Nobody Asked Me, But...

SPECIAL WHINY CONSERVATIVE EDITION

 

1) You can almost hear the conservatives chuckling to themselves "Heh, Indeed". So let me get this straight, asshole: a program that was funded for three months runs out of money in just a week (a program that conservatives basically went nuts over), attesting to the wild popularity of the program, and you folks somehow think this is a failure? I think it's a testament to the fact that, deep down, Americans want to do better: they want better cars, they want to be environmentally responsible, and they want to help the economy.

They get it, you don't. Now shut up.

 

2) A President you reall can have a beer with! 

 

Of course, conservatives made up shit about what beers were drunk. Not so much, however. Turns out, only the Presidents had an imported beer, a Bud Light (now owned by a Belgian company). Biden had a non-alcoholic Buckler (by Heineken...designated driver?), Crowley a Blue Moon (division of Adolph Coors (BEEGSHMILE!) company, but believe it or not, also an import now), and Gates had a Boston-based Sam Adams, the only American light beer to be awarded a gold medal at a German beer competition that had no light beer category. And of course, the only frikkin' American beer served at the summit!

 

But let's face facts: non-alcoholic American beers are piss-poor quality, and Bud is so American it would be hard to ignore the company.

 

3) Healthcare "reform" is inching forward.

 

Conservatives point to the "cash for clunkers" program and mock Congressional reform of healthcare. I'm not getting this. Has there suddenly been an uprising of senior citizens outraged over the massive bureaucracy and governmental interference in Medicare?

 

4) Conservatives have mocked the rise in unemployment as the only economic news that counts. It's not. unemployment lags the economy by about six to eight months. Blame Bush.

 

5) "We promise to try not to kill people" Maybe the neo-cons should have taken the same oath.

 

6) Conservatives cannibalize conservatives.

 

7) Apparently, Google is NOT omniscient.

 

8) There's a trope among conservatives with regards to allowing people to sell their organs (this came up in light of Steve Jobs recent liver transplant). This is why it is a bad idea.

 

9) I'd sure go to the beach more often!

 

10) One final jab at conservatives.

 

10)

Flu WHO?

I'm a little surprised at the muted, if any, outrage from the right about this:

A complicated list of who should get pandemic flu vaccine in the fall is now set. When the vaccine starts arriving in September, first in line will be pregnant women; the caretakers of infants; children and young adults; older people with chronic illness; and health-care workers.

That's the advice of a 15-member committee of experts, which met all day Wednesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to advise the federal government on vaccine policy.

The priority list names targeted groups and suggests the order in which they should be vaccinated. While acknowledging the potential for confusion, the committee chose the strategy because of the possibility that the epidemic will be peaking within four to six weeks of when the vaccine becomes available.

This crisis has the confluence of a no-win situation for the Obama team, which is why I was certain this would be a softball for the right wing nutbags to tackle.

 

Think about it: An insufficient vaccine availability (Obama's Katrina) forces the government to ration health care (socialized medicine) which favors the poor, the ill, and women (welfare) over a crisis that hasn't begun to truly impact the United States (UN domination of US sovereignty) so why are we spending so much time and money and exerting such energy over a non-existent crisis (global climate change)?

 

I mean, damn, throw a birth certificate angle in there, and you have a feast for Republizombies!

 

There have been a million swine flu cases already diagnosed in the United States with just over 300 deaths reported and it's still the summer and far from flu season. The production schedule for vaccines has about 40 million doses being delivered in September, 80 million more in October, with another 80 million by the end of the year.

 

Argentina reports 100,000 cases in the middle of their winter, with at least 50 confirmed deaths. Argentina's population is roughly 1/8 the size of America's, so you do the math.

 

In other words, in the middle of our summer, hardly flu season, we've paced the outbreak of one of the worst outbreaks in the Southern Hemisphere winter. And that's after Argentina all but shut down for a week: businesses closed, travel was discouraged, and people were encouraged to remain at home.

 

Quarantine, in other words.

 

Once schools reopen in the fall, we can expect a tremendous spike in the number of cases, and we clearly will not have enough vaccine to get to school kids right away, particularly as this strain of flu seems to hit young people much harder than people over 18 (24 is the priority age for the vaccine, to inoculate college students).

 

 

World's Dumbest OpEd

And considering it's published in the Wall Street Journal, that's a mighty large field to beat out! Meet Thomas Franks...

The essential point about Gates-gate, or the tempest over last week's arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is this: Most liberal commentary on the subject has taken race as its theme. Conservative commentators, by contrast, have furiously hit the class button.

Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to "listen to each other's narratives" and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own "narrative," the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding "liberal elite." Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an "Ivy League big shot," a "limousine liberal," and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, "you don't know who you're messing with"; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates's demand that the officer "beg my forgiveness."

OK, so far, that's not a bad assessment of the situation. Although I might quibble with the terms "most," certainly the loudest and most public voices have focused on those two issues. And now, for the brain fart:

Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.

The, uh, facts broke their way? Honeychild, the facts most certainly broke against the arresting officer and one wonders exactly why the conservatives in this country, the alleged bastion of individual rights and freedoms, aren't taking up Gates' cause.

After all, if he had been arrested for brandishing a weapon at a police invasion of his premises and assault on both his private property and his person, it would be Ruby Ridge all over again!

Oh. Wait. Randy Weaver was white. It's different for white people shooting at Federal agents. I forgot.

The facts, Mr. Frank, are that the originating 911 call made no mention of the suspect's race, except when prompted and even then, Gates or his driver were misidentified as possibly "Hispanic" (direct quote).

And yet, somehow, "two black men (were reported)" appeared in the initial police report. This, despite the firm denial by the complainant (Lucia Whalen) that she ever mentioned the race of anyone.

