Parrot Cage

The Jobs Americans Aren't Allowed To Do

A little article in Fortune Magazine caught our attention in regards to the whole immigration debate.  They warn that the housing market may collapse since contractors have relied on illegal labor to drive prices down.  Fortune estimates that illegal labor comprises about 40% of employed home builders.

Now, the complexity of our position on the immigration issue can be summarized in a two part solution: 

1. Embrace immigrants, naturalize them ASAP
2. Jail and fine the pants off of employers who violate labor laws

If 40% of all home builders are actually illegally employed laborers, this fact absolutely demolishes the argument that immigrants are performing jobs that Americans won't do.

Carpentry and construction are respectable professions which have brought millions of Americans without a higher education into the middle class.  These well paying jobs didn't just happen, they were fought for by unions.

And how do you bust a union?  Scabs.  We don't like to tar illegal immigrants with such an ugly name, but clearly many corporations in this country are using them as such.  We understand that immigrants are just looking for a better life for their families--leave them alone.  The guilty parties are these sleazy contractors who have built their businesses on the piss-poor wages they pay these replacement workers.

We suspect that Fortune Magazine, which only exists to protect its class interest, is merely reflecting the scare stories which their kind has peddled to politicians who fear that a crackdown on illegal employers will sink the economy.

Just a reminder to so-called liberals and radicals: in this immigration debate, if you ignore how corporate America is using immigrants to crush the working class you have no business calling yourself a lefty.  We know many lefties who look at how the working class has consistently voted against their own interests in the last few years and say 'fuck 'em.'   But if Democrats are unwilling to defend their interests in these very obvious ways, why should the working class vote for them anyway?  Might as well vote on gay marriage. If you can't earn a living wage and Democrats are willing to create "guest worker" atrocities, voting on your squeamishness over two dudes kissing is at least voting for something with real results.

If Democrats could abandon their absurd "guest worker" solutions--which benefit nobody but the corporations--and actually concentrate on how to create good jobs and good lives for Americans, they might someday have the opportunity to govern and orchestrate a progressive society.

Yul Love It

Know the standard Hollywood movie trailer formula by heart?  Try entering the simple equation into a classic Cecil B. De Mille campfest and you have the perfect promo:  10 Things I Hate About Commandments.  Brilliant.

Meat Without Murder

William Saletan of Slate has written an interesting article which foresees sources of meat grown in labs rather than butchered in slaughterhouses.  The science is already progressing in that direction, but the fascinating part of Saletan's article is how he reads this technological development as a moral solution to hunger rather than a pragmatic one. 

As non-evangelical vegans for two decades, we tend to overlook the fact that just because many people scarf bacon doesn't mean they aren't troubled by their actions.  Without any self-congratulatory intentions, we know that it takes an iron will to eschew meat and animal products in a society whose rabid consumption offers few other options.  In the last twenty years, it has gotten better.  And living in Silicon Valley helps.

We are most definitely the kind of vegans who crave meat.  It is a constant and occasionally painful struggle.  But what Saletan and many non vegetarians apparently don't know is that while our biology may have a definite taste for meat, the biology also works the other way.  Veganism has become much easier knowing that any deviation into animal consumption will be violently rejected by the body which has adapted and grown quite comfortable with its vegetarianism.

We have mixed feelings about the whole homegrown meat experiment.  We like that animals are taken out of the equation.  Vegetarianism for us is a moral choice.  Our all-purpose ethical postulation which defines our vegetarianism is relatively simple:

If I can survive, and even thrive in health, without eating meat then why should I?  For all the many reasons why I should not eat meat (health, animal welfare, environmental destruction, human safety), there is only one reason why I should: yummy, yummy, yummy.  Therefore, is my lust for meat more important than the life of the animal, any animal?  The only moral answer to that question has to be "no".  And that ain't an easy "no", it's a reluctant, gut-wrenching, and ethically honest "no".

For those of us who crave meat, yet retain the moral fortitude to reject the violence inherent in that mouthful of tasty, laboratory meat sounds like a godsend.  Laboratory meat eliminates the pain and death to a fellow animal with a central nervous system.  So why are we skeptical?

Perhaps it's because bioengineering is still a new science whose potential for infinite human good is overshadowed only by its potential for apocalyptic disaster.  Perhaps it's because this new science is largely in the control of corporations: totalitarian entities devoid of ethical judgment by design.  Perhaps it's because we should not become dependent upon laboratories for our food sources.  Perhaps it's because the will to kill animals, and with it the will to kill humans, might still be a necessary survival impulse in humanity.  And perhaps mostly it's because those who have moral reservations about eating meat should just stop eating meat and not wait for scientists to solve your fucking moral dilemma for you!

When Aruba just isn't enough

Time magazine finally gets around to covering the war in Congo which has killed an estimated 4 million people in the last 8 years.  It may have taken them a while, but kudos to Time for actually covering an enormously tragic human story which the rest of the American media have ignored.

