Class Act

George Takei came out of the closet today, or at least the story hit the wires today. Now, I'm one of something like three people for whom Sulu was my favorite character in classic Trek. (I imagine that's about to change. 8^) So for me, this is a bigger deal than most, though as a caveat I feel honor-bound to add that I'm also not as big a Trek fan as most Trekkies. I just have too many interests to get really involved with just one.

Still, this grabbed my attention. I love the character of Hikaru Sulu -- the quirky background character who was more D'Artangan than Bruce Lee (that would have been so easy in the 60s, but Gene had balls the size of suns), quiet and unassuming yet was in command of the Enterprise during what may have been the greatest fleet battle of their time (Organia), and surprisingly multitalented for anybody, let alone a second banana in an old TV series. However, I try to be careful not to idolize actors. While I've always liked George Takei in an abstract sense, I also tend to wait until I see some real evidence of a celebrity's integrity before making a judgement.

Well, I just saw integrity in spades today. To reveal his homosexuality in the current social climate took extraordinary courage, and this quote (found on Wikipedia, though it obviously has a separate origin) shows admirable insight:

"It's not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen."

From a personal standpoint, Mr. Takei had every reason to just continue living his life quietly -- his revelation involves considerable risk for no tangible gain. He did the right thing solely because it was the right thing to do. I can imagine no higher praise for anyone than to make such a statement about them.

On the other hand, the number of Sulu slash stories is about to explode, so it's not all good. ;^)

Kudos, Mr. Takei, and may you and your partner live long and prosper for many years to come.
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(/) Roland X
Straight but not narrow

Let Them Eat Cake

No, really.

On Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote. "The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out."

A short time later, Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," Worthy wrote.

"Restaurants are getting busy," she said. "We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

Seriously, this deserves to go down in history right alongside the famous encapsulation of epic, detached cluelessness in the title. I'd go on for quite a while about how horrifically this shows how little those in charge cared about the thousands of (black/poor) people suffering and dying, when it was their job to protect those people...but really, what can I add? This speaks for itself.
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(/) Roland X
Just when I thought I couldn't be any more disgusted...

Criminalization of (Iraqi) Politics

This article is on the Guardian, but as I write this, it's the top story on Excite:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating ``unusually high'' numbers of ``yes'' votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Word of the review came as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of voter fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among their allegations were that police took ballot boxes from heavily ``no'' districts, that some ``yes'' areas had more votes than registered voters and that supporters of the charter were allowed to vote in crucial provinces where they do not live.

American-style democracy, indeed. If it's good enough for Bush, it's good enough for the Iranian-backed politicians the Cheniacs support as well.

Honestly, does this surprise anyone? After Florida and Ohio, I find the notion that the administration's party operatives disguising themselves as advisors in Iraq would have the slightest qualm about voter fraud laughable.

The good news: this is actually being covered by the American media. Is our once-pathetic Fourth Estate finally struggling to free itself from bondage, perhaps shaking off (at last!) the Svengali-esque control of Rove and his ilk? Only time will tell.
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(/) Roland X
Zoe: "It's a fair bet the Alliance is going to know what's coming."
Mal: "No. They're not going to see this coming."

Not Getting It

Jonah Goldberg proves how completely he doesn't get it by getting it this once (linked to Washington Monthly because I try not to link directly to Wingnuttia):

We already know that lots of conservative are skeptical about Harriet Miers, but what's more interesting is the number of conservatives who are turning their guns on George Bush himself. Here's a sampler:

...

Jonah Goldberg: Bush's instincts about where his principles should be are often right. But in this case the principle seems to be that Bush's instincts are principle enough.

The last sentence is all you need to know about both George W. Bush and the rutting morons who have placed their faith in him for the last five years. "The principle seems to be that Bush's instincts are principle enough" is the defining trait of George W. Bush's vision of the presidency. He has no other principles, which is the entire gorram problem.

(Oh, and for the record, I feel compelled to add that the idea of Goldberg's statement about Bush's principles being "often right" is so laughable, given the unbroken string of policy failures this administration has presided over, as to border on self-parody. What, was this culled from the Onion or something?)

Ye gods. I was stunned by the attacks on 9/11 -- I have an uncle who works at the American Stock Exchange about a block away from the site, and my father used to work there -- and even now, I kick myself for the second chance I gave this idiot. The difference is, I learned my lesson (and fast). Liberals and conservatives alike have been making excuses for this shaved chimp for years, like battered wives saying how their abusive husband is "really a good man" and he's just doing what he has to do.

Democrats have to win in 2006 if there is to be any hope for the republic in the foreseeable future, but IMHO it would behoove Republicans to disavow this venal, corrupt administration ASAP. Then again, what do I know? Whenever movement Republicans give Democrats "advice," all I see is them throwing a drowning man an anvil.
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(/) Roland X
Which I must admit, I'm not averse to doing in this situation... *G*

Don't Mince Words

Hunter of Daily Kos tells us what he really thinks of those who prostitute their minds and souls to the evil, corrupt SOBs running our country:

At Blogs For Bush, which bills itself as the Whorehouse... er, "White House" of the Blogosphere, the ever effervescent Mark Noonan writes about the DeLay indictment:

...