Those are the facts. Furthermore, since when has insulting anyone....in other words, exercising your First Amendment right to be a jerk...been an arrestable offense? Detestable, perhaps. But it is not an arrestable offense for anyone, standing on their own property, to call a cop names.

After all, one would think they've heard a lot worse from traffic violators, yet county and town jails all across this nation are studiously empty of boneheads with quick tempers, mouthing off to the cop who stopped them for a taillight violation.

But wait! There's more from Mr. Franks!

The "elitism" narrative routinely blind-sides them, takes them by surprise again and again. There they are, feeling good about their solidarity with the coffee-growers of Guatemala, and then they find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from, say, the plumbers of Ohio.

Elitism, in this case, meaning a man who teaches at Harvard University is not entitled to the same basic Constitutional protections that, say, a limousine-riding Ph.D. columnist for the Wall Street Journal is. Especially if said teacher is uppity and black. But I digress.

But then again, limousine-riding Ph. D. columnists for the Wall Street Journal would hardly deign to share a beer with anyone, much less the house Negro at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, would they? Or is he just jealous that The Man is keeping a white man down?

UPDATE: Harvey Silvergate continues the discussion of the Constitutionality of Gates' arrest.

Sgt. Crowley had every right to check on what was reported as a possible break and entry. But as soon as he realized that the occupant was entitled to be in the house, he should have left. He admits in his own police report that he was indeed able to ascertain Professor Gates' residency and hence right to be in the house.

As for Professor Gates' inquiries into the officer's identity and badge number (as Gates describes the confrontation) or his tirade against the officer (as Crowley reports), the citizen was merely--even if neither kindly nor wisely--exercising his constitutional right when faced with official power. Even if Professor Gates were wearing a "Fuck You, Cambridge Police" jacket, the officer would have been obligated to leave the house without its occupant in handcuffs.

No, No, NO!

Just when you think we might actually make progress on national healthcare reform...

[Senator Max] Baucus [D-Stupidtown] says his group will produce the bill that best meets Mr. Obama's top priorities, broadly expanding coverage to the uninsured and curtailing the steep rise in health care spending over the long term, what policy makers call "bending the cost curve."

Still, if the three Democrats and three Republicans can pull off a grand bargain, it will have to be more conservative than the measures proposed by the House or the left-leaning Senate health committee. And that could force Mr. Obama to choose between backing the bipartisan deal or rank-and-file Democrats who want a bill that more closely reflects their liberal ideals.

Already, the group of six has tossed aside the idea of a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers, which the president supports but Republicans said was a deal-breaker.

Instead, they are proposing a network of private, nonprofit cooperatives.

They have also dismissed the House Democratic plan to pay for the bill's roughly $1 trillion, 10-year cost partly with an income surtax on high earners.

The three Republicans have insisted that any new taxes come from within the health care arena. As one option, Democrats have proposed taxing high-end insurance plans with values exceeding $25,000.

The Senate group also seems prepared to drop a requirement, included in other versions of the legislation, that employers offer coverage to their workers. "We don't mandate employer coverage," Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and one of the six, said Monday. Employers that do not offer coverage may instead have to pay the cost of any government subsidies for which their workers qualify. In the House, centrist Democrats have temporarily stalled the health care bill, many lawmakers want to see what Mr. Baucus's group produces before voting on tax increases in the House bill.

What's the point in gutting our current system if we're only going to replace it with a NEW AND IMPROVED FAILED SYSTEM!!!

 

What's the point in reforming healthcare if the reform basically involves putting the foxes in charge of the hen house and letting the wolves walk away scot free?

 

Look, I understand that things in this country have to be done in small steps, like turning a battleship around in a harbor, but this is not even a step forward so much as a move to the side! Meanwhile, millions of Americans will die this year because of inadequate heatlh insurance, bad medical treatments because of bad insurance policies, and inadequate attention to preventative measures that could significantly improve not only the longevity of Americans, but the quality of that life, allowing us a more productive citizenry to help move this country forward.

 

This is LUDICROUS!

 

Bad News, Worse News

An interesting study was released by the University of Hawaii overnight:

Atmospheric carbon increased 70 percent during the period known as Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago, said Richard Zeebe. Yet it was less than expected to explain a rapid increase in temperatures, he said in an interview.

"This constitutes an enigma because carbon dioxide released cannot account for the entire warming. This means something else contributed significantly to the warming," he said.

"We're not saying carbon dioxide is not important," he emphasized. "It is very important. Current and future warming is almost entirely due to carbon emissions. There is no doubt about this."

The right wing will probably crow loudly about this, in their Crow Magnon style, but this is even worse than anticipated.

 

See, if global climate change correlates with an increase in temperature, and that increase in temperature (which has been shown) is correlated with a rise in atmospheric carbon, then any fluctuation from that means that predictions going forward based on that mechanism are suspect.

 

Which might be good news IF temperatures had risen less with a rise in carbon than anticipated in history.

 

This study indicates something far more insidious, although you won't read about it in the news much. The implications of this story are the very real threat of a feedback loop that actually creates more warming than the levels of atmospheric carbon would dictate.

 

For example, it's very hard to measure atmospheric methane in ocean sediment cores-- carbon gets to the bottom of the ocean as unicelled organisms which process it in photosynthesis die and drop down-- but methane is even more of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This study showed that a 70% increase in atmospheric carbon created a 16 degree rise in global temperatures. This was a rise that would be predicted with a tripling of carbon dioxide levels.

 

Scientists predict now that CO2 levels will double this century. We're in for nasty weather, not just this century, but for milennia to come.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) This whole Henry Louis Gates thing up in Massachussetts is arguably the single biggest misdirection this year. Here you have a private citizen in the sanctity of his home, walking around with a cane, being arrested on suspicion of being a burglar...IN HIS OWN HOME!

Look, I like cops. I think they have the toughest job in the world, keeping assholes safe from being assholes and other assholes. But in this instance, they acted precipitously and yes, "stupidly," as our black President, who you know is probably the first in our nation's history to actually suffer police harassments, put it.

Forget the race. A 60-something man walking around a house with a cane is not a robber and the frikkin' cops simply blew the call. Period. End of story. That's the way I'd be reporting it if I was a journalist, and any news organization that is reporting it any differently "the man wasn't acting professional," "police departments nationwide are angry with Obama," is not doing their job.

Period.

2) If these guys were Islamic, how much of a hue and cry would be made? This would have moved from a crime story to a national security "crisis" in seconds.

3) I feel good about this. We need all the friends we can get.

4) I'd be happy if we can get out without embarrassing ourselves. The war we should have been fighting since September 11 seems to be slipping away from us.

5) For the first time in its history, Windows sales declined last quarter.

6) Lance Mannion has posted a very interesting comparison of the Harry Potter novels/movies to Star Wars.

7) "I feel the earth move under my butt." I'm a big fan of outdoor sex, but this would probably put the fear of Thor in me...

8) The inventor of WD-40 has died. World's smoothest burial follows.

9) Revenge....

10) ...Ironic blowback!

Maybe We Ought To Do Away With Marriage?

This is a bit of a woolgathering post, so if it comes off disjointed and rambling, please forgive me.

 

I mean, more than usual, of course.

 

It all started in Florida...

Fort Myers Beach town council voted 5-0 to fire Scott Janke "without cause" after Mayor Larry Kiker called an emergency meeting Tuesday night.

 

Kiker said he learned that afternoon that Janke's wife is an adult film star, and word quickly spread. The elected officials took the action a few hours later.

 

"At no time did we make a judgment call on the activities of Mr. Janke or his wife," Kiker told The Associated Press. "It's a matter of how effective he becomes after this situation. How much disruption there is."

Janke's wife is an actress in adult films who goes under the nym Jazella Moore, and who has starred in the MILF Hunter videos.

 Not my cup of tea, but not hideous or even that obvious a porn actress. This, by the way, was one of the cleaner images I could find of her.

 

So first it was gay marriage that would scare the living crap out of the community, and now it's marrying a porn actor(tress)? Here you have a town manager who was hired to fix problems in the town itself, being fired...for what? His choice of companionship?

 

By the mayor's own admission, Janke "violated no rules or laws and added that he had done a good job for the island town."

 

Huh?

 

A man who was brought in to reunite a town that had been divided over some issues related to its beach...its beach...now finds himself being assumed to be an object of division himself.

 

Look, if he had somehow leaked a videotape of he and his wife (or other person) in the act, and you want to fire him for that, at least that's a construct I can understand. He'd be humiliated and the butt (sorry) of jokes for the rest of his tenure, making his job a little harder to perform to his standards.

 

But to say that his wife is going to somehow affect his ability to negotiate with people or to enforce codes or whatever it is the manager does seems ludicrous. To say that marrying a porn star somehow tarnishes the image of a bikini-clad beach community runs close to the line of silliness.

 

If that's the case, then why not go house by house and look at the folks who live there. Got any porn stars living on the beach? Get rid of them. And the drug dealers. And the guy who's cat meows too loudly when it's in heat.

 

If, as Councilman Tom Babcock of the town states, you are held to a higher standard as a public official, can we assume then there is absolutely zero corruption in the town? Or is Mr Babcock receiving a few bucks under the table because he's looking the other way about underage drinking or perhaps a zoning variance? Maybe he needs to be vetted again, along with every other member of the Ft Myers Beach government.

 

Why is it that marriage to anyone is anyone else's business? If a marriage makes a man or woman happy and helps them to perform their jobs more effectively and makes them better citizens in the community, then by God, why not let the man (or woman) marry whomever the hell they want to and just shut up about it!

A Sign of Sanity

If you're in the middle of an economic crisis and your own people are hurting and there's no one on the horizon who has anything close to the military hardware you have, then you can afford to let upgrades die:

The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation's premier fighter jet program, embracing by a 58-40 margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that the F-22 is no longer needed for the nation's defense and a costly drag on the Pentagon's budget in an era of small wars and growing counterinsurgency efforts.

[...] (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates had depicted the F-22, which was conceived in the 1980s, as a "silver bullet solution" to a high-technology aerial warfare threat that has not materialized. He said other warplanes will adequately defend the country for decades to come, and won support from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Air Force's two senior leaders. But his view was strongly opposed by others in the Air Force and by military contractors and unions that have benefited from the $65 billion program.

A hearty "Amen" to this!

 

Defense spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product is roughly 20% of the United States budgets in a typical year. I say "typical," because of the outlying domestic stimulus spending this year, which will dwarf defense spending (and watch the right-wing whackjobs now claim "it's such a small number!").

 

We nearly spend more each year on defense than every other nation on the planet. Combined. Re-read that and think about the implications.

 

Military power is closely aligned with spending, so that means that if we had to defend our soil against every other country on the planet, right down to Lichtenstein, San Marino and Palau, it would be a fair fight!

 

The war of the future as it stands right now will be fought using mobile and surgical tactics, smaller forces deployed in smaller areas targeting smaller objectives. That may change, but right now, there is no one on the horizon who can create such a widespread war as to justify the waste of money on a fighter of this caliber.

 

Except maybe, um, us. And we nearly did cause a war of that magnitude. The lessons of history will probably be written that America came closer to the brink of starting World War III in this generation than any nation ever did. if the start of World War I is any indication, it would not take much of a spark to light the powder keg that Bush in concert with Al Qaeda compiled.

