What a week

Is it over yet? I'm kind of over this session of the WV legislature.

It hasn't all been bad. Ending the lifetime ban on SNAP was a great win that will help thousands of people. Some other promising criminal justice stuff may be in the pipeline.

The good guys won a huge fight this week in defeating a bill that would impose Medicaid work requirements, really a way of taking away health care from as many as 46,000 people.

Teachers, school service workers and allies helped defeat the ominous omnibus education bill, which would have been bad news for public education.

But there's also stuff like this, as if the image of the state hasn't been tarnished enough already by stuff like this.

As if all that wasn't enough, the house passed a bill that would allow firearms on campus. What could possibly go wrong?  At the same time, the senate passed  a bill raising the age to purchase tobacco products to 21 at about the same time.

Several commentators have pointed out that, if both these bills go through, 18 year olds will be able to bring guns to class but couldn't buy cigarettes.

As I've often said, it's time to change the state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up."

WV Council of Churches statement on Charlottesville

CHARLESTON, W.V. — West Virginia Council of Churches Condemns Violence in Charlottesville, VA

For many years, as stated in our Public Policy Issues Booklet “the West Virginia Council of Churches laments the deterioration of political debate in our society as it is expressed through the demonization of political adversaries, falsehood masquerading as truth for political gain, and the corrosive effect of anonymous money.  All of these have a negative influence on public trust and the participation of citizens in the political process.  We call for civility, mutual respect, financial transparency, disclosure, and truth telling in campaigning and other forms of political activity”  (WVCC Public Policy Issues Booklet, p. 7).

Today, in Charlottesville, Virginia, we have seen the end result of the failure to attend to those things that nurture civil society and of the failure to see one another as sisters and brothers.  We whole-heartedly condemn the violence and the hate that was displayed in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We unequivocally reaffirm our belief that Black lives do matter and that our country must come to terms with the racism endemic in our society.  We pray for peace and healing in Charlottesville and in our country.  It is our hope that all people of good will, politicians and citizens alike, will condemn this violence, begin to heal the wounds in our country, and “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5: 24).



The West Virginia Council of Churches (WVCC) represents 14 Christian denominations in West Virginia. Its mission is to make visible the unity of Christ's church, and to provide a Christian witness on public issues, as well as to engage in cooperative mission and service for all West Virginians.

Some days are better than others

West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has been in the news a bit lately, the most recent example (to my knowledge) being speculation that Trump may tap him for energy secretary. This may or may not explain his stated support for the appointment of Jeff Sessions, whose record on racial issues is...let's just say out there.

As if all that wasn't enough, he has also been widely quoted as saying he'd "beat the hell out of" anyone he found burning a flag. I wonder if he feels the same way about hate groups that hide behind the flag?

There's the rub

The theme at Goat Rope lately is the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with a special focus now on his lecture/essay The American Scholar.

Full disclosure: I'm doing this for several reasons. One, it's kind of a busy time and having a regular theme makes it easier to feed a blog. Two, I'm trying to figure out Emerson and see what there is in his work that makes sense today. 

I must admit that I can read whole pages or even essays of his and have no idea of what he's talking about. But then he'll have some great zingers that are keepers. Here's one of those:

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

That, alas, is the tough part.

 A BLAST FROM THE PAST. Here are some progressive planks from the Republican Party platform...of 1956.

BAD NEWS WAITING TO HAPPEN. Extremist groups on the right are ramping up these days, enraged by both possible gun regulations...and the fact that there's a black man in the White House.

WOULD YOU, COULD YOU EAT AN EYE? No, I say, don't ask me why.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Good zombies

El Cabrero is a sucker for clever strategies. I am struck with amazement and often a little jealousy whenever I hear about people responding to injustices in creative ways.

I had that feeling again when a friend sent me this item, which describes a funny response to something pretty unfunny, to wit a hate group.

And not just any hate group but the Westboro Baptist Church, a gay bashing litigious group that even seems to give hate groups a bad name. When the group planned an action at a military base (they often target military funerals the same way they do mine disasters as examples of God's wrath for America's alleged toleration of homosexuality), local organizers decided to zombie the group.

According to this Huffington Post item, around 300 people showed up in zombie garb, far outnumbering the approximately eight members of the hate group.

Ordinarily, I think that the Westboro groups is so obnoxious that there is no great need to counter them.  I mean, they even embarrass homophobes. But if you're going to do respond, what better way than to zombie the hell out of them?

GRIN AND BEAR IT. Really.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

It's a (downward facing) dog's life

This is Wu practicing heat yoga beside the fireplace.

This winter, the Spousal Unit started taking yoga classes and loved it. I was curious but it was her gig so I waited to be invited. I thought it might be a good balance to the other kinds of things I do, like karate, running, weights, jumping rope and smiting a heavy bag with hands and feet.

Karate and yoga are (very) distant cousins, if some of the legends are right. There's a chance that some of its influence came with Buddhism to China and parts farther east.

