This is the end—from the perspective of a guy in a car

     A friend sent me this link to a video (HERE) of the Japanese tsunami from the perspective of a guy in a car. It's truly amazing. At first, the driver comes upon a quiet intersection and the earthquake occurs. Judging by one pedestrian's movements, it is very violent. Then the scene shifts to the driver in traffic, approaching an intersection. Cars are stopped. We see the water come in from the left, hundreds of feet ahead. The water rises; then the current becomes violent, and the car suddenly fills with water. Amazing.

Professor Reeve's curious Facebook page

     REEVE'S BLOG. For those readers who seek to learn more about SJC City Councilman and Saddleback College adjunct Derek Reeve—the fellow who joked at a recent meeting that he had named his dog “Muhammad”—you might check out his blog: Patriots of Troy. There, he informs us that he is “an attorney, small business owner, and adjunct professor of political science at Saddleback College and Concordia University.”
     On his blog, Reeve posts only intermittently, typically providing links to conservative or libertarian articles, such as conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer’s The Fall of Obama.

      FACEBOOK. He’s also on Facebook: Professor of Political Science Derek Reeve. On his Facebook page, that title is followed by the words “Public Figure.”
     Under “about,” we are told that:

This is dedicated to all current and former students of Professor Reeve. FREE SPEECH ZONE, but please be respective [sic] of others [sic] wrong ideas. :-D

     Is the Facebook page merely "dedicated" to Reeve's students or is it also a resource for students in his current classes? It would appear to be a resource as well. You'll see why I make that inference in a moment.
     There’s no denying that most of Reeve’s Facebook posts present conservative or libertarian views. For instance, he leaves a link to “There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap,” an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. He leaves links to articles by the likes of Bob Barr, who has run for office as a member of the Libertarian Party. (There are few exceptions to this pattern.)
    He quotes notorious libertarian/libertine philosopher Ayn Rand:

"The Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."

     He also cites Fox News stories.
     As on his blog, on his Facebook page, Reeve posts intermittently, occasionally offering brief conservative or libertarian opinions—or links to like-minded articles.
     On Sept. 10, he advised: “Remember in prayer all the victims, first responders, fire and police officers and those affected by 9/11 on this 10th Anniversary......”
     So Reeve assumes that his audience prays. He is suggesting to his audience who they should mention in their prayers. Are his current students among his audience? It seems so. He clearly makes announcements to his students on this site. (Judge for yourself.)

     EXTRA CREDIT. One thing on his Facebook page caught my eye. Back in June, he offered his students an extra credit opportunity: attendance of the showing of the anti-socialized medicine documentary “Sick and Sicker” (see above). The showing was at a local church and it was promoted by a local “Tea Party” organization: South Orange County 912.
      Upon clicking on the latter link, we see the following:

Movie - SICK & SICKER! 

When the Government becomes Your Doctor! 

Monday, June 27, 2011, 6:30 PM
. . .
Christian Mission Church
27812 Forbes Road, Suite A, Laguna Niguel, CA (map)
. . .
   This is our second showing of this Movie with Dr. Jeff Sarkozi as our speaker. If you missed the first showing, don't miss this one! Dr. Sarkozi is an ex-patriot of Canadian socialized medicine. He is passionate on this subject! He will also give us solutions! 

   Where will ObamaCare lead America? 

    Logan Darrow Clements shows what happens when "the government becomes your doctor" using licensed news footage from Canadian TV, interviews with doctors, patients, journalists, a health minister, a Member of Parliament, a doctor who went on a hunger strike as well the producer's own Canadian relatives. Clements even rents a hospital to show the mismatch between supply and demand in a medical system run by politicians. SICK and SICKER puts ObamaCare on ice with cold hard facts from Canada.

One of Reeve's students wrote back:

    Hi Professor Reeve, I am in your PS 12 class [“Comparative Politics and Government” at Saddleback College] this summer. I am entering my junior year at UCSB where I have been since my freshman year and am pursuing a Political Science degree. I am interested in learning about foreign governments this quarter. I am a registered Republican but consider myself to be a conservative before any political party title and would vote according to who represents my values best. I watch a good amount of news weekly and hope to learn more.

     Hmmm. Is this student responding to Reeve's stated "values"?

