as is San Francisco. Much of the high-end film, video, graphics and music work for the whole Bay Area already happens in Oakland. There is serious work there for talented people. What's missing is a system to train the people coming up so the good jobs go to people already in Oakland.

The problem is, it's Oakland. Have you ever spent time with these people? Probably not. Folks from Oakland are as smart and talented as anyone in other cities and towns. But living in Oakland people assume they're borderline homicidal lunatics (with concealed guns.) I'm not kidding. Mention Oakland in conversation and watch people draw back ever so slightly and check you for weapons. If you're in the Bay Area it's often not "slightly."

The people who live in Oakland need a University level education, the same opportunities you and I have. By virtue of a lousy school system and frequently being poor, they don't get it. If they manage to break out, tough -- being from Oakland or out and out prejudice against people of color screws them over anyway.

I fought to keep these people alive. Their blood has soaked through my skin.

All the stories about death and destruction there? Yeah... True. But it's surface stuff. Go hang out downtown. Grab some lunch. Take a walk by the lake. Get to know the people. Oakland is a fine place with people like anywhere else, maybe even a touch nicer. Some cities would just get pissed the world thinks they're crazy dangerous. Not Oakland. The people there like others and are genuinely happy to chat with someone interested in them.

What Oakland