Testifying
I've posted this photo before, but it deserves repeating. It's of happier Mardi Gras times past.
New Orleans has two big major holidays a year: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. Of the two, Mardi Gras is the darker. French for "Fat Tuesday," the day before Catholic's Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, Mardi Gras' slogan is: Laissez les bonnes temps roulez! (Let the good times roll!)
The colors of the festival -- purple, yellow and green -- are usually only seen together in bruises. Bruises like those you get when you get so drunk you fall down in the gutter on Chartres Street one night. The smell of college kids' vomit will waft up to you at times like that, but luckily, you won't remember it the next day.
While you're in that darkened, drunken state, you'll see things you never thought you'd see humans do: mostly sexually. People kiss and suck and fondle and fuck right there in damn front of you. There's a wildness in peoples' eyes at times like that that it's hard to forget.
New Orleans is the place you go to get lost. It's where Lee Harvey Oswald ran and was found. You go there to hide, to change your name, your life, your lifestyle, your sexuality, your gender, your religion and on and on. I ran there to ease a broken heart and write. Instead, I fell in love and learned to bartend. The only time I wrote was when he came to pick me up on dates. I always made sure I was at the typewriter, tapping away... for the first few dates anyway. He soon learned who I really was - a much less disciplined person than that and way too young to be a good writer.
The problem with New Orleans is -- should I be saying "was?" -- that there were no rules, no guideposts to measure your journey by, especially on Mardi Gras. You could get your hands on whatever you wanted there, but would you be ready for it when you got it?
Mardi Gras is your last free out for sin. Lent is all about absolution. Like a smoker trying to quit and overdosing on cigs that last night, any sinner can go anywhere on Mardi Gras and be forgiven in the next light of day.
That's a dangerous thing to offer sinners like us.
A Little Rumi for Ya
I can't stomach politics today, so thought I'd post one of my favorite poems by Rumi.
THE GUESTHOUSE
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Why This Stuff Bugs Me So Much
A house in New Orleans, after Katrina and the politicians were done with it.
When I look at this photo, the thought that fills my mind is: this is what D.C. will look like if it suffers a real terrorist attack someday. Another majority black city that nobody cared about. People's lives being put on hold or ruined. A city's heritage burning while Capitol Hill serenades us on their violins and finds out what the lobbyists want done.
But of course, it being D.C., it will be much worse than New Orleans because we won't even have people in Congress or the Senate fighting for us. Note: The above is the result of even having people (albeit of the wrong party) fighting for you.
Where did the meaning of "public servant" go, exactly? Anybody seen it around?
That's why this stuff bugs me so much.
-- DC Native
Top Ten Reasons You Can't Trust Republicans with National Security
10. They outed a CIA operative to exact political revenge, endangering her life and leaving a legacy that will make people think twice before signing up for duty.
9. They ignored a memo in August 2001 entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."
8. They made seniors less secure with the massive giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry known as the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan.
7. They sent our troops off into battle without appropriate armor, making them incredibly less secure. They make them pay to fly home for leave and for body armor that gets damaged when they are hurt using it.
6. Almost five years after 9/11, they still have done nothing to make our chemical and nuclear power plants more secure.
5. They've cut funding for first responders across the country. They link school funding to adherence to their failed No Child Left Behind program. They've sold our country's debt to China, leaving us weaker against that country's political whims. They've sacrificed the health of our environment to the highest industry bidders nationwide. All of these things are part of creating real security for America instead of phony, PR-focused "security."
4. They still haven't worked out communications networks in places like Washington, D.C. that failed during 9/11, leaving first responders in likely target cities without the tools they need to keep us safe in a disaster.
3. Rampant cronyism that endangers America: placing Michael Brown in charge of FEMA and Porter Goss in charge of the CIA – the latter, an appointment that has led many experienced senior Agency employees to walk away from their much-needed service to our country.
2. They only believe in the kind of affirmative action that gives our East Coast ports over to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. Finally, they start to understand the dangers of racial profiling.