 

And if history's course is any determinant, aggressors get theirs in the end, usually in swift and painful fashion. It would not have been pretty.

 

We should applaud Secretary Gates as well as the Senate for having the courage to not take us one step closer to annihilation, militarily as well as economically.

Matt Drudge: Fucking Moron

It's easy to see how Matt Drudge can be taken seriously as a "journalist," what with the cool fedora he's usually portrayed with. After all, clothes make the man, right? Things like integrity, hard work, fact checking, none of those have anything to do with reporting the news. It's all about the hat.

 Like, say, talking about how the government spent almost $2 million dollars to buy a couple of pounds of ham. Try to find the original article, and it's gone, but here's the precis:

The purchases for sliced ham and other contracts - including mozzarella and other cheeses - were to provide soup kitchens and homeless shelters with food for the needy.

And governmentese references to 2 pounds of frozen ham and other sizes was to the products' packaging, not the overall amount of food purchased.

In fact, the Agriculture Department purchased some 760,000 pounds of ham with that $1.19 million - a cost of about $1.50 a pound, Vilsack said.

Now, a real reporter would have picked up the phone, and called the USDA and asked, "Hey, you know, there's this line item in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that says you folks spent over a million bucks on two pounds of ham. Care to comment?"

 

A cursory look at Drudge's website on any random minute, like, say, now, reveals these headlines:

 

- UK: Man, 22, Dies After Liver Transplant Refused...

 

- CLAIM: Fish are shrinking in response to global warming...  (well, at least he acknowledges global warming is real)

 

- VIDEO: Congressman's town hall erupts over Obama birth certificate...

 

- iPhone application lets you find nearest pot dealer...

 

Now, I'd bet that of these four stories, one is flat out true (the claim about the fish actually having been made), one is an exaggeration of circumstances (the town hall eruption), one is a joke reported as straight fact (the pot app...altho it's going to be fun downloading that one!), and the last one is a flat out distortion of what is likely a true-but-mundane story, so badly distorted now that the memory of a tragic death will be tarnished forever by a bunch of know-nothing bloggers who believe that Drudge only ever tells the truth.

 

After all, he wouldn't print it if it wasn't true, to quote the Joe Jackson song.

 

To his credit, he not only published the refutation by the USDA, specifically by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, but highlighted it on his home page.

 

To his dishonor, he mocked it, acting as a child who points to a load of shit he's just taken under the stairs and saying "See? See, Mommy? Look what I made!"

 

This reprehensible piece of human filth, this scum who dares call himself a newsman, is a disgrace to anything that walks the face of the earth and calls itself a human being. His job, his life, is to destroy anyone who is better than him and that means everyone. And one day, he'll turn his guns on anyone, including those who suck at his teat now and feed him his dredge information.

 

And I'll applaud. They deserve each other.

Space: The Liberal Frontier

A curious nexus of events is occuring right now, coincidences abound.

 

Today marks, as you undoubtedly know, the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk by Neil Armstrong.

 

It's hard to believe that it's been forty years. It's harder still to believe that the promise of those early space explorations has been strangled in the cradle by bureaucrats and people without dreams, pragmatists.

 

Less hard to believe is that Walter Cronkite, one of the voices of the American space program, has been stilled on the very threshold of this anniversary.

 

Cronkite reported on many tragic events in a turbulent American landscape at a time when change was something real, not a campaign slogan. Through it all, from assassinations to war to student unrest to politics, Cronkite kept his composure, at times when a lesser man would have broken down (and indeed, many did).

 

If you look closely at the time he reported on the death of John F. Kennedy, you can see him fight his tears back, because he knew his job was to tell us what happened, not to feel it.

 

In fact, the only time I can recall Cronkite being so overwhelmed by the news was on this date, 40 years ago, as man stepped out onto the surface of another celestial body for the first time.

 

Part of that, no doubt, was the monumental task involved and the effort America dedicated to it. Three astronauts died testing Apollo 1. Millions and millions of dollars were spent honing and refining technology. A nation that had come of age with the death of its youngest President, his brother and a man of peace, all at the hands of gun violence, was in desperate need of a spark and the shiny metal boxes of the space program provided welcome relief.

 

A nation cheered Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, less for their achievement than for the relief from our losses.

 

But I think a larger part is unspoken often when discussing what the moon landing meant to us. We were set upon the task by that youngest President, who saw the competition that the Soviet Union had laid down upon his table and rose to the challenge. We were scared not only of the world around us, but of ourselves. America revealed an uglier side with the use of the atomic bomb, no matter whether such use was justified or not and continuing right into a war of aggression that was probably pointless.

 

Cronkite's brain cramp, his "wow" moment, was undoubtedly largely influenced by all this: the tears he had been unwilling to shed that November day were exhaled on this July day.

 

There was a sense of completion that day, to be sure. The entire nation had been ramped up for the exploration of space for so long and as 1968 closed and we saw images of our earth from Apollo 8, at the end of a year of violence and unrest, it was almost as if the entire country stood still and clasped hands. We really were all in this together on this little blue marble.

 That image marked the pursuit of the moon in earnest. Hell, even SNOOPY was an astronaut!

 

The decade closed much as it had opened: with promise and hope and new beginnings. Sadly that promise was broken, the hope quashed and the new beginnings became "nothing in the street looks any different to me." History didn't change, at least not for the better. We ended up in the morass of self-righteousness and moral lecturing that we've seen these past forty years grown and morph this country from one that looked forward to one yearning to move backwards, past the moonwalk, past the assassinations, back to a time when men were men, women were silent, and minorities were at best ignored.

 

The promise of space is a promise of progressivism. The promise of space is liberalism writ large, on a cosmic scale. What we learned going to the moon, indeed the benefits we've accrued...it always makes me laugh to read a criticism about space exploration written on a computer using the very microchips that grew out of Apollo...have been massive, and I think we've only just begun to understand technology's promise from space.