     Naturally, it wouldn’t do to offer this “extra credit” opportunity only to students who happen to visit Reeve’s “Professor” Facebook page, and so I'm guessing that he has all of his students monitor the page. That is, it seems likely that viewing Reeve's Facebook page is part of taking his course. (Again, that's a guess.)
     Just sayin': if Reeve has his students keeping track of his Facebook page, it looks like his instruction is mighty conservative/libertarian. Tea Party groups? Documentary showings at a church? Instructions to pray?
     Golly. [END]

     UPDATE: Note to right-wingers: I am not questioning Reeve's right to hold and express opinions or to cite articles/blogs. We honor those rights. If there is an issue here, it is whether, qua CC "poli sci" instructor, it is appropriate for Reeve to [a] suggest to his students that they pray or how they should pray, [b] recommend political articles that are almost uniformly conservative or libertarian, [c] set himself up as a conservative/libertarian guru to his students—if indeed he is doing that on his Facebook page. With regard to b and c, people can reasonably disagree, I suppose. I don't see how [a] can be defended. —Again, I'm operating on the assumption that Reeve has his students read this Facebook page, which seems likely [though not certain], given that he makes announcements to his students on that page. See.

The Supreme Court's Breyer impresses in Nixonville (Red Emma)

RED EMMA

✵ IT WAS A FUNNY place to be on the tenth anniversary of Congress’s odious vote to fund the military invasion and occupation of Iraq. Heartening only for Red Emma is the chance to recall and remind Dissenters of the brave and principled Ms. Barbara Lee, reviled by most and of course redeemed by history, if not, unfortunately, celebrated. I here propose September 14 as Barbara Lee was Right Day. You could fly your flag, or drop her a note. Dear Barbara: You were right. I think she’ll know.

Pics by Rebel Girl

Funny indeed. I glanced down at the screen of the laptop balancing on the lap of ace OC Register reporter Mike Mello, who seemed to have already written most of his article on the talk by Associate Justice (and ice cream scion) Stephen Breyer seconds after the judge stepped from the podium, situated next to six US flags and two either competing, or complimentary signs (you choose), one bearing the traditional over-the-top Nixon Foundation logo, fully embossed and the other, the weirdly snazzy “Mod Squad” style Nixon Presidential Library and Museum design.

Red greets the doorman

It’s actually fun to visit the library now, which some years ago morphed from a Disney ride to an actual federally-funded (“Follow the money!”) National Archives and Records Administration research facility. The foundation folks wanted legitimacy and, yes, taxpayer money, so, faster than you can say Jerry Voorhis, it went from hagiographical to historical. That’s perfect, cuz you still get the little old Republican ladies of eastern OC greeting you in their stunning bunting-wear – red-white-and-blue blazers, scarves, blouses – but then there’s the director, an esteemed scholar named Dr. Timothy Naftali who dresses, it seems, in the flag of a land called Business Attire and Scholarship, if nattily. And in the bookstore you can buy Andrew Breitbart’s new book (he visits the Foundation next week) and a t-shirt, I shit you not, declaring your original charter membership in the Silent Majority.

Oddly unpleasant ad
for next week's event

Red flashed reporter Mello a winning Dissent smile and showed off my official Dissent press pass. It identifies me as your favorite blog’s humble Nixon Library Museum and Birthplace correspondent. Humble and Nixon are two words you seldom see together, but then most people get Dryers and Breyers mixed up too, and of course Associate Justice Steve is neither a scion or an heir to anybody’s frozen dessert fortune. It’s just fun to mess with people. Wow. The power of the press! And all the better, it turns out, for you and me and America and the Constitution that the guy became a judge. Re the Constitution, like so many of us, this Supreme carries a copy of it in his breast pocket and, yes, pulls it out (a lot) as his reliably winning and singular and satisfying prop. Pulling out an ice cream cone probably wouldn’t help much, rhetorically I mean.

"Ooh, ooh!"

Sylvia

As a Dissent field reporter, I work a very limited beat, for which most reasonable and polite readers of this blog must certainly be grateful. Still, I like seeing other professionals at work, and think of myself as the Sylvia Pogiolli of Eastern Orange County underground journalism, a dark-haired beauty of imagination with a husky, authoritative voice. And have you ever seen a photograph of Syl? Unlike most radio types, she looks exactly like she sounds. Lovely. I understand she fancies herself the Red Emma of public radio reporting, but that is neither here nor heir.

Mike and Red and Rebel Girl and the Littlest Anarchist, age 9 (listening in between rereading The Spiderwick Chronicles through the justice’s speech) sat with our pal Big Dave the Sommalier Surfer in the crowded and charmingly fake reproduction of the White House East Room, the westernmost East Room you’ll find. Teddy Roosevelt hung there, on the wall near us, seeming sternly disapproving. He is reliable that way, gazing out at the room like it is a hill he means to take.

