From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V9 #97 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Saturday, April 15 2000 Volume 09 : Number 097 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Lulu & Robyn & Wall Street [tclark@apple.com] Re: Elian.... [Capuchin ] Re: Lulu & Robyn & Wall Street [MARKEEFE@aol.com] embargoes and healthcare [Vivien Lyon ] Re: embargoes and healthcare [Capuchin ] Re: embargoes and healthcare [Vivien Lyon ] Re: embargoes and healthcare [overbury@cn.ca] RE: Elian.... [tanter ] Re: Elian.... ["Capitalism Blows" ] Re: until the end of the all over the world ["Capitalism Blows" ] Re: Elian.... ["John Barrington Jones" ] Re: Elian.... [Christopher Gross ] more movie music [Christopher Gross ] Re: satellite dub - new music ["craig brown" Subject: Re: Elian.... First a note on Elian: There are thousands of important issues out there that effect many more five year old boys. Pick one that (a) you can help and (b) has a broader scope. Yes, embargoes against Cuba are pretty silly and probably hurtful. No, Cuba's not a utopian wonderland (healthcare is good and literacy increases dramatically in prison, too). The fate of Elian is inconsequential. The important issue is whether or not we have a consistent, meaningful policy for Cuba. Do we honor the deicisions of Cuban courts? Do we treant criminal, political, and domestic (family) court decisions differently? You can't micromanage the world's happiness. You have to have a reasonable system that makes all decisions clear (or at least minimizes exceptions). Special acts of Congress for one person's benefit are wasteful and counterproductive. So fuck Elian. He's just one kid caught in a messy system. Let's fix the system, execute whatever policy toward Cuba we decide is best and change that policy of the horrors outweigh the benefits. Stories like this and Jon-Benet Ramsey and whatever else are just human interest pablum dished out to keep eyes away from real issues. Would this be any more or less fucked up if the child were from China or Hell or some place we can all agree is truly a mess? The fact is that this case should have been a split second interpretation of a very clear policy. I don't care WHO stands to gain from it, somebody's trying to bend the law for the benefit of one (either the folks trying to send him back or the folks trying to keep him here... I don't know which one is consistent with our policy toward Cuba). Do what the law says and then do everything in your power for the rest of your life to prove that the law was wrong and get it changed. And as for this joke of a Presidential campaign... where the two leading candidates are enemies of both freedom AND reason (now usually, you're an enemy of one or the other... either you justify your irrationality in the name of freedom or you rationalize your destruction of freedoms, but this is truly phenomenal)... On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, steve wrote: > Not that Miles needs my advise, but this is interesting: > http://www.salon.com/politics2000/selectsmart/form.html This thing's broken. I mean, all the buttons work and it does what it can to rank the candidates in line with your opinion on what they call "The Issues", but their choices are simplistic and misleading and their ranking considers all issues equal. For exmample, after filling out the form, it was suggested that the Socialist candidate is most in line with my opinions. However, his "Key issues" were diametically opposed to my views. In fact, on some of the most important things (health care, gun control, and affirmative action), we're quite opposite. (Understand that we do align on several issues, hence the top ranking of his name, but the issues themselves are should not be equally rated.) As for their choices being misleading and simplistic, in income tax reform, I'd like to see just a strict adherence to the tax tables with no deviation or deductions (perhaps the tax table would need a minor shift, however, to accomodate cost of living). That alone would make a radical difference in the amount of money that comes in via income tax and how it is distributed. In the end, I think we'd see the advantage of raising that cost of living "standard deduction" (which would be the same for everyone) to relieve the tax burden all around and raise the minimum a person could make before he is responsible for income tax. So maybe that's income tax reform. But this candidate says that his view on tax reform is a maximum wage four times the minimum wage. I find this view ludicrous (at least at the very low factor of four). But salon would have you think that we have roughly the same stance. The form strongly favors the status quo and mismatches nearly everyone who wants things to change (unless you have a cookie-cutter worldview that you picked up from reading the same pet radical publication all the time). That is all. J. - -- ______________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 16:14:50 EDT From: MARKEEFE@aol.com Subject: Re: Lulu & Robyn & Wall Street In a message dated 4/14/00 12:38:46 PM Pacific Daylight Time, tclark@apple.com writes: << nowhere in this film does Mira Sorvino sing a duet with Robyn. She doesn't even sing. The end credits list all the songs, and RH is nowhere to be seen. Yet another two hours of my life I'll never get back. >> Yeah, but you got to look at Mira Sorvino for two hours! Hardly a waste, in my book :-) - ------Michael K., who, while Liz was out of town this past weekend, watched 2/3 of some stupid ass movie on HBO called "Ill-Begotten" or "Misbegotten" or something. Now *that* was a total waste of time. Even worse, I have this morbid curiosity about how the hell is turned out. I assume the bad guy gets impaled on something, becauese that's the way these things usually