 

We really have no choice, we humans. We must move forward. We must move outward. We must seek space.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Not that I think abortion should be illegal or anything to abrogate a woman's right to choose, but it seems to me that these folks would have had strong moral backing if they chose to step in on the part of the anti-abortion crowd. This is a very sad story when we should be celebrating their lives.

 

2) Wrists In The News.

 

3) Just in case you thought swine flu was no longer a problem...Argentina has been under a national lockdown for over a week now.

 

4) "Less of a problem" is not "no longer a problem."

 

5) I don't know if this is pure speculation or if there's a real trend here, but good news in the housing market.

 

6) It was forty years ago today...give or take.

 

7) Yea. The way a chigger gets under the skin until you kill it.

 

8) This is one "endangered species" I will not mourn. Phugliest shoes in the world.

 

9) Wine and beer at Starbucks. Look forward to overpaying for badly stored chablis made with sour grapes and rebottled Old Milwaukee.

 

10) I guess this guide is for rich parents of kids who won't take advantage of what life has gifted them to get into college. "Now, Johnny, when the admissions officer asks if you shot anyone, just smile oddly."

You Talk A Lot....

...but you're not saying anything.

 

When a candidate is being questioned for confirmation, one way to know whether it's a slam dunk or if it's a rocky road is how much the candidate him or herself actually speaks. The same is true for a suspect, if you ever get into that situation: the more the cops talk, the less likely they're convinced they have the right man.

 

As Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times points out:

As of Wednesday morning, the senators had spouted 50,082 words.

In response Judge Sotomayor had been able to utter barely 20,000 words (20,728, to be exact).

Monday was the worst day: Senators 23,175  Sotomayor 942.

Some "hearing." Maybe they ought to call it a "talking."

Clearly, this is a stall tactic designed to make the Senators look good under the "advise and consent" clause of the US Constitution. Things got so bad that Al Franken felt the need to do what is arguably the stupidest thing ever in a Senate confirmation hearing: do shtick

FRANKEN: OK. I -- we're going to have a round two, so I'll ask you some more questions there. What was the one case in "Perry Mason" that Berger won?

Admittedly, this was after some very piercing questioning about Internet regulation and privacy rights in which Sotomayor actually DID have the chance to expound on her views.

 

In point of fact, there's not a whole lot "there" there, as the only legitimate complaint about Sotomayor has been one, and only one, quote of hers with respect the whole "wise Latina woman," and even there, the context in which she spoke (to an audience of, um, wise Latina women) and the speech itself (on how important it was for wise Latina women to be role models for the community).

 

A remark she has already expressed regret about. Her rulings and her track record suggest a centrist judge with empathy and compassion for those who deserve it, and stern justice for those who don't.

 

Could we ask for a better judge? Too many of the "old white men" that have been the hallmarks of the Reagan/Bush administrations have never set foot in a ghetto, never seen the inside of a tenement or housing project, never walked the streets of their own neighborhoods terrified of the next dark alley.

 

Sotomayor has. I think it's safe to say she knows the difference between need and greed, between those who ask us for help and those who beg us for a free ride. She's seen people in actual need, dealt with them in her life outside of the law.

 

And she's seen scammers and crooks who hide behind the masks of pain and need. This has clearly shaped her use of the law to promote justice. And since the Supreme Court is all about the interpretation of the law, it would be easy to fall back on the patriarchal "Founders intent" viewpoint as so many fasc-- I mean, conservatives have.

 

It's easy, in other words, to rule on law in the vacuum of textbooks and precedents. You make the law as strict as possible, and ignore that there are hundreds of millions of people out there, each with a different story, each affected differently by the law. And it should not be policy of the government of the United States to treat anyone unfairly, if avoidable.

 

The rigid, dogmatic thinking, logic and ice cold, of the past 233 years must be changed to incorporate our new understanding of humanity and humankind. This is what I think Sotomayor brings to the court.

 

And why the Senate won't need her to speak.

Finally, Someone Takes A Stab At The Right Thing!

It's about fucking time:

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democratic leaders, pledging to meet the president's goal of health care legislation before their August break, are offering a $1.5 trillion plan that for the first time would make health care a right and a responsibility for all Americans. Left to pick up most of the tab were medical providers, employers and the wealthy.

"We cannot allow this issue to be delayed. We cannot put it off again," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said Tuesday. "We, quite frankly, cannot go home for a recess unless the House and the Senate both pass bills to reform and restructure our health care system."

Healthcare ought to have been a right in the Constitution from the get-go, but back then, people didn't see doctors unless they were dying. And the average age a man lived to was 40, a woman with children had an even shorter life expectancy.

 

See, it's in the Declaration of Independence and these asshats who always look to the "intent of the Founders" ought to reacquaint themselves with that document.

 

There's an awful lot of good in the proposal, as highlighted in these paragraphs:

Under the House Democrats' plan, the federal government would be responsible for ensuring that every person, regardless of income or the state of their health, has access to an affordable insurance plan. Individuals and employers would have new obligations to get coverage, or face hefty penalties.

The legislation calls for a 5.4 percent tax increase on individuals making more than $1 million a year, with a gradual tax beginning at $280,000 for individuals. Employers who don't provide coverage would be hit with a penalty equal to 8 percent of workers' wages, with an exemption for small businesses. Individuals who decline an offer of affordable coverage would pay 2.5 percent of their incomes as a penalty, up to the average cost of a health insurance plan.

In other words, you can't really opt out of the insurance. One way or another, we're not going to let you drag our healthcare costs up by treating the emergency room as your family physician anymore. By the same token, no employer is going to make an extra couple of pennies off the backs of his poor workers by depriving them of the most essential tool they need to do their jobs: their health. I know an awful lot of people who would give up the cafeteria/lunchroom or the soda and candy machines for affordable health insurance.

