Limited Jest

Ex-aide renounces Bush

2007-04-02T07:07:00.000-05:00

Chief Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd tells the NYT he's disenchanted:

“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said.

Yeah, imagine how the rest of us feel.

French leave

2007-03-19T08:11:00.000-05:00

I like the flap over the number of deserters. Are they counting Bush, or not?

Run, Dick, run.

2007-02-27T10:03:00.000-06:00

See Dick run:

Cheney takes refuge in bomb shelter after Afghan blast.

Pack of liars

2007-02-09T09:33:00.000-06:00

Today on GMA I heard that wolves take care of their old and sick.

It's regrettable but hardly surprising that an animal notorious for rapacity is more humane than the current Administration:

In the months since the election, President Bush has escalated the war in Iraq and made serious threats and allegations (unsupported by evidence) that could presage an attack against Iran. He has proposed a health-care reform measure that, as a side effect, would largely wipe out Social Security for low and moderate income workers. President Bush has also proposed gradually phasing out Medicare for middle income retirees over the next 4 or 5 decades. --Dean Baker

Can you hear me now?

2007-02-02T14:16:00.000-06:00

The Earth stages a guerilla marketing campaign on Super Bowl weekend:

Florida tornado released on same day as IPPC report.

Global Climate Change-- brought to you by YOU!

Uppity woman will be missed

2007-02-01T08:02:00.000-06:00

Molly Ivins' first newspaper job was in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle, followed by the position of sewer editor. She went on to the Minneapolis Tribune, where she was the first woman police reporter in that city and, later, the reporter who covered a beat called Movements for Social Change, where she notes that she wrote about "militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers." She left the Tribune to write for the Texas Observer from 1970 to 1976. The New York Times, concerned that its prevailing writing style was too staid and lifeless, hired her away from the Observer in 1976, and she wrote for the Times until 1982. Her more colorful style clashed with the editors' expectations, and in 1982, after she wrote about a "community chicken-killing festival" and called it a "gang-pluck," she was dismissed. She then wrote for the Dallas Times Herald from 1982 until the paper's demise in 1992, moving in that year to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, her current home paper. --Creators Syndicate

Molly's last column ends:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge.

Schieffer takes a stand

2007-01-29T07:30:00.000-06:00

Bob Schieffer is mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more. This is how he ended "Face the Nation" Sunday:

Schieffer: Can We Handle the Truth?

During the court martial scene in the movie "A Few Good Men," young Navy prosecutor Tom Cruise put Marine Colonel Jack Nicholson on the stand and demanded the truth.

Nicholson replied, "The truth? You can't handle the truth!"

A memorable line, but we are left to ask: Has the government concluded Nicholson's character was right, that Americans can't handle the truth?

As the war has grown worse, we have heard government spokesmen from the top on down tell us "Stuff happens," "Mission accomplished," "Enormous progress," "The good news is not reported."

We can't even get a straight story on how our troops die.

Last week, the Pentagon first reported that four Americans were killed in Iraq while repelling an enemy attack. Then on Friday we were told they had actually been kidnapped during a shootout and executed, two of them handcuffed and shot in the head.

In the hours after the killings, reporters who had pieced together the real story were told their version was inaccurate. The new Secretary of Defense claimed he was unaware of the new information an hour before it was announced.

The government argues that public criticism hurts the war effort, but it is being damaged much more by its own loss of credibility brought on by such incidents.

Truth is the foundation of democracy and Americans can handle the truth — they demand it. History shows that when they fail to get it, they no longer follow their leaders, no matter the cause. They are more likely to just change leaders.

I applaud Bob Schieffer's courageous stand. He is clearly outraged by this administration's casual dismissal of important values such as truth and human life.

Thank you for speaking up, Bob, and speaking truth to power. If more journalists had dared to challenge this arrogant administration, we might not now be debating our painful way out of the Iraq quagmire.

Never mind the rabid rightwing bloggers, ("You know, this is rediculous. Just rediculous. Bob", "Bob Schieffer, you are full fledged, flaming, card carrying liberal.") full speed ahead.

In a word, no.

2007-01-27T10:11:00.000-06:00

Today's NYT editorial:

We often wonder whether there is a limit to the Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy, its assault on the rule of law, its disdain for the powers of Congress, its willingness to con the public and its refusal to heed expert advice or recognize facts on the ground. Events of the past week suggest the answer is no.

Let me rephrase that: uh-uh.

While Rome burns

2007-01-27T08:15:00.000-06:00

"The house is on fire and he's mowing the lawn."
--Terry Tamminen on Bush's nod to global climate change in the State of the Union address.

Can we sing it at ballparks?

2007-01-24T09:45:00.000-06:00

Randy Newman proposes an anthem for our day:

A president once said,
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid
It’s patriotic in fact and color coded
And what are we supposed to be afraid of?
Why, of being afraid
That’s what terror means, doesn’t it?
That’s what it used to mean

The end of an empire is messy at best
And this empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We’re adrift in the land of the brave
And the home of the free
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

The Emperor's New Plan

2007-01-24T06:14:00.000-06:00

All he is saying is give war a chance.

What it is costing us

2007-01-19T13:53:00.000-06:00

In his denunciation of the Vietnam War , Dr. King said,

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Art Buchwald

2007-01-18T09:14:00.000-06:00

Too soon to say goodbye.

The madness of King George

2007-01-16T10:11:00.000-06:00

Slate says:

The endgame in the war on terror isn't holding the line against terrorists. It's holding the line on hard-fought claims to absolutely limitless presidential authority.

Time to Break Silence

2007-01-15T00:17:00.000-06:00

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Riverside Church, NYC 1967

No Iraqi Left Behind

2007-01-11T10:16:00.000-06:00

The NYT says:

Before Mr. Bush spoke, Americans knew he planned to send more troops to pacify lawless Baghdad. Mr. Bush’s task was to justify that escalation by acknowledging that there was no military solution to this war and outlining the political mission that the military would be serving. We were waiting for him to detail the specific milestones that he would set for the Iraqis, set clear timelines for when they would be expected to meet them, and explain what he intended to do if they again failed.

Instead, he said he had warned the Iraqis that if they didn’t come through, they would lose the faith of the American people. Has Mr. Bush really not noticed that the American people long ago lost faith in the Iraqi government — and in him as well? Americans know that this Iraqi government is captive to Shiite militias, with no interest in the unity, reconciliation and democracy that Mr. Bush says he wants.

In other words, we are going to reform Iraq the same way we reform the schools:

by setting up unrealistic and cynically imprecise benchmarks amid a lot of chest-thumping media play,

failing to provide the resources or leadership that effective reform requires,

and declaring “mission accomplished” without any assessment of actual progress or results.

There you go again, George.

Edwards Obama 08

2007-01-11T09:24:00.000-06:00

John Edwards and Barak Obama were on late night TV last night. Sounds like a ticket to me!

Acuity in time saves nine

2007-01-09T10:27:00.000-06:00

Today's Doonesbury "Say what?"

"When Ford talked to Woodward, he was 91 years old, or 92 years old. My mother is 95. You know, I'm not sure I'd like to see some of her quotes published on the front page of The Post because I don't think she has the same mental acuteness she had when she was younger."
-- Ford White House press secretary Ron Nessen

Putting the surge in insurgency

2007-01-08T23:50:00.001-06:00

“It may not be too late, but it’s five minutes to midnight.”
--John Burns, NYT Baghdad bureau chief, on Tavis Smiley

Duck!

2007-01-08T09:53:00.000-06:00

There's a gas-leak smell across the greater New York area, a sudden unexplained bird die-off in Austin, but this has to be the scariest wire story this morning:

Cheney Is Going Hunting Again Today

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 8, 2007

Filed at 10:11 a.m. ET

LIGONIER, Pa. (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney was scheduled to be in western Pennsylvania Monday for a hunting trip.

Cheney was to fly into Arnold Palmer Regional Airport after his morning briefing in Washington, his spokeswoman, Lee Ann McBride, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Cheney will hunt at the private Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, about 45 miles east of Pittsburgh, where he has hunted several times in recent years for pheasants and ducks.

Cheney will not make any public appearances, but will hunt with some companions that McBride declined to identify.

Last year, Cheney wounded attorney Harry Whittington with shotgun pellets during a quail hunting trip in Texas. Whittington recovered.

Doublespeak

2007-01-06T09:10:00.000-06:00

From doonesbury.com:

"It's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure."
-- Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend, on "failure" to capture Osama bin Laden

Wow, we're doing Osama's job for him. He must be pleased.

As for the other grave Bush threat, Barak Obama, I was pleased to see that the junior-grade Republicans on "Morning Edition" are scared enough to start dismissing him. Laura Sydell goes quite out of her way in a piece on the rumored Apple cell phone to compare it to Obama, "an unknown quantity" that Dems can invest with their fond hopes.

With two best-sellers, a distinguished academic career and a Senate seat, Obama is an "unknown quantity" if you can't read, I guess...

Enough already

2007-01-02T09:14:00.000-06:00

Add another accomplishment to the Ford record: a 14-day funeral that didn't disrupt a single football game.

On this triumphal day

2006-12-30T09:05:00.000-06:00

Where's Osama?

(just askin')

WMD my ass

2006-12-28T07:52:00.000-06:00

How flimsy were the Bush rationales for his disastrous war in Iraq? Even dim-blub Gerald Ford, the liberator of all Eastern Europe, could see through them.

Fitting Tribute

2006-12-27T08:32:00.000-06:00

With his usual impeccable timing, Gerald Ford seems to have died during the Tonight Show (Eastern/Central). In the middle of Leno quizzing passers-by about American history for laughs, a voice-over started reciting the “highlights” of the Ford presidency. On Letterman, a dog was solving math problems. It was a confederacy of dunces.

