I can’t wait until we start killing prisoners for sport, like in the dystopia depicted in the Steven King story turned crappy movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Running Man.

I don’t think we’re that far off, and lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time we just embrace violence. Kill who needs to be killed. I mean Jesus Christ, it doesn’t always have to be such a bummer, does it? And didn’t Obama just prove that to be true, bookending his SOTU with a celebration of death?

In the free market of moral outrage, those of us who go through the motions of expressing concern are free to choose which atrocities to be disturbed by, and which ones to sort of let slide. I wasted nearly a minute of my life tweeting to some guy who calls himself BardOfEarth because he went ballistic over a cat that had its head bashed in and the word “Liberal” scrawled across its dead corpse.

The image of the dead cat is terrible, but these are terrible times, and in the free market of moral outrage I choose to be more disgusted that a Marine can get off with just a pay cut and drop in rank for slaughtering women and children in Haditha than for some sick fuck’s misplaced political rage.

My twitter feed is a mosaic of moral outrage, and I’m sorta getting tired of this woman from #Bahrain. Her father and husband have both been tortured in prison and she’s always talking about terrible shit happening. I’m considering unfollowing her. Or maybe tweeting her that The State killing their little uprising doesn’t blip in the US, because Bahrain lends America its oceanic parking lot for its 5th fleet. And to spit in her face, the president quietly supplies Bahrani royalty with weaponry:

President Barack Obama’s administration has been delaying its planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain due to human rights concerns and congressional opposition, but this week administration officials told several congressional offices that they will move forward with a new and different package of arms sales — without any formal notification to the public.

In a recent exchange with a fellow blogger, there were some thoughts shared regarding the philosophical opposition to war as juxtaposed to the sometimes vicious behavior of (all of us at times) bloggers and commenters; civil discourse abandoned for mud wrestling, implying an inability to practice what one preaches. Guilty.

Despite my own personal failings, in the free market of moral outrage, I’m gonna continue using my market share of the social media revolution to amplify my personal mosaic of moral outrage. And to make the tediousness of my anti-imperial brand more palatable, I’ll keep offering poetic interludes, like this one, that explores the possibility that at times I behave like a dickish somnambulist:

*

DISPARITY

In poems I sound the call
typifying dissent with words untied to action.

In life I daily fail, same as the rest.
Who can say, from one day to the next, what
will work?

In poems I am the music dancing from word
to word, line to line, changing like a shape-shifter
perhaps in a shed where motes of dust linger
in suspension, where

the diffusion of afternoon light outside animates
the tiny drama of my existence.

In life I yell at my dogs for delaying our progress
when they nose out tidbits from alleyway trashcans.

They glance back at me, only slightly perturbed
by the volume of my voice
which makes me angrier, which causes me
to act stupider, which is why

I promptly leash when I cannot seem to whisper.

In poems I sound the alarm, but cannot disable
the snooze button.

In life too often I wonder if I’m really awake.

—William Skink

Worthy sources are confirming GOP gubernatorial primary candidate Ken Miller – who’s hitting Rick Hill’s insurance big business connections pretty hard – will be announcing one of Bozeman’s newer residents Billie Orr as his Lieutenant Governor running mate soon.

Who is Billie Orr? From her Wikipedia page:

Billie J. Orr, Ed.D. is an advocate for education reform. She is the former president of the Education Leaders Council, and former deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of Arizona . She was the principal of Kiva School in Scottsdale, Arizona from 1994 to 1997.

She lives in Bozeman, Montana, is active in the Tea Party movement and is a Republican candidate for the Montana House of Representatives.

As Arizona Superintendent of Education Ms. Orr implemented the most vigorous charter school program in the country.

Makes me want to look at how education is doing down there in Arizona, considering her 20+ years of influence there….

I will say I ran into a guy at Costco a while back with a Ken Miller t-shirt on. When I stopped to ask him about “Ken Miller” he actually knew a good bit about the candidate (usually I find the opposite). We had a short pleasant chat, and about 25 minutes later he “found” me and provide me with some literature.

Miller’s got some enthusiastic supporters – that one being from Mineral County, as I recall. Now it looks like he’s got a Tea Party favorite for his running mate. Both, I’m sure, will serve him well as he fights Hill’s cash – which (on hand) is 88 times more than what Miller’s got earmarked for the primary.

Seems everyone’s fighting big money these days. Even the good old GOP candidates – Gingrich included.

America – and Montana – is now for sale to those able to purchase the best government they can afford.