1. The guy at the top of the page: Karl Rove. He's the real Numero Uno behind the smoke and mirrors.
I ran out of numbers before I even got a chance to talk about the budget or a million other things! (Feel free to nominate your own in the comments.)
Adding Insult to Injury
Having lived through 9/11 in D.C., I don't really believe it's possible to stop terrorist acts. The best you can do is get good plans in place to deal with the aftermath.
The inevitability of terrorist acts seems especially obvious when you look at our ports. The photo above is of the Port of Long Beach in CA, which isn't one that the United Arab Emerates (UAE) is about to take over. Or rather isn't one that a company bought by the UAE is about to take over. I couldn't find a photo of those in the short time it took me to lose my patience with internet research. But this gives you a sense of the absolute SIZE of our ports. The number of palettes of shipments that come in every day. In the best of situations, we're currently only screening 4 percent of cargo, so we're on borrowed time as it is.
However, I still think this is incredibly dumb. Did we think when we elected Bush that we'd be giving so many Arab governments the keys to our house? That he'd be tiptoeing through the tulips hand-in-hand with guys in burkhas? They tried to do this deal in secret so we wouldn't raise a stink. I hereby raise said stink.
Two of the 9/11 highjackers were from the UAE and money to fund it was laundered through the country. Is there any terrorist in the world who isn't ecstatic at this news? Meanwhile, we're supposed to sit by and trust Dubya and Elmer Fudd.
If the Dems can't get some mileage off this, the cause is beyond hope.
What Odysseus Hath Wrought
It's hard to find photos of Odysseus. Here he is hanging out with a bunch o' sirens.
"I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known: cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move." [Tennyson 1809-1892. Ulysses]
I just caught a few minutes of Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? - because evidently George Clooney needs residual checks this month on TOP of everything else great currently happening to him - and was reminded of the happy fact that the movie was based on the Odyssey.
Being an Immaculata girl, I read the Odyssey in sophomore year high school, I believe, translating it ourselves from the original Latin. I remember how dry and dull it seemed as the nuns dragged us from chapter to chapter, following his tragic, bloody, and I guess heroic exploits around the world. Like many a fairy tale, the hero just wants to get home. In Oh, Brother... we follow George and the boys as they trip through post-jail time and we want them to succeed.
Somehow the story looks different to me from this age. At 14, I had no experience of Trojan horses or the pull of Scylla and Charybdis. I hadn't had all my fellow travelers eaten alive by monsters or fought back at Cyclopses with spears to blind them.
Now, I kinda think I've done all those things, one way or another.
I look around me and see friends going through divorces at middle age... through bold career changes... finally adopting kids... or getting onboard the spiritual voyage train. With a certain number of years and success/failures hanging over our belts, we note the scenery changing with varying degrees of horror.
So I'm happy the nuns made us read about Odysseus when we were too young to understand it. Maybe the only way to handle the tale is to take it in small bites like we had to when translating it. Of course, I did my Latin homework while watching the Partridge Family, so it's amazing I got it at all.
However, even David Cassidy has gone through being buffeted by the winds of an angry ocean god and gotten out the other side. I guess we're all in the middle of the waves right about now.
Maybe if I'd never read that story, I'd never have wandered the world like I did. I certainly wouldn't have taken even the first step if it had been laid out in a book before me like that.
Unless, of course, the story featured George Clooney.
Seeking Forgiveness from Dubya and Dick
I gotta give a shout out to Harry Wittington. Molly Ivins had a
nice piece about him this week and he sounds like a really decent guy. Kind of like me and you. We're happy he lived. What I don't get is why he's apologizing to the guy who shot him.
Is this some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, learning to appreciate our abuser? Or is this just good politics? Hard to say.
I've tried to imagine the scene all week. Harry Wittington's hospital room. White House operatives guarding the door, waiting to influence any decision the doctor might make in the case. Come on, doc, he's gonna pull through! Replace his damn heart and stitch him back up. He just needs to be making it through nine holes on the nearest ritzy golf course asap.
At what point did they decide to release the news? After everybody's blood alcohol content had been wiped clean? Or am I just being a cynical liberal?