I expected it to be a nice, relaxing thing that might help with old injuries, of which there are many. There was some of that to be sure. I did not quite expect it to kick my hind quarters, but that's exactly what it's doing, especially in the power and heat yoga classes. I had no idea that plank asanas or positions were even harder to do than knuckle push ups.

Anyhow, on a recent visit to a public library, I came across a fun and diverting book about the early days of yoga in America, where it was often seen as a suspicious and possibly lewd activity that undermined public morals.

The book was The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America by Robert Love. The "Oom" in question was P.A. Bernard, a Midwestern kid who ran into an apparently authentic yoga master in turn of the century Nebraska of all places. After various run ins with the law and the forces of decency, he established himself on a spread near Nyack, New York and attracted many prominent Americans in the first half of the century. Bernard was part yogi, part huckster, part ladies man and 3/4 showman.

It's a fun read if you feel so inclined. And I think I'm hooked as far as the yoga thing goes.

AUSTERITY. Cutting budgets in a time of high unemployment is not the best way to deal with the crisis or with long term debt, Paul Krugman argues.

GETTING MEAN. From the UK Guardian, here's a look at how potentially violent far right nativist groups have been energized by Obama's presidency.

HEALTH CARE REFORM. Here are some ideas about how to defend it.

FAST FOOD WORLD. American-style diets are making people sick around the world.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Next stop...Ohio?

Yesterday, close to 100 people jammed into a legislative committee room in Charleston WV to make a statement in support of workers in Wisconsin protesting against a union busting effort led by governor Scott Walker. Quite a few legislators attended, in addition to several dozen union supporters.

(By the way, you can follow a good chunk of the money behind the right wing jihad in Wisconsin and elsewhere to the Koch brothers.)

Now, it looks like another protest is building in Ohio, where a similar measure is being considered, and in Indiana, where "right to work (for less)" legislation is getting some play.

Clearly, the billionaire funded right wants to kill the labor movement, but union members don't seem to be going gently into that good night. I hope instead of an easy victory the enemies of labor stir up a hornet's nest.

A SUGGESTION FOR WORKING PEOPLE: just say no.

WONDER WHY? There are more hate groups in the US than ever before, according to a new study.

URGENT DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Perfectly legal

Back in the 1990s, when militias were making headlines and the Oklahoma City bombing shocked the nation, I did a lot of reading about extremist groups and how they operate. I was particularly interested because the home base of white supremacist William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, which inspired Timothy McVeigh's terrorist attack, was located in West Virginia.

The Pierce/McVeigh case provides an example of how such things could happen. The elders of the movement, i.e. people like Pierce, would put out ideas but never get their hands dirty with any specific act of violence. Instead, individuals and small groups, often composed of disturbed, angry and aggrieved people, would act on the hate message without leaving any trail traceable back to movement leaders. This approach was called "leaderless resistance."

From what I can gather, a lot of terrorist groups around the world, including those based on religious fanaticism, operate in a similar way. Ideas, images and techniques are put out on the web and via other means and autonomous groups and individuals do the killing. Again, the leaders who inspire such actions are often not directly involved in carrying them out.

One thing that has changed between the 1990s and today is that inflammatory speech and rhetoric has gone pretty much mainstream and conspiracy theories are telecast, tweeted, and otherwise communicated to millions of Americans every day. And when some angry, disturbed and aggrieved person acts out, those who fanned the flames can claim no involvement.

As the saying goes, for the leaders at least, it's perfectly legal.

I'm not saying anyone intended the recent eruption of violence to happen. Nor am I trying to shut down anyone's First Amendment rights. Obviously, the shooter has mental issues and there are plenty of holes in our mental health system. But people have been playing with fire and when that happens somebody is likely to get burned.

MORE ON SAME here.

HERE TOO. Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo makes a good point in this post about the need to tone down the rhetoric in coalfield controversies as well.

CLIMATE CHANGE. The CIA is concerned about it. Too bad congress isn't.

THE NOT SO SECRET WORD. When my kids were little, we used to enjoy watching Pee-wee's Playhouse. (For that matter, I still think his movie was a classic.) One regular feature of the show was the secret word. Whenever it came up, everybody was supposed to scream real loud. The not so secret word at the WV legislature is OPEB, which stand for "other post-employment benefits." Some politicians think it's the Big Bad Wolf, but a recent report by the WV Center on Budget and Policy suggests it might not be too big a threat. We'll see if the screaming continues.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON music.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Like thieves of mercy (and an action alert)

There are some unlikely plot devices in Hamlet, but I guess you'll have that in a play that opens with a ghost.

One of these occurs when the prince is sent to England in the company of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are carrying a letter to the king of England ordering Hamlet's death. Hamlet opens and reads the letters and changes it to order the death of his former friends. He was just lucky enough to be carrying with him the official seal of Denmark.

