I have a bit of a fever (getting over the flu), so pardon me in advance if this essay becomes rambling and strange.

I rarely read about the candidates for President, whether it be on the blogs or in the traditional media.

I stated elsewhere, in some essay or comment, that if I had my way these elections would be unlike any we’ve ever had.  They would be somber and there would be no cheering and funny hats and souvenirs.  They would be sober and sad, because we are going through terrible times.  There would be a gravity to the national discourse that wouldn’t allow any kind of show-biz breathlessness we’ve all seen too much of, nor the kind of cheerleader as supporter that has made many of us turn away from the dreaded “candidate diaries” at several progressive blogs.

I find it surreal that is not the case, even as I’m aware my view is only mine and there’s reasons why others wouldn’t feel that way.

I like to write this series spontaneously so that it is timely.  I usually write it on Friday right before it publishes on the Front Page of Docudharma.

Tonight I read Robyn’s Friday Philosophy essay right when I logged on to the intertubes.

She speaks of fairness and games and such.

I think that’s an interesting conversation and I’d like to continue it here.

Robyn writes:

To many people I suppose that makes me appear to be a fool. If that’s how you see it, so be it. I still believe it is more important that a good game played fairly is more important than who wins or loses. I revel in Tiger Woods and Ernie Els going stroke for stroke in the President’s Cup until it is too dark to play anymore…and then calling it a draw. To me, the view of life as an exercise in trying to be a winner rather than a loser is nearly the very definition I have for labeling someone a loser.

I’d like to riff off that notion.

Both in high school and for the two years I attended college, I was a member of the debate squad.  I was brought up listening to my brothers and father argue and search for what was real when it came to whatever topic arose.  It was always an education for me.

In debate we were told we had to back up everything we said when we made our case.  What made it even more interesting was that we all had to argue both sides of the issue, depending on which “round” of the debates was in session.  So my partner and I would argue the “pro” against another school and the next round we’d argue the “con” against another team.

Sure there was all the snark and obnoxiousness one could imagine among us all, in a way it was very similar to the blogs.

But then Kirby Boner came along.

Yep, that was his real name, and I am putting it out there deliberately as praise for him is long overdue.

I have no answers here, so if you are looking for answers, this is not a good essay to read.

See, here’s the thing.  We have a Presidential election campaign going on.  It’s probably a good thing to pay attention to what’s happening there, yep.  After all, one of these folks is going to gain an enormous amount of power in November of 2008.

No question, attention should be paid.

But see, here’s the thing.  I’ve written reams about how not impeaching Bush and Cheney and their gang of criminals will have real consequences.  And I believe we are facing one of those many consequences.

As I am writing this, Bush, Cheney and their gang are breaking the law.  Nor will they stop breaking the law.  We all know this, it’s no secret.

S:  Mr. Smith’s office, may I help you?

CALLER:  LET MY PEOPLE GO!

S:  Excuse me?

CALLER:  I AM MOSES.  LET MY PEOPLE GO!

S:  Well, Mr. Moses, this is Mr. Smith’s office and I don’t see any people …

CALLER:  LET MY PEOPLE GO!

S:  Well I’m TRYING to tell you that we don’t HAVE your people!  Are you quite sure you have the right number?

CALLER:  MOSES SAYS LET MY PEOPLE GO!

S:  All right, all right.  I think it’s Pharoah you are looking for, Mr. Moses.  I think he’s the one that has your people, if I recall correctly.

BBRRRIIINGGG!

Well I don’t have a lot to say tonight — but given my proclivities, I’m sure I’ll use a lot of words anyway.

I’ve had a tough couple of blogging weeks.  Mostly dealing with the issue of public housing in New Orleans.  ‘Course I also got in some scathing comments on a couple of immigration diaries.  Oddly, some of my enemies and I are beginning to acquire a bizarre form of camaraderie.  Ah, familiarity breeds a whole lot of things, it seems.

It wasn’t so much that I was fighting folks as struggling to communicate, which was frustrating.  Nightprowlkitty, SuperKitty of Justice(!) does not LIKE to be patient!  Seems, though, that patience is a requirement.

ek hornbeck has, though his writing, helped me enormously when it comes to another quality I have found is necessary if one is to engage in the dirty work of real communication of ideas and information and values – often to folks who may not know or trust me – and that is toughness.

To illustrate this helpfulness, I shall link a comment and response from one of his issues of the Stars Hollow Gazette.  I had commented one needs toughness to “save the internets” and his response has become my new mantra for 2008:

You can’t expect that people will treat you in any particular way.

Hell, if you have to ask what that word means, then you probably are too young to be reading this.

Just so that folks coming here don’t think we’re all a bunch of prissy little pure angels (lol lol), I thought I should post some ribaldry for the holiday season on the theme of “we work hard … we play hard … we are bloggers!”

Or something like that.

Wrote a ribald song the other night and recorded it on Gabcast today — as usual, it’s a recording without music over the telephone, so any intrepid listener should turn down the volume due to possible sound distortion.  It is Episode #6, so just hit the “play button” next to Episode 6 and you’ll be all set.  Here’s the link:

Gabcast! Auld Manhattoe #6

And here’s the lyrics:

15 MEN IN 30 DAYS

by Nightprowlkitty

she was a terrible woman

the way she loved her men

she treated them like candy

oh yes, she did … and then

she’d toss the box aside

and catch another ride

and when I asked her

to explain,

she sang me this refrain

-chorus-

I want 15 men in 30 days

girl, you’re asking me why?

cause I can get ’em

and I can love ’em

till the day I die.

I want 15 men in 30 days

And I’m not playin’ you wise

cause I want ’em

and I can find ’em

like a crackerjack surprise!

-end chorus-

She was a terrible woman

the way she loved her men

but when I listened to her story

I remembered way back when

I’d toss the box aside

and catch another ride

and when they asked me

to explain,

I’d sing the same refrain.

-back to chorus-

‘Course I am but a mere amateur at ribaldry.  Here is a veritable Maestro!  None other than the divine Bull Moose Jackson, singing “Big Ten Inch Record”

Have a bit of ribaldry for the holidays!  :-p

How selfish of me to be trying to drag the reader from some lovely spiked eggnog to the nitty gritty of the struggles of others.

My only rationalization is that Christmas is approaching.  The whole damned story was about Mary and Joseph not being able to get a room when she was about to have her baby.  I believe at the time they were traveling back to Joseph’s hometown for some registration or other.  (What’s that cool French phrase that means, “the more things change …”? Cestdelamemchanceorsomethinglikethat.)

So with that admittedly self-serving rationalization, I continue with a story that has grown more and more interesting to me, the public housing issue in New Orleans.

From the indefatigable oyster at Your Right Hand Thief, a pertinent question of what the nature of this public housing will be:

Quoting the Times-Picayune:

Unbowed by days of caustic protests, the New Orleans City Council on Thursday unanimously approved the demolition of four sprawling public housing developments, launching a new era in the troubled history of a social safety net launched in the World War II era.

…

The unanimous decision, which put to rest some predictions of a racially split vote, handed a major victory to President Bush’s housing aides, who have pushed for mixed-income developments as a way to restore an original goal of public housing: to provide transitional housing to help people elevate themselves from poverty.

(emphasis mine)

Oyster goes on to question this new meme being introduced by our politicians and our media, “transitional housing,” and questions if that was the original reason for why our country helped folks with their homes.

You can read the entire post and there are some comments which do some research (including a link from Yours Truly).

So let me see here.

Folks were evicted from their public housing after the federal flood, even though their homes were not all damaged.  They were sent to far flung places in and out of the Gulf Coast region.  They received some assistance from the feds and from the state, but some of that assistance is running out, some folks are being evicted from their FEMA trailers, there’s a big question about housing — heck, there’s also illegal demolitions going on of middle-class housing that have resulted in law suits, serious ones.

So there’s a big mix here, it would seem to me.  Whether it’s public housing or illegal demolitions of private housing, a lot of tearing down and building up (and the attendant big money contracts for same) is going on.  And it will affect the entire city, the rich and the poor, imo.

We’ve heard many promises from politicians, trumpeted in the traditional media both locally and nationally, that those poor folks, those wretched poverty stricken folks will be treated with great compassion and housed well all due to the bounty of our federal government and its great agencies HUD and FEMA!  They are regular Santa Clauses!  Yay!

But of course this housing is only transitional.  And what does transitional mean, I wonder?  ‘Course just having a home is not exactly a ticket to high class status here in the good old U S of A.  I dunno, jobs might help, daycare centers, hospitals, schools, libraries, all the kinds of community services so many of us take for granted, that might also help with this so-called “transition.”

How long is a transition, I wonder?  Well in this instance I guess a transition depends on the money — oh not the money someone on public assistance makes, oh no!  It depends on the money the government is willing to spend for this noble goal of helping to transition folks out of that nasty awful poverty they’ve got themselves in.

So it could be that next year some of these noble heroes from HUD or FEMA or maybe even some local developer with a lot of power and a lot of greed, could decide that a miracle has taken place!  Each and every one of those folks, even the ones in the diaspora who have not yet come home, well can you believe it!  They have all successfully transitioned from poverty and we no longer even NEED public housing!  Hosanna in the highest!

Transitional my ass.

Here’s what I would like to know.  Who is getting the demolition contracts?  How much will they be paid?  Will the citizens of New Orleans get the information they are entitled to get from the City Council on exactly who is doing what in this large project?  And I am not just talking about public housing here, but city planning generally.  Will the citizens whose lives are going to be affected by these decisions be given the information they need to judge how well this job is being done, so that they can feel comfortable with the results?

That’s what I’m interested in when it comes to New Orleans.  I’ll stick the “transitional” meme in my meme box with all the others, like “what part of illegal don’t you understand?” or “you are only allowed to have a television if you earn over $50,000 a year,” and “impeachment is impossible, we don’t have the votes.”

I believe the story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus is about far more than housing.  But it cannot be denied that they were in very “transitional” housing indeed on that night a birth took place in a manger.  With wise men and extremely groovy gifts.  A night of contrasts, I guess.

Lagniappe:

There’s an essay by NLinStPaul that I just can’t stop thinking about.

It’s about how with the right resources, we can keep vulnerable children from a life of hopelessness and poverty.

I’ve been blogging about New Orleans and public housing lately.  There was one photo posted by the Times-Picayune showing a black woman who had complained about her new home, the plumbing was bad, the door was broken, etc.  The picture showed this woman in her apartment — it was very neat and clean.  But what caused a big buzz was her 60-inch television set.

In a visceral reaction, many folks condemned both the woman and a system that would enable “freeloaders” to have giant TV’s that other hard working and deserving folks couldn’t afford.  It just wasn’t fair.  That’s what I heard every time I’d read these comments, the eternal cry of a child who feels they are missing out on someone else’s good fortune.  “It isn’t fair!”

This reaction is nothing new.  Ronald Reagan pandered to this feeling when he blasted a woman on welfare for having a Cadillac and successfully turned middle-class Americans against the poor, because “It isn’t fair!”

‘Course this isn’t rational, we know that.  In our times, we are being robbed blind by our own federal government for wars of occupation, graft, patronage, you name it.

But we can’t fight the government, it seems, because the government is too big and powerful.

We can, however, find a scapegoat.  And the poor have always been there for that role.

It’s a shell game, of course.  And we all can be prey to it at one time or another, depending on which part of our psyche would make us cry out, “It isn’t fair!”  

Many folks have read that there were riots and some violence and a bunch of rabble rousing and yelling and such at the New Orleans City Council meeting on public housing, heck, it’s the top story at AOL News.

And the NOLA blogs are covering this as well.

Yep, that’s the breaking story out of New Orleans.  NOT!

Let’s take a look at what actually happened today, let’s … oh, I don’t know … BLOG about it.  The fucking media and our fucking representatives sure as fuck aren’t going to educate us.  Arrggh.

This is a national issue.

And it’s especially a national issue for any blogger who is against this misAdministration of criminals and thieves.

h/t to Jeffrey over at Library Chronicles for this set of live updates from the Times-Picayune.

The New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to go ahead with the demolitions of public housing.

Please remember these seven names (one of them has posted at Daily Kos):

Arnie Fielkow

Stacy Head

Cynthia Willard-Lewis

Shelly Midura

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell

Jacquelyn Brechtel-Clarkson

James Carter

(If Any NOLA bloggers find I’ve incorrectly named one of these Council members, please let me know in the comments and I’ll fix.)

These seven people now own the challenge of providing fair and well built public housing in New Orleans, for both the poor who were forced out after the Federal Flood and for the greater community who are their good neighbors.  That is a big responsibility.

And these seven people are going to have to work with city, state, and federal agencies, including the Bush-ridden and incompetent HUD.

This is a national story.  I will tell you right now we are not going to get the truth from either our traditional media or elected political representatives — unless we push them hard.

That’s what bloggers do, imo.

The story about the riots and the poor folks who are being tasered and tortured is a big fat distraction being thrown in our faces by a traditional media who doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground.

This is going to be a tremendously difficult story to cover, and it has major national implications for cities all across the country.

The hyenas are out, and they want their share of the meat.  The only thing between those hyenas and our brothers and sisters in New Orleans will be folks who find out the truth and let others know about it.

I think bloggers, nationally, have a role to play in this.  One of the many, many rewards of doing this investigative work will be that when the hyenas come to your city, you’ll be prepared to call them out for what they are.

For seven years we have not heard a peep from this misAdministration about the suffering of the poor, as millions more Americans have fallen into poverty.  This latest story about protesters being treated badly by the cops is nothing but a distraction — for the poor have been treated like shit for seven years and no media has bothered to cover it.

The real story is the vote.  And those seven people who now have the responsibility of letting American taxpayers know what’s happening with their money.

Yeah, this is what we do.  We are citizen journalists.  Our media has failed us — for every good reporter and story there is a tsunami of dangerously false information being fed to the American public, causing human suffering and great damage that every blogger here knows the extent of all too well.

It is in this light that I write about something which may not seem terribly important in the midst of all the big scandals and campaign goings on.  But mark my words, this is important to us — as bloggers.

The NOLA blogs have been an invaluable source of real information for me since the Federal Flood destroyed America’s illusions on how much our federal government is willing to solve national problems.  Instead we saw our federal government head straight for the cash register and give out billions of our tax dollars and overwhelming federal agency powers to corporate and political cronies.

When the Federal Flood occurred, thousands of residents of public housing were forcibly evacuated from their homes, even though the homes themselves were not overly damaged in many cases.

And they were not allowed to return.

Now HUD and politicians in New Orleans are planning on demolishing this public housing, before real guarantees can be had that folks can have a home to return to in the so-called “mixed housing” that is being proposed.

The community has not been given the chance to give real input here.  Advocates for the poor, some of whom are truly humanitarian souls and others who are rabble rousers extraordinare, whose actions irritate as many as they inspire (for after all, poor folks rarely get slick lobbyists to represent them, that costs a bit, ya know), are trying to halt these demolitions.  One of the best things I saw was a video where a man simply stated these folks had leases and their rent was paid.  Think about that.  Think about being shoved out of your apartment when you had held up your end of the bargain, and not being allowed to return.  That’s just plain wrong.

And, of course, this has, unforgiveably, gone on over two long years.

I heard from a little bird a request we do some Holiday Cheer stuff here at Docudharma.

Well, I don’t know how cheery this is, but it is one of my favorite spiritual prayer/songs.  Ava Maria.  The Shubert version.  I read he wrote this in devotion to the Virgin Mary when he was a young man.  The melody is one of the loveliest I have ever heard.

But I also think about Mary (in my own idiosyncratic way).  She may have been a young girl when she gave birth to Jesus, but when he was crucified, she was no longer young.  If she was 16 when she gave birth, then 33 years later she was 48.

To watch your son die just when you are entering middle age and facing your own mortality, that is a story in itself,  I think.

Anyway, enough of my odd meanderings.  Here is my version, just a fragment of the song as I couldn’t find lyrics which would teach me the entire version.  As usual, please remember to turn the volume down, or the distortion won’t be purty.

So, a fragment of Ava Maria.  Merry Christmas to all, in the real spirit of the holiday.

Gabcast! Auld Manhattoe #5