"Thank you, Dick, for hitting me with all the buckshot. I'm sorry for the pain my pain caused you, Lynn, that lesbian daughter and any other stakeholders. The check's in the mail for the gun safety PSA you'll soon be producing! God bless ya'!"
We've all been treated poorly in our time. If you have a few hours, we could swap stories but what's the point in that? All I've learned is that people treat you the way you expect to be treated - or are willing to put up with being treated. I'm uppity. I require certain behavior from those in my life. No buckshot. Especially of the up-close-and-personal kind.
Harry, I see, is less fussy.
Thank you God, Allah, Jesus, Yahweh, (insert deity name here) for getting a nice guy like Harry through this. Now can we get him and the rest of America a weekend course in how to stand up for yourselves and demand being treated like humans?
Oh, that's right. There's an election coming up. We have a chance to stand up for our own selves. Yee-ha!
Another Public Service Message
Click here to see how much we're paying for this crack team in the White House. That will make you happy. Just wait til I do my report about the benefits they get for the rest of their lives after leaving government service. I believe retirement for those in Congress is 80% of their salary. I'm so glad Gary Condit will be well taken care of.
DC Native
A Day Late and $65 Billion Short
I am an American. I am such a damn American. I'm even a baby boomer, so I'm kind of a cliche of an American. I always think things will work out. I'm only mildly afraid of debt. I never did EST or got involved in a pyramid scheme but I know people who did both.
So I wasn't surprised to see the White House ask Congress today for $65 BILLION more for what they now term "The Long War." This, on top of the $80 something Billion he asked for in December. It's only FEBRUARY, folks. NBC reported (that's a qualifier on accuracy, obviously) that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will then have cost us $450 Billion.
$450 billion. Think about that for just a moment. What else might we do with that much money? Did we ever, as citizens, think our government had that kind of dough to throw around? What kind of schools and roads and energy sources could we have built in the last five years with that kind of financial commitment?
Aside from the Clinton surplus legacy, where the hell is this money coming from? Well, as I understand it, it comes primarily from treasury bonds and other government financial products that have been bought by China and Japan, two countries we're in trade debt to as well.
This is kind of the canary in the coal mine and I hope we start paying attention soon. The American auto industry didn't pay attention years ago when other countries were working on fuel efficient and hybrid cars while we built larger SUVs and turned the Hummer into a civilian vehicle. Now the construction industry isn't paying attention as the housing market starts to cool and soon we'll be left with an abundance of crappy condo buildings dotting the landscape, waiting for one stiff breeze or hurricane to blow them down.
For a country that was once so well-educated, we're still pretty dumb. Or maybe we're just lazy. Somebody's making money off all this, but it sure ain't you and me. The cream is rising to the top, and we just wait patiently for the leftover milk.
My fear is that all our bad financial decisions will catch up with us at once - the only way Americans ever seem to pay attention: when backed against a wall. Given no other choice than to finally deal with a problem, I do believe we step up to the plate. I just wish we'd get there before circumstances were always dire.
It's like one big knitting project. You start pulling at one thread, and the whole thing falls apart.
Hold onto your knitting needles and get ready to purl two.
Democratic Party Shoots Self in the Heart
A different kind of politician says good-bye.Iraq vet Hackett drops out of Ohio Senate race
NEW YORK (AP) -- Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, a Bush administration critic who had been recruited by top Democrats to run for U.S. Senate, said Tuesday he was dropping his campaign and declared his political career over.
Hackett said he was pressured by party leaders to drop out of the Senate primary and run for the House instead.
National Democratic leaders, especially Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of the Senate campaign committee, had told Hackett's top fundraisers to stop sending money, Hackett told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
"My donor base and host base on both coasts was contacted by elected officials and asked to stop giving," Hackett said. "The original promise to me from Schumer was that I would have no financial concerns. It went from that to Senator Schumer actually working against my ability to raise money."
Schumer, who represents New York, was not immediately available for comment.
"I made this decision reluctantly, only after repeated requests from party leaders, as well as behind-the-scenes machinations, that were intended to hurt my campaign," Hackett said in a statement announcing the end of his campaign...
