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Saturday, June 12, 2004 I got some sad news last night: J LHLS's poetry editor, William Benson, died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Because, as artists do, he worked jobs that didn't offer health insurance so he had it for many years before it was diagnosed and treated. The last time I saw to him he was between chemo courses and he was thin but seemed okay. The last email I had, he was worried about the bone marrow transplant his doctors were planning. And then Bob Tribble emailed me a poem that was read at the the funeral I didn't know about. I wish I'd taken the trouble to know William better and help him more during his illness. We met in a poetry workshop in 1999 and he was a great poetry editor for J LHLS. I don't think he was forty years old yet and I think he had a lot more to say as a poet. We're lucky we have what he left us. Rest in peace, William. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 10:09 AM PST [Link] Friday, June 11, 2004 "Nothing brings the United States together like the death of a popular ex-president and as far as the 'could die any minute' list of ex-presidents goes Ronald Reagan was at the top. Imagine my surprise, on the heels of an announcement that he was going to die any minute, when he actually died! Hours of D-Day memorializing fell by the wayside on every 24 hour news channel and network presentation so that anchors could solemnly recite the good parts of the legacy of Ronald Reagan. It was (and still is) impossible to turn on almost any channel without seeing footage and announcements about Ronald Reagan. Before my Sunday was over I saw the cast of Reno 911 reading a heartfelt letter from Michael Reagan and witnessed Carson Daley actually tearing up as he watched file footage of Ron and Nancy. "Conservatives around the country fondled sacks of jellybeans like they were rosaries and spat venom at anyone who seemed disinterested by the news that their political hero had just expired. Personally, I was glad he died, because Alzheimer's is a fucking horrible way to decline and these last few years must have been nothing but suffering for his family and even him during his increasingly rare lucid moments. Alzheimer's is a funny disease that way. It leaves the body basically intact, but as it chews it way through the brain it will take and take, until there is only that body left. The pain, the anguish, comes from those brief moments when the real person inside that husk surfaces. For a few minutes, maybe just a few seconds, they see what they have become, remember what they have done. "I want to devote this article to the Ronald Reagan that I knew. The guy who wasn't very good at kickball and wasn't shy about watering his lawn while underdressed." My idol not making any more or less sense on Reagan's life and death than, well, the Washington Post editorial pages. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 06:20 PM PST [Link] New reviews at www.liheliso.org Buzzboy. The World's Most Upbeat Superhero! (comic) True Porn (comic) Cats Don't Exist (comic) Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 06:19 PM PST [Link] The Mayerson Voter Registration Drive Drives On! 527 votes made all the difference in 2000. Your vote DOES count! Oregon Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 06:17 PM PST [Link] Thursday, June 10, 2004
"But however much Reagan helped wind down the Cold War abroad, he absolutely revived class war here at home. Slashing taxes on the rich, refusing to raise the minimum wage and declaring war on unions by firing air traffic controllers during their 1981 strike, Reagan took aim at the New Deal's proudest creation: a secure and decently paid working class. Broadly shared prosperity was out; plutocracy was dug up from the boneyard of bad ideas. The share of the nation's wealth held by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans rose by 5 percent during Reagan's presidency, while virtually everyone else's declined." Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:23 PM PST [Link]
"What is needed to be known by all the concerned parties, that the legitimate Kurdish struggle was not in the face of Sunnism or Shiisim but rather in the face of the racist Arab nationalism that saw the Kurds as an obstacle on the illusionary path of the unification of Arab countries. While the Shiites were oppressed, horrible atrocities were committed against the Kurds not in the name of Sunism but in the name of Arab racist nationalism. Now the question the Kurds have to ask themselves is why they should accept a solution to the Iraqi problem that entirely addressed the Sunni- Shia dispute at the expense of the Kurds and their potential gains? The Kurds and the rest of the world with them assumed their nascent democratic experience would serve as a role model for the rest of Iraq, which would have been the corner stone for paving the way for an honorable way out of Iraqi dilemma. Instead, the whole situation was reversed. Kurds have been told their demands are unreasonable. Just because they are Kurds they are not allowed to assume any of the top posts in the new government and Iraq would not be turned into a federal state based on the recognition of the Kurds as a distinct ethnic group and Kurdistan as unified geographical unit." Anybody else remember the Kurds? The Kurds who fought with the U.S. in Iraq? The Kurds Saddam gassed with chemicals we sold him? Yeah, those Kurds. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:22 PM PST [Link] New reviews at www.liheliso.org Kabuki: Metamorphos (graphic novel) Schadenfreude! (comic) Mac Afro (comic) Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:21 PM PST [Link] The Mayerson Voter Registration Drive Drives On! 527 votes made all the difference in 2000. Your vote DOES count! Oklahoma Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:18 PM PST [Link] Wednesday, June 9, 2004 Click on "Link" for Reagan comics Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 08:34 PM PST [Link]
"In Tribute to President Reagan A nearly textbook perfect example of how to say, well, dick. Reagan, like the bush handlers, knew how to play the worst - racism, homophobia, greed, more greed, fear, anger, you name it - in the worst of Americans for his own gain; lets be honest and call things what they are, folks, and not mangle the word "optimism" beyond recognition. I think Rep Kucinich has been on the campaign trail a little too long and ought to return to concentrating on his core competencies. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:12 PM PST [Link] "Washington, DC – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) today condemned Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Alfonso Jackson’s statement, 'I do not believe being poor is a condition. I believe it is a state of mind.' Secretary Jackson, who was recently named by the Bush Administration as HUD Secretary, was making his first appearance before the Subcommittee on Housing, which has oversight of HUD. "Joined by other Members on the Housing committee, Lee led the charge against Jackson, saying that his statement -- and the mindset that it revealed -- was a disgrace and insult to the millions of Americans who are victims of the Bush Administration’s harsh policies. 'It’s obvious then,' Lee said, 'why you’re cutting Hope VI, Shelter Plus, and all the other homeless programs.' "Under President Bush’s FY 05 budget, Section 8 funding is $1.63 billion below the level necessary to renew all Section 8 assistance; care for the chronic homeless is cut by $128 million, and the Hope VI program is terminated. "Afterwards, Lee said, 'The Secretary’s statement was really unconscionable and insensitive. I defy the Secretary to tell all those people looking for jobs in this horrible economy; all those people who spend night after night in the cold; and all those working poor and their families who must live in transitional shelters because the cost of housing is so high that 'poor is a state of mind.'" I guess that fits in with the bush admin idea that being working poor, and therefore taxpaying, is for suckers. Y'know, this is what we're up against and, let me say it again, thank God for Barbara Lee. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:12 PM PST [Link] New reviews at www.liheliso.org The Confusion (novel) Tell Me Something (comic) Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:11 PM PST [Link] The Mayerson Voter Registration Drive Drives On! 527 votes made all the difference in 2000. Your vote DOES count! Ohio Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 07:08 PM PST [Link] "Here’s a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge … It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars." Eric Idle presents... The FCC Song Go Eric! This song is hilarious and filled with the F-word. (You have been warned.) Could we get him to write an elegy for Reagan?