 

It's not perfect, it's not even that close to perfect, but it looks like it might be an interesting first step towards what this nation truly deserves: single-payer health insurance whereby NO ONE can make a profit off your body.

A Welcome Breath Of Carbon-Neutral Air

Sarah Palin is an idiot.

 

That said, there are legitimate concerns with respect to cap-and-trade policies in an energy policy, centered mostly around how easy it is to game the system to benefit large polluters, as well as a moral objection to the introduction of free market solutions to essentially a social problem. Rather than seek a reduction in carbon emissions, cap-and-trade effectively shifts the burden, spreading it around.

 

To a degree, this is true, but it's also true that there is a heavy financial incentive on the part of those who have credits to trade not to pollute more (they have less income), and as time goes on, the price of credits will index up, thus negating the pollution incentive for the purchasers of credits.

 

It's a gradual withdrawal of carbon from the pollution cycle, and therefore manageable.

 

Palin raises a ridiculous point, particularly in light of what other criticisms of cap-and-trade amount to.

 

She claims:

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.

Cap-and-trade does not limit energy production in the sense that it sets a ceiling on it. If some company decides that it needs more energy, and it is willing to make the rather punitive payment to use it, then it is free to do so. Cap-and-trade is not a quota system with finite limits.

 

Indeed, if anything, these voluntary measures will help extend America's own fossil fuel supplies as companies recognize there is profit in protecting the environment.

 

And profit creates jobs. And jobs create an economy.

 

Now, you don't have to take my word for it. Here's Conor Clarke, subbing in for Andrew Sullivan:

Cap and trade creates revenue, which can be used to mitigate the costs for consumers. When the Congressional Budget Office did it's analysis of the distribution of the costs and benefits of the House's cap and trade bill, it found that the poorest quintile would actually benefit.

Cap-and-trade attempts to quantify the social costs of business decisions. If I litter, I create a job for a sanitation worker, which means a wage must be paid. In addition, I help feed a vermin population, which means a health official must be hired.

 

American society has always been predicated on the quantifiable. It's the Flatlanders' best method of proving their superiority. I can compare my wallet to yours, and if mine has more, I'm a better person.

 

Which might be true, but probably is not. As Warren Buffett so often points out, nobody gets anywhere in this world without the support of the people and society around him or her. Those who can shunt aside as much of the costs of success as possible to hidden and unmeasurable resources make pure profit.

 

Which is why it's important to account for these as closely as possible. Level the playing field, and open the books.

 

Who knows? Maybe it will even turn Alaska into a powerhouse state!

Ice Age Meltdown

It's been very interesting to watch the dynamic of the Republican party over the past six or seven months, ever since losing the 2008 election in a landslide.

 

For example, the intramural backstabbing is beginning in earnest on the one person who probably stood the best strategic chance of reuniting the party quickly, Sarah Palin:

What is remarkable is the contempt Palin has engendered within her own party and the fact that so many of her GOP detractors are willing, even eager, to express it publicly -- even with Palin an early front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

 

Some admit their preference that she stay in Alaska and forget about any national ambitions.

 

 

"I am of the strong opinion that, at present day, she is not ready to be the leading voice of the GOP," said Todd Harris, a party strategist who likened Palin to the hopelessly dated "Miami Vice" -- something once cool that people regard years later with puzzlement and laughter. "It's not even that she hasn't paid her dues. I personally don't think she's ready to be commander in chief."

And Harris was polite, compared to some of the vitriol!

 

What I find most interesting is that this is the precise venom spewed by the conservatives and Republicans for the past sixteen years as they held sway over, first, Congress, then the Presidency and finally the Supreme Court. Liberals and Democrats were not only attacked, they were mutilated.

 

Having seen a country grow tired of these divisive tactics and having seen their power slip like an ice cube down a glacier on a sunny day, Republicans have not learned to put the flame-throwers down, instead finding the one target left that they can legitimately hose down.

 

Each other.

It is more than cruel sport, this picking apart of Alaska's departing chief executive. The sniping reflects a serious split within the Republican Party between its professional ranks and some of its most ardent followers, which threatens not only to undermine Palin's White House ambitions -- if, indeed, she harbors them -- but to complicate the party's search for a way back to power in Washington.

There's the power brokers on the one hand, the rank-and-file on the other hand. The brokers know how to get things done. The rank-and-file knows how to get people nominated. Palin stood a chance at pushing the rope that is the Republican party towards unity. Her massive appeal with the masses would have put her in good stead with the powers that be if she learned to be a bit more flexible in how she is being handled.

 

Indeed, I suspect part of the problem the GOP has now, and perhaps the problem the Democrats finally shed with Barack Obama, is the need to micromanage even their candidate for President (nominally the party leader). The Republican party has been the slave to a formula laid down in the 1980s by Lee Atwater, reinforced by Newt Gingrich, and then set in stone by Karl Rove, a strategy of attack without mercy, propose with as little detail as possible, and spin, spin, spin.

 

And as the last twenty five years have shown, it works. For a while.

 

It didn't hurt the GOP that the Democrats threw candidates against the wall men who had no business running...Michael DUKAKIS?!?!?! John Kerry????...which only reinforced the general notion (which they then incorporated) that the GOP was invincible. It also didn't hurt the GOP that demographics were on their side, as manufacturing jobs, generally held by more conservative elements of society, fled the bluer states into the redder states, replacing dying agricultural jobs.

 

Now that those jobs are being offshored, it's left conservative men and women angry, but has also marginalized the GOP as a regional powerhouse and nothing else.

