Franabanana

What do you do with an empty blogger?

2008-01-24T11:54:00.000-06:00

Well jeez what is the point of having a blog if you don't do anything with it?

Politics just don't float my boat no more.

Food, recipes, - I can do that. I SHOULD do that. But so many do it better.

Being a mom. OK. But it doesn't consume my life anymore, now that my son is a gradeschooler. Should I write about being the mom of an "only"? Does anyone care?

Technology and other cool stuff? If I just listen to what my husband is up to, I can do that do too.

Then there's TV, music, entertainment, gossip - so not my bag I should leave it to the experts. We just switched to Comcast - is that fun to write about?

Jewish stuff? Yeah, I could do that. As long as it involves mahjongg!

So here are my new topics:

Mommy-ing a gradeschooler/only child
Having a kosher Jewish home
Recipes and food (Jewish/kosher focus)
Cool mahjongg stuff
Gadgets/technology with focus on the home
Stuff I like (housewares, clothes, paper goods)
What I'm reading/watching/listening to

A new goal: one short blog a day. I guess this counts...

Drash on the Leevees

2007-12-11T09:11:00.000-06:00

I LOVE this. Rabbi Yonah at Blog Shul completes his Midrash on the LeeVees album.

My son has been listening to the LeeVees Hanukkah Rocks album nonstop for the last two weeks. What can I say, it beats most any Hanukkah album every made, and 99.4% of all Christmas songs as well.

Best Recipe: Parve Mashed Potatoes

2007-12-10T09:42:00.000-06:00

Now if you are like me, and I hope you are, you are a huge fan of mashed potatoes. I adore mashed potatoes.

The sad thing is ever since I have gone over to kosher, I rarely get my fill of mashed potatoes. Although Taboun Grill has delicious kosher meat dishes, their mashed potatoes are merely OK. I'm just not sure that the middle-eastern cooks really "get" the creamy goodness of mashed potatoes. Plus, there is no gravy.

I have been known to order mashed potatoes as a side dish with fish (yes, I eat fish and vegetarian when I go out), but still there's nothing like a big plate of roast chicken with mashed potatoes.

So this past Thanksgiving I was assigned to make kosher mashed potatoes for my large extended family. Of course only my mother-in-law and I care about kosher parve, but luckily she was in charge and was making all kosher turkeys! Yay!

First step was to invest in a potato ricer. My sister got one of these years ago, and has raved about it. I HATE to buy one-use gadgets, but every now then you gotta go for it. So I got the Oxo Good Grips Potato Ricer.

Then, I grabbed a 10# sack of russet potatoes. (Don't get me started on those waxy Yukon Golds.) I needed potatoes for 19 people, so I think I peeled about 8 pounds of potatoes. Probably 10-12 medium-large Russets. Not the huge-mo baking potatoes; the more modest bagged Russets.

Next, I got a stock pot of water going. I cut the larger potatoes in half, put the smaller ones in whole, added a couple good spoonfuls of salt, brought the water to a boil, and reduced it to simmer, cooking the tatties for about 1/2 hour until they were nice and soft.

Using a slotted spoon, I pulled the potatoes out and one at a time, put them through the ricer. This took all of 5-10 minutes and the texture was perfect.

Now here's the secret to parve mashed potatoes: TOFUTTI SOUR SUPREME. I added about 2/3 c Tofutti Sour Supreme, and 6-8 T of Smart Balance tub maragine, along with salt and white pepper to taste. (You can use black pepper, but I like white pepper for white mashed potatoes.) To make the potatoes a little looser, I added small amounts of the water you boiled the potatoes in - I started with a couple tablespoons and kept going until they were the texture I wanted. I probably used about 1/2 c of the reserved boiling water. This is instead of the milk that is typically used for dairy mashed potatoes, or stock for meaty dishes.

I received many rave reviews, from people who had no idea they weren't the typically creamy dairy potatoes.

Here is the formal recipe, sized down for a medium-sized family dinner. I like big portions, so if you want extra, size up. Keep in mind that the recommended amounts of sour cream and margarine are just personal preferences. Feel free to adjust as you see fit.

CREAMY PARVE MASHED POTATOES
8 servings

3 pounds of Russet potatoes
1/4 c Tofutti sour supreme
2-4 T Parve margarine (I prefer Smart Balance)
Salt
White pepper
Reserved cooking water from the potatoes

Peel the potatoes and put into a large pot. Cover with water, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 20-30 minutes until the potatoes are soft.

Remove the potatoes from the water; do not throw out the water. Reserve at least 1 cup!

Put the potatoes through a ricer, or mash with a fork or masher. Fold in the sour supreme and the margarine. Add small amounts of water about 2 T at a time to get the desired smoothness.

Serve hot with kosher gravy.

Recipe: Kosher Beef Barley Mushroom Stew

2007-02-01T17:05:00.000-06:00

Here is a great winter meal -- all in one pot. The key to the recipe is making sure the beef is tender. Sometimes stew meat cooks quickly; sometimes it takes a bit longer. Figure a minimum of 2 hours total cooking time.

Ingredients
2-4 T olive oil
2 lbs beef stew meat (chuck, shoulder)
1/4 lbs beef fry (cured beef bacon), chopped
1 med onion, chopped
1 small celery rib, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
4 cloves garlic chopped
1 large can of tomato sauce (28 oz)
2 c broth (chicken, beef, or vegetable) or other liquid (water, red wine)
1/2 t each of dried thyme, rosemary and oregano
1 bay leaf
salt and black pepper to taste

3/4 c pearl barley
4 med red potatoes, chopped into cubes
8 oz mushrooms, quartered

1 c. frozen peas and/or green beans
1/4 c chopped fresh parsley

Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven or stock pot over a med-hi flame. Add half the beef cubes and brown on all sides. Remove from pot and add the other beef cubes. It will take about 5-10 minutes to each batch to brown.

Remove the beef cubes. Turn the flame down to med-low. Add the chopped beef fry and cook about 5 min until the beef is crispy. Add the onion, celery, carrots and garlic and saute until softened, about 5 min.

Add the beef back to the pot, along with the tomatoes and broth, herbs and pepper. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pot and simmer for one hour.

After an hour, add the barley, potatoes and mushrooms. Cover and cook for 45 minutes.

At the end of the 45 minutes, test the beef to be sure it is tender. It should be easy to chew and soft. If it is not, continue cooking, checking every 10 min. When the beef is tender, add the frozen beans and peas and the chopped parsley. Cook for another 10 minutes. Salt again to taste.

Serve with crusty (parve) bread.

Big Fun Mah-Jongg Sunday

2007-01-22T15:29:00.000-06:00

While many Chicagoans were basking in the glow of a Bears playoff victory, I was feeling the true joy of having played 4+ hours of mah-jongg yesterday.

Some friends accosted me on my way to minyan after dropping my son at his Hebrew class. Given the choice between minyan with the altekockers and mah-jongg, I made a choice to pray another day. And God seemed like he was going to withhold victory, as I had bad hand after bad hand. But then at the end, I played and won a closed hand. Oh bliss, oh rapture!

Then, my regular mah-jongg group convened at 7:30 last night, and I had no compunction about going out in semi-blizzard conditions and icy roads. Again with the bad hands most of the night, but, then, joy of joys, I managed to win on a closed hand.

Wow, two closed hand victories in one day. True big fun.

Make All Happiness Joy: MAHJ!

2007-01-13T20:02:00.000-06:00

I started playing mahjong about 9 months ago. I was pulled into the game by some friends (well, at that point they were acquaintances) at my synagogue. After a few lessons, I was off and running.

I know I really like a game when after I play it, I think about it, dream about it (literally, at night, dreams), and want to learn everything there is to know about it. That was me with mahjong. I couldn't wait to play the next time, and since that day, I think I've played almost every week.

I couldn't wait to tell my mother, who had a regular afternoon mahjong game when I was a youngster. I can remember the ladies mixing the tiles and calling out "crack...bam...dragon." But I never learned the game, and eventually she stopped playing. Bless her heart, we recovered two old sets, one of which belonged to my grandmother. I use it now, and it's wonderful to play with.

Mahjong American Style is a tricky game -- there is a lot of luck involved, and a decent amount of skill in choosing a hand, and it can be painful and beautiful. Even today on my Shabbat afternoon game, I went for a pairs hand that was a long shot. But it looked so pretty on my rack, I had to go for it.

A great part of the fun has been a newfound camaraderie with my mahjong ladies. Yes, I have turned into my mother! It's been a long time since I have had close girlfriends. As a work-at-home (not stay-at-home) mom, I've been out of regular social circles for a long time. And here I found a group of women who have been a lifeline for me; people I can call for advice, talk about our kids, our husbands, gossip, schmooze, laugh, and cry when our hands go dead.

I'll probably have a lot more entries on mahjong. Along the lines of "mahjong, it is so like life..." Gack!

Bad pundits...bad, bad pundits

2007-01-12T20:27:00.000-06:00

This great article on how well the pundits who were WRONG about Iraq are doing; by comparison those who were RIGHT are still struggling on the outskirts of mainstream media outlets.

Can't we fire pundits? I'm so weary of these bobbleheaded babblers who are paid millions of dollars to discuss their empty useless hypotheses.

Half Birthday Cake

2007-01-10T21:55:00.000-06:00

Made a 1/2 layer peanut butter with choco frosting 1/2 cake for my dear son's 7.5 birthday today.

It was a doctored white cake-mix with about 3/4 cup peanut butter added, a bit of extra vanilla and a reduced amount of oil. The cakes really rose up in the pan, so I probably could have cut the eggs.

The frosting was a 1/2 cup of melted chocolate chips, a few tablespoons of cream and 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, a pinch of salt, a dash of vanilla, with the added bonus of a cloud of powdered sugar that blew all over my kitchen when I picked up the handmixer.

Not my best effort, but the happy smile I got from the kid made it all worth while.

Love the Reese's Big Cup

2007-01-09T22:26:00.000-06:00

You can keep your regular Reese's, your minis, even your Easter Egg and pumpkin incarnations. (Lalalala, I pay no attention to white chocolate and Nutrageous options.) Don't even bring me the fancy Long Grove Confectionary giant p.b cups, as enticing as they may seem. Sometimes the best quality chocolate and the creamiest richest peanut butter filling is just overkill. (Not to mention $3.00 each.)

Keep all those tasty but inadequate peanut butter chocolate candies, and serve me up a delicious Reese's Big Cup! It's got a thick slab of that tasty peanut butter filling, enrobed with just the right amount of creamy Hershey's chocolate. The downside? Only one per package. But at the tasty price of 79¢ (look for the BOGOs at your local grocery store), it's a bargain.

I should add that I have no objections to mini Reese's when used to make this delicious treat.

Parve Duncan Hines on the Jewel shelves

2007-01-07T00:41:00.000-06:00

Yes, it was announced back in October 2006 that Duncan Hines, which had previously reformulated their parve cake mixes to dairy, were going back to parve. Ever since that announcement, I've scanned the boxes every couple weeks to see if the new parve products were out.

But tonight in my local Jewel in Skokie, I saw that the DH Deluxe Classic Yellow was marked parve. All the other mixes were still marked kosher dairy. I'm not a huge fan of cake mixes, but they are nice to have in the house in a pinch. And kosher parve is just that much better, as I can't imagine what dairy would be in a cake mix that would make any difference to the flavor or texture of the finished product.

As long as I talking about my local Jewel, they just switched their entire store around. It's still taking me 10-15 minutes longer to shop. But they have added a much bigger kosher food section. It does not yet rival the Howard Jewel in Evanston, but it is expanded signficantly. If only they had more kosher meat options. Trader Joes has a better selection of fresh kosher meat than the Skokie Jewel. Hint, hint.

Caution: Brain in Training

2007-01-02T19:01:00.000-06:00

After reading "My 4-Week Quest: Be Smarter" in Wired 15.01, I succumbed to the siren call of My Brain Trainer. It is strangely addictive. I don't quite know my brain age, and one of the things I'm getting smarter about is knowing that my spatial visual memory is pretty bad.

I am doing well training myself to remember long sequences of letters, and then recognizing whether this is a match in the next sequence of letters. But doing that same thing with black and white shapes - very hard.

I'm hoping to become a Brain Master some day. Don't ask.

What is with kosher restaurants?

2007-01-02T18:40:00.000-06:00

As a preface, It's no secret to my close family and friends that I took a giant leap into kosher eating and cooking about 6 months ago. Even though I had not cooked traif (pork, shellfish, etc.) for several years in my house, I still ate it out, and even would carry it in. I always felt funny about keeping any kind of kosher, because it seems so hard to right and fully. And if you're going to do it, can you do some of it, but not all?

After a lot of encouragement from my clergy and kosher friends, I gave up on cooking with milk and any kind of meat, so now we have either dairy meals or meat meals. I buy only kosher meat. I eat fish or vegetarian dairy when we go out. (Although I've been known to slip "off the wagon" and eat non-kosher meat. So sue me.)

This has led me to explore of the great world of kosher dining. I personally don't care for kosher dairy restaurants, as I will eat vegetarian out, but we have friends who prefer to eat kosher when they go out, so we go too. Suffice to say, we have been less than thrilled with the kosher dining options we have, and we have a good number to choose from.

