okrent: a prime example of what is wrong with our media.

this is from the okrent v. Krugman slap fest (from okrent's flailings):

The New York Times: Public Editor's Web Journal (Forum/Message Board): "But I laid off for so long because I also believe that columnists are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data. But because they’re entitled doesn’t mean I or you have to like it, or think it’s good for the newspaper.
"

he did what???!?!?!?

If you are the editor of a newspaper, you should not 'lay off' correcting or confronting one of your writers if they are being misleading. It is your damn job! Sorry, dude, but whether or not you are right about Krugman playing fast and loose with the facts, you are a chicken-shit, passive/aggressive coward who didn't do his job and then wants to bitch about it later and blame someone else. Yes, you should give your opinion writers a wide berth for their opinions, but when they start throwing around questionable statistics and facts or using them in unseemly ways, you need to confront them and push til you get a clarification or a correction. If you think they are acting innappropriately, you should address it then.

Is our country being run by 13 year-olds?

Actually, please don't answer that.

a few gems from the past: the collected hits of Mason.

I originally started this blog mainly as an archive of the extended discussions which Mason and I have been having over the years. I had saved every stinking email but on a couple of occasions, had those email archives wiped out, so I wanted to cache them elsewhere, but also open them up for public consumption. I had (and still have) every intention of taking some of the better of our old discussions and putting them here.

But over time this became more a place that I used for cathartic ranting and Mason moved to NYC so we were having more of our rambling discussions in person, leaving little textual residue for web preservation. Also, there were only a very few people looking at the site, so there didn't seem to be so much urgency to put new old things up.

Mason has always been intended to be an equal partner in this enterprise but has only occasionally contributed. This will suprise no one who knows him, but neither will the quality of the few things he does share.

Since his recent post seems to have generated a flurry of comments/links/hits (not that many to some blogs, but we don't get a lot of traffic around these here parts), I thought I would point out his past posts:

Sacrificial Design

-this one was written right before the republican convention attacked NYC and played around with "industrial design, my high-school self, straight edge punk, and the upcoming Republican National Convention."


borrowed words on Abu Ghraib

-and this one was originally a personal correspondence, with Mason letting fly in un-characteristically brutal fashion on American perceptions of and response to the Abu Ghraib mess. If you read only one thing on this blog, this is it.

Listen while you work : The Magnetic Fields in Concert

I spend an awful lot of time doing fairly mind-numbing work at a computer, so I am always looking for good sources of interesting things to listen to. I've really been digging on the Creators at Carnegie series on NPR. The Caetano Veloso/David Byrne concert, the kd lang concert, and the Emmylou Harris concerts really stand out in my mind. They just put up the Magnetic Fields show on the website and I am listening to it right now.

NPR : The Magnetic Fields in Concert

I've only seen them live once (although I have seen Stephin doing wrong word kareoke on more than one occassion), but it was really nice hearing some of the songs without all the synth. Nothing against the synth and production on the albums, but naked songs are nice every once in a while.

"Dobson is the most dangerous man in America today."

Steve Gilliard says something I have been saying for years (much to the chagrin of my mother).

The News Blog: "Dobson is the most dangerous man in America today. He has money, followers and access to the White House and Congress. And he is an absolute idiot. He understands nothing about America which is complex or subtle. 24 would confuse him, Desperate Housewives would be slander, Queer as Folk, gay propaganda. His vision of Ameica would be foriegn to most of us."

Dobson can move more votes on his word than any other person in the country. But one of the dangers is that he and what he will bring about given the chance are every bit as serious as Steve and others say but how he appears to the casual observer is much more benign.

He speaks in a sympathetic voice to the majority of protestant christians. He made his name speaking to the frustrations of keeping a family together in modern america and all of his writings don't sound as extreme as he is characterized by the left. My mother regards him as a voice of moderation!!! And she is someone who thought regan was an awful president and pat robertson a moron and often votes Democrat (or used to).

This appeal to the benign issues of everyday life is how he gets otherwise reasonable folks to swallow his crap. He crams his politics in with his more everyday fare.

dobson and american family radio are going to give us more trouble than we are ready to admit right now not just in this country but globally. Their radio broadcasts are translated and broadcast in hundreds of languages and they are targeting heavily developing nations. They are very, very dangerous and they are very, very political. This is what my mother misses. They ceased to be primarily a family or religious organization a long time ago, even though this is what most of their followers signed on for. Politics and influence is their main game.

More on Dobson later...

No, we get it. We got it all along.

Cowboys and Indians - New York Times: "YES, as that anonymous officer said, the Bush administration's policy in Iraq could indeed still fail. But too few American liberals seem to grasp how high the price will be if it does."

Ferguson is making an all too common mistake. He assumes that liberals simply want to walk away from the war, all war and are blind to the consequences.

That is a stone cold stupid assertion.

Liberals were against the war precisesly because we were very aware of what could go wrong if we failed in our undertaking as well is what was wrong with it if we didn't. Our problem with this wasn't just military use. We want a strong military as much as anyone and I wouldn't hesitate to fight and kill to defend this country if the threat were real and direct. But I'll be damned if I will let some retarded man-child and his neo-con handlers start some international boondoggle for profit and smokescreen and try to pay for it with my ass.

Yes, liberals get it. Iraq has no easy solutions and pulling out without leaving any stability is a disatrous option. But it is the one that most of America voted for last November. They voted to ensure that it remained a mostly unilateral undertaking and that the people who had failed to properly plan for the realities of this conflict before rushing in remained firmly in place calling the shots. It wasn't the liberals who cast that vote so don't you dare go accusing us of being all starry eyed about how things will go if we pull out. We no there are no easy answers and there never were. If you need someone to call an idiot polly-anna, look in the whitehouse. The administration is full of them.

Damned Idiots

at least they aren't from Alabama or Mississippi for once.

New Rule on Endangered Species in the Southwest - New York Times: "In a telephone interview from the Albuquerque fish and wildlife office, Larry Bell, a spokesman, said that Mr. Hall's interpretation meant that 'the only thing that we have to consider in recovery is: does the species exist?'

'We don't have to consider whether various adaptive portions of a species exist,' he said."

The endangered species act is by no means perfect, but fuck the assholes who further screw it up. We have to get rid of this culture in this country that we should be able to do any damn thing we please and screw the consequences and that the only value that we measure is private, economic value. If someone can't own it or slap a patent on it, then there is a huge chunk of the population that would just as soon see it turned under with a bulldozer.

I won't even begin to touch the stupidity of the assertions by these Fish and Wildlife officials that current science shouldn't be used in considering issues about the preservation of endangered species; it is too blatant to bother. The ownership society strikes again. They had better be careful: one day they are going to wake up and realize they got exactly what they paid for.

the virgin ben deserves our pity...

So little ben shapiro has written a book about his generation, the 'porn generation.' World O'Crap looks into this must read summer hit: World O'Crap

Why doesn't this strike me as one of the dumbest things ever? Really, I am tired of those creepy 'christian' freak-a-zoids who only think about sex. Are all Christians crazy sex-minded freaks? No, but there is a good portion that are really demented and make you feel dirty just talking to them. When my sister was in college, her social center was the campus Wesley Foundation (the Methodist group). They were less of jocktard greek types than the baptist group and mostly pretty decent, even if a little over the top for my tastes. But there were a chunk of guys in that group who creeped me out, because you could tell that all they thought about was sex. They would talk to me about 'getting married' and really they meant 'having sex'.

