Tuesday, October 7, 2008
What bugs me is that this is probably the first you've heard about this.
Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1 - Armytimes.com Article
Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1 - Militarytimes.com Forums
Not a joke, kids. Check the URLs. And then freak out and leave. Or consider taking advantage of your second amendment rights.
Christ, I hate being right.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Political Interlewd
--- On Sat, 10/4/08, D____
From: D_____
Subject:
To: "T_____" , "C_____" , "Niko" , "J_____"
Date: Saturday, October 4, 2008, 5:27 AM
I am sending the links to these articles only to you four, unless I get
a bite from G_____ or U_____. I should have the confidence of my
convictions, namely the guts, to send it to them anyway, but I don't.
This is information you probably already have but, in case you don't, I
send these to read. The stakes are very high this November. We really
need to take back our country. To me, that Congress passed the
"bail-out bill" is a very, very, very bad sign.
---D_____
http://themovingtarget.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/news-from-the-vp-
debate-the-mccain-palin-coup/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/the-battle-plan-ii-
sarah_b_128393.html
As to whether to send these on to G_____ or U_____, I hesitate to say, except to consider this: the ideologies referred to in the articles, and the ideologies of the Bush/Cheney/Rovian cabal of the last eight (or fifteen, depending on when you want to start counting) are emphatically not traditional Republican concepts. Traditional Republicans are fiscal conservatives (remember the "tax-and-spend Democrats" of the eighties?), not $630 billion war-mongers or $810 billion bailout advocates. More importantly, traditional Republicans are mostly interested in limiting centralized (i.e., Federal) government, and advocate deconcentrating power by turning it over to the individual states. They certainly aren't interested in heaping it all in one wing of the White House. Republicans, all things considered, are relatively sane folks.
These psychos aren't Republicans (as G_____ pointed out to me a couple years ago, during what was, admittedly, our one and only conversation about politics); they're Neo-Cons. And Neo-Cons are, as far as I can tell, more or less indiscriminate power-mongers. What I find deeply upsetting about them is that they appropriate Republican language in order to further their own radical goals. "No tax-and-spend" became "No new taxes," which turned into tax cuts and deregulation (for businesses and the wealthy). And, since Republicans have always tended to have more faith in laissez-faire capitalism, there's your rationale. Even Sarah Palin kept going on and on about how government has to "get outta the way" of individuals (and individual businesses), which, amazingly, is why she's for expanding vice-presidential executive power.
And, of course, what fuels all of this and gives it legitimacy is fear, both realized and imagined. Both sides tell us America isn't safe, as though safety were all that mattered. (Here is where I digress and point out that one thing that I do not like about Obama is that he voted for the FISA bill this year. You know, that bill that grants immunity to all the telecom companies like AT&T who assisted the government in its illegal wiretapping? Yeah, Obama okayed that one. And apparently Joe Biden and I are the only ones who think that wasn't cool. Chill out, kids, I still voted for him.) I often like to suggest that security and liberty are a zero-sum game -- the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. Hey, the safest neighborhoods in America are Mafia 'hoods.
Another thing I like to suggest (with a certain gleeful self-righteousness these days) is that everyone go traveling. Of the vast myriad of things Americans are scared stupid of, one of the most prevalent, insidious, and long-lasting is "dem damn furriners," particularly the brown varieties. A little worldliness gives a little perspective and dispels a lot of one's extraneous, if systemic, racism.
I'm preaching to the choir, of course. And I imagine that I'm continuing to when I say that, despite my misgivings about Obama (he's really not that radical, he really is that inexperienced, and there's that damn FISA vote), and despite the apparent shallowness of saying so, I voted for him, and not in small part because he's black.
This is an interesting assessment of Palin succinctly articulating the lingering, not-quite-conscious fears people have about Obama. Hint: it ain't the "inexperience."
"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo....
In her character attack, Palin questions Obama's association with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground....
Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?
In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.
