Second Breakfast

The husband and I have decided to unplug from the news for a month. No CNN in the morning, no drive-time NPR. No perusing news blogs in an effort to stay informed, keep up, or remain in the know. No more Tivo’ed Daily Show during dinner, or Colbert after dinner is cleaned up.
The news is, frankly, depressing. And its making us cynical.

It started with, innocently enough, the alarm clock. The 7am radio alarm would come on, and Carl Kasell’s reassuring voice would tally the number of dead and wounded in Baghdad that day. Of course by now we’ve all become somewhat numbed to the daily body count, so its easy not to really “hear” the thing, but it has a subtle (or not so subtle) effect if that’s the first thing you hear in the day.

Then I decided that I couldn’t listen to the news on the way into work, so we switched to Sirius “First Wave” (oldies for Gen-Xers), and reserved the drive-time news for the evening commute home (we drive together most days). I just find that, given the preponderance of really bad news these days, it makes me anxious and angry and frustrated to listen to so many really bad things that, frankly, I can do little or nothing about.

The proverbial last straw was last week’s assertion by Tricky-Dick Cheney that the Vice President doesn’t work for the Executive Branch. While laughable, it illustrates an administration that has zero regard for the intelligence of the public, holds utter contempt for the fundamental principles of the Republic, and is obsessed only with its own power and reactionary agenda. Our usual news venues were either as dumbfounded as anyone else, or had the obvious satirical responses. But boy, the knot of impotent and cynical anger that put in my stomach hasn’t left for days.

So we’ve had enough, at least for July.

Of course I feel guilty. I feel like its my duty to stay informed, so I can write my congressman, senator, governor, state rep, county commissioner, mayor, and zoning commissioner to voice my rage at whatever idiocy is being perpetrated on our country, state, and community this month. And its hard to get away from this stuff. Sit down to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning, and the remote, almost by itself, turns on CNN. It turns off just as easily though.

The world will do just fine without us for a month. Maybe we’ll do even better without it.

Our old friend Pat, whose prayer life includes asking God to strike down those he doesn’t like, is at it again. This time its against the citizens of Dover, PA. According to CNN Robertson included Dover in a rant on his 700 Club show. He said:

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city,” Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, “The 700 Club.”

“And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there,” he said.

So this raises some interesting questions. If 51% of the voters in Dover, PA voted to oust the school board members does that mean that God is going to strike down 100% of the citizens? Or only those who voted incorrectly? What about those who stayed home? They should have voted. Was not voting more or less of a sin that voting the wrong way? What about those who didn’t understand the ballot, or punched the ballot incorrectly? Maybe God won’t strike them down, just give then a serious case of the gout, or measles, or something.

I like Pat because he makes rational people look so, well, rational by comparsion.

Cthulhu for President 2004 - Why Vote for the Lesser Evil?

Seems apropos for some reason. Lets get the fully-concentrated evil on the ballot in 2008. No more years! No more years!

I just don’t want to be the running-mate.

I don’t usually comment on current events, because others do it better, but I’m having a hard time letting this one go. Fresh Air featured an interview today with a journalist, Cam Simpson, a Chicago Tribute reporter who has written a story about 12 Nepalese workers who were abducted and executed in Iraq in August. The full story is available at the Chicago Tribune Online.

So here’s where your tax dollars are going:

• Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a division of Halliburton (Dick Cheney’s company), supply most of cheap labor required for support services for the troops in Iraq.
• Because of (legitimate) security concerns, KBR sources most of its workers as so-called Third-Party Nationals.
• Many nations, including Nepal, have banned their citizens from working in Iraq because of concerns of safety and exploitation, but KBR looks the other way.
• KBR uses Middle-Eastern subcontractors to source these workers, who use the same fraudulent and coercive practices that the US condemns in other countries.
• US Federal law requires that companies like KBR provide death and disability benefits to workers in venues like Iraq, but KBR does not inform workers or their families of this, and isn’t paying against any claims.

So the 12 Nepalese workers that the story describes borrowed $3500 (a huge sum!) to work (they were told) in Jordan for $800 per month. Instead, they were taken to Iraq where they would have earned $300 per month, effectively in debt-slavery since they would never be able to pay off the loan given the interest they were charged. On the road from the airport they were given no protection (not cost-effective!), and were kidnapped, held, and gruesomely executed on video a few days later.

We heard very little about this story on the news, even on more serious and balanced sources like NPR.

I feel an enormous sense of anger and shame at my country when it condones and facilitates such exploitation and neglect of human life.

I was listening to Sirius Disorder today (Alan calls this “easy listening” and insists I’m officially over the hill and heard this track, which is courtesy of Wax Audio. Basically this guy followed Bush for a while capturing audio of his public statements, and then realized that he had captured Bush speaking every word from “Imagine”. The result (6.2MB MP3) is both hilarious and a little saddening.