I'm not the biggest fan of marriage anyway (not most marriages at least, or the way people act about marriage these days), but hearing some creepy twenty-something talk about how he has been dreaming about 'getting married' since he was 13 and getting a funny look when a pretty girl talked to him kind of made my skin crawl. Yes, most guys can be annoying hornballs, but most guys are not that retarded about it.

little benji is one big public sextard who is putting his creepiness in print. Really, someone out there should tell him that he is a perv and that this is embarassing. ben, most people who regularly have sex do not think about it as much as you. Most people can treat it as just another thing and not the big center of their life, the only thing they care about. An important thing, but not the only thing. Sure, it takes some folks a little while to figure that out when they first suddenly start dealing with sex first hand, but it takes somekind of warping to keep it that kind of an obsession.

And this is coming from a gay man. One of the interesting things about gay culture is that when gay people become more casual about their 'gayness' - being out, not caring if people think they are gay or look gay or act gay, being able to talk about relationships, talk to their family about their life, whatever - the less it all becomes about sex. I'm not going to try to tell you for a second that gay culture isn't plenty obsessed with sex, but not all of it is and the more open the community gay people find themselves in, the less sex centered it becomes.

One of the things which makes gay life the sex centered monster that it sometimes is, is that for most of us above a certain age (and still for lots of gay kids finding their way today), the idea of being gay was only presented to us in sexual terms. It was about having sex with men and that part of you was separate from everything else. Sex was sex and it was shameful and secret and having sex with other men was completely different from everything else in your life. That desire was treated as deviant and the chance that it would ever be fulfilled was supposed to be very slim and opportunities rare, so you would be constantly vigilant about keeping your eyes open for other interested men. Other gay men are just opportunities for sex, not friendships, not emotional connections, just sex.

When gay guys begin to come out and realize that sex isn't this rare thing, that they aren't alone, that their desires for companionship and intimacy with other guys isn't more scandalous than their sexual attraction, sex loses its grip as a controlling factor. You will have a hard time finding a gay man who doesn't still consider sex an important factor in a relationship and many who don't have many qualms about partaking of it casually, but the same could be said about a lot of straight folks. The point is that this partitioning off of sexuality and the subsequent obsession with it is the same thing that religion often does with it. ben shapiro is a perv who thinks everyone has sex all the time and thinks about nothing else because he has this belief system which tells him that sex is this dirty amazing thing that should be hidden and make you ashamed.

Which, of course, it can be, but it really is just another biological human function, which our adult brain is going to have to deal with one way or another. You treat it like this crazy secret club that only adults can get into, and of course kids go crazy and want to have sex and drink and do drugs or whatever. But you educate people and give straight information and some folks will still be pervs and idiots about it, but most folks will find some balance and moderation and be much healthier. Keep treating it like crazy vodoo devil magic and you end up with warped-ass adults who don't know how to deal with other people.

like the virgin ben.

shot across the bow

there's a shot across the bow if I ever saw one:

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth: "Oh, and Senator Coleman: Before you go attacking other people's character based on a single source under questionable circumstances, you might want to take a peek in your own closet. I've received lots of info from sources claiming all sorts of things - well, actually, one specific thing - about your character. Think really hard (no pun intended) if you really want that to be the standard for public personal attacks on politicians' character."

Something about the way that is worded rubs me the wrong way, but none the less I am always happy to see some asshole get his chain yanked a little even if he had already had his ass delivered to him by another fellow earlier in the day.

just desserts: dennis miller dropped.

Ha ha.

Gay Bashing: the new public face of bigotry.

Frank Rich has an interesting new article on the crazy right's trouble with all the homo's getting yanked out of their woodwork. I want to consider the overall phenomenon and two passages specifically:

Just How Gay Is the Right? - New York Times: "Today's judge-bashing firebrands often say that it isn't homosexuality per se that riles them, only the potential legalization of same-sex marriage by the courts. That's a sham. These people have been attacking gay people since well before Massachusetts judges took up the issue of marriage, Vermont legalized civil unions or Gavin Newsom was in grade school."

and

"Those were the dark ages, but it isn't entirely progress that we now have a wider war on gay people, thinly disguised as a debate over the filibuster, cloaked in religion..."