So there you are. Obama, I strongly suspect, is not the messiah the lefties hope for. But I don't think he'll completely suck, either. And I'm pretty sure he isn't the smiley-faced spearhead of American fascism that Sarah Palin is. The thing is, as long as he doesn't completely bollix the job (and hey, even if he does, right?), we have at least four years to get used to a presidential face that isn't fish-belly white. We might be a little less terrified of "not like us." Next go-round, we might be willing to consider another one or two, or maybe a woman, or maybe even -- gasp -- a homosexual. Call me batty, but I think a little more flavor in the stew is a good thing.Who am I kidding? 59 million Americans, remember? See you in the re-education camps, kids.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Never a dull moment at the Sehgyeh Wehgukwoh Hagweon, Part 1
I'm not really sure where to begin. Rather a lot has occurred. Really, kinda everything has turned upside-down in thirty days.
Okay, so, work. I'll start there, since that's about eighty percent of my life these days. I think I mentioned that the sked got all gnarly on me. It looked basically like this:
6.35 am: Pour myself out of bed and into a nice pair of pants. Try to remember if I washed my hair yesterday or the day before.
7 am: Intermediate conversation. I've got a book and 14 people to entertain with it. For an hour. At, I repeat, 7 in the morning. Thank god for the vending machine iced coffee. A buck for two, and I can at least feign coherence. Most of the time.
8 am: Three hour break. Go home, wash my hair (or not), and back to bed for another couple of hours until
10.35 am: See 6.35 am. Second verse, same as the first.
11 am: Adult beginners. A couple of absolutely darling ajumma (housewives). They complain about their neglectful husbands and tell me I'm handsome. If only all my classes were like this.
12 pm: Four hours for lunch. That's right, I have a 7 o'clock class, three hours off, an 11 o'clock class, and then four hours off. I guess this is to make up for getting to get up at 10 for two months. So, lunch, class prep, probably another nap. Or news, which I've been using to cheer myself up -- in the vein of "It may be rough, but at least I ain't in America." (Seriously, why are you worrying about me? Aren't you too busy hoarding gold and lynching Congress?)
4 pm: The Gauntlet. The way middle/elementary school classes work is that we alternate classes with a Korean teacher. So I have a main class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and a second class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It used to be that I only had to dread MWF, when I had my fifth graders, who were widely acknowledged as the worst class at the school. Now, with my new middle school class at five, I have probably the worst middle school class, too, albeit in a different way. Silent. Surly. And, thanks to Haseyo, from whom I inherited these kids, spoiled by the cash bribes he ended up resorting to. I've tried it a couple of times, but I always feel a little, er, dirty. Hasn't helped me anyway. Going to class feels like walking out to the parking lot at night and seeing five guys sitting on your car. Quiet, hostile, and expecting money. It is an ugly scene.
6 pm: TOEFL prep. Things have improved. I have some measure of rapport with them now. But the book is ridiculous, at least for a handful of thirteen-year-olds. It's proficiency tests for college, for god's sake. A lot of it is note-taking and outlining and serious essay-writing, and all (ideally) under a time limit. There's listening stuff, conversations and lectures and things, and they speak so fast it's hard for me to take notes. And it's mostly about boring college topics, too. It's all so advanced that I'm not really teaching English in there anymore, I'm mostly teaching writing -- stuff like taking notes and summarizing information. I've started bringing in a lot of independent stuff, articles and things. One day, we watched clips from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and I asked them to tell me what was going on. In some ways, I'm kind of back to where I was in June, winging it and hoping I can figure out what this class is supposed to be. But at least now I have some idea what I'm doing. Weirdly, this has become the class where I most feel like a teacher, not just giving information, but imparting knowledge. It's still rough; everyone in there is dog-tired and sick of class, and no one can write a decent outline (except me -- I've been getting a lot better at it), but it actually feels like we're getting somewhere, even if it is slow and exhausting. My dread fear is that one day I'll actually figure it out, and then my schedule will change, and the class'll go to some other teacher who'll have to start all over again.
7 pm: Adult beginners again. Thankfully, I end my day with a class I adore. Then it's take-home gimbap, maybe some downloaded American television (Battlestar Galactica is still the best thing on; Prison Break somehow keeps getting trashier and more entertaining; Fringe, the new J. J. Abrams show, blows white-hot chunks of suckiness, but I watch it anyway), maybe an hour or two of Spore, shower. Bed.
And this is every day. Jenn, you were right, this place is a boot camp. And this is just the schedule. This is not including the further drama, the girlfriend, the news, and what all. But these are stories for another time. Probably tomorrow.