OK, I can buy that part, but then the ship is attacked by pirates (!) who wind up taking Hamlet with them and eventually dropping him off in Denmark. As he wrote in a letter to Horatio,

Ere we were two days old
at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us
chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on
a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded
them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so
I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with
me like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they
did; I am to do a good turn for them.

(I think I'm gonna use the captured-by-pirates story next time I'm caught playing hookie. )

Another unlikely device is the plan Claudius and Laertes come up with to deal with Hamlet when they find out he's alive after all. They will contrive a fencing match at which Laertes will use poisoned blades and Claudius a poisoned drink. They could have used "more matter with less art" themselves.

It occurs to me that several characters in this play could have used some lessons in The Art of Whack from Tony Soprano...

ACTION ITEM. If you live in West Virginia, please click here to support a bill that would create an office of minority affairs to address racial disparities. The bill passed the House but is in danger of dying in the Senate Finance Committee, which such things often happen.

TWO WEEKS? The White House is pushing for quick votes on its health care reform bill.

ON A RELATED NOTE, Senator Byrd has indicated he might support reconciliation as a way to pass health care reform.

WORLDS APART. Schisms in the US Senate reflect different political and moral universes.

SURVIVAL OF THE NICEST? Some researchers suggest that kindness and generosity may convey some evolutionary advances.

ON THE OTHER HAND, hate groups seem to be doing pretty good these days.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Ziggy and Xerxes

Themistocles, leader of the Greek naval forces at Salamis. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

"For pride will blossom; soon its ripening kernel is
Infatuation; and its bitter harvest, tears."

A common image of Greek tragedy is one that El Cabrero likes to think of as the Ziggy Stardust interpretation. I am referring to the David Bowie song in which the title character "took it all too far/but boy could he play guitar"--i.e., he was someone brought down by excess.

That doesn't work for all tragedies but it fits Aeschylus' The Persians pretty well. In it, the Persian ruler Xerxes plays Ziggy. Master of a huge land empire and incredible wealth, he wasn't content with what he had but planned a massive invasion of Greece.

For Aeschylus, Herodotus, and many others, Xerxes was the embodiment of hubris and excess, which was also impiety--the pagan equivalent of blasphemy--against the gods.

One example of this impiety as far as the Greeks were concerned was Xerxes' audacity in building a bridge of ships across the Hellespont, the narrow body of water between Asia Minor and Europe. This was seen as the attempt to shackle the sea itself. When a storm damaged this project, he was said to have ordered the sea to be flogged.

In biblical language, this is the pride that goeth before a fall. And the fall comes fast in the tragedy.

It begins with the anxiety of the Persian court and Xerxes' mother Atossa over the army's fate. It gets worse. A messenger arrives with news of the total defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis. It gets so bad that Atossa consults the shade of her dead husband and former emperor Darius, who is appalled by the excess and loss. (Note: not to be nitpicky, but the real Darius planned to do the same thing but died before he could do it.) By the end of the play, a chastened and humbled Xerxes slinks home.

The play can be interpreted as Athenian triumphalism but it seems to me that it was also a warned to a confident city-state and budding empire to avoid making the same kind of mistakes. Too bad it was a warning not taken.

ANOTHER ROUND. Economist Dean Baker is one of several calling for a second stimulus.

GOING UNDERGROUND. Here's an item about infiltrating hate groups.

ANIMAL REGRET. They may experience it too.

IN CASE YOU'RE RUNNING A LITTLE SHORT, here's a new hominid.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Master of those who know

The dude abides. A statue of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, courtesy of wikipedia.

In Dante's Divine Comedy, the Greek philosopher Aristotle is referred to as "master of those who know." In the 14th century, when Dante wrote his masterpiece, Aristotle's long lost teachings had been rediscovered fairly recently and seemed to many to be the last word on subjects of science, art, ethics, metaphysics and politics.

You could say that this says more about the state of human knowledge in the late medieval period than about Aristotle. It is kind of sad that knowledge, philosophy and science in Europe had fairly stagnated for centuries.

Part of the reason for that can probably be explained by what has been called "the terror of history," i.e. the massive disruptions caused by the fall of the western Roman empire, massive invasions and migrations, and all that. And it's hard to deny that the Christian religion in its first several centuries was singularly uninterested in the advance of earthly knowledge and that it held a commanding place in the lives of most people.

Having said all that, Aristotle was no slouch and much of his writing can be profitably read today, particularly his Ethics, Politics, and Poetics. (El Cabrero must admit that his acquaintance with his works on metaphysics and logic is second and third handed.)

My recently reinvigorated interest in Greek tragedy inspired me to take another look at his Poetics, which still has a vast influence over how people look at literature and the nature of poetry, drama and plot.

More on that to come.

ONE BIG UNION of unions may be on the way.

A PLANETARY SHIFT in American politics?

HATE GROUPS are ramping up again.

DIONYSUS is still here. He was all about people getting together and acting as one.

JUST FOR FUN, this article asks which movie bad guy does a certain vice president more closely resemble.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED