Why I Need To Read More

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

These are the 110 most banned books.  The ones I have read (or mostly read) are in bold; the ones I have read excerpts of are in italics.

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights (any number of doubtless-abridged versions)
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (all four books)
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’ Nest
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X (Alex Haley, too)
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brow
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Emile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Oscar Night

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

For the first time in many many many many many years, I really didn’t give a shit.  I hadn’t seen most of the movies, except "Sideways" which was nice.

I’m glad Morgan Freeman won.  That was nice.

But here’s the thing: does Chris Rock suck bigtime or what?

The Hidden Cost

Ken AshfordIraq, Mental HealthLeave a Comment

A side of the Iraqi War that you rarely read about:

Jesus Bocanegra was an Army infantry scout for units that pursued Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit. After he returned home to McAllen, Texas, it took him six months to find a job.

He was diagnosed with PTSD and is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim. He goes to the local Vet Center but is unable to relate to the Vietnam-era counselors.

“I had real bad flashbacks. I couldn’t control them,” Bocanegra, 23, says. “I saw the murder of children, women. It was just horrible for anyone to experience.”

Bocanegra recalls calling in Apache helicopter strikes on a house by the Tigris River where he had seen crates of enemy ammunition carried in. When the gunfire ended, there was silence.

But then children’s cries and screams drifted from the destroyed home, he says. “I didn’t know there were kids there,” he says. “Those screams are the most horrible thing you can hear.”

At home in the Rio Grande Valley, on the Mexico border, he says young people have no concept of what he’s experienced. His readjustment has been difficult: His friends threw a homecoming party for him, and he got arrested for drunken driving on the way home.

“The Army is the gateway to get away from poverty here,” Bocanegra says. “You go to the Army and expect to be better off, but the best job you can get (back home) is flipping burgers. … What am I supposed to do now? How are you going to live?”

Read more here.

Uncle Bucky Cashes In

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

From the LA Times:

The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc., and new financial data show that the firm’s war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name — Bush.

William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, uncle of the president and youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, cashed in ESSI stock options last month with a net value of nearly half a million dollars.

"Uncle Bucky," as he is known to the president, is on the board of the company, which supplies armor and other materials to U.S. troops. The company’s stock prices have soared to record heights since before the invasion, benefiting in part from contracts to rapidly refit fleets of military vehicles with extra armor.

So, let’s see. Thousands of parents have to spend money so that their kids — National Guardsmen heading for Iraq — have the proper armor for combat, while Bucky Bush gets a little dividend. Nice.

More on the F-word

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

A little over a week ago, I wrote a post about the F-word ("fascism") being used to describe the Bush Administration by a prominent conservative magazine.

Was it just mudflinging . . . or is there something to the notion that we are heading into a fascist era?

This flash animation makes a compelling argument that we are indeed seeing the earmarks of a fascist state.

From the Producers of “The Swift Boat Veterans for *cough* Truth *cough*”…

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Sex/Morality/Family Values, Social Security1 Comment

… comes the latest in surreal conservative propaganda. And it is a doosy.

AARP: Anti-military. Pro Gay. Therefore, we should privatize social security.

This is a copy of the the ad being run by USANext, the conservative alternative to AARP (when you click the actual ad, you are taken to USANext‘s home page). 2

There’s no article or argument as to WHY the AARP is supposedly anti-military or pro-gay. They just . . . um . . . ARE . . . I guess.

Meanwhile get the scoop on USANext here.

I have no problem with there being an alternative to the AARP (although I’m not inclined to think of the AARP as anti-military, pro-gay), but really — a front for the pharma industry? How stupid do conservatives think our senior citizens are?

Disconcerting News

Ken AshfordHealth CareLeave a Comment

WASHINGTON – The Earth may be on the brink of a worldwide epidemic from a bird flu virus that may mutate to become as deadly and infectious as viruses that killed millions during three influenza pandemics of the 20th century, a federal health official said Monday.

***

"The science here is all alerting us that we have a great deal to be concerned about," she said.

The CDC chief said her agency is getting ready for a possible pandemic next year.

Read the whole thing.

Bush’s “Schtick”

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

Gotta love it. From the NY Times article on the newly-discovered Bush tapes:

He refused to answer reporters’ questions about his past behavior, he said, even though it might cost him the election. Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: "I wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried."

