The New Daily Planet

Ted Olson rocks

February 9, 2012 by Robin Marlowe

While politicians on the right are pitting religious freedom against reproductive rights—

Speaker Boehner: “This attack … on religious freedom in our country cannot stand and will not stand.”

Really? Religious freedom? To deny birth control to women in the 21st century in a “free” country?—

While that ridiculousness prevails on the religious right, the opposing counsels from Bush v. Gore joined forces to argue the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8 in California, and winning. Lead counsel Ted Olson, on the Rachel Maddow show: “…this is an issue of american justice, american freedom, american equality… the principle that all men are created equal in this country. We have got to get there.”

That’s more like it.

Category: Yikes

SOTU 2012 State of the Union

January 25, 2012 by Robin Marlowe

Reuters, or whoever wrote the SOTU 2012 article for Reuters, totally ignored that President Obama led with a tribute to our troops, and closed with another tribute to our troops, and focused instead on President Obama’s stated interest in ending the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy, and on implementing the Buffett Rule, establishing a minimum tax level of 30 percent for any income over one million dollars per year.

Tax the rich! was the headline, in the less purple (or yellow) style of Reuters. Soundbyte reporting: lazy.

That was the night of the SOTU. In the morning, now, the headline on Reuters reads: “For Obama 2012, it’s all about the 99 percent.”

As well it should be: as FDR said, the President is there to give voice and power to those who have none.

Category: This just in

Full court press

January 16, 2012 by Robin Marlowe

Margaret Court is standing up for her right to a: be bigoted, and 2: pick and choose what in her holy book counts as law she considers The Truth and therefore is required and wishes to require all others to follow.

Remember West Wing, and the rebuttal of the (alas fictional) President to those who were waving their holy book regarding same-sex love, but not regarding the touching of pigskin on the Sabbath? Leviticus.

So here we have it again, someone whose religious views convince them that religious law is an absolute.

The oddest part of Margaret Court’s outburst is this “The bible will always be the TV guide to my life.”

I think that statement is something incredibly telling (and admirably succinct!) about the religiousity assault on and resistance to human rights.

The TV Guide to their lives… yikes.

Category: Yikes

Banner year

by Robin Marlowe

It’s been a great year for junipers, a profusion of plump and very blue berries. Startling to see them against the snow, almost like winter blueberries.

In my own life, it’s been a banner year (or two) for upheaval and for difficult lessons. The most difficult, but the most rewarding, concerns romantic love.

I have always given lip service to an unconventional approach to love (to most everything, really, at least in so far as I believe that questioning forms and adapting them is a requirement of conscious living), but I have not often been given the opportunity to act on that principal, and I have been able to sidestep it, just by going along.

So maybe now…

In any event, I accept the lessons and challenges.

Category: On reflection

Moonrise

December 28, 2011 by Robin Marlowe

The day before full

Category: Morsels

Along the canal

December 7, 2011 by Robin Marlowe

Category: Morsels

Thanks, giving

November 30, 2011 by Robin Marlowe

Thanksgiving was mellow and the turkey was tender, and doing toasts, I did one to “Useful Unemployment,” thinking of a book whose title contains that phrase, that I have had on my shelf and only nibbled at for years.

So tonight I opened it at random, and there was this:

“… a continuing identification of technical progress with the multiplication of commodities [things to be bought and sold, upon which profit-making relies]. The bureaucrats of egalitarian persuasion and the technocrats of welfare would converge in a call for austerity: to shift from goods such as jets, that obviously cannot be shared, to so-called ‘social’ equipment like buses; to distribute more equitably the decreasing hours of employment available and ruthlessly limit the typical work week to about 20 hours.” —Ivan Illich, “The Right to Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies”

Now, there’s a stimulus package for you: all the stimulus goes to hourly wage earners! Imagine that.

Can you guess who the professionals are?

Category: On reflection

Pizza, Congress: vegetables

November 28, 2011 by Robin Marlowe

No, space fans, pizza is not suddenly a vegetable. It’s just that the amount of tomato paste required to be considered a serving of vegetables (here is the article that clued me in) is not going to go up, so a pizza meal could contain sufficient tomato paste… etc.

All’s well in Mudville.

Category: This just in

Obituary: Danielle Mitterrand

November 22, 2011 by Robin Marlowe

Died, November 22, 2011:

Danielle Mitterrand, widow of French president François Mitterand (they met in the Resistance)

“…was a member of the Resistance and an outspoken human rights campaigner… well known for espousing leftwing causes, including supporting Fidel Castro and… denouncing slavery.”

(Aside: How is denouncing slavery leftwing? isn’t that something all Americans might possibly agree with?)

Anyway…

“…born in 1924 in the eastern French town of Verdun. Her father was a school headmaster and committed socialist who was later sacked by the collaborationist Vichy government during the second world war for not giving the Nazi occupiers the names of Jewish pupils and teachers at his school.

“Danielle joined the Resistance as a ‘liaison agent’ aged 17… married François Mitterrand, a fellow Resistance member, code-named Captain Morland, whom she met while he was on the run from the Gestapo in 1944…

“…preferred to devote herself to human rights work and humanitarian causes [rather] than play the hostess at glittering Elysée Palace receptions.”

Vive Danielle Mitterrand!

Category: This just in

EPA: protecting the Commons

by Robin Marlowe

It is high time we humans grew up a little bit. Took on responsibility for somewhere further into the future than a year, or even our lifetime. For far too long, economists and therefore everyone else have permitted the externalizing of the true costs of the carbon-based energy economy. As those costs are cumulative, their effects might very well increase suddenly and exponentially (or not! let’s hope not!)

The environment (air, water, soil, life) is essentially, and should be so regarded by law, the Commons.

SO:

The EPA has proposed new rules regarding power plant pollution. Yes! We must, for the sake of the future, have the power to limit toxic air emissions.

Category: ...just saying...