“Bevilacqua was a pimp.

by fuster Posted on February 1, 2012

 He never could have outfought Santino.“

 

 

 

In their report, the grand jurors said they wanted to hold Bevilacqua accountable. “The grand jurors have no doubt that his knowing and deliberate actions during his tenure as archbishop also endangered thousands of children in the Philadelphia Archdiocese,” they wrote.

Bevilacqua’s lawyers have maintained that the cardinal is too sick to testify. They say he suffers from cancer, dementia, anxiety and depression, and requires round-the-clock care.

William Sasso, Bevilacqua’s longtime lawyer, described for the grand jury a visit in which he said the cardinal struggled to recognize him.

“He was unable to focus on his current thoughts,” Sasso said, according to a transcript. “At times he was drifting off.”

 

Good defense, also worked for Vinny the Chin and

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Posted in Culture & Entertainment, History, Movies, Music, Pets, Photography, Religion, Saddam and Babaganoush | Tagged | 2 Comments

Israel Third, To Be Precise

by CK MacLeod Posted on January 31, 2012
The wrongness of the appellation "Israel Firster" is the point of the appellation, thus the predictable development and devolution of a discussion - in the works of one damn blogger, blogging reporter, reporting blogger after another after another - that rises to the level of dialogue only where it breaks down completely, as what cannot be achieved by logic is instead achieved by the failure of logic, by the violent impact, the harm inflicted by whomever on whomsoever else and on themselves. The participants in this discussion will, because they must, continually and compulsively, inevitably and inescapably, underestimate the degree to which their own contradictory and incomplete self-identities have always already distorted and compromised their positions.Their necessary resort to rhetorical violence mimics and re-produces, but also precedes, pre-figures, the resort by real actors to physical violence. Pursuing a conversation supposedly about contested identities - national, political, religious or spiritual or eternal, historical, collective, individual all at once - performing own identity as contestation of the other's, they search for the sum but repeat the same. Or: They search for the dispositively undeniable sum, the identity of identities, pure self-identity - the plain truth, the fair description, the bottom line - but what they find, ever, is refraction of the failure with which they began, as they likely even have been warned they would, some time before choosing to go on anyway as though for some good reason. As a substitute for the discussion that never actually commences, we receive a disorganized catalog of factoidal assertions built on unexamined assumptions, a collective stammering of fragmentary mantras, until both sides half-collapse from fatigue, and drag themselves, along with their new or re-opened wounds, from the anti-orgy, each and all half-convinced of half-victory, half self-assured that the other half halfway at least knows and feels deep down that he/she/they/it lost... then begin again the search for that plain fair true real falsehood. No one, least of all your half-Jew half-host more than half expects anyone actually to understand even halfway. No one discussing the notion of "Israel First," as no one once upon a time discussing the mirror notion of "America First," can fully comprehend the paradox embedded in the concept except materially, except in the actualization of their ignorance - their, your, my, our ignorance - via politics.

(Illustration: George Washington Crucified © Stephen Alcorn; Casein on poplar panel; 26″ x 20″; http://www.alcorngallery. com)

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Religion, War | Tagged | 15 Comments

Commodity of Commodities

by CK MacLeod Posted on January 27, 2012

Unfortunately, action on climate change seems to be a case where the right has, effectively, won. Human activity is making the earth warmer. Quickly. Most people don’t buy into the notion that it’s a big conspiracy. But the consensus does seem to be that doing something about it would be too hard, or would destroy the economy, or maybe we should study it more…

As I noted at the discussion thread, I find both the above comment and further observations on climate denialism and a “both sides/open question” framing in the mass media to be “true enough.”

On a practical level, a rational left-liberal response to this predicament might be to set down markers, remain open to unexpected alterations in the political terrain, and carefully prepare for the eventual crisis, which will probably arise “too late” from multiple perspectives: It’s the same stance that any radical oppositional perspective requires of the oppositionalist who is unable to describe precisely how the politician or administrator can employ – actually implement – whatever recommendations.

The further problem, however, is that most on the “liberal left” are as incapable of coping with climate change as those who openly call it a “hoax.”

Climate change is a typical, perhaps the typical, product of democratic capitalism as a world system. The idea of the fundamental disruption of the environment itself, a kind of “crack in the world,” stands as that system’s ultimate externality.  Ecological catastrophe appears to be, equates with, the inevitable destination of democratic capitalism because full comprehension of the problem of externalities requires practical, effective acknowledgment of ultimate, primary, and determinative transnational social-collective ownership of the means of production. In other words, avoiding climate catastrophe requires of democratic capitalism that it embrace its own absolute contradiction – catastrophically.

The neoliberal right and left – “conservatives” and “liberals,” as per the plain Sunday questions – each respond with their own versions of denial, and modern political science can produce reams of literature explaining why neither group, on this question members of the same group, will ever overcome the challenge before it overcomes them instead.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics | Tagged , , | 9 Comments