Democrats also considered Schmidt vulnerable in a rematch against Hackett. She was widely criticized for saying in a House floor speech about a troop pullout recommendation by Rep. John Murtha, a decorated Vietnam veteran: "Cowards cut and run, Marines never do."
But Hackett said he had already told other Democrats he would not enter the congressional race.
"I said it. I meant it. I stand by it," Hackett said Tuesday. "At the end of the day, my word is my bond and I will take it to my grave."
(click on link for rest of story)
****************
I almost called this post "Why I'm Proud to Be an Independent."
I've spent a year working with a movement that is desperate to find "non-traditional spokespeople." It's much better to have a farmer telling you why it's best if we keep the rivers clean and full than it is to have a lawyer telling you which part of a law was broken by someone who drained said river. People respond to other people. You realize that if you've ever seen a baby looking at you.
Dems, Howard, anyone?? You had a war hero who dared speak his mind and still almost won a race in a mostly Republican district last time around. You sought him out to run for you. Then you changed your mind and drained his pocketbook of dollars. You wanted to go with a more "seasoned politician" (one whose motto is the stirring, "He's on our side").
Maybe this is the turning point those in the military need to see how little their service is valued by our political leaders. I thought it was only the Republicans who demeaned those who served - and only after they dared seek office.
Is this another page from the Republican playbook that the Dems are trying to steal? If so, don't be surprised if they keep losing.
I guess it's time to draft Robert Redford after all. The DLC can just watch "The Candidate" and whistle a happy tune. That's pinning a lot on Mr. Redford's looks and appeal still winning, but it's better than any "strategery" the party seems to be able to muster anymore.
A Little Elizabeth Barrett Browning for Ya
I memorized this poem once and recited it to a man at just the right moment (hey - I thought this blog wasn't going to be personal!). It was lovely to have felt these feelings and have been able to express them to a guy, thanks to E.B.B.
Happy Valentine's Day!
DC Native
From
Sonnets for the Portugueseby Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XLIII
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Today, of course, I have these feelings for a girl:
Aren't We All in the Line of Fire?
Courtesy of AP:
Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter'Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good'
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.
Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.
Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.
Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.
Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.
Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.
"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.
"It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.
"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."
Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.
"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.
The Anticipation
In anticipation of launching my candidacy for DC Mayor-in-Exile, I've been thinking a lot about the problems of the Democratic party. It came to me in the shower - though it's been said before by others in different ways.
The Democratic Party has no unified field theory. The Republicans have: What's good for business is good for America. Business must make money.
What do the Dems have? What's good for Social Security is good for America? Children must get educated? Yawn.
The Dems are lost in the forest and can't find their way out for all the damn trees. Simplify and repeat, people. Simplify and repeat.
What is the belief that underpins the priorities of families, of single people, of gay people, of the elderly, disabled, etc., etc? What do all those who aren't making over $100,000/year have in common? What's the tag line that could make them all nod their heads and think, "Of course!"
I did a spit-take when Kaine did the Democratic reponse to the SOTU. His responsorial phrase, aimed at inspiring the crowds, was "There is a better way."
Hold it. Isn't that the slogan of Robert Redford's character in the Candidate? "There's got to be a better way," I think it was. That level of sloganeering only works in America circa 1972 with a candidate as handsome and charismatic as RR. The last frame of the movie is him having won his Senate seat, looking at his campaign manager and going, "Now what?"
I'm not going to release any gems for the party here today, but I pray to whatever gods are listening that the Democrats 1) figure out the Unified Democratic Field Theory and 2) be prepared to answer "Now what?" when they win - because I think if they accomplish #1, they can accomplish #2.
Of course it's early on a Sunday morning. I'm believing anything is possible.
Team Players
President Bush shaking hands in 2001 with Chief Raul Garza of the Kickapoo tribe of Texas. In the background at left is the lobbyist Jack Abramoff; Karl Rove, the president's top adviser, is at the right. (photo credit: White House)
President Bush on Friday, flanked by Representative John A. Boehner and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)
Need I say more?
DC Native
Camaraderie Works
Bush and some military guy who'll help him remind everyone about 9/11.I copied out this photo this morning and didn't mark the story. I think it was Bush announcing how he thwarted a terrorist attack in L.A. in 2002. It's already such old news 12 hours later that I can't find it on the site. That's what's so weird about all this - it's totally ephemeral. Its importance is only earned by the attention we give it.
So this photo would fit as well if you replaced the military guy's face with Michael Brown's. He testified before Congress today and seems to be sticking with a more belligerent version of "the dog ate my homework." Evidently, now that he's not constrained by a hefty government paycheck, he's being even more of a jerk than he was.
I guess he took the meaning of "public servant" literally in the old days with his restraint.
On the heels of my Betty Friedan moment, it's appropriate to point out the strength of the male personality. It would be hard to find a woman who would act like Michael Brown did today. Or even acts like Bush does in his most assured press conferences. What would it be like to have that swagger? I had my last day on a job today because I actually DID hold my own around hordes of male attorneys (their own special category) but eventually it tired me out. Who wants to live like that? Besides, any woman who acted like that would be put away. Case in point: Martha Stewart. She's as close as we've got.
In the Bush Administration, however, such alpha male behavior is critical. Cheney and Rumsfeld have perfected the, "He's an a**hole" smirk. I'd hate to be on their staffs. Can you imagine what it would be like to bring up a different idea in a meeting with that awaiting you?
So it's no surprise that the budget they released this week does what Cheney and Rumseld want: it contains a 7 percent boost for the war on terror's budget - and includes a $40 million in Medicare cuts that squeeze home health care providers and hospitals. Yippee! Those commies at PBS also reported that the Pentagon's budget has increased 50 percent since 2001. I love that stat.
But while the boys on Pennsylvania Ave do all this, they do protect the women folk. In the midst of the Muslim cartoon controversy, they kept Karen Hughes (Undersecretary of Spin for the Middle East) far away from the media. "She did not have any press availabilities" is how they put it.
I guess when the Middle East is involved is best that boys just stay boys and the women hide away. It's a different kind of affirmative action.
A Pause in the Feminist Heartbeat
There's a lot going on in the world this week, but I gotta take a moment and recognize how different the world is today because of Betty Friedan and all the feminists like her.
Backstory: I come from a long line of feminists. My mother was in the first class of women Marine's. My grandmother got a public health degree at Columbia in the early 20th century, ran the Red Cross there during WWII, and brought visiting nursing to the Mid-West. Her mother was a teacher on the Iowa prairie. Family legend has it one of her students was Laura Ingalls Wilder. In my family, women never questioned that we would work.
When my oldest sister was looking at colleges in 1968, she got an interview for the Foreign Service School at Georgetown, our father's alma mater. My sister was captain of the debate team - and I think president of her class. She got As and knew her stuff. It was a time when women could think about being diplomats instead of teachers or nurses.
At the interview, the counselor told her that they wouldn't accept her because they didn't want to waste a spot that a man could use who'd really go on and have a career. They knew my sister would only work until she got married.
So, my sister scheduled another appointment with another counselor there. Amazingly, that person told her the exact same story. She found a different school to go to and has had a great career in other realms.
Within 10 years of that date, nobody would believe that story. Especially no young woman. By the time I was headed to college, Mary Tyler Moore had her own show as a career woman and I was ready to throw my beret in the air just like her.
Now we're at the other end of the feminist movement. Girls today wouldn't know what you were talking about when we said they're treating themselves as objects by dressing like sluts. Bill Maher even had a joke about it, "You know who I really feel sorry for today? Whores. I mean, how do their customers even know who they are any more. They have to hold up signs that say, 'no, really, I AM a whore!'" Today beauty seems to be the #1 requirement for women. Thank god that wasn't necessary to those who started fighting for our rights. Until Gloria Steinem showed up, none of us was worthy of being a Playboy bunny.
I think it was in the 1980s that polls started to show a weakening of pro-choice beliefs in college women. After so many decades of fighting for our reproductive rights, women started to get complacent. Now, you can't get an abortion in 85% of counties in America. And still nobody's ever thought to get men involved in that issue - which I find odd because they are exactly half of the equation when it comes to the insemination of an egg.
In fact, I'd venture to say that one of the weaknesses of the movement founded by Friedan and others is that they haven't leveraged men as partners where they could. It was an us vs. them mentality for a long time - and I'm not sure it's served us. We're still only making 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, aren't we?
With all its failings, I'm still proud to be a feminist - even if that word is going out of fashion. Maybe we need a new word to denote where we are on the equality curve. We're Friedan-tastic. We're Steinem-ized. Stein-women. Friedancers.
Work with me, people. Keep hope alive. And note one blip on the heart monitor of the women's movement as a true revolutionary moves on.
The Snake's a Charmer
I just watched Dick Cheney on the NewsHour for an extended interview. I had to leave before the final moment because I was going to hurl.
Lehrer questioned him on the NSA wiretapping of Americans. Whether the secrecy of the program was more important than the checks and balances of our government. "You can't tell 500 people (i.e., Congress) something and expect them to keep it a secret, Jim!" He went on to point out their main talking point on this issue: that we haven't been hit by another big terrorist attack in this country in four years.
Then, he took the shot that would inoculate the administration from any attacks that happen now: "now that it's out in the media, anything can happen."
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose, I guess.
The freakiest thing about Dick Cheney is his automation. He has the cold clear stare of a serpent and the head turning timing of that species as well. He hasn't been coached by anyone because he's beyond coaching now. He is of a piece. He is the message. He is the program.
He went on to talking about Iran (sounds like our next project) and lots of talk about "our enemies." We have to neutralize them. "We believe" is the catch phrase to start any answer to a reporter's question that asks for facts. "We believe that to be true... We believe they had weapons of mass destruction... We believe we have all the legal authority we need for this program."
Re: the domestic surveillance, Cheney actually said, "Everything was fine before there was publicity." Several slams on the New York Times.
Yup. It was telling "folks" that caused all the problems. The government we fund doesn't owe us check writers any damn 'splanations!
Re: Darfur. Lehrer tried to elicit some shame. Didn't work. "We're doing all that we can do," said Dick. Good to know, said I.
I had to leave the room when Cheney went on to defend the competence of the Administration. I work in spin and even I was getting seasick.
Is that a rattle I hear? Dick, is that you?
Got a Question for Dubya??
Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post is asking for questions that the current media is too ... polite? scared? sycophantic? to ask.
Try not to be too rude.
DC Native
"Credibility WatchI've already gotten hundreds of responses to my request in
Friday's column for questions you readers would like reporters to ask Bush. Please keep in mind that what I'm looking for are not generic questions, but well-documented and (ideally) polite queries that would specifically go towards the issue of his credibility.
E-mail me at
froomkin@washingtonpost.com . I apologize in advance for not being able to respond to each e-mail personally. I'll publish many of them later this week."
Spam Haikus
Every morning, I wake up to a new batch of strangers with weird names writing me emails with odd subject lines. I never open them, but I feel like they're sending me a message. What are they trying to tell me at this critical juncture?!?
Here are words from the subject lines and return addresses in haiku form. Ponder. Ruminate. Enjoy.
DC Native
1.
Malignant actor
Is this stock undervalued?
Lon, your perfect size
2.
Hey are you there? botch
Bullfinch abhorrent cramer
Ignore Labovitz
3.
Curvilinear
Furbish slivery golux
Rafael re: re:
A Republican to Listen To
More of the news today will focus on the rioting over those cartoons. So I'll talk about something else.
But I gotta say it pains me that the world is erupting over drawings on pieces of paper and what some words in a book say about them instead of things like the poverty and injustice in their land that leaves them with all that free time to riot about the ridiculous. I can smell topic #2 of this blog - murder - somewhere in this story.
So, instead I'll talk about some news the White House released on Friday, the day you release stories you want to bury:
Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon PlanConventional Tactics De-Emphasized
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006; A01
"The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons."
By way of comparison - and because he says it better than I need to try to - here are
the words of Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, three days before he left office in 1961. There's a new documentary coming out about this speech that I'll be watching for. Amazing. Forty years have gone by and we seem to have learned nothing.