Hot prospect

2006-12-13T16:56:00.000-06:00

At the news that Tim Johnson of South Dakota seemed to suffer a stroke in his Senate office this afternoon, Republicans leapt immediately to counting their chickens. As NPR’s David Welna reported,

“Should the Republicans regain control of the Senate, that would be an important victory for them after all the losses they suffered last month.”

Never mind that we don’t know Senator Johnson’s condition or prognosis, or that last month’s losses were suffered at the hands of voters in our representative Democracy, Bush will step over Johnson’s body to claim another “mandate’.

The $84,000 cover-up

2006-12-08T09:33:00.000-06:00

On today’s “Live with Regis”, Kelly Ripa and guest host Anderson Cooper delve into the current White House dress scandal:

Kelly: And it was a couture dress!

Anderson: What do you mean “couture”?

A fine question from Gloria Vanderbilt’s son. I think we need to get to the bottom of this: What does Anderson Cooper know, and why won’t he admit it?

Shock, horror, probe

2006-12-07T09:34:00.000-06:00

What is the biggest crisis facing our nation? War and rumors of war? Leadership meltdown? Assault on our basic freedoms? Wake up, people, it’s Katrina fraud.

NPR’s Pam Fessler, who never met a Bush memo she couldn’t swallow whole, is tireless in sounding the alarm.

Calling the misspending “Mindboggling!” Fessler notes that $17 million may have been overpaid for rent, and as much as $20 million issued in duplicate payments.

“It appears that some of these individuals were paid twice, for the same television, refrigerator, washer and dryer,” says Gregory Kouts of the GAO.

In a disaster that drowned a major American city, killed over 1800 people and ravaged 90,000 square miles, where are our priorities? Sure we never really counted the dead, and it took us weeks to collect and bury the ones we found, but do you mean to tell me we lost track of some major appliances?!

And what about “payments to hundreds of ineligible foreign students and workers” (upgraded from last night’s total of “50 foreign students.”) The horror! The horror!

What’s more, 20 flat-bottomed boats are unaccounted for. Or maybe 21.

Never mind that this all sounds much more like shoddy FEMA management than fraud, the frightening statistic remains: Of the $81.2 billion estimated Katrina damage, $1 billion may have been misspent. That’s (very slightly) over 1 %. Where’s the accountability? No swift boat left behind!

Rummy's Last Memo

2006-12-05T08:03:00.000-06:00

TomDispatch has a fabulous close-reading of Rummy's Last Memo, which includes great advice like:

Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start ‘taking our hand off the bicycle seat'), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.

I'm picturing a hapless kid trying to pedal and pull his socks up as his witless Dad shouts instructions. The Bushies are never far from negligence, if not outright abuse.

Kill the messenger

2006-12-01T13:32:00.000-06:00

Today’s Guardian reports:

Iraq's interior ministry has formed a press monitoring unit in response to what it described as "fabricated and false news" that misrepresents the country's security situation.

Singling out the Associated Press for criticism, spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said yesterday that dedicated unit would monitor news coverage and even initiate legal action if journalists do not correct stories it believes to be incorrect.

"Fabricated and false news hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different," he said.

He added that the media should consult the ministry's large public relations department staff for "real, true news".

Dodging bullets

2006-11-30T23:58:00.000-06:00

There has been much crowing about the end of hurricane season. Haven’t we learned not to say “Bring ‘em on”?

Happy Plastic Turkey Day!

2006-11-24T08:46:00.000-06:00

Bush in Hanoi

2006-11-17T10:54:00.000-06:00

“My first reaction is history has a long march to it,” Bush said. The lesson he draws from the 15-year Vietnam War is, ''We'll succeed [in Iraq] unless we quit.''

Wow.

I wonder if he’s going to have time for a side-trip holiday in Cambodia.

Fallout

2006-11-16T10:36:00.000-06:00

Editor Graydon Carter in the current Vanity Fair:

The president still commands official respect in his international travels, but it is the respect you accord the 17-year-old with a Kalashnikov rifle. British prime minister Tony Blair has been ridiculed at home for his slavish devotion to Bush, and has been all but hounded from office, announcing this fall that he will step down sometime next year. Aside from Saddam, he is the only leader the U.S. has managed to topple since the war on terror began.

GWOTV

2006-11-14T12:33:00.000-06:00

TV critic David Bianculli, surveying the dismal state of sweeps offerings, advised Fresh Air listeners today to “pray for a meteor”.

Coming after an examination of the efficacy of prayer, this was especially chilling. I have an alternate suggestion: instead of calling down the end of the world as we know it, David, save civilization-- turn off your TV!

Matchstick Men

2006-11-13T16:10:00.000-06:00

A few days ago, as the campaign mudslinging became increasingly offensive and absurd, I jokingly suggested we elect Borat president. Then I thought about our current Chief Executive. In spite of his ultra-elite background (educated at Andover, Yale and Harvard, grandson of a U.S. Senator and son of a Presiden-- how many Americans can say that? like six?) he often appears in rural working clothes, and speaks with a corny made-up accent.

Like Borat, W. pretends to be from a simple country village. That tumble-down shed reporters use in Crawford might as well be a stage set. We all know Laura isn’t inside it cookin’ up a mess of vittles.

Despite W.’s attempts at simple folksiness, his approach, like that of Borat’s Sacha Baron Cohen, is shrewd and calculated. Like all artists of the con, they succeed through deception and misdirection. They disarm people and get them to betray their own interests. Borat is not your buddy, he’s using you to get what he wants.

W. takes lavish care of his big-money donors and is mystified to the point of pique at working people who don’t see the same rosy economic outlook as his CEO pals. They get the no-bid contracts, we drive the unarmored trucks to Fallujah, or fight with insurance companies in Gulfport, or at our second job.

The aw-shucks shuck and jive works well at first, people go along to get along and you leave them laughing. Then folk wise up. Cohen is over here because he’s too well known in his native Britain. As W. has prompted us to say, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” That’s the midterm in a nutshell.

The Big 3

2006-11-10T03:47:00.000-06:00

Seated in order of succession, R to L

Let the record show

2006-11-09T06:27:00.000-06:00

What a casual liar our President is.

At his news conference yesterday to renounce his thumpin’ and announce Rumsfeld’s sudden departure, W. was confronted by wire-service reporters. The reporters wanted to know why Bush told them last week that Cheney and Rumsfeld would remain through the end of his term.

Having just be re-reassured that Cheney was to stay on, their question was, in essence, the classic lawyer’s trap for a shifty witness: Were you lying to us then, or are you lying now?

Bush: Right. No, you and Hunt and Keil came in the Oval Office, and Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, `Are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the vice president?' And my answer was, `They're going to stay on.' And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer. (Washington Post)

See, he only lies to us when he doesn’t want to tell us the truth. When the truth might be inconvenient or might interfere with his political agenda. Or when the truth might provoke follow-up questions and discussion. Or when he doesn’t have the wit or verbal dexterity to sidestep a question without lying. Or when he’s tired and cranky, having missed his nap or bedtime.

America wakes up, smells coffee

2006-11-08T07:13:00.000-06:00

Well done, Rahm & co. Sometimes even Cub fans win big.

2006-11-07T04:44:00.000-06:00

Orgy of tastelessness

2006-11-06T13:26:00.000-06:00

In a story on a Bush rally in Indiana, the Financial Times reports that Republicans have taken to calling the heavily-contested heartland states of Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania “the Killing Fields”.

You would think they would want to avoid casual (not to mention offensive and tasteless) references to Cambodian genocide and other disastrous outcomes of the Vietnam quagmire.

As the President likes to remind us, “Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words.”

It is also heartening to see the Bush visit bringing out the best in “values voters” (Financial Times):

Penne Keith, whose husband painted an American flag on his front lawn after the terror attacks in 2001, said she admired Mr. Bush as “very moral, a Christian believer… My husband called in sick today to attend the rally, the first day he has missed this whole year.”

I bet if there’s one thing Ms. Keith just hates about liberals it’s their embrace of moral relativism.

Whom would Jesus crucify?

2006-11-03T10:28:00.000-06:00

Regarding the Colorado Springs mega-pastor accused of a gay liaison, associate Rev. Richard Cizik is quoted as saying, “Let’s not crucify the man before we know the facts.”

Here’s another alternative: keep your beloved pastor, and lose the impulse to crucify gays. The inter-mountain west would be better for it, trust me.

Book Tour from Hell

2006-11-03T09:59:00.000-06:00

Listen to writer Richard Ford grow increasingly desperate as he attempts to explain the idea of fiction to NPR host Steve Inskeep. Unclear on the concept, Inskeep probes for the sources, research and data behind Ford’s new novel.

This is especially droll in light of the fact that Inskeep rarely challenges the administration, folk who serve up fiction as fact daily, with dire consequences.

Yale charges what?

2006-11-02T08:48:00.000-06:00

The same press that routinely cleans up Bush’s botched utterances is now rendering Kerry’s (admittedly boneheaded) “study hard or you’ll get [us] stuck in Iraq” as “study hard or face deployment”. That’s the current ABC news crawl. Wha?? Let’s call the whole thing off and elect Borat.

Hall of Fame

2006-11-01T02:40:00.000-06:00

Actual junk mail sender line from today's inbox:

Fiasco Services

Status Quo

2006-10-29T11:49:00.000-06:00

NPR leads with this news item: “President Bush says people should vote for Republicans.”

What incisive reporting! How do they come up with scoops like that? Pledge today, and we can look forward to hard-hitting, in-depth stories like:

Folksy commentator remembers mom’s advice.
Author disagrees with critics.
Objects fall from height.
Another indie band.
Cat takes a nap.
Once again, Cubs come up short.
People die.
The sun also rises.
Worldwide entropy increase predicted.
Situation worsens, Bush unveils new slogan.