Isn’t that the height of arrogance? Does Bush actually think that kids will try marijuana because HE did it? Like . . . of ALL the people that kids want to emulate, he’s #1?!?

He mocked Vice President Al Gore for acknowledging marijuana use. "Baby boomers have got to grow up and say, yeah, I may have done drugs, but instead of admitting it, say to kids, don’t do them," he said…

Because "just say no" worked so well in the 1980’s, I guess.

Anyway, instead of that message being sent, the message received is "It’s okay to do drugs, just so long as you don’t admit to doing them, so you can then tell others how bad drugs are."

When Mr. Wead warned that he had heard reporters talking about Mr. Bush’s "immature" past, Mr. Bush said, "That’s part of my schtick, which is, look, we have all made mistakes."

Schtick?!? That’s Yiddish for "gimmick", isn’t it? Here’s a nice example of more schtick . . .

Preparing to meet Christian leaders in September 1998, Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, "As you said, there are some code words. There are some proper ways to say things, and some improper ways."

So . . . a man of principle? Or a class-A panderer relying on gimmicks and proper wordsmithing? You be the judge.

Hypocrisy of the Right – Part III

Ken AshfordRepublicans, Sex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

From the comments at Body and Soul via Sisyphus Shrugged:

See, me, I’m fine with his being gay. Hell, I’m fine with him being a prostitute, if that’s what he needs to do to live.

What I want to see, and what thankfully I am seeing, is all of the right-wing pundits roaring anathema on left-wing blogs because by not recognizing that bringing up Jeff Gannon’s business (which, you know, he did advertise all over the internet) the left is showing hypocrisy and homophobia and not letting him have the privacy which he has every right to. Anyone who wouldn’t just tactfully not mention Jeff Gannon’s sideline is a gay-hating ignorant bad person.

I’m sure it comes as quite a shock to the twenty-something percent of the voters who came out and supported their guy because he was going to put it to all those terrible gay people that their opinion makers think so little of them.

The right has for years justified taking children away from gay women with nine to five jobs and not letting gay men adopt by trotting out the same footage of the mardi gras style parades in San Francisco and saying see? These people are freaks. You can’t let these people think they’re as good as we are. Society is going to fall down and go boom if we don’t put these people in their place.

Well then, fine. Y’all go ahead and explain to me why a woman who’s a good mother and a responsible citizen has lost her right to raise her children because and only because she loves another woman but Jeff Gannon, who peddles his ass to other men, is above reproach because

Because what?

What I don’t like about Jeff Gannon is his politics and his dishonesty. What the right is in an uproar about is what he does with his genitals behind closed doors.

Fine. Tell all the nice values voters why that’s something we shouldn’t penalize a person for. It’s an open book test. You can copy stuff off of every liberal blog in town.

Hypocrisy of the Right – Part II

Ken AshfordBlogging, Republicans, Right Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Eason Jordon believed that U.S. soldiers were targetting journalists. Ann "It’s Time for the New McCarthyism" Coulter wants U.S. soldiers to target journalists.

Eason Jordon’s statement is made in a closed-door symposium with relatively few listeners. He retracts it almost immediately.

Ann Coulter’s statement was made on national television to untold millions of listeners. She never retracts it.

Eason Jordon is compelled to resign as a result of his statement.

Ann Coulter gets booked on television, and gets asked back, as a result of her statement.

Right Wing blogosphere reaction to Eason Jordon: Pack mentality, and blood-revenge.

Right Wing blogosphere reaction to Ann Coulter: [crickets, a sagebrush blows in the wind, a dog barks in the distant, more crickets]

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Hypocrisy of the Right – Part I

Ken AshfordIraq, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

If the Clinton Adminstration had done something like this . . .

U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with Iraq’s Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported yesterday, citing Pentagon and other sources.

… the right wingers would run the word "appeaser" into the ground.

But it is Bush, so they don’t. Hypocrisy of the right.

Of course, what you THINK is happening isn’t ACTUALLY happening, according to the Bush Administration:

The Bush administration has said it would not negotiate with Iraqi fighters and there is no authorized dialogue, but the United States is having "back-channel" communications with certain insurgents, unidentified Washington and Iraqi sources told the magazine.

I guess that’s why the right wing blogosphere isn’t calling Bush an "appeaser". Because Bush isn’t "officially" negotiating with terrorists. He’s only unofficially negotiating with terrorists, and that’s okay.