First, what's up with all the homos who are running down other gay people and gay rights in general, like ken melman or jeff guckertt (or what ever the hell his name is)? Two things:

When you don't like something about yourself you try to change it. If you are taught that it is a mortal sin, or that you are evil because of it, you try one or a combination of two things (leaving out the third option of understanding it and reorienting you assumptions about it), repressing it or destroying it.

1) Repression

Learning to control and channel biological urges in a contructive and healthy way is something we all have to do; you don't just let everything you feel take over or you are going to end up in an unhappy place, but on the flip side of that, if you try to just deny biological urges completely or deny their existence, then you are going to end up a basket case or a monster. Just look what has happened with so many Catholic priests over the last several hundred years. Not that a man can't be celibate and serve the Lord, but that not every man can and ask any gay person you know with a traditional Catholic mother what she said when he came out or got caught with another boy: join the clergy and forget about sex. But it doesn't work that way and the Catholic church will be paying for it for years to come. But not every repression is as complete as that or has as severe consequences. Most gay men (not just gay-identifying men, but men who have sex with men) either speak very little about their sex life or compartmentalize it completely. The quiet ones are the ones who just learn to be vague and switch pronouns or never speak of romantic interest. They take the asexual public-persona route and may or may not be known to be gay, but it isn't spoken of.

The double-lifers are a little more difficult. They have wives and kids or girlfriends, and then sleep with guys on the side. Much has been made of the whole 'down-low' thing, but the assertion that it is a uniquely black/latino phenomenon is ridiculous. Anyone who believes that is plain stupid. There may be a difference in how these demographics (black urban/white rural-suburban) play out their publicly disavowed sexual desires, but both groups are out there screwing other men and lying to their wives/girlfriends/families about it.

2) Destruction

Then there is the inclination to destroy it. The more honest among us kill themselves. When they believe the lies that they have been told, that homosexuality is an abomination and that they are the lowest of the low and unlovable by God or others, and they recognise honestly that this isn't just a phase they are going through and that they aren't one day going to meet the right girl who will change them or the hobby or political cause with can keep their mind off of sex, they take the logical step: destroy this evil. And they begin and end with themselves.

The dishonest and selfish try to destroy it in other people. They keep their families and they keep their gay sex and they keep it divorced from public acknowledgement and scrutiny and they try to destroy other gay people and the opportunity for gay people to have sex. It can be very direct, like Billy Jack Gaither getting brutally murdered by an alleged ex-lover. Taking it all out on someone else and destroying what you can't stand about yourself by destroying someone else who you recognize it in. Or it can be less personal and still violent: taking a baseball bat to some random gay kid or throwing rocks at a passing car with rainbow stickers. But with gay folks taking a more prominent position in the public eye, we have a new beast, those homos who want to destroy public reference to gay life to protect their secret life. This is particularly suited to the republican closet cases: they have their money, their power, their position, their families, AND their gay sex and they want to keep all of it secure. The problem isn't that they want to keep gay people from having sex, in fact it is the opposite: every gay man who is out of the closet and publicly acknowledging his homosexuality is one more man who won't be getting fucked by (or fucking) him. Because when your sexuality ceases to be this intensely private thing, divorced from the rest of your life, it is no longer just about the sex and you aren't going to settle for the fucker who just wants you to come in his mouth and then pretend like you don't know him so he can run back to his wife. You are going to have to deal with public scrutiny to what you do and you start to concider emotions a part of sex and it all becomes less two-dimensional.

When everyone knows someone gay and everyone knows there are gay people out there and starts to wonder if there are any in their neighborhood, it gets harder to have those 'special' friends and not have your wife get suspicious. So these selfish fuckers decide that they are going to just try and make sure being gay continues being treated as criminal and continues to be a subject too crude to be discussed. If you can keep the general public against it being visible, then staying invisible in your double life is much, much easier.