"My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all...
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment...
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration...
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together...
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow....
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road."
Today, our government is committing us to huge expenditures to keep their supporters in the oil and armaments industry making record profits. We've been warned about these dangers since at least 1961, when Eisenhower coined the phrase "military industrial complex" in this speech.
I hope in November we take up arms (of the voting variety) against this sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.
I Said to My Soul, Be Still...
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
-- excerpted from T.S. Eliot's "East Coker,"
Part of his
Four Quartets
Cartoons are Serious Business
(insert cartoon of the prophet Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb)
I can't offer you the actual cartoon because all the MSM outlets I go to are too chicken to run it. So tonight on NBC Nightly Snooze they had a big segment about how the Muslim world is going crazy about the Danish paper (then the subsequent European ones) publishing cartoons that dared to depict the prophet.
I'm sure there are things the MSM does daily that offend Wiccans and Catholics and Jews, oh my. Why does this one religion get a pass because some of its followers are using it as an excuse for violence?
The MSM showed both sides of the debate and discussed the cartoon's offense of Sharia law. Might the cartoon not have been making the point that the offenders are taking offense at? Case proved. Let them be offended.
The thing that bothers me more than the spineless MSM coverage of this is that neither NBC nor PBS (the only two I caught tonight) had the guts to run the next logical segment: that here in America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter to the Washington Post objecting to the cartoon I'll post below. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Tom Toles was trying to make a point about Donald Rumsfeld's cavalier attitude about our troops and how thinly stretched they were (to which Rummy had alluded in a speech saying "they're battle-hardened").
Why does the MSM not report this story? How can they miss the obvious parallels? Could they do anything more to prove these cartoonists, these opinion-makers, right?
Another Reason to Be Proud I'm a Woman
You know, we women were really dragging behind in some crucial social spheres. We especially have lagged behind in our incidence of serial killing.
Up til now, I always thought men murdered more due to testosterone, the most dangerous drug we're not currently controlling in this country. Would anyone disagree with me that there'd be less violence nationwide if high school boys went on the pill like so many girls of that age? The girls get their hormones regulated (and yet they're still pretty wacky). Why can't we even consider that testosterone is dangerous and should be looked at?
Then we get this story that proves all my hormone theories wrong:
"Ex-Postal Worker Kills 5, Then SelfCalif. Shootings May Be Nation's Deadliest Act of Workplace Violence by WomanBy Sonya GeisWashington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 1, 2006; A03
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 31 -- A former Postal Service employee opened fire at a Southern California mail distribution center where she once worked, killing five workers and critically wounding another before taking her own life late Monday night, authorities said Tuesday.
The 44-year-old woman shot three employees in a parking lot, three more inside the postal building, and then turned the gun on herself, officials said. Experts called it the nation's deadliest act of workplace violence ever committed by a woman...
The fact that the perpetrator was a woman was "very unusual," Mantell said. The typical profile of a workplace shooter is a male loner, paranoid and fascinated with violence, who has made previous threats and has little in his life outside work, he said.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, said men's tendency to identify more with their work can lead them to be more devastated by the loss of a job than a woman would be in the same situation. Furthermore, he said, women tend to use violence to defend themselves, while men are more likely to use violence as an offensive strategy.
"So a woman is much less likely to respond to a loss of a job by firing back. A man is more likely to be violent because he wants to regain control," he said. Fox also noted that many earlier acts of violence by postal employees were done by copycats after a seminal 1984 shooting. "So should people in the Postal Service be nervous? In some sense, yeah," he said 'It's a very large workplace in which people identify with the guy on the line.'"
Funny. In the time it took to copy that text out, I went back to the Post site and they've already moved the story out of any current edition. How quickly such stories become old news.
So here's my first murder entry, folks. See how little we even notice these stories anymore? And really what this story is about is mental illness, which left untreated (perhaps, seems likely), ended up causing the murder of 7 people.
There are no winners in these stories. Tonight at least 7 families are in pain. Somebody is wondering what they could have done to stop it. Somebody else just wants to die.
And the beat goes on.