This is not the actions of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority - it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself...it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made...

I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge - you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received.

...

Mark... may I call you Mark? I feel when someone has shown me the insides of their own rectum, we're pretty much on a first name basis... I have some words for you.

Whitewater. Rush Limbaugh. "Drug Dealer" Bill Clinton. Swift Boats.

Vince Fucking Foster.

Playing with fire, you say? Because the indictments ringing Tom DeLay finally reached up that one, final step from his ring of closest advisers to DeLay himself? Because the SEC has launched a formal investigation into the same behaviors by Bill Frist that put Martha Stewart recently in prison? Because one of the single most visible, highest profile Republican money men has been indicted for fraud, is being investigated for client shakedowns, and has his close business associates being investigated for a mob-connected murder?

What utter cowardice. What pathetic anti-American pedantry. What laughable protestation. The crimes of campaign money laundering, of fraud, of conspiracy, the violation of the laws of the nation, to be answered with stern visions of potential gunfire if Democrats have the audacity to pursue it.

...

Your party has set aflame the entire political landscape, and now, once burned, you warn sternly from the branches of a burnt-out tree about "playing with fire". You used the ashes of one of the great liberal cities of America, New York City, as war paint for your own sick, racist dreams. You shudder at a burning flag, yet are willing to snip-and-cut basic tenets of the Constitution as needed or convenient.

...

Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror.

...

Step back from the edge? You poor boy, asleep in the back of the car the whole trip, finally waking up and wondering where you're at.

...

You can't even see the edge from here. You left it behind a hundred miles back.

So don't give me chest-thumping crap about civil wars, if your politicians are indicted. Don't give me visions of a lake of fire, if all those who find you loathsome refuse to suck at your teats of scientific ignorance in the name of religion, racism in the name of freedom, and corruption in the name of the New World Order.

Or, as a great playwright once put it:

"Oh? And when the last law was down, and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws being all flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it) d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

DeLay has no place left to hide from his crimes, and the poor sods who have sold their souls to this monstrous pack of traitors have no place left to hide from the truth, except in citadels built from the mortar of their own frightened denial. They want to believe that they are righteous when they are only self-righteous, that their leaders are virtuous when they are corrupt, that their beliefs are noble when they are vile, and that all their enemies are cut from the same cloth. Wish as they might, however, John Kerry is not Osama bin Laden and George Bush is not Thomas Jefferson.

I truly do believe that we can alter what is possible through perception and will. But such power comes from wisdom, and whenever someone tries to alter reality from a place of towering hubris, Truth will repay such arrogant folly many times over. They have sown the wind, and now they decry the whirlwind as partisan?

No. This is not backstabbing, revenge, or even justice. This is simple physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The madmen who have hijacked the once-noble institutions of the Republican party and the government of the United States have acted with absolute contempt for honesty. The bitter harvest is clear for all with eyes to see: the death and tragedy in Iraq, the return of the drug lords in Afghanistan, the price of blindness and neglect in what was once New Orleans, $3 a gallon gasoline, a government deficit so massive it beggars the imagination and the near-universal hatred of a world that gave us nearly universal, unconditional support a scant four years ago.

And the storm is still just now breaking.

I am saddened that so many -- a full 40 percent of the American people -- still don't want to see the truth. I can't blame them, though. It is something terrible and painful to see, like watching a beloved uncle slowly dying of a cancer he refuses to admit exists. But our Uncle Sam does have a cancer, and only by confronting him with the truth can he be saved. Joining in his denial will only prolong the pain, and if we wait too long, even that mightiest of relatives may perish.

The time to awaken is upon us. Either this country chooses to face the consequences of its leaders' actions, allowing us to begin to face their mistakes, or it will remain blind and embark on a path that ends in a nation indistinguishable from Oceania.

There's just one problem for the would-be Big Brothers of God's Own Party: there is a real resistance out here. We pay attention to facts, rescue the past from the memory hole and continue to point out inconvenient truths. The simplest and most important one is this -- they are not America, no matter how much they pretend to patriotism and decry their enemies as 'anti-American.' We are all America, and their delusional, hateful Frankenstein's monster of corporate mega-greed, xenophobic bigotry, and budding theofascism is only a tiny, insignificant portion of the legendary Melting Pot.

Most Americans would be shocked if they saw it for what it is -- their dropping poll numbers are the result of a few more coming around to the truth all the time -- and the monster is coming apart at the seams. If it weren't, would they be desperately be threatening violence like Chicken Little screaming about the sky falling? Then again, for them, the sky is falling, but it's really just the ceiling of their little bubble of falsehood caving in. And really, what's one more lie among friends after so many?
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(/) Roland X
And the Truth Shall Set Us Free
(those poor bastards are on their own, though)