Man of the People

2006-10-28T06:49:00.000-05:00

Don Gonyea slipped this subversive item into his Morning Edition report on the great Republican victory march:

Dick Cheney goes into a Wisconsin diner to campaign, but won't eat the food. He has his own food brought in "for his personal safety."

This is recounted by a woman who has been a server at the diner for seventeen years. In a "mostly rural, solid Republican" district. And Dick Cheney won't take a cup of coffee from her hand. Won't risk the eggs. Can you imagine that level of paranoia? I almost feel sorry for the miserable SOB.

What IS the matter with Kansas, anyway?

2006-10-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

Today's NYT has a story about a Topeka, Kansas six-year-old who is obsessed with Dick Cheney.

So are a lot of us, I guess, but this poor kid admires him.

That's just wrong.

Won't someone please think of the children??

Sports Fan

2006-10-11T08:07:00.001-05:00

The latest junk-mail strategy-- putting sports vocabulary in the subject line. Who wouldn't want to read about (actual subject lines in my inbox):

Ballet
Zorbing
Human powered aircraft
Kyudo
Bullfighting
Lawn bowls
Goalball
Elephant polo (wait, that might refer to last night's A's)
Broomball
Fell running...

If I see "Curling", I'm going to open it.

New Orleans

2005-10-01T10:43:00.000-05:00

I think of all the drowned pianos.

July 7

2005-07-22T00:35:00.000-05:00

On Sept 11, 2001, when I was stranded far from home,

Billy Collins came on the radio and said,

Any poem is a poem against what happened.

For my dear friends on the Underground,

a poem.

from the Rose Garden

2005-05-31T10:16:00.000-05:00

W: "Disassemble, that means not tell the truth."

Ooooh, he's ready for Derrida.

Best Picture IMHO

2005-02-20T17:11:00.000-06:00

David Edelstein, in his Obligatory Oscar Commentary advises:

Give out your own private awards this year, and watch the Oscars for the spectacle of exhibitionists walking the tightrope between humility and grandiosity.

When I emailed that to a friend, he responded by having The Big Lebowski sweep his Josh Awards. I admire the sentiment but think this is playing a bit too fast and loose with the constraints.

I give the 2004 SteelR Awards for Best Picture and Director to Sideways, for several completely idiosyncratic reasons (and emphatically NOT because its banner ads have appeared on every page of the electronic NYT for months).

For one thing, the film provided a rare moment of détente in politically fractious 2004 when conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer devoted an op-ed to recommending it.

For another, it renewed my faith in the possibilities of my white-bread minivan suburb when a guy two rows in front of me guffawed when the wannabe writer protagonist in the film compares his novel to Robbe-Grillet. So there are at least a pair of us refugees from High Modernism out here on the frozen prairie.

But mostly, Sideways wins the coveted SteelR for getting Southern California exactly right. Southern California, as home to the film industry, habitually stands in for all kinds of locales. But the Southland has a distinctive look, and never quite plays other biomes convincingly. When you are familiar with Southern California (I grew up in the real Orange County, which nobody, then or now calls “The O.C.”) the differences are as glaring as they would be if all locations were shot outside of Scottsdale, with saguaro cactus cropping up everywhere from “Alabama” to “Norway”.

But Sideways gets the locales and the details right. It gets “the Beach” right (Santa Monica in the novel, San Diego in the film)—most interactions with your neighbors involve requests to move your car. It gets the freeways right—north on the San Diego has the right view of commercial jets screaming by just overhead, the Oxnard exit is the Oxford exit, Buellton is Buellton. Nobody drives the wrong way across the Bay Bridge, as in The Graduate; nobody flies over freeways that won’t exist for decades, as in The Aviator. For that matter, no one but a Southern Californian would set a film (faithfully) in San Diego. Why would you go to that trouble? Who would know?

Special mention: the Kraft® Catalina dressing on the mother’s dinner table is exactly, hilariously, right.

These careful details might be the work of the DP, or a fanatically precise art director, but I feel confident in conferring my award on the film and its director Alexander Payne. Only Payne could have decided to shoot the comic climax (the return for the wallet) in dawn’s early light. How they managed to get that sequence in a unique light that lasts maybe ten minutes is a mystery to me, and a tour de force worthy of recognition.

Going ape

2005-02-09T13:41:00.000-06:00

The grass is greening, the robins are returning, this year’s crop of baseball scandals are breaking out, and the nation’s thoughts turn inevitably to… how and whether to teach evolution in our classrooms.

NPR’s Greg Allen reports on the controversy in Kansas (What IS the matter with Kansas, anyway?) where opponents of science masquerade as advocates of “intelligent design”.

“Science errs by refusing to look beyond natural phenomena to other explanations,” complains William Harris. Indeed. That would be because it is science, a discipline which studies and seeks to explain natural phenomena scientifically. And a public school parent explains that she is “providing her children with religious instruction and doesn’t want to have to correct ideas they learn in science class.” In other words, literally, my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts.

The formidable Renee Montagne tries to resolve the issue by presenting: a scientist who is also a Christian! D.C.-based NPR had to look as far as the Smithsonian to find this prize specimen-- astronomer Owen Gingerich. (There are, of course, legions of religious folks who have no problem with the idea that living things evolve.)

Montagne tries to get Gingerich to agree that the big problem with evolution is that “it doesn’t explain everything.” Aspects of the theory remain under investigation, he says, (again, this is the nature of science) but “that’s not grounds for dismissing it.”

So Montagne goes for her trump card. She asks the astronomer, “When you look up at the stars, do you imagine an Intelligent Being, a personage, if you will, being up there in the heavens alongside those stars?”

His answer is respectful, literate and persuading. It amounts to, “In a word, no.” But the question sets me thinking. Suddenly I see a way to save the Hubble telescope, condemned to death by the Bush budget: we’ll tell them that we’ll aim it into deep space to see if we can capture god as he roams his heavens like Bigfoot. Perfect. Get me Heraldo.

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate scientific debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism of evolution. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to “intelligent design,” to be introduced into the science curricula of the public schools.
--National Center for Science Education

Talkin' bout my generation

2005-02-03T10:15:00.000-06:00

Chris Suellentrop has a nice précis of the president's Social Secuirty initiative which he characterizes as an invitation to Boomers to "Screw Your Grandchildren."

I will only point out that there is a substantial group of Boomers younger than 55: Those of us born in the 50's and the first couple of years of the 60's.

Always at the tail end of the population bomb, we have been pretty well screwed from Day One.

I started elementary school with 55 kids in my classroom. It wasn't education so much as crowd control. By the time I left college in my biology degree was essentially decorative, but the loans still had to be paid back. (Scientific American once estimated that the 1977 was the graduating year with the worst prospects for scientists/academics.)

In the intervening years I have turned over big chunks of my meager salaries to FICA (Now self-employed, I pay double social security and my tax rate is higher than Dick Cheney's). Still, it does my heart good to think of all the greens fees I have contributed to retired physicians and captains of industry.

I guess The Who knew what they were talking about when they sang, "Hope I die before I get old."

All hail, Madam Secretary!

2005-01-27T04:59:00.000-06:00

From the guy who writes the memos Condi shitcans:

The invasion of Iraq was a godsend to Osama bin Laden, very literally, because it validated so much of what he has said and told Muslims: that the Americans want Arab oil; that the Americans will destroy any Muslim regime that appears to be powerful; the Americans will destroy any country that appears to be a threat to the Israelis; and they're willing to invade any Muslim country if it suits their interests.

… That's what Iraq has done. It's increased danger in Europe, but also [in] the United States, Canada and Australia, the Far East -- danger in the sense of not bin Laden command and control, but danger in the sense of Muslims striking back for the invasion of Iraq, which, after all, is the second holiest place in Islam.

-- Michael Scheuer 22-year CIA veteran who headed a special unit to track Osama bin Laden.

But hey, what does he know?

Sessile No More!

2005-01-21T02:20:00.000-06:00

I wasn't going to say anything. Let them have their day, even in the pages of our paper of record.

If some Harvard psychology twit wants to claim his research proves that Bush isn't so bad after all and that this is really the best of all possible worlds, well, why not? We all know that social science is as harmless as it is lazy.

If William Safire wants to dodder into his retirement proclaiming W's limp tone-deaf bleat one of the 5 best second inaugurals of the 20 delivered, let him. He's old enough to have attended all 20 and he'll be out of our hair and our Times soon enough. Plus, as even the Harvard guy could probably calculate, ranking in the top 5 of 20 isn't very impressive. That would be like the Bulls standing, and they're as cold as this town.

(For a better analysis see... a better columnist.)

But then the family values thugs overplayed their hand (as they always do). Giving us 4 more years of hate and hypocrisy was one thing, but then they came after Sponge Bob.

Look, you joyless perverts, go back to your obscene phone calls, fourth wives, and looting of the treasury. But leave Sponge Bob alone.

And the band played on

2005-01-16T13:01:00.000-06:00

With this triumphal, spare-no-expense, invitation-only ("Keep out: this means you!") inaugural, Bush and his minions confirm what many of us have felt all along:

Not my president.

"This is a civic liturgy," said George Will on ABC's This Week, "This is where they reward people who pay the bills and do the work." What a cozy conflation of religion and cronyism. How very Bush.

Whatever happened to, "With malice toward none, with charity for all."

I guess Bush isn't your great-great-grandfather's gay Republican president.

Not my president.

But make no mistake, this is still my country.

Just a Theory

2005-01-13T07:38:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in my little midwest prison town the day started with ice-fog. Mists trailing from snowbanks,drifting over roadways. Cars colliding. At noon it was 62 degrees. I took the dog for a walk past flooding streams and the matted bodies of drowned fieldmice, surprised in their beds. In the evening, we had a full-bore thunderstorm, the second this January. I turned off the TV and sat watching lightning arc across the winter sky. I thought about flying. I thought about never flying again.

Global climate change may just be a "theory" (you know, like evolution). But it has captured our attention, in this season between Scott Peterson and Robert Blake. You have to wonder.

Freedom's legacy

2005-01-12T06:04:00.000-06:00

At the end of NPR's second hour today, just before the M&M story, Steve Inskeep announces the death of James Forman, who "organized Freedom Rides to protest desegration on busses" [in the South].

Today's grammar tip: "protest" means "against".

Highlights of 2005

2005-01-02T11:33:00.000-06:00

Worst New Year’s Call.
5…4…3…2…1… Welcome to ground zero! --Host, NPR Toast of the Nation.

Worst Prediction Headline.
Who’ll Make Waves in ’05? --Chicago Tribune

Inquiring minds want to suggest.
Do the major media present fair and balanced coverage of Christmas or biased coverage that undermines the traditional meaning of Christmas?
--Media Research Center Daily Poll Question.

Best pundit summaries of the thorny situation in the Mideast. (3-way tie):

Comparatively challenged.
The bad things got more bad and the good things got more good. --David Brooks, NYT, on News Hour.

Warning: dangerous parallel construction ahead. Pull up! Pull up!
This is the year that will vindicate or… question Bush policy. --Robin Wright, Washington Post, on This Week.

No arguing with that.
Isn’t it always something we didn’t expect that surprises us? --Evan Thomas, Newsweek, on Meet the Press.

A Few Good Things

2004-12-31T01:10:00.000-06:00

It has been a hard year. So many of the people I care about are weary, sick or close to losing heart. Just for a day, I think, we can pause in the struggle. After all, one response to the tsunami may be to enjoy it while you’re here, because you never know…

So for my friends, a few good things:

A slide show of wild album covers from the 50’s

A collection of Edward Hirsch poetry columns

The Living on Earth Appalachian special. Pinckney Benedict has a terrific story.

Fresh Air, recent interviews with John Waters, David Sedaris, and Mort Sahl are classic.

Two riveting documentaries:

Agnes Varda, The Gleaners and I

Andy Goldsworthy - Rivers and Tides: Working With Time

For music? I like to search the streams on publicradiofan.com

Blues Before Sunrise
is a good show from Chicago Public Radio.

Sontag

2004-12-29T10:32:00.000-06:00

An ample reservoir of stoicism is needed to get through the great newspaper of record each morning, given the likelihood of seeing photographs that could make you cry. And the pity and disgust that [these] pictures inspire should not distract you from asking what pictures, whose cruelties, whose deaths are not being shown.
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others.

Our Miss Brooks

2004-12-28T23:37:00.000-06:00

There has been much key tapping over who will be chosen to succeed retiring NYT columnist William Safire. Apparently any number of bloggers, with characteristic humility and sense of proportion, have nominated themselves.

It seems to me that Safire’s replacement has already been piped aboard the Times in the person of David Brooks. Brooks has cultivated a reputation as a tame and palatable conservative. A pseudointellectual who strives for catchy turns of phrase and will occasionally concede a point, Brooks is the balding, bucktoothed face of the Bushie next door.

Brooks makes a show of independence, but he definitely gets the White House talking-points memos. When thinking conservatives and principled Republicans began to distance themselves from the imperious, dismissive Rumsfeld of the “Army you have” Kuwait press conference, Brooks toed the line.

“He’s confident,” Brooks said of Rumsfeld on the PBS News Hour, “Surprises happen.” Never mind that military analysts say that insurgencies have been a mainstay of warfare for the past 70 years, and could have been anticipated. But not by a leader who admits no error, takes no blame, won’t even consider alternatives, and calls faulty logistical planning “essentially a matter of physics” (Oh, we’d like to provide you with armor but the laws of the universe make it impossible!)

Besides, Brooks assured News Hour viewers, Rumsfeld isn’t chiefly focused on running this war, as author of the Quadrennial Review, he’s preparing for the next one. Isn’t that a comforting thought.

The Full Montagne

2004-12-23T09:11:00.000-06:00

Far be it from me to suggest that a general “dumbing down” necessarily accompanies NPR’s increasingly worshipful stance toward all things fundamentalist and increasing credulity in transcribing White House cliff notes. I simply listen to Renee Montagne.

On the prisoner abuse memos (Monday 12/21):

I’m gonna repeat a question, ‘cause we’ll cut the first time I ask
it— To whom do these memos go to?

This morning on the Arizona immigration law:

Starting today, state workers in Arizona are required to deny certain
benefits to applicants who can’t prove they’re in this country illegally.

Obviously these are being left in the broadcast, but I’m guessing that
all the editing suites in all of Hollywood could not sweeten these little newsreadings.

Meanwhile, the competing classical station remains witty, urbane and
blessedly free of churchy cant (reverential portraits of homeschooling hatemongers, "commentators" plugging their coercive Christian websites, etc., you know, the stuff that's so difficult to find on the rest of the radio dial):

That was a song by Englebert Humperdink, the real one...

Don't ask me

2004-12-20T13:09:00.000-06:00

Fareed Zakaria quipped on Sunday’s This Week that the bad news is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld only has one supporter, the good news is that it’s President Bush.

In his “traditional” holiday news conference this morning, the President made it clear he is 100% behind Rumsfeld. “He’s a good, decent man. He’s a caring fellow.” Apparently Rummy and his wife are at the Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals “all the time”. I think he’s personally knitting socks for amputees. That’s why he can’t sign condolence letters, I mean there’s hundreds of them, what do you want from the guy?

Bush also remains100% behind Kerik, a figure whose rap sheet is so troubling it is widely believed an illegal nanny was ginned up to put the press off the scent. “He made the decision” to withdraw his nomination, Bush told the press pack. Mister President, have you given any more thought to that debate question about a mistake you’ve made, have you been able to identify one yet, sir?

The mistake Bush is now intent on correcting, of course, is Social Security. Pressed for information about reforming a system that impacts every American citizen, Bush was ready. “[I know the press will try] to get me to negotiate with myself in public,” he told a network correspondent, “I just want to condition you. …I know there’s questions about what [reform] means. I will repeat, don’t bother to ask me.”

Fox news was recognized to make a paid political announcement. “Mister President, can you tell us why the Democrats have their heads completely up their tailpipes on this issue?”

“The crisis is here,” said Bush. “The current system cannot support that which has been promised to the workers.”

Later, when the President had turned “away from the media” and was talking to the L.A. Times, its reporter tried to get Bush to give us a hint about the ground rules, you know, like which of us should start laying in supplies of dog food. He was told, “Nothing will change. Promises will be met.”

A British reporter asked about Osama bin Laden. “Well, if I had to guess…” Bush was so bored he could barely complete a sentence on the topic. What’s the big deal? 9/11 was never about Osama, it was about my reelection. Mission accomplished. Next?

The Mideast peace process after Arafat? “I gave a speech June 24, 2002, in the Rose Garden that laid out the vision…” What and you’re asking me again??

There was just time for one more important announcement. “The Crawford Pirates are the state 2-A champs. And we look forward to waving the championship banner over Crawford.”

Many will see that last item as irrelevant. But it was wholly thematic, a distillation of the message as pure as a Biblical parable. Why are we in Iraq? Why were we in Vietnam? If you can’t see the answer in Texas high school football, well, what planet are you from?

This Was the Week That Was

2004-12-19T13:28:00.000-06:00

I like George Stephanopoulus. He’s genial without being slick, both intelligent (knows a lot) and smart (knows the game and how to play it). As the host of ABC’s This Week he is almost unfailingly deft and smiling.

That’s why I looked up over my coffee and paper this morning when Stephanopoulus fairly squeaked in astonishment on this follow up to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, “How can you say the war is won? The insurgents are able to attack at will.”

“Well,” said Card, “they’re not attaching all of the people all of the time.”

And, Mr. Card, may I add that you’re not fooling all of the people much of the time either.

The main attraction in this morning’s Big Top was the panel of regulars Fareed Zakaria and George Will, joined by visitor Richard Perle. A three-ring circus of conservatives, and highly-intellectual ones at that. Were they going to give us their top 10 ultra-wonk reading lists? Their year’s-best recordings of Wagner?

No, as it turns out, they were going to dramatize the fragmentation of the right. Zakaria started, by suggesting Rumsfeld should be held responsible for the string of failures in Iraq. Will reminded us that he had called for Rumsfeld’s resignation in the wake of Abu Graib, but noted, “He’s wealthy and he’s 71. He doesn’t need this job.” There’s a recommendation you can take to the bank.

Perle took issue with Zakaria. Surely many are to blame for the difficulties in Iraq, he said, let’s move on. [Sorry, cons and neo-cons, moveon.org is taken. You can have wedontneedthis.org]

Zakaria parried every thrust, in a debate Perle called “absurd”. Responsibility for post-war policy in Iraq was given to the Pentagon to a degree unprecedented in the history of American foreign engagements, FZ noted. Nonsense, said Perle, the generals and many others were consulted and were fully on-board.

When Shinseki gave the wrong answer he was cashiered, said Zakaria. Not so, said Perle, he retired to spend more time with his family (or some such standard equivocation). No one from the administration came to his retirement party, said FZ, a message was being sent. Finally Perle could only intone, racist accusation masquerading as condescension, “Fareed, Fareed.”

Had Zakaria been as well-versed in the idiom of the American public school as he is in that of the British Public School (a different animal, entirely) he could have replied, “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

While Zakaria lunged and Perle retreated (the Shakespearian stage direction would be, “They fight”), George Will was scooting away so rapidly you could hear his chair scraping across the floor. Lest the dim TV audience miss the point, Will made sure to lean over, pat Perle on the arm and say, “You’re a card-carrying neo-con.”

There was no mistaking the school-yard reference of that gesture: Tag, Perly, you’re it.

But by far the strangest pronouncement of a strange program belonged to Dr. David Graham of the FDA. “I don’t think I would prescribe Bexter or Celebrex to my mother-in-law,” he said.

Saints preserve us, every one.

Chicken Little in Chief

2004-12-16T20:15:00.000-06:00

Anyone who is paying attention knows that social
security is fully funded for the next 40 to 50 years.

So of course there is nothing for it, Bush would have us believe, but
to destroy it now! Right now!!

The last time we saw W. in this much of a lather was when he was jumping
up and down and insisting, against all reason and evidence, that we had
to go to war in Iraq right away! Right away!! Remember how there
was no time to plan or consider, no time to explore options or cultivate
allies to share the burden? Are there five people left in the entire country
who think that was a good idea?

How did our leader express it, in all his forceful eloquence,

Fool me once, shame on… you. Fool me twice, shame on… Shame
on… Won’t get fooled again.

Play us out, Pete:

We'll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgment of all wrong

They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I'll get on my knees and pray

We don't get fooled again

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! (sit down, Howard.)

Free association

2004-11-26T11:32:00.000-06:00

The (d)evolution of attribution (and not a single citation
among them):

Forster, Poet Auden, Famous writer, Old saying…

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 847 for "How do I know what I think
until I see what I say?". (0.36 seconds)

The Write Stuff

... coursework. increase awareness of the services of the Writing Center.
“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” ~EM Forster. ...

www.brenau.edu/writingcenter/writestuff.htm - 19k -

EduBlog Insights :

... As EM Forster put it, "How do I know what I think until I see what
I say?" It's a chance to synthesize what I read in the blogging world and push myself
to ...

anvil.gsu.edu/EduBlogInsights/2004/08/17 - 29k - Cached - Similar pages

time1

... TOM: The poet, WH Auden, said once, How do I know what I think
until I see what I say? BETSY: I just saw that quote somewhere. TOM: Yeah. ...

www.looseleafbookcompany.com/archives/2050/tr6.html - 17k -

Interview with award winning children's author Sally M. Keehn by ...

... A famous author once said, "How do I know what I think until I
see what I say?"

It was in writing through THE FIRST HORSE I SEE that I began to see
what I had ...

debbimichikoflorence.com/index.2ts?page=sallymkeehn - 47k

Why Use Writing?

... As an old saying goes, "How do I know what I think until I see
what I say?" In fact, research done by Richard Light at Harvard confirms
that "students relate ...

mendota.english.wisc.edu/~WAC/

How's that again?

2004-11-21T11:14:00.000-06:00

Sunday morning latté spit-take:

Bush's mission is to liberate people. --Bob Woodward, ABC This
Week

Did he say "people" or "capital"?

Mystery solved

2004-11-19T08:13:00.000-06:00

Not Credible

by Andrew Sullivan

Only
at TNR Online | Post date 11.16.04

The new conventional wisdom is that the election results were not
so much a triumph for right-wing Christians as they were a more general
endorsement of George W. Bush's clear, reassuring presence in a troubled
time. How else to explain the two-thirds of Bush voters who were not evangelical?

Those must be the stupid ones.

Wicked fun

2004-11-13T04:01:00.000-06:00

This week's writing exercise:

Compare the edited L.A. Weekly version A
Message form the Arrogant Liberal Elite

to the original rant.

As you note the difference a little professional polish makes, tell
yourself, "I'm not enjoying this screed, I'm studying it."

Sympathy for the devil

2004-11-11T11:38:00.000-06:00

My attempt at compassion (Really. I don't think I've quite got
the hang of it.)

He's a drunk. His daddy doesn't love him and his mom is a gorgon.
He's a coward who failed repeatedly in school and business, and only wanted
to be Baseball Commissioner. He hates us for our freedom.

Don't hate him back, and really make him mad.

***

And why is Karl Rove, Pillsbury doughboy from Hell, so allfired eager
to define marriage for everyone else?

Does that guy even date?

We're not bitter

2004-11-09T09:16:00.000-06:00

In which I try to be a better person, for selfish narcissistic
reasons.

It is only after the election that any use for Alan Keyes has become
apparent: he is the perfect definition of an ugly loser. It was clear from
the jump that his off-the-bench Hail Mary campaign was doomed, even to
the Illinois Republicans who recruited and ran him for U.S. Senate.(Say
one thing for Chicago, the city of the Bulls, Bears and Cubs knows the
dynamics of crushing defeat).In the only race the exit polls got right,
Keyes was utterly stomped by rising star Barak Obama. I’m not even sure
Keyes made it into double-digits, yet he refuses to concede. Instead he
rants on in what’s left of his press coverage, wildly blaming anyone and
anything besides himself, threatening darkly, and in general throwing a
combination hissy fit and pity party that would make Dick Nixon blush.

I’m saying this not to chide our dear Republican allies, who seem to
have developed the tenderest of sensibilities since they steam-rolled us
in the national elections. Even with our faces planted in the asphalt,
and tread marks across our “Run Against Bush” t-shirts, some highly-sensitive
columnists feel they can discern the slightest smidgen of spine still protruding,
the traces of a sneer on our “unchurched” faces AND THEY DON’T LIKE IT
ONE BIT. You could even compare them to the easily-offended PC-types they
used to mock, if you were uncharitable.

But that’s my point about the sorry Mr. Keyes: anyone can see that his
road is not a good way to go. It’s not a credit to his supporters or his
Party, and he’s making himself miserable and ridiculous. Equally distasteful
but more amazing were the chat-boards after the Bush sweep. The victors
were screaming, cursing, hurling insults, calling the vilest of names (Yes,
that stuff is part of the on-line game, but this was markedly more shrill
and much more one-sided than usual). Reading their rage-filled postings,
you would have thought the red side had the election blatantly stolen from
them. Ahem. Yes, well-- sore losers, sore winners-- people of character
can do better. It’s gut check time, America.

Let’s agree. You won; well-played. And 51 - 48 is not a shut-out, there
are millions of Americans who voted each way and a whole slew of folk we
didn’t hear from. I’ve been bashed, you’ve been bashed, all God’s children
have been bashed. (Or, in my scripture, I would not feel so all alone,
everybody must get stoned.) Let’s all go get burritos! OK, that’s not helping.

I’m going to appeal to faith. Yes, me. A few weeks ago I got trapped
into listening to a Public Radio show that usually causes me to hit the
dial so fast I miss my exit. It’s on at about zero a.m. Sunday morning,
and it’s called Speaking
of Faith. Now here’s what made this particular episode worthwhile:
it included people of different faiths. Faiths, not sects, because pluralism
is a value too. Yes, there was a born-again
Christian type (and, OK, another one on tape, and hosting) and also
a Rabbi, a Professor
of Islamic studies and a Buddhist teacher.

From the Buddhist
I learned that in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts, ‘anger’
and ‘fear’ are the same word. An ironic analysis
of the election paints it as a choice between anger and fear. No wonder
so many of us are looking for a way out, a way past this ugly impasse.
If you turn down the volume, in fact turn off the TV and ignore the politicianss,
party hacks and pundits altogether, you can hear voices like F.
Peter Phillips of Montclair, NJ: “Maybe the lesson of both elections
[2000, 2004] is that we need to work much harder to listen to each other
and to take in what we're hearing.”

This seems to be similar to the process Rabbi Kushner invokes when he
describes how difference and disagreement can be a way of respecting each
other. “Our commonality,” he says [at around 23:30 on the download]
“comes from passionately clinging to our uniqueness and our individuality
and our difference. I am convinced that I start by telling you who I am
and what I believe. And then I arm-wrestle with you, we have a big fight
about it: that’s healthy, that’s fun. In Jewish tradition, arguing is a
mark of high respect.” He tells a story about sitting in a coffee shop
as a rabbinical student with all his books, and an old guy coming up to
him and saying, “So, how about an argument?” A thoroughly friendly,
polite overture, like the one he makes next to the show’s (Protestant)
host:

Right now, if you and I were really brave, and really fortified and
really spiritually secure, and we dared open our hearts to one another,
there’s no telling what would happen to us as a result of this conversation.
I would really have to listen to you, and I would have to be prepared for
the possibility that you would have something new to tell me that I’ve
never heard before, and once I heard it I would be different. And
if you sensed that I had heard it and I was different, that would make
you different, and then we’d have to start all over again. …I also expect
that if you continue to be honest, and I continue to be honest, and we
stay at it long enough, that we’ll each discover that we have one another’s
cards in our hands.

From my humanist perspective, this is precisely the goal of education.
To learn how to listen to various points of view (of a poet, figure in
history, scientific theory, person leaving a poll, the guy in seat 34B,
etc) with understanding. This is hard, exacting work. You don’t have to
agree with the other point of view, but you have to walk in its shoes,
sit down and have a beverage with it, really get to know it so you can
see how it fits with, challenges, and changes what you think. This is a
skill, an art, a habit of mind. Not elitist, but worthwhile. And like hitting
the curveball or programming or cooking it takes time and practice, the
will and dedication to invest those, the coaching and guidance to perfect
them. Like freedom, it’s not free, and it don’t come easy. It’s just invaluable,
essential.

All Along the Watchtower

2004-11-08T08:12:00.000-06:00

From today's NYT
letters:

I write from the heart of an evangelical university with a strongly
pro-Bush student body. As I look out over my class, none of the women are
wearing burkas and the men have not beheaded any of the 60 percent or so
of the faculty who favored John Kerry.

And none of the transexuals has been seen since Tuesday night.

Idol speculation

2004-11-07T06:46:00.000-06:00

Hey, does it say anywhere in scriptural prophesy, “And in those last days
their leaders shall be named after vulgar names for the sexual parts of
the body, causing school children and producers of down-market cable comedy
shows to snigger uncontrollably.” Also, is that a detainable offense
yet? Just checking.

Happy four more years, Dick and Bush!

It's Moral Values, asshole!

2004-11-06T11:00:00.000-06:00

Well, it seems we were wrong—hate is a family value after all.
And apparently everyone, every single person in this great country of ours
who counts, turned out, stood in line for hours and hours, endured harassment
by court-sanctioned Republican challengers, and defiantly, deliberately
cast a vote for Bush (or voted on an electronic voting machine, which in
some cases amounted to the same thing.) And why? Because of Moral
Values.

How do we know? Our infallible exit polls told us so. The
same ones that had Dems chilling the champagne and Bushies cringing sullenly
the afternoon of election day. Before we found out how completely
wrong we were.

“Moral values” was an exit-poll option, one possible multiple-choice
answer to the question “What was most important to you in deciding how
to vote?” I think the other choices were: I dunno; What I had
for lunch; What’s it worth to you?; and Go perform an unnatural act on
yourself.

“Moral values” was a phrase so self-evident it required no definition,
until the pundits glommed on to it as the new organizing principal for
our government. I heard six “expert panels” in the space of as many
hours deconstruct it for us (pace Derrida). These panels all consisted
of: a hardshell fundamentalist Protestant; another hardshell fundamentalist
Protestant (for balance); a slightly more moderate fundamentalist Protestant;
and a token godless heathen foil, preferably one from the East Coast media
establishment. (And it goes without saying that all participants were white.)
That’s it. There’s your new spirit of tolerance and diversity. No
Catholics, no non-Christians, not even any Unitarians. Welcome to
Bob Jones University! pep rallies are mandatory.

The most blatant of these panels was on 60 Minutes, the Wednesday edition,
which is no doubt scrambling to get back on the Dean’s list after handing
in that forged paper. The only panel member I recognized was Barbara
Ehrenreich who bravely pointed out that there’s nothing in the Bible about
tax cuts for the wealthy and service cuts for the poor. (Whom would Jesus
smirk upon?) A woman with a frizzy 50’s perm didn’t mince words:
America now consists of “churchgoers” and “the un-churched”. A well-fed
man offered the definitive sound-bite: It was a contest between Father
Knows Best and The Times They Are A-Changin’, and Father Knows Best held
on. Holy Patriarchy! Can we keep our color TVs though?

The next big consensus news topic (and why do I think that pretty much
all we’ll get from here on in is consensus news topics?) is “What to expect
from four more years of Bush.” (NPR’s Morning Edition actually called it
his reign, but let that pass, it’s as accurate as anything they’ve said
lately.)

I think we all know what to expect. That’s why even the “un-churched”
among us are down on our dirty, disfavored knees praying for anyone who
is anywhere near Fallujah, any living entity or ecosystem that comes between
the New Mandate Oil Co. and “their” oil (and where do you think oil comes
from, you literalist evo-denying dumbf-ks?), anyone who works for what
used to be known as a living, anyone who has made the moral error of becoming
sick or injured-- hey, bad decision! What were you thinking?

My own particular thoughts are for the caribou. I’ve never seen
them, and now I guess I never will. I’m sorry that they must be going.
Sorry, sad and sick at heart.

If I may quote from my scripture, it’s a hard rain a-gonna fall.

Aftermath

2004-11-03T08:26:00.000-06:00

On NPR this morning it was "Happy Birthday to another Massachusetts
presidential candidate: Michael Dukakis!"

Smug bastards.

Tuning to the classical station I heard Ravel, Theme inspired by "The
Gallows". Very funny. Then they went back to their pledge drive.

Oh, well.

Best analysis: William
Saletan of Slate. Check out his assessments of Kerry
and Edwards from the New
Hampshire primaries back in January: dead on. Edwards/Obama
2008!

Googling monkeys (today's google find):

Tikkabik. Comments: Apres moi, le deluge. I thought that was Charles
DeGaulle. ...

It was Louis XV (fifteenth) who said Apres moi, le deluge.". ...

www.tikkabik.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=406 - 6k

What's at stake?

2004-11-02T21:26:00.000-06:00

There is much concern over the strange behavior of our president,
and many theories to account for it. The British are quite eloquent on
the subject. Has
Bush lost his reason?, asks Andrew Stephen of The Guardian, aghast
at the three faces of Bush on display during the election debates:

The spoiled brat of the first debate: slouching, peevish, pouting,
pursing his lips with disdain at what his opponent was saying… unable to
marshal any coherent arguments.

The wildman of the second, threatening at one point to savage even the
clinically inoffensive moderator Charles Gibson: Bush could not stay
on his stool and leapt up to dispense what were - certainly in contrast
to Kerry's cogent recital of statistics and arguments - frequently defensive,
shouting rants.

The jack-o-lantern of Oct 13: This time, he was peculiarly
flushed, leading a colleague to speculate whether he was on something.
He had clearly been told to look positive… and spent the evening with a
creepy, inane grin on his face.

That odd grin alarmed one physician so much she was unable to attend
to even his feeble, obvious and repeated slogans. She wrote
to express concern that his down-turned left lip might indicate he’d had
a stroke. (My own pet theory is that they botoxed his famous “smirk”,
the one that earned him his nickname
“the lip” at Yale.)

Others suggest progressive brain damage from alcohol or other neurological
impairment. They hold up his (admittedly spotty) public record as
evidence of a recent decline (Vanity Fair, "The Teetotal Effect",
August.)

The PBS Frontline special Decision
2004, a 2-hour look at the careers of Bush and Kerry provides a good
glimpse of the devolving W. Clips from his father’s campaigns are
literally cheerleading (“U.S.A. Bush! Bush! Bush!”). There’s a clip
after W’s first, lost congressional campaign which is strangely reminiscent
of Oswald (the light? camera angle? the slightly deferential interview
demeanor?).

There are a few moments from W’s debates with incumbent governor Ann
Richardson. These are often held up as a lost “Golden Age” of Bush
eloquence. He’s never especially grammatical, or truthful for that
matter (“crime is more young”), but overall you see him halfway between
George H.W., his father’s transplanted patrician prairie-speak, and the
“Full W.” that we’ve come to know and love. Over time W. gets progressively
twangier, more fragmented, less polished/posh.

I don’t know that this peculiar manner of speaking can be ascribed to
neurological damage. I think it is partly deliberate. If you want
to hear the authentic Texas cowboy
voice that W. is trying to adopt, listen to the fabulous Documentography
series, photos and sound from the real residents of Crawford. Authenticity
can be gauged by the fact that W is probably the only West Texan who does
not ride (now that Oswald’s dead). Note that the real Texan is not taken
in for a moment by W’s prancing pretensions “We’re acting like the bully
on the block,” he says. Compared to the genuine article, an accent
rich and tangy as good barbecue, W’s attempt is thin and flavorless as
gruel.

I think W.’s strange speech and manner is partly situational. It doesn’t
help that, at his loyalty-tested campaign appearances and in his rare addresses
to the nation, he is usually shown reading. He is not a good reader,
he’s not fluent.

I actually saw him welcoming the Clintons to the White House for some
occasion and he was perfectly suave, cordial and well-spoken. It was a
rare glimpse of him in his element. When he puts on his shirtsleeve
campaign costume he tries to be like us, Joe Lawnboy, but his native dress
is a meticulously tailored power suit. Power is his suit, his birthright,
the only home he knows.

I think the best explanation is something I heard Harry Shearer tell
Tucker Carlson about television. The longer you are on TV, Shearer
said, the more feedback pressure you get. People tell you, “That
was great, do more of it”, or “That didn’t work at all.” You become a caricature
of yourself over time.

Under the infinitely hotter glare of the presidency, W. has been shaped
and molded. His handlers are the only people he deals with. As Maureen
Dowd says, all presidents are in a bubble, this one’s in a thermos.
Although his base doesn’t believe in evolution, the theory is relevant
here. Severe isolation can result in insular dwarfism, in which creatures
evolve into smaller versions of themselves, like the extremely
small humanoids just discovered in Indonesia. W: the incredible
shrinking president.

So, stroke victim, dry drunk, swaggering imitator, or media mutation
FrankenBush, the question now, fellow citizens, is are we really going
to elect a man so obviously unfit to govern?

Don't blame me, I voted for Buchanan

2004-11-02T09:15:00.000-06:00

What greets me this election morning is an NPR
birthday shout-out to "commentator" Pat Buchanan.

That would be the same Pat Buchanan holocaust-denier who, on a badly-designed
ballot in Palm Beach, Florida garnered a suspiciously large endorsement
from elderly Jewish voters, yada yada, and the Supreme Court appointed
George W. Bush president. That Pat Buchanan.

It's also nice to hear that the Supreme Court is still with us, a couple
of feet in the grave not withstanding. The next news item is that
they have roused themselves to allow Republicans to harass voters at the
Ohio polls. Go, Big Red Machine! Suppress that vote! Remember
to scurry appropriately for Michael Moore's cameras. Try not to impale
anyone with a flag, it's been done.

"It's almost too good to be true!" enthuses the brainless Renee Montagne
on checking in with a rural Ohio county and, hearing that, aside from most
of the election judges having been intimidated into resigning, everything
is going fine. Perry
County, according to state census figures is 99% white with a median
income of $34k. Do we really expect that Republican poll "challengers"
are challenging rural white voters, or asking suburban soccer moms to produce
their passports at polling places? Thank god we've averted that nightmare.

What's with the new, not-so-crypto conservative Morning Edition? Why
isn't anyone on this story? Yesterday they ran a profile of a (nutball)
fringe candidate
straight-up: just let him rant away, against evolution, immigration,
human sexuality, etc. Sure, stuff as dumb as this refutes itself,
but why give it air time? Maybe to make "Senior" Commentator Juan
Williams , "Senior" News Analyst Cokie Roberts and "Senior" Washington
Editor Ron Elving seem more reasonable? When did "senior" become a synonym
for "Republican"? Where's Strom Thurmond when you need him? This morning
we had very "senior" T.R. Reid slobbering over the power of the vote for
"The Poor
Voter". It's the poor listener I pity.

Pay no attention to the corporations behind the curtain! And Happy
Birthday to holocaust-deniers, religious fundamentalists, bigots of all
stripes and vote suppressors everywhere!

Slide Shows

2004-10-27T08:12:00.000-05:00

The NYT World Series Slide
Show for Game 3 is literally that. The fourth and fifth photos show
two key put outs.

Walker, out at the plate: How to slide.

Suppan, out at third: How not to slide.

The Guardian posts a slide show of American families during the run-up to the
election.

It's interesting to see what catches the British photographers' attention. They
are fascinated by our driveways, and a bit spooked by Halloween. ("Pumpkins
are everywhere.")

So is Bush. The same creepy poster of smirking W. and vacant Laura hovers over the lives of the Republican families. Orwell, anyone?

Check out The Williams Family's sound clip, and the photo of Mr. Rodriguez
in his den (with Beatles albums and FOX World Series telecast).

Aye, very like a whale

2004-10-18T13:03:00.000-05:00

Illuminating baseball commentary from the ALCS.

Explaining el Duque’s “dead arm”:

“It’s when your arm feels really heavy, lifeless.”

“Dead.”

“Yeah.”

On a pitching change:

“What this pitching change does, it gets rid of the sinkerballer and
brings in someone like Timlin.”

[In fact it is Timlin himself, who proceeds to throw nothing but sinkerballs.]

Ex-Cub watch:

Nice to see Mueller again, and Bellhorn. Bellhorn shows that he
can get to the ball, now if he could only throw it and hit it, he’d be
a triple threat.

Doonesbury Links

2004-10-15T14:37:00.000-05:00

As a service to my imaginary readers, here are
links to the Doonesbury Honest Voices Reading List®

Monday 10.11.04 John
Eisenhower: Why I will vote for John Kerry for President

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion
in this country. But let it be based on careful thought.

Tuesday 10.12.04 Wall
Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi writes about Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being
undervirtual house arrest

Wednesday 10.13.04 A
Reaganite argues that Bush is a dangerous, profligate, moralizing radical
-- and that his reelection would be catastrophic both for the right and
for America.

A few high-octane speeches cannot disguise the catastrophic failure
of the Bush administration in both its domestic and its foreign policies.

Thursday 10.14.04 REP.
DOUG BEREUTER: Going to war in Iraq was a mistake

It should be noted, too, that the administration received many warnings
not to make those very errors.

Friday 10.15.04 The
Lone Star Iconoclast in Crawford, Texas endorses Kerry

In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans
rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow
Bush’s lead through any travail.

He let us down.

When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases
well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes
instead of solutions.

Saturday 10.16.04 George Will on W's Questionable Kind of Conservatism

Warning: this article contains language like "hubris" and "constitutionalizing".

Another Dead White Male

2004-10-11T11:03:00.000-05:00

Poor Derrida, "Abstruse Theorist Dies", NYT
front page:

Other critics found it disturbing that obscure academics could presume
to denigrate a Sophocles, Voltaire or Tolstoy by seeking out cultural
biases and inexact language in their masterpieces. "Literature, the deconstructionists frequently proved, had been written by entirely the wrong people
for entirely the wrong reasons," wrote Malcolm Bradbury, a British novelist and
professor, in a 1991 article for The New York Times Book Review.

So W. would bellow, "How can you profess, when you say 'Wrong
people, wrong reasons'? You just can't! That's not what a professor
does."

Then he might add, "Want some wood?"

Lessons of 9/11

2004-09-12T21:01:00.000-05:00

As 9/11 slips into history (there were memorials yesterday,
sure, but mostly it was business-as-usual around town and on the airwaves)
let us pause and examine a few telling moments before we turn the page.

The accounts of that morning now famously show the president in an elementary
school classroom during a reading lesson. He is sitting uncomfortably
on a tiny second-grade chair at the front of the room. Adults who
don’t work in early elementary always look uncomfortable in those chairs,
so his demeanor at this point is typical.

The president is shown a book and he holds it as the teacher conducts
the lesson. The title of the book is almost always given as My Pet Goat.That’s
what Michael Moore calls it in his film that uses footage of the school
visit. But on this point Moore is apparently wrong. According
to The
New Yorker (7/26/04) it is a workbook called "The Pet Goat".

This was uncovered, as so many news items seem to be these days, by
a sharp-eyed blogger, in this case href="http://www.ledgeofliberty.com/2004/06/mystery_of_the_.html">Peter Smith
who was puzzled about why no one seemed to be able to locate
the book on Amazon. He watched the classroom footage and saw the
teacher leading the students in a stylized drill.

Interestingly it turns out that "The Pet Goat" it is not a proper children's
book at all (any author interested in children and in storytelling would
call her book My Pet Goat). It is a rote "delivery system"
for drill and practice which is part of the Direct
Instruction phonics program, one of the “research based” models endorsed
by No Child Left Behind.
The terme d'art for this type of program is "Teacher Proof".

A rear-eschelon action in the Culture Wars, played out in rooms with
tiny chairs and little academic status, the Reading Wars are nonetheless
hard fought and empassioned (and when Federal dollars are invlolved, as
they most certainly are in NCLB, worth a fair chunk of change). On one
side, reading is a "skill" best developed by repeated drills. Content
is no more important than the programmed words strung together for the
nameless protagonists in "The Pet Goat":

A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat.
She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her
yard. But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad. The goat
ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes.
He even ate capes and caps. One day her dad said, "that goat must go. He
ate too many things." The girl said, "dad if you let the goat stay with
us, I will see that he stops eating all those things." Her dad said he
will try it. . . .

Do you hear an echo of our leader's odd syntax in that last line?

The other side fights for autonomy, engagement and "higher-order thinking"
(gathering evidence, constructing and evaluating arguments, making decisions).
Kids will want to read if reading is enjoyable and useful to them.

Now run the classroom footage forward. See the president's aide
come in and whisper the news that we are under attack, Watch the
president and tell me, is it important to be able to think things through,
to draw on what you know and make decisions?

And before we leave the school, let's look at the last shocking footage.
President Bush makes his first announcement of 9/11 with the young children
arranged around him as props. (Doesn't Jesus in the Bible have some pretty
strong warning about scandalizing little ones?) That no one had enough
sense to alter the planned “photo-op” to spare the children and reflect
the gravity of the unfolding situation tells us all we need to know about
our leaders and their priorities.

Bipolar Bears

2004-09-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

It seems the Cubs have decided either to win big or lose miserably, no
middle ground. I guess you have to respect that.

It follows a certain logic. You want to pass with flying colors or just scrape through:

Q: What do they call the student who got C's in Med School?

A: Doctor.

And I am tired of eating my liver over wretchedly punishing one-run
games (in which we have amassed a less-than-distinguished14-24 record).
I was momentarily distracted from this angst by the prospect of football
starting up, but then I remembered-- oh yeah, the Bears.

So fine, I say, you Cubs: get shut out or win by double digits.
Or do both in one day (today). This is Chicago after all, a city
where the minor leagues give out ice scrapers in August. Not because
"you never know", but, oh, because you do.

Correcting Selectrics

2004-09-09T19:20:00.000-05:00

"Thud" best describes:

1. The return to Earth of the Genesis space capsule, now embedded in
the Utah desert;

2. Macier Izturis' double falling behind a scrambling Sosa, taking with
it the Cubs NL wild card lead;

3. Another sheaf of damaging documents grudgingly released to the press
in the dark of night by the Bush administration.

Salon has the best coverage of the Bush
National Guard controversy, with

extensive links to sources:

Ironically, that means strings were pulled to get Bush out of the
Guard in

1973, just as they were pulled to get him enrolled in 1968.

There are some great investigations
underway in blog-land to compare the “original” CYA memo regarding
Bush’s National Guard service with Microsoft Word versions typed today.

Part of the argument hinges on whether typewriters in 1972 had proportional
spacing.

A quick check of on-line references
yields:

Even so, all Selectrics were monospaced -- each and every character
was the same width. Although IBM had produced a successful typebar-based
machine, the IBM Executive, with proportional spacing, no proportionally-spaced
Selectric office typewriter was ever introduced. There was, however, a
much more expensive proportionally-spaced machine called the Selectric
Composer which was considered a typesetting machine rather than a typewriter.

This agrees with my memory of typing technology of the time. Not proportional.
No way. Not on the slickest, fastest machines which were coveted like today's
latest Pentiums. And the Army would not have had many of those fanciest
Correcting Selectrics. Grunts and REMFs would have typed up five-carbon
forms (always with the government, five copies, hence the rainbow bottles
of boo-boo juice: white, pink, pale blue, light green, and goldenrod)
on tired chugging Selectrics and manual bangers. Thud, thud. MSWord is
a whole different animal.

When computer-based word processing was phased in (mid-70's to mid-80's),
first as batch jobs sent to mainframes(you haven't lived until you've tried
to coach office assistants through preparing and batch-printing grant proposals
in UNIX, on deadline), then using increasingly powerful desktop machines
(remember working on the first Mac, the one that maxed-out at 5 printed
pages?? But it was WYSIWYG, and we loved it) the aspects of word processing
which were amazing to users, which completely blew us away (justified text,
proportional fonts, bold, italic, etc.) were trivial from the standpoint
of programming.

And now I sit on planes next to folk thumb-typing their grant proposals
on Black Berries, completely oblivious to the genesis of the QWERTY keyboard:
the need to slow down typing speed so the slender flying typebars, propelled
upward by the typist's keystrokes in an acrobatic ballet would not crash
into each other and tangle, resulting in inked fingers, smdged pages, and
misaligned letters (which gave each machine a distinctive "signature",
so useful in detective fiction.)

Top Ten things I have in common with Sen. Robert Byrd

2004-07-27T13:11:00.000-05:00

1. We both worked as gas station attendants. (In the summer of
1972 I sold gas for 32 cents a gallon in the Tiny Tim plaza, at the western
end of 4th Street in Santa Ana, California. If it’s still there,
look for the sign of the smiling crippled orphan).

2. We both think George W. Bush is dangerously arrogant
and reckless.

3. We like to cite Bob Woodward’s Bush at War: “I'm
the commander-- see, I don't need to explain-- I do not need to explain
why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President.
Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't
feel like I owe anybody an explanation”.

4. We would both look incredibly presidential on that Boston Jumbotron.
Of course, so would a ham sandwich.

5. Senator Byrd was interviewed today on Fresh
Air. I listened to the interview.

6. We worry that not only can’t Bush pronounce “sovereignty” , he does
not understand that in our government sovereignty rests with the people
of the United States. (Senator Byrd refers to his pocket copy of
the U. S.
Constitution. I always think of that old Star Trek, where
the crew finds a tablet inscribed “E Plebnista” by incredibly Latinate
cave dudes, and recognize it as a degraded copy of the Preamble.)

7. Neither of us was alive when the Cubs last won the World Series.

8. Senator Byrd has many highways, bridges, etc. named after him in
West Virginia. I have driven on many of the highways, bridges, etc.
named for him when I work in West Virginia.

9. Senator Byrd has written books.
I have many bird books, and a “Frequent Feeder” card.

10. In the days following September 11, when the Bush administration
set up a “shadow government” operating in an undisclosed location, we both
learned of this by reading about it in the newspaper. Of course,
Senator Byrd, as President pro Tem of the Senate at the time, and third
in the line of presidential
succession, should probably have been informed directly. (See
2, 3, 6 above.)

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day

2004-07-19T05:01:00.000-05:00

It’s 4 a.m. local. Dark, relatively quiet (the freeway murmurs gently like a loved one, the birds are still asleep), as cool as it will be today.

On air, the all-night jazz program finishes with a flourish, the host signs off with tiny hints of pride and relief at another shift brought safely home, the handoff accomplished. There’s a beat, a moment of stillness quite distilled, and then,

“Good morning. A bomb in an Iraqi suburb has killed a dozen people.”

AAAaaagh. Steve Inskeep. The pleasant, detached new voice of NPR calmly recites the day’s headlines. Horrific, indifferent or just plain stupid, the stories like the voice roll on. It isn’t perky, thank goodness for small favors, but… vacuous. Slowing slightly around the corners of certain words, for reasons of enunciation, but never resonant with thought, or the feeling thought engenders, necessarily entails. I wonder how long it will be until I wake to that voice informing me of a terrorist nuke, a forestalled election, the next plague. I say a prayer, for all of us. Bob Edwards, out there in the dark asleep… thanks, man, you are missed and loved.

Selective Memory

2004-07-18T12:35:00.000-05:00

The press is in a reflective mood this slow-news July Sunday.
NPR’s Weekend Edition noted the anniversary of Chappaquiddick,
lest a whole generation grow up thinking it’s a Harry Potter field sport,
I suppose. The big 35th anniversary, what is that, crystal?

On CBS’s Face the Nation the featured 50th Anniversary Flashback
was a moment from a 1986 interview with Marion Barry, which was used to
set up file footage of his drug
arrest sometime in the murky midnight hours of July 18/19, 1990.
OK, I’m not going to play up the conspiracy angles here (that’s what the
book side of self-publishing is for), but I will say this is a hell of
a long way to go for a perp walk.

ABC is covering the British Open (is that golf or tennis?) So
to fill out their dance card, I will note that my childhood best bud Judy
McKenna was born on 7/19 a good many years ago. Who knew she would
become a top-flight legal scholar of national renown? We all did.
Hey, Jude! Many Happy!

Another quick aside: while researching this post on the Washington
Post's helpful if hillarioulsy-named Destination:
Scandal, I was reminded of Bush Senior's misadventure
with cocaine. She don't lie, but he has maybe been known to mis-represent.

NBC’s Meet the Press opened with a guest who doesn’t need film
clips to look back over the past century of American politics. Robert C.
Byrd (D, WV) is basically mad as hell, in a gracious Senatorial way, of
course, and he has written a book.
Drawing on the senior senator’s historical perspective, host Tim Russert
asked Byrd to compare the current Bush administration to another noted
for its secrecy, Nixon’s.

“Worse. Far worse,” Byrd said, even allowing for the fact that
several Nixon staffers hold key positions in the Bush administration (Cheney,
Rumsfeld).

And for those of you keeping score at home, from the Watergate
Timeline: July 18, 1973 Richard Nixon reportedly orders the White
House taping system disconnected. Happy 31st Anniversary! (horsehide?)

“I’ve never been as afraid for our country, for the direction we’re
heading, as I am now.” Byrd held up a well-worn pocket copy of the U.S.
Constitution and decried Congress for turning over to Bush its power to
declare war. “The framers must have been spinning in their graves,”
he said.

Your huddled masses yearning to change sheets

2004-07-17T09:28:00.000-05:00

Hey, I heard something useful on NPR today. No, seriously.

In conjunction with the eye-glazingly weary yet somehow obligatory Martha
Stewart coverage (all hand-wringing, all the time!) that has momentarily
replaced Scott Peterson and John Edwards at the top of the news cycle (though
you’ve got to like that ticket), Scott Simon interviewed David
Novak who wrote essentially an etiquette primer for white-color criminals
(which I sincerely hope is not titled, Everything I Need to Know I Learned
in Stir).

Among Novak's precepts: When you finally get to prison, your impulse
will be to unburden yourself by recounting, to anyone who will listen,
all the injustice and screw-ups and sad wrongs that were visited on your
innocent person by a vengeful god/media/courtsystem/public/family/whatever:
but don’t! The first thing you learn is that, whatever the circumstances,
everybody in prison has been through a lot, so it’s better not to air your
complaints.

If only we could enshrine that principal at the editorial gateways of
NPR-land. I’m so tired of hearing the well-practiced whine of the
über-entitled upper-middle class over any and all of their ills and
discomforts, real and imagined. Yesterday I fled from a 20-minute
commentary on the difficulties of managing immigrant household help during
a relative’s illness. It turns out that they just don’t understand
what you’re going through! Imagine being born into grinding poverty,
and managing to survive god-knows-what harrowing journey to the United
States only to discover that your reward is domestic servitude. That's
what the Statue of Liberty says, right?:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to change sheets...

The piece was so unrelenting in its myopic self-pity it drove me to
vacuuming in 90 -degree heat. (I'm writing from the Midwest; it's not a
dry heat.) So here is my advice to Martha and to her fans, for free:
Pull your socks up! Get over yourself! Or, at the very least,
get off my radio.

Think Positive and Work Like Hell

2004-07-10T19:45:00.000-05:00

As much junior-grade fun as it is to jeer at The Other Side, trade funny
pictures poems
and songs
about them, and call them poopheads, etc., (and don't misunderstand me,
it is a lot of fun), maybe like me you have been searching for positive
actions to take to help make things better for folks who "don't count"
in Bushie America. Maybe like me you wish that the rich white men
who largely run things in Washington could have some more diverse company.

That's why I'm writing today about Doris "Granny D" Haddock, a citizen
in her nineties who has embraced the "crazy idea" of personal political
action and activism. A few years ago she walked across the United
States to protest the distorting influence of big-money campaign contributions
on our representative democracy, and wrote about the journey in her memoir.

Tonight on NPR I heard that she has stepped up to run for U.S. Senate
when the Democrat dropped out of the race in her state of New Hampshire.
Republicans and "smart money" consultants interviewed for the radio
story were openly dismissive of her and disdainful of her candidacy.
But I think they are ignoring the genuine feeling that is building out
here in Internet Land and the power we possess when we use our networks
to mobilize and lend support (as we did for Howard Dean and Michael Moore).

You can learn more about Doris Haddock and her feisty campaign to "Think
Positive About Our Future and Work Like Hell" at her website.

Clintonesque without the grotesque

2004-07-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

In an "instant response" to the Kerry VP choice that simply
amazed television commentators (it was on Bush-Cheney web sites within
minutes of the official announcement! Wow! Are they on top
of things, or what? Lucky for us the Prez wasn't reading a good children's
book this morning...) the Republican National
Committee website calls Edwards "disingenuous" and "unaccomplished."

Ouch! Never mind that Bush cannot read, pronounce, spell or define
"disingenuous", or that, true to form, these accusations best characterize
the Bushies themselves.

The Bush campaign website (which
can't use the address "GWBush.com" because the Bushies didn't have the
foresight to register their name, ceding it to satirists)
jeers that Edwards was not Kerry's first choice. Dems could effectively
counter by pointing out that Dick the snarling, duck blasting, crony courting,
unelectable, Halliburting "go
f--- yourself, big time" Bunker-boy Cheney
was
W's first choice
for VP. Or maybe it was the other way around, scary in any case.

The Bushies know, or think they know, how to defend against a careful
thinker who engages the complex problems of government with a nuanced response
to factual analysis (Gore, Kerry, Nader for that matter). Like the
talking Barbie doll who
giggled, "Math is hard!" and "Let's go shopping", the Bushies put on costumes,
print up slogans, wink into the camera and shake their heads. "Pointing
out how we've squandered the budget surplus, ignored domestic problems
and started a specious war is so pessimistic! Let's go to Disney
World!"

But Edwards is a different story. He has an easy, natural charm
and all the smarts and cunning of a winning trial attorney. He's
Clintonesque without the grotesque. I think Edwards will kick butt,
smiling all the way.