Posted by Laurel Sutton @ 10:31 AM PST [Link] Tuesday, June 8, 2004 Ow. I'll miss it and be less well informed. Dirk was always very nice about linking to stuff I sent him. I'll miss that a lot. Oh well, my loss is TCJ's gain and I wish Dirk well there. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 09:40 PM PST [Link]
"In some crude forms of therapy the patient is confronted with a re-enactment of the trauma that caused his collapse. Even so, I don't think I'll be watching Ronald Reagan's state funeral as Margaret Thatcher's taped tribute is played. It'll be too painful. I'll go and sit on broken glass for a while instead." Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 05:52 PM PST [Link] More Reagan truths from the Gropinator, who can remember longer than week before last: Reagan's destruction of the UC system in CA Maybe if we all just keep telling the truth, that's what will stick. It's worth trying anyway. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 05:51 PM PST [Link] New reviews at www.liheliso.org Mortal Evidence (nonfic) Wordcraft (nonfic) House of Bush, House of Saud (nonfic) Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 05:50 PM PST [Link] The Mayerson Voter Registration Drive Drives On! 527 votes made all the difference in 2000. Your vote DOES count! North Dakota Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 05:49 PM PST [Link] Monday, June 7, 2004 Giving Reagan credit for the Soviet Union's collapse is like giving him credit for gravity. Franklin Harris, June 5, 2004 Well, that's how I feel, too. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 06:45 PM PST [Link] "Ah. I was hip to Xanga. It's a brand of online journal similar to Blurty, Diaryland, Digital Expressions, Live Journal and so on, all part of the Web logging revolution (fad?) that soon will have an estimated 10 million people, more than half of them teens, publishing their thoughts on the Internet." The thought of five-plus million teens publishing their thoughts on the internet boggles the mind. Don't get me wrong, I much prefer they blog than OD or get knocked up, but still, there was so much more to do when I was a teen than. . . than. . . than just write about it. "And I don't think writing a Xanga is dumb or a waste of time. I know how heady it is to discover the intimate and awesome power of writing to an audience." Oooh yeah, that audience thang. Oh well. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 06:45 PM PST [Link] New reviews at www.liheliso.org Last Roundup (fic) Catalyst of Sorrows (fic) The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney's War Against the Counterculture (nonfic) Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 06:43 PM PST [Link] The Mayerson Voter Registration Drive Drives On! 527 votes made all the difference in 2000. Your vote DOES count! North Carolina Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 06:27 PM PST [Link]
 Even in the midst of our long national nightmare, Maru's kittens are still cute. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 08:39 AM PST [Link]
Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 08:35 AM PST [Link] Sunday, June 6, 2004
As usual, Robert Parry pretty much sums it up. I wish add here that part of the reason the U.S.S.R. crashed was that, yes, the arms race killed them, but also the oil slump at the end of the 1980s finished them off because they could not longer afford the arms race or their near abroad. Of course the arms race and the oil slump nearly killed the U.S. as well, but somehow that's different. And, you know, Reagan was the original Cold Warrior War Preznit and when the Cold War went away (sort of), so did most of his (and the hard Right's) political/philosophical raison d'etre. So, yeah, the Cold War ended on his watch (sort of), but not because it was his watch, dij? I thought you did. Reagan doesn't get a halo. Too many people died in Central America because of him and we mainly have his administration to thank for General Zia, Mullah Omar, Osama bin Ladin, and the Mujahideen. Too much of the safety net and that which used to make the U.S. a civilized place were stripped away by him and his minions on his watch. Punishing the poor and helpless might be fun for the hard Right, but to the rest of us it's. . . it's. . . it's un-American. Now, where's Betty Bowers' eulogy? Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 04:35 PM PST [Link]
 He got that right. But, ahem, isn't there someone missing from this picture? Someone from Georgia? Insane, but still. . . The Allies could not have won WWII without the USSR, no matter how horrible Stalin and his regime turned out to be. Or maybe the artist just didn't have room in this comic for him. Posted by Ginger Mayerson @ 11:00 AM PST [Link] |
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