 

Hard to say where this ends. My suspicion is the Republican party will cleave open and a third party will emerge, which will pretty much guarantee a Democratic hegemony for a decade easily, and perhaps two, until a candidate emerges for either of the two fractions of the GOP that can heal the wounds and attract followers from the other party.

 

Perhaps this is Palin's ultimate goal.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Michael Jackson...murder victim????

 

2) News headline I'd like to see: SLEAZY POLITICO HOLDS ENTIRE STATE UP FOR RANSOM, because that's truly what Espada did.

 

3) The score stands as follows: Humans 480 Bulls 15.

 

4) Truly, this has been an Endeavour.

 

5) If you were at the restaurant at 354 Metropolitan Avenue last night, yes, that was me. I made a rare public appearance at Fette Sau, a new barbecue place. Looks interesting. It's an old commercial garage. I may have to go back for food one night.

 

6) Not in a million years would I have realistically given Lance Armstrong a chance to win an eighth Tour De France and vindicate his earlier victories. He has voluntarily submitted to daily testing AND has been subjected to at least two other surprise "random" tests.

 

7) Of course, if Lance did drug, maybe marijuana was his drug of choice. Sure didn't hurt Michael Phelps any.

 

8) Somehow, shooting gerbils doesn't seem like much sport.

 

9) This is why women don't cook anymore.

 

10) Terrorism or dumb prank? You decide.

Sub-burpin' Sprawl

I am a black hole.

I'll get back to that in a minute. Let me do the set up first.

I would argue that, while perhaps not an overwhelming number, a pretty big segment of society is pretty shallow, perhaps even a majority.

Psychic space being a finite element if you look in two dimensions, part of the reason we end up in conflict with each other is that your sprawl ends up butting against my sprawl, because each of us is trying to get more sprawl.

I'd wager this large segment of society are always busy doing, well, something: Running out to meet friends, working too hard at a job, jetting off to the next vacation. They need the trappings of a "good life", the condo on the beach, the car, fine wines.

They expand sideways because they can't know there's a depth to life, too.

I call these people "Flatlanders". In the guise of "expanding themselves," adding sides (to extend the metaphor), they gain no third dimension. They buy this trinket or that souvenir and proudly display them on their shelves to boast of their travels.

They claim understanding of the world around them, but in truth, this is a false logic.

For how can you truly relate to the world if you do not relate to yourself? How can you understand someone else and have compassion for their plight if you don't understand yourself and extend that compassion to yourself?

How can you love if you have no love to give?

Love is a commitment, and commitments always demand faith. You can only have faith by delving deep into those parts of you that lie covered in darkness, shrouded by the sprawl of your flatlandedness.

Faith is not based on logic or hunches. Indeed, faith is that thing that keeps us tied to what we love when "evidence" suggests it might be time to let go.

I put "evidence" in quotes because none of us can ever really know a truth outside of ourselves. our eyes deceive us. Our ears hear distant noises that emanate from within us.

Our minds lie to us for...what? Fear? Our protection? Freud was not far off, I fear, when he spoke of the id, the ego, and the superego. Many people you'll meet have a champion superego, but no id.

Well, that's not completely true. That id shows up in the weirdest ways and those are the behaviors we look at and wonder what the hell were they (or we) thinking?

Faith comes from belief. Faith is a never-ending well to draw from.

I am a black hole.

Spending my adult life extending my self-knowledge, I have been able to give love completely.

Love does not necessarily mean another person at all times. One can love yourself, for example, or find love in the smallest acts of kindness and in the roughest, bleakest landscape.

I express this love through my art: my photography, my acting and performing, and especially my writing. By opening my heart to what goes on around me, by drinking in from the fountain of the world, I can absorb that which I see and express how it affects me.

This is something that Flatlanders never get: it's not about seeing the temples at Angkor Wat or the pyramids or Mount Everest, taking a snapshot, buying a trinket, and bragging about it later, maybe saying how you "soaked up" the local culture with a beer and some local food at a boîte.

It's about how these affect you. I probably have fewer pictures of more places in the world that I've been than anyone else. And I'd wager I have a deeper understanding of anyplace I've been than a million other tourists.

Let's say five people, including me, see a house on a high cliff and take pictures of it.

Most people will center on the house, and the good ones will get enough of the cliff to allow for the precarious position of the building.

I will take that same picture and focus on the cliff: the striations of layers of history building, year after year, one on top of the other, the roots breaking out into the air, the grass overhanging the lip.

Oh, I'll include the house, to show it as the burden the cliff must bear until it can no longer bear it, to highlight the foolish transient nature of people who build on land that is ultimately destined to fall.

To highlight the Flatlanders.

I take that picture that way because I understand the precarious nature of life, how tomorrow, we might all be gone. Or more to the point, how tomorrow I might be gone.

So I want to leave a piece of me in these places. Many people talk about leaving their heart, but for me, I've shredded little bits of my soul and left them behind. Places don't steal my heart. I steal places' hearts.

I am a black hole. I leave a small footprint on the surface, but once you've peeked into the abyss, you realize there's a lot more down there than up here.

The trouble with Flatlanders is, they insist on painting on the surface what they want me to be, to define me somehow. But you cannot define that which you cannot understand.

And then they get frustrated that I no longer fit the definition they gave me in the first place.

I am a being, not a doing. I don't worry that I've held the same job for eleven years, because while I don't enjoy it much, I know that it's comfortable for me, and as many places as I've worked, this is pretty sweet and stable.

Some may jump jobs every other year and believe they are improving their lot, but they collect nothing but a paycheck and a too-long resume. Like children with french fries, they are grabbing for the next one before they're finished chewing the first one.

Further, I understand that my discomfort there has to do with boredom, the terrible mind draining tedium of having conquered all I can on this employment.