The problem is Captive Audience syndrome. Kosher places know that they will always have a certain number of customers who have to eat kosher. Does this inspire them to serve the best possible food to this group in the most pleasant and helpful way? No, not really. The food at most kosher restaurants is mediocre, at best, and the service is just slightly worse. Put that on top of paying for kosher, which is always a little more (to a lot more) money than an equivalent non kosher place. But the mediocre places pack 'em in, so maybe I'm the idiot!

The one exception we've found is Taboun Grill, located on California near Devon in Chicago. The service is good, the food is delicious, and not outrageously priced, either. So that's a keeper.

Been a long time

2006-12-25T10:07:00.000-06:00

I got so so tired of blogging on politics. It was a land of 1000 blessings when the Democrats won in the mid-term elections, but I just did not have the heart to write about the campaign and the media nonsense.

So here I am back again, thinking of blogging on some new topics of interest to me. More of the personal, spirtual nature, related to Jewish practice and life, such as I sort it out. I'll be adding some new blog links to my blogroll, including Jewschool and Jewlicious. Something about joining a synagogue is putting politics much closer to home. Anyone who's been there should know!

Five Questions

2006-06-05T16:36:00.000-05:00

1. Why do prescriptions drugs cost so much, and why do their costs increases at exponential rates each year?

2. Why is the United States the only industrialized nation that does not provide universal health coverage to its citizens? It makes no sense. We don't save money. We don't have better outcomes. We do have very wealthy insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

3. Why is a marriage amendment more important than health care, security, disaster preparedness, war, energy, education, and transporation policy?

4. Why don't we have high-speed rail based in Chicago and radiating out to major cities such as St. Louis, Detroit, Des Moines, Louisville, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Memphis, Nashville, and Indianapolis?

5. What is the deal with Rachel Ray? She bugs.

Good article

2006-02-03T19:17:00.000-06:00

"Lies About Blowjobs, Bad. Wars? Not So Much." from Eric Alterman

Very Moving This American Life

2005-09-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

Ira Glass & team knocks one out of the park. Visit the site where you can buy it now, or stream it next week.

Surprise! FEMA sucks.

2005-09-10T09:53:00.000-05:00

From Spenser Hsu at WashPo: "Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience"

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

No wonder they were so concerned with PR. That's all these guys knew. Might as well have put Karen Hughes in charge.

A question

2005-09-08T12:45:00.000-05:00

When did accountability become known as "the blame game"?

Gimme a break. The White House is expending a great deal of energy in redirecting blame elsewhere while patiently and repetitively insisting that this is no time to be "blame-gaming." Hey, it's a noun AND a verb. Handy.

Well, here's a bunch of links on this topic:
Amy Sullivan, WashMonthly
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
Kevin Drum, WashMonthly
E&P on the media HAMMERING poor Scotty
Bruce Reed on the end of compassionate conservatism

For those interested in facts, a timeline is being prepared and updated regularly to understand what happened when, where key admin officials were, and what the various statements and repspones have been.

Katrina timeline

Times-Picayune Calls for Resignation

2005-09-04T10:04:00.000-05:00

Via Editor & Publisher

Plus a round up of editorial condemnations.

Locally, the Chicago Tribune has an odd editorial, which concludes, "rebuilding New Orleans as it was "looks to be folly:

The hope here is that the city's residents, and the Americans who will help them recover, craft a master plan that preserves the city's brash spirit while protecting it from another disaster on this scale.

Then New Orleans can reinvent itself--as a devastated Chicago did after 1871.

The facing page reprint of an editorial that followed the 1871 Fire is called Cheer Up.

"My Pet Goat" in the Bayou

2005-09-03T16:56:00.000-05:00

Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher gets medieval on BushCo: "Simply stated, the president and his top advisers chose vacation over action."

Bush Fires People for Disloyalty, Not Incompetence

2005-09-03T10:33:00.000-05:00

If anything were a better indication of the autocratic, dare I say fascist, inclinations of BushCo, it is their willingness to fire or marginalize competent people who disagree with Dear Leader but keep on incompetent cronies and kiss-asses who have FUBAR, and then added a big pile of FUBAR on top of that.

The latest incompetent? FEMA Chief Mike Brown, who is NOT doing a great job, who is clearly in over his head, and (see link) had a difficult time managing horse shows. He would probably appreciate being relieved of duty. Just show some leadership, Shrub, and FIRE HIM!!!!! Lincoln fired about 5 generals before finding Grant on the western reaches of the country.

Leaders should not just expect loyalty. They should expect competence and accountability.

Football fans show their heart

2005-09-02T21:58:00.000-05:00

Previously, in the Deep South, many hotel had warned Katrina escapees that they would have to vacate their hotels for football fans who had booked their rooms months in advance. But CNN reports that many of these fans have opted to stay home, give up their rooms, and some have offered their tickes to evacuees. Menschitude is spreading. Story here.

Relief Shows Up

2005-09-02T18:18:00.000-05:00

CNN has the story.

Looks like this Gen. Honore has the right idea:

CNN's Barbara Starr, who is traveling with the three-star general, said Honore is "very determined to keep this looking like a humanitarian relief operation."

"A few moments ago, he stopped a truck full of National Guard troops ... and said, 'Point your weapons down, this is not Iraq,' " Starr reported.

Yes, please don't shoot the starving, thirsty, helpless victims.

Faith-based Leadership Faces the Music

2005-09-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

Our administration can no longer pretend that everything is great, that all is well, help is on the way, when the pictures and interviews say the opposite. Finally our beloved media, who fiddled while BushCo sashayed us into Iraq, cannot ignore the lies, deception and incompetence. I guess it's easy to let such things as Swift Boat lies slide--that stuff is all part of the fun and games of politics. But this disaster cannot be spun aside. It's not a game, and it's no longer fun.

The media giant is waking up from a deep slumber, rubbing the Jesus dust out of its eyes, and seeing clearly. Politics ain't beanbag, as the great Mayor Harold Washington famously said. And politics has left a major American city devastated.

CNN documents the lies, so far. They call it the disconnect. More like a chasm, a gulf, a vast expansive wasteland between reality and spin.

Slate's Jack Shafer rounds up the media "rebellion"

Dad Argues with Callous Barber

2005-09-02T16:09:00.000-05:00

My dad braved a scissors-wielding barber. I'll let him tell the story (as communicated via email):

I haven't been able to work on anything all week. One minute I'm so angry I want to explode; the next minute my eyes tear up. I can't remember when I've been this distraught. Maybe JFK's assasination, after which the world changed for the worst.

I got into it with ... my barber, today. He's a typical working-class Republican. Also, I think, although I was unsure until today, a racist. We were watching the coverage.

I said, "it's a shame our government cut funds on a levee system that might have saved New Orleans."

He grunted.

I ploughed on, "Well, I have to say, this is the worst performance by the federal government I've ever seen." "

"You can't be everywhere," he said, "anyway, where were the local and state people?"

I exploded: "The local and state people?!! You've got to be kidding. They don't have the money, the manpower, the troops, the ability to do anything. it's a federal responsibility, and they ducked it. And This president, this idiot, is the worst fucking president in the history of the nation. It's a disgrace that we're fighting a ridiculous optional war and can't find the means to deal with disaster right here at home."

"Well," he said a propos of nothing (which sealed my feeling about his racism), "nobody has to live in New Orleans."

"Yeah," I said, "and nobody has to live in Biloxi (where he goes to play golf every winter with his buddies), but they do, don't they? People live in all sorts of dangerous places. Does that mean we abandon them? The next time Chicago floods or gets snowed under, maybe we say, 'Oh, well, they choose to live there.'"

I concluded, "the people get what they vote for, and this time the people got a fucking, Jesus-freak dimwit for a president. Maybe he'll pray us out of this mess."

Do you think I was too subtle? If he hadn't been wielding the scissors, I might have been more direct.

More direct? I think you did good, Dad. God knows what might have happened if you had run into Condi Rice while she was shopping for shoes yesterday.

My Disgust and Anger

2005-09-02T09:27:00.000-05:00

I cannot believe what I have seen and heard in these last two days. An unbelievable report from the NO Convention Center showed thousands (2,000, 5,000, 15,000?) stranded with no water, food, medical care, toilets, transportation, and perhaps worst of all information. People are DYING. Babies and older people are dying first, dehydrated and lacking the most basic care. These people aren't criminals, looters, or drug addicts. They are citizens. Families, many many young children and babies, pregnant women. I can barely control myself thinking about it.

The mayor of New Orleans was a voice in the wilderness (download the audio file here) crying out for support. Transcribed here.

Even President Bush has stepped out of his boy-in-the-bubble world to admit that the help has been "not acceptable."

Not acceptable? NOT ACCEPTABLE?!!!!! It's shameful. Disgusting. Just simply staggering. I'm no logistics expert, but where are the air drops?

I woke up this morning hoping to hear that those people at the convention center got help. No indication yet.

Krugman Sez...

2005-09-02T09:25:00.000-05:00

It's a "Can't Do Government":

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

Who Dares Question Dear Leader?

2005-09-01T22:32:00.000-05:00

Joe Conason says we all should.

Other People Ranting

2005-09-01T12:14:00.000-05:00

Wes Clark: It All Comes Back to Leadership
NY Times Editorial: "Waiting for a Leader"
letter writers to the National Review (via Laura Rozen)
Washington Monthly "FEMA Mismanagement"
admitted incompetence
Liberal Oasis summary
Diarist Hunter from the Daily Kos
Anatomy of a Disaster from Salon
If We Had a Real President from Daily Kos Diarist Stirling Newberry
ProgProg on the right.

For hurricane relief donations:
The Red Cross
Other Relief Organizations

Worst.President.Ever: A RANT

2005-09-01T10:55:00.000-05:00

Back in my youth I took a class on ecology and energy public policy and crisis management. The instructor made the point that after any disaster, a white paper, report or other document predicting the exact nature of the disaster is found. One might think that "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" is one of those.

Now there is an entire paper trail of article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune predicting disaster for New Orleans if repairs were not made to the levee system. And if wetland barriers were reduced. Guess BushCo had better things to do with our money than invest in infrastructure and environment.

Blumenthal on Salon has some details. As does Tim Grieve.

The Chicago Tribune reports today in "Flood-control funds short of requests". The article (registration required) quotes Michael Parker, " a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps' budget." Guess he joins a long list of officials (Paul O'Neil, Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson, Genl. Shinseki, and now Susan F. Wood) who attempted to bring the bright light of rational thought to a fundamentalist regime. The Trib article says:

A corps plan to shore up the levees began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years but remains incomplete. "They've never put enough money in to complete it," Parker said. He said the corps' budget has been regularly targeted by the White House because public works projects are perceived as pork and aren't considered "sexy."

"Go talk to the people who are suffering in New Orleans," Parker said. "Ask them do they think it's pork."

I can only hope that historians will dissect the Bush governance and identify not just its mendacity, but its greed and incompetence. Bush makes Warren Harding look like Franklin Roosevelt. He makes his father look like Abraham Lincoln. He is a disaster--a selfish, spoiled, ignorant, callous, vengeful and downright wicked leader. He is remote from the people, acting more like a King than an elected leader. His stage-managed Potemkin-town meetings and speeches are attempts to shut out having to respond to the real voice of the American people.

Bush has hidden himself behind a country-boy Jesus-loving facade while he has dismantled federal support of science, reason, social structure and community. He has waged a war based on a ever-shifting rationale: WMD (none); 9/11 revenge (false premises); democracy/human/rights/peace in the Mid-East (Iraq is the domino? not likely); now it's the security of oil (well, that's getting a little closer).

He is a bad man, bad for this country, bad for the global community. As bad I thought he was in the election cycle, I see he is exponentially worse now. He has blood on his hands. I can only hope that finally, FINALLY, a great wave of citizens and our media representatives will see this man for what he is. Perhaps now people will respond. Ask questions. Demand answers. Vote these evil people OUT.

Me likey that Wesley Clark. He very smart.

2005-08-26T15:55:00.000-05:00

Clark acutally tries to articulate a strategy that goes beyond a rapid pullout (leaving a failed state/Islamic fundamentalist government in power), or protracted deployment of troops. He also does a nice job cataloging all the shit Bush/Cheney/Rumsfled have screwed up.

From the Washington Post

The growing chorus of voices demanding a pullout should seriously alarm the Bush administration, because President Bush and his team are repeating the failure of Vietnam: failing to craft a realistic and effective policy and instead simply demanding that the American people show resolve. Resolve isn't enough to mend a flawed approach -- or to save the lives of our troops. If the administration won't adopt a winning strategy, then the American people will be justified in demanding that it bring our troops home.

Hearting Gary Hart

2005-08-24T15:21:00.000-05:00

Gary Hart kicks the Dems in the butt (from the Washington Post via truthout).

History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security.

But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong."

This Is More Like It

2005-06-29T15:47:00.000-05:00

The Gadflyer's Jonathan Weiler writes

As much as Bush talks about freedom, an enduring legacy of his presidency will be violence and blood-lust and the price that countless innocents and people of good will have paid for that cheap talk. Many Americans endure life on a perilous sea of uncertainty and threat. Bush, by contrast, lives on a yacht on a body of water whose tranquility is undisturbed unless he instructs his crew to take the yacht out for a joy ride.

Sacrifice is never his own.

This reminds me of an earlier post "The President Does Not Mourn," quoting from E.L. Doctorow.

Tribune: Huh? Parsing the "Support"

2005-06-29T14:19:00.000-05:00

Is the Chicago Tribune for real? By many accounts, Bush's speech last night was a bit of a dud. Nothing new, nothing different, lots of blah blah blah 9/11, blah blah blah, terrorists, blah blah blah, stand firm, blah blah blah.

So the Tribune, which can be reliably counted on to support the Prez in 99.44% of his endeavors, had an editorial of support that left so much out, it might have been printed on swiss cheese. Or a Flashdance shirt. Or something else with a lot of holes:

His message: Iraq, and the brave Americans fighting there, will face continued violence from terrorists determined to keep Iraq destabilized--and to hand the U.S. a devastating defeat. But a second courageous endeavor in that distant war zone, the building by Iraqis of the new government that eventually will secure and run their country, is on schedule and pressing ahead.

Everything is oh-so-courageous. Except for Bush's ability to speak clearly and honestly about what has gone wrong, and how he will address it.

With his citizenry impatient, his poll numbers down and some in his own party growing nervous, Bush needed to explain that the mission in Iraq has great long-term value for this country and that his administration has a strategy to succeed there. The president argued both lines of thought. But he wisely avoided the self-imposed treachery of timetables, he mouthed no empty promise about when peace would be at hand.

Uh-huh. Bush argues real good. Somehow I'm thinking that good rhetoric is not going to get Bush out of this. Good policy might. A change in policy. An admission of missed opportunities. Mistakes were made, that kind of thing. But the Tribune carries on, reliably supportive, predictably indifferent to the reality behind Bush's platitudes and arguments.

Tuesday night's speech was, then, the latest volley in a battle to influence Americans' will to win this war. Zarqawi and the other architects of attacks in Iraq have done a superb job of filling our television screens with images of violence and death. Their successes have stripped the war effort here of some support.

I'd say their successess combined with our failures have stripped the war of massive amounts of support. Only diehards are behind this war now.

Tuesday night, in response, Bush tried to help his countrymen see that orchestrated violence as an effort to intimidate them. "The American people do not falter under threat," he said.

Yes, but we do like to know what we're up against, and how we're going to defeat it. And we do like to know that our leaders understand the threats, analyze them effectively, and respond appropriately. So far, not so much.

Not that Americans watched his speech alone. On the far side of the globe, unsettled Iraqis no doubt measured every word as the leader of the free world pledged to complete their liberation.

Yeah, I bet they are. Especially those many factions aiming to thwart the liberation.

It was just so make my day if at some point the Tribune were to rise up from its torpor and really apply some critical thinking skills to our President's policies. I know wishful thinking.

Cool Flash News Site

2005-06-29T09:31:00.000-05:00

Credit to Daily Kos for the link to this flash-based Newseum site, where you can view a map of the U.S. (or select other world regions); when you mouse over the city markers, a front page of that city's newspaper loads next to the map.

Cruis'n' the News

2005-06-28T13:42:00.000-05:00

I can't help it. I'm obsessed.

Other Things that Tom Cruise Knows More About Than You.

When Politics Wears You Out...

2005-06-24T19:32:00.000-05:00

Just pay attention to celebrity news.

I could totally write a hilarious, snarky posted about Oprah and her civil rights battle. But someone beat me to it. And I was beginning to feel a twinge of sympathy for Oprah, subjected as she was to the Cruiseomatic 9000 on HyperMode.

Perhaps the topic of Oprah's planned show should be "When Celebrities Are Forced to Live in the Real World," rather than her "Crash Moment."

Letter to Senator Durbin

2005-06-23T07:51:00.000-05:00

Senator Durbin stood up to the administration, and then backed down. I wrote him a letter (via his website) last week expressing my support for him. Now I have written him expressing my disappointment. Here is what I wrote:

Dear Sen. Durbin:

I wrote to you last week with heartfelt praise and admiration for telling the truth about the illegal and immoral activities going on at Guantanamo Bay. I said then that you should not back down. What you said was absolutely true, and based on an FBI report.

I am very very very disappointed in you that you apologized for your remarks. I guess the national discourse today is such that we cannot tell the truth about what is happening in our country without being attacked. Surely Orwell would recognize this nation, where telling the truth requires apologies and hand-wringing, while the lies and the cruelty continue unquestioned and unexamined.

Unfortunately, now, YOU have become the story rather than what the Administration is perpetrating.

I am sorry that you felt the need to bow to right-wing pressure. I am sorry that our country cannot handle the truth. Actually, I think we CAN handle the truth - I am just not sure our leaders (sadly, yourself included) believe that we can.

I KNOW what you were saying was not that WE (our troops, our country, our government) are Nazis or Stalinists -- but we certainly could be mistaken for that based on the FBI report.

Why is that message so difficult to communicate? Because the Administration and its noise machine on the right will do EVERYTHING in their power to avoid answering, explaining, or opening up. Their tactics are secrecy, stonewalling and misdirection. You became the distraction; you took the blame.

I am not sure if you read my initial email to you last week; probably your office was so inundated with hate mail that it was lost in the shuffle.

I know you are a good man and I hope you remember that there are people out here like myself, my husband, my parents, my friends, and my sister (and our young children) who are residents of this great state who believe in democratic (small "d") values and want representatives who will fight, and fight hard, for those values.

God bless,

Fran Diamond
Skokie, IL

Durbin received a barrage of hate mail from the right wing. If you're a resident of Illinois and would like to express yourself as I have, contact Durbin at his website.

P.S. Eric Zorn agrees with me. Here's his idea of what Durbin's "apology" should have been:

"Hey, I'm sorry I played `the Hitler card.' It always inflames, distracts and confuses, and it never convinces. In this case, it let opportunists ignore my main point and gasbag instead about my unnecessarily overwrought metaphor and the many, obvious ways in which America is not Nazi Germany.

"But if you expect me to come before you and bite my quivering lips as I apologize to those who were spun into a dudgeon by the contemptible effort to draw attention from these infamous allegations, you'll be disappointed.

"I will not babble out a mewling defense of my patriotism to those with the vile audacity to have questioned it.

"A true patriot loves what his country stands for, not necessarily what his country does, and I will not shrink from holding America to her ideals...."

Bush is "For" Life, Except When He's Against It

2005-06-06T11:12:00.000-05:00

The President is against abortion and using embryos for stem-cell research. He does not feel one form of life should be sacrificed to save another. OK. Fair point. I disagree that embryos represent "life," but that's my opinion.

The President is also pro-Death Penalty. His justification is that it saves lives.

Anyone else see this as a huge contradiction? William Saletan in Slate does. He lays out the multiple contradiction.

I guess if he said he were in favor of the death penalty because he believes in vengeance or retribution, that (while not quite so moral high ground) is at least a consistent position. But how he can defend embryos right to exist (if they even can be said to exist) but be in favor of killing real live human people?

But the real question is why can't anyone in the media ask the President to address this contradiction? Allowing this obvious craven, cynical hypocrisy to stand is just letting the President get away with it.

Bush - Ack! Ack! Hairball

2005-04-22T10:18:00.000-05:00

Gosh, George Bush is deriding Democrats for playing politics with his nomination of John Bolton. I have to let out a hardy Ha! Ha! and cough up a hairball when I hear politicians of his ilk deriding other politicians for being political. As the late great Mayor Washington said, "Politics ain't bean bag." And he might have added, "You twit, get used to it." Bush is polling badly on Iraq, Social Security, his conservative judges, maybe people are even getting down on his squinty flinty smirks. Too little too late, but perhaps by the end of his second term he will be cemented into a leadership role in the Top Ten Worst Presidents list. He's already there in my book, but maybe the general public, confused and deluded in the 2004 election, sees the veil lifted.

Speaking of presidents, and good ones at that, Bush visited our great state of Illinois to dedicate to the new Lincoln library. Now there's a meeting of minds - perhaps the greatest president ever (some may argue for Jefferson, Washington, TR or FDR) being lauded by this mook.

Rude Pundit has a truly delightful blog on the topic, of which I excerpt just a bit:

First off, having George W. Bush dedicate a library to Abraham Lincoln is like having David Duke dedicate a civil rights museum. It's like having James Dobson dedicate a Kinsey collection. It's like having . . . well, shit, you get the idea. It just ain't right. But because you have to dedicate presidential libraries with the President you have, not the President you want, so it was that President Bush spoke at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library yesterday.

...

... Bush spoke about Lincoln's early days, his "humble beginnings," if you will: "Before history took notice, he earned money as a storekeeper, a surveyor and a post master. He taught himself the law." And perhaps the irony was not lost on the gathered crowd, that this son of privilege, who never suffered a day in his life, who had servants hired just to buff his balls after a bath, was allowed to even speak the name of Abraham Lincoln, who, faults and all, sought to keep together a nation that George Bush and the current Republicans are trying to desperately to tear apart.

Knowing the intelligence and keen eye for politics of my fellow Illinoisans, I can assure Rude Pundit that we got it. Yup. Irony, melting into tragedy. Or perhaps just plain sad.

Case in Point Why Our Country Is Screwed Up

2005-04-21T13:13:00.000-05:00

I've been fomenting a rant on how incredibly ridiculous our country is that we cannot afford universal education and health care. I mean for gosh sakes Sweden? Norway? Denmark? Canada? Britain? Japan? Germany? France? South Korea? Singapore? They are not as wealthy as the U.S. GNP per capita, not even close. Yet they seem to manage covering many more social benefits for their population than the U.S. Yes, I could actually research this issue, talk about macroeconomics and states' rights and tax models and corporate welfare and deficits all that boring stuff.

I just want to know WHERE IS ALL THE MONEY GOING? Our economy is huge! Gazillions of dollars are changing hands! Why is this country so inefficient or unfair or just generally fucked up that we can't make sure that all schools have Internet and computer labs, and noone has to worry about getting hit by a bus and wracking up huge medical bills, and even poor kids can go to college without having to work 3 jobs? I ask you -- where is the money?

And then today I happened to notice a new site just opened up called Walmart Watch, which is dedicated to monitoring Wal-Mart's abuses and its drain on U.S. taxpayers. "The Wal-Mart Tax" is a brief entry that estimates Wal-Mart COSTS taxpayers at least $1.5 billion per year in assistance to employees who are undercovered by Wal-Mart. And that's just the Federal cost.

Maybe this is where the missing money is. How many tax breaks does Wal-Mart get? Federal? State? Local? And on top of that, Wal-Mart does not even sustain its own employees. So rather than boosting the local economy, it drains it.

Channeling Walt Whittman?

2005-04-14T11:07:00.000-05:00

Do they contradict themselves? Indeed, they do. Josh Marshall lays it out here:

Today, however, House Republicans voted overwhelmingly to abolish the inheritance tax, a tax that, by definition, only impacts people who inherit money from extremely wealthy forebearers. If passed by the senate this new legislation, which would come into effect in 2012, will cost the Treasury $745 billion dollars during its first ten years. Figure in associated interest on the added debt and the number comes closer to a trillion dollars.

That is about a trillion fewer dollars in the US Treasury over the course of the same decade in which the Social Security Trustees say the SSA will begin (2017) to start drawing on the Treasury notes in the Trust fund to cover scheduled benefits (2020, if you go by CBO estimates.)

There's no hidden complexity here. It's a zero-sum game. They say Social Security is in trouble because we don't have enough dollars to make good on the Trust Fund (which today holds roughly $1.7 trillion in Treasury notes). And here they are voting to take a trillion more dollars off the table.

I haven't blogged all that much on Social Security (admittedly, I haven't blogged on much of anything of late) only because other people are doing it much better than I could.

My next blog...how stupid is it that this wealthy nation we live in can't afford public transit, education and health care for our citizens? Very stupid, I say.

The Pope Is Still Dead

2005-04-10T15:34:00.000-05:00

Yup. Still dead. Having skipped all the TV coverage of the double-header of death of Terry Schiavo and JP2, I'm catching up on the critical reviews.

Frank Rich has this to say in "A Culture of Death, Not Life":

What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

Moving on to the ever-caustic James Wolcott, who in Signs of the Crosstakes CNN to task for its inane worship at the shrine of Bob Novak. Hey, Novak's a Catholic now! Apparently one of the Opus Dei guys. At least I don't have to be ashamed to share the same religion as the Prince of Darkness.

And the astute Jeanne at Body and Soul gives a thorough round-up of the differences between many U.S. Catholics and the fundamentalist Protestant Chrisitans who claim the Pope as their own in "The fundie Pope and the whining bishops."

Happy Sunday!

Blog Round-Up

2005-04-04T22:37:00.000-05:00

Round em up, raaaaaawhiiiiiiiide!

From Digsby at Hullabaloo, a wake-up call to right-wingers:

See, the right isn't like us. They think that the so called liberal media is irretrievably biased but believe what they see, read and hear on their own media. We on the left, on the other hand, have no faith in any mainstream media, really, or any alternative media either for that matter. We have developed the habit of culling from various sources and analyzing the information ourselves as best we can. Even then we are very skeptical. Nothing that the media could do would particularly shock or disappoint us. No so with the other side. A fair number of them are actually hurt and bewildered by what they saw in the Schiavo matter.

From Maxspeak, on the Pope:

Like scripture, there is something for almost everyone in the Pope's statements. Nobody except prix fixe Catholics -- as opposed to the cafeteria variety -- can really take ownership, though that is something ordinarily attempted with any renowned personage. Progressives could note his criticism of unregulated capitalism. Cultural conservatives point to his unreconstructed opposition to abortion and anything resembling euthanasia. Catholic traditionalists welcomed his opposition to the ordination of women and other possible modernist reforms within the Church. And democratic anti-communists of all stripes hail his role in liberating Poland and bringing down the Soviet Union.