go. Ah, whatever. My point is this: Mira Sorvino's hot. p.s. - note how I choose to comment on something incredibly important like this, rather than Elian or the Presidential race . . . I maintain that my priorities are totally in place :-) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 13:53:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Vivien Lyon Subject: embargoes and healthcare the shining light of my life wrote: > Yes, embargoes against Cuba are pretty silly and probably > hurtful. No, > Cuba's not a utopian wonderland (healthcare is good and > literacy > increases dramatically in prison, too). I agree with what I perceive to be your main point, but these two sentences are just plain wrong. The embargoes are most certainly harmful. For instance: Cuba's healthcare may be better in many ways than ours, but they have a devil of a time getting insulin over there, because the world's main supplier of insulin is an American pharmaceutical company. Second, I don't know where you got your information on the prison system's healthcare, but you're dead dead wrong. It may be better for minor things, for instance a throat infection which can be cleared up by one trip to the nurse and some antibiotics. But woe betide the prisoner with a chronic illness. They just don't get to see the doctors they need to see, they are often accused of malingering, and many more of them die for lack of care than people (with health care coverage) on the outside. Of course, they do fare better than non-prisoners with no health insurance, ie: me. Poor me. Vivien __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send online invitations with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 14:08:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: embargoes and healthcare On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Vivien Lyon wrote: > They just don't get to see the doctors they need to see, they are > often accused of malingering, and many more of them die for lack of > care than people (with health care coverage) on the outside. Of > course, they do fare better than non-prisoners with no health > insurance, ie: me. Poor me. Well, that was my point. The free healthcare in prison is better than the free healthcare outside. But mostly I was saying that healthcare and literacy do not alone make a place nice nor living there a pleasure. J. - -- ______________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 14:55:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Vivien Lyon Subject: Re: embargoes and healthcare - --- Capuchin wrote: > Well, that was my point. The free healthcare in prison is > better than > the free healthcare outside. But mostly I was saying that > healthcare > and literacy do not alone make a place nice nor living there a > pleasure. Gee golly gumdrops do I hate to quibble, but I did not restate your point. Nowhere did I say that the free healthcare in prison is better than the free healthcare 'outside,' which may be interpreted to mean Cuba. I said that the free healthcare in Cuba may be better than the free healthcare in American prisons, which in turn is better than the free healthcare availble to non-incarcerated Americans (ie: none). So, in effect, I was saying that yes, Cuba's healthcare is better all around than America's. Furthermore, healthcare and literacy may not make a place a paradise. How about having a culture that doesn't revolve around the profit-motive? (Okay, I realize that I'm talking about the Cuba of twenty years ago and more, but still...) Vivien __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send online invitations with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 20:12:27 -0400 From: overbury@cn.ca Subject: Re: embargoes and healthcare Jeme said: > But mostly I was saying that healthcare > and literacy do not alone make a place nice nor living there a pleasure. Especially if it's still SNOWING there in April!!! [insert mad laughter here] - -- Ross Overbury Montreal, Quebec, Canada ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 21:41:27 -0500 From: tanter Subject: RE: Elian.... >===== Original Message From Jason Thornton ===== Sorry, but for your bachelor party you'll have >to settle for cigars made in China instead. Thank God for that--we would only want cigars made in a nonrepressive communist nation.... Marcy L. Tanter Assistant Professor of English Tarleton State University Stephenville, TX 76401 254-968-9892 (9039 to leave a message) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 00:58:33 PDT From: "Capitalism Blows" Subject: Re: Elian.... the influence of the miami cubans (as with that of the "jewish lobby") is highly overrated. i'm sure that mr. hedges has seen plenty of documents lamenting that cuba poses an immense threat so long as it propagates the notion that poor people should have some manner of control over their own destinies. so long as cuba poses this threat ("the threat of a good example"), we'll continue to wage war upon it. just like we'll drop israel like a bad habit if it ever stops following instructions -- no matter what the "jewish lobby" has to say about it. even more ironically (well, not really), cubans have the highest standard of living in the region -- every other country, of course, is looking down the barrel of the imf gun. why? there's no fucking way in hell that a bush presidency would be more damaging than a gore presidency. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 01:03:13 PDT From: "Capitalism Blows" Subject: Re: until the end of the all over the world <--Jason "as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" Thornton> to illustrate how well jason's point is taken, *immediately* upon reading this, tony bennett's Rags To Riches popped into my head. and yes, Goodfellas is on the very short list of finest use of music in a movie. i will never, ever, for the rest of my live-long life, think of anything other than frozen, fully clothed bodies hanging on meathooks whenever i hear Layla. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 10:52:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Terrence Marks Subject: Re: Elian.... On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, Capitalism Blows wrote: > influence over U.S. policy toward Cuba.> > > the influence of the miami cubans (as with that of the "jewish lobby") is > highly overrated. As someone who was in South Florida when this whole thing went down, I'm not so sure of it. The Miami/Ft. Laud stations gave him more airtime than the entirety of Fort Lauderdale. Terrence Marks Unlike Minerva (a comic strip) http://www.unlikeminerva.com normal@grove.ufl.edu ------------------------------ Date: 13 Apr 2000 21:45:40 -0700 From: "John Barrington Jones" Subject: Re: Elian.... >Is anyone else as frustrated about this as I am? I'm frustrated that I have to read about this story day in and day out. It's been a long time since I've seen a story this UN-compelling. I see the headlines and I think, "Slow day in the newsroom again." You can call me a cynic, and you'd be right. But some of the stuff I read in newspapers grabs me and affects me. The cuban boy's plight does not. I couldn't care less. =jbj= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 13:36:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Elian.... On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, Capitalism Blows [nice to see the return of a non-scatalogical user name, btw] wrote: > i'm sure that mr. hedges has seen plenty of documents > lamenting that cuba poses an immense threat so long as it propagates the > notion that poor people should have some manner of control over their own > destinies. so long as cuba poses this threat ("the threat of a good > example"), we'll continue to wage war upon it. [snip] > even more ironically (well, not really), cubans have the highest standard of > living in the region -- every other country, of course, is looking down the > barrel of the imf gun. Eddie, do you see Cuba as a reasonable approximation of the type of socialism you advocate? If not, how much and in what respects does it fall short? I'm not necessarily trying to start a long theoretical debate on the list, but I *am* curious. Brief replies to the rest of the thread: I agree that Elian should go back to his father. No question there. I also think that the embargo should be given up as a failure. However, neither stance should be taken as support for the current Communist dictatorship in Cuba. Someone implied that Florida's Cuban exiles are all former rich Batista-istas, which is a terrible exaggeration. About Cuba itself, it has always been among the most successful and least oppressive of the Communist countries (not exactly a high standard). However, it should be noted that Cuba is by far the largest country in the Caribbean, has the most natural resources, and even before the revolution was the richest (though that wealth was badly distributed) and most developed country in the Caribbean, so government policies were not the *only* reason Cuba compares so well to its region. And the "non-profit-oriented" phase of Cuban history was more like 30 years ago than 20; at least, it was 30 years ago that the Cuban government started introducing "socialist incentives," ie more money and perqs for more work, following the economic failure of doing without material incentives in the late 1960s. > > > why? there's no fucking way in hell that a bush presidency would be more > damaging than a gore presidency. Pure speculation -- since Bush has few established views and absolutely no accomplishments to his credit, we have no way of knowing what kind of president he would be. - --Chris, who is sitting two blocks from the IMF building and three from the World Bank's main building. Not much seems to be going on at the moment, though. ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 13:42:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: more movie music I saw _American Psycho_ last night, and thought it pretty good. It was far better as a movie than as a book, from what I've heard; I haven't read it myself. Anyway, it made great use of crappy 80s music to illustrate the basic hollowness of the main character. Christian Bale, who played him, may be the first person in the history of the English language to say "This track is called 'Sussudio.' Great song." - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 20:52:29 -0700 From: "craig brown" Subject: Re: satellite dub - new music ok - I'm new to this mailing list thing and didn't know that there was a certain way of doing things. I'm hardly a ruthless business type - I've got hair half way down my back! Again - apologies. Thanks for the mail - Craig - -----Original Message----- From: fartachu To: craig brown Date: Saturday, April 15, 2000 9:13 AM Subject: Re: satellite dub - new music >when we last left our heroes, craig brown exclaimed: > >>I've been a fan of robyn and the soft boys for about 8 years now and just >>thought some people on the list might like my music - I didn't mean to annoy >>people. If I have - I'm sorry. > >well, that's better than some of the alternatives...but without any >context, your initial note came across more as an advertisement than a >genuine thought that some of us might like the music you make. > >you see, fegmaniax is kinda like a big, happy (somewhat dysfunctional) >family. your note was like someone barging into the dining room while said >family was enjoying a meal. everyone's welcome at the table, but there's >polite and impolite ways to join... > >woj > ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V9 #97 ******************************