Update on ombudsman

While I know that Michael Getler got plenty of mail about the Post's obscene advertising (see Action and fashion below), it seems they were largely concerned with online cartoons today. Silt has the story.

All lost in the supermarket

I always doubt myself when I blog "discoveries." I wonder, has everyone already seen this? Am I like the person forwarding that same tired list of medical or legal jokes that the recipient has deleted 14 times already? I do try not to be stale.

In any case, TrueGoods is a site that pretty much scares me. It's modeled after a shopping site, but instead of buying things, you tick off your values and put them in a shopping cart. If you get stuck, you can browse other folks'
value statements. I'm a big fan of metaphor. I really am, but I'm just thinking the shopping cart doesn't really work for things like Equality and A World at Peace.

Most of the Value Statements are along the lines of Patti's, "There are many things in life that will catch your eye; But only a few will catch your heart ~ pursue those," if more long winded. A lot of people talking about loving people and treading lightly on the earth (for more on that topic, see below). But then, there are the occasional odd balls. The Phenomenologist:

Meaning is a human invention. Life itself is (only) a phenomenon and the realisation of this should be considered a liberation from imagined and imposed demands. The only things that are real are people (though they may be meaningless), who can not be totally ignored by your own psyche.

The missionary:

We must each find Jesus and make Him our personal Savior. When we keep Him in our hearts He will direct us through life. Then we will have the peace that is beyond understanding.

And the Lost Soul:

I walk the planet alone, looking for something more than I have been given. But, it does not exist in this world and I can not find it. All of my life, I have been drowning in the Sea of Sadness, filled by my tears.

I'm sorry we're all out of the single servings of Personal Fulfillment. We only have the economy pack in stock. Is there anything else we can help you with today?

A quiz

Okay, guess which organization's mission statement the following quote is excerpted from:

encourage land use consistent with the guidelines set forth by the Tread Lightly! organization; ... and primarily be a social and educational entity, encouraging its members to be active in land use advocacy and community service.

Sierra Club? Nope. Conservation International? Nope.

Give up?

The Hummer club. I know...that was going to be your next guess wasn't it?

Well, treading lightly on the earth is not the only lofty goal these folks aspire to. They have partnered with the Red Cross in their new HOPE program--HUMMER Owners Prepared for Emergencies. GM is giving the Red Cross $4 million in support of the program. Mike Morris, HOPE's founder explains, "The HUMMER Club has a lot of people who care about helping others and are willing to give up their personal time because it's the right thing to do," You can't make this shit up, I tell you. It's amazing The Onion still finds anything to create parody from.



These are not the people I want rescuing me.

Action and fashion

Just getting on board here with what everyone's blogging (Eschaton, Alternate Brain, Hullabaloo...)

First, the Washington Post distributed an appallingly anti-gay magazine with its Friday paper. You can read about it and download the .pdfs at AMERICAblog. The substance of the feature article is that blacks were given civil rights because they were being discriminated on the basis of traits that are immutable while homosexuality is a choice, and a bad one indeed, according to Both Sides magazine. In fact, given the fact that the median age for a gay man without AIDS and with a long-term partner is 41 (watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat, Rocky), as opposed to the 75 years a married hetero lives, to make gay marriage legal would "institutionalize a lifestyle that would cut the lives of our young men by nearly a third." Nuff said. It's appalling. This is the contact information for the Post's ombudsman:
Mike Getler:
- ombudsman@washpost.com
- (202) 334-7582

Here's my favorite line from my email to him:
Happily, I no longer live in D.C., a fine city, but hamstrung by a press with an editorial policy that apparently could have been drafted by a cheap whore (or Tom DeLay).

Even when I'm most pissed off, I do crack myself up sometimes.

Okay now that you've gotten angry and depressed, go to Oliver Willis' site to check out his cool tee shirts. I like this one:

When you say "spin," they think "spin cycle"

Okay, I really do have things to do today, but before I hit the road...

There's a great piece on "the undecided voter" at The New Republic. [My thanks to Safe As Houses for pointing it out.] You have to register, but it's worth it. It's almost got a sort of anthropological participant-observer feel to it: what I observed from my time living with the tribe. Christopher Hayes spent the seven weeks preceding the election in Wisconsin talking to undecided voters, and here he writes about what he learned. Among the gems: undecideds view politics like laundry, an onerous chore that they put off until they have no more clean socks.

Here's a slice:

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to.... At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics--maybe, I thought, "issue" is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they're being quizzed on a topic they haven't studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

You know, I used to teach composition (argument, rhetoric, etc.) and American literature in Wisconsin, and it is only this morning that I really am grasping what a tough task that was.

Palast on sums

Nanovirus pointed me to Greg Palast's Monday math lesson. It's short:

FALLUJA ARITHMETIC LESSON
Monday Nov 15, 2004
by Prof. Greg Palast

Today's New York Times, page 1:
"American commanders said 38 service members had been killed and 275 wounded in the Falluja assault."

Today's New York Times, page 11:
"The American military hospital here reported that it had treated 419 American soldiers since the siege of Falluja began."

Questions for the class:
1. If 275 soldiers were wounded in Falluja and 419 are treated for wounds, how many were shot on the plane ride to Germany?
2. We're told only 275 soldiers were wounded but 419 treated for wounds; and we're told that 38 soldiers died. So how many will be buried?
3. How long have these Times reporters been embedded with the military? Bonus question: When will they get out of bed with the military?

Today's New York Times, page 1:
"The commanders estimated that 1,200 to 1,600 insurgents had been killed."

Today's New York Times, page 11:
"Nowhere to be found: the remains of the insurgents that the tanks had been sent in to destroy. ...The absence of insurgent bodies in Falluja has remained an enduring mystery."

"Every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the Big Fool says to push on."

- Pete Seeger, 1967

Readers who have been following may be reminded of Winston Smith's words

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

[As an aside: This being one of the many reasons why the blogosphere is better than academia--It's not necessarily vulgar to cite yourself.]

Loving my country and hating my government

I'm not a flag-waving nationalist, but hell, I did write a dissertation on the Constitution and the flag. I really do love America for lots of reasons too complex to detail here. Walt Whitman, James Dean, Thoreau, the vastness of the great plains, greens and corn bread, the House on the Rock, SoHo, the fucking Constitution, for all its limitations... There's a lot to love about the United States. But I am really, really hating my government today.

The deal-makers have hammered out the last bits of their spending deal, which will seemingly get railroaded through Congress tomorrow in a soul selling frenzy to adjourn. Among other appalling features of the bill is the elimination of language that would attempt to mitigate Bush's war on labor (the "new rules" on overtime pay and the hunger to privatize more public sector jobs) and the addition of a provision that will limit access to abortions. (DemFromCT at Daily Kos has a post on the abortion issue for those of you with the stomach to engage.) I guess Barbara Boxer is threatening to try to slow the train with some Roberts Rules tai chi. Kudos to my Senator, I may not love her as much as my last one, Feingold (who really is the most liberal person in the Senate) but she's fighting the good fight.

And then there's the raising of the debt cap to an unbelievable $8.18 trillion. That's two-thirds of the value of the NYSE. According to the Washington Post (registration required), "Just the increase in the debt ceiling over the past three years is nearly 2 1/2 times the entire federal debt accumulated between 1776 and 1980."

In short, it's all just sick-making. I feel myself losing ground, shifting from "it's time to stand up and fight" back to "it's time to look further into emigration." If anyone has anything marginally uplifting, feel free to post a comment. Please refrain from reminding me that Canada has winter.

Rice cakes

Controversy reigns in my last hometown. This past Wednesday, Sly, a "radio personality" in Madison, Wisconsin, called Condoleezza Rice an Aunt Jemima and said she was incompetent. Perhaps needless to say, he's getting a lot of grief for it, and his remarks are being conflated with those of the Milwaukee DJ who used the word "wetbacks" a couple of weeks ago. The radio station has a survey up, and as of this post, 82.7% of respondents say Sly should apologize. And so on Friday's show, he did:

It is with a heavy heart that I apologize this morning to Aunt Jemima. She wasn't a self-serving hack politician who got up in front of Congress and lied. Aunt Jemima didn't kowtow to Don Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney.

I'm liking this one

Courtesy of LEFT is RIGHT. (With apologies to my new found friends in Georgia.)

Ignorance is Strength

Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in North Carolina suspended one of its faculty members for showing Fahrenheit 9/11 in class. Yahoo's AP has the story on the suspension, which happened because March, the teacher, was in violation of a memo ordering staff to be non-partisan in the classroom. March teaches rhetoric, and I for one, wonder how a person can teach rhetoric and argument without actually discussing rhetoric and arguments. Um...articles on stem cell research? Nope. Articles on war? Nope. Foreign policy? Nope. Better construct a syllabus that discusses TV and pop music (oh, but no West Wing or Eminem please). It's a slippery slope and universities and colleges really must err on the side of academic freedom.

"If I'm wrong about this, I've been wrong my entire career," said March, 54, who has taught at the school for two decades.

Go here for the American Association of University Professors' Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure:

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.
Academic freedom is essential to these purposes and applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning.

A call for new phraseology

When I was listening to KPFK this morning, they announced that the next story would be about "election irregularities." I'm not a conspiracy theorist...well, not all the time, anyway...but I'm thinking we really do need a new phrase here. "Election irregularities" sounds so much like "Just take some democracy immodium and everything will be fine." At least progressive media should be calling this something like "subversion of the democratic process" (I know, that's a little clunky). How about "vote erasure" or "ballot theft"? Any suggestions?

(I really hope I'm not turning into some bizarre Andy Rooney left wing blogger. I feel like so many of my posts could begin "you ever wonder?")

Why it is good that I have no children

I present my obese and highly medicated cat.

War is Peace

So what really got me thinking about 1984 was not Margaret Atwood's book so much as Colin Powell's statements about Iran. I'm sure you all have heard about this by now...some unverified source apparently tipped US intelligence that Iran is advancing its nuclear weapons capabilities:

If the information on Iran were confirmed, it would mean the Islamic republic is further along than previously known in developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it.

What is that quote about history repeating itself? The second time is tragedy; the third time is farce. The fourth time is dystopic novel? I just feel like we really are in 1984 with its endless war against a shifting yet constant enemy.

My coworker Jeff wrote this morning: "From yellow cake in Africa, to WMD in Iraq the ravenous eye now turns towards Tehran." What rough beast, indeed.

It's in the air

My virtual buddy Eponymous, ghosting at yelladog was apparently also thinking about 1984 this morning.

Two Minute Hate

Perhaps inspired by the fact that I am reading a dystopic novel right now, Oryx and Crake, I found myself thinking this morning about driving in LA and 1984. I am from the east coast, and I have lived in the midwest, and I must say, LA is super-friendly compared to anywhere I have lived. But get these folks into cars, and holy mother of god look out. Total personality schism. So this morning it occurred to me that driving in LA is, in fact, like Two Minute Hate:

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, ... And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies.

Which goes some way to explain why I must restrain the urge to drive into oncoming traffic at times when I have the news on the radio.

So those thoughts led me to look up 1984 and this passage seemed worth sharing:

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.

This is perhaps one of the most cogent explanations of the connection between the antigay amendments on so many ballots and the "war against terror" I've seen.

More great gift ideas for the ladies in your life

Archie McPhee action figures!

my own personal ghost of Christmas to come: the crazy cat lady action figure

Woof

Okay, I know this happened days ago, but what can I say...I'm getting caught up. From Bush and Blair's joint press conference

Q: Mr. President, first. The Prime Minister is sometimes, perhaps unfairly, characterized in Britain as your "poodle." I was wondering if that's the way you may see your relationship? And perhaps, more seriously, do you feel for the --

Blair: Don't answer "yes" to that question. If you do, I would be -- (laughter.) That would be difficult.

Q: Do you feel, for the strong support that Britain has given you over Iraq, that you have to pay back Britain for that support in some way?

Bush jumps in with a fervent defense of Blair ending with:

These are troubled times. It's a tough world. What this world needs is steady, rock-solid leaders who stand on principle. And that's what the Prime Minister means to me. [At least he didn't say anything about it being "hard work"]

Then Blair tries to defend himself, saying he backs the "war against terrorism" because it's the right thing to do, not just because he's Bush's whipping boy. To which, Bush says:

Good job.

Woof.

Signs you've been working too much

A genuine conversation with my best friend tonight:

A: I love that quote from Edward Sevareid.

Me: Eric

A: That's what I said, isn't it?

Me: No, you said "Edward."

A: Oh, I meant Eric. I hate being dyslexic.

Me: That's not dyslexic. It's....what's that word?

A: Aphasic?

Me: Um, yeah.

Google scholar

Bless Google. Their newest beta just searches scholarly works. Bummer I'm done with my dissertation...not. Great tag line: Stand on the shoulders of giants.

If you've never been to their catalog site, check it out. A good way to waste time when you really should be looking for scholarly works.

Too funny

Found this over on Transblawg. It seems that a former royal secretary, Elaine Day, is claiming Prince Charles' assistant sexually harassed her. That's not the funny part, of course. The Guardian covers the story:

A former royal secretary told an employment tribunal today that Prince Charles is the head of a "hierarchical and elitist" workplace where staff are expected not to "rock the boat."

It's a monarchy, for Christ's sake, Elaine! The whole system is predicated on an elitist hierarchy.

The story goes on to explain that Day suggested that personal assistants with degrees should be able to train for spots as private secretaries, a notion apparently ghastly to Charles who responded with this memo:

"What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?

"This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability.

"This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history." The memo concludes: "What on earth am I to tell Elaine? She is so PC it frightens me rigid."

How funny is that? Prince Charles complaining that people believe they can be competent heads of state without credentials. Um...and you're qualified why? Oh, right, birth and lineage, that's it.

Can I tell you how nice it is to be reminded we're not the only fucked up country in the world.

Economic recovery in Afganistan

The UN released a report today on opium production in Afganistan:

Afghan annals will record 2004 as contradictory. On the one hand, the political progress towards democracy culminated in the near plebiscite election of President Karzai – the country’s first-ever leader chosen by the people – whose courage and determination I salute. On the other hand, opium cultivation increased by two-thirds, reaching an unprecedented 131,000 hectares. Bad weather and disease lowered the opium yield per hectare resulting in output of 4,200 tons, an increase of only 17%, thus preventing a bumper harvest. Opium cultivation also spread to all 32 provinces -- making narcotics the main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome populations. Valued at $2.8 billion, the opium economy is now equivalent to about 60% of Afghanistan’s 2003 GDP ($4.6 billion, if only licit activity is measured).

Apparently, along with the growth in the crop has come a reduction in price (down 67%). I admit I don't know much of anything about economic matters (I've tried; I really have but it's like water off a duck's back in my brain), but it just seemed worth noting here if only for the sadness of the ways economies try to rebuild themselves.

The BBC has more:

Doris Buddenberg runs the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan.

She says many farmers have little option.

"Afghanistan is a very poor country and particularly through the war the rural areas were very affected," she says.

"They need cash for very simple goods and needs, school books for children, clothing, tea which is a staple here. Opium is the cash crop."

Growing opium is a low-risk occupation and selling it is rarely punished by the authorities.

Lucky number 13

That's the US's rank in The Economist's survey that asked "Where will be the best place to live in 2005?" I'll be damned if I can find a link on The Economist's website, but here is the BBC's summary. The top ten:

1 Ireland
2 Switzerland
3 Norway
4 Luxembourg
5 Sweden
6 Australia
7 Iceland
8 Italy
9 Denmark
10 Spain

Quote of the day

So I just got out of a two-hour meeting on "infrastructure" and was talking to a coworker about why I love the Internet (in brief, it has something to do with my frequently thwarted desire to like people, as a species). He just sent me this:

“I understood the paradox and the tragedy of so many liberals and radicals on the "intellectual" side, who believe that men must work in groups, yet who cannot bear a committee meeting themselves. We were social by conviction, but intensely individualist by nature.”

-Eric Sevareid (who also happens to be my coworker's grandfather)

The quote comes from Sevareid's Not So Wild a Dream.

Bummer it doesn't come with tiles

More proof that I am a geek. This rug, available from the National Scrabble Association, is $115, and I really, really want it. I may actually buy it for myself for Hannukah.
I admit even though I told Mike the other day that I had way too much work to do to waste my time going on dates, if I were to find a handsome, leftist chef who played scrabble I would find the time

Fifteen years ago

The latest release from the National Security Archive contains 10 cables from the US embassy in Prague to the State Department during the Velvet Revolution. Maybe you have to be a bit of a geek to appreciate recently declassified documents; I don't know. I find them pretty fascinating anyway, but heck, I am a geek.

I especially liked this from a November 18, 1989 cable:

There is a final bit of cruel irony to last night's events. Started officially to commemorate a heroic student act of protest against the brutality of Czechoslovakia's Nazi occupiers, they ended yesterday in brutality and apparently at least one student's death at the hands of the Czechoslovak authorities.

What happens when you post before you've had enough coffee

Um...link and spelling now fixed in last entry. The sad fact: I make my living, in part, as a copyeditor.

Lets hear it for the libertarian left

Thanks to eponymous for the tip that Political Compass has updated their site. Some of you may remember it's the site that asks you all of those questions like "I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong," and then at the end graphs your overall position on a grid with a "left-right" axis and an "authoritarian-libertarian" axis. Anyway, they have new questions.

I'm hoping I am not the only one who seems to be on a leftward march these days. Come join me in the corner! Me: Economic Left/Right: -8.25, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.59.

They also graphed the 2004 candidates, which explains a thing or two about some of our feelings of...um...dissatisfaction with the choices. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get much past an "anybody but Bush" feeling about the election. Maybe if we could just find a Dem who wasn't in the upper-right-hand quadrant I could muster more enthusiasm.

City of Angels, indeed

Billy Graham is coming. Tomorrow. He's going to save us. If it's not bad enough that I live in a state where the governor has six hummers, I live in a city where the mayor et al are rolling out the red carpet for the crusaders:

Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn presented a joint resolution signed by the mayor, city attorney, city comptroller and all council members. "The Los Angeles City Council doesn't agree on everything but on this we all agreed," she said. "We hereby acknowledge and commend the wonderful ministry of Billy Graham, commend him on his consistent desire to bring the good news to all people and declare this day 'Billy Graham Crusade Day' and wish him the best for his November 18-21 crusade at the Rose Bowl."

Well thank god the city council has learned to get along. Praise the lord.

Doublespeak

Maybe someone else who is smarter than me can make sense of Goss' instructions to his new super secret staff. In an email to staff this week, Goss wrote

We avoid political involvement, especially political partisanship...We support the administration and its policies in our work...As agency employees, we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies. We provide the intelligence as we see it — and let the facts alone speak to the policy-maker.

Let me see if I get this: We're not political partisans...we only support the Republican agenda...we shun the opposition...we are neutral.

Is that clear everyone?

Porter Goss

You know, the new CIA director. Yeah, well...check out this clip where he talks about his qualifications.

Oscar nominees

The not-so-short list for the best documentary oscar came out today. The five nominees will be chosen from these twelve films:

• "Born into Brothels"
  "Home of the Brave"
  "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train"
  "In the Realms of the Unreal"
  "Riding Giants"
  "The Ritchie Boys"
  "The Story of the Weeping Camel"
  "Super Size Me"
  "Tell Them Who You Are"
  "Touching the Void"
  "Tupac: Resurrection"
  "Twist of Faith"
  

Um...hello? Michael Moore anyone? I mean, the film did win Cannes' Golden Palm. You'd think it would at least make this cut.

End times

Okay, now the rapture people are really going to be packing. Apparently, the plagues have begun. Locusts are swarming in Egypt for the first time in 50 years:

The FAO described the insect clouds as a "medium density swarm of locusts numbering several million, if not a billion," covering several square miles.

Ew.

What...you only talk about politics?

This made me laugh: Yiddish with Dick and Jane.

Journalists in Iraq

A 27-year-old KnightRidder reporter writes about life for a reporter in Iraq:

As the close calls grew, the Iraq we knew shrank. The northern mountains and southern marshes are off-limits now because the roads out of Baghdad are lined with bombs and gunmen. Even a jaunt to the grocery store is a meticulously planned affair. Do you have a radio? A flak vest? A second car to watch for kidnappers?

Some of my colleagues have left, their blond hair and pale skin too inviting for militants out hunting foreigners. Other reporters plan to move inside the Green Zone, the American compound that "protects" you from the people you came to cover.

This year may turn out to be the deadliest journalists have ever know. More than 100 have died as of last week.

Fish empathy

That's what PETA is calling its new ad. They have a whole campaign set up including tips on becoming a pro-fish activist. I don't want to be nasty here, but don't we have bigger fish to fry right now? (Forgive me...I couldn't resist.)

Anger is an energy

I heartily recommend this video at What We Know. Be aware you should close your office door lest someone hear the f-word issuing from your speakers. Go watch it right now. It will make you feel better; I guarantee it.

When the rapture comes, can I have your car?

Okay, I am loving corrente to which I am grateful for my trip to rapture ready. It's definitely worth a visit. Check out the End Time News Bites (a sort of newsblog apocalypse-style), The Dead Frog Report ("examples of unnoticed decay"), and of course, the Post-Rapture Survival Guide (for those of us left behind).

A sigh is just a sigh

Caption contest here

It would be nice if they could call it something different

I don't get why The Paris Review has chosen to call their Writers-at-Work interviews "the DNA of literature," but be that as it may, the interviews from the 50s are available online now, and they'll be rolling out the rest of the decades over the next seven months.

Thanks to Gordon for pointing out Syracuse Cultural Workers' version of the war poster blogged below.

Florida

Can we please just sever it at the panhandle and let it float out to sea?

10 x 10

Jonathan Harris is at it again. I love Harris' Wordcount that presents the most used words in English graphically. Here we can learn, for example, that "mandate" is the 9804-most used word, right behind "outrageous" (9802) and "lied" (9803). "Bush" is number 2629; reading sequentially, we get "bush admits specifically agents smell." What fun. Harris' latest, 10 x 10, compiles photos and words from RSS feeds (Reuters World News, BBC World Edition, and New York Times International News) using "an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis" to determine the most important words and then matching images to the words. I'm not sure how scientific it is, but it's pretty nifty.

Where the blood is coming from

So I had to work today, which just feels wrong to me, and I am bone weary. Part of my job is coordinating volunteers who come in from around the world to serve on workgroups, and one of those workgroups is in town right now, so posting will be light these next few days. Today in the workgroup we were talking about race and diversity. And humanity really. In particular we were discussing the need to reach across racial lines in the work we do (which is a-political, I feel I must clarify). We were talking too about the need to keep sight of our similarities, our common bond, even while we respect and try to speak to our differences. "Aren't we all red inside," one of the workgroup members said. "Or really red and blue," he corrected himself, "depending on where the blood is coming from."

Faces of the Fallen

Saw this referenced at MyDD. The Washington Post has a chart showing a picture of every service person that has died in Iraq as well as ages, where they were from, where they were serving and how they died. Grim stuff. 1166 as of November 11.

ceci n'est pas une critique

Got this one from Harper's. It's not new (posted 15 July 2004), but it's such nice found poetry it has a timeless feel.

The following assertions were collected from public statements made by George W. Bush and his official spokesmen since 1997.

The President of the United States is not a fact-checker.
I’m not a statistician.
I’m not a numbers-cruncher.
I’m not one of these bean counters.
I’m not very analytical.
I’m not a precision guy.
The President is not a micromanager.
I’m not a member of the legislative branch.
The President is not a rubber stamp for the Congress.
I’m not a censor-guy.
I’m not a lawyer.
I’m not a doctor.
The President is not an economist.
I’m not a stockbroker or a stock-picker.
I’m not a forecaster.
I’m not a predictor.
I’m not a pollster, a poll-reader guy.
I’m not a very good prognosticator of elections.
I’m not a committee chairman.
I’m not of the Washington scene.
I’m not a lonely person.
I’m not a poet.
I’m not a very good novelist.
I’m not a textbook player.
I’m not an emailer.
I’m not a very long-winded person.
I’m not a very formal guy.
I am not a revengeful person.
I’m not an Iraqi citizen.
I’m not a divider.
I am not a unilateralist.
I’m not a tree, I’m a Bush.

Looking for the report on Gulf War Syndrome that has just been released, I went to the Dept. of Veterans Affairs...How May We Serve You? Burial. Wow.

The Gov'nor is in Tokyo this week on a trade mission.

A picture from the war

This picture, of soldiers at ease in a mosque is from The New York Times. I pinched it from Body and Soul where the concise post pretty much captures my thoughts.

Kristalnacht in Falluja

Postmortem

The Pew Research Center released a study Thursday about the election. Despite the stupid title, Voters Liked Campaign 2004, But Too Much 'Mud-Slinging' there is some interesting stuff. Most of it is predictable or over-reported already, but some ways into the report, I encountered this:

A narrow majority of Democrats (52%) think the party's leaders should stand up to the Republicans on issues that are important to Democratic supporters; 42% think Democratic leaders should try to work with Republican leaders even if it means disappointing some groups of Democratic supporters.

I cannot imagine what would possess someone who called themselves a Democrat to determine the Dems should "work with" the Republicans. I'm really thinking Rodney King here. After they beat the crap out of you, you're asking, "Why can't we all just get along"? My message to 42% of Democrats: The situation really will seem brighter as soon as you get your heads out of your asses.

News

It's a cheap laugh, I know, but apparently a man did actually bite a dog today (or at least that's what the police are saying). In fact, they say he nearly bit off the ear of a police dog. What's particularly newsworthy to me is that the police in Kansas City have enough time on their hands to chase down folks who stiff cab drivers and release their dogs on them. Geez, when I managed a store in D.C., I couldn't get a cop in to arrest a shoplifter if no blood was involved.

U2's New Album

I have tried to avoid weighing in on the "Arafat as dignified statesman" sentiment that seems to be all over the news. Obviously, the situation in Israel/Palestine is complex and I have been a little more given to simplified thinking lately. One more rant just didn't seem helpful.

That said, I have had a hard time listening to the news lately, particularly the progressive news (KPFK, for instance). It seems as though every time I turn it on, someone is saying "Well, now we'll all find out that the reason we don't have peace in the Middle East is because of the Jews." This morning I tried again, and again, they were interviewing Palestinians who were talking about what's wrong with the Jews.

So I changed the station to KCRW, which was playing music. I really like Nic Harcourt's Morning Becomes Eclectic. Nic comes on and says he has a track from the new U2 album. Oh good, I think, maybe it will be some good old fashioned anti-war U2. The song begins:

Bow down

Lay down
Lay down
Lay your sweet lovely on the ground
Lay your love on the track
We’re gonna break the monster’s back

Lay down your treasure
Lay down now brother
You don’t have time
For a jealous lover
As you enter this life
I pray you depart
With a wrinkled face
And a brand new heart

At this point in the song I'm wondering if it's going to do that U2 turn to address war. Sure enough the next stanza goes like this:

I don’t know if I can take it
I’m not easy on my knees
Here’s my heart, I’ll let you break it
We need some release, release, release
We need love and peace
Love and peace

And then comes this:

Lay down
Lay down your guns
All your daughters of Zion
All your Abraham sons

Am I being paranoid here? I could just be ignorant or misunderstanding the song, but it does appear to be telling the Jews to lay down their arms. I'm not sure I want to get into a big debate here about culpability--I just wanted to say it really disappointed me.

For Veteran's Day, or the ten minutes remaining, here are some posters from National Archives

This one is special for K

A very LA-type war poster

sweaters

My oldest friend A's conversation with a sales clerk yesterday:

A: I see the regular sweaters and I see the petite sweaters, but I don't see the fat people sweaters anywhere.
Clerk: You mean the beautiful women sweaters? They're over behind the petites.
A: Well, that figures. What were they thinking to make us shop right next to the petites?
Clerk: Honey, we rule.
A: You know how you know that?....Because we eat all their food.

I really love this woman.

Godly America and Worldly America

I don't really agree with the oversimplification of this piece by Simon Schama, but the guy just writes so damn well I had to share it.

Schama on reaching across the divide:

I don't want to heal the wound, I want to scratch the damned thing until it hurts and bleeds - and then maybe we'll have what it takes to get up from the mat. Do we think the far-right Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, in the ashy dawn of his annihilation in 1964, wanted to share? Don't think so. He wanted to win; sometime. And now, by God, he has.

And on the inefficacy of technology to persuade:

For most of us purblind writers spend our days in Worldly America and think that Godly America is some sort of quaint anachronism, doomed to atrophy and disappear as the hypermodernity of the cyber age overtakes it, in whatever fastness of Kentucky or Montana it might still circle its wagons. The shock for the Worldlies is to discover that Godly America is its modernity; that so far from it withering before the advance of the blog and the zipdrive, it is actually empowered by them. The tenacity with which Godly America insists the theory of evolution is just that - a theory - with no more validity than Creationism, or that Iraqis did, in fact, bring down the twin towers, is not in any way challenged by the digital pathways of the information age. In fact, such articles of faith are expedited and reinforced by them. Holy bloggers bloviate, Pentecostalists ornament their website with a nimbus of trembling electronic radiance and, for all I know, you can download Pastor John Ashcroft singing the Praises of the Lord right to your Godpod.

I was feeling pretty blue, it being Veteran's Day and all (did you know more part-time reservists died Monday than any single day in the last year and half?), but Schama cheered me up a little (and so did my haircut).

Colonization

So I have been thinking about this whole what-to-do-now issue. We all know the solutions being proposed: emigrate, secede, get busy... But I am thinking...what about colonization? By my figuring, Florida needs something like 400,000 democrats to turn blue again; Ohio needs 130,000 or so. We can round up 530,000 people from places like California and still have a solid majority there. Don't get me wrong: I have no desire to move to Miami (though "jobless recovery" is strong there due to the hurricane apparently--natural disasters having done for our unemployment what the administration cannot), but if I were going with 529,999 other folks I could sacrifice. And maybe some of you fine folks from Boulder, Colorado or Athens, Georgia or Austin, Texas would be willing to abandon your islands in the red seas and join up. Anyone in?

Mary Cheney

I find it fairly amazing that Mary Cheney has been referenced in more than 100,000 news citations in the last six weeks. This according to a study of political buzzwords by The Global Language Monitor. I really must live in deep denial most of the time. I have no idea what interests most people I think.

Among the lists of buzzwords:

Colossal Error: Kerrys judgment on Bushs Iraq policy. Evidently following California Olive Growers Association Guidelines for measuring the size of olives -- Large, Extra Large, Jumbo, Gigantic, Colossal and Super Colossal. This leaves wiggle room for a 'super-colossal error'.

Shopping

Can I just say how much I love the Unemployed Philosophers Guild? Myself, I have the Freud and Couch finger puppet set in my office (frighteningly appropriate), but check out the link above to the Disappearing Civil Liberties Mug. Pour in coffee and the Bill of Rights vanishes. Though of course, were it truly reflective of our time, the Second Amendment would still be in place. I also really love the Axis of Evil finger puppet set.

Red and Blue are so Limiting

I need to view this about 57 more times to absorb the data, but these flash maps are pretty darned cool at first glance. Campaign ads, election results, demographics...

Lies, damned lies and statistics

This is a pretty decent article on the *ahem* voting anomolies. I like this part:

Republican pollster Dick Morris said the Election Night pattern of mistaken exit polls favoring Kerry in six battleground states – Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa – was virtually inconceivable.

“Exit polls are almost never wrong,” Morris wrote. “So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. … To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here.”

But instead of following his logic that the discrepancy suggested vote tampering – as it would in Latin America, Africa or Eastern Europe – Morris postulated a bizarre conspiracy theory that the exit polls were part of a scheme to have the networks call the election for Kerry and thus discourage Bush voters on the West Coast. Of course, none of the networks did call any of the six states for Kerry, making Morris’s conspiracy theory nonsensical.

I find it pretty ominous that even Dick Morris is saying the results "boggle the imagination."

I've Really Lost It (Some Would Say)

Look I made a friend (you have to scroll down to the "time to rant" heading). It's good to know someone's praying for me, in any case. I can use all the help I can get.

I am restraining the urge to post back, “Learn to use spell check Matt becuase otherwise you look like a dumbo.” (Besides I forget sometimes too.)

Liberation

From today's post at Baghdad Burning:

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld is making his asinine remarks again,

"There aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by U.S. forces,"

No- there are only an 'estimated' 100,000 civilians in Falloojeh (and these are American estimations). So far, boys and men between the ages of 16 and 60 aren't being counted as 'civilians' in Falloojeh. They are being rounded up and taken away. And, *of course* the US forces aren't going to be doing the killing: The bombs being dropped on Falloojeh don't contain explosives, depleted uranium or anything harmful- they contain laughing gas- that would, of course, explain Rumsfeld's idiotic optimism about not killing civilians in Falloojeh. Also, being a 'civilian' is a relative thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a civilian if you're on their side. If you translate for them, or serve them food in the Green Zone, or wipe their floors- you're an innocent civilian. Everyone else is an insurgent, unless they can get a job as a 'civilian'.

So this is how Bush kicks off his second term. More bloodshed.

Swing state

Is it just me, or does anyone else think "swing state" sound like something there must be medication for?

It's started already

Got this email from a friend this a.m.:

Thought you like a little post election update from the heartland (Rockford, IL). I work for a high-tech aerospace parts manufacturer where 70% of the union workforce is made up of skilled trades workers. I have been there for 25 years. The company is one of the most profitable in the industry, outperforming even General Electric almost every year for the past 10-15 years on shareholder return. They have about $35 billion per year of gross sales, a significant amount of that is with the U.S. defense industry. Over the past 10 years they have increased worldwide employment but reduced the number of U.S. jobs by about 40%. They are dramatically growing their businesses in communist China, Poland, Puerto Rico and Singapore.

Three days after the election my company announced that they are closing our repair and electronic operations and moving them to Miramar, FL; Phoenix, AZ; and Puerto Rico. Guess they were waiting to see who won before they jeopardized their defense contracts. This will cause the layoff of about a third of our union members and take place in 2005. They are also moving about 80 union jobs from Connecticut to a non-union plant in York, Nebraska and closing a plant of about 300 workers in Grand Junction, CO and moving those jobs to Singapore. Let's hope I can hang on another five years to get my retirement eligibility, although I lost the healthcare coverage after a six week lockout in 2003. And my cousin wonders why I'm a Democrat...

The Right Job for the Right Man at the Right Time

Howard Dean is considering a bid for DNC chair. No meditations or speculations on that as I must go to work and sit in an Excel training for four hours. Feel for me, people.

You know, while I am regaining my sense of humor, I haven't had a good night's sleep since the election. At least I am not dreaming of being arrested and DNA printed as J is. Be grateful you don't live in Cal-i-for-nee-ah, my friends in other places. Those ballot measures...

Good News for a Change

A legal victory for at least one detainee at Guantanamo:

A U.S. federal court ruled Monday that Osama bin Laden's driver was entitled to a legal hearing on whether he is a prisoner of war — a landmark opinion that could prevent military trials of alleged enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay.

.......

"Unless and until a competent tribunal determines that petitioner is not entitled to protections afforded prisoners of war under Article 4 of the Geneva Convention ... of Aug. 12, 1949, he may not be tried by military commission for the offenses with which he is charged," U.S. District Judge James Robertson said.

Of course, the article goes on to explain that the government will appeal because the Geneva Convention does not apply to al-Qaida members. There are 550 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, some who have been there for almost three years. Only four have been charged.

Falluja

According to this story by the BBC, the troups seem pretty psyched to go kick some Falluja ass.

But for the highly-professional marines, Falluja is also a return to the simplicity of combat after the complexities of peacekeeping and an enemy that never shows itself.

"The marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy," said Colonel Brandl.

"But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."

Ed got it right (and I thank him for the original citation):
Who says it's not a crusade?

Out to coffee with Becky tonight and this is the label from her water bottle. Certainly she was relieved that she wasn't drinking any of that fatty water.

An Open Letter to the Right

Inspired perhaps by my coworker Jeff, I wrote a letter to the editor (of the LA Times) today:

Still smarting from Kerry’s defeat, the 55 million of us who voted for the Democratic nominee now are subject to the critique that we did not and cannot win because we think we are better than the rest of America, that we on the coasts have written off the middle of the country as ignorant, fly-over territory. But electoral maps do not tell the story well. With the exception of voters in Washington, DC, most of us live in states that are more accurately some shade of purple. And that is what inspires the widespread sense of shock and disbelief among those of us still proud to call ourselves liberals and progressives. We know you. We work with you, we shop in the same grocery stores you do, we attend movies and concerts together, we stood in line next to each other at the polls. Some of you are our friends, even relatives. And we cannot understand how you could willingly choose to continue on our present course. Do you know what the media is saying about you? They are saying that you were driven to vote by the desire to deny rights to people because of who they love, that you are passionately committed to “saving the lives of the unborn” but you are willing to write off more than 100,000 civilian dead in Iraq as “collateral damage,” and that you believe the invasion of a sovereign nation is okay because “the world is a better place” now, but you are not interested in intervening in the genocide in Darfur, nor were you interested in taking action against the genocide in Rwanda. And why this latter seeming inconsistency? Because you want to ensure full tanks for your SUVs and Hummers and are unwilling to legislate fuel efficiency limits because, god knows, you need to drive a military vehicle to take your children to soccer practice. In short, it is hard to view you as anything less than selfish, xenophobic war-mongers who cloak themselves in righteousness and talk of compassion while fervently pursuing an agenda that costs thousands their lives and millions their rights. Yes, we do think we are better than you, most assuredly. We in blue believe the best ideals of our country have to do with tolerance, justice, and equality. We think you have abandoned those ideals. And we plead with you to prove us wrong because you are our friends, our neighbors, our relatives.

Say what you like about LA, but at least we're a blue city. This week's LA Weekly cover

Thursday's Mirror cover

Some quotes

"Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set." Adlai Stevenson "Putting First Things First"

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows." Winston Smith in 1984

"Think how far Iraq has come from the days of torture chambers and mass graves, and the brutal reign of a barbaric tyrant." Bush in Iowa, 1 Nov. 2004

"Farmers’ sons will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than light." Thoreau "The Succession of Forest Trees"

"I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen." More Thoreau On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Ben Sargent's take

Exodus

Reuters is reporting that hits to Canada's immigration website are drastically up.

On an average day some 20,000 people in the United States log onto the Web site, www.cic.gc.ca -- a figure which rocketed to 115,016 on Wednesday. The number of U.S. visits settled down to 65,803 on Thursday, still well above the norm.

Don't trust anyone over 30.

What I've read in the paper in the past 48 hours

Bush is excited to eliminate social security, drill in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, and test smart bombs in Australia. Big surprise, Bush got extra votes in Ohio from machine errors. Hollywood may be "a liability" to Democrats because Republicans feel "pistol whipped" by the celebrities urging a humane and sensible political choice. And Republicans are "issuing only slightly veiled threats" to Democrats who might oppose the appointment of conservative judges. Finally, and most amusingly, coyotes have been spotted near the White House. I don't need to point out the metaphor here, do I?

Credit where it's due

Just found out the below came from this blog. I think I might buy an "I seceded" tee-shirt.

American Coastopia

I got the following via email today. It echoes my friend David's suggestion that all of the Kerry supporters should just leave: "I mean what would all those beef-cheeked billionaire CEOs do without the dominated sector of the dominant class to do all their dirty work?"

Ladies and gentlemen, you needn't fret anymore. We have decided that we can't live in the United States anymore, because so many of you in the "heartland" are so full of shit. We were all going to move to various other countries, but then we thought - why should WE move?

We are tired of rednecks in Oklahoma picking the leader who will determine if it is safe for us to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. We are sick of homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming contributing to the national debate on our gay marriages. So we have done the only thing we could. We seceded.

May I present to you: AMERICAN COASTOPIA.

That's right, American Coastopia. The states of Washington, Oregon and California are joining us on one coast, and we will provide all of New England. In the middle of the country, we have taken Iowa and Illinois, mostly because we need the fine produce of Iowa's soil, and the museums in Chicago are fabulous.

The other dot is New Orleans, which you don't deserve. American Coastopia needs a place to gamble, and the locals want nothing to do with you. Sure, you can visit, but it isn't part of your country anymore.

I can sense your worry. Who will get all the banks? You can f---ing have most of them, because we're taking downtown and midtown Manhattan back, turning the whole thing into a giant artist colony replete with movie studios and progressive think tanks. Wall Street and other financial institutions will be relocated to Charlotte, which we believe will suit your needs better. Frankly, the good folks in Manhattan are sick of being a terrorist target for your benefit.

A word about our politics. Abortions will be safe and legal in American Coastopia, and homosexual men and women will be free to marry at their discretion. We will have our own currency, and trade with any countries we want. Everyone will have health care. Everyone will have an identity card. Homelessness and unemployment will be virtually unknown. We believe in a meritocracy and a huge chasm between church and state. 100% of our cars will be hybrid by 2006.

Yes, we're taking all the people that ever created everything beautiful. Yes, we're taking all the funny people, too. All the sculptors, architects, surgeons, philosophers, violinists, and fishermen. You should have treated them better when you had them.

We have no pledge of allegiance, but I can say this: I am no longer from your United States of America. I belong to American Coastopia, the United States of My Friends, the Nation of Two: my partner and I. We hold our noses as we fly over you. We are sickened by the way you treat people who are different from you. The rest of the world despises America, and we don't want to be lumped in with you anymore.

Please, all of you who went to bed night before last sick with worry, come to us. In American Coastopia, the light is always on, the hazelnut lattés are always hot, and we have a trundle bed for each and every one of you.

This pretty much sums it up

At least everyone else is angry and depressed too

I will write more this weekend when it's not already midnight, but in the meantime, let me say that Bush's claim that he has a mandate is laughable. Reagan had a mandate. Clinton could argue he had a mandate. Bush has a mandate only insofar as he was elected rather than appointed this time. Which is to say (thank you Wendy for pointing this out) the Compact OED defines mandate this way: "the authority to carry out a policy, regarded as given by the electorate to a party or candidate that wins an election." Did everyone catch Bush's claim "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it"? And this one is truly horrifying. It reads almost like an Onion article from the title ("Bush Unlikely to Keep All Promises"--ya think?) to the wish list of agenda items ranging from eliminate social security to drill for oil in Alaska. Did you know that if they placed fuel efficiency limits of 3 miles per gallon we would save as much oil per day as they could extract from our National Wildlife Refuge?

Sigh.

Anyway, it's late and I have to go to bed. I only just came in off the ledge today around lunch time. It gets tiring to keep passing the open windows. If I didn't send it to you already, you should read the post To My Friends From Other Places. One of the Rons forwarded it to me today and I tracked it down on the web. I'm a fan.

Doing what we can

I just spent a half hour or so calling people in "swing states" to encourage them to vote. There's this organization votercall where you can register and they give you a list of names and number of low income and minority registered voters. They give you a script and you call people and ask if they need help getting to the polls or information about where their polling place is.

So that's the strategy for trying to effect some sort of positive momentum. Barring the success of that effort, I also began contingency planning today. I think that I can, indeed, emigrate to Canada as a skilled worker.

Rats

So in the search for intelligent commentary about tonight's debate or even in search of public opinion (two things so very unrelated at this point in history), I found myself surfing by the McEnroe show and stopping to hear Robert Sullivan talk about rats. Did you know that the LA rats (black rats) are thinner than the NY rats (brown rats) and that the former prefer a vegetarian diet while the latter prefer meat? What's more, LA rats ("ship rats") don't swim well, and NY rats ("water rats") do. LA rat packs have dominant males and females (which are general the most aggressive rats) and are "polygynous," which means the boy rats mate with more than one girl rat at one time, while NY rat packs are dominated by males and are "polygynandrous," which basically means what's good for the goose is good for the gander. In fact, according to Animal Diversity Web, "Once a female enters her six-hour estrus period, she may mate as many as five-hundred times with competing males."

Peter Pan

I wish LA had a weekly as great as the Voice. Their latest piece on Kerry and Bush is pretty insightful, I think.

Descending into the abyss

So admittedly, I got a little distracted today at work. I've been saying for some time now that I would post some of the online "finds" of recent weeks, and I visited memepool in anticipation of such a post tonight, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything really great. Well, you know how these things go... First I followed a memepool link to the Unfortunate Animal of the Month Club. This one is my personal favorite, though I am also really fond of frankenbunny. Well, Cat Grey's links page (Cat Grey being the creator of the unfortunate animals), took me to another site, which in turn took me here. Who knew that goths had their own ebay-ish haunts? Somehow I got on an animal expedition of sorts and from link to link found myself admiring the tiger man and feeling somewhat astonished at the wide variety of fetishes there are in the world. In my defense, let me say that I used to work here and have even published a book about the Internet. That is to say, I used to surf the web for a living (and of course, write grants, as every writer for a nonprofit must do except those of us lucky enough to work for places that don't accept outside donations--let's hear it for the traditions). Of course, I don't surf the web for a living now, so there's really no excuse for my behavior today. I just got sucked into the perversity, what can I say?

Many of the other recent sites I have loved, have had to do with politics, shocking I'm sure. There's the Dishonest Dubya action figure, the George W. Bush speechwriter, and highlights from the first debate, Faces of Frustration. Thank god the Democratic Party has finally overcome the desire to take the high road, I say. On the less satirical and more sobering side of things, the Cost of War site I think is very effective, Convince Your Mom is cute, and this story by The Washington Post explains a thing or two (sorry, you have to register for that one, I think). Most depressing of all is the Iraq Body Count site.

Which reminds me of my ideas for the Kerry campaign. First, the next time an anti-abortion person asks him a question about her tax dollars going to fund abortion, I think Kerry should politely point out that regardless of his stance on abortion, he is the best candidate for anyone who cares passionately about the sanctity of life since we perhaps could have avoided the deaths of 13,000-and-counting people if we had managed not to go to war. (And on this note, let me say as an aside, that it really would be nice to have a Democratic candidate that wasn't quite so much of a hawk. Bring back the doves!)

My other idea, and this one I have held onto since "liberal" became an epithet during the Dukakis campaign, is for Kerry to read the dictionary definition of "liberalism" the next time Bush accuses him of being the most liberal man in the Senate (and if that's true the country is far worse off than even I imagined). Merriam-Webster says it's "a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties." Similarly, the American Heritage Dictionary defines it this way: "A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority." I think Kerry should just read that and ask Bush what part of that definition he is trying to distance himself from. I actually emailed that suggestion to the Kerry campaign, so if you hear him define liberalism during tomorrow's debate, you know where he got that idea from.

If you watched the last debate, you know that Kerry handled the accusation by stating that he didn't believe in labels. Frankly, I still do believe in the efficacy of labels (nice wiggling on that one, John), and I know the most liberal person in the Senate is my former senator, Russ Feingold,who was the only one out of the hundred of them with the guts to vote against the Patriot Act. If you're curious about how liberal your Senators are, check it out at Progressive Punch.

Okay, that's enough out of me for one night.

Shirts for the men, and shirts for the ladies.

I know I am a bit behind in finally posting these, but they are too good to keep to myself even if they are late. Pics from my friends in NYC of the anti-RNC protests.

milestone

So today is my NA birthday. I have been clean 19 years. Happily for me, where I live that isn't such a very long time. In fact, I feel like I can almost play with the big kids, like I am almost old enough where I don't have to eat at the card table with the youngsters, you know? I had a really great day at work. Went to the Indian buffet with a bunch of coworkers to celebrate my birthday and U's, who is my "sister in recovery" with a nineteen years and three days today. Got an array of gifts: lucky bamboo and a gold cat from Japan that waves (I'm not sure if it's waving out the bad luck or waving in the good). I am sure I have placed these things in the wrong corners and completely messed up my chi and fucked up the feng shui, but hey. Admittedly my office is beginning to look like a set for some sort of wannabe cool indy film or something. Last week two of my coworkers brought me a plastic severed foot that expands in water and the next day JS gave me an early birthday gift: farm animal pencil toppers with nose erasers that "sniff out mistakes." Sort of a David Lynch meets Spensers Gifts kind of combination that made me think hmm... And there were an array of other nice things today. K got me a leather belt from the skate shop that has my name on the back. I feel like I am stinting it to wear it without a back tattoo that says something like "delicious" with some sort of goth border or something.

After work I met J at the little step meeting, which grew right out of its room tonight. It was a recovery battle of the bulge. J gave me a cake and we went out to follow your heart with P and J. I bought my favorite vitamins (MegaFoods Unstress) and my favorite yogurt (Brown Cow full fat, thank you very much, with the cream layer on top). J gave me a pink cat clock that will go on my table at work next to the magic 8 ball and the punk duck. Let it never be said I take myself too seriously.

Really the thing was though not the stuff or the cake but just the feeling of being so loved and at home. I got so many calls and emails and cards. Sitting at Follow Your Heart eating potato soup and talking with P and J and J I just felt so content. I remember when I was using I felt so incapable of enacting any change in my life. I didn't feel like an agent at all, and I was so desperately unhappy but I just felt like a victim of circumstance...like an object in misery will remain in misery until acted on by an outside force...the physics of addiction. I remember there was a Kate Bush song that was popular that had a lyric like "I just know that something good is going to happen but I don't know what," and I used to hear that and think something good will happen. I used to go out to clubs and get totally obliterated and wait for something to happen, but I didn't know how to make anything good happen in my life. And tonight I just thought about how much I love my life. Exactly as it is.

And it's a funny thing. Even though I know that I understand how to affect change in my life now. I have a life I love in part because I have worked to get one. But at the same time, I think about how unlikely it is for someone like me to be happy. I wouldn't have bet on that horse. I hear people say in meetings all the time "I deserve this," or "I deserve to be happy," or whatnot. And I don't know; I don't feel like I "deserve" a life as good as the one I have. I am grateful for it and I cherish it, but I think I am more lucky than deserving. So many people don't make it. I always think about Meredith on my birthday, my friend who killed herself when I had five months clean. She was 21, and she jumped out of a ninth-story dormitory window. She and I used to live in the dorm and we would sit in my room, on the ninth floor, and talk about what it would be like to jump. I still miss her and I think about how it could have been me. What am I trying to say here? Just I guess that it's all a blessing. And I guess I think living a life that makes me happy is a privilege not a right for me.

On a related but different note, I got the bound copies of my dissertation in the mail today. I paraded them around like pictures of grandchildren to show everyone in the office. They are baby blue. Then of course, I had to look myself up in the UW library catalog. I now have two entries next to my name. I confess: I've done a vanity search for myself in Google before. I am a validation slut. There, I've admitted it.

I have been collecting websites to post, but they are all at work. Too many of them are political. I think that's part of why I have been so bad about posting here. With the election looming, sometimes I feel like politics is the only thing worth talking about and yet politics depresses me so much sometimes I have to turn off democracy now on the radio lest I swerve into oncoming traffic. More on that note later. In the meantime, here are two sites that made me laugh so much I almost hurt myself: famous films reenacted in thirty seconds by animated bunnies and Strindberg and Helium.

P.S. So I just ran spell check, and it suggested I replace "fucked" with "bucked" or "bucket," "Spensers" with "Spenserian," and "P.S." with "POOH," which I guess is the shit you forgot to say in the main body of the message. Anyway, I thought it was pretty funny. Spenserian gifts...that's like when you write your girlfriend an inscrutable and overly long poem because you don't want to spring for a piece of jewelry, right?

Has anyone else noticed that we're going to hell?

From the AP Newswire:

"Police said more than 1,760 people have been arrested in a week of convention-related protests, a record for a U.S. political convention."

I heard this gem on Democracy Now from a delegate from Wausau, Wisconsin: "There was a time when he [Michael Moore] would have been tried for treason."

I cannot even listen to the news on my way to work anymore because it makes me want to drive into oncoming traffic.

My friends in NYC tell me Manhattan is exploding with protest. More than a quarter million people, including my dear A who is carrying a sign: "My bush would make a better president."

And then there's my favorite:

Bush's latest

Did everyone see this one from last week? Thanks to Ed and Carole for forwarding it to me.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our countryand our people, and neither do we."-George W. Bush

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20040805/D84963381.html

As if we needed more reasons to hate Walmart

This is from the August 3 LA Times

Study Cites Social Costs of Wal-Mart
By Abigail Goldman, Times Staff Writer

Inadequate wages and benefits force workers at Wal-Mart stores in California to seek $86 million a year in state aid, according to a report released Monday by the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Moreover, if other retailers cut their wages and benefits to the levels offered by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the cost to California's public-assistance programs would rise by $410 million annually, the study said.

In their report, Berkeley researchers Arindrajit Dube and Ken Jacobs contend that more than other retail workers, Wal-Mart employees rely on a variety of public-aid programs, including food stamps, Medicare and subsidized housing.

"In effect, Wal-Mart is shifting part of its labor costs onto the public," the researchers wrote. "Wal-Mart's long-term impact on compensation in the retail industry has the potential to place a significant strain on the state's already heavily burdened social safety net."

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, maintains that it pays competitive wages and relieves public assistance burdens by giving jobs to many people who otherwise would not be employed.

"It's unfortunate that these UC Berkeley researchers would release a study whose findings are questionable," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin said. The company employs more than 60,000 people in California.

The public debate about whether Wal-Mart benefits or hurts local communities has grown considerably louder over the last few years, particularly in California, where some communities have opposed the company's expansion plans.

The company's wage and benefit structure was also cited as a reason behind last year's strike and lockout of unionized grocery workers in Southern California; the largest supermarket chains said they needed to revamp costs to compete with the retail giant.

Dube and Jacobs' study took into account statewide data on wages paid by large retailers, the numbers of workers throughout the retail industry who use state assistance programs and information gleaned from lawsuits about Wal-Mart's pay and benefits.

Dube, of Berkeley's Institute of Industrial Relations, and Jacobs, of the school's Center for Labor Research and Education, said they did not contact Wal-Mart in preparing their report.

The report found that Wal-Mart's wages on average were 31% below those of the broader group of large retailers — $9.70 an hour versus $14.01 an hour.

And with less earning power, Wal-Mart workers rely more heavily on state resources, Dube and Jacobs found, costing the state $32 million in health-related expenses and $54 million in other assistance.

The study contends that the average non-management Wal-Mart employee receives $1,952 in public assistance compared with $1,401 for workers at large retailers in general.

"The disproportionate use by Wal-Mart workers of the various healthcare and social safety net programs, and the cost that that brings to the state, is an important consideration for policymakers," Jacobs said in an interview.

Dube and Jacobs noted that other studies have reported similar findings.

In Georgia, a state survey of the state's children's health insurance program found that Wal-Mart employees' families disproportionately relied on the program, accounting for more than 10,000 of the 166,000 children enrolled.

In Congress, a report by Democratic staffers on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce looked at employee eligibility for assistance programs and found that a typical 200-employee Wal-Mart store could cost federal taxpayers $420,750 a year, or more than $2,000 per employee.

Wal-Mart has disputed those findings.

the music of politics

So I was thinking tonight, while watching Kerry's acceptance speech, about how many of our country's problems we could have avoided if we had a requirement that our Commander in Chief be able to correctly pronounce the word "nuclear." Say what you like about Kerry, but at least he would never ask a question like "Is our children learning?"

That said, I am feeling something akin to battered spouse syndrome in this election:

"I know I said I'd give you health care before, baby, but this time I really mean it. I'll never lie to you again baby. I love you. I do. Don't give up on me. This time I really will respect you and your rights."

And did anyone notice the music playing when Kerry took the stage? That's right, Springsteen's "No Surrender." I suppose the idea was to emphasize the verse: "There's a war outside still raging. You say it ain't ours anymore to win." But of course, the refrain repeats over and over again "Well we made a promise we swore we'd always remember. No retreat, baby, no surrender. Like soldiers in the winter's night with a vow to defend. No retreat, baby, no surrender." So which is it—we can't win the war or we'll never retreat or surrender? What a perfect rallying cry for the candidate who wants to be understood, at once, as a decorated veteren and an antiwar protester.

Here's our political quiz for the day: What other presidential candidate used a Springsteen song in his election bid? Think "Born in the USA"...that's right Ronald Reagan. I admit I was having a sort of PTSD moment last night with the Springsteen in the background and all of that flag waving in the foreground. But at least Kerry (or his handlers) seems to have understood what the song is about, as opposed to Reagan whose inability to comprehend basic rock lyrics should have been a giant red flag. The man thought "Born in the USA" was an unproblematically patriotic song and the Beach Boys shouldn't play on the mall because they "attracted the wrong element."

You know, it's hard to believe it was twelve years ago already when I stood outside for three hours in Madison, Wisconsin waiting to see Bill Clinton on his campaign trail (when he finally arrived he actually admitted he was three hours late because he stopped for burgers in Milwaukee). The music playing when Clinton took the stage was Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now," on the face of it a good anthem for regime change:

Right here, right now
there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
watching the world wake up from history

The song, however, is really about the fall of the Berlin Wall, not necessarily the event Clinton would want to evoke.

How about a candidate that plays Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" or Leonard Cohen's "Democracy":

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Maybe then I could muster less ambivalent enthusiasm.

All of that said, I was going to write that I would vote for a trained seal if it was running opposite Bush, but then I realized, the seal would not, in fact, need to be trained to get my vote.

Meghan Daum

I guess her two books were pretty big, but I stumbled across her website, and I wanted to share it. Check out her take on L.A.

Don't you love this bumpersticker? Let's hear it for cafepress.com.

National Brotherhood Week

Okay, I know my blog is increasingly characterized by a "what the hell is wrong with people" tone, and for that I apologize, but seriously--what the hell is wrong with people? What's with the Republican hysterically homophobic approach to political commentary these days? Is it a byproduct of a party that has drifted so far from anything resembling the truth or even the pretense of acting in its constituents' best interests that the only strategy left is grade school name calling? "Never mind the economy, you're a homo?" "Never mind the occupation of Iraq, we just need to make sure those queers don't legalize their relationships?" Good lord. Let's all join together for a rousing take off on the old Tom Lehrer song.  Altogether now: "Everybody hates the queers."

the grammar of LA

So watching the news last night and the progression of our latest fires, it occurred to me that before I lived in LA I never called trees and brush (that is, vegetation) "fuel."
 
There is a particular grammar to LA. On the east coast or in the midwest, "smog" and "valet" are not verbs—as in "Are you going to valet your car?" or "I need to get my car smogged."
 
Before I moved here, one of my friends summed up the east coast/west coast cultural differences by saying that on the east coast they say "man" and on the west coast they say "dude." Since I have been here, I have developed a theory that American English is in the process of becoming a tonal language like Chinese. Two California teenagers can hold a 20 minute conversation in which the word "dude" stands in for about 50 other words depending on inflection and facial expression. "So he was like duuuude. And I was like DUDE!" 
 
All of which, to me, is positively charming compared to the latest from our Governor. "Girlie men"?! For god's sake. And the best that Nuñez can offer is "Certainly my mom and my sister aren't happy"?
 
On an unrelated note (except in that we are talking about grotesque politicians), check out this piece  on Bush. It's not new (from May) but is very well written—and by a conservative no less. I particularly like this bit:

"The cynical game these shape-shifters have been playing in the Middle East is too Byzantine to unravel in 1,000 pages of text. But the hypocrisy of the White House is palpable, and beggars belief. If there's one American who actually believes that Operation Iraqi Freedom was about democracy for the poor Iraqis, then you, my friend, are too dangerously stupid to be allowed near a voting booth."

Ten Oxherding Pictures

I am overdue for a meatier post, I know, but in the meantime, here is some zen verse. How can you not love this line: "This heaven is so vast no message can stain it."