First, the jolly representative of the Nixon Foundation, Richard “Sandy” Quinn, read the winning raffle number. Alas, none of us scored a free, signed copy of the latest book by tonight’s special guest, titled, à la Tim Gunn of Project Runway, Making Democracy Work. I never win anything. No, not true. Age six or so, sitting on my father’s shoulders, I called out the right answer to a riddle (Dad had cheated, whispering it to me) and won a plastic whistle from Little Oscar of wiener fame, this in the parking lot of Beach’s Market, a crowd gathered around the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. That would have been about 1965, important re tonight’s dispatch as Justice Breyer, there to talk about the importance and value of the Supremes (no surprise there) seemed also to talk an awful lot about Civil Rights, including Korematsu v. U.S. and Dred Scott v. Sanford and, of course, Red’s own favorite, Brown v. Board of Ed. Red was raised in Downey, California, mysteriously free of Black people, and a place where the city mothers and fathers, as if anticipating Breyer’s book, dropped the “Earl” from Warren High School because they did not so much like, as completely hate, the Supreme Court Justice’s positions on desegregation.

Cropping by RG

Re making it work, democracy-wise, Justice B. suggested he’d like nothing better than to meet an average American woman in a supermarket, take out that copy of the Constitution he keeps on him, and spiel to her for an hour about his favorite topic. Which he did, as it happens, right there with Teddy on the wall and Nixon in his nearby grave, rolling over and over. He is an enthusiastic judge. As I observed to Rebel and Little in the car, driving home on the Richard Nixon Freeway, “That Justice Breyer sure likes his job!”

The crowd seemed full of liberals: liberal citizens, liberal law students, liberal lawyers. Three law school deans were there, and a judge, who knows about them? Former Congressman Tom Campbell. (Not a liberal, no.) Everybody seemed quite nice, and the questions later were good, except for the two confused ladies who tried to get Justice B. to tell them, right there, last night, in Yorba Linda of all places, how he was going to vote on the constitutionality of so-called health care reform.

You’ll want to read the new book, signed or not, to get the whole story but the fun part about hearing and watching the justice was his call for more civics and history classes taught in high school and in supermarkets, even as he gave what amounted to a very good high school history and civics lecture…if, that is, you went to Harvard High School or Stanford High School or Yale High School and your teacher was appointed to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton and voted in the majority and, as he reminded us, dissented on Bush v. Gore and, yes, the horrible Citizens United v. FEC, which I like to call “Have A Koch and a Smile.” (And, who was it in the crowd, I wonder, who started the vigorous applause for S.B. on that one? Just little ole Red, of course.)

4 Sale

In conclusion, as my students too often end their reports, America is a great country and it could be a lot worse as well. Or even better. Who knows? This seemed to be Judge Steve’s big point, arguing that it was all of those things more or less because of the important and balancing role of the nine smarty-farties in their black robes. Only, he insisted, the historians would know and in the meantime we didn’t have riots, murder and mayhem in the streets every time the Court ruled. One of the last questions from the crowd was a very thoughtful, specific one about rulings in the late 1950s, from an older woman in the back. Breyer thanked her and suggested that her question sounded like one from a historian. “That’s because I am a historian,” she said. My kind of crowd.

Barbara Lee

All the talk about justice and precedent and “right vs. right” and ice cream (okay, mostly by me) caused the Little Anarchist to ask for some on the way home. He got quizzed by his Constitution-loving folks about how to share with others in Fourth Grade the experience of seeing a talk by a Supreme. He’s a little weak on Reconstruction, sure, but solid on Cooper v. Aaron and the Little Rock Nine. The kid shows signs of becoming a Constitutional scholar. His first ruling, later that evening, on Vanilla v. Chocolate, showed both integrity and a real acknowledgement of precedent. —RE

Saddleback's Derek Reeve to City Council: "I named my dog Muhammad"

     Back in July, we noted an article about a San Juan Cap city councilman—and Saddleback College Poli Sci adjunct—who sought to allow citizens to carry guns at the city park.
     Evidently, Derek Reeve is some kind of libertarian gun nut. His Neanderthalic nature became clearer when I dug up Reeve's so-called “mission,” which appears on his election website:

I pledge to represent San Juan Capistrano according to these principles:

1. America Is Good.
2. God is the Center of Life.
3. Your family is sacred and the ultimate authority, not the government.
4. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
5. We have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
6. You work hard for what you have and you will share it with who you want to. Government cannot force you to be charitable.
7. It is not un-American to disagree with authority or to share your personal opinion.
8. The government works for you. You do not answer to them, they answer to you.
9. Semper Fidelis

     Well, Mr. Reeve is in the news again. Evidently, he has named one of dogs “Muhammad,” a fact he went out of his way to report at a recent City Council meeting:

Nicknamed "Muh"

San Juan Capistrano Councilman Named His Dog 'Muhammad' (Voice of OC)

     San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Derek Reeve announced at last week's council meeting that he gave one of his dogs—animals considered particularly impure in the Muslim world—the same name as the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
     "That's right," Reeve said at the council meeting, "I named my dog Muhammad."
     The remarks came during a discussion about a planned dog park in the city. Reeve pulled the item from the meeting agenda, which was scheduled for adoption without discussion, to ask questions and make a brief comment.
     Apparently Reeve thought the remark was funny, and so did some meeting attendees, who could be heard laughing on the audio tape of the meeting.
     "I have two new dogs. I'm excited about a dog park," Reeve said. "America and Muhammad may want to play with [other] dogs."
. . .
     Mayor Sam Allevato said he was "frankly shocked" when he heard Reeve make the comment. Allevato said elected officials need to be held to a higher standard.

His pig, Moses

     "I do not believe that comment does any good in the furtherance of good relations with members of the Muslim faith," Allevato said. "We have to be mindful as the elected leaders of the city. What we speak from the dais reverberates throughout the community and throughout the organization."
. . .
     This isn't the first time this year that a local city council member has made comments offensive to Muslims. Hundreds turned out at a Villa Park City Council meeting in March to protest comments made by Councilwoman Deborah Pauly, who called attendees at a Muslim charity event "enemies of America."

The Ron Paulies invade Irvine Valley College

     Rebel Girl sent me these photos of today's appearance at IVC of the Ron Paulies. Apparently, they set up a booth, offered the usual arguments, and distributed the usual colorful propaganda.
     Among Cave People, Dr. Ron Paul has a special role—he deserves a particularly pointy stalactite—owing to his relative honesty and forthrightness. Sometimes, you almost want to like him.
     He's a Flintstonian Don Quixote, tilting at windbags. The Tea Partiers sometimes claim him because of his isolationism, nativism and hatred for redistribution of wealth, I guess. But he's too genuinely into the freedom thing to be trusted by most of the Tea Brained. And, of course, he's utterly unacceptable to the Big Money GOP old guard.
     Mostly, though, he serves to make his right-wing Tea-Pandering competitors look dodgy and impure. So I do hope he hangs in there!

Affordable Textbooks? Cabrillo College students and instructors weigh in...

"This is Nicola, a Cabrillo College student. 72% of her education expenses go towards buying textbooks. On average, a student like her will spend nine hundred dollars a year on textbooks. In a classroom of 30 students that amounts to 27,000 dollars a year..."

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Take a Hint: Former Student in Print

In case you wonder where they go, what they do - here's one former student checking in.

excerpted from Flash Fiction Chronicles edited by Gay Degani:

Take A Hint: Jenn Alandy’s Long Walk to Print
by Jenn Alandy

I was twenty-four years old when I discovered Welcome to the Monkey House. A former writing teacher, Lisa Alvarez, deepened my appreciation for Kurt Vonnegut by introducing me to this short story collection. Some of the stories were familiar to me, while others – like unopened gifts – were brand new. One of these gifts was a particularly uncharacteristic Vonnegut story entitled “Long Walk to Forever.” In this peculiar and sentimental story, there is no dystopia, there are no Trafalmadorians, no United States Handicapper General, and no Suicide Parlor Hostesses. There are just two young adults named Catharine and Newt.

Catharine is on the verge of marrying another young man named Henry Stewart Chasens, but Newt shows up at her door unexpectedly to visit and notices that she’s clutching a bridal magazine, presumably dreaming of a fruitful, fairytale-esque future. Newt, ever present-minded and spontaneous, disrupts her daydream and asks her to take a walk:

“A walk?” said Catherine.

“One foot in front of the other,” said Newt, “through leaves, over bridges—“

You see, much like Catharine, many emerging writers tend to be farsighted and dream of the fanciful end results: a future book deal, a future six-figure advance, a future book tour. Instead of focusing on the present, writers dream about publication. But this is not why we should write, nor is it why I write...

To read the rest, click here.

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There's Jenn, along with other authors, at the book signing for Hint Fiction at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena.