politricks and other distractions

Travelling this wide country

2008-03-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

It took 7 days to drive across this time. Lucy finally laid down and slept once Alison was on board as my copilot. Until then, Lucy stood up and was stressed out in the back seat. I think she needed to know I had somebody else watching out for me while I drove. What a dog.

Stayed at a cheesy motel in San Fran whose name I won't mention so I don't get spammed by them. In the bathroom, they'd stapled the wallpaper to the wall. Class-ey! Luckily I brought my own pillow so I didn't have to share anyone else's head lice - and for $160/night.

The weather was wacky right ahead of us, so we didn't rush. Got to Elko, Nevada the next night. They didn't care if we left Lucy in the room while we ate at the Olive Garden.

Next: a short drive to Boulder, CO where Lucy slept in the car while Alison and I ate at a nice restaurant (the kind with gay waiters) in downtown.

By then the weather had blown through. The Midwest had been dumped with rain, but we got through before the rivers crested. A night in Kansas City (at a great Westin - one night in a real hotel), the next night outside Louisville, KY at a motel. We went to the Waffle House for breakfast the next day. Great.

Past Colorado, there was no great scenery to write about. Miles and miles of mowed fields lay in front of us. Food became our only news. Across the board, the coffee shop coffee was lousy. Nobody cared about vegetarians. I think I "broke" mozzarella sticks that night in Elko. Only they were "mozzarella wedges," evolution of fried cheese. I think they're still stuck somewhere in my intestines.

After Louisville, we hauled ass through West Virginia and Virginia. Got to DC Thursday night. My sister greeted us with dinner and wine. Lucy was ecstatic to see Kathleen and the kitties.

There was enough drama between Alison and I just in spending 7 days in a car together to keep me awake the whole time. We listened to NPR - always reliably somewhere between 88 and 95 on your FM dial no matter what state you're in - and books on tape for 3,455 miles. I guess we took a long route.

The difference between us in 1992 when we drove across last time and this time, 2008, was not in the road or the food, but in ourselves. Left to our own conversational devices for that long, typical middle-age issues like loss, disappointment and shock at our bodies' failings surfaced. I learned I'm not nearly as bitter as I once was. Getting out of Hollywood was good for that.

And I had a chance to practice just letting go and not taking the bait. "Not giving the arrow a place to land," as my therapist used to say. Having a dog along for the ride made that easier somehow.

Next adventure: Capitol Hill.

Politics, my distraction

2008-03-05T21:31:00.000-08:00

So Hillary won last night. It makes me think. I was an Edwards fan, then an Obama fan, but will admit that Hillary was great at YKos. I have no problem with Hillary. I have problems with the people who surround her. I think she has lousy taste and is stuck in that old DLC mindset that won't behoove the party. If she can jettison that pod (Terry McAuliffe, Rahm Emanuel, Frogman James Carville, Paul Begala, BILL CLINTON), she'll be fine.

I have faith - not so much in Barack's experience, but - in his judgment. He's run a good campaign. The advisors I know of his are good and smart people, not scum. He's trying not to go negative. Beyond all that, policy will change. I want to vote for somebody who has good instincts and knows who to trust. THEY will largely shape policy. I'm looking for that first, initial intelligence. I think Barack has that. Hillary, not so much.

Friends in both NY and CA have called me recently to talk about the changes in my life, the move, the new job, etc. And to a one, they have all argued loudly and forcefully for Hillary. They say this is typical. A woman works hard for years, does a good job (being Senator at least), and when she tries to capitalize on all that hard work, who comes along but a handsome whiz kid guy? He hasn't nailed down all his "plans" yet (useless though they are at this point), and is full of fine rhetoric.

Maybe we've been so deprived of brain power these last eight years that we respond like dry sponges to the fulfillment of hope-filled rhetoric. Maybe we're suckers for someone who can still imagine a way out of all this shit we find ourselves in.

All I want to know is which Dem has what it takes to beat McCain. Hillary's won all the key Dem states. We're not likely to win the ones Obama has taken. And I'm surprised by her strength among blue-collar voters. That could make all the difference.

What a weird place we find ourselves in. The natty black guy from Harvard is winning white people and the educated. The white woman lawyer from Yale is winning the blue-collar and the elderly. I think unions are splitting.

I just hope the party doesn't split. That's always our big downfall. "Can't we all just get along?"

I Hate Air Travel

2008-02-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

I've been stuck at LAX for the past few hours... nothing ever goes as planned it seems.

Why did we bail out the airlines after 9/11? If European or Asian carriers had bought the airlines, none of this would be happening. We'd have a new air traffic control system... we wouldn't be sitting here looking out the window for news on our flights - actual airline personnel would be here telling us what's going on (currently there's no one there).

Since 9/11 we've given up comfort, food and service and paid lots of tax dollars for it.

I hate air travel. Have I mentioned that lately?

Blogger Betrayer?

2008-02-23T11:59:00.000-08:00

Now that I know only a few people - evidently including a beer marketer - are reading this, I can admit a few things. Like how I just got a new job that will take me far away from my current one and back to the homeland. This time, however, I'll not only be inside the Beltway, I'll be inside Capitol Hill.

I have no problem with the new post (I keep telling my dog we're actually in the military and that's why we move so often, so I guess I'll keep up that story for her). I'm proud to be working for the member of Congress that I'll be working for. I think he does great work and cares about the people he's supposed to be representing, not just himself. He seems to have a nice staff and I hear the offices are schweet!

But I've spent so much time on blogs, especially DKos, that I'm having a bit of cognitive dissonance. Can I be inside the inner circle and not be part of the problem? That's kind of how working in politics is posed on such sites and I've certainly seen it in action. Know it can be true.

I've been here this week doing some enviro work and have been steeped in the need to find compromise to find solutions. The old "sue them and sue them and then sue them again" strategy of the enviro community is not only tiresome, it's eventually counter-productive. The only thing that protects the environment is good policy. That requires some good governing.

Maybe it's because this is my hometown, but I believe there is such a thing as good governing. I just don't believe Republicans can do it. Clearly, they hate government, except for when they can manipulate its levers to dispense government money to them and their cronies. Dems - while still believers in bringing home the bacon to their constituents - believe that government can be a force for good, the great leveler of playing fields. They believe in accountable government too. I like these things.

So can I be a member of the blogosphere and a member of government at the same time? I guess Ted Kennedy and others who write on DKos can. Maybe this is just stupid rumination. But I'm watching myself be skeptical of myself and it's hurting my head.

I'm ecstatic to have this opportunity to get on the battle field for the good guys. I'm hopeful I can do it without becoming disillusioned and cynical (hey, I'm already there, aren't I?). I guess I won't know til I walk through the doors that first day and hunker down to work.

Every job I've ever had has made me cynical and disillusioned at some point in time, so why should I expect this to be any different? As long as I can see myself helping a good boss move the ball down the field towards goals I believe in, I do believe this will be one cool gig.

Yee-ha.

Flying Purgatory Air, Coach

2008-02-19T10:42:00.001-08:00

Woke up at 3:30 am after a lousy night of sleep. I never sleep well when I have to get up insanely early. Afraid I'll miss the alarm. Cab picked me up at 4:30. Got to the airport by 5. Through security by 5:30. Waited for my 6:30 flight to Seattle, then to DC. Got on the plane. Got off the plane. Got back on the plane. Fog in Seattle has done it again - put me in air travel purgatory.

They flew us to Portland. Thank god for free wireless. Without it, I'd have to listen to the FOX news blasting from various TVs. Did you know that Barack Obama is a plagiarist and that his Harvard-educated wife made $200K a year working for a hospital AND has never been proud of America til now???? And I got all that just from the chyrons and crawl.

I'm supposed to get on a noon flight to DC via Cincinnati - but is anyone taking bets? My old boss used to (joke that?) he hated flying with me because of my bad flying karma. If only he knew...

Yes, I'm an airport refugee. A vegetarian who's packed enough food to get me all the way east with no help at all. I'm an airport refugee... (sing it with me).... trying not to hit the Rogue Ale Pub House I'm staring at longinglyyyyy...... Hey, it's almost 11! That's at least 5:00 in Paris.

Sigh.

There's got to be an easier way.

On Authenticity

2008-02-18T20:41:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it. I'm a pop culture addict. It all began as a kid when I started worshipping Marilyn Monroe. She was one of the first stars to die early and tragically in my life. As a little Catholic kid, the story I remembered was how sad her life was because she had had to divorce the man she loved, Joe DiMaggio, for her career. When I got older, I spent hours reading about her and researching her life and death. I remember seeing how big her obituary was. It took up half a page in the Washington Post.

At dinner one night, I said that's what I wanted when I died - one big, honking obituary for me. My brother Jimmy shot back how stupid that was. That he didn't care if there was just a little box in a column about him. Which is good, because when he died a few years later, that was exactly what he got, so he was wise and unimpressed with fame.

When Norman Mailer's book came out about Marilyn, I got it in both hardback and paperback. I think I still have one of them somewhere in the boxes I cart around with me when I move every few years (or less, these days). Marilyn was a damaged person, but also incredibly strong. She was the first Hollywood star to have her own production company and tell the studios to fuck off after all the years she acted as their slave. She was screwed up. She had drug and man problems. But she had an inner strength and beauty that is hard to beat.

Maybe that's why I find it so irritating that an idiot like Lindsay Lohan tries to pretend she's Marilyn in a new photo shoot. The difference between the actual Stern photo shoot and the pretend Lohan one are obvious. Maybe Marilyn had had a few drinks before taking her clothes off for her shoot, but no amount of loosening up will bring the same vulnerability to Lindsay Lohan. Fake hair. Fake boobs. And such a lack of knowledge about Marilyn that she doesn't even know she should try to fake the openness.

In the end, it was Marilyn's willingness to open herself up and display all the good, bad and ugly that made her a star. It wasn't just the body, the voice and the hair. It was her ability to face herself and put it out there. That's something that's hard to do for any of us (me included - and I might as well be a "never nude" a la Arrested Development).

Every time one of the old Hollywood stars dies, I lament a little more because I don't see anyone worthy of replacing them coming up in the ranks. Lindsay Lohan? Gwyneth Paltrow? Jessica Alba? Yuck. If they didn't have drug addictions and bad relationships, we wouldn't even pay attention.

Art is about being vulnerable and real. Artists are those who take the chance. Marilyn did and didn't survive the experiment. She shouldn't be mimicked by idiot children who want to pretend to be her.

Dear Rico Suave

2008-02-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

Thank you for still logging on to my little blog here every once in awhile, looking for anything entertaining coming out of my head. Right now my brain's so full of ca-ca and confusion, I'm loathe to put anything down on Internet paper. I admire your stick-to-it-iveness when it comes to living in this little town and the solidity of your life. In contrast, mine seems like those dunes out at the beach, built of constantly shifting sand.

If the new job comes through, I've certainly got to tough it out, even if it is in the den of slavery that is Capitol Hill. I do think I could make it to 2010 going in to the same office every day when it's one that's actually changing the world, or at least our little corner of it.

And to my frustrated reader who once had me bookmarked, but now has moved on because I'm such a fickle blogger: SORRY. The last word in this blog title is "distractions." That seems to be all I can focus on these days.

The Power of Believing

2007-09-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

This summer, now past, was full of surprises. Good and bad. One came in late July when I found a lump in my breast and couldn't have it checked out right away (thank you, fabulous American health care system where there is no waiting like the damn ferrin ones). For about a week, I was certain I would die because that's how all our stories end, isn't it? I rode a tearful plane to Chicago for YearlyKos. I drank and shared lump stories with other middle-aged women. I began to wonder if I was just having a typical mid-life story.

During that bad week, I harkened back to the family legend of my father's cancer that he turned away by making a deal with the Virgin Mary. He'd say a rosary every night for the rest of his life if she took it away. Never mind that he never had a medical doctor check out the lump. He was an M.D. himself, and as we all know, that means he is this close to godlike.

The lump disappeared and the rosary came out every night for the rest of our lives together. The large, worn back beads moving through his finger tips as he murmured Our Fathers and Hail Marys while yelling at my mother.

But this summer, I spent a lot of time thinking about the depth of his faith - that he could actually believe some spiritual being had the power to take away physical disease. Even more importantly, he did this as a doctor who didn't believe in illness. To Daddy, illness was weakness, so all his patients were inferior to him. I don't think he was alone in this belief in the medical profession. Just look around.

As I felt my lump and let my imagination run wild, I had to admire the old man, though. To have that level of faith in ANYTHING is amazing. And to turn that faith into the physical manifestation of easing a lump... though, today, I can no longer feel my lump so nature seems to take care of itself. Or is that the way I see it because I'm an atheist? Perhaps Daddy reached down from the other side and took it away and I should be praying to him.

Huh? Do tell.

The fable of my father's lump and subsequent deal with the BVM struck me as an amazing story in mind-body connection, something he never believed existed (being a doctor who earned his M.D. in 1929). Yet when I went to my surgeon in Eugene, she spent most of the time talking about stress and its effect on the body, particularly the breasts for women.

How the world has changed, but how the power of belief doesn't. Whatever the physiological equation with Daddy, he believed what he believed and he found peace with his fear of dying. It's amazing how powerful the fear of death is for us - yet I realized that week that I feared years of doctors' appts., chemo, radiation and being a science experiment much more than I fear death. For me, it would have required an active choice to fight cancer. For Daddy, it was a matter of faith and - more importantly - his love for his wife and children, who he refused to die on just yet.

So what really happened in that story? Was it Divine intervention? Was it the physical power of my father's fear of death? Or was it love?

That week I realized I'm a pragmatist at heart. I am not my father's daughter.

Then let's nuke 'em

2007-06-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

I grew up knowing, from my parents, that Truman HAD to drop the bomb to end the possibility of a long, drawn-out struggle from the Japanese. Nuclear war was the kind war. As Rumsfeld later said of the initial attack on Iraq, "It was the most compassionate bombing you've ever seen!"

Ee-gads.

Watching the news tonight, with more bombing of a building - a mosque - a collection of bricks and mortar and some history, a building people are stupid enough to die over... the fact that the more troops we send over, the more sophisticated the bombs become (regardless of what country they come from), the exponentially more humans who die... and Bush will tell you that's what it takes to "win."

If winning = pounding the enemy into the ground until they no longer exist, then let's get it over with. Right now, we're the superior military force. Right now, we have bombs nobody else has. That's goin' away. Globalization and all.

Using Truman's logic, let's nuke where we must. Just take them all out. In a few days, we'll have proved we're the biggest bullies in the schoolyard and will have only killed a few more innocents than if we'd continued the projected decades-long occupation.

Blow up the buildings. They're only bricks and mortar. Show the weak facade that religion is, so connected to material things like shrines and altars and false gods.

Nuke it all. Let's start again. And may the fastest, most effective bomber win.

Will that finally make us proud to be Americans?

When Dogs Fly

2007-06-05T22:32:00.001-07:00

I screwed up the lens cap on my camera at Country Fair last year (don't ask). But the flaw sometimes makes for cool framing. Lucy, in flight.

Artistically looking behind her at the rocks off Bandon, on the southern Oregon coast:

Just call me Annie Leibowitz. Or not.

Who loves ya, baby?

Part of our hike every day, Elephant Head Rock:

Down the 2.5 mile stretch of dramatic rock formations, past the Seaweed Shroud:

Another view of Elephant Rock:

More of the 2.5 mile walk:

Lots of good smells:

The rock that legend has it is a woman's pained spirit rising out of the sea:

Lucy, really sick of walking 5 miles in the wind and the dunes every time we STEP OUT THE DOOR:

Heading home, stopping at South Slough, to stroll through the skunk blossoms:

Life is good when you and your dog are tired and windblown:

Like Ted Bundy Before Him

2007-06-04T22:37:00.001-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Serial Killer of the Week.

A man so selfish, he chose to endanger the entire world rather than miss his wedding trip to Greece. And now there are even questions of whether or not he actually did the deed.

But it's okay because he's a white guy. And a lawyer to boot. And a personal injury lawyer to add insult to... well, injury. An ambulance chaser. THAT's why he thought to tape record one doctor somewhere not saying exactly what he could legally be held liable to knowing about later.

He's white. Imagine if he were a black man. He'd be in a penitentiary infirmary right now. Imagine if he were a gay black man. He'd be on his own island somewhere. Imagine if he were Middle Eastern. He'd be in Guantanamo.

But because he's a wealthy, educated white guy, he gets fluff pieces in the New York Times (AP) about what a great guy he really is. Except for the TB endangering part. Like the BTK killer, Ted Bundy, and a host of other serial killers before him, he has a Greek chorus of astonished friends and neighbors who swear he couldn't do anything like that, killing other people. He's a good guy. A really good guy.

Who are his PR people? That's what I want to know. They're a firm to work for!

His station in life made him arrogant enough to get on crowded planes in crowded airports and go to his vacation. When he was told in Italy to check into a hospital, he evaded authorities and took a flight from another country (I don't remember which and am sick of researching this) to Montreal so he could drive across the border.

A touch of premeditation? Ya think?

Once again, because he was a nice-looking white guy, he got a pass from border control (anybody betting what race and gender that guard was?). He spent a grand total of TWO MINUTES at the border crossing.

Imagine if he were any race but white.

His treatment will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wonder who's picking up that bill? Certainly not our hero, Andrew Speaker!

And all the while, he and his family make the rounds of TV talk shows, asking forgiveness and trying to get your understanding.

Tell them to kiss your ass.

How to be a Girlfriend

2007-05-21T21:38:00.001-07:00

The stars of my life, circa 1967.

I may not know much, but I know how to be a good girlfriend - that is, a good female friend of other females. It's what I learned witnessing the scene above for years: my mother on the right, in her frilly white shirt (note: frills at both cuffs and neckline), me in the background with my blue faux-rhinestone glasses, head cocked so I didn't miss a word of dialogue. On the left, Marjorie, my mother's best friend, in curlers before a night out. I envied her marriage. They were the epitome of a couple in love, it seemed to me. She and her husband were classy, cosmopolitan-type people, unlike my Wonder Bread parents who constantly fought, regardless of who was listening.

It wasn't until many years later, I learned Marj's husband beat her. Often.

I think back to all those afterschool hours, hanging out with Mom and Marjorie as they sipped bourbon and pineapple/grapefruit juice, neither of them telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But they were girlfriends and they offered each other that.

To quote the article: "A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down.

Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers."

Mom's friend Marjorie died a few weeks ago. It was a quick death, and unexpected. The kind that's easy on the one who's leaving but hard on the people left behind. I was having lucid conversations with her when I was home in February. That makes it harder to accept that she's just - poof! - no longer there. But I couldn't have hugged another human more in my life, except for her friend, my mother.

I don't know how to explain what Mom and Marjorie taught me about being friends. I got an afternoon alone with Marj last year and we both considered it a treat after so many years of multiple-member family gatherings. We talked and talked, which is something I wasn't used to with an 82 year old. I finally asked her - because I couldn't remember - what she and Mom used to talk about over bourbon on those late afternoons. She said they just talked about us, family... and maybe some current events.

I do believe those were the times of Nixon and Vietnam. I do believe there were current events discussed. But the only bitching I remember about marriage was Mom's. Marjorie was silent.

Marjorie taught me important things like how to mow a lawn, how to crack ice with the back of a spoon, and what the symptoms of menopause are. Marj would suddenly be overcome with heat, and rip off her blouse in mid-sentence, saying "I'm sorry. I can't. It's just too hot!" Then five minutes later, she'd have the shirt back on with an afghan around her, shivering with chills. Her bras were fine and pointy, like those Christian Delacroix ones that Madonna wore. It was my first experience sitting around with a woman in underwear. It didn't seem odd at all.

The way I've described Marjorie to friends is, "she's my auxiliary mother." Having her in my life has often made me want to start a charity of non-affiliated women who would mentor girls - or at least just be their backups - and it was going to be called being "a Marjorie."

Being a Marjorie would mean that you always had to be there for a young woman, no matter how bad the circumstances. You had to talk her down off any ledges and protect her from the world, all while giving her motherly, sound advice on what to do. You had to have the extra couple hundred bucks that could make all the difference to someone who's 19 years old and be willing to part with it. You had to be a rock. I never had to call on Marjorie for that because I could always go to Mom, but I knew she was there.

When my friend Christine had her first baby, I told her that I was going to be his Marjorie. I doubt she remembers it and I know I didn't say it that way. But I told her I would always be there for that boy and for any other children she had. And that if they ever came to me for help and didn't want her to know, I would honor their request. I would use my best judgment to take care of her children and help them out of the scrapes young people sometimes get into. I would be their Marjorie.

I don't know how you learn this role except for having had someone be there for you. But my mother and Marj's friendship shaped my life. It made me who I am today. It made me someone who can count among her greatest accomplishments that I still have the first friend I ever made (in the sandbox when I was one) in my life and we still like each other.

My family probably thinks I have too many friends. My friends think I'm too involved with my family. What they don't realize is I don't see any difference between the two. I love them both. And I owe that way of living to the two women at the top of this page.

Thanks to both Mom and Marjorie. How could they leave me here alone? Oh, that's right. I'm not.

Imus in Oblivion

2007-04-13T16:19:00.000-07:00

Is this the monkey who insulted the Rutgers women's basketball team?

Oh, sorry. That's insulting to the monkey. Here's the scarecrow in question. Tell me how a man that looks this gross gets away with insulting anybody's looks.

Oh, sorry again. I can tell you: he's in the entertainment industry.

I'm white, so maybe that's why the sexist aspect of Imus's idiotic comments struck me more, but it's also that I spent many years in Hollywood, working in comedy, and what Imus said brought back lots of memories.

In the world of television sitcoms, women are disposable and mostly valued for their looks. Hence, the many years of Imus being an idiot, making all manner of comments about women, people of other races, etc., and his getting away with it. In comedy, anything that makes anyone laugh is fair game and you're not supposed to get all politically correct about it.

Women rarely rose to the top on the shows I worked on. Sitcoms are a male bastion, giving us the finest in fart, dick and boob jokes. I sat through many years of being in the room with the writers working on scripts where wife beating, insults and cries of "lesbian feminist!" anytime you stood up for women were rampant.

It's from this background and the comfort of his fraternity of wealthy entertainment industry a**holes that Imus grew. The thing that struck me most obviously was that these are the kind of comments Imus must make all the time off-microphone for them to have so easily slipped off his disgusting serpent tongue that day.

The lesson here is: all those rich white guys in Hollywood need to get out more and GET FRIENDS OF DIFFERENT RACES. Really, boys, try it sometime. Once you get to know other types of people, you'll find those nasty thoughts don't even pop into your mind and, consequently, don't flow out of your mouth.

The entrenched power of rich white guys in Hollywood is so strong that they're used to getting away with this unquestioned. Imus's look of angry surprise all week was fitting. He's The Man. He's not used to getting slapped down - and I'll admit that it's unfair for him to get this punishment while truly evil people like Rush Limbaugh are still on the air. I hope Rush is right, that "they're coming for me next."

The Rutgers women stood up for themselves and for being judged not by their looks but by their accomplishments - something Hollywood may never learn. Just watching the news media sexism as reporters age is enough to bring this home. The parade of bad facelifts - from Andrea Mitchell to Katie Couric to every other woman on the news - is almost as frightening as Imus's wrinkled face. You can be bald, fat and ugly in both news and TV comedy if you're male - and you still get the pretty skinny women! That's the Hollywood reality.

So I thank those young female stars at Rutgers. They showed guts and class this week to us all.

Now somebody go throw a bucket of water on Imus and melt him, please.

When Nightmares Come True

2007-04-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

I'd post a picture of my dog's ripped up neck, but I don't want to wait to empty my camera of digital space for it. I'd rather just write this out.

I've had a spate in recent years of really bad things happening that were things I'd dreamt of beforehand. Should I chalk it up to some kind of psychic premonition or is it the opposite - imagining the worst and then creating that reality somehow?

I was walking Lucy on a beautiful Friday lunch hour. We approached the blanket of homeless people and their pit bull with caution. Lucy and I had walked past the car the dog was always trapped in (a crowded old Toyota Tercel) many times and the dog had barked crazily at us. This day, it was free. On a leash, but out of the car. I steered Lucy into the street to keep us far from the dog, now non-stop barking. As we narrowed into the sidewalk nearest the dog, Lucy was blissfully sniffing lampposts. I hurried her along (my fatal mistake?) and the dog pulled free and ran towards us.

That's when the nightmare kicked in. After two dog bites in Eugene the month we moved away, I'd had both the prior experience and the writer's imagination to foresee this moment. The pit bull running towards us barking. Me, trying to body block Lucy from the dog while holding her on the leash so she didn't run out into traffic.

Of course the pit bull got around me. Of course it went for her jugular. Minutes stretched like hours as the drunk homeless assholes lumbered over. I screamed like an Irish banshee for someone to come help, to unlatch the steel jaws from my dog's neck. As in previous nightmares, I screamed and no sound seemed to come out. Nobody ran to the rescue.

I ripped at the pit bull's jaws with all my strength to no avail. I pounded with both fists on the dog's head, just like I'd done in my dreams. I kicked it with all my might as I fell to the pavement. I flashed forward in my mind and imagined watching my dog bleed to death in my arms.

The pitbull finally let go and the homeless people yelled at me for yelling at their dog. I screamed my usual ineffectiveness at them: "You shouldn't have a dog like that!!"

Huh?

Then I ran down the street behind Lucy whispering, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

The day went on and the trauma still goes on, though Lucy's alive and sleeping on the sofa as I write this.

But I wonder what the lesson is I'm supposed to learn, to have had several actual nightmares of mine come true in recent years. From the murder of the man I loved to job nightmares to family, I've lived through the scenes I once feared. I suppose there's a strength to knowing you can get through them. That no matter how bad the scene, you're always alive and just dealing with it on the other side.

It's not so uplifting a lesson, I guess. Maybe that's the pity.

Blogging Against Theocracy

2007-04-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

I listen to preachers on the radio as I drive the wilds of Oregon. Those are the only stations that never seem to waiver in the woods, which of course, explains a lot.

I grew up with Burt Lancaster as Starbuck, then Elmer Gantry, so I have a place in my brain reserved for bombastic preachers of questionable morality. And I tease myself with listening to today's Elmer Gantrys just to see if I could have that psychotic break so many seem to have while listening to warnings of hellfire and damnation. There have been times when I've wished I could just relax and lose my mind that fully, but it's never happened, even in my lowest moments.

I'm an atheist and proud to be so. I'm blogging about this today to be part of Blogging Against Theocracy and help usher in the Century of Secularism that was being promised by a rabbi on NPR the other day. He said the 20th century had been the Christian century and that he thought we were entering one of secularism. Hallelujah!

I don't know why my "religious choice" seems to scare so many Americans, but I know it does. I don't have the stats available (hence my not putting this on DKos), but I know atheists are reviled and mistrusted in this country.

I'm not sure why people are so uncomfortable with people who don't believe that there's a white man with a long beard sitting by a gate in the clouds to welcome you when you die. The only rational explanation is that the Christian-types haven't thought it out very much.

I remember once when I was in L.A., a friend from college got very heated about this at me and ended up raising her voice as she said, "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior? Do you??"

When I asked her what that meant, she was flummoxed. She didn't know how to answer. She'd never thought that far. Her husband intervened and explained me to her, which kind of helped. But I couldn't impart to her the fact that no, I didn't believe anybody had died for my sins and that in fact I didn't believe in the concept of SIN to begin with. It's like that ability to roll your tongue, either you have it or you don't. Either you accept the whole meme of religion, sin, guilt and punishment or you have a rational conversation with yourself and come to a more rational conclusion.

For this reason, I can swear that we should not live in a theocracy. We need anyone who wants to be governed by what they "believe" in the dark of night as they cross themselves and whisper sweet nothings to their redeemer to SHUT THE HELL UP. You can have all the weird little speaking in tongues and even cross dressing thing going all you want, but don't inflict it on me. Don't run the country through your Bible. Don't tell our teachers what verse to espouse as scientific truth.

On one of the nutty preacher shows recently, the preacher railed against us atheists. He said without Christ, one couldn't be moral. What utter horseshit. I don't believe in a god, but I believe that there is a right and wrong and I believe most thinking humans know pretty well where those lines fall.

It's time to take morality out of the realm of those who see invisible saints and gods swarming them and put morality back in the hands of each of us and our neighbors. I trust my fellow humans more than I trust some fantasy in the clouds.

Religion = the easy way out of moral choices. Government = the hard way to get anything done. Let's keep them separate so that at least the latter might have hopes of accomplishing something good for all of us. Regardless of which Spaghetti Monster we worship.

Great Writing Returns... Just not from me

2007-04-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the long absence. For an extended period of time Blogger was trying to make me set up a new Google account that I didn't have time or patience to do. Now today, once I'd decided to just DO IT, it's letting me post the old way. Hmmmm... We'll see how long I get away with being old-fashioned.

I dust off the blog machine to highlight the work of an old friend (and husband of one of my closest friends), a great writer, Dick Amrhine. He writes at the Fredericksburg (VA) Freelance-Star. Not the most liberal paper in the world. So imagine the guts and commitment it took to write this. (Of course, guts and commitment make him the great husband and father I've seen him be for the past 20 years.)

A war, a dad, and a hero

Photograph provides food for thought on war, and the love between a father and son

RICHARD AMRHINE

(Caption:) Sgt. Calvin Summerville embraces his son Jeffrey, 12, before getting on a charter bus that will take him to Fort Dix, N.J. From there, he will likely go to Iraq. MIKE MORONES/THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Date published: 3/18/2007

THE PHOTO ON Page 1 caught my eye and wouldn't let go. It was taken by our photographer Mike Morones, of an Army sergeant from the area preparing to ship out to Iraq. He was hugging his 12-year-old son, who had a tear welling in his eye.

My son is 12, too, I was thinking. I hug him that way nearly every day, and it either gives me a good feeling as I prepare for the day ahead, or reminds me why a tough day at the office was worth it.

I'm not hugging him with the thought that I might never see him again.

I agree with whoever said that each year with your kids is better than the last. I can safely say that has been the case for me so far. At 12, my son has reached the age that he is thinking about and forming opinions about things that truly matter in life.

He's asking questions to which my first reaction is: Whoa--I didn't see that one coming! I try to respond appropriately, whether it's with the best answer I can muster, or perhaps with another question aimed at helping him think it through a bit more for himself.

This is absolutely wonderful stuff, and increasingly it applies as well to my daughter, who is nearly two years younger.

So I am thinking, as I stare at this photograph, how incredibly difficult this moment must have been. Not just the goodbye, not just the anticipation of being separated for a long, long time, but also the unspoken reality that this could be the last moment that this dad and son physically share with one another.

One recent evening I mentioned the photo to my son, remarking on what a tough situation that must have been for the two of them. He nodded, though I wasn't sure whether my point had sunk in.

But as I turned off his light later that night, he told me about a friend in his class, a really good student, by the way, who told him that his dad is eager to get back to Iraq for his next tour. The friend said his dad has a really important job over there, searching for and disarming enemy mines.

Since he's not on the "front lines," his friend thinks his dad might not be as vulnerable as some other soldiers. Sounds pretty dangerous to me.

I got the impression from my son that his friend is hugely proud of his dad, because it's his dad's duty to help limit the dangers his fellow soldiers face.

So now my son has turned the tables, and given me more to think about. While it might have been hard for that dad in the photograph to say goodbye, his emotions might have been mitigated by his sense of duty, the belief that he was leaving not just to serve his country, but to rejoin his outfit, get back to his job doing his part for the war effort.

Whether the war is popular is not his concern. He simply has a job to do.

For the son, his dad's absence is probably tempered by the pride he takes in his dad and the job he is doing.

The fact that his dad is willing to sacrifice this time with his family, and maybe even his life, makes him a hero in his son's eyes no matter what the future brings. The son will be the man of the family for a while, at least--a life lesson in responsibility if there ever was one. Hopefully their relationship is such that it will strengthen despite their time and distance apart.

The fact that I've been against the war from the beginning in no way diminishes my support for the troops serving in Iraq. The initial feelings of many that President Bush was taking us into the war based on faulty intelligence and a personal hatred for Saddam Hussein have been verified over the past three years.

I'm not sure what would be worse--that Bush manipulated information to make his case to the American people, or that he was too stupid or gung-ho to seek out the truth before taking action. I fear it could be a combination of the two. Obviously he declared victory a tad too soon.

The rapid erosion of Americans' support for the war is unprecedented, and mirrors the collapse of the president's popularity over the past two years.

Two presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and former Vietnam prisoner of war, and Sen. Barrack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, have apologized for saying that lives of 3,100 U.S. troops have been wasted in Iraq. Both later said they meant to say "sacrificed," but Americans will use their own judgment.

For many Americans, a soldier in battle is a soldier in battle, following orders and courageously risking his life. As you stroll through a national cemetery, does it really matter whether the death date on the headstone is 1863, 1917, 1944, 1951, 1968, 1991 or 2007? They served, they died, and they'll be remembered proudly for their roles in U.S. history.

The Vietnam experience left a generation of Americans with an aversion to war. Their willingness to accept the challenge in Iraq was contingent on it not descending into quagmire, which it did some time ago.

Even without weapons of mass destruction, or evidence of any Iraqi role in Sept. 11, Americans mourn the loss of American lives in Iraq, not the waste of lives--even if the terminology does serve as anti-Bush rhetoric.

We understand now how woefully unprepared we were to fight this "new kind of war." And we object to the president's plan to put additional troops in harm's way.

We have been down this road before. We want the dad in the photograph to return home not in a box, but rather to share the future with his son and family.

Perhaps the most shameful element of this war is our failure to prepare suitable living and convalescing conditions for the returning wounded. As with Katrina, we are as ill-prepared for the aftermath as we were for the event itself.

Those who have supported the Bush administration in the past must now acknowledge that it is completely devoid of decency or vision.

Richard Amrhine is a writer and editor with The Free Lance-Star.

e-mail ramrhine@freelancestar.com

Rip Van Winkle Foreign Policy

2007-01-03T07:31:00.000-08:00

Our Fearless Leader

One of the most amazing parts of the Saddam Hussein execution (to me, anyway) was the word that President Bush went to sleep that night while he knew it was happening. He figgered that once the old man was out of our hands, he wouldn't have to worry about the rest of it. And, presumably, the man doesn't need Ambien. He seems to sleep just fine.

Meanwhile, across the world, lots of us lose sleep every night. We wake up at 2 am and worry about our lives. Sometimes we can turn it off with a quick trip to the bathroom and a glass of water before falling back to sleep. Sometimes we don't. We fall back into the same nightmare that woke us up, relentlessly sinking into a nonsensical story that imprisons us in the dark.

Dubya hasn't had any of that, it seems. And so, today, it's appropriate that the very thing he thought would be his savior, his ticket out - or at least a positive blip in the polls - Saddam's execution, has gone south on him. It's going to be an albatross around his neck that will feel a lot like that noose.

So NOW is not the time for him to sleepwalk through this next set of decisions and send more troops off to die for his mistake. Now is the time for protests so loud and raucous around his house that he becomes unable to sleep. It's time for him to be haunted just like all the families of all the dead soldiers and Iraqis are.

If only loud protests would do it, I'd be there on the front lines. Whatever vote I can have on this, I'll cast because it would be a sin to sleep through what's coming.

Three Wise Men, All Dead

2006-12-29T21:12:00.000-08:00

It's been an amazing week in death. James Brown, Jerry Ford and Saddam Hussein. It's like a backwards astrology: see what you share with those who weren't born when you were, but did die when you did.

And of course, who's the most influential of these dead? James Brown, surely. Anyone who could so change the way we hear music and move to it has a more lasting effect than either Ford or Hussein.

Ford: He's being praised this week as a wise man. Sorry - he shouldn't have pardoned Nixon. If we'd prosecuted him and his minions, we wouldn't have had Rumsfeld and Cheney in power these last few years to screw things up. He might have been a nice guy, but nice guys don't always finish first for their country.

Hussein: Who's to say he wasn't wise in his way? Now that we've cracked open the Pandora's Box of his country we can see the value of his iron fist. I'm not saying how he ruled was right, but he had a certain understanding of his culture and countrymen that is woefully lacking in our current foreign policy.

Brown: The Godfather. The hardest working man in show bidness. The man who took incredible odds stacked against him and did something with them. He made huge mistakes along the way and paid for them in ways American men of other classes never had to. But he forged a trail through our society that few could even attempt.

It's been quite a week. 2007 here we come.

I'll Be a Little Busy the Next Few Days

2006-12-23T09:59:00.000-08:00

This chubby old man in a red suit asked for my help delivering presents this year.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

A Different Kind of Christmas Story

2006-12-17T18:44:00.000-08:00

I was driving up I-5 today and saw a snow-capped mountain in the distance. It probably wasn't Mt. Hood as I was too far south, but it made me feel like every mountain in Oregon right now is Mt. Hood and we're all being haunted by it.

The media is reportng that one missing hiker has been found dead in a snow cave 300 feet below the summit at the location of the cellphone that called out last Sunday.

They found the other hikers' footprints in and out of a higher snow cave. Anything could be happening, and to have Mt. Hood looming in our collective consciousness at this time of year is a good holiday reminder: human dramas are happening all around us every day that we should be paying attention to. People get lost and they're trying to get home. The best laid plans can still screw up and all we have is each other and the elements to survive.

I don't remember all the details of the Nativity, but there seem to be parallels there. The family looking for shelter and ending up in a manger. There's probably some resonance with Hanukkah too (Billy G can tell us). Tonight, we're reminded that not all miraculous holiday stories have happy endings. And we're reminded of our deep and fragile humanity.

It's times like these that remind us to care about each other. We're all on a journey to our own personal summit, but we all get lost along the way. I keep thinking about the 100 mile per hour winds these men have been through the last week with nothing to protect them but snow pounded into the correct formation. The snowfall was being measured in feet, not inches. It must have been blindingly white and surreal.

It's a story we'll all be witness to. It's a sad thing to unite our attention this holiday season, but in the end it might just yield some truth about redemption and caring.

If it gives us a chance to share some kind of cross-spiritual lesson this holiday season, that man may not have died in vain after all.

Might Blogging Have Peaked?

2006-12-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

I know I need to write an entry so my few audience members don't have to suffer seeing a nutria every time they click here.

Also, on Keith Olbermann tonight, they reported the average readership of most blogs was a grand total of: ONE. So, like, you write your blog, then you read it. Count = one. Sad.

Then I click over to Driftglass and see that he's reliably written again today - and created a customized photo to boot! I applaud his creative instincts and his ability to control his time. I don't have either of those.

:)

Yet, Drifty writes passages that are too long for me to read anymore. I write an average of 500 words in a post. That's manageable. The four-screen essays scare me away. And, if I were to write them, I'd think I was asking a lot of my audience for reading that much. Aren't we all really busy?

Something to look forward to this week on my blog: photos of my sprained/broken wrist as it gets more and more black and blue. Yee-ha!! It only took four hours at the "urgent care center" to get the diagnosis I had given myself... only then to be told that most breaks don't show up in the first 48 hours, so I should come back and DO IT ALL AGAIN in ten days if the pain hasn't subsided. Fabulous. I love the health care that expensive private insurance companies give us. It's so... workable.

That's the deal. It's a Monday. Whaddayawant? I have a big project due Wednesday. My life shall return after that and I'll try to be more... prescient. Wise. Shocking. Naked.

And think about my duty as a blogger. If you ain't doin' it every day, you ain't bloggin'. Maybe we all peaked a few months ago and it's all downhill from here. Maybe DailyKos has killed my blogging. Maybe our massive need to hear our own voices echoing in the well has subsided.

Maybe there will be no Blogger Oscars after all.

:(

As the River Rises

2006-11-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

"Oh give me a home
Where the nutria roammmm
And the deer and the racoons playyyyyy..."

We've had record rains and the river has overflowed its banks. Lucy sits on watch as dusk falls, waiting for the nutria to swim out of the cold water and dry themselves on the grass below our window. Usually, she barks. I had to be told they were nutria, of course. I had hopes that they were some kind of beaver (the state animal!) with a skinny tail. Nope. Nope. They're just big water rats.

I won't make the obvious parallels to politics. It's just too easy. But I was encouraged when, in D.C. last week, I heard that a friend's rabid Republican sister who'd moved to town a year ago to kill environmental progress had quit her job and was moving back to where she came from. A victim of the election. Score!

And so the tide turns in Washington. These are nice times to be there. I'd miss it if it were still the place I once loved. Instead I'm learning to love another place.

The End of the Beginning of 9/11

2006-11-13T20:49:00.001-08:00

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

-- Winston Churchill, November 10, 1942

It's taken me awhile to settle down since Tuesday. It was my busy time at work and Election Day - though happy - went on waaaay too long for this ol' girl. And it took a few days for all the results to come in and learn we got the Senate. I had to search out George Allen's concession speech just to make sure I'd heard it right. It was a lovely speech to watch. I highly suggest you Google/You Tube it.

As the numbness has worn off, I've come to see that this election is the other end of the 9/11 bookend set. What started with a terrible tragedy and a horrific day ended with us redefining ourselves as a country of pre-emptive war. I don't think that's what those people died for.

We've been cowed for five and a half years as citizens and consumers. We've been asked to shop instead of shrug off fear because all we had to fear was fear itself. We've been asked to swallow huge budget deficits and corruption because we were chattel. I know the feeling. I'm from Washington, D.C.

Last Tuesday's election proved that the country really could stand up and be counted. I hear the national turnout was around 40%. Here in Vote by Mail Oregon, it was 70%. I heard of three hour lines at polling places in Idaho where people stood in the cold until they could get inside, warm their hands, and mark their ballots. Lines in Tennessee were even longer. That kind of participation can't be faked or manipulated. That kind of voting is real. I love it. It means people still believe. It means there's hope.

So Tuesday was the end of the beginning of 9/11. The warrior ways we embraced after that awful day have proven empty and their proponents voted out. We turned our back on them. We've turned a corner. Even if another terrorist attack happened today its repercussions would be different. I truly believe we'd try another route than the last failed strategy.

I know this period of mourning. It's a good corner to turn. Onward and upward.

To Kill an Election Mockingbird

2006-11-05T21:03:00.000-08:00

It's been an eerie weekend in Oregon. Like clockwork, the Fall rains came the day after Halloween. As a friend describes it, we have 9 months of rain followed by 3 months of drought. Lucy and I have had many mornings in the fog at Riverside Park. It's a good time to see egrets and herons on the barely seen river.

Tonight I walked Lucy in the dark behind the warehouses and over the railroad tracks. The lights are few and far between in Salem - like any city in this state - and when they appear you feel like you're back on a movie set.

Trains whistle through this town regularly. One is echoing past us now, a reminder to always look both left AND right when crossing an intersection. The factory next door processes green beans. Graffiti-ed cars get parked and loaded, carrying those Oregon beans to exotic climes like Detroit.

Walking through these empty places in the dark, in the autumn, can only bring up To Kill a Mockingbird. The night is windy and chimes that never move are being thrashed about. It's time for Boo to make his appearance.

And I'm not only thinking of Election Day, but of course I am. The anxiousness I feel is real and emanates from the woods like those in the movie.

Tuesday night we'll know what's lurking in the woods, but until then, we have to live in the reality of fear and the unknown of change. It's a familiar feeling in Fall in general, for me at least. This year, with so much at stake and so much invested in the future, it all seems dark and personal.

Vote, vote, vote - even in the rain!

-- dcnative

It Can Happen Here

2006-10-30T21:58:00.000-08:00

One "room" of the FDR memorial in DC.

Here's the thing. We live in a country that's forgotten the Depression. I was raised by two parents who lived through it. My father was born in 1905, so he was 24 when it started. This was after he'd survived the Influenza Epidemic of 1918. No wonder the man prayed to the Virgin Mary for help every night.

My great aunt on my mother's side, Mame Mae, kept a pot of stew perpetually simmering on the stove in her house in Minneapolis. The hobos (as they were called then) drew hieroglyphics on the fence outside the house that said, "friendly house" so that other hobos knew they could stop in for food and the chance to do chores. Hobos were people like my family - white, middle-class - whose jobs, like rugs, got pulled out from under them when the stock market crashed. Today it seems "acceptable" to think of those things happening to people of other races, or from other countries, or with mental illness or some disease - anything to make them seem like "the other" and not like us. Those things don't happen to us. Not to people with college degrees and McMansions.

Before the Depression, my mother was lucky. She was raised by her aunt, Mame, and her uncle - a man whose drinking and bad judgment made him alternately a millionaire, a pauper, a millionaire, a pauper, then a government worker in DC. Consequently, Mom was cautious of wealth, though she always had a desire to be among the wealthy, I think.

The point of all this is that I came from parents who'd lived through the unthinkable happening: jobs went away, families went broke, children raised their siblings, a nut in Germany tried to take over the world and exterminate a great race of people... and we were all tasked with being part of the solution. Whether it was cooking a meal for our starving fellow man when they came to our front door, or whether it was paying for the GI Bill to send our soldiers to college when they came back from war. We were part of something greater than ourselves. And we made things better.

It's election season. We have a chance to do something just slightly similar today. We have different boogeymen and fears, but fear itself hasn't changed - just the call to action we get from our leaders. Today, we're asked to shop. Today, fear is not the only thing we have to fear.

To many politicians today, the thing we have to fear is the truth.

Slap them with the consequences, people. Demand representation. Demand honesty and accountability. Or trust me, it has happened before and it can happen again... Our house of cards will come crashing down upon us. But this time, Mame Mae is gone and her like is not to be found again.

If we don't take care of ourselves and our country, we will all starve. We will at last all be The Other. But we can turn it all around.

To quote P.J. O'Rourke: Vote like hell!

Why Bother?

2006-10-29T20:45:00.000-08:00

Why bother to vote?

It doesn't make a difference. The Black Box machines will just eliminate it. The Bad Guys will always win.

Call me crazy, but I think it makes a difference. Here we've got ten (mostly) stupid ballot initiatives on the ballot and 2 weeks to think about them. It takes a million times more effort than most people would care to spend on it. Maybe only the geeks do it. But you gotta.

I disagree that you have to be ultimately informed to vote in an informed way. Just one of our Voters' Pamphlets was over 170 pages long. Who's bored enough to read that? So, what you do is you skim through the initiatives that might make sense to you. You see who writes the arguments pro- and con-, then you vote with the organizations or people you agree with. A friend in Eugene says he knows who to vote for because he drives by a well-informed friend's house at election season. He remembers whose signs she puts in her yard and votes for those things/people. That's good enough. I bet that's even good enough for our founding fathers.

I've been working on this right to vote thing. Amazingly, it's not a right that's guaranteed in the Constitution - yet another proof that that document is not infallible.

In those days, only rich, white landowners could vote. Forget women. Forget anyone whose skin wasn't white. The slaves were only considered 3/5th human. These were areas that had to change in the blessed document.

Today, smart political forces have realized there's a value to keeping certain segments of society from voting. Stop the elderly - they're not too sharp anymore. Stop the disabled - you know they'll only vote for more government aid. Stop the working poor - they don't have the time to wait in line because their shift starts in 45 mins.

If things keep going as they are, the right to vote will one day be like the right to choose - something enshrined at the top of a precipice somewhere in the desert - the kind on top of which Wile E. Coyote would land after an explosion. We'll be able to point to the right to vote, squinting in the setting sun, and say, "Look, we still have the right! It's over there, where the SUVs and Hummers and Segues and Cessnas can get to it. That's all that matters."

Tonight I toast the right to vote. Hell, I've already done it myself. All my choices are in the mail. Nobody's dirty ad can touch me anymore. And maybe, just maybe, things will change in 9 days.

To quote my boss: WOOOOO!

If Women Ran the World

2006-10-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

I'm on a radio show next Saturday morning with my former town's mayor, discussing "if women ran the world." So I've been thinking about that a lot.

Then the Mark Foley thing happened and they threatened to end the page program in Congress. I got to thinking how that outcome would make our congressional representatives equal to the Taliban, whose desires were/are so out of control that the women near them must hide their face, head and bodies under burkas. This is the only way to keep the men from being driven mad with desire. [See above.] Much like members of Congress and those nubile pages.

If women ran the world, these choices would not be an option. Man would have to simply keep it in their pants and shut up about it. I get attracted to men all the time -- okay occasionally -- but somehow I manage to not commit a crime against them.

Maybe I have more faith in the fortitude of men than the members of Congress do. I believe they can be trusted around young boys and girls, for the most part.

Then there's that conundrum: do you have to be an asshole to run for Congress or does running for Congress make you an asshole? (Transpose words like "child abuser" in appropriate places in that sentence... or other nouns... and it still works. The transitive property of scum.)

I think it's time we stopped stooping to the lowest common denominator in what behavior we'll accept of our "leaders." I think it's time we demanded more and left the kiddies alone. Whaddayasay?

My only residual fear: that this crisis will drive Karl Rove and his minions to unexpected depths this October to find a Surprise worth taking our attention away from Mark Foley and Dennis Hastert.

Hold onto your hats. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Richard Nixon's Close, Close Friend is Back

2006-10-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

"The illegal we can do right now; the unconstitutional will take a little longer."

Henry Kissinger

One of the revelations in Woodward's book is that Henry Kissinger is giving advice on a regular basis to the Bush Administration on their conduct of our disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That REALLY makes me think we're going to bomb Iran eventually too. These guys are insane. All you have to do is watch Dr. Strangelove and everything will become clear to you. Or perhaps the following will help.

On Kissinger's creation of the Plumbers, who broke into the DNC's office at the Watergate:

"It was the leading Anglo-American financier factions who decided to dump Nixon, and availed themselves of the pre-existing Watergate affair in order to reach their goal. The financiers were able to implement their decision all the more easily thanks to the numerous operatives of the intelligence community who had been embedded within the Plumbers from the moment of their creation in response to an explicit demand coming from George Bush's personal mentor, Henry Kissinger...

Preponderant power during the last years of Nixon and during the Ford years was in any case exercised by Henry Kissinger, the de facto president, about whose pedigree and strategy something has been said above... in retrospect there can be no doubt that Watergate was a coup d'etat, a creeping and muffled cold coup in the institutions which has extended its consequences over almost two decades. The roots of the administrative fascism of the Reagan and Bush years are to be found in the institutional tremors and changed power relations set off by the banal farce of the Watergate break-in...

The Plumbers were created at the demand of Henry Kissinger, who told Nixon that something had to be done to stop leaks in the wake of the 'Pentagon Papers' affair of 1971. But if the Plumbers were called into existence by Kissinger, they were funded through a mechanism set up by Kissinger clone George Bush. A salient fact about the White House Special Investigations Unit (or Plumbers) of 1971-72 is that the money used to finance it was provided by George Bush's business partner and lifelong intimate friend, Bill Liedtke, the president of Pennzoil... Cancelling the Patman probe meant that there would be no investigation of Watergate before the 1972 Presidential election.

The Washington Post virtually ended reference to the Watergate affair, and spoke of Nixon's opponent, George McGovern, as unqualified for the Presidency.The Republican Party was handed another four year Administration. Bush, Kissinger, Rockefeller and Ford were the gainers."

-- "George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography"
by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

Kissinger is a proponent of "Realipolitik" - as defined in Wikipedia:

Realpolitik (German: real ("realistic", "practical" or "actual") and Politik ("politics")) is a term used to describe politics based on strictly practical rather than idealistic notions, and practiced without any "sentimental illusions."

Oh, if only he'd use that philosophy to squash the "optimism" and belief that you can bomb people into democracy that are the driving forces of their policies...

Lastly, Henry, in his own words, waxing eloquent about Tricky Dick over the latter's casket:

"Richard Nixon's foreign policy goals were long-range. And he pursued them without regard to domestic political consequences. When he considered our nation's interests at stake, he dared confrontations, despite the imminence of elections and also in the midst of the worst crisis of his life. And he bore, if with some pain, the disapproval of longtime friends and allies over relaxing tensions with China and the Soviet Union. He drew strength from a conviction. He often expressed to me the price for doing things halfway is no less than for doing it completely. So we might as well do them properly. That's Richard Nixon's greatest accomplishment. It was as much moral as it was political -- to lead from strength at a moment of apparent weakness, to husband the nation's resilience and, thus, to lay the basis for victory in the Cold War...

So let us now say goodbye to our gallant friend. He stood on pinnacles that dissolved in the precipice. He achieved greatly and he suffered deeply. But he never gave up. In his solitude, he envisaged a new international order that would reduce lingering enmities, strengthen historic friendships, and give new hope to mankind -- a vision where dreams and possibilities conjoined."

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it - but why do all of us have to share their leaky, sinking boat?

Thanks for the Birthday Present, Bob!

2006-09-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

On this, the 40-something anniversary of the day my father dropped my very pregnant mother off at Bethesda Naval and said, "Call me when it's over," I must salute Bob Woodward for the best present I've ever received. A book about how the Bush Administration is lying to us about the war. Thanks, Bobby!! It's almost nice enough for me to forget the other two books where you kissed their feet, then gave them pedicures!!

And below, an appropriate cartoon by Anne Talnaes that displays this Administration's attitude toward all our human sacrifice for Bush's Supreme Folly. In case you didn't hear the comma story, Bush was asked at a press conference about how history will treat this war and he said the quote she used as a caption: "When the final history is written about Iraq, it'll look like just a comma."

So, Bob, how do you deal with all the dead soldiers and dead innocent civilians in Iraq who've suffered unspeakable deaths since you first started making money off supporting the Bush Administration on this war? Maybe they'll get lucky and you'll go on Celebrity Jeopardy again, like you did a few years ago, and win - and then send the $20,000 to an Iraqi charity instead of to your child's posh high school in DC like you did then?

You're really an inspiration. Ahhh, journalism. It's not just for the intrepid anymore. It's for the rich.

Finding Peace

2006-09-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

The first time I realized the importance of having a calm, happy home life was when I was in acting school in New York. I was living in a crappy little mouse-and-roach-ridden apartment on 93rd between Riverside and West End. My roommate and I painted the walls in her room lime green, but we ran out of paint about 3/4ths of the way up the wall, leaving a straggly beige border around the 6'5" mark. The rest of the place was pockmarked with mouse traps and shadows.

Anne used to leave coffee cups with partial amounts of coffee in them lying everywhere. She wore dark red lipstick that stuck to the rims like sludge. Then she'd toss her cigarette butt in to marinate.

When my acting teacher Ron and I talked about my unhappiness in the place, he asked me a series of questions about what it took to make me happy. I said I needed some green space nearby. I needed peace and quiet. I needed solitude. Ron said, "so why do you think you should be happy when you don't have any of those?"

It was a good lesson to learn at 19.

My view from my living room window today, looking left:

The view if you're a lazy slob sitting in the blue chair facing the TV and looking out over Lucy on the ottoman. This weekend, we watched water skiers:

The view from the balcony at happy hour:

Life is good. You gotta recognize it when you see it.

You Call That Angry?

2006-09-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the fuzzy photos...

It's weird to watch the coverage of this story. It basically breaks down into three camps: the FOX folks, the Huffingtons et al who think Clinton blew it, and the frustrated Dems who feel liberated by watching one of their own stand up for themselves - especially to a windbag like Chris Wallace.

Now, I'm sure not every fact Clinton gave was right or even verifiable. But it was refreshing as hell to see him push back. As much as it was an ad for Richard Clarke's book, it was nice to see somebody talk about the media strategy. The Bushies have used some tired old saws from their side for years about the media's agenda. Heavens to Betsy! You mean the conservative media might have an agenda too?! Pass me the smelling salts. I feel the vapors a-comin' on.

And what do you expect the man to say the week that TV movie aired with some revisionist history while he's out there promoting a positive thing like his global initiative? Nobody likes good news, Mr. President. And remember: only TV movies about the Reagans get pulled.

So I applaud ol' Bill. I'll allow him his moment of righteousness. I'm not sure how focused he was on Osama bin Laden before he left office. I'm sure he knew about him and his threats. I know enough people who worked in his White House to know the stories of how hard he worked, how much he read, how many facts he could cram into his cranium. He didn't need staff to read the papers, then pre-masticate his news before they spat it into his hamster cheeks.

Those certainly were different times, weren't they?

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he tried his best. The one thing there's proof of is: he never used his search for OBL to start a war and blow up an entire country on the pretext of keeping people from blowing us up here.

Those were the days.

The Thing About Parental Consent

2006-09-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

Since my month away from blogging, I don't feel the need to scour the internet for photos to accompany the blogs. I'll try later, but I just don't got it now. And what kind of photo goes with this entry's title?

We have an initiative on the ballot here this fall that's a parental consent law. All the usual arguments pro- and con- are being made. The paper put both sides in today. I haven't read them yet but I know what they say. Abortion has always been an important issue in my life. There's no question for me whose choice it is.

So I was thinking back this weekend to all my friends who got pregnant in high school. Some told their parents. Some made sure they knew what they wanted to do before telling their parents. Others had abortions unbeknownst to mom and dad. And in every case, the kid chose correctly. The girls with abusive parents had the abortions. The ones with the open, loving parents told them - and sometimes still had the abortions.

Stop trying to force families to work. Even young women can tell when their family can handle news like this.

I always judge societal issues by the number of people I actually know who've been affected by whatever problem we're talking about (murder, robbery, rape, divorce, etc) and weigh the issue from there. Abortion - or unwanted pregnancy - is something that has affected almost everyone I know.

And the years of going through these stories with friends makes me know the evil of parental consent laws. We've said it before, we'll say it again: you can't legislate morality.

Please. Really. Stop trying.

Because We Haven't Heard from Him/Her Lately

2006-09-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, junk email. It's been so long. The pitch has evolved. Marketing lesson: when your sales slump, add in "illicit sex" and blame mom.

I got this in my work email last week. Enjoy. But don't send any money.

DC Native

"How are you?

I am Nelly Davey Macmillian am 16 years old i am a
Londoner (UK) my mama is a an Algerian. my late popa
Mr. Davey was an engineer in London (Uk)before he died
in a car accident on 6th of january 2006.

he deposited the sum of (12 Million pounds) in one of
the london bank before he died i have
tried to claim this money now as i am in need of it to
further my education but i was told to bring a matured
person to do the claim on my behalf. I could
have told my mama but my mama and popa were divorced
for many years before popa died i was a year old then
and i was brought up by a german lady by name miss
schloer who took me to germany but she is late now.

Drug and Illicit sex by mama was the reason of the
divorced as my popa made me to understand that my mama
turned to junkies and made away with all that they had
except the money with the bank which popa
disclose not to any except me before he died
unfortunately popa is the only child of the
family and grannys are late my education is at stake i
do not know my mama till this moment i need to
continue my education in london and take care of myself
thats why i contacted you to help me do the claim on my
behalf and invest it till i finish my education as i am
too young to take care of the money now so please get back
to me as quick as possible so that i can give you the contact
of the of bank manager for you to contact him

Regard

kelymcjnr"

Dropping Some Keys

2006-09-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

I had to let go of the keys to my house today. They're changing the locks because my East Coast two-keyed locks aren't healthy for children or other living things. I had to drop two keys off my key chain today. Even the psychedlic one. It was sad.

Yet again... fewer keys is always a good thing.

My favorite feeling is driving across the country with only the key to the car and maybe a storage locker. Ahhhhh.... Won't be happening again, but it was lovely while it lasted.

I dream the dreams of the newly employed in high stress lands. I dream of being fired and wake up happy to find I'm not. It's amazing how little it takes to make one's day.

I'm also giving up on thinking I've got the key to anything. It took awhile, but I do believe I've gotten there.

Taking My Leave

2006-08-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

The last time I left D.C., I was advised (by my therapist) to really say good-bye when I left. It was a weird concept. D.C. is a place I can never say good-bye to. It's a huge part of me: my friends, the scenery, the history. But I tried. When I hugged each person good-bye, I made a point of saying the words.

I thought of that today as I walked my dog in the hot sun, at the end of a bad week for her. She got bitten twice in one week by two different dogs. It's made me look at my neighborhood differently and made me willing to hurry to the next place.

The next few weeks will be all about handling details and packing and once again saying good-bye. This feels very familiar. My dog and I have friends here. I have to remember that things aren't always stressful... and I vowed today to stop seeing the bad for these next two weeks and try to celebrate the good. After all, this is a town where all the swings in the park are set at adult height.

I've moved so many times and said so many good-byes this seems very natural. My Sikh chiropractor once dubbed me a "wandering Sufi." I never did research the full extent of that, but I remember thinking it was a good designation.

I realize there are lots of people who never leave where they live. They put down roots as kids and just stay planted like Giant Redwoods. I think that's great. I wish I could do it. But my life's been a series of saying good-byes: to people who died, to careers that got where I wanted, then didn't prove to be what I wanted at all... to cities and fantasies and relationships, to images of who I thought I was.

The town I'm moving to ain't much. I'll be working too hard to need too many friends, but my dog will be looking. Luckily, there are dog parks. Maybe I'll finally get into bicycling or hiking, ways to get rooted for the meantime til the next shift in fortunes in two years when this job ends.

All of this might be hard if the rest of the changes didn't feel so right. Onward and upward.

Yee-ha!

The Power of Euphemism

2006-07-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

After Bush used his first-ever veto to stop research on stem cells, I was flipping channels and happened upon a C-SPAN show. That idiot who wrote "The Party of Death" was talking about his book that claims the Democratic party has that focus, given our interest in protecting the rights of women to choose abortion... our belief in the right to die... and our belief in the value of scientific research using embryonic tissue.

I flipped past it, but ended up coming back and seeing a different speaker. He was talking about "embryo research" and I realized we're now in a new game of euphemism with the lunatic right. I've been on many a conference call with environmental groups, arguing the pros and cons of playing this semantic game and I've come firmly down on the side of Yes, we need to play it.

So, now that "stem cell research" is being tossed aside, how about calling it the "Save Michael J. Fox research." As the beloved Republican child of Family Ties - a show with lots of hugs and learning - can't we all get behind saving him? If he weren't a multi-millionaire and been able to afford exotic brain surgery, he'd already be seriously disabled with his Parkinson's. The Republicans would want to hide him. He'd bring up too many emotions in his loyal fans. It would be too painful to watch him disintegrate, especially knowing we could have done something to stop it. We could have funded stem cell research, just like every other civilized, industrialized, GROWN UP COUNTRY.

But no, that's not where we are. We're in the crowd who wants to blow up the Middle East in hopes of bringing on Armageddon and the second coming of Christ. We're among those who think women and minorities need to go back where they belong - the kitchen and the plantation, respectively - so that the natural order of the world will be restored.

For those of us still thinking, it's time to put our heads together and practice our Anti-Orwell speak. "Save Michael J. Fox" research. "Care About Every Child Before Giving Birth" contraceptives. "Educate everyone for the benefit of all" schools. "Stop Killing People in the Middle East so Maybe They'll Stop Wanting to Kill Us" foreign policy.

It's a little wordy. Let's aim at phrases of three words, shall we? The pen is mightier than the sword. So let's get writing.

Festival Season in Oregon

2006-07-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

In Corvallis, Oregon, there's a festival called DaVinci Days, where engineering feats are accomplished by dedicated people who create this machines that race. I missed the parade the night before, and the sand dune race. I got there today for the mud race and the river race. Here are scenes from before, during and after:

As they hit the mud.

Another contestant gets into it.

My favorite machine: Extreme Makeover.

Extreme Makeover racing, overtaking another
machine that floundered.

The cool hat brigade.

More machines waiting to race.

Ditto.

A good time was had by all.

Country Fair

2006-07-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

Here's relief from my last post, which some have deemed "weird." Speaking of which, here are pictures from the Oregon Country Fair, my experience last weekend:

In Oregon, you don't have to be gay to dress up.
You just have to be creative.

Parade leaders. Yes, and Tigger too.

The Parade Dragon.

Me, advertising my friend Marjorie's business (hat), with Country Fair horns,
even though her biz is on the East Coast.

I admire men who wear their tutus and wings well.

Country Fair fashions that I'm too old for.

A treehouse atop a booth. A place I'd like to camp at night.

Hula hoop pros. You can't see how tall the woman on the right's hair is. Trust me.

Billy Guilfoyle performing for youngsters with a former Slug Queen.

They worship the chilluns.

Me, at the end of the day, sans hat, still bedeviled. Hot, But not that kind of hot.

Hope -- and Wayne - Float

2006-07-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

Bwana, the world traveler, always up for adventure.

It's almost a full moon. Maybe that's why Wayne is on my mind so much. It's nowhere near the anniversary of his murder, it's just that a mutual friend recently reported on the situation in New Orleans and stories from that city always make me think of him.

Sue said that the city is barely making it. If another hurricane hits, it will be finished for good. There will be no bringing it back. Every house in Uptown has a "for sale" sign on it, though her former employer - an optician - is doing surprisingly well. I guess everybody who's left lost their glasses.

Being the morbid person I am, I asked her if the cemeteries flooded. They're up at the end of Canal Street, by the 10 freeway. She'd mentioned everything from there to the river is unrecognizable, so she gave me the opening and I've been wanting to know. I've spent so much time taking the bus up Canal to the end of the line to Greenwood to visit Wayne's grave. The cemetery is like a city. It has streets and addresses. He's near the intersection of Magnolia and Pine - which I remember because his friend Mel used to joke that was appropriate. Pine box and all.

I met a man on my first visit to the grave. I'd finished my freakout at Wayne's mausoleum. I'd leaned across the top of the box, trying to send my energy through the cement to whatever was left of the body I once loved to hold and be held by. I sat and smoked a joint, then left a roach in the flower vase attached to the mausoleum's face. It was like the ancient Greeks, pouring some of the wine on the ground for the gods. I wanted him to share.

As I walked back down the lane, I ran into a man sweeping up around his wife's grave. We shared our stories. He showed me a picture of his wife, "Huggy," who'd recently died of cancer. I showed him the picture I carried of Wayne. He recognized him. It turns out he lived down the street from Wayne's mother. He promised me he'd take care of Wayne's grave and watch over it in case drunk vandals from the nearby bar scaled the fence (as they were wont to do) and broke it open to drag out his remains. I thanked him and wandered away, dazed by yet another horror I hadn't imagined possible.

Back in the present, Sue told me the cemeteries did flood. It makes me happy. Wayne loved to dance, and he'd like nothing better than to have his bones floating as his city was submerged. Someday I'll get back there to check on things, but it will probably be awhile. If Sue's prediction is right, it will be a time when the dead in the city vastly outnumber the living. In that case, it will be good to have a spirit guide I once loved. Okay, still do.

The Need to Stand Up

2006-07-05T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Idiot in Charge, celebrating his birthday
while our men and women die in Iraq.

I don't like being confrontational. I prefer to keep my brow un-furrowed. But I think part of the reason the right wing rhetoric has gotten so bad in recent years is that people like me (including me) have chosen to stay "above the fray" and not fight back.

I was disturbed on the celebration of our country's independence to get the following "joke" from a relative - a career veteran no less. Within minutes, I fired off a defensive email, listing all the things this administration has done to veterans... the fact that our commander-in-chief never served and couldn't be bothered to show up for his reserve duty... the fact that Dick Cheney got five or six deferments that kept him from serving... the fact that no one in the current administration ever served their country by military service... and the fact that Cheney's former company is raking in the dough through war profiteering - something that earlier presidents (I need to research which ones) have called treason.

I never got a response from said relative, but I hope I'm off his stupid conservative joke list. And I hope any other relatives reading this will at least push back to him, even if it's less pointedly than my approach.

Until we start fighting back, we'll never take our country back. It's now or never, folks. Just do it. Stand up for what's right. You know what that is.

Here ya go. Happy Fifth of July. Try not to puke:

"On a Saturday afternoon, in Washington, D.C., Senator John Kerry's campaign manager visited the Cardinal of the Catholic cathedral. He told the Cardinal that John Kerry would be attending the next day's sermon, and he asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Kerry to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling Kerry a saint.

The Cardinal replied, "No, I don't really like the man, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over certain of Kerry's views."

Kerry's manager then said, "Look, I'll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 to your church, if you'll just tell the congregation you see Kerry as a saint."

The Cardinal thought about it and said, "Well, the church can use the money, so I'll work your request into tomorrow's sermon."

As Kerry's manager promised, Senator Kerry appeared for the Sunday sermon and seated himself prominently at the edge of the main aisle. And, during the sermon, as promised, the Cardinal pointed out that Senator Kerry was present. Then the Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation,

"While Senator Kerry's presence is probably an honor to some, he is not my favorite person. Some of his views are contrary to those of the church, and he tends to flip-flop on many other views. John Kerry is a petty, self absorbed hypocrite and a nit-wit. John Kerry is a liar, a cheat, and a thief. John Kerry is the worst example of a Catholic I've ever personally witnessed.

He turned on his buddies in Viet Nam. He wrote a book and portrayed himself in the best light when he was a traitor to his fellow servicemen. He has lied about his military record and had the gall to put himself in for a medal.

He married for money and is using it to lie to the American people. He also has a reputation for shirking his senatorial obligations both here, in Washington, and in Massachusetts. He simply isn't to be trusted." The Cardinal completed his view of Kerry with, 'But, when compared to Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Kerry is a saint.' "

Happy Fourth of July

2006-07-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Flag Our Troops Are Fighting for this Independence Day

It's been weeks since I've blogged here. Thanks for still tuning in, if anybody's still out there. I've been writing and working on other projects, so this had to take a back seat.

It's also been a pretty depressing few weeks in American politics. The Supreme Court has issued rulings that protect gerrymandering across the country. The citizens of this fine land can now look forward to extended periods of administrative haggling in state legislatures any time one party gains control of both the state house and the Governor's mansion. It's about time the Dems started to play that kind of hardball and I know they will, I just lament the loss of time spent GOVERNING, you know running things like the schools, the roads, the police, taking care of the poor, and protecting their environment.

And when the Supremes laid down the law and finally tried to rein in our Imperial Lord and Master by outlawing his military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Dubya and his minions in Congress immediately said they'd find new ways around that decision. I guess we're moving towards a monarchy at a record pace.

Patrick Fitzgerald disappointed many of us letting scumbag Karl Rove off, but one can only hope there was a plea deal involved and we'll see a different kind of fruit from that labor.

Then there are murders and rapes committed by (hopefully only a few of ) our troops in Iraq. Nothing like raping a woman, killing her family and burning the body to win the hearts and minds of a people whose country we're occupying. We've lowered the bar on who we'll allow to enlist - and raised the age to 42! - so we're bound to get people who have a few problems. And now news reports admit that Bush made their jobs easier by disbanding the CIA taskforce dedicated to finding Osama Bin Laden. I guess we've just quietly checked him off our list. Dead or alive? As Emily Litella would say, "never mind!"

So even though this is my favorite holiday, today I face it with a heavy heart. Coming from a military family, I always enjoyed the fireworks display in DC. I didn't mind that it was a celebration of war, since it was a war we fought for our independence. It was the one night a year my family went out together. We'd spread a blanket on the lawn by the Iwo Jima memorial in Arlington and watch as the sky lit up over the Washington Monument with fireworks. They'd reflect in the Potomac, encircling the boats anchored there with shine. It was a night that was always happy.

Now I think we're in a much tougher fight for our independence. Apathy and the busy-ness of our lives keeps most people from paying too much attention to what's going on. And so far that's led to the gradual stripping of our rights as Americans, the slow drip of freedom leaving our lives as we keep up the race in the hamster wheel to pay our bills and keep the oil companies fat with profits.

This is the way America ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

The Death of Belief in Truth

2006-06-19T21:33:00.000-07:00

The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner

emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life.

Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality.

I must be spending too much time on the computer and in the DailyKos site because I'm starting to see a breakdown in realities. This weekend, I wrote a diary about a female soldier in Oregon who'd gone AWOL because she said she'd been sexually abused in her service and had PTSD. Not being in any position to research the claims, I read what I could and put up a post that gave her the benefit of the doubt (and my reasons for giving them).

During the course of the comment thread, somebody logged on and said he was a doctor in Iraq and that if she's a soldier she should suck it up and do her duty (or words to that effect). I had one or two responses he may have read. It's hard to tell as the thread goes. But I took him seriously and addressed him as someone in the field.

I told a friend this story today and she asked how I could be sure the guy really was writing from Iraq. I said I didn't. You know that troops have access to computers and lots of them are blogging, so it's not a stretch for me to believe that I was conversing with a soldier in the field. But I had realized it could all be a lie. I still gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Last weekend, my half-brother in Vegas suggested I get a gun to protect myself from burglars. I said statistics show that you're much more likely to die from the gun yourself (from the bad guys, a friend or suicide) than to use it in self-defense. His response, "Oh, you're just listening to what the gun control lobby says."

I did do a lot of writing for gun control groups in the 90s, but their stats were from reliable polling and government studies. The fact is, I can't quote bibliographical references but these are numbers that are accepted public knowledge. And if I could quote a government study, the argument against it would be, "well, that's just the government. They don't know shit."

The Administration has regularly questioned accepted scientific facts (global warming, evolution) and has shown everybody how to act indignant or condescending when your opponent in a debate says the sky is blue.

So we get to the key dilemma facing media and communications today: how do you talk to anybody when we have no common reference point for truth? We've all gotten so used to thinking in terms of liars, spin, and self-interest (follow the money) that nobody trusts anybody anymore.

In the blogging world, sites like DailyKos have developed extended communities of diarists, commenters, and lurkers. I jumped in with both feet - characteristically - and have been writing diaries and comments. But the first diary I put up (about the auction to benefit YearlyKos) had the first comment: who is this person? Why should we trust them? How do I know where my donation really goes?

I had others on the auction go in and vouch for me, so I "got some mojo," as it were. But therein lies the only validation people have in blogs: the building of community that makes everyone accountable for the honesty of the public square. There are "troll-hunters" zapping commenters who are just schilling for the other side, trying to disrupt reasonable debate. And with enough time on the site and mojo built, you too can become a "trusted user (TU)" and get to troll-rate people, which hides their comments from plain view.

I don't know how the site or Markos figured out all these rules, but I see that they're the only answer to give the skeptics. How do we know anything about anyone writing there? How do you know anything about your spouse? All we can know is what people choose to tell us.

In the sphere of public commentary, we are dividing into self-selecting groups of like-minded people. There's a chance blogs will bring people together in some kind of bridge but it's not happening much yet.

In this new public square, we only have each other and our better instincts to rely on. Getting back our trust in truth will take a long time. We'll see if this experiment works... or else.

Dear Scooter,

2006-06-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

cross-posted at DailyKos.

I think of you often. Well, not all that often. Just when my dog needs her anal glands expressed and she does that thing to the carpet...

I'm writing you today to tell you the aspens are whispering to each other, and they're finally turning towards the sun.

Yes the odor that emanates from the veterinarian's table at times like that does bring our government to mind, especially during weeks like this when another of your oily friends has made off with a turd to grow another blossom out of.

You probably are used to the smell by now. It's Eau du Republican Locker Room. It's the holy water of your baptism.

I've known your type all my life. You walks the halls of a rarefied world, trading in futures like war whose bonds will never come due for anyone in your family.

You chance the lives of dedicated public servants by exposing them and their operations in a vile attempt to protect the men you have to suck up to to keep making money. To keep holding onto power.

The sad thing is, your strategy works well. Guys who play on teams like yours with the easy ethics have frequently made it to the top. American capitalism is a contact sport and you body-check with the best of 'em.

People who play by the rules are just suckers, aren't they? And those who dare to try to raise the level of discourse are weak. The ones who start to inspire those left behind - the poor, the children, the elderly, the tired huddled masses yearning to be free as it were - the ones who speak to them, well, generally, they get assassinated.

That's the strategy that worked when I was a kid. We'll see if that one comes back for a reprise.

But the aspens are connected now and they're reaching for the sun. They're going to try to clean the rotten air you've left behind and offer some shade in the desert of politics and scorched earth that is your legacy.

Patrick Fitzgerald played by the rules so clearly that we all must accept his judgment. Even though your boys would have twisted the rules and the evidence to create the PR outcome you wanted, Fitz is one of us. He doesn't lower himself to your standards. He believes in the rule of law for all Americans, even you.

You may have won a battle or two, but in the end, Mother Nature will out. The aspens will be standing and the sound of their leaves rustling in the wind will echo the gentle sigh of justice.

Regards,

dcnative

More YearlyKos Love

2006-06-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

I got front-paged at Daily Kos today. Cool beans. SusanG highlighted it in her Wed night Diary Rescue. I'm truly honored.

Did two entries about the event on Blue Oregon.

I couldn't think of an appropriate photo, though I hear I was spotted on C-SPAN this weekend. Probably talking. And talking.... and talking...

In Vegas

2006-06-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Man, I had no IDEA the blogger dress code was so fancy!

I'm at YearlyKos in Las Vegas. To read posts for the next few days, visit: www.blueoregon.com.

Where is ACT UP When You Need Them?

2006-06-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

My romantic role models growing up: Rock Hudson and Doris Day.

I had two chores growing up: setting the table for dinner and dusting the 1st floor furniture on Saturday mornings. I learned to plan my dusting around the Saturday morning movie, which was always black and white and frequently featured the two stars above. Love always started out on the wrong foot and ended up in heaven, or at least marriage. There was one that ended with Doris Day seeming horny, an image that led me to become the woman I am today.

In acting school, I fought believing the rumors that Rock was gay, but I was working coatcheck at a Broadway Bar. Charlie's on 45th. (Some nights I'd take a minute and just lean back into the minks. It felt fabulous.) It was the kind of place that put "reserved" signs on all the tables and sat people as they came in depending on their fame.

One night, Rock Hudson came in with his entourage of about 6 handsome young gay men. He was a towering figure, 6'4" if he was an inch. Broad-shouldered, deep voiced, flashing eyes... and gay as the Queen of Hearts. Oh my god. None of his boys were allowed to walk in front of him (the waiters told me) because Rock always came first.

This was one of my first moments of awakening.

It didn't make me love him any less, however. My best friend since high school was a gay guy, so that was a culture I knew. In the early 1980s, there were also rumors about a "gay cancer." My friend started to have friends who became mysteriously ill with a wide range of symptoms, all of them grosser and more debilitating than the last. In Hollywood once, we went to visit a friend of his who'd been one of the Marlboro Men. His chiseled handsome image had long adorned a huge billboard at the curve in Sunset Boulevard by the Chateau Marmont. By the time I met him in 1986, he was skinny as a rail, blind from some disease, and showing signs of carposes sarcoma.

It took a long time for Rock Hudson to come out and admit he had AIDS and he only lived a few months after doing so.

Elizabeth Taylor came to his PR rescue and stood up bravely for her long-time friend. It took guts to deal with AIDS victims in those days. The world made a big deal about the time Princess Diana was photographed touching a baby with AIDS in Africa. That one shot changed how people saw AIDS victims.

The government ignored AIDS for a long time. Reagan was president and things were somewhat like they are today under Bush (though not quite so crazy nutso insane). What turned the tide on getting AIDS addressed as I remember it was a "radical" group of gay activists called ACT UP. These guys were sick of watching their friends die around them in increasingly large numbers. They'd all gone from having fun at the baths to being afraid to help their friends eat because it was all so mysterious. Rumors were rampant.

So this group of annoying, fervent, devoted, theatrical (mostly white, I think) gay men took center stage. They showed up at government PR events and tried to disrupt them. They did street performance. They got in your face any way they could. They were media hogs. I don't know all the details of how they did it, but I've seen what gay men have done for urban renewal across America and they sure started that kind of genius coming together to fight AIDS.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the first news announcements about people dying from a newly discovered disease called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Its discovery was one of the most drastic changes to hit my life. Suddenly, everyone could kill you. We weren't even sure how it was transmitted, but men who slept together seemed to be a key target.

Not surprisingly, gay men would simply not shut up and sit in the back of the bus. In the face of every evangelical in America screaming about God's wrath for sin, his Divine Retribution, these men said, "Fuck You! Cure this disease! We will not stand for this, for being ignored, for having our deaths celebrated by the likes of you."

I bring this up today not only because of this anniversary, but also because this story is one of the few examples I can think of where the left got actively engaged - and enraged enough - to demand societal and governmental change.

Today, the conservative side gets rallied by something as simple and blatantly pandering as a "fight for a Constitutional Amendment against Gay Marriage" or illegal immigration or gays in the military or gay adoption. It only takes getting an initiative on state ballots to energize the base who harbors these kinds of hatreds.

What does it take for the Left to find that fervor? The issues we have that concern us are some of the most important I can think of:

The lack of health care for 40 million Americans
A failing education system
Endangered Social Security
Protecting pensions from corporate bankruptcies
The death of unions
Insane national debt to countries that don't necessarily have our best interests at heart...

I could go on, but you get the point. I could write a tome of sadness on any one of those bullet points, but somehow I don't think anyone on the left who's not politically engaged would necessarily stand in line to vote on these issues. Not if it took more than 10 minutes. I hope I'm wrong, but this feels right and I'm so far left you can't see me anymore.

So here's my solution: get all those guys from ACT UP to help us out. Lots of them must be retired by now. Let's use their expertise, enthusiasm and community organizing talents to help us all. In exchange, we'll keep fighting as we have for their rights. Seems fair to me.

I believe in the power of gay men. I am proud of them. I thank ACT UP and everyone who worked so hard to make AIDS not the death sentence it once was. (insert standing ovation here... along with Donna Summer's "I Will Survive.")

Please Help us now. We need you.

Advice to Veterans on Memorial Day

2006-05-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day weekend is a lot of things. It's a time to celebrate having survived winter and spring and gotten to summer. It's a weekend of picnics and newly opened swimming pools and having your sisters visit from far away places. [ed. note: it's news like this that makes me happy my DC sister is already on a plane headed here right now.]

But in reality, it's a weekend to honor veterans who have given their lives in our wars.

It's crazy that, as we celebrate our veterans' sacrifices, we get this piece of news, that MILLIONS of them have had their personal identity information compromised. And not only that, but the government took WEEKS to spread the news, so there's no telling what's happened to their credit ratings, their bank accounts, their records...

Happy Memorial Day, Vets!!

As a survivor of identity theft twice in my life, here's my wise advice to veterans this weekend: GO SHOPPING WITH YOUR CREDIT CARDS. Go now, while you can still claim someone else did it. Go wild. Spend to your limit. All you'll be liable for is $50. And when Visa and Mastercard come looking for you, simply tell them to go to the government for reparations. They f***ed up, they should pay your bills.

Call it a teensy little bit of payback for their cutting your benefits, for closing schools on bases, for keeping female soldiers from being able to get Plan B (emergency contraception), and for finding ways to discredit each and every one of you who runs for office against any Republican with power. Remember the Alamo, Omaha Beach, the USS Indianapolis, but also remember the smear campaigns against Max Cleland, John McCain and John Kerry.

This isn't an administration that values its veterans, so do your best to make them pay.

And while you're spending those hard-lost dollars, might I suggest these bits of subversive shopping? Get back at the Christian conservatives by plunking down your $9 for the DaVinci Code. Have coffee first, however. It's boring.

Then, head on over to anyplace selling CDs and buy the Dixie Chicks album. It's literally flying off the shelves (the cashier asked me why everyone was buying it), and your purchase will be a nice slap in the face to all those Clear Channel DJs who think they're un-American. Um, actually, they're quintessentially American. My God, they even play country music.

And if you can't get to Vegas to be with all us bloggers who are trying to shake things up, at least go buy Crashing the Gate and read about how people are taking back politics in this country, one byte at a time.

Be a patriot. Enjoy Memorial Day. Have a beer and a tofu pup on me.

And take a veteran shopping!

A Video Worth Sharing

2006-05-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

I'll write more later today (I hope), but in the meantime, here's a link to a YearlyKos promo that should make you understand why I'm bothering to volunteer for this crazy thing and why I'm going to Vegas in the heat of June.

Join me?

Going Against the Tide

2006-05-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

First woman to head wrong way - British yachtswoman Dee Caffari holds a flare as she crosses the finish line aboard her craft Aviva, in southwestern England Thursday as she becomes the first woman to complete solo non-stop round the world voyage the 'wrong-way' against prevailing winds and currents in a west-about route. (AP photo by Chris Ison)
May 19, 2006

There are just so many good female stories this week. I think the caption tells the above story, but it's one that seems to exemplify the way I've been feeling lately. I may be facing into the wind. I'll remember to not spit into it. But I've got to believe I'm still going the right way.

Just like this lovely Peruvian woman recently discovered. Okay, so she's a mummy. Don't hold that against her. From the NY Times story:

"A mummy of mystery has come to light in Peru.

She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche culture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures.

But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said yesterday, is not the offerings of gold and semiprecious stones, or the elaborate wrapping of her body in fine textiles, but the other grave goods.

She was surrounded by weaving materials and needles, befitting a woman, and 2 ceremonial war clubs and 28 spear throwers — sticks that propel spears with far greater force — items never found before in the burial of a woman of the Moche (pronounced MOH-chay).

Was she a warrior princess, or perhaps a ruler? Possibly."She is elite, but somewhat of an enigma," said John Verano, a physical anthropologist at Tulane University, who worked with the Peruvian archaeologists who made the discovery last year...

"Perhaps she was a female warrior, or maybe the war clubs and spear throwers were symbols of power that were funeral gifts from men," Dr. Verano said."

And this 'un:

"Panel recommends FDA approval of cervical cancer vaccine

Merck says drug will slash global deaths by two-thirds

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A vaccine with the potential to slash worldwide deaths from cervical cancer, the No. 2 cancer killer in women, should be approved for sales in the United States, a federal panel said Thursday.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted 13-0 to endorse the safety and effectiveness of Merck and Co.'s Gardasil, which blocks viruses that cause cervical cancer. The company said the vaccine could cut worldwide deaths from the disease by two-thirds."

*********

I love those few times when the crazy right-wing nuts lose. I heard a good comment the other day that answers the argument: "but if you vaccinate them against STDs, kids'll just go out and have sex!" The response: "There's no evidence that if you give a kid a bike helmet, they're more likely to go out and have accidents."

This could be a banner week for female headlines. Gotta seize these moments of celebration when you find them.

Been down so long, it looks like up to me.

Go forth and have a great weekend! And since I'm volunteering for the Yearly Kos convention, here's a plug for that: go to www.yearlykos.org and register today. If I have to be there, so do you!!

Drinks and fervent idle chatter poolside at the Riviera for all progressives!!

-- DC Native

My Sentiments Exactly

2006-05-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

Conservatives Can Only Cry For Themselves

2006-05-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

A teeny, tiny photo of Tony Snow, White House mouthpiece.

It's good to see Tony Snow's performance this past week as I job-and-client hunt. It makes me realize there's a need for people like me to keep people like him from embarassing themselves. Though it is one of the world's toughest jobs, so who am I to judge?

What I CAN judge, however, is his tearful moment, when he got choked up talking about his bout with cancer last year. Yes, Tony, be choked up. You got all the medicine you needed, got better, and had a chance to take on this lucrative job because you lived. But you work for a party that has systematically - almost proudly - made the kind of health care that saved you so expensive that businesses are jettisoning workers' coverage. They've created an entirely new business model that abandons anyone with less than perfect health so that the profitability of the company is kept healthy. They don't care about people falling through the cracks because they don't count. Not to this administration and its party. Retirees who were promised pensions are having their health coverage dropped by their employers, who pass the costs of funding their pensions on to us, the American taxpayers. Business. Lovely business. Lord Business must always be served.

But as for the human beings in this story... there are lots of families all over the country tonight, Tony, who are crying because they can't afford the care you got and they've got to make a whole different set o' plans for their future.

Somehow, I'm not so impressed by your sensitivity, Tony. Buck up, boy. You've got a long loooong road ahead.

A Bad Moon Rising and What You Can Do

2006-05-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Karl Rove, left, Brett Kavanaugh (nominee for federal appeals court judgeship) right.

Here's a wrap-up of CNN.com's headlines right now:

BUSH: WE'RE NOT TROLLING YOUR PERSONAL LIFE

Dow Drops 130 Points

Priest Convicted of Murdering Nun

Bill May offer Citizenship or Deportation

Immigrants Found Locked in Refrigerated Trailer

Controversial Judicial Nomination Moves Ahead (see photo)

Big Oil Boycott Gives Little Guy the Smackdown

And, from WashPost, a story that should get much more play than this, Robert's Missing Papers.

In brief, the story of the photo above is about the Administration using the specious "everybody deserves an up or down vote" logic to cram through more dangerous judges while they still have control of both houses of Congress. In Crashing the Gate, authors Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga explain that the Republican revolution really got momentum when a little-known and fresh-out-of-college Karl Rove developed the strategy of targeting the judicial system to instill a generation of judges that would give Big Business favorable judgements, inspiring Big Business to send their dollars to Republican candidates and starting this fabulous engine that has gotten us to the above-listed headlines.

How's that workin' for ya, Karl? America?? Bueller? Bueller??

I guess it's workin' fine.

The other highlighted story is about how, months after our new Supreme Court justice got in, we still can't find those pesky papers detailing his history under Reagan, working on affirmative action. Hmmmm... do we think those papers made him look good? Especially since Archives officials now admit that White House folks were in the room (as no other people are allowed to be) carrying their own personal item (briefcases, etc) and the papers haven't been seen since.

Are these the same guys who are tapping our phones? GOODIE!! At least they're consistent in stealing things like our rights and privacy and freedom of information.

So what can you do about this tide of bad news and your appropriate frustration? Join me at the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas next month. And, while there's still time, have your company become a sponsor or have a booth.

As an Average American and blogger, I'm looking forward to meeting other obsessed political junkies like myself and seeing if we can move this conversation out of our separate home offices and into the communities where votes need to be awakened and mined in November. As a business, I'd almost consider having a booth myself (too broke, alas!) to get my name and contact info out in front of the Biggest Mouths in the Blogosphere. Daily Kos is the most widely read political blog on the planet, and, well... all the blabbermouths will be in Vegas and in the mood to strategize.

Going to Vegas for a convention. It doesn't sound too progressive, does it? That's the great thing about what could be this new political movement: we use the tools of the future with the spirit of high-stakes gamblers and the power of interpersonal connection to MAKE A F***ING DIFFERENCE at a time when that seems impossible as just solo mio.

That's my sales pitch. I've been honing it all week. Sign up. Join us!! Let's get this party started!

"So A Chicken Walks into the Dept of Ag..."

2006-05-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

A provider of bird flu or our next spokeschicken on how well things are going in Iraq?

Every communications person's nightmare: the media gets ahold of a memo you wrote about talking points. Of course, only Dubya's team of Orwellian wizards would even dare try a stunt like this -- getting pro-Iraq war messages into the Dept of Agriculture. I believe these are desperate times calling for desperate measures on Capitol Hill.

My favorite part are these graphs at the end:

"The suggested talking points for agency workers to use before farm and agribusiness audiences include the poultry angle: pointing out that Iraqi farmers use U.S. aid to buy American feed and are working to "update 25-year-old chicken houses" as national stability takes hold. A barnyard stemwinder could deal with the ticklish subject of civil rights by noting that Iraq "has been evolving for 230 years" and is "still working to become a more perfect union" with the administration's help."

And there's nothing like a fresh back story in the war on terror. "Iraq is part of the 'fertile crescent' of Mesopotamia," where mankind first domesticated wheat thousands of years ago, this suggestion begins. Then it moves to the clincher: "In recent years, however, the birthplace of farming has been in trouble."

*******

Now THAT'S what I call a segue!

-- DC Native

Blessed Pro-Life America

2006-05-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, to be in the land of the free and the home of the Defenders of Life. Here's my argument on being "pro-life" in this country - in my experience, those who espouse that philosophy never care about the baby once is comes screaming out of a woman's womb. They don't vote for higher taxes to pay for their health care, for daycare so that their parents can work and support then, for school budgets or lunch programs, etc., etc.

Proof of our negligence is sadly apparent in this report, nicely timed to come out right before Mother's Day, showing that America has the second highest infant mortality rate of any developed nation.

Mix this with a healthy dose of political meddling in FDA decisions (approving Plan B, allowing the use of RU-486, and perhaps most heinously, interfering with the approval of a VACCINE AGAINST CANCER because they fear that it will lead girls into promiscuity) and you've got a country that lives in cognitive dissonance - holding contradictory beliefs in their wee heads just fine... as long as nobody points such contradictions out to them.

The interference with the HPV vaccine actually proves a theory I've long held: that if "life" is defined as the growth of cells that connect, then eventually, we'll have to stop all this battling of cancer. Who's to say cancerous tumors aren't a form of life - maybe the Thetans whose return to earth Tom Cruise and L. Ron Hubbard so eagerly anticipate? And if you're truly pro-life, then you do have to agree with South Dakota's recent ban on all abortions, even including rape and incest, right? I mean, cells are dividing in some woman's womb - what does it matter how that sperm and egg got together? To me, the pro-life argument is woefully low on logical follow-through.

The Left, to which I proudly belong, is often accused these days of being angry, especially in the blogosphere. Count me in on that. I guess blogs are providing outlets for us to finally pull together the many strands of insanity that have been ruling this country for awhile and find like-minded individuals to share our frustration with. I'm hoping that connection leads to increases in voter turnout in November, so that we can start taking back the power in America before the Boy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. blows up the planet.

Look, I'm a single female. I pay lots of taxes for things I don't get any direct benefit from - but I believe infant mortality is something we should be able to fix. I'm pro-choice, which means I believe women should have the choice over whether or not to have babies when they find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. But we live in a country where - especially poor - women have increasingly LESS choices all the time and less support if they do choose to have a baby on their own.

Dan Quayle went after the fictitious Murphy Brown when her character had a baby out of wedlock (and then conveniently never dealt with it as it seemed an inconvenient plot twist) - but Murphy Brown probably did more to make women comfortable having children on their own than any anti-choice campaign Quayle supported.

The Choice Debate has been emptied of choices. We now face down the maw of the lesser of many evils wherever we look. It's a pity that, while the "pro-life" wingnuts are running the country, they can't at least boost the odds for newborn infants along the way. That would lend some credence to their claims of moral superiority over those of us who consider money (via tax dollars) less important than living in a society where every child is wanted and given a chance from day one to grow up strong and healthy.

How to Ruin My Derby Experience

2006-05-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

O.J. at Kentucky Derby - Former football star O.J. Simpson chats with an unidentified man during morning workouts at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., on May 4.
(AP/Amy Sancetta)

Buy Bourbon

2006-05-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

Bath time - Kentucky Derby hopeful Keyed Entry shows his teeth as he gets his bath following morning workouts at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., on Wednesday. Expected favorite Brother Derek and three horses trained by Bob Baffert were among a full field of 20-year-olds entered in Saturday's race. (AP photo by Charlie Riedel)

The Derby's this Saturday, May 6th, so don't forget to go buy some bourbon in honor of my mother - I mean, to make mint juleps with while watching "the most exciting two minutes in sports." That's about my attention span for sports anyway... though I like the pregame show for this because it's all about the pretty horses.

:)

Pre-game show on NBC: Saturday at 5:00, Eastern. They say the show goes til 6:30, so I'd assume the race is at 6:28 pm, Eastern.

For your edification and shopping list, here's the official mint julep recipe from the Derby website:

The Early Times Mint Julep Recipe

2 cups sugar
2 cups water
Sprigs of fresh mint
Crushed ice
Early Times Kentucky Whisky
Silver Julep Cups

Make a simple syrup by boiling sugar and water together for five minutes. Cool and place in a covered container with six or eight sprigs of fresh mint, then refrigerate overnight. Make one julep at a time by filling a julep cup with crushed ice, adding one tablespoon mint syrup and two ounces of Early Times Kentucky Whisky. Stir rapidly with a spoon to frost the outside of the cup. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.

Per the recipe, you're supposed to drink it in a chilled silver goblet while wearing an exceedingly large hat (the latter part, just clearly understood).

Glad to be of service!

DC Native

DC Native Gets a Byline

2006-05-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Wayne, my much beloved friend who became a murder victim

There was a really heinous murder in town a few weeks ago. A teenage boy who'd been living with his friends' grandmother (after the friends moved out), killed the grandmother in question after torturing her all night long. The neighbors heard screams, which were quickly muffled, but ignored them because the house had had a lot of that sort of thing when the kids lived there and the neighbors got immune to hearing it. The kid had nowhere else to live, however, so when the cops arrived the next day - after a neighbor made the gruesome discovery - he was just sitting on the porch waiting for them. I guess now he has a place to live for the rest of his life. Some solution to teenage homelessness (and mental illness, obviously).

So I wrote a little piece for our local paper that got published today. Enjoy.

-- DC Native

Not a Win, But...

2006-04-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

Check out Daily Kos for more, but here's the net neutrality update. Keep an eye on this story...

"The Energy and Commerce Committee has had its vote on Congressman Markey's amendment to save the Internet, and we lost, 22-34. But it's not a total loss. The four Representatives targeted in my previous post all flipped, and voted for the Markey amendment. As Matt Stoller notes, the subcommittee defeated it 23-8, so that we narrowed the margin as much as we did is significant."

Thanks to all who called - and prepare to do so again when this turkey shows up in the Senate.

Remember your cable bill and vent accordingly.

-- DC Native

Save the Internet TODAY

2006-04-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry. No time to find a cute photo for this one. Shown the way by Daily Kos, I see that the end of free internet is in sight - something I've been afraid of for a long time. Cable deregulation went so well for the consumer, I knew it was only a matter of time until Big Business would want to rape internet customers, too. And of course, the mainstream media doesn't like the competition, so they're not reporting on it. For discussion of the topic, go to Daily Kos and read around. For more details, go to http://www.savetheinternet.org/ and read on. It will tell you there how your reps are voting.

But most importantly, call your representative TODAY. Action could be happening as early as 4/26, which seems to be... TODAY.

Click here to find your congressional rep's number. I called Greg Walden and they were very pleasant, especially considering he disagrees with me.

Call. It's fun! Exercise your rights, damn it! Flex your American citizen muscle before it atrophies!!

Now, cribbed from the Save the Internet site... note another Orwellian name for legislation. How can I get into THAT writing job? I'd love to come up with names like this that mean the exact opposite of what they do. It would be quite a challenge...:

"Congress is now considering a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act. The primary bill in the House is called the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006" and is sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), Rep Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Rep. Charles Pickering (R-Miss.) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.).

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet's First Amendment -- a principle called "Network neutrality" that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you -- based on what site pays them the most. Your local library shouldn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to have its Web site open quickly on your computer.

Who wants to get rid of net neutrality?

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all.

They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.

These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services — or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls — and a leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.

What's at stake?

Decisions being made now will shape the future of the Internet for a generation. Before long, all media — TV, phone and the Web — will come to your home via the same broadband connection.

The dispute over net neutrality is about who'll control access to new and emerging technologies.
On the Internet, consumers are in ultimate control — deciding between content, applications and services available anywhere, no matter who owns the network. There's no middleman. But without net neutrality, the Internet will look more like cable TV. Network owners will decide which channels, content and applications are available; consumers will have to choose from their menu."

Sounds lovely, don't it? And this isn't one of those internet hoaxes going around. I swear.

As one commenter on Daily Kos said, "You don't even have to get off your a** to do it! Do it!"'

Thanks.

-- DC Native

They're Getting Away With It

2006-04-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like good writing in the National Journal to get me hot and bothered. The latest issue includes an article by Murray Waas called "Insulating Bush." It starts:

"Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration..."

It tells of the delaying tactics and obfuscation used by Condi and the gang to hide the fact that Bush knew it was bullshit to say that Saddam Hussein had been importing high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon. But that became one of the key issues -- along with the fake attempt by Iraq to buy yellow-cake from Niger -- that Bush used to lie our way into war. The article lays out the long trail of evidence that the White House engaged in serious, well, "lying" is the only word for it, to try to insulate the President and preserve his deniability on the story.

All this lying and moving around the shells on the card table just to get past the 2004 elections.

Now this alone wouldn't get me that pissed off. I mean, lying? Come on. This is politics. High stakes money is involved. People's CAREERS are on the line - of course lying is required. Right?

But then I think back on how the White House also got the NY Times to delay reporting on the domestic wiretapping story until after the November elections. And how they've gotten Scooter Libby's trial delayed until after THIS November's elections... and on and on it goes.

They're playing the game by changing the rules and you know what? That's a really easy way to win, especially when the other team doesn't want to upset the apple cart. It would be too complicated for them to explain this all to the simple American public, wouldn't it?

No, actually it wouldn't be. It might take a little effort, but anybody who's ever had a deadline understands the concept of having that deadline delayed and delayed and delayed. And most Americans can be trusted to understand that we have these little things called ELECTIONS the first week of every other November... with a really big one happening every FOUR years intead of two. I trust my fellow citizens to still be with me.

What scares me is that they're getting desperate now. Today Bush's poll numbers were positively nu-cu-lar. His approval rating: 32%. (Oddly, he got 47% "yes" and 47% "no" on the question, "is he competent?" - a split I don't understand in the context of his approval rating...).

But what scares me is how dangerous these guys will get when they're backed into a corner. His plane seems to be in a death spiral and I wouldn't put it past him and his coterie of whip-crackers to stir up a little somethin' in Iran to pull them out of it. After all, how could we vote out our loyal representatives in November if we need them on Capitol Hill staying nice and focused on getting us out of the NEXT war?

Iraq. Iran. Next up: the IRA. We're having luck with that letter combo. (Ixnay on the Anistan-Gay.)

They've gotten away with all of this incredibly dangerous, planet and civilization-threatening lunacy this far -- because NOBODY'S PAYING ATTENTION TO THE IMPORTANT STUFF.

Will somebody stop letting them move the finish line past November for anything important to happen? Please. People. Stop them. Wake everybody around you up. Go read National Journal - after you read Sy Hersh in the New Yorker last week.

A reporter told a friend of mine in DC her belief that Bush got us into Iraq because he thought only wartime presidents would be remembered. I wouldn't put it past him to bomb Iran for the very same reason ("Mo' often, mo' bettah!," as my friend Wayne would say).

The thing he doesn't care about is whether or not any of us are left alive to read the history books that will extoll his many virtues.

Stop him now.

Let's roll.

Need Help with Gas??

2006-04-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about the digestive kind, though judging by TV ads during the evening news, there are a lot of people who could use that kind of help. What's up with all that indigestion, bloating and constipation, people? Here are two words: Go vegetarian. Trust me. You'll have no digestive problems and conveniently avoid both mad cow disease and the bird flu, perhaps.

I guess that makes this two public service announcements. The latter comes on the heels of some wise words from our Fearmongering Leader. He's the one who's a uniter, not a divider. But today, he's a DECIDER.

He's also a big brain on gas. He's swears he's gonna keep a close eye on them prices. To make sure his campaign contributors stay fat and happy, I guess.

On a less snarky note: my public service today is this link to help you find the cheapest gas in your 'hood.

If this were any other country in the world (especially France), the streets would be filled with angry citizens demanding lower profits for the oil companies (read: raping the American public) and more help for us.

But we're not, so this is my attempt at personal revolution.

-- DC Native

Are You a Typical American?

2006-04-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

Or are you hiding behind a disguise you're not even aware of?

I found these stats, from analysis of recent polling data by a Univ of Washington communications professor, enlightening. He was teaching a workshop on communicating for environmental groups and was tackling the topic of who our audience is. He asked the group to respond to the following questions:

How many of us listen to NPR on a regular basis?
How many of us buy coffee at coffee shops at least once a week?
How many of us regularly shop at Wal-Mart?

Not surprisingly, every hand in the room went up for the first two questions. None for the last. It was a lesson in how much we differ from most of our fellow citizens. Their answers:

NPR listeners: only 16% of the country
Coffee shop customers: only 10%
Regular Wal-Mart customers: 84%

More proof of how important it is to remember not everyone thinks like us or can immediately be assumed to share our priorities. And perhaps a reminder that lattes are not required to get through the day, as much as we may enjoy them.

Bad, Bad Hollywood

2006-04-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Mouse, inflicting punishment.

Every once in awhile, I think I was stupid to leave Hollywood. After all, I was on a certain job path (see "Swimming with Sharks"). Maybe if I'd been able to put up with all the B.S., I'd be rich by now and be able to afford the early retirement I'd be forced into due to my having lived past the age of 40.

Then I read articles like this one from today's NY Times.

" F.B.I. Links Big Film Names to a Detective

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and ALLISON HOPE WEINER

LOS ANGELES, April 13 — The chairman of Paramount Pictures and a onetime Hollywood superagent had far more direct dealings than they have acknowledged publicly with the celebrity detective at the center of a rapidly expanding wiretapping scandal, according to government evidence.

Brad Grey, Paramount's chairman, told the F.B.I. that he spoke with Anthony Pellicano about two lawsuits in which Mr. Pellicano, a private detective, was working on Mr. Grey's behalf, and that he learned information about his legal opponents directly from Mr. Pellicano. A former employee of Mr. Pellicano, who was charged in February with wiretapping and conspiracy, separately told the F.B.I. that Mr. Grey had met with the detective at least five times.

Publicly, Mr. Grey has said that he was only "casually acquainted" with Mr. Pellicano, and that his lawyers were responsible for hiring and overseeing the detective.

Michael S. Ovitz, a former talent agent and Hollywood powerhouse who served as the head of the Creative Artists Agency and was once president of the Walt Disney Company, acknowledged to the F.B.I. that he paid Mr. Pellicano in April or May of 2002 to obtain information on 15 to 20 people who were saying negative things about him. They included former business associates and Bernard Weinraub, then a reporter for The New York Times who was reporting on the demise of a company Mr. Ovitz started after he left Disney, and Anita Busch, a freelance reporter who wrote with Mr. Weinraub..."

It goes on to implicate Bert Fields, one of Tinseltown's most powerful lawyers - and coincidentally, my former boss's lawyer when he was suing the TV show he was fired from. I never heard about anything like what the article alleges, but just from being around these guys, you know they're capable of anything (see "The Player").

I had a friend who couldn't stand working for the team on Seinfeld (Exec Producer, Brad Grey) and left in the first season. We always thought, in hindsight, she made a huge mistake, but stories like this remind me just how hard it can be to hang out in that crowd. Especially if you're not one of the boys.

So, on this Good Friday, I will stifle my urge for schandefreude (sp?) and instead light a candle for their salvation.

Friday Entertainment

2006-04-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

From an old news story, but a good 'un. When you play the game, make sure the cursor is in the top half of the page and brings up a target, then remember to hit the space bar to reload. Ahhhh... Oddly satisfying. Glad to be of service.

-- DC Native

City Mouse Back in a City

2006-04-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

Downtown Seattle.

There's just nothing like a city. Maybe that's why I lament my inability to afford living in one, but at least they're great to visit.

My blog pause was due to a trip to Portland and Seattle, both great working port cities. Big cities in the Pacific Northwest are different beasts from those on the East Coast. At least from what I've seen so far. There's a scale to them that's just HUGE-r. Except for Seattle's streets, which seem much too narrow for the size of everybody's cars these days.

I think what I miss most is the culture of neighborhoods. Where I live has some neighborhood definition, but nothing to write home about. It's just different flavors of hippy. Seattle and Portland have distinct areas with their own looks and stores and specialties. They also have people who aren't white, which is something I really miss.

Seeing working port cities doing their thing also puts a lot of the issues of the West in perspective. You understand why there are such controversies on things like the environment and extraction industries. The stakes are huge for all sides and it can be a zero-sum game. If one side wins, the other side can lose big.

Politics and all its repercussions are intensely local here, which may be why so many distrust government. I'm still not sure where the line is between the Western "independent voter" and your average conspiracy theorist. The wide open spaces have been a broad canvas for an understanding of How Things Work that is unlike New York and DC - even L.A. (which basically is an East Coast city that happens to be on the West Coast).

But essentials - coffee, traffic, boutiques, street musicians, homeless, restaurants... and the occasional porn store -- all seem familiar. It's a fix I need in between my months at home, in the Valley, with the lonesome whistle of the train blowing across at 2:30, 3:30 and 5:30... am and pm...

The spark of the occasional city wakes me up.

Oh pleasepleaseplease...

2006-04-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

One classy anchor broad.

My heart is lightened this morning with news that I may soon be able to watch The Today Show again in the mornings. Katie Couric may finally be leaving. Hall-e-LUJAH.

The woman who perfected the role of perky emotional parasite will surely be paid a lot of money to move on. Good for her. Good for all of us.

I don't know anyone in recent years who hasn't wanted to kick Katie's teeth in when she interviews the family of a murder victim the day after the crime. "How did it make you feel to see your daughter's mutilated body, Susan?" and other such stellar examples of humanity.

Now, I'll have to admit that I once interviewed the victims and widow/widowers of people who'd been shot in one of the first office building massacres in San Francisco. This was about 12 years ago and I was writing the direct mail campaign for a candidate in the Bay Area who was for gun control. I had my Katie Couric moments where I had to ask some of them, "So what does it feel like to be shot by an automatic weapon?" Amazingly, they answered calmly and with a cool clarity that may have been because some time had passed between the incident and the retelling. Or maybe it was that they were choosing to use their pain to make a difference - to elect a candidate who might stop madmen from being able to get guns and use them on others as they had had they used on them.

That campaign won awards for best congressional race that year. The interviews turned into something quite moving and real, but unfortunately, something that didn't win the race for the candidate.

So I cop to the fact that I've had to use people for a purpose too, but the subjects of my interview were able to make sound judgments to be used. What always bugs me about Katie and her ilk is that they ambulance chase. I always wonder what it's like to be in the houses of the victims' families that awful next day when you're dealing with morgues and coroners and police and funeral homes... and have the phone ring and it's some young perky producer from the Today Show trying to schmooze you with a sense of caring while getting you to commit to being up and in makeup at 5 am your time the next day for an interview on national TV.

In my imagination, it's a crime in and of itself. Using you while your wounds are still so fresh you don't know what you want, except to get through today, or to turn back the clock.

And you don't realize til the lights and cameras go off that there's no price you can pay, no public humiliation or pleading too bare, to get you what you want. But at least you will have given Katie good ratings.

Good bye and good riddance, Katie.

Announcing My DC Mayor-in-Exile Campaign

2006-04-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

The candidate. A few years ago.

For Immediate Release
April 1, 2006

Contact: D.C. Native, asdfjkl99@comcast.net

D.C. Native Runs for Mayor-in-Exile Post

Blogger Says City's Future Lies in the Hands of Those Who've Left

(The blogosphere... the part in OR) - Blogger "D.C. Native" announced today her candidacy for Washington, D.C.'s Mayor-in-Exile, a post that represents District residents who've been forced out of their hometown by a deadly combination of rising housing prices, incessant political viotriol, and the loss of the city's middle class.

"I've never seen it this bad before," said the fourth generation native Washingtonian. "I hated to leave D.C., but I'm not willing to make myself a slave to a housing market gone crazy. There are easier places to live where we can work from afar to help the District."

The blogger is running on the "Save Our City" platform, which includes a "Stop Murder" plank, a "Reclaim Our Name" plank and one very worn but sturdy "How 'Bout Some Representation with that High Taxation?" plank.

"Let the candidates who live in D.C. keep fiddling with the school board and the baseball stadium. A candidate like me who lives far from the Beltway can see the broader picture," said D.C. Native. "And with a campaign purely done through blogs, I don't need the rich backers of every other politician. My motives will stay clean: I want to save my city."

Currently running unopposed, the candidate feels pretty confident about her chances on Election Day. She's keeping an eye on Marion Barry, though.

Follow the campaign's developments by visiting: http://politricksetc.blogspot.com.

The Power of One Person's Story

2006-03-30T11:04:00.000-08:00

Here we have Abdul Rahman who converted to Christianity 15 years ago, came back to Afghanistan in recent years and was almost hanged for apostasy. (How often do you get to use THAT word?)

I'm glad the guy got out alive. The Pope even came to his rescue. But this really highlights to me the bizarre nexxus of government and personal PR. From Terri Schiavo to Elian Gonzales to Abdul Rahman (hey, aren't popes involved in all these stories?), we have governments waking up and smelling the coffee time and time again for one person who has a publicity machine behind them, conveniently ignoring the larger issues the stories represent.

It sure was easier to tell the story of the warring Schiavo factions than it is to deal with end of life issues and Americans' fear of death. It was easier to strong-arm the Afghan government to let this guy off and have him whisked away to Italy than it is to deal with the fact that we're building and paying for a government there that doesn't believe in religious freedom.

I guess with a president who constantly reminds us that what he's doing "is hard work!!" we can't really expect him or his cronies to really DO the hard work of diplomacy or good governance that's required to fix these things. And of course I LOVED his coming back from vacation early to sign into law the Terri Schiavo Interference with the Will of the Coma Victim law. That was hard work that played well to his base.

So it annoys me when his ilk blames everything on the media, when we're learning time and time again that if you don't get media, you don't get attention from your elected leaders. Media = power if you don't have money. And if you've got religion on your side, you can surely get the contributions to pay for the media attention.

It seems the answer to all our problems is to get one person who's a great example of every issue facing us, then have a tragedy befall them, then call the Today Show.

There. That's my expert advice today. Go forth and spin.

It's an Ambien World

2006-03-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

Flaming June, by Frederick Leighton, 1895

We've heard about how people who take Ambien are sleeping driving and sleep eating, now it seems "sleep-divorcing" is happening. Of course, if I were a woman in a country where a man could divorce me by just saying "I divorce you" three times, I might claim I heard him say it in his sleep, too.

I doubt, somehow, that Ambien is to blame in this case of sleep-divorce in India. But it does bring up the issue that people everywhere are having a hard time sleeping. I'm not the only person I know taking Ambien occasionally. I have friends who can't get through a night without it - and one who has to take it in combination with another drug to make it work. What are we doing to ourselves?

My current sleeplessness is about, as usual, work. I bolt awake around 2 am many nights, wondering what I'm doing trying to start my own business when I have a mortgage to pay and a dog to support. The mind fills with "what ifs" and leads to several hours of tossing and turning. Sometimes I get up and make my dog keep my company in hopes that the sound of her snoring will lull me back to sleep. It's times like that that I'll reach into the night stand and break off half a tab of that dreaded pharmaceutical to knock me out. I hate to respond so well to it - and to the ads that promise a new controlled release version that will get me past 2 am.

But more and more of us are dreading bed and sleepwalking through our days. Is it the constant diet of fear we're fed? Is it too many bills and not enough jobs to pay them with? Children? School? Living up to high expectations?

I don't know what the answer is. I'm walking an hour a day up and down the hills around my house, in hopes that exercise will soothe the brain. It's not helping yet, but at least I'm not getting flabby as I work at the computer all day.

And it's spring in Oregon. Who wants to be inside and unconscious? Maybe sleep is over-rated after all.

End Your Friday Happy

2006-03-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

Click here, then go to the far right-hand video entitled "The Big Finale" and enjoy.

And thanks to Susie Bright via Driftglass for pointing the way to the appropriately named Chris Bliss.

-- DC Native

When the Crap Floats

2006-03-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

(Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

"Mr. Rove is operating as impishly as ever. At a party at the British Embassy when Mr. Bush and Mr. Card were on their way to India, Mr. Rove was asked by a group of guests how things were going.

"Everybody's away, so I'm running the country," Mr. Rove replied, playing off his caricature as an all-powerful behind-the-scenes puppet master.

And another creepy quote from the same NY Times article:

"An ingredient that's missing right now in the White House is that sense of urgency, that passion, that intensity," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota. "When you've had horses there that you've been riding for a long time, you kind of need to change them once in a while."

Now, getting past the creepy, tangy, sweatiness of thinking of Rove as a horse you're riding... which is an insult to horses everywhere... I think what's missing in the rest of the country when they look at the Administration is any sense that these people are like them. I mean, we've all been in offices where people have failed up (they're related to the boss, they're sleeping with one of the bosses, they're too litigious to fire, etc...), but I think Average Jane American looks at these losers continuing to screw up and still have jobs and goes What the F***?!

And they're all a bunch of those pasty white prep school guys that we all hated, too. They're always the ones with the weirdest fetishes, aren't they? Speaking of which, we never did find out what Jeff Gannon did all those evenings in the White House, did we?

All that being said, she says trying to get back to seeming calm and classy, it's a great time to be involved in the debate. It has truly become like Stephen King's The Stand. There's the good and there's the evil (obviously through your own prism) and you have to fight for your own sense of the Good. The debate has never been so divided.

In environmental issues, the moral card is a winning card. People always call beautiful places "God's Country," so how far a stretch is it to connect that belief to our own innate belief that you need to take care of God's country (nature)?

With the way Bush and Co. are getting us into debt, there's a clear right and wrong: it's wrong to levy a birth tax on children. Now every kid who's born starts out in the "Debt" category. How is that right?

This may seem radical, but I also question why it's right that we're blowing up Iraq because "if we don't fight the terrorists there, we'll be fighting them here." What did the Iraqi people do to deserve to be our strafing range? If we really were the tough nuts Bush portrayed us as when he said, "Bring it on!" we should be willing to fight the people who did 9/11 in our very streets. Or, as I did, you can leave the Big Obvious Terrorist Target Cities, make some sacrifices, and revitalize rural America.

A lot of that option seems right to me. A lot more right than incurring astronomical debt to continue to finance a fiasco that's costing us millions - or is it billions? - per day and sending home troops horribly scarred. And it would certainly clarify the stakes for all Americans. It's like Guantanamo - someday these things will have to be stopped, but the guys in charge now refuse to be the ones to do it. They'll instead retire from the hole they've dug us into, cash in being on boards of directors, and shoot down the Democrats who eventually have to come in and clean up the mess.

The crap floating continues. "Ending tyranny in our time" or however Bush puts it is a ridiculous goal. America had many happy centuries upholding tyrannies that worked for us. How about shifting gears and trying: "protecting human rights across the globe?" or "ensuring that every person on the planet can drink clean water" or spreading the belief in "loving thy neighbor as thyself"... "doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you?"

I think the guy who's credited with those last ideas was -- heaven forbid -- one long-haired hippie.

Let's see... long-haired hippie vs. pasty white dough boy in the photo above? I know who I'd choose to follow - and I'm not even a Christian.

A Time for Heresy

2006-03-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

I didn't say it. Bill Moyers did. It's a long 'un, but as always, worth it.

-- DC Native

Botox That Forehead

2006-03-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

You know, if they shot some botulism into this man's forehead, he'd no longer have either a foreign or a domestic policy. Right now, the wrinkles are all he's got.

But he's a BOY, so he doesn't have the guts to inject poison into his face. Ha!

Honestly, one of the hardest parts about living in the Pacific Time Zone is that sometimes you have to endure things like a presidential press conference before your first cup of coffee. Today was one of those.

Dubya's performance grade: B+. I thought he really handled the hour well. The lies are now so ingrained he doesn't have to work so hard for them anymore. And he's learned his lesson about calling on Lebanese women. She may be short, but she's smarter than you, Boo-Boo.

That was a lovely moment:

QUESTION (Helen Thomas): I'd like to ask you, Mr. President -- your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime.

Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, your Cabinet officers, former Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth -- but what's your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil, the quest for oil. It hasn't been Israel or anything else. What was it?

BUSH: I think your premise, in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- that I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect.

QUESTION: And...

BUSH: Hold on for a second, please. Excuse me. Excuse me.
No president wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.

BUSH: My attitude about the defense of this country changed in September the 11th. When we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people.

Our foreign policy changed on that day. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life.

And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people, that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy, and that's why I went into Iraq.

(CROSSTALK)

BUSH: Hold on for a second. Excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for Al Qaida.

BUSH: That's where Al Qaida trained and that's where...

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

BUSH: Helen, excuse me. That's where -- Afghanistan provided safe haven for Al Qaida. That's where they trained, that's where they plotted, that's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council. That's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed.

And the world said, "Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences." And therefore, we worked with the world. We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world.
And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did. And the world is safer for it.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir. Secretary Rumsfeld...

BUSH: You're welcome. I didn't really regret it. I kind of semi-regretted it.

QUESTION: (inaudible)

BUSH: That's right. Anyway, your performance at the Gridiron was just brilliant, unlike Holland's (ph) which was a little weak.

(LAUGHTER)

Under the related topic of "incompetence" and "malfeasance:"

From the Washington Post:

Congress Raises Ceiling for Borrowing
$100 Billion Is Spent Without Offsetting Cuts

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff WritersFriday, March 17, 2006

Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend well over $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, health care, transportation and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.

On vote after vote in the House and Senate, lawmakers demonstrated the growing gap between their political promises to rein in spending and their need to respond to emergencies and protect politically popular programs. The votes followed last weekend's GOP leadership meeting in Memphis, at which virtually every speaker called on the party to renew its commitment to fiscal discipline and to control federal spending and the deficit....

With no brakes on spending and no moves afoot to raise taxes, the federal debt is now raising at an unprecedented clip. The government bumped up against its $8.18 trillion statutory debt ceiling last month, forcing the Treasury to borrow from employee pension funds to keep the government operating. After weeks of pleading from Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, the Senate took the politically unpalatable but economically critical step of raising the ceiling for borrowing to $8.96 trillion. Under House rules, the debt limit was raised last year without a vote when lawmakers approved a budget.

It was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has now risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

"This should be a wake-up call for every member of the Senate, every member of Congress, and a wake-up call for the president of the United States," said Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. "The question is: Are we staying on this course to keep running up the debt, debt on top of debt, increasingly financed by foreigners, or are we going to change course?"

****

During his performance today, Dubya talked about how his failed misadventure in Iraq was his way of spending his political capital. EVEN AS A CYNICAL COMMUNICATIONS PERSON, I find it offensive to hear anyone brag about spending something as ephemeral and ... egotistically driven as his political capital.

But recent estimates I heard said that his war has cost every man, woman and child in America $30,000 so far. In Oregon, that's a year's salary. I don't vote for that. I CHOOSE NO. How can I make that count? Who's with me?

If the Dems have half a brain, they'll start touting such numbers. Find ways to crunch them like Republicans do, to turn them to your advantage. On the liberal side, at least you know you have God and "What's Right" in your corner. Right? Who would Jesus bomb? Whose student loans would he destroy to trade for his political capital? Which natural monument would Christ strip mine? Which child would he tear from his meth addict mother's arms? Which child would he bring into this world saddled with debts he'll spend his whole life paying, that were squandered before he was born? Which schizophrenic would he be happy to leave sleeping on the street?

If the Dems can't paint the picture this black and white, they are truly lost and it's time to get a third party going. Hell, the Dems can't win the way they've been working for quite some time now, so what if we annul Hillary's soon-to-be-failed bid for the Presidency? Ahhh, the Oprah moments yet to come! Or we could just bring back Bill.

I'm thinking our slogan should be this:

National Security Means More than Bombs.

We're secure when our children are fed and educated.
We're secure when people can live on just one job per person.
We're secure when different kinds of people accept one another.
We're secure when our elderly don't live in poverty.
We're secure when our air, land and water are clean and our most beautiful places aren't held hostage to industry.
We're secure when we can believe in any god we want -- or none -- without harassment.
We're secure when women have rights, especially those over their very bodies.
We're secure when compassion rules the day, not financial or political power.
We're secure when our budget matches our priorities and are fulfilled through competent leadership and judgment.
We're secure when our elected officials work for the people who vote for them, not for the corporations that fund their campaigns.

I guess you could call that my Ten Security Commandments.

And now, as Jon Stewart would way, your moment of Zen:

Dubya: "That's why I said in my second inauguration address: The goal of this country ought to be to end tyranny in the 21st century. I meant it. I said that for the sake of peace."

I keep being reminded of Donald Rumsfeld during the Shock and Awe campaign, talking about "the most compassionate bombing in the history of the world."

Why, oh why don't I think they know what the hell they're talking about?

Pop Culture, Fermented

2006-03-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

A day at the mall for an abaya-clad Michael Jackson in Bahrain. (Reuters)

And to think, when I was a kid, I really looked up to this guy.

Sad. Mental illness disguised as eccentricity via the deodorizing patina of money.

His poor kids (i.e., "Blanket" wearing a hood).

-- DC Native

Children with the Sad Wisdom of Age

2006-03-19T16:53:00.000-08:00

10-year-old girl shot and killed at her birthday party

Englewood residents, already reeling and enraged by the slaying earlier this month of a 14-year-old girl, spent Sunday struggling to absorb another tragedy: a 10-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet during her surprise birthday party. Deanna Woods (left), aunt of Siretha White, collapses in the arms of Siretha's sister, Davonna Woods, 18, on Sunday.
(Tribune photo by Chuck Berman) Mar. 13, 2006

From the mouths of babes - too old before their time.

-- DC Native

Why are we fighting to live if we're living to die?
By Shontanette Brinson, 8th grade
Published, Chicago Tribune, March 19, 2006

THE CHILDREN SPEAK

Imagine that, last weekend, you saw your friend shot to death at her 11th birthday party. Imagine that this wasn't the first time you had lost a friend to a bullet meant for someone else. That another girl from your neighborhood, a little older, had been killed the week before, the girl everybody thought was going to make it out. Then imagine all the others who died before them, the boy who was strangled just before the school year started, the fathers and cousins and aunts and brothers. Last week, some of the pupils at Vernon Johns Community Academy, the grammar school that both Starkesia Reed and Siretha White had attended, wrote letters and poems to the two girls who died eight days and a few blocks apart. Now imagine, amid the angry marches, the rhetoric and political posturing, that you can hear the voices of the children of Englewood:

Why are we fighting to live if we're living to die?

Why are we fighting for love if it only makes us cry?

Why are we fighting for gangs when all our colors are the same?

Why are we dying with no one to blame?

Why are we killing for all the wrong reasons?

Why are we dying every day, every month, every season?

Why are we worried that Daddy isn't coming home?

Why are so many children left in this world alone?

Why can't we go outside and play?

Why is Mommy worried that one of us may get hit with a stray?

What is the reason Daddy isn't coming home today?

Why do we have to sleep on the floor at night?

Why do we hurt and fight?

Can we all stand together and make all wrong right?

Why do people bring babies in the world like this?

Why did that bullet have to hit Starkesia?

Why didn't it miss?

Why does money make the world go around?

Why when we die we get put in the ground?

Why does it seem as our life changes in so many ways?

Why does it feel as we are living in our last days?

Why does this gang get into it with that gang?

When everyone lives in the same community and has the same things?

Why doesn't death scare me anymore?

Because death is a game and has reached its final score.

Why is it that when a person dies a baby is born?

Or is it that the person comes back reformed.

Why is it that we are focused on the good and never expect the bad?

Why after we laugh, we cry?

Why are we fighting to live if we're living to die?

Shontanette Brinson is an 8th grader at Vernon Johns Community Academy. She likes to write poetry and listen to music. She was friends with Starkesia Reed and Siretha White and said she was inspired by Tupac Shakur's "Runnin' (Dying to Live)" to write this poem.

Kiss Us, We're Irish

2006-03-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

My college roommate's mother, a famous Irish singer named Carmel Quinn.

Every year in New York after I met Terry, we'd go to Carnegie Hall tonight on St. Paddy's Day to see her mother sing. Arthur Godfrey had brought Carmel over from Ireland when she was a young woman to be on his show. Now, let's have a show of hands. Who knows who Arthur Godfrey is? Think "ukelele." Anybody? Geez. I am old.

So, that was a good part of being Irish. It was a night of the best Irish singers in New York. There's nothing like hearing an Irish tenor sing Danny Boy to bring tears to your blue eyes.

Things we Irish are good at:

Telling stories
Drinking
Having babies
Doing what it takes to make babies
Having lovely accents
Obeying God, as long as He doesn't get in our way
Guilt
Arguing
Writing
Taking both the high road and the low road to Lochloman
Grieving/wailing
Death

I won't get into what we're bad at. That wouldn't be celebratory.

I must say, the thing that makes me proudest of Irish people is that we finally got past The Troubles and created a booming economy over there. I can't actually say "we" in that except for the American part: sending George Mitchell to broker the agreement. I never could understand - as in so many civil conflicts - how people even knew who to fight. They all looked identical as far as I could tell. I guess it's people who knew each other for generations, so they knew who the Orange Men were.

Now, in true Irish fashion, I gotta go write. Top o' the mornin' to ya and all that. Here's the ol' Irish blessing to speed you on your way:

May the road rise to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

May God be with you and bless you:

May you see your children's children.

May you be poor in misfortune,

Rich in blessings.

May you know nothing but happiness

From this day forward.

May the road rise up to meet you

May the wind be always at your back

May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home

And may the hand of a friend always be near.

May green be the grass you walk on,

May blue be the skies above you,

May pure be the joys that surround you,

May true be the hearts that love you.

Lucy, my Irish terrier.

If You Meet Buddha on the Road...

2006-03-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

Give him a lift.

Murder Most Foul

2006-03-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

Well, I've talked about politics a fair amount and pop culture, so there's no time like the death of Slobodan Milosevic to talk about my third blog topic category: murder.

I have several problems with murder. First, except for the occasional pretty white girl...

A notice offering a reward in Imette St. Guillen's case hangs near the bar where she was last seen alive.

...you never hear about the victim. It's always the killer. That's the story that gets told whether it's in the news or a TV show or a movie. Serial killers a specialty.

Serial killer nurse Charles Cullen, sits alone in court during his sentencing in Somerville, N.J., Thursday, March 2, 2006. The nurse who admitted to killing as many as 40 patients... received 11 consecutive life terms in prison, making him ineligible for parole for nearly 400 years. (AP Photo/Mike Derer, Pool)

The story that rarely gets told - because it isn't sexy and the protagonist is hampered by his/her state of being dead - is that of the victim and those left behind.

When you know someone who's been murdered, you spend a lot of time imagining their last moments as if putting yourself through that scene will pay some psychic price and you could get them back. It's like having that last contact with them that you were cheated out of.

It's quite a moment, the moment you realize a) someone you love is dead and b) that another person actually planned, if even for a few minutes, to kill that person. They thought it was a good idea. Then they did it and succeeded.

Your options are limited. You don't get any second chances. You expected the victim home for dinner. For about the first 30 seconds, your mind goes, "No, that can't be. They're coming home for dinner!"

Your life then becomes a series of periods: 1) being awake and trying to stay upright and 2) tormented sleep that you awaken from to those moments where you still think the person is alive and all is right in the world. Until this happened, you never realized how little it took to make all right with the world. You vow to never take it for granted again if only god would bring that person back. If only you could trade a year of your life for one half-hour more with them. Okay, five minutes. I just have a few quick things I never said that I've got to say.

But it's too late. Incredibly too late. And it's too late because of someone else's hatred for the person you loved.

My big lesson when my friend was killed was that I'd rather have the killer locked behind bars for the rest of his life than be put the death - that would have been the easy way out. I could get into the level of retribution that would keep him in orange jumpsuits at Angola State Prison Farm in Louisiana. I would have paid extra taxes for it, in fact, but he got out after 10 years. In those 10 years I had to let go of my need for retribution and justice. Retribution just lowers me to his level, and justice is rare in life. At least I got 10 years of the man's life. I hope he learned something and never kills again.

But I was nuts for several years. I'd walk out into traffic and hope to get run over by a taxi. I'd stand at the edge of the Metro tracks and figure out the exact timing to make the jump successful. You don't want to survive jumping in front of a subway train. Luckily, I was too chicken to try any of that stuff, but my mind went there over and over again. It would certainly have stopped the pain.

The other story that never gets told - maybe because it doesn't have an ending - is that there is no getting over grief, especially from murder. You just learn to deal with it. Nothing you can do is going to bring the person you loved back or turn back the clock. No amount of hatred or screaming at the murderer is going to take away the pain. You could take a knife and rip them open, then pull out their innards with your angry hands, and it will change nothing. After your shower, you'll still be in the same hole.

Only time and some kind of healing will show you the way out of it. First you realize it's been a minute since you thought about the murder and your loss. Then weeks later, it might be as long as a half hour. A year later, you might go half a day, and on and on til years pass and it's worn a soft, sensitive groove in your heart. You no longer touch it all the time, but when you do, it's as fresh as the first day. The only thing different is you've learned to accept the cruel and unacceptable.

If you could understand this at the beginning of the grieving, you could save yourself so much trauma - and so much to those around you. Is it possible though? Just because I did it once, would it be easier the next time someone I love is murdered? I doubt it. Last time, I was nuts for about three years. Maybe next time it would only be a year and a half. Now take those numbers and apply them to all the families in America who've been touched by murder. That's a lot of suffering to be healed.

Isn't it weird that, when it comes to the phenomenon of murder, we never do anything about the consequences left behind? How can we ignore the tidal wave of pain that emanates out from the ripples of every murder in America? You can say it's one of those issues that's just too big for us to handle, but we once thought you couldn't test every bag of blood in this country for AIDS and we finally did it. Where there's a will there's a way.

Murder's an accepted epidemic in this country, easily ignored until it touches your life. But like any disease, it won't get better by pretending it doesn't exist.

Isaiah Reed, 18 (center left), brother of murder victim Starkesia Reed, is consoled by Hal Baskin, a community activist, as they march with neighborhood volunteers Monday to hand out information alerts regarding his sister's death in the Englewood neighborhood last week. Starkesia was getting ready for school when she was shot. (Tribune photo by Kuni Takahashi) Mar. 6, 2006

Where Will All the Cities Go?

2006-03-09T16:01:00.000-08:00

This upset me today, an article entitled, New York Asks Help From Poor in Housing Crisis.

"The New York City Housing Authority, landlord to more than 400,000 poor New Yorkers, is facing a budget shortfall of $168 million and has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged.

The authority says its operating deficit stems from enormous increases in energy and pension costs while its federal financing for public housing has been cut. Since 2001, the agency says, it has spent $357 million from its reserves to close repeated budget gaps; this year, for the first time, it no longer has enough reserves to cover the shortfall...

"The chickens are coming home to roost," said Representative Jerrold L. Nadler of Manhattan, who added that the federal government was taking less responsibility for public housing. "The Housing Authority has, by one ingenious means or another, been holding it together with spit and baling wire. This could be really devastating."

... Arlyne Allen, who lives in the Amsterdam Houses on the West Side of Manhattan with her husband and three teenage children and provides day care out of her home, said of the fees: "It'll affect me a lot. You can't even afford what you have now." If she could, she said, she would move to Pennsylvania to find private housing that she could afford....

Saul Ramirez, executive director of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, traced the budget shortfall to "a steady disinvestment" in public housing at the federal level. "Obviously," he said, "there has been a decline that has gotten to a critical point in the area of operations."

*****************

So the rich are getting richer while the poor move to Pennsylvania? Have I got that right?

I am undoubtedly a Big City Girl. The smallest town I've lived in til now was Washington, D.C., population around 500,000. But like lots of people who didn't catch the real estate wave at the right time, I've been priced outta Dodge. I moved to a small college town on the West Coast (but one with an airport at least) and live in a style I could only have dreamed of in any big American city these days.

And that's a pity, because cities need all sorts of people -- even ones like me.

Cities used to be mosaics of ages, races, and economic levels. Neighborhoods were built by people with things in common, set in the middle of the vast raging masses. If you don't know New York City, you might think it's a cold, hard place, and it can definitely be that. But I've never lived in a city where everybody was so aware of their neighbors. People in New York care about what goes on around them and they don't mind raising their voices to tell you so. And they come together in a crisis like no place else. I was there for the subway strike in the early 1980s and all I remember is what a good time I had hitchhiking in Manhattan, getting into cars with interesting strangers - everyone a goodwill taxi driver - crawling along at 10 or 15 miles an hour on Broadway.

You are both anonymous and very famous at the same time in cities. You can blend in with the crowd, but will almost certainly run into the only person among that 100,000 nearby that you were hoping not to see. Especially looking like this.

There are some people you're forced to crowd next to in cities, not always with your wishes. You learn things about other people's personal habits... you hear them tell their innermost secrets to friends... you watch parents discipline their children right there in front of you and learn to say nothing... and you avoid men spitting.

Car cities are a little different. In L.A., you drive around in your own personal pod. The crowds are bumper to bumper, not butt to butt. But the fundamental things apply, as the song says.

So I mourn the loss of our cities to the very wealthy. Who ARE these people who can afford $800,000 for a condo these days? Are there that many incredibly successful people who just beat me to the punch? Are there that many trust fund babies? Or is everybody maxed out on the credit cards of life?

All I know is that the cities are getting drained of their color, their life, and their uniqueness. And you know where it might be going? To small college towns like this.

Wimpeachment

2006-03-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

There. Now we can say there's a Dubya in "impeachment."

I'm starting to get hopeful. I mean, when Garrison Keillor starts writing about impeaching Bush, you know you're onto something. It's kind of like Walter Cronkite turning against the war. Harper's cover story this month (buy it!) goes further and enumerates, with lots of footnotes, all the legal reasons Bush should be impeached. To quote them quoting Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, "I think if we're going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed." The magazine goes on to quote Bruce Fein, former associate deputy attorney general under Reagan, who said of Bush that he "presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law."

Wimpeachment works on so many levels. Impeach the wimp. Hell, impeach all the wimps in Congress too who've let him get away with his criminal behavior for years.

Let's talk about strength, shall we? Strength is not being the loud, obnoxious parent in the stands at the soccer game, screaming at the kids and picking fights with other parents. Strength is being the dedicated mother or father who volunteers a few afternoons a week to coach the team. Strength isn't "the most compassionate bombing the world has ever seen" (Rumsfeld during Shock and Awe), strength would have been building up Afghanistan, creating jobs, ending the poppy trade instead of boosting it, educating everyone including women, building infrastructure, etc., etc. Strength is in it for the long haul, not for PR events and short-term projects that might look good but don't last.

Folks, we ain't got no coach. We've got a guy bent on war and destruction because it pays his and all his friends' bills. Can you say "Iran's next?"

I actually stopped on Fox News last week (Beltway Boys) and found them discussing the possibility that the Dems could win both houses of Congress in the fall. They said, with Bush's sinking poll numbers, that he has about 3 weeks left to "turn it around" and win over Fox viewers, then all would be lost. Praise Fox's Lord. Also, beware of Big Events happening in the next three weeks. I don't put anything past these guys to solve their poll problems.

They've proven that absolute power corrupts absolutely - and more blatantly than I've ever been aware in my young life. I know the Dems were corrupt too when they ran the Hill for 40 years, but at least they managed to accomplish good things during said corruption like civil rights, environmental protection, and a modicum of women's rights.

Just imagine - because all change has to start with being able to imagine something - that Bush was left at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for two whole years with the Dems in charge of the House and the Senate. They could finally impeach him. How lovely would that be?

Sing along, won't ya?:

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself: "What a wonderful world!"

Oscar Buzzzz

2006-03-05T21:17:00.000-08:00

I seem to either be stunning my audience here or boring them to death, judging by the lack of comments, so I'll touch on something lighter: the orgiastic celebration of my first professional homeland, Hollywood.

Somehow my Oscar invitation got lost in the mail, so I had to watch it from up here, 800 miles north with local friends, including two ex-patriates from Paramount.

As a quote-unquote Real Person now, I was slightly appalled that the gift bags given to presenters were worth over $100,000 each. Might this not have been the year to have that sort of money donated to charity? Maybe buy some armor for the troops or something?

I got past that factoid, just like I get past every factoid about wealth rising to the top in America. At least in Hollywood, they look pretty for it - though I predict next year's new award category will be in makeup, for artistic superiority in covering facelifts so they look good on HDTV. I was actually happy when the bald fat guys got up. Their eyebrows moved. It was... refreshing.

Other scary part: how thin the women are getting. I thought Dolly Parton was going to faint dead away. Obviously, I couldn't have lasted this long in Hollywood. I don't have the patience to diet that much.

As I drove away from Eric's house after the show ended, I was thinking happy thoughts about Hollywood and how much fun I had working there. Then I drove a little further and remembered all the days I had spent in Eric's office, bitching about my job (and he in mine doing the same). Many, many scenes poured through my head and all of a sudden I didn't miss it quite as much. I especially remember refusing my boss's request for sex when his wife was really pregnant. I'd tell him no, then shut his office door behind me as I left and say, "You can do whatever you want once the door is closed." Now, that was f-u-n.

My first year in TV, I used to ask non-producer friends the same question: Did you have to be an asshole to become a producer or did the process of becoming a producer make you an asshole? It was a question that stumped most people. You could see them running a cast of characters through their heads, tallying up who'd grown up in Beverly Hills vs. who fought their way up. I never did get a consensus. Now some of my friends are producers, and I just pray they haven't become producer pod-people. Maybe things are getting better.

My friend Laura - who was speaking of theater producers when she said it - once pronounced that producers had all been children that nobody else would play with, so they became producers so everybody had to play with them. For a 20 year old (at the time), she was very smart.

As I watch shows like the Oscars, for all their self-congratulatory air, I do applaud the pure stick-to-it-iveness of everybody who was on that stage - even the model/companion girls. All those people stuck to it and achieved. And this year, I even think the quality of the films they got produced was good. Shocking.

I'll try to be positive and remember the good times of being on sets and working with good people - from the lowliest grip to the most famous international star. For the most part, everyone is thrilled to show up at work every day on a Hollywood lot and that does make it a different environment from most offices. People are all a little larger than life, that's why they're drawn to that world. And a bonus for putting up with the torture of writing comedy is that everybody's always trying to make you laugh. What's wrong with that? (Well, I can think of a few guys I'd have liked to close down, but...)

So, I salute the few friends I still have who remain in Hollywood and who still work in the business. It ain't easy, but the scenery sure is nice -- as long as you stay off the 405.

As the Sun Sets on the Right to Choose

2006-03-03T07:32:00.000-08:00

A pro-choice group was once a client of mine when I was working at an agency. They put out a 25th anniversary book of women's abortion stories and asked me to be part of it. I wrote the following story. They asked for something a little tamer, which is what they published.

Now, a few years later, there's something called the blogosphere, and it seems the media has caught up with the message of the original piece. It's a little dated. A younger woman wrote it, but it's still valid.

It seemed appropriate during this week where women's right to choose is melting away faster than the polar ice caps. If the tide of righteousness that carries the anti-choice movement along succeeds in taking away this right, lots of us will be going down.

-- DC Native

They paint us as hellions, racing to abort a seven-pound, viable fetus from our wombs because it took us too long to decide we didn't want to be inconvenienced by motherhood. Or we forgot to schedule the appointment. They outlaw life-saving fetal tissue research as if we'd support ourselves in the future by making our wombs fertile fields for lucrative fetal body parts. The life-givers and the grave-robbers all rolled into one.

They either don't know, or can't, what it is to have life inside you and not be able to keep it. For a million different reasons to a million different women who never thought they could or would have an abortion, sometimes it is the only choice. A child is not a choice. Certainly true. A child is the rest of your life. It is a commitment to be ready for anything. It is every penny you will ever make, every breath you will ever take, every thought you will ever have. It is opening the door to the unforeseen, often the unsupported, with you as its only anchor in the hurricane that blows through your life. It is the end of your life as yourself and the conscious giving it over to another.

You may be young. You may even be a responsible adult. Your body betrays the potential child inside you before you even know you're pregnant. Your breasts are tender. Your nails become like rock. Your very skin changes texture as the clock ticks by on your decision. You can't feel the cells dividing in your womb, only the shell mutating to another purpose. And every demon that ever passed through your conscience suddenly has you cornered.

One thing it is not: a decision made lightly.

We don't generally have abortions on the way to cocktail parties. We don't have resorts built that offer deals on "abortion/massage/seaweed wraps." Our hairdresser doesn't make us pretty for the occasion.

Many of us do it alone, without telling our friends or families. We pack a bag with a sweater and a box of maxi-pads early on a Saturday morning. It's not a happy day. It's another day of doing the chores that equal taking responsibility for ourselves and for our future children. If we're lucky, we don't have to explain ourselves to anyone. If we're not, we suffer tears and recrimination from others that barely echo the castigation we've given ourselves. One moment of not paying attention, one moment of not taking responsibility, one moment of senseless passion and we become society's target.

You see the signs waving in the distance as you approach the clinic. You hope it's an adjacent store being struck by workers, but you know it's not. You speed up your pace as you head for the door. "Think about Jesus before you do that!! Murderer!! You'll rot in Hell!" They shout disgusting things at you in the name of their Lord. Someone with whom you've had an intimate relationship all your life, but not to their satisfaction.

You sit in the waiting room. The TV blares Saturday morning cartoons. Frank Sinatra croons on the clinic's PA system. Couples murmur somberly together. Women flip through worn magazines. Nothing drowns out the shouting of bitter epithets or of righteous Our Fathers from out on the street. A weird counterpoint finds its own rhythm in the cacophy of this surreal morning. You try to absorb Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote to numb yourself for the longest hour of your life.

They call you in in groups. You watch a video. You have the procedure explained in graphic detail. You learn what sounds to listen for to tell you it's almost over. A certain camaraderie builds as it does any time a group of women collects. Only these women know how you feel, as if you're taking the same life-changing workshop.

You can't hear the madness on the sidewalk from the back rooms. It's there that you change together, as a group, in what's basically a large closet. Someone volunteers to go first. Everyone else wishes you well as you walk out the door.

Finally, you're alone in the room, lying on the table where an unassuming machine waits. The nurse comes in. She holds your hand and asks if you're sure you want to do this. The tenderness in her voice, the caring in her eyes, makes you well up with tears as you nod 'yes.' She tells you that the doctor won't do this if he comes in and sees you crying, so once again you do the adult thing and swallow all emotion. No sense making it harder on everybody than it has to be.

The doctor is kind and quick. The sound you heard about comes with a little cramping and it's over. You go to the recovery room and rest. Your life can begin again.

But you spend the rest of your life angry. Not always at yourself - though that's there too - but you know that was a decision that was right at the time. You're angry at the onslaught of the righteous who never knew you and who never would care to. Those who want to make the most difficult decision of your life even harder because it makes them feel better about themselves. It makes them feel like they're saving lives.

The truth is they couldn't care less about the life you'd give to a child once it's here. They are the people who want everyone off welfare. Who wouldn't vote for state-sponsored day care or health care if their lives depended on it. Who spit when they say the word "feminist" to a single mother who decides to have a baby on her own when the father walks away.

I've seen it in their eyes in the lines of protest outside clinics - their hatred for us. For women who don't do as they say. Who disobey the rules they live by. Most of them have never read the Constitution. Couldn't care less that this country was founded by people running from religious persecution. They want this country declared a Christian state and have us all toe the line of a Jesus they'll define for you.

I don't mind their hatred. It makes me know I'm right. That freedom begins inside each of us and extends all the way out through our skin. The whole body. Freedom of our minds and hearts to rule our bodies. Freedom, even, to make mistakes if that's how they see it. I defy them to live lives of perfect decisions every moment.

But they can't take my freedom away. I'll do what I have to do, as God made me, using the intelligence and strength that was my birthright. And I'll piss off as many of the fakers as I can along the way. Gladly.

A Cure for Mercury in Retrograde

2006-03-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

Stop leaving and you will arrive.
Stop searching and you will see.
Stop running away and you will be found.

-- Lao Tzu

Give Up Complacency for Lent

2006-03-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

You don't have to be Catholic to give something up for Lent. I gave up Catholicism when I was 15, but this time of year still makes me feel like doing a little penance.

This year, I'm encouraging everybody to join me in giving up something deadly: complacency. Today's challenge, call your representatives in Congress now and stop one of Bush's many stupid ideas: the logging of burned over forests. (Now that I HAVE representation in Congress, this is one of my greatest joys.)

Basically, do you want this...

and this...

Or this:

And this?

These are all actual photos from the Pacific NW, your last remaining repository in the West of any substantial part of the Ancient Forests of America. Here's how it goes: a fire, which occurs naturally, burns through a forest. Left alone and given nature's clock, it takes time, but will regenerate. Trees grow from what's left of old trees. The necessary mix of different kinds of plants and trees comes back. Certain kinds of birds nest in certain kinds of burned-over forest. Grasses and flowers regenerate. Nature does its thing.

Industry says it just wants to go in and take dead trees, but as the photos above show, once they get the right to get into our forests, they go for the biggest trees for the big bucks. I've met former loggers who've been there when they put old-growth trees straight into the chipper to ship the chips to China where they get turned into pressboard furniture. Industry lies and gets away with it over and over. If you've ever seen a clearcut, you know there's no justice in the way our forests are managed. And nobody's yet been able to change the equation that a 200 year old tree is going to take 200 years to grow back. Industry doesn't give a rat's behind about 200 years from now, but you do, don't you?

Right now, a really bad bill is trying to make its way onto the floor of the House, and we still have time to stop it. It's the Walden-Baird Logging Bill, H.R. 4200. If it passes, logging after fires will be expedited across the country. The bill waives the National Environmental Policy Act and makes consultation under the Endangered Species Act optional for big business. This is exactly the kind of "streamlining" of our environmental checks and balances that the Administration LOVES to give to industry.

Without these ancient forests and the roadless areas this bill would open to logging, our watersheds will suffer more degradation and devastation than the last five years of industry giveaways by government have already brought about. Logging loosens soils that end up in streams. The soil in the water kills fish and other species. Since the trees are no longer there, the soil left in the forest heats up to temperatures that keep it from being able to do its healing thing. And I don't have to go into the value of trees for cleaning the air, do I? For more info, check out the Siskiyou Project.

I could go on and on, but I'd rather you just get on the phone now and tell your representatives you think keeping our air, land and water clean is more important than making the timber industry fat and happy. Replace logging jobs with forest restoration jobs and there goes the economic argument - which is specious anyway since the American taxpayer inevitably foots the bill for cleaning up what industry leaves behind.

They're taking away our future and our health. Stop them. Now. Before it's too late. Do it for Lent. It's certainly better for the soul than just sitting there!

Testifying

2006-02-27T20:54:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-26T14:19:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-23T07:53:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-22T15:15:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-20T21:07:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-18T20:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-16T18:41:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-15T07:50:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-13T19:35:00.000-08:00

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 Portuguese
by 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?

2006-02-12T13:59:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-11T21:35:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-09T07:45:00.000-08:00

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.