Enron Republicans Behind Bars

Our little joke is starting to wear thin, having been repeated more often than we thought likely in this era of Republican dominion; but, as we consider Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling's potentially lengthy jail sentences, for fraud and conspiracy in driving Enron into the ground, forgive our indulgence:

There is pleasure to be taken from Republicans behind bars, and that should commence sometime after lockdown.

Get out the honey butter Kenny-boy, you're gonna make some friends.  Kenny's dreamy eyes and virile pate could make his lips the most coveted executive position in the entire cell block.  But don't count out the allure of Jeffrey "mad booty" Skilling.  When those expensive hair plugs take more tugging than they were designed for, he's got those executive ears which could get utilized more in jail than they ever were in the boardroom.

Will repeated impolite sodomy reverse the California energy crisis?  Will the two biggest Republican donors having their teeth kicked in to make a more inviting orifice for the Aryan Brotherhood restore Enron's pension funds?  Sadly, no.  But it almost makes it worthwhile.

Lest anyone confuse our unsympathetic speculation on Enron management's new love life with a sadistic streak, keep in mind we merely ruminate on such terrors because there is almost no chance they will ever materialize.  Being a Republican donor has its privileges; we predict that a Presidential pardon will almost certainly interrupt the union of the smartest guys in the room with the collective lust of the united Crypts and Bloods.

Let's hope that somewhere before that Presidential pardon the Justice Department has at least made a dent in retrieving the massive fortunes these crooks amassed in their wake.

Bush of the Bayou

After all his manifest ineptitude, after his cowardice in the face of crisis, after bungling his message as much as he bungles his office... he still gets a second term by appealing to his base.

Newly re-elected mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin is now officially the Bush of the Bayou.  Not that his opponent Mitch Landrieu was much of a prize pig either, but Nagin should hold the distinction of being possibly the worst US mayor this side of Marion Barry.  Actually, that's not fair to Barry.  At most, he ignored the crack epidemic; at the very least, he participated in it.  It's not like his incompetence destroyed his entire city.

We know that many Democrats and even progressives have made excuses for Nagin: blaming his appalling performance on the federal government which, conveniently enough, is dominated by Republicans.  Few remember that Nagin was one of these cardboard cut-out Black Republicans, a sock puppet for business interests, up until the moment he realized that no Republican could ever be elected mayor of New Orleans.  As mayor, up until Katrina, he behaved like that mercenary Republican sock puppet: fellating big business at every drop of a coin.

But Nagin's performance during and after Katrina is what should have spelled his permanent departure from American politics.  Historian and Tulane Professor Douglas Brinkley's new book The Great Deluge documents Nagin's many horrific shortcomings.  Most importantly, Brinkley answers the question that many of us were asking as New Orleans was drowning and the Superdome survivors wilting: where the fuck is the mayor?  We heard him call into a radio show with words of distress, but where was he calling from?  We didn't see any pictures of him commanding a war room, or even comforting survivors.  He didn't even call a pathetic press conference like hapless Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to call for a Day of Prayer as one of America's most important cities crumbled into chaos and ruin.  So where was the mayor?

He was hiding in a high-rise hotel.  Although he refuses to specifically address the allegations, Nagin has angrily denounced Brinkley's account of his performance.  Sadly, in a political climate where a politician need only appeal to the prejudices of his base, Nagin has never had to account for his whereabouts or for his inaction during the fall of his city.

Our favorite story from the book is how Nagin, when told that there was a crowd of people approaching the hotel, ran to the top floor and cowered behind locked doors.

Like Bush, the real tragedy is not necessarily that an ignorant or irrational electorate think that Nagin is worthy of office.  No, the really ominous shit is that, like Bush, Nagin still applies for a job that he must know he is incapable of performing.  Why is it that politics is the only profession where there is no definition of "unqualified"?

Alas, do the people of New Orleans deserve Ray Nagin?  Now they do.

At last a bi-partisan issue: corruption

What is it with Southern Democrats?  They're almost as bad as Southern Republicans.  Predictably, as Democratic Congressman William Jefferson's office was raided during an investigation into his bribe-taking, many fellow Congressmen of both parties are rushing to cry foul.  Such drastic steps in a place that rarely, if ever, investigates its own members, has Congress in a tizzy.

The poverty of the South breeds corruptible politicians of both parties; that corruption absolutely guarantees the South's permanent poverty.  But that's American-style democracy for you: in the region where advocates for the majority of poor citizens is needed most, they are nowhere to be found.

If Howard Dean really wants to have a 50-state strategy for the Democratic Party, it should include ousting these corrupt Democrats, whatever their seniority. 

And how about public financing of elections as the most important democratic reform since Athens?   Yesterday, Al Franken received a cool response when he suggested that the Democrats adopt public financing as a major policy initiative to Andy Fois, staff director of the Senate Democratic Communications Center.  Fois gave a clear indication that public financing was about as high on the Democratic war room moguls' priority list as adopting Swedish as the national language.  These kinds of assholes are the ones who blur the differences between the two parties and makes them both equally contemptible. 

Come November, if the Democrats actually pull off a major victory to retake Congress, don't expect any real change.  Not without public financing.