My faith tells me this. I am enough, and my needs beyond the space to explore my space are few. I don't need to be "seen" in a hot exotic restaurant with friends who I can only truly stand when I'm drunk, but my influence is felt none the less.

I am a black hole. By knowing myself, I know everything I encounter. No, I might not know every single fact about everything...altho most people will swear I do...but I have a deep comprehension of the truth of it.

It is that truth that gets expressed, like the radiation bursts out of the black hole.

You Keep Telling Yourself That, Sparky

Poor Sarah Palin:

The Alaska governor spoke in taped interviews on ABC, NBC and CNN broadcast Tuesday morning.

She told CNN that "all options are on the table" for her future.

But told ABC's "Good Morning America" that she recognizes she might not have political staying power after her surprise resignation Friday, which came just as she had been expected to elevate her national profile ahead of a possible 2012 GOP presidential run.

"I said before ... 'You know, politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it,'" she said.

Speaking in fishing waders from the town of Dillingham, Gov. Palin said her administration has been paralyzed by fending off frivolous lawsuits.

So let me get this straight: you're frustrated by your inability to win a fight in your administration because your administration has been under investigation for possible corruption...and leaving is somehow fighting?

I might be wrong, but "fighting" to me means throwing a few haymakers back. Anything else is quitting.

Cute touch with the fishing waders and the whole "family fishing business" thing. Most people in the lower 48 will assume it's like the Gloustermen of The Perfect Storm, you know, weeks on a boat, reeking of bait and a lone shower, the things real men do.

I'm betting that "fishing business" means hiring boats to go out and do the dirty work for you.

Imagine, if you will, what would happen if, say, she somehow got caught in the Oval Office with her pants down and Congress launched an investigation that lasted six years and culminated in an impeachment trial.

Think she'd quit? I do, based on this silly little girl's tale here.

Personally, I don't think she's going to run. Between the campaign jokes made about her, the recent kerfuffle with David Letterman and this obvious grandstand ploy, she's come to the realization that, goshdarnit, people really don't like her very much.

Yes, she has immense support from the conservative wing of the Republican party, but other conservatives in the party are balking mightily at the fact she seems to be dividing the party up, perhaps to create her own ("Dominionist"?) third party.

It's hard to predict where this is really going to end up. On the one hand, a Palin party would both destroy and save the Republican party from itself. It would attract the John Birchers and the fringe members of the media and with the help of Rush Limbaugh et al, would establish a legitimate national party.

For a while. See, moving the inmates out of the asylum doesn't make the inmates sane, but it makes the asylum safer.

Fear is the mindkiller

Rigid thinking and black and white solutions are the mark of children, the small-minded, and Republicans.

I started thinking about this over the weekend, attempting to flesh out why so many people in this country are patriarchal.

It's the whole "my way or the highway" logic. I never understood the lack of of compassion for another person's situation. I mean, it's not like we're discussing things that require immediate action or snap judgements.

It's true, even framing the discussion as black/white (either/or) often precludes a meaningful discussion and b) any hope of solving complex problems, like immigration and of course, abortion.

So why do people do this? Why is it so easy, left and right, to paint the opposition as radical and dangerous and thus shut off dialogue?

Rather than be open to compromise and new ways of seeing things, to simplify things to some arbitrary "essentials" ignores nearly the entire tale of history. Things are never as easy as they appear.

What's turned this entire thread around was that I wanted to understand why some people can't seem to let go and grow up, that they feel the need to control and dictate over things they have no business controlling.

Like other people. Indeed, the essence of controlling someone else is to negate any possible value of that person's opinion in favor of force-feeding them your position, and then intimidating them into accepting it.

I think it comes down to views from the extremes, which I find are propelled by fear and when grabbed by fear it is extremely difficult if not impossible to see clearly and with distance.

Fight or flight. You panic and all you can think about is whether your gloves are high enough in front of your face or your running shoes are laced tightly enough.

People can't manage to take a breath and assume the other party perhaps has some validity to their views, and incorporate those, rather than attacking the views, the other party, or usually both.

But why?

I think it has to do with knowing yourself. In getting to know yourself, you learn two things:

1) The world is a lot more complex than you ever gave it credit for and, 2) you have to incorporate as much information as you can in order to present an informed judgment on something. You have biases, but as you gather information, you learn what those biases are and try to compensate.

In gathering this information, you learn about different views of the world. You learn that other people see things just as logically as you do and can yet come to completely different solutions.

When you don't know yourself, when you make knee-jerks reactive judgments based on biases or incomplete information, you panic when presented with alternative views and alternative information that discredits and maybe negates your own conclusions.

And panic leads to immature behavior. And children don't think, they believe, and when those beliefs are threatened, they try to believe even harder.

Making a commitment to something-- a relationship, a religion, a job, whatever-- requires an act of faith. It says that "I am in this fully because I believe in this and good will come from it."

When evidence to the contrary presents itself, how many people sit down and try to understand if it means something? Instead of trying to incorporate the new information either into their faith or to perhaps look more closely at that faith, the larger number of people with either reject the evidence out of hand ("He can't be having an affair! We just made love last night!") or reject the faith-object itself ("Boss, you promised me a promotion! I quit!").

Both of those are intelligent reactions, so long as they remain in the realm of first stage reactions (what we tell ourselves). Neither of those is intelligent actions until we can look deeper into the abyss of this new information and uncover what's really going on.

Our fears: justified, or not?

Nobody Asked Me But....

1) *crossing legs tightly*

2) *putting on my walking shoes*

3) *getting my hot dog jones on*

4) *putting on my lead suit*

5) *checking my computer cache*

6) *dipping my teabag in a big fat cup of shutthefuckup*

7) *dipping my Boehner in a big fat cup of shutthefuckup*

8) *checking my bank balances*

9) *checking my liver*

10) *wondering about segregation in cyberspace*