More good stuff there. And, not to be outdone, Attaturk at rising hegemon has the scouting report for the next pontiff.

From our own backyard, Joshua Holland at Gadflyer reports on the crazy pharmacists of conscience who have been refusing to fill Rxs for birth control and morning after contraception. You get 'em Blago. It's been covered widely in the local press, and good to see national bloggers noting it.

And, from Bull Moose (and myself) a belated Happy April Fool's Day with a heartfelt apology from Tom DeLay for all the trouble he's been causing.

Disillusioned Conservative Says Media Ain't Liberal

2005-01-27T22:57:00.000-06:00

From Paul Craig Roberts' "End-Timers and Neo-Cons:"

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.

I don't agree with his contention that liberals went wrong because they trusted government too much. But, I'll welcome any conservative who can pull back the curtain on this sham administration and the sad complict media that has supported it. Even if he's an unrepentant supply-sider.

Not Every Church Hates Sponge Bob

2005-01-27T20:06:00.000-06:00

Don't conservatives have better things to do than criticize Sponge Bob Squarepants and PBS kids shows? Well at least some churches have a sense of humor. Stop by the The United Church of Christ for a lesson in tolerance and a good chuckle.

Boxer Stops by Daily Kos

2005-01-27T20:04:00.000-06:00

Barbara Boxer, aka "My Hero," posted a really nice message to Daily Kos.

Trib Caves a Little, but Mostly Steady on Doublespeak Directives

2005-01-26T13:44:00.000-06:00

As a number of good bloggers (see Talking Points Memo and Eschaton) out there have noted, the President & his White House minions have decided that Social Security terms "privatization" and "private accounts" are not polling well. So they have decreed, after having used this terminology for YEARS, that henceforth and foervermore such things shall be called "personal accounts." And any newspaper not using the term "personal accounts" (which, frankly could be my passbook savings account for all I know) is "editorializing" and is biased against the President.

Shake head in wonder, and insert Orwell reference here.

So, TPM and Eschaton and others have been documenting all the newspapers that have bowed to this pressure.

I'd like to report, thankfully, gratefully, and somewhat astonishingly, that the beloved Chicago Tribune is still (mostly) calling them "private accounts" although some language like "managed investment" and "private retirement" is creeping into the debate.

In a January 26 article, "Black caucus, Bush to discuss key issues" (from Newsday): One issue likely to come up is Bush's plan to divert part of their Social Security taxes to privately managed investment accounts. Supporters of privatization say African-Americans could benefit from the change.

From the lede to a January 26 feature article, "High stakes: As President Bush seeks to reform the Social Security program, economists argue the pros and cons of switching to private accounts" by Nancy Traver: Joan Staples invested her money well during the years she worked as a Chicago Public Schools teacher. Now that she is retired, she's enjoying a comfortable income from her investments. Still, President George W. Bush's proposals to privatize Social Security make her uneasy.

This article does mention "personal accounts" 4 times, in the context of what Bush and his supporters call them. But "privatize" is used three times and "private accounts" is used 6 times, and that seems to be what the economists and "regular folks" are calling them. Even a letter-writing supporter of "private accounts" calls them..."private accounts!"

Note that all Tribune links are free for one week from the published data, and registration is required to view them.

Johnny Carson

2005-01-24T13:59:00.000-06:00

I am sad that Johnny Carson has died - 79 seems much too young for someone these days. I have fond memories of watching Johnny as a very young person - the first time I saw his show was staying up late to babysit on New Year's Eve. Johnny and Ed dressed in tuxedos and gamely shephered in the New Year in a 90-minute special. As I grew older, I appreciated his monologue, his quick wit on the couch, and his eclectic interest in a wide variety of entertainment, news and regular quirky people. He may have lost his cache moving into the late 80s, but he could still get more out of lame joke (or a lame guest) than any other host then, now or ever.

I happened on his "official" web site, johnnycarson.com, where you can search on any guest. I thought of Joe Williams, one of my favorite all time singers, and there he was (many many shows), on July 31, 1980 alongside Bruce Dern, June Carter Cash and Jeff Greenfield.

Tom Shales has a lovely obituary--one of the better ones, and I've read most of them today.

Without devolving too deeply in politics, as Carson was notoriously private and seemed apolitical and equal-opportunity when mocking politicians of all stripes, one wonders what he would think about the current police state. His tribute to democracy from 1991 (after the fall of Soviet Communism) gives a little hint:

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties. ... Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto -- usually a mop or a leaf blower. It means that with proper timing and scrupulous bookkeeping, anyone can die owing the government a huge amount of money. ... Democracy means free television, not good television, but free. ... And finally, democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with 13 arrows in one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13 stars over its head -- this signifies that when the white man came to this country, it was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad luck for the wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle. I thank you.

Last, but not least, Carson loved the standards. Here are the lyrics to "Here's that Rainy Day" (Johnny Burke & Jimmy Van Heusen), which Better Midler sung to him on one his last shows. It's definitely a little rainy around here.

I should have saved
Those leftover dreams
Funny
But here's that rainy day
Here's that rainy day
They told me about
And i laughed at the thought
That it might turn out this way
Where is that worn out wish
That i threw aside
After it brought my love so near
Funny how love becomes
A cold rainy day
Funny
That rainy day is here
It's funny
How love becomes
A cold rainy day
Funny
That rainy day is here

Catholic Church Defends the Indefensible

2005-01-22T13:23:00.000-06:00

At one point, I was planning to write a novel about stolen Jewish art, a Vatican conspiracy, and Holocaust survivors. I haven't written it yet, only because, well, I'm lazy. Writing is hard, especially lots or writing. And writing that requires research.

But stories like this one in the New Republic (subscribtion required), "QUESTIONS FOR THE VATICAN. Hide and Seek" by Daniel Goldhagen, make me want to revisit the topic all over agin. The article discusses whether the Vatican endorsed kidnapping Jewish children after the end World War 2. Parents and relatives and Jewish charities who came to reclaim children left in the care of Catholic schools were thwarted in their efforts. Some were told children had died.

Pope Pius XII, who was also behind the Vatican's tacit support of Naziism (or to be kind, an unwillingness to speak out against the Nazis as an institution or thwart them in any way) as well as the rounding up of Roman Jews, still gets a rousing hoo-ray from the current powers that be, and it seems there's no low that can't be defended or explained away by his supporters. After all he was infallible and is heading for sainthood.

Freedom Is on the March -- Look Out World

2005-01-21T13:12:00.000-06:00

The president's inauguration speech makes it obvious our president really really likes freedom (mentioned 27 times) and liberty (mentioned 15 times). Or, if I were going to be cynical, I'd say he thinks that WE, the Amuric'n Public, really like hearing about "freedom" and "liberty" and won't think too much about what it means.

The most striking (and a leetle beet scary, kids) is this metaphor:

By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well -- a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.

Look out world, it's the untamed fire of freedom and it's coming to get YOU! Iran! North Korea! Cuba! AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIYYYYY! (Pakistan? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Are they in trouble, too? Doubtful.)

There are lot of intelligent people out there taking apart the speech bit by bit. I could not stomach to listen to it, so I've breezed through the transcript and caught snippets here and there on the radio. For more studious analysis, I strongly recommend Juan Cole's pictorial commentary and Max Speak's "Liberventionism," a term that is the best one-word summary of this new policy as one could ever hope for.

This Man-Date is OVAH

2005-01-19T22:37:00.000-06:00

Not that you could tell from the coronation activities going on. The WP reports on a recent poll:

Bush said in an interview last week with The Washington Post that the 2004 election was a moment of accountability for the decisions he has made in Iraq, but the poll found that 58 percent disapprove of his handling of the situation to 40 percent who approve, and 44 percent said the war was worth fighting.
...
The president's overall job approval rating stands at 52 percent, up slightly in the past month. Of all presidents in the postwar era who won reelection, only Richard M. Nixon had a lower job approval rating at the start of his second term. The other chief executives began their second term with job ratings of 60 percent or higher.

Can we stop the mandate talk now? Oh, didn't think so.

My new hero: Barbara Boxer!

2005-01-19T22:02:00.000-06:00

I'll admit it. For a long time, I've confused Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) with Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). Now that Sen. Boxer has had a metric ton of media coverage, I can honestly say there is absolutely no resemblance. Boxer: attractive, sleek salt-and-pepper hair, expensive glasses. Mikulski: cabbage patch doll.

Anyhoo, I think Sen. Boxer is living up to her name, and throwing a few smart jabs at the administration. First there was her effort (visciously maligned by the Repubs) to support a challenge to the Ohio vote. And now, she dares to question the SLOTUS (that's Second Lady of the U.S.), aka Dr. Rice.

So follow the various links. Considering that 58% of the U.S. population disapproves of Bush's performance in Iraq (40% approve), a courageous voice challenging the administration is welcome. More, please.

Sen. Boxer's Day 2 Questions (requires registration)
Salon interview (premium content)
Daily Kos interview

For Family & Friends Not Familiar with Fafblog

2005-01-13T21:07:00.000-06:00

Fafnir, Medium Lobster & Giblets are the most funniest writers in Blogoland. See fer yersef:

what fool's errand?
So there's gonna be a whole lotta whining and bitching about "oh the Iraq War was a sham" all because the US military gave up looking for weapons of mass destruction. Three weeks ago. Well, that's a whole lotta crap! By invading Iraq the US headed off a grave and gathering threat, like a mushroom cloud made of terrorists! Oh, you hear a lotta talk about "chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons" that never turned up. But does the "Mainstream Media" ever talk about the OTHER weapons of mass destruction that the US has disarmed in Operation Iraqi Freedom? No!

SAND! It is well-known in the "blogosphere" that Saddam was mastering the creation of unstoppable Sand Golems capable of crushing whole cities in monster rampages! Only by siezing control of deadly Iraqi sand could we protect decent Americans from this menace. But the threat of high-sand-content nations isn't over! Giblets hears that Syria may already have a sand processing plant up and running!

ARABS! Saddam had hidden thousands of potentially deadly "dual-use" Arabs that could have been weaponized at any moment! Fortunately the US military has been rounding up and destroying these civilians of mass destruction. But did Saddam hide any of these CMDs to other countries such as Iran and Syria? Giblets says there's only one way to find out!

OIL! Ever tried to drink oil? Oh, it tastes pretty good, but after a while you can get reeeeeaaal sick. So what was Saddam doing with all this black Giblets-sickening stuff in his country anyway!
posted by Giblets at 11:45 AM Comments (10)

Thanks Gibs my friend for clearing this up.

In other No WMD news, a clever fellow called The Poor Man created a nice chart to compare the fallout from media failings/lies of "Rathergate" to that of the WMD. As we used to be told in our AP English class essays, "Compare and contrast...".

And in case anyone has forgotten how shamelessly the Bush Administration flogged this issue, Daily Kos diarist Macabbee published What They Said. Staggering and shameful.

TV Musings for the "Second" Season

2005-01-11T10:01:00.000-06:00

Yes, with a lack of politics to pay attention to, and a cranky back, I've spent an inordinate amount of time with TiVo and some new and returning shows.

Lost
I missed out on this show's first half because I was strangely fascinated with the train wreck known as America's Next Top Model. ANTM was like eating spun caramel corn - the first few bites were sweet and crunchy, soon it began to stick in my mouth, and ultimately, I felt a little sick. I was spoiled on the winner - or I guessed it, maybe - so I wasn't surprised at all. But damn, it was silly and boring.

So Lost started showing up in a few reruns here and there, and I caught up on all (OK, most) of the synopses on Television Without Pity, and now I'm in on the fun. And it is fun. I could do without the multiple flashback back story, where each main character thinks back to How I Got Here, but doesn't really relate any of their back story to any other character, so basically they're a bunch of ciphers running around trying to get rescued, build a viable society, and protect themselves from strange goings-on. Jeez, given the backstory I get from people just waiting for the train, these are the most close-mouthed 21st centurians I've ever seen. Oh well, keeps that mysterious feeling going - cause all we the viewers do is watch and wait for everyone else to find out stuff we already know. Hee. Kind of like Hitchcock, but about 10% as good but 100% more jungle-y.

24
Oh. My. God. I'm back, Jack. I'm sorry I left you midway into Season 2. I couldn't stand your Spawn, and I lost the storyline (that was pre-TiVo) and I just didn't have the patience to figure it out all over again.

This season, 24 has given up the pretense of "foreign" terrorists (I'm looking at you, Dennis Hopper, Season 1) and committed to offending the Arab Defense League (or whoever they are) with real Islamic Jihadist Terrorists as the bad guys. Well, if the Sopranos can go balls-out and offend Italian Americans, network TV should be able to do the same.

The terrorists include a sleeper cell family, who apparently have been in the U.S. for four years as part of the nefarious plan. The most arresting of the terror family is the strikingly beautiful but evil Dina Araz, played by the beautiful but probably very nice Iranian actor Shohreh Aghdashloo. Her dark eyes are so arresting that you feel she could hypmotize you with a 10-second stare. She has an amazing way of smiling with her face but not her eyes.

Other promising characters include Aisha Taylor as a sneaky independent contractor trying to trade her way into CTU's power base; William Devane as the bad-ass Secretary of Defense, whose kidnapping started off the fun; and Lukas Haas as a hapless computer programmer who stumbled into someone hacking "the Internet." Uh-huh.

Despite the ridiculous plot twists (too many to name, even after only 4 epi-hours), the show is still engrossing and even unsettling. It leaves you with a feeling of "yeah, that could happen," when you see a train blown up by plastic explosives, or the hopeless scrambling go on at the intelligence agency to figure out what's going on. Ouch.

MI-5
This British import, called "Spooks" in the U.K., is showing up in its third season on A&E. Unfortunately, MI-5's season is only 6 episodes. Stingy Brits.

Where "24" goes for over-the-top effects, suspicious "good guy" characters, implausible "whatever" technology that works or doesn't in the service of the plot, and unbelievable heroics from Jack Bauer, MI-5 concentrates more on the Crazy Business We Call Spy - what it does to personal lives, the subtle office, national and international politics, the erosion of trust and faith, and, oh yeah, some really rip-roaring good stories.

Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
Gordon is my new TV boyfriend. Yeah, Jack Bauer can save the world, but can he clean out a nasty kitchen, re-train chefs, rip a lazy stubborn owner a new one, revise a menu, and prepare delicious meals all in a single week? I think not.

Gordon first caught my eye on the goofy show "Faking It," where a burger chef was made into a real chef, and he was one of the coaches.

He is horribly potty-mouthed and arrogant, but that doesn't mean he's an idiot. On my ever popular and easy-to-learn scale of Nice/Mean and Smart/Stupid, he would fall into the "Mean/Smart" quadrant, although probably he's not all that mean - just tough. But tough isn't in my quadrant. Oh well, I digress.

The point of this show (again, only four episodes? What is up, Stingy Brits?! Make more, please.) is for Gordon to go into a failing restaurant for a week to get it back on its feet. The problems originate with clueless restaurant owners who don't seem to consider decent food at decent prices a priority. One owner has run a fancy restaurant into the ground by trying to cook himself; another has let a 20-year-old kid run a "fine dining" place - meanwhile the "chef" has let food go horribly off, and he has a particularly bad palate and no real knowledge of basic cooking techniques. And so on.

Gordon's dedication to the business of food service makes for compelling viewing - especially when he threatens to shove a microwave up a useless "executive" chef's arse. I just love watching Gordon dropping his f-bombs liberally, along with some "bollocks" and "bloody hells," in his never-ending quest to serve .... the customer! He is devoted to providing the customer with a pleasant dining experience (he offers redecorating tips), and good, simple food for a good value. He is also big on food cost and time savings - he is apopleptic when he sees food going to waste. This devotion often takes the employees and owners by surprise - wow! our food sucks! wow, people around here don't WANT fancy food! Wow! We have competitors who are better than us!

Dark Days

2004-12-25T22:20:00.000-06:00

Yep, it's pretty dark days here in Frananbananaland. I've poked my fingers into the cyberspace over at Television Without Pity and LTH Forum (Chicagoland foodie discussion board), but otherwise have not had the interest or inspiration to blog, much.

It hasn't even been fun to read my regulars, such as Talking Points Memo or Daily Kos. I do check in with the brilliant James Wolcott (god, do I wish I could write like that), but even so I was away for several weeks. And bless his heart, Bob Somerby is still doing God's work at the Daily Howler, but my ire cannot be raised. This is post-election despondence.

Bush and company are still up to their shenanigans, perhaps even worse now with their so-called man-date. The media went into spasms over Scottie Petersen; has anyone else noted that wife-killers are a dime a dozen? Didn't think so. Yet still Iraq quags further into the mire, and more young men and women are maimed and killed. I have felt hopeless and powerless since the election. Really, what is there to say or do at this point?

I listened with more than usual melancholy yesterday morning to the Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College in Cambridge. It was originally created in 1918 as a way to bring imaginative worship to the Christmas Eve service. I am moved, as I imagine the young Dean of King's, fresh from his service as an Army chaplain, creating an oasis of peace and joy following such monstrous despair and destruction he and his entire generation had experienced. It is some comfort that dark days do inspire such expressions.

Perhaps I will suit up following the New Year, raise my ire, my dander, and sharpen my fangs. Perhaps.

Blogging Blues

2004-11-16T19:20:00.000-06:00

I find myself greatly admiring the bloggers who have carried on valiantly following the election. My heart isn't in it right now. I'm still visiting the blogs, and reading the news, but the election results have taken the wind out of my sails.

I find myself spending more time on Television Without Pity and Fametracker and following the horror known as Star Reynolds (nee Jones) Big Gay Wedding. Nothing comforts the mind like silly television shows and pseudo-celebrity excesses.

Still, the political world invades. Colin Powell retires, to be replaced by Condi Rice. Here's an SAT analogy for you...
Jesus Christ:Mary Magdalene::George W. Bush:
a) Barbara Bush
b) Condoleeza Rice
c) Helen Thomas
d) Karen Hughes
e) Laura Bush

OK, it's not easy. But I'm going with (b) Condoleeza Rice. (If Karen Hughes were still in the administration, she'd be my choice.) I predict disaster. With little real management experience, and owing her political career to the Big Dick, Condi's real benefit to the administration (but not to the country as a whole, nor to the world) will be as the handmaiden who carries out Bush's every wish and desire.

Also worthy reading is Media Matters' fine analysis on why "moral values" did not REALLY affect election decisions. Just as I thought, although I didn't take the time to do the legwork. So, thanks Media Matters and David Brock.

Now, back to lick my wounds and watch The Gilmore Girls on TiVo.

Three Days Later...

2004-11-05T15:40:00.000-06:00

It's taken me this long to begin to consider a post-election blog. I read through the opening of my last post on Tuesday morning, when I had jitters in my stomach but that same cautious optimism I'd had the last few weeks prior to the election. Fueled by decent polling numbers and continuing bad news and defections from the Bush camp, I was hopeful.

In hindsight, the piece of information that most pointed to the election result was this study: "Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD or Major Program, Supported al Qaeda" from the University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes. The meta-analysis goes on to point out that:

72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%).
56% assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD
57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.
75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda
63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found.
60% of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts
55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.
69% assume incorrectly that Bush supports Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
72% assume incorrectly that Bush supports the treaty banning land mines
51% assume incorrectly that he favors US participation in the Kyoto treaty.
After he denounced the International Criminal Court in the debates, the perception that he favored it dropped from 66%, but still 53% continue to believe that he favors it.
An overwhelming 74% incorrectly assumes that he favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements.

"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," according to Steven Kull, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."

Well, there you have it. I probably should have been far more worried and pessimistic after reading that study's findings.

There's been quite a lot written about the "moral values" of the exit polling, and I'm sure this is only the beginning. Without more information other than the talking heads and the bloggers, I can't begin to comment on it, or even fathom the meaning of that phrase.

What I do know is that slightly more than half this country wants desperately to believe in our President. And believe they do despite all evidence to the contrary.

Faith and emotions carry a lot of weight -- if there's anything I've learned from my many years in the marketing world, people don't make decisions based on logic. It's not that you can't reason with some people -- most people are immune to reason and seek comfort and security. As the good prince Hamlet said,

"Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core..."

For me, knowing what I know about the President and his minions, I was completely willing to put my comfort and security in the hands of John Kerry. Beyond all logic, I felt, and still feel, deep in my soul, my heart, and my bones, that President Bush is rotten. Corrupt, wrongheaded, mendacious, calculating, and deceitful.

For those who believe in the President, the challenger did not offer enough. My consolation is now that Bush will have to live with the mess he had made, and perhaps he will have to face up to them. We must make him face up to them.

Iraqi Dead Estimated at 100,000

2004-11-02T11:34:00.000-06:00

I know, I know. It's Election Day. I should be wringing my hands (OK, I am), engaging in nervous eating (check!), and making optimistic predictions (Kerry will win the popular vote and the electoral college).

But I thought I would address the crimes against humanity that we have perpetrated against the Iraqi people in our zeal to bring them democracy.

A recent study by the U.K.'s Lancet medical journey estimates that 100,000 non-combatant Iraqis have died in the 18 months since we invaded Iraq in March 2003. Without going into the details of the survey methodology (The Guardian has more info), it is certainly better than the complete lack of information provided by the "Coalition" forces.

This is 0.4% of the Iraqi population, which would be equivalent to 1.2 million American. Imagine that!

When I recently brought this statistic up to a friend (Bush supporter), his response was:

Well, we would expect civilian deaths if we were invaded, too.
When I mentioned that we invaded Iraq without cause, and that there would be an unbelievable outcry if we lost 1.2 million people due to some invasion or attack; where was the equivalent outcry about the injustic to the Iraqis? We are blind to our own destruction.
The next response was: Saddam was a danger to us. We need to get rid of tyrants. What if we had gotten rid of Hitler in 1933?
Oy, the Hitler argument. I completely absolutely totally reject the equivalency of Saddam to Hitler. I agree that Hitler was a danger, and we fought a long and bloody war to rid the world of him. Saddam was not a danger to us, though, any more than Pol Pot, or Robert Mugabe. Saddam was contained. He had no weapons programs. He was a bad baddie, but he was not a danger to the U.S. I could make a good case that we should be more worried about Kim Jung Il or Musharif where we have real documented evidence of nuclear weapons.
The last point: Saddam was murderous thug to his people, and he killed far more people and would keep on killing them unless we stopped him. There were 300,000 bodies found in mass graves -- women and children.
This put me in a difficult spot, because I ain't going to start definding Saddam Hussein. But that 300,000 number seemed awfully big. But being open-minded, I wanted to check out the sources for that. I could find a lot of sources for the 300,000 number, which seemed to originate at Human Rights Watch, which estimated 290,000 Iraqis dead in mass graves. But that was from May 2003, right after we "won" the war. Since then we've had a chance to find all the mass graves (and the WMD). So what's the latest?

There are many many many sources who repeat (or even expand) Saddam's death toll at 300,000, but not a single stitch of post-invasion documentation of that number. There is certainly recent evidence of mass graves, and women and babies in them. CNN reports finding hundreds of bodies in October 2004. The article repeats the 300,000 murdered estimate, but gives no support for it.

But there was a single article in July 2004 in the Observer that stated:

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

So far, I haven't found this same story in any U.S. newspaper. I'm still waiting for evidence.

Wages Slaves, Be Sure to Vote!

2004-10-29T13:07:00.000-05:00

Many states require employers to give employees time off to vote.

In Illinois: Employee may take two hours off to vote. Must apply in advance. There is no so specific provision that you will be paid for your time; however, the statute provides that the voter shall not be liable for any penalty for absenting himself to vote. The statute has been interpreted that non-exempt employees will not be paid.

In Kentucky: Employee may take off four hours to vote. Must apply for leave in advance. There is no specific provision that employees will be paid. The statute provides that no person shall be penalized for taking a reasonable time off to vote, unless under circumstances that did not prevent him from voting, he failed to vote. It also states that such a person may be subject to disciplinary action. The Kentucky attorney general has issued an opinion stating that employees of private employers need not be paid for time off taken to vote.

In California: Employee may take time off if there is not sufficient time outside working hours to vote. Employee must give two days notice of need for time off. Employer must post notice of right to take time off to vote 10 days before election. Employee must be paid, for no more than two hours.

In Ohio: Employee may take a reasonable time off to vote. Employee may not be discharged or threatened for taking time off to vote. Violators may be fined from $50 to $500. It is unclear whether employees must be paid. The statute has been interpreted to mean that an employer’s refusal to pay an employee who is employed on other than a piecework, commission, or hourly basis for taking time off to vote, if done to induce or compel a person to refrain from voting or to vote in a certain way, would violate this law.

In Florida: No provision. Figure it out and vote on your own time!

This list shows all the state statutes.

Friday cat blogging

2004-10-29T08:13:00.000-05:00

Bush Takes Shamelessness to a New Low

2004-10-27T18:53:00.000-05:00

After spending the last year and a half or so TRASHING the current Democratic leadership and villifying his opponent, Bush has the gall to hearken back to great Democrats of the past (Roosevelt, Truman & Kennedy) -- guess he doesn't think much of old Eisenhower, although his granddad Prescott Bush was quite a fan -- and attempt to make the truly lame case that HE is the true inheritor of Democratic values.

Ha! Double-ha! As NDOL.org says:

We have no way of knowing if the president is going to continue this laughable effort to steal the clothes of great Democrats right up until election day, or if this gambit is as disposable as his 2000 campaign promises to "change the tone in Washington" and serve as a "uniter, not a divider." It is pretty clear that his words in Wisconsin probably didn't reach too many Democrats in real time, since anyone bearing visible Democratic insignia is banned from his campaign appearances. Moreover, he was surrounded on the platform by a host of Republican candidates eagerly seeking to reinforce the GOP's iron partisan control over Congress, a place where Democrats are being treated with a degree of contempt rarely seen since the 19th century.

Vote this man out.

New Yorker Makes an Endorsement

2004-10-26T14:37:00.000-05:00

Usually I resist reading the New Yorker online before I receive the magazine. I love reading the magazine itself. Flipping the pages, seeing what the "talk" is, checking the reviews, glancing at the cartoons, seeing who has the fiction piece that week.

But really, I read on Laura Rozen's excellent blog that the New Yorker has actually endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its long history. So of course I had to check it out. The editors systematically take down Bush for his lack of "uniting," his ill-advised tax cuts, his environmental policy, his breaching of civil liberties through the Patriot Act, his hostility to science, and last, but not least, his incompetence in monitoring the terrorist threat prior to 9/11, and his complete botching of the Iraq War.

You can read all that bad stuff about Bush yourself. I'd like to tell you what they say about John Kerry:

But when his foes sought to destroy him rather than to debate him they found no scandals and no evidence of bad faith in his past. In the face of infuriating and scurrilous calumnies, he kept the sort of cool that the thin-skinned and painfully insecure incumbent cannot even feign during the unprogrammed give-and-take of an electoral debate. Kerry’s mettle has been tested under fire—the fire of real bullets and the political fire that will surely not abate but, rather, intensify if he is elected—and he has shown himself to be tough, resilient, and possessed of a properly Presidential dose of dignified authority. While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America’s mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that this election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half century. That insistence is a measure of his character. He is plainly the better choice. As observers, reporters, and commentators we will hold him to the highest standards of honesty and performance. For now, as citizens, we hope for his victory.

Beautiful day. Beautiful family.

2004-10-24T21:29:00.000-05:00

Beautiful day. Beautiful family
Originally uploaded by franabanana.

This photo was taken last spring, on a blustery day by Lake Michigan.

When bloggers make me laugh...

2004-10-21T20:56:00.000-05:00

From Attaturk, at Rising Hegemon: Atrios and Steve Gilliard point out that Bush is supposed to be in Crawford on his potemkin ranch this weekend.

Bwah! Potemkin ranch! (Here's the trackback link. We'll see if it works.)

Definition of Potemkin Village: Something that appears elaborate and impressive but in actual fact lacks substance.

Sounds about right.

Greatest Writer of All Time Hates Bush

2004-10-21T08:36:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm quite partial to John LeCarre novels. And John LeCarre's politics have much to recommend them as well, especially when we writes:

Maybe there's one good reason — just one — for reelecting George W. Bush, and that's to force him to live with the consequences of his appalling actions and answer for his own lies, rather than wish the job on a Democrat who would then get blamed for his predecessor's follies.

Read the rest (requires free subscription to LA Times).

It Just Goes to Show Ya ... Not All Bushes Are Bad

2004-10-20T16:12:00.000-05:00

I like these people. I really like them!

Bush Relatives for Kerry.

Bush Is Not a Man of Faith

2004-10-20T14:06:00.000-05:00

As good as Ron Suskind's NY Times Magazine article "Without a Doubt" is, something was just a bit off. The issue left unchallenged is that nearly everyone, including Suskind, takes Bush's profession of faith at face value.

But he is not a man of faith. (See also my earlier post on E.L. Doctrow's elegant bashing of Bush's lack of compassion and empathy.)

Ayelish McGarvey writes oh-so-insightfully inThe American Prospect, taking Bush's faith at face value

is a huge mistake, because when judged by his deeds, an entirely different picture emerges: Bush does not demonstrate a life of faith by his actions, and neither Methodists, evangelicals, nor fundamentalists can rightly call him brother. In fact, the available evidence raises serious questions about whether Bush is really a Christian at all.

Ironically for a man who once famously named Jesus as his favorite political philosopher during a campaign debate, it is remarkably difficult to pinpoint a single instance wherein Christian teaching has won out over partisan politics in the Bush White House. Though Bush easily weaves Christian language and themes into his political communication, empty religious jargon is no substitute for a bedrock faith. Even little children in Sunday school know that Jesus taught his disciples to live according to his commandments, not simply to talk about them a lot. In Bush’s case, faith without works is not just dead faith -- it’s evangelical agitprop. ...

Judging him on his record, George W. Bush’s spiritual transformation seems to have consisted of little more than staying on the wagon, with Jesus as a sort of talismanic Alcoholics Anonymous counselor. Bush came to his faith through a small group program created by Community Bible Study, which de-emphasizes sin and resembles a sort of Jesus-centered therapy session.
...
Save for a few standout reporters, the press has done a dismal job of covering the president’s very public religiosity. Overwhelmingly lacking personal familiarity with conservative Christianity, political reporters have either avoided the topic or resorted to shopworn clichés and lazy stereotypes. Over and over, news stories align Bush with evangelical theology while loosely dropping terms like fundamentalist to describe his beliefs.

Once and for all: George W. Bush is neither born again nor evangelical. As Alan Cooperman reported in The Washington Post last month, the president has been careful never to use either term to describe his faith. Unlike millions of evangelicals, Bush did not have a single born-again experience; instead, he slowly came to Christianity over the course of several years, beginning with a deep conversation with the Reverend Billy Graham in the mid-1980s. And there is virtually no evidence that Bush places any emphasis on evangelizing -- or spreading the gospel -- in either his personal or professional life.

Al Gore Lives in My Heart

2004-10-19T14:38:00.000-05:00

From Al Gore's speech at Georgetown yesterday:

It appears to be an important element in Bush’s ideology to never admit a mistake or even a doubt. It also has become common for Bush to rely on special interests for information about the policies important to them and he trusts what they tell him over any contrary view that emerges from public debate. He has, in effect, outsourced the truth. Most disturbing of all, his contempt for the rule of reason and his early successes in persuading the nation that his ideologically based views accurately described the world have tempted him to the hubristic and genuinely dangerous illusion that reality is itself a commodity that can be created with clever public relations and propaganda skills, and where specific controversies are concerned, simply purchased as a turnkey operation from the industries most affected.

George Orwell said, “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Give em hell, Al. The Emperor has no clothes! The Wizard of Oz is just a man working the levers!

"We'll always have ... Poland?"

2004-10-15T11:54:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my brother Michael (my real brother, not my "bra'"), I will never forget Poland. To have the same experience, visit You Forgot Poland!

Rise Up Against the Corporate Media

2004-10-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

Frank Rich writes a powawful indictment of the interests of corporate media in this insightful article:Will We Need a New "All the President's Men"?.

Like the Nixon administration before it, the Bush administration arrived at the White House already obsessed with news management and secrecy. Nixon gave fewer press conferences than any president since Hoover; Mr. Bush has given fewer than any in history. Early in the Nixon years, a special National Press Club study concluded that the president had instituted "an unprecedented, government-wide effort to control, restrict and conceal information." Sound familiar? The current president has seen to it that even future historians won't get access to papers he wants to hide; he quietly gutted the Presidential Records Act of 1978, the very reform enacted by Congress as a post-Watergate antidote to pathological Nixonian secrecy.

Please read it! (The New York Times requires a free subscription.)

Best Debate Questions Came from Regular People

2004-10-13T22:02:00.000-05:00

With the last debate over, Kerry and Edwards did exactly what they needed to do. Even without Bush's Debate 1 Meltdown (Blinky McWired); Cheney's tired growling (Grumpy McScary); Bush's Debate 2 aggression (Shrieky McFury); and Bush's Debate 3 Frat Boy Jokiness (Giggly McCreepy), Kerry Edwards still scored points with specific rhetoric, mature demeanor, and respect for the process and for their opponent. Kerry did not get rattled; he may not have always given the best answers, or responded with the greatest force, but he did enough to show himself as a strong candidate to those voters only exposed to Bush's lies.

Bush will not recover from the impression formed in the first debate; of course his supporters will continue to support him, but he has reached his ceiling.

As for the "debate" format, I say let them all be town halls. The moderators were awful; the town-hall folks were awesome (I guess Gibson gets some credit for choosing the questions. But still).

Lehrer: The questions weren't that bad, but he allowed Bush to jump all over him, taking extra time. Is everyone in the press afraid to challenge Bush?

Ifill played weird word games: Talk about what your ticket would do, but DON'T USE HIS NAME. Easy for Cheney, since he never mentions Bush anway.

Schieffer lobbed multiple softballs to Bush: Do you believe homosexuality is a choice? What kind of issue is immigration? Talk about your personal faith. Your strong woman. BLECH. (Edited to add this link to Somerby's Daily Howler column from Thursday, Oct. 14. Scroll about halfway down to see his criticism of Shieffer's lame-ass questions. He also notes the inherent bias in the questions directed at Kerry.)

Give me the intelligent, engaged voters of St. Louis. They brought specific, direct and tough questions to both candidates. Unliked the overpaid self-important blowhards of Da Media, they were not afraid to confront Bush (or Kerry).

Quickie book review

2004-10-12T21:24:00.000-05:00

I just started reading Joyce Carol Oates' new novel The Falls. It is one of the best beginnings I've read in years. I'm only a few chapters in, and I woke up this morning thinking about the characters. If nothing else is good in this book, it's worth it.

I must stop blogging and read.

Like I Said, These People Are Scary

2004-10-12T21:16:00.000-05:00

Nevada. It's the new Florida. From Las Vegas CBS affiliate: Dem Voter Registrations Trashed:

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.
...
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

We must take these people down. And keep working for democratic (small "d") values even after the election. These are very very very evil bad folks.

News Flash: Tribune Does Not Like a Republican

2004-10-12T11:15:00.000-05:00

Yup, a recent Trib editorial came out against Tom DeLay.

In the clubby halls of Congress, getting spanked by the in-house ethics police is pretty rare. Last week, DeLay was walloped not once but twice, on top of a separate trip to the woodshed the week before. Unfortunately, the Texas Republican's conduct lends support to the most cynical view of how the nation's top lawmakers carry out their duties. And his angry reaction to being admonished by his peers shows that DeLay is too arrogant to mend his ways.

You go, guys.

It would be nice to see the same spanking for Dubya. An endorsement for Kerry, perhaps? Nah, that would be too good to be true.

Slightly Less Cautiously Optimistic Today

2004-10-12T10:26:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I told my dad that I was cautiously optimistic about Kerry's chances. I feel even less cautiously optimistic today. Perhaps it's been two solid debate performances from Kerry, along with a weak Dubya in Debate 1, and a mediocre Dubya in Debate 2.

Perhaps it's that Dubya has nothing substantive to offer about himself, his achievements, or his goals -- he merely repeats and repeats and repeats the John Kerry = bogeyman meme until your brains start to rattle around in your head.

Perhaps it's that certain media outlets (see ABC, the Washington Post) are finally "getting" that Bush lies, distorts, misleads, misrepresents, dissembles, falsifies, invents, makes shit up....

Perhaps it's that Bush seems strangely off (or read it here) and possibly wired for sound, and the major media are not ignoring the story.

Perhaps it's the everyone who's anyone is shrill when it comes to Bush's policies on science, terrorism, Iraq, the economy, health care, jobs, and the environment.

I am still cautious because these guys are evil and scary. Sinclair Media is trying to throw the election to Bush by airing a 90-minute Swift Boat Veterans commercial rehashing already discredited lies about Kerry. Bush's support is weakening, but not enough to be comfortable.

And Karl Rove will stop at nothing to win.

Wouldn't It Be Pretty to Think So

2004-10-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

Once again, James Wolcott (this link works, too) expresses my deepest darkest desires. There's only one more debate: Frisk Bush! Frisk Bush!

Bush Hates Democracy; Campaign Spokesman Lies

2004-10-08T09:49:00.000-05:00

In the ongoing coverage of the Bush campaign, one particular feature has stood out to me. Bush campaign events do not allow dissenters to enter. This has been documented many times, by The Boston Globe; The Washington Post; and even far across the pond in The Guardian.

Apparently, John Kerry puts no restrictions (other than tickets required) on who "gets" to see him on his campaign stops.

Nina Totenberg reported on this story on Morning Edition today. I have paraphrased some of her reporting, but the quotes from the individuals are correct.

I begin in media res with the set-up quote from Bush's campaign spokesman:

Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman denies any filtering of crowds: “The crowds aren’t screened. We love the fact that these events are usually huge. We certainly welcome very much folks that want to listen to what the President has to say, regardless of their affiliation regardless of who they intend to support.“

The campaign provided one name of someone who had been kept out of Kerry campaign event, but she did not return calls.

However, there are many reports of people kept out of Bush events. Even high school students.

At Lee Summit H.S. in Missouri, school officials let students out early so they could attend a rally. The campaign ordered the removal of some students because they had buttons or Kerry stickers. The school district did not return calls, but there were reports of youngsters in tears.

Now it’s official. Dubya makes kids cry. Moving along...

Kathy Meade, of Traverse City, MI, Identifies herself as a registered Republican, but is leaning toward On the way into the event, she bought a small Kerry sticker and put it on her lapel. When she went through the second level of security she was told she had to take it off.

“I said, ‘Really? In a democratic society shouldn’t I be able to wear this sticker?’ And at that point, someone else came over and immediately started ripping up my ticket and ripping up my sticker and told me I had to leave immediately.” She was appalled. ...

Barbara Miller of Midland MI calls herself a swing voter who has voted for both republicans and democrats for president. In
August she got tickets to go to bush rally with her husband and daughter. But Miller had on her arm a pro-choice shirt.

“They said, ‘No, we don’t let in any pro-choice non-republican paraphernalia in this event .’” Miller put the shirt on a table and went in without it. But close to the time the president was supposed to arrive, the same man who had stopped her at the door, came over to them and ordered the family to leave. “We said, ‘No, we’re here to see our president.’ We were just dumbfounded. They said, 'If you don’t leave, we’re going to have to call the secret service and you’ll be put in jail.'"

OK, I’m skipping a couple incidents…

Jason Nelson is an iron worker and a first-term county supervisor in Appleton WI. He had been to a small Kerry rally earlier in the day, and had on a Kerry shirt under his long-sleeve denim shirt. When a security search revealed the t-shirt, he like the others was turned away and threatened with arrest when he protested.

“You would have thought that I was like one of the biggest terrorists that was.”

He was directed to a secret service agent.

“He showed me his ID, and I showed him my drivers’ license, and at that point I was telling him, ‘What’s going on? Was this illegal to have this t-shirt on or what?’ And they were e like, “No, we do this for everybody. You just can’t be here.”

And then Totenberg goes to the experts: what's annoying in her wrap-up is that neither seems to point out that only BUSH practices this unprecendented limitation of access and first-amendent rights.

Totenberg interviews the Post’s EJ Dionne, and some guy who works for, get this, the George Bush School of Government. Sure, he’s objective. They point out that campaigns are more scripted and that campaign events play more to committed supporters rather than the general public. OK. That’s probably true. But which campaign requires loyalty oaths? Stops people from attending? Makes high school students cry? That’s right. And it’s not John Kerry.

Yeah, John Kerry lets anyone come in and listen to him – even hecklers. Bush keeps out anyone who even glances to the left.

Good Men Always Leave ... Bush

2004-10-07T13:48:00.000-05:00

Not only has GWB managed to keep and encourage incompetence around him (I've got my Manson lamps trained on you, Condi, Paulie, and Donnie.), he has pushed away, excluded, humiliated and insulted others who have shown competence and effort in moving policy forward.

First, there was John J. DiIulio Jr., who headed up the President's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives for about 6 months. He left for the pat "family and personal reasons," but later wrote to reporter Ron Suskind of Esquire in October 2002, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus.... "What you’ve got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." See the full article here. (Given my previous post, I don't think Machiavelli would very much approve of this administration.) Smears and threats ensued. We move on to...

Next came Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, who had made a name for himself getting to know Bono and actually seeming to care about debt in the developing world. He was fired from the administration in December 2002. O'Neill told Ron Suskind (Hey! It's That Reporter Guy!) in their collaborative book, The Price of Loyalty:

In the book, O’Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate.

At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."

This is what O'Neill says happened at his first hour-long, one-on-one meeting with Mr. Bush: “I went in with a long list of things to talk about, and I thought to engage on and as the book says, I was surprised that it turned out me talking, and the president just listening … As I recall, it was mostly a monologue.” (Source: CBS News 60 Minutes, January 11, 2004)

So what happens? O'Neill is smeared, and accused of releasing classifed documents. Anything come of that? Nope.

Next we hear from Richard Clarke, in his book Against All Enemies, and in his riveting testimony to the 9/11 Commission. Clarke said in a March 20, 2004, 60 Minutes interview, " I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on the Cold War issues when they came back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back, they wanted to work on the same issues right away -- Iraq, Star Wars -- not the new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years." What happened to Clarke? Yup! Personal attacks and smears.

Moving along to...military leaders, such as General Eric Shinseki, a four-star Army Chief of Staff, who had the gall to at least be mildly optimistic (but realistic) when estimating that we would need 300,000 troops to invade Iraq. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld went on to publicly rebuke Shinseki and humiliate him by announcing his successor 1 1/2 years before his term was up. As James Fallows noted in a Frontline interview:

When Paul Wolfowitz was asked why he thought Shinseki's estimates were so wildly off the mark, first he used the sort of standard Pentagon line, especially under Donald Rumsfeld, which was really, "The future was unknowable." Of course the future is unknowable, although that line was used to excuse a failure to give any financial estimates, which was more irresponsible than it was unknowable.

Then he went on to say, first, he thought many things would go fairly easily. Countries like France were likely to help us in the reconstruction, that this was likely to go more easily than most people thought. Then he went on to make the crucial point that raised the main philosophical difference between the Army and the civilian leadership. Wolfowitz said he found it hard to conceive that it would be harder to occupy Iraq than it had been to conquer it. This was a thing that was difficult to imagine, he said.

Far from being an imaginary concept, this idea that the occupation was the hard part was the heart of the Army's prewar argument.

Where else to go for people who have abandoned Bush? John Eisenhower, son of a GOP President. Foreign service officers, both Democrat and Republicans. Lots of military leaders (OK, a lot of these guys were never WITH Bush -- work with me people). Families of 9/11 victims.

Bush clearly cannot handle the truth. Faith-based policy, indeed. Now of course, the administration disses its own State Department's intelligence and the CIA. Or distorts them mightily to make their point.

Veep Debate: Richard III meets Henry V

2004-10-05T09:56:00.000-05:00

The thought of watching His Royal Evilness, the Power Behind the Throne, crouched behind a desk, spewing attacks and lies is too delicious to resist. I will watch, perhaps sometimes with my hands over my eyes, Lou Abbott style, in order to blunt the horror, the horror.

My theory is that Cheney insisted on a desk-style talk show format because he is not able to stand for more than 90 minutes. Actually I'm sure it was to blunt Edwards much more energetic and engaging personality. Look, John Edwards can walk around. John Edwards can smile. John Edwards is charming and charismatic. It's like Richard III vs. Henry V (Shakespeare versions, not historical).

Cheney has much to answer for:

Where are the WMD?
Where is the link between Iraq and al Queda? Why are willing to discuss that fully with minimal evidence, but not to address the links between Saudi Arabia and al Queda?
Who did you meet with on the energy advisory council? Why won't you release your notes? Why do you thwart a transparent government?
How come you did not listen to advisors in both budgeting money and troops to fund the Iraq war?
Where have all the flowers gone?

I'm sure I could spend more time on this, but I have to work today. As the lovely Elizabeth Edwards said in her blog, "Now if we could only get Mr. Cheney to debate for one and a half days rather than one and a half hours." May it be so. Keep him on the ropes, John Edwards, and remember you are doing God's work here.

Why Is Bush's Team So Incompetent?

2004-10-04T18:50:00.000-05:00

It's not the team. It's the leader.

Those who think that every Prince who has a name for prudence owes it to the wise counsellors he has around him, and not to any merit of his own, are certainly mistaken; since it is an unerring rule and of universal application that a Prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised by others, unless by chance he surrender himself to be wholly governed by some one adviser who happens to be supremely prudent; in which case he may, indeed, be well advised; but not for long, since such an adviser will soon deprive him of his Government.

If he listen to a multitude of advisers, the Prince who is not wise will never have consistent counsels, nor will he know of himself how to reconcile them. Each of his counsellors will study his own advantage, and the Prince will be unable to detect or correct them. Nor could it well be otherwise, for men will always grow rogues on your hands unless they find themselves under a necessity to be honest. Hence it follows that good counsels, whencesoever they come, have their origin in the prudence of the Prince, and not the prudence of the Prince in wise counsels.

Read Machiavelli's The Prince.

Wish I could say I found this quote myself. Nope. Credit to the most excellent Brad DeLong.

Cautiously Optimistic Election News from my Alma Mater

2004-10-04T09:49:00.004-05:00

Well, ya just never know where a tidbit of election info would come from. Here in my inbox this morning was a newsletter from my alma mater, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, College of LAS.

And therein is a link to this article: Kerry vs. Bush-- Past voting patterns give the edge to the Democrats this November. So it seems that one Professor Peter Nardulli has spent the last 20 years of his life analyzes state-wide elections from 1828 to 2000. The conclusion is...

According to Nardulli, the Democrats have not begun a presidential campaign in such a strong position since 1944.

“Practically speaking, all the Democrats need do is win the states in which they have a meaningful normal vote advantage to capture the presidency,” says Nardulli. “If the Democrats can do this they need not win any Southern states in which the Republicans hold an electoral edge, including Florida.”

Moreover, even if Ralph Nader matches his state-level returns from 2000, this by itself will not be enough to overcome the Democrats' electoral advantage in states that are essential to attaining an Electoral College majority.

The Democrats enjoyed such a strong starting position in the 2004 campaign because of the cumulative effects of gradual shifts in normal voting patterns across a wide swath of states outside the South. These trends began in the 1970s, Nardulli says, and “have eroded what once were sizeable Republican electoral advantages in a number of key states.”

“At the national level, the net electoral effect of these gradual shifts is comparable to most critical realignments in U.S. electoral history. Comparable periods of secular change benefited the Republicans in the first quarter of the 20th century and between 1932 and 1976."

Not all is rosy, however, for the Dems:

But does this mean that the Democrats have the 2004 election “sewed up?”

“Absolutely not,” says Nardulli. “The Democrats' edge in the size and distribution of their electoral base does not mean they have a lock on this election. Electoral upsets such as those that occurred in 1912, 1916, and 1976 demonstrate that even overwhelming normal vote advantages do not guarantee electoral victory. State normal vote advantages simply provide parties with ‘comfort margins' that help them deal with election-specific departures from normal voting patterns that are driven by such factors as increases in unemployment, inflation, or crime. Or scandals such as the Teapot Dome Scandal, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Monica Lewinsky affair.”

Given all the current efforts in voter registration, which seem to be favoring the Democrats, this is cause for hope. Visit Peter Nardulli's web site for more info.

The Two Faces of Bush

2004-10-03T23:32:00.000-05:00

More on the public and private personae of Bush, this time from digsby at Hullabaloo. (Forgive the lengthy quote, but it's all so good...)

The truth is that since George W. Bush entered politics he has always had two faces. In fact, virtually everything you know about his public persona is the opposite of the real person.

He claims to be a compassionate, caring man, often admonishing people to "love your neighbor like you loved to be loved yourself." Yet, going all the way back to Yale, he is quoted as saying he disapproved of his fellow students as "people who felt guilty about their lot in life because others were suffering." His business school professor remembers him saying that poor people are poor because they are lazy. This from a man who was born rich into one of America's leading families and relied on those connections for everything he ever achieved.

He lectures on responsibility, saying that he's going to end the era of "if it feels good do it" and yet he failed to live up to his responsibility as a young man in the crucible of his generation, the Vietnam war. In fact, if it felt good, he did it and did it with relish --- for forty years of his fifty eight year life. He has never fully owned up to what he did during those years spent in excess and hedonism, relying on a convenient claim of being “born again” to expiate him of his sins. Would that everyone had it so easy.

He ostentatiously calls himself a committed Christian and yet he rarely attends church unless it’s a campaign stop or a national occasion. The man who claims that Christ is his favorite political philosopher famously and cruelly mocked a condemned prisoner begging for her life. He portrays himself as a man of rectitude yet he pumped his fist and said "feels good!" in the moment before he announced that the Iraq war had begun. (One would have thought that if there was ever a time to utter a prayer it was then.) How many funerals of the fallen has he attended? How many widows has he personally comforted?

He portrays himself as a salt of the earth "hard working" rancher, clearing brush on his land in an artfully sweaty Calvin Klein-style t-shirt. Yet in the first 8 months of his presidency leading up to 9/11, he spent 42% of his time on vacation. His "ranching" didn't begin until he bought his million dollar property just before he ran for president in 1999. He has lived in suburbs and cities since a brief period in his childhood in the 50’s, when he lived in the medium sized boom town of Midland before going to Andover.

There is no doubt that whether it's a cowboy hat or a crotch hugging flightsuit , George W. Bush enjoys wearing the mantle of American archetypal warriors. But when he goes behind the curtain and sheds the costume, a flinty, thin-skinned, immature man who has never taken responsibility for his mistakes emerges. The strong compassionate leader is revealed as a flimsy paper tiger

Paul Waldman on the Rhetorical Presidency

2004-10-03T21:56:00.000-05:00

Paul Waldman at the gadflyer writes a positively brilliant and cutting analysis of the Bush presidency's committment to saying things -- lots of things.

Bush's campaign has come down to this: The things that I say are superior to the things that he says. I will continue to say good things, strong things. Because nothing is more important that what you say. So I'll be saying things. My opponent won't say things the way I will. If you re-elect me, I will continue saying things, giving signals, sending messages. God bless America.
...
Say this about President Bush: he says what he says.

Check out the link--Waldman lists the many ways Bush says things from the debate on Thursday.

The Daily Show put together this a cutting satire of Dubya's convention film: George Bush: Words Speak Louder than Actions.

Register to Vote!

2004-10-03T20:32:00.000-05:00

The Illinois deadline for voter registration is Oct 5, 2004.

Suburban Cook County voters can check here to make sure they're registered.

Other Illinois voters can look here for county clerk information. Or, go to Move On to start the process.

If you're not registered, you can't vote!

And, if you plan to be out of town, look here for absentee ballot requests (Cook County, IL), or contact your county clerk board.

Marry Me, Jon Stewart!

2004-10-01T14:21:00.000-05:00

Woops, I'm already married. And so is he.

Oh well, listen to this great interview of him on Fresh Air, broadcast Sept. 30, 2004. Dave Davies, while he's no Terry Gross, did a nice job.

Wolcott: "The trees are alive with the sound of Kerry"

2004-10-01T14:14:00.000-05:00

Please read James Wolcott's assessment of last night's debate. He is a much better writer than I am:

The notion that Bush is "likeable" has always been laughable. It takes a Washington pundit to be that dumb. He's an angry, spoiled, resentful little big man--I use "little big man" in the Reichian sense of a small personality who puffs himself up to look big through bluster and swagger but remains a scheming coward inside--and next to a genuinely big man like Kerry, shrunk before the camera's eyes.

Funniest Debate Moments

2004-09-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, The enemy attacked us.

Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist.
...
BUSH:First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.

Oh, really?

Or, perhaps it was when Bush spoke of the Iranian "myoolahs" we needed to talk to about "nyookular" weapons.

Or, when he accused Kerry of sending "mexed missages."

Or, when he insisted, twice, on reminding us of how much support we have received from the good people of Poland.

View the transcript.

OK - I couldn't resist debate talk

2004-09-30T16:15:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Wonkette who came up with a drinking game for the debates, so I don't haaaaaave tooooooooo.

Finish the Bottle If:
Anyone challenges anyone to a duel
The moderator rips off his mask to reveal his true identity is Karl Rove

Nancy Drew -- My Heroine

2004-09-30T15:36:00.000-05:00

I know, I should be writing about the debates, which are tonight.

But I thought I would have a little reminiscence about Nancy Drew. I LOVED Nancy Drew as a girl. Between the ages of 9 and 12, I think I read every Nancy Drew book I could get my mitts on.

Now, when I take my son to the library, and I hang out in the kid's section as he runs around playing with puppets and listening to music, I pick out a Nancy Drew mystery and read the first few chapters.

The one I just picked up was "The Bungalow Mystery," which I think is no. 3 in the series. Believe me, I used to know all the mysteries and their order. I believe my very first Nancy Drew was The Spider Sapphire Mystery. Gosh, just the titles of these books get me intrigued -- or nostalgic. Not sure which.

Skimming through the books, I've noticed the descriptions and the characters are both wholesome and pulpy. Everyone is defined by their body type, eye color, and clothing.

I've noticed that "class" is much more obvious in the books: I think perhaps 40-50 years ago when these were written, the fact that there were rich folks, middle folks, and poor folks might have been admitted to. Even though today we are much more divided economically, everyone thinks they are middle class.

There I go, getting into economics when I just wanted to praise Nancy Drew. Read Nancy Drew, girls! And not the newer, cleaned-up versions. Read the old ones. They're not quite so sweet, edited and "PC" as the updated ones, but what girl truly is?

Thoughts on the New Year

2004-09-27T14:22:00.000-05:00

With the weather finally turning crisp, Saturday felt like a High Holy Day.

This is the first year in many that I was able to attend a full day of Yom Kippur services, with a fast until about 7 pm. What an interesting experience - the light-headedness, crankiness and fatigue that set in by the end of the day, but combine that with the sense of self-denial, of solidarity with other Jews around the world, and if only superficially, of the hunger and deprivation that many experience around the world.

Early the next morning, I suited up in my "Run Against Bush" t-shirt and ran 7 miles (still my longest run distance). I felt great; strangely empowered and dedicated to my goal. I definitely received more strange looks on the path, and one woman shouted at as she ran in the other direction, "Love your shirt!" I lifted my head, shouted back, "Thank you!" and felt my step get a little extra spring in it.

We then went to Synagogue and I learned more about Sukkot in 2 hours than I had learned in my entire life. Next year, a sukkah!

I have also started on my much belated path to a Hebrew Bat Mitzvah, scheduled for summer 2005. Block off your calendars. I'm brushing up my aleph-bet and basic prayers now.

The President Does Not Mourn

2004-09-24T11:06:00.000-05:00

This is perhaps the most eloquent description of the President's "character" from E.L. Doctorow :

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

...

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.

Thanks to Eric Alterman for this link.

One Cartoon Says It All

2004-09-24T08:14:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Josh Marshall for linking to this Danziger cartoon.

Bush Is In Denial

2004-09-23T20:02:00.000-05:00

Here I thought I had this brilliant new insight into Bush's character: He's a dry drunk! He never received any treatment for his alcoholism, so he continues to exhibit the destructive characteristics of a drunk (impulsive, selfish, childish, egotistical, stubborn, fixated, etc.).

This most recent press-conference with Allawi hit home. Bush is addicted to his Iraq policy, and Allawi is a co-dependent enabler. They are both in denial. As Dr. Phil might say, "Get real!"

So I started to write my thoughts, and to augment them, I did a quick google on "dry drunk." Lo! and Behold! folks have been writing about this theory for several years!

Woops.

So anyhow, here are some more links on this.

Addiction, Brain Damage and the President by Katherine van Wormer
Is Bush Making a Cry for Help? by Alan Bisbort.
George Is Drunk by Bruch Schimmel

And, you be the judge yourself: A general definition of the Dry Drunk.

I ain't the first to have this theory - but I did come to it independently. (If you believe that...Would Franabanana lie to you?)

George, please go into recovery and don't take your addictions out on us.

Tribune Public Editor Feels He Has to Justify Kerry Coverage

2004-09-23T11:07:00.000-05:00

Don Wycliffe, public editor of the Chicago Tribune, had an amazing column today. Not amazing in its content - but amazing that he felt he needed to address this issue at all.

Apparently a lot of rabid Bush fans from the Land of DuPage, including one Barbara Critton of Naperville, did not like the front page banner headline coverage in the Sept. 21, 2004, Tribune of Kerry's speech on Iraq. Wycliffe's column quotes this woman's phone message:

"Why would you possibly put [Kerry's speech on top] and a huge picture of him and a very small picture of our president who gave a wonderful speech in New Hampshire--why would he be below Kerry? ... Why aren't you fair and balanced like a newspaper should be?"

Anyone note the "fair and balanced" lingo? Mayhap her eyeballs are stuck to FOX News and her brain is leaking out her ears. If she read the editorial pages or John Kass at all, she'd realize that The Trib is on her side .

Wycliff's column continues:

Critton would have made CBS' apology for using phony memos in a story about Bush's Air National Guard service the lead story. Another caller agreed with her and voiced the suspicion that the CBS story, which appeared just below the Kerry story and above the fold, did not lead the paper because it was an embarrassment to the media industry.

Yet another caller felt the story of the beheading of kidnapped American Eugene Armstrong by Islamic militants in Iraq ought to have led the paper. (Incongruously, that same caller lamented all the "good news" stories we let go by.)

I am happy to say to these and all other readers who had a different notion of what should have led the Tuesday front page: You may be right.

He goes on to justify the wholly justifed coverage like this:

Quite simply, [Kerry's speech] was civically more important than any of the others, and the newspaper's civic role is paramount. The Democratic presidential nominee had made a frontal assault on perhaps the single most controversial policy decision of the Republican incumbent, in the hope of forcing the "great national debate on Iraq" that should have been had before the war began.

Come Nov. 2, many Tribune readers are going to have to perform the most important duty of their offices as citizens: They'll vote for a president. They'll be passing judgment on George Bush's decision-making on Iraq, either approving it by voting for him or disapproving by voting for an opponent.

Arguably, from now until Nov. 2, the Tribune and other serious news organizations have no weightier duty than to see that citizens are informed on the key issues of this presidential campaign. Without question, Iraq is one of those.

So there's my take on that Tuesday story and headline. And, I am happy to say, I may be right.

MAY be right?! Harumph! You are right, Don! Good God, the major challenger is addressing the incumbent on the key issue the incumbent is running on! The challenger will likely win the majority of votes in the city and the state (OK, but probably not Naperville). Don't we voters deserve to see this critical coverage dominate the news? After months of coverage in which the RNC and Bush has harped on Kerry's alleged flip-flopping on Iraq, not taking a stand, blah blah blah -- here is Kerry with his point of view. Wouldn't even Republicans in the deep dark bowels of Naperville be interested in that?

Nah - why challenge these folks devoted to "fair and balanced" with reality?
Note: Chicago Tribune links are up for one week. The Tribune requires registration.

Steady Leadership? Me No Think So.

2004-09-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

Thanks to MyDD and AMERICAblog for pointing out the many (still counting) reasons Nookleeyar George has given for going to war in Iraq.

Let me (that is, AMERICAblog) count the ways:

War on Terror
Prevention of the proliferation of WMD
Lack of Inspections
Remove Saddam Hussein regime
Saddam Hussein is evil
Invading Iraq would allow us to gain favor in the Middle East
Example to other terror states
Liberate the Iraqi people
Broken Promises - Iraq had made commitments to the UN and the world
Revenge for Iraq's attempt on the life of President H.W. Bush
Threat Saddam posed to the region
Because We Can - There would be little conflict or struggle, little price to pay for entering the country, the war would be easy.
Cleaning up unfinished business in Iraq from the first Gulf War
War for Oil - The US' oil interests in the Middle East and Iraq serve as a reason for wanting to invade the state and topple its leader.
Sake of History - Pres. Bush claimed history had called on the US to take action against Iraq
Disarmament - total elimination of ALL weapons in Iraq
Safety of the World - Iraq as a terrorist nation could sell weapons to other terrorists and thus posed a threat to the entire world
Commitment to the Children - America should give its children and the world's children a better future.
Imminent Threat - The uncertainty of Iraq's weapon power and future plans.
Preserve Peace - Iraq posted a threat to the peace of the world by its continued terrorist involvement and its increased tension in the Middle East
Threat to Freedom - By oppressing its people and threatening the world with possible terror acts, freedom was prevention from spreading through the Middle East and was lessened in those nations that feared terror in their backyards.
Link to al Qaeda
Iraq Unique - Rumsfeld declared that Saddam Hussein in combination with the weapons potential in Iraq made Iraq different than the other "axis of evil" countries, and therefore a great immediate threat.
Relevance of UN - The UN was put on notice that it would face illegitimacy if it did not support the cause of the United States.
Iraq had broken international law - Colin Powell said that violations of UN resolutions broke international laws established in the UN Charter.

I would also add 2 more that Bush announced in the past few days:
Saddam "hopes" to "some day" get WMD (as compared to he "has" WMD).
Saddam had an "ability to work with terrorist organizations" (as compared to actually "working" with terrorist orgs).

Maybe I could add a few myself:

Saddam Hussein smelled bad.
Afghanistan was not enough. We needed more WAR!
Just cleaning house for the rapture. Really. See Bill Moyers' article linked below.
Needed to destroy irreplaceable items of immense historical value.
Nothing like body counts to give you something to, well, count.
Oh, don't forget collateral damage. It's no fun unless you can euphemize away thousands upon thousands of deaths of innocent civilians.
Bush presidencies' (41 and 43) popularity only goes up in wartime. In all other times their incompetence is too noticeable.

Bill Moyers Is Bringing Me Down

2004-09-20T20:36:00.000-05:00

I wish I could plug my ears and go, "Lalalalala, I can't hear you, Bill Moyers." But everything he has to say about Journalism Under Fire in Progressive News is heartbreakingly true.

I recently watched Moyer's NOW program on the Bush administration's (lack of) response to terrorism in the build-up and immediate follow-up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. I am sorry that Moyer's courageous voice will soon be lost. He is retiring at the age of 70, and I guess PBS reporting will be left to Tucker Carlson, John McLaughlin and the News Hour. Sigh.

Sopranos Put a Bullet in the West Wing's Head

2004-09-20T13:20:00.000-05:00

All right! Finally, the best show on TV got an Emmy. OK, they got many Emmys. And not the lead actors this year (sorry Edie and Jimmy) - which is pretty shocking since they were both so good. But there were much-deserved awards for writing (Terence Winter, Long Term Parking), and acting (Michael Imperioli and Drea De Matteo, who tore up the small screen this year in "Long Term Parking").

Recognition also went to Angels in America - I think Jeffrey Wright was so good. I think I would like to have him over for coffee and thank him for just being so, well, good. Al Pacino was very Al-ish (over the top and annoying, but sort of hard to argue that he wasn't good) and Meryl Streep was best as Misguided Mormon Mom. But, Jeffrey Wright, you were really really really good. And I guess Kushner and Nichols deserved their Emmys too - without em, not much of a story or show.

Yes yes yes the Daily Show rocked and rolled over Dave, Jay and other stupid talk shows with really smart writing and just the bestest funniest on air talent.

And finally, finally, I completely blew off watching the Emmys this year. I not so fondly remember last year's Emmy telecast, when I groggily awakened in a puddle of drool after nearly 14 stultifying hours of boring speeches and clips. So this year, I just let the magic happen without me. And yes the show went on. And it just goes to show you, it doesn't really matter if I watch or not, because I would have been there, rooting for the Sopranos the whole time, hoping against hope that my rooting would affect the outcome. And lo! and behold! my presence in front of the TV was not needed.

Although the joy of seeing Drea, Michael and Jeffrey pick up their Emmys might have been worth waking up in a pile of drool. Oh well.

And I did miss seeing all those bony women in their fancy dresses. But I guess that's what US Weekly is for!

Why Gallup Is Wrong

2004-09-17T20:05:00.000-05:00

Steve Soto at The Left Coaster gives a cogent reason why the latest Gallup poll numbers are way off, which show Bush-Kerry at 55%-42%. Apparently Gallup asked likely voters in the following breakdown:
GOP 45% of sample
Dem 33% of sample
Independent 28% of sample

Interesting that in the 2000 election, the breakdown of actual voters was:
GOP 35% of electorate
Dem 39% of electorate
Independent 26% of electorate

If anything, Gallup should be oversampling Democrats! Sheesh. If I were conspiracy-minded, I might think Gallup is trying to stack the deck. Soto suggests that it's not that off base:

The real problem here is that Gallup is spreading a false impression of this race. Through its 1992 partnership with two international media outlets (CNN and USA Today), Gallup is telling voters and other media by using badly-sampled polls that the GOP and its candidates are more popular than they really are. Given that Gallup’s CEO is a GOP donor, this should not be a surprise.

Read the details.

Run Against Bush

2004-09-17T18:21:00.000-05:00

I just joined Run Against Bush. Yes, I am a complete whore for CoolMax t-shirts. But still. I figure that since I already run, and I'm trying to get better, this may inspire me to move my butt just that much faster. I'm running to lick Bush! Hee, yes I'm 12. So sue me.