Back up with our backs up

Thanks to our ever-loving mercenary friends at Comcast, we've been down for over a week.  So much to catch up to....

A Muslim's desperate search for inner peace and nice jugs

Andrew Sullivan pointed out an interesting, uh, trend in internet usage.  On Google Trends you can track the volume of web searches for any particular subject by city or by country.  Turns out, there seems to be a pattern in the regions most interested in finding "sex" on the net.  And that pattern is sexually-repressive Islam.

Check it out.  Of the top ten countries googling for sex, 8 of them have enormous Muslim populations.  India weighs in at number 6.  Many people forget that while the overwhelming majority of religious Indians are Hindu, there are still almost as many Muslims in India as there are in Pakistan.

Of course, it's hard to judge what this all means.  After all, these good Muslims might simply be surfing the web to find ways to stamp out sex, as their religion dictates.  Yeah, or maybe guys want to look at girls.  Hey, if Allah wanted men looking at women he wouldn't have created burlap sacks.

Oh, and Saudi Arabia leads the world in searching for ass--followed distantly by the United States.  That ass-gap might just be the key to winning this war on terror....

When an elected President becomes a "strongman"

The Associated Press recently reported that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants a referendum to make him President for the next 25 years. Many American media people, including Air America's otherwise brilliant Rachel Maddow, ate up the story: uncritically parroting the premise that Chavez was yet another Latin American President for Life.

Turns out, it's not that simple. Rather, Chavez has proposed an extension of Presidential term limits.  He would be subject to the same Presidential elections at the end of each 6 year term, but wouldn't be limited to two terms.  Chavez doesn't want to be Fidel Castro, he wants to be the Franklin Roosevelt of Venezuela.  And given the staggering poverty of Venezuela, they could use a FDR right about now.

Also, it should be noted that Chavez isn't entirely serious about this proposal.  Chavez is using this proposal to force his opposition into actually participating in the upcoming elections.  In Venezuela opposition parties have a history of boycotting elections when it looks like they're going to get creamed.  Their withdrawal is intended to de-legitimize elections that they lose.  In this case, the opposition party is led by the very business interests that impoverished Venezuela for decades.  Chavez is attempting to force them to run candidates by threatening an extension of Presidential term limits.  Given Chavez's overwhelming popularity in Venezuela, a non-term-limited Hugo Chavez is the last thing his political opponents want to face down for the next quarter century.

That said, we have mixed feelings about Hugo Chavez.  He seems to be reforming his country in the ways that it needs to be reformed.  Like so many Latin American countries, Venezuela has been dominated by right-wing pseudo-dictatorships which have run their countries into the ground at the behest of American free-market theorists.  These economic experiments have been unmitigated disasters for the people of these countries, without exception. The recent wave of leftist victories in Latin America may prove to be the liberation which they need.

Because he places national interests above the interests of international business, Chavez has been the favorite bete noir of proponents of so-called "free trade".  Business interests loathe Chavez and his nationalization of the oil industry.  Not only have his opponents forced a recall election, which Chavez handily won, he was the victim of an attempted coup--which was immediately supported by Condolezza Rice, just before Chavez broke free to retain his office as the elected leader of his country.  American conservatives so despise Chavez that pseudo-Christian evangelista Pat Robertson even called for his assassination.  Other white-ringers are more coy, merely painting him as the burgeoning Fidel Castro.  Some particularly idiotic conservatives have tried to peddle the story that Hugo Chavez gave a $1 million donation to Al Queda right after 9-11.  Notice that these rumors are being manufactured out of "free trade" think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.  In fact, Michael Falcoff of AEI has created some of more amusing anti-Chavez fairy tales.

Why is Chavez so hated by "free market" forces?  His nationalized oil industry is thriving and serves as an example of success.  With the billions that Chavez is earning from the recent gas hikes, he is financing anti-poverty programs and bolstering Venezuela's infrastructure.  All without loans from the World Bank.  All without contracts to Bechtel or Halliburton.  That cannot be tolerated.  Such a model of independence flies in the face of corporate colonialism which has preyed on the third world for the last fifty years.

What makes us uneasy about Chavez is his justifiable paranoia and seemingly boundless power.  Agents of the United States have targeted Chavez for assassination in the past and are undoubtedly plotting an attempt every day.  Understandably, Chavez is no fan of the United States.  We hope that his rational fear of the US and devotion to his own country does not give way to the irrational caricature that business interests would like us to believe is the true Hugo Chavez.  Paranoid politicians rarely give up the power which they think will protect them.

The rightwing press will holler about Chavez; they will even fabricate what they cannot distort.  The msm will follow their lead, as they always do: class interests inevitably collaborate.  Just remember that, for now anyway, Hugo Chavez is not the enemy of the American people, he is the enemy of Exxon/Mobil, Conoco/Phillips, and Chevron/Texaco.  And those entities, my friends, are the real enemies of the American people.

So we wish Chavez well, and could pay him no greater compliment than to consider him the FDR of Venezuela.  We hope that he avoids the likes of interning Japanese citizens for the sake of national security.  Only American Presidents can get away with that.