I went looking through my Pablo Neruda to find a poem for Newt Gingrich. I found one that seems appropriate in Neruda’s collection, titled Fin de Mundo, published by Copper Canyon Press (2009). I’m going to feature the poem in its native ghetto language first. For those of you who can’t read Spanish, William O’Daly’s translation of this poem into the language of prosperity is below the fold. Enjoy!

TAL VEZ

Es cuerdo el hombre que voltea
y parpadeando en el alambre
cambia de piel y paladar
buscando el sol o el equilibrio.
(La astucia cambia de color
y el conservador no conserva
sino las máscaras que usó
ya convertidas en ceniza.)

*

PERHAPS

The man is wise who swings
and blinking on the wire
changes skin and palate,
seeking the sun and balance.
(Cleverness changes color
and the conservative conserves nothing
but the masks he wore,
already turned to ash.)

—Pablo Neruda

So I was watching the latest episode of the Showtime series Shameless the other night when I witnessed something profound.

*spoiler alert*

The drunken patriarch of the family, Frank Gallagher (played brilliantly by William H. Macy), had been laying the groundwork for a long-con on a woman who is dying. Slowly he ingratiates himself with little favors, exploiting her loneliness and fear. It becomes apparent his target is her city pension, not just to the viewer but too his mark as well. When she calls him on it, he lays out a justification for why she should do it. It’s a convincing pitch; he wins her over by pledging to keep her memory alive after she dies, that she’ll be remembered; he’ll even go once a week to church to light a candle for her. I think what Frank digs deep to touch is a more profound fear than just death; it’s a fear of the total obliteration of self, of having no trace left behind of your life on earth.

But it’s all a con, and the awful turn in this agreement between an alcoholic and a dying woman comes when a beeper goes off while the woman is in the shower. You see, she’s waiting for a heart to become available, because she needs a transplant, which Frank knows, which is why he calls the hospital and tells whoever on the other end of line that the needy organ recipient had already died.

It gets even worse, but I don’t want to ruin the whole episode. Needless to say, the show earns its title, with every episode.

I am actually going somewhere by mentioning all this. Shameless is an important narrative being told about the ravages of alcoholism, a narrative newspapers can report on, but can’t fully contextualize. Editors can certainly push certain aspects of the symptoms, like featuring three separate stories related to alcohol abuse in the Montana section of the Missoulian a few days ago, or focusing on “Transients” without getting in depth about why our culture turns so callously against drunks who have drunk themselves into the misery of perpetual intoxication on the streets, but it shouldn’t be their responsibility alone to tell us why these things are happening under our collective noses.

A comment here at 4&20, posted this morning by “Opal”, reminds us again of what continues to happen here and all over the country:

Apparently another homeless person has died on the sidewalk in Missoula. The death is being reported on Keci and Kpax, but not in the Missoulian this morning. The Irony of the death on the same day as the project homeless connect event, and during the city’s homeless awareness week. Sad.

As the city slowly develops its 10 year plan to end homelessness, I hope the role alcohol plays in destroying people’s lives is fully considered.

While that happens, there will continue to be those on the margins of our society who slowly drink themselves to death. They all have their stories and their reasons, and those stories, I would argue, are really important for us as a society to listen to, to understand, because there have to be better ways for communities to respond to chronic issues, like alcoholism.

A problem, it should be noted, that may only get worse as economic conditions decline.

Baucus pulls a Rehberg

The rhetoric was pure Rehberg but it came from the mouth of Max Baucus.  On the heels of the State of the Union address, the first comment from our congressional delegation was Max blasting Obama for not ramming through the Keystone XL pipeline.

Granted, it was just a local TV news snippet and I’m sure the station was looking for the most controversial quote, but Max gladly provided it.

He joins the ranks of Joe Leiberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln as party skanks.  Montana Republicans should be grateful that Max Baucus is their senior senator.

Baucus says he’s “quite disappointed” that Obama didn’t reference the pipeline.  Here’s the link to the 10 p.m. newscast.  Max is about four minutes in.  Viewing not recommended for those with a queasy stomach.

On the other hand

In light of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, both Baucus and Tester are pushing for a Constitutional amendment that would regulate campaign spending.  This will be no cakewalk as it takes two-thirds of both chambers and three-quarters of the states (38 states?) to ratify the amendment.  Maybe just making our elections publicly financed would be easier, although I’m sure that, too, would end up in SCOTUS.

Of course Rehberg likes the idea of unlimited corporate influence in elections.  He believes there just needs to be more “sunlight” (or transparency) in campaigns, which mens a five-minute scroll of all the contributors at the end of a sixty-second negative hit spot on TV.  Yeah, right.  Like we can’t already figure out where all the millions of dollars are coming from.

It will be interesting to see how aggressive Congress is in advancing this amendment and how accountable members will be to citizens (and by citizens, I don’t mean corporations).

Update: Here’s Pogie’s take on Rehberg and Citizens United.

Stress can be like a caged animal caught in your chest, kicking your bowels, stiffening your limbs. Today it bit me good, and so I’m taking a mental health day. After I decompressed for a while, I picked up the book of poems currently gracing my night stand—Reading Novalis In Montana, by Melissa Kwasny. I flipped through and settled on a poem that but smacked me good (it’s actually the second poem of a twelve poem series). Thanks, Melissa!

*

2 Soul

There is something all right in giving yourself halfway
if you understand the danger, the hugeness of the thing,
that you’re not up for it. All night the moon shines,
showing you how trees breathe. Pines become the thing
they are that you forget, those with whom you live your life.
You could go out into the world or in and leave the thing,
which is like a bridge, clear for the others.
Twice in the backyard, a flash of yellow in the willows,
once getting wood, once calling out your door. What thing
was its south, its side of shadow? Everything—
seasons, directions, elements, the moon—divides itself
into colors and gestures, into secondary lodgings
of the half-breed or the deciduous though some things
are blind: blind soul of thunder, blind soul of feathers
on its back. The dark clouds are ominous, bringing things
that you need. Yet the mind continues to cast out
like a prison beacon for suspects, to pounce on something
it barely sees. You want instead to be chosen, gifted,
touch your hands on the earth to remember and remember.
The sky is silver from last night’s rain in the low spots
below the mountain. The sky is not one thing
but many highs and lows. As a child, it hurt you when things
were ugly—a bar, an alley, a tar roof to sunbathe on,
all of it so tired and unhappy, certainly never happy
to see you. The green world then became
your happiness, those with quiet voices and four souls.

—Melissa Kwasny

During the first era of Newt, I didn’t really give a shit about politics. I was just your average privileged white male midwest suburban teenager maximizing my fun time during the ’94 Republican revolution and subsequent contract with America.

What does stick out quite vividly is the political and legal battle over what President Clinton did or did not do with his penis. It was around this time in my life that I started developing what would later become a serious allergy to “social conservative” family values.

Hate is too strong a word, but I really despise the social conservative, Focus-on-the-Family-type morality crusaders who stand against the simple dignity of legal rights for gay couples, which is why Newt Gingrich’s victory tonight makes me so happy.

Newt or Mitt, it ultimately doesn’t matter, social conservatives are going to be gagging to the polls either way, and that makes me smile. The tea party wave they’re still riding on is currently crashing; their political darlings don’t stand a chance. Now they must choose between the corporate Mormon vulture capitalist who incubated Obamacare in Massachusetts, or the serial monogamist/wannabe swinger (polygamist?) who was ousted as speaker on ethic charges and later pocketed cash lobbying for Fannie Mae.

If I was Axlerod I’d be tweeting smug sports analogies too. But instead of reproducing that tweet, I’d like to end with a tweet from Markos:

I don’t ever want to hear Republicans talk about “family values” ever again

This week’s LWPS takes a look at Frank Marshall Davis, a black poet and alleged communist who played a prominent role in influencing our president, the closet Marxist, Barack Obama.

I received Davis’ book of collected poems, titled Black Moods, last week. I tried to find the most outlandish poem in the collection, and settled on the poem “To Those Who Sing America”. The poem, slightly altered from its original format, is below the fold. But beware, dear readers, if Davis influenced our president, altering the ideological course of his life, then there’s no telling what effect his verse may have on you…

*

TO THOSE WHO SING AMERICA

Well, gentlemen
You flag wavers
You rabble rousers
You who ask that I sing America
On patriotic occasions—
Here is one question:
What do you know of the song you chant?
You begin
“My country! ’tis of thee”
But here the patter ends.
Gentleman,
Haven’t you forgotten
Something?

~

“My country! ’tis of thee…”

(On the shores of this, my country, dwell Plenty in a forty-room mansion and Poverty in a one-room hovel…a nation turned prostitute for the fat pimps of Politicians and Captains of Industry…Sundays all rise to serve a crippled Nordic God…His torn-out eyes replaced by dollar signs…His belly bloated with the greasy gravy of the Profit System…His spindly shanks molded from the spavined bones of the hungry workers…His doddering frame supported by the props of Federal Dole and Government Subsidy…this is my country with the star spangled robe snatched away)

“Sweet land of liberty…”

(Do you remember Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston, Tom Mooney in California, nine Scottsboro boys in Alabama?)

“Of thee I sing; …”

(Yes—with words approved by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Ku Klux Klan, American Legion and Boards of Censors of forty-eight states)

“Land where my fathers died!…”

(While strong-arming the Indian owners…starving to fill money sacks of Mistermorgan, Misterdupont, Mistermellon…human guinea pigs testing crazy social systems)

“Land of the Pilgrims’ pride!…”

(The Pilgrims, gentlemen, had not seen my country as a land of peons down South, wage-slaves up North…her wooded hills stripped to stony nakedness by lumber corporations…signboards selling beer and bunion cures blocking her native scenery…lynched black bodies swaying from trees in a morning breeze)

“From ev’ry mountain side…”

(Including airy skyscraper and penthouse for the few, disease cradling tenement for the many)

“Let freedom ring!”

(Although the rich are counting dividends and dodging income taxes while the poor are scrambling for crumbs dropped from the Table of Capitalism, let us hush…the Politicians and Professional Americans wish to lift their voices in song)

~

We shall stop here
My flag waving friends
You don’t remember
The other verses
Anyway…

—Frank Marshall Davis

It’s more than a bit shocking – regardless of your political persuasion, I’d like to think – when a state senator and a congressional primary candidate champions the short-term economic boom to the shops in downtown Billings that occurred when Exxon spilled crude from its pipeline into the Yellowstone River this past July.

That’s the kind of thing you’d expect our current Representative Denny Rehberg might say, given his love for oil & gas industry money – Representative Rehberg ranks 14th in receipts of oil & gas industry money of all recipients there in Washington.

Instead, it was state senator Kim Gillan (D-Billings) who made the remark at a forum for several of the candidates held by The Policy Institute this past weekend. I have tremendous respect for The Policy Institute. They’ve provided excellent policy testimony – especially on budget issues – to legislative committees. Frankly, it’s a bit surprising that Gillan would say such a thing given the audience.

During a Q&A moderated by former Representative Pat Williams, candidates were asked about the Keystone XL pipeline by TransCanada – whether they thought the pipeline was good or bad (or both) for the economy. Gillan was up first with her answer – and I wish I had some video or audio, but alas, audio and video were not permitted – and she said that “there are people in Billings that think the oil spill was a good thing, that it was good for business. They are looking at their watches and asking can we do this again next year?”

The room fell quite with shock. First murmurs…then low boos. What. Was. She. Thinking?

One also has to wonder the company she keeps. Where – even if she was attempting a joke – something like that were considered funny.

Somewhere along the line I read that Montana has the most EPA cleanup sites. The Milltown Dam to Anaconda cleanup is the largest cleanup site of all. Helena (her district) has a big old cleanup site they’re trying to figure out what to do with right now, doesn’t it?

I’m guessing Gillan thinks all that is good economic development too.

Her remarks have been bugging me since I heard about them – I’ve often pondered if there wasn’t a certain attitude in the legislature with regards to mining/oil/gas development that was a lot of “let it roll” combined with “it’ll be a big cleanup site in the future.” Her remarks lead me to believe that I just may not be completely cynical…that there’s actually some truth to what should be pure fiction.

Gillan ranks first in the Democratic field for pulling in cash ($124,145 this last Q), followed by Franke Wilmer ($107,117) and Dave Strohmaier ($49,078). By comparison, Republican Steve Daine’s collected $546,327.

Yeah. Over a half a million buckaroos, Montana.

~~~~~~~

Gillan’s out for me with this kind of news. At least this cleared up any lingering doubts I had about being open to persuasion.

Dave Strohmaier, for his part, has done quite well, picking up a number of endorsements. Strohmaier’s also been hard working and well received around the state. At this weekend forum he got glowing reviews. His answer to the Keystone XL question called for more thorough economic and environmental studies – and he questioned the moving target on the number of long-term jobs it would create.

Franke Wilmer is a strong candidate, having served 3 legislative sessions in the House, representing moderate Bozeman. She’s a scrapper, too – just read her biography).

On Keystone XL, Wilmer pointed out that if “you take the jobs out of the pipeline, no one likes the pipeline.” She went on to point out this is the reason we need to strengthen our unions. “If we had a stronger unions to negotiate for clean jobs,” said Wilmer, “this wouldn’t even be an issue.”

Thank Goddess these two got it right.

This winter storm is phenomenal, and not just because of its humbling disruption to our daily routines. Extreme weather like this does something to a community, something encouraging. And because I’m a writer, I wrote something about it.

Stay safe, Missoula!

*

when snow won’t stop falling
when the world becomes whiteout
and the landscape, fused by fluff—
the town shuts down
and people do what they can for each other