choking · on · bile

Check this out!!!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6084167

Throwing an infantile tantrum in the White House Rose Garden, the president of the only world power "focused on his message of the day that if lawmakers don't specify how Geneva applies to U.S. interrogators, he may halt the CIA's..." He then went on to threaten to hold his breath until the Senate let him do what he wants.

The CIA has always operates overseas without judicial oversight. This probably does include acting as interrogation advisors in nations whos interrogation practics are in violation of the Geneva Convention along with assassinations that are implicitly in violation of the Geneva Convention. OK, it’s a scary world. He is trying to make CIA tactics policy for judicial trials for war crimes. As judicial act this would not be part of intelligence gathering activity.

Personally, I regret but acknowledge the shady executive powers of the CIA and disagree with making them judicial policy. What is not my just my belief is that because of the CIA charter, they are two different issues. Further, the President’s attempt to merge the two is an attempt to expand executive powers. OK, this is something that the elected legislative body can do. I realy wish they wouldn’t but thats only my two cents.

The President’s threat to shut down CIA operations that are not subject to judicial oversight is just that, a threat. A threat that is tantamount to the President saying “if I can’t do what I want, I won’t do anything.” It is the equivalent of a Presidential filibuster and as such it is a threat to not use those overseas intelligence gathering resources. It is a threat to not do his goddamn job.

What disheartens me is no one is calling him on is bullying the legislative and judicial branches with executive inaction. He is tough on terror…as long as people toady to him and he can stroke his ego and pole ratings with show trials that will be seen and judged by the world. Including nations that are hungry for an excuse to continue their human rights violations. What I suspect it’s a bad policy. What I know is that he is threatening to play games with security. If he is serious this is worse than another color-coded lie or October surprise. If it is not it is almost as shameful. He is either a bad commander and chief or chief diplomat. Take note, this has got to be up there with Nixon’s denial of American troops in Laos or Regan’s Iranian weapons embargo.

An amazig peice of poetry. What the old born again seems to miss (and I say this not ever hearing the cage version), is the dark aproiratenes of the comparsion of the mercy seat (on the arche of the covent the housing of the ten comandemnts) mediate by the cross and reprsenced in the electiric chair.
It is a scary but obvious connection and perhaps more so now that we have fundamentalist president who has sent scores of people to fry.
I probaly will never fully explicate this considring how fucking morbid it is, but if you can put up with it google the lyrics and info on the arche of the covent and see for your self.

Home: Something that I only miss when Muggs away or sacked out (as is currently the case). Also not one place and never a building (with the possible exception of a Cabin in Cheese Land near the great lakes), always a community, usually a city. If your reading this your probably there. Love all y'all. I’d say I’d be back but I never leave but I hope to see as much of it and you over the summer as we can mange.

School: Behind schedule, behind the 8 ball, out of my mind and never more alive [insert maniacal laughter here]. I don't know why but intellectual everything always seems to fall into place about a month after it would have most useful and about a week or two before it would be two late.

Philosophy and Music: Strangely, Kant and Robert Earl King seem to go well together. Sadly, Mr. Nietzsche and Mr. King don't seem to be seeing eye to eye. Must dig up some Beethoven (I wonder if Nietzsche critique of Schiller’s poem at the end of the Ninth applies the aesthetic experiences of some one who like me can’t understand the words).

Ok, I wasn’t planning on writing cause nothing is really coming together for me intellectually and most of my social life can be found at nemember_when. This will change after I’ve had some real class. I was thinking ahead about what might be a quote from Plato Symposium in Juliet’s speech in R&J. I have three two weeks to track down any connection and should be doing more general research into Plato and poetry. I also need to read 80 pgs of Hegel and Art and my read some stuff he wrote that wasn’t actually assigned in my other class I am caught up for couple of weeks and won’t be starting term paper work until latter.

Up until I haven’t paid any attention to the news . . . some I knew before I started Sunday’s Times, and I think I will keep caught up by reading the previous Sunday’s addition on Fridays. Intellectually, this is something that I am conflicted about.
On one hand Watts/ gcurious has a point that

“No good philosopher lies awake nights worrying about the destiny of man and the nature of God and all that sort of thing, because a philosopher today is a practical fellow who comes to the university with a briefcase at nine and he leaves at five.”

Is a valid criticism of philosophy in America and part of the reason I started with a paraphrase of Alan Watts (actually I am informed that he was quoting William Earl who I haven’t read).

On the other hand, I feel philosophy has always been in the wrong when it tries to prescribe moral axiom and psychological or spiritual cures. But there seems to be an obligation to seek whatever wisdom can be had in the face of human horror, and not to turn away or let others do so. I have been very bad about it.

At the end WWI in 1918 the worse strain of influenza probably killed more people then civilian and combatants in the entire war. I don’t know many people who heard of it. There is something extremely terrible about the way stories work in face of horror (the power of narration is something that gcurious is working on and I hope to start in). 30 million people JUST DIEING no different then thousands of mostly elderly and young people that die every year, just the flue, doesn’t sound right. It does sound better then a city just not being there any more. I remember hearing that a plain was crashing into the twin towers, and I remember how it didn’t sound right. But there is a story whether it’s a mastermind making plots, a thug paying families of suicide bomber, bombing in Viet Nam’s water, bombing in pearl harbor, assassination of a Duke, the sinking of the Maine or the kidnapping of someone’s wife. The stories make it hearable, they make it repeatable, and maybe they make it easy. In the last few years we have become so comfortable with fear that we forgot the horror. Not just the horror of being bombed (the punch line of the story) but the horror of contaminated water. It is a reality not only of the Tsunami and Katrina but it is also what is literally meant when some pundent, general, or cabinet member suggest bombing a country into the stone-age.

But I actually have 9-5 work to do. Hopefully, it will tie back in at some point.

Alan Watts said something to the effect that Philosophers would wear lab coats to work if they thought they’d get away with it.

While he came to religious studies out of an analytic background, the sentiment seems to hold for the study Aesthetics in post-structilsm and an analytic philosophy. Initially I feel that art and philosophy have a lot in common (not that I'd feel comfortable explaining how). I know that there have exchanged inspiration over the years and there have been some great artist (usually literary) who were great philosophers and visa versa. Also I feel that philosophy at its best is an art not in the sense of craft but in the Aesthetic choice of subject matter and the creative effect methodology as in informs structure and reform subject matter.

Anyhow this is the first real entry. I hope the free style will serve as a break from my class work and a form for brainstorming. I will not be editing this for public consumption but I hope to pick up on some public discussion form friends and family who are live journal user.