And to my second big point (which I will try to keep shorter) which concerns the excerpts from the article: with the exception of the above mentioned groups, it isn't just about homosexuality. It certainly isn't just about gay marriage or religion either, the attack on homosexuality is just the currently acceptable outlet for popular bigotry. The public expression of racism isn't considered really acceptable right now and the popular line on racism is that it is a problem of the past. This is horse-shit, but you go on tv and talk about blacks as being more morally depraved than white people or that if black and white people were allowed to get married that next you would have people marrying dogs and box turtles and see how long it would take for every member of the Kool Kids Klub to denounce you and shove you out of sight. Where I am from in Alabama every damn redneck starts off every racist statement with a disclaimer, "I'm not racist, but..." Actually, so do the racists here in New York, but there are more people here and I can usually choose who to be around so I don't have to bother with people who offend me quite as much. Sometimes the bigots will say the same shit about gaybashing ("I'm not homophobic, but..."), but often times they won't even bother ("Hell yeah I'm homophobic; I don't want queers around my kids!"). You can introduce a bill into congress saying that gay people matter less to the law in a way that it is harder to do with regard to people of color, so we are were the bigots are focusing their attention now.

But it isn't just about being gay, it is about dissillusionment and shirking of responsibility. It is about someone to blame. The people for whom life isn't going as well as they wish it were want someone to blame. They would prefer an easy target and someone weaker than them so they can have their cathartic lashing out without risking too much themselves. And the powers that be are eager to deliver. Black people and poor people are perennial favorites, but the recent rise to prominence of gay people in the national consiousness has made us the new big target and fundraiser bogey man. Locally, colored folks are still getting the short end of a lot of sticks and given more hoops to jump through, but you can't say that on television. So you need a new scary scape-goat: the faggot/dyke. Bigot preachers can still go on the radio and say gay people are more depraved and should be shunned. Politicians can say that our jobs shouldn't be protected from a boss's prejudices. They can say we aren't fit to adopt children, to teach in schools, to live in their communities, to be protected by the law. They can say this on national TV! Don't for a second think they wouldn't be saying the same things about black people if they could get away with it (look at how Middle Eastern people are often characterized in the media). The used to and they wish they could again.

Because the greedy fuckers at the top growing fat on corporate welfare and screwing over the rest of us need someone to identify as a public enemy to keep eyes off them. So we get the war on drugs and the war on tara and the war on fags and the war on Darwin. And the miserable greedy bastards in the religious right are more than happy to oblige because it buys them entry in to this class (in the cases of a few top dogs) or they can profit off these popular bigotries. Just listen to the american family radio network or focus on the family when they are having a fund drive. If you hear them mention the need for more funds, you may be very sure that you will be hearing a lot about homosexuality in their programming for a while. And the war on drugs has never been about the realities surrounding drugs on any but the local level and often not on that. It is an excuse to arrest black people and trouble causing students and poor people. It is an excuse to interfere in Central and South American governments.

These bastards hate gay people, but it is a symptom of a larger plague: the blame of others for their miserable lot and their exlusion from some fictional past paradise which they should have inherited. They hate. Period. Homos are just the group they are allowed to publically bash without having to really veil the bigotry too much.

Call a spade a spade: the nekkid emperor's priorites, what over what?

James Wolcott, as always, has some entertaining and thought provoking things to say today and this little snippet struck me as particularly pretty:

James Wolcott: Bend This :

----------
"To reward Blair and express his gratitude, Watson said, don't be surprised if Bush bends a little on issues significant to Blair, such as global warming and international aid.

Allow me to hazard a counter-prediction.

George Bush will do fuck-all nothing about global warming.

He may exercise his tonsils and make concerned noises, but he will dedicate himself no more vigorously to global warming than he has done for the last four pissed-away years. Like his party and the rightwing media that pimps for it (about which voice of sanity Molly Ivins has more to say), Dubya places religion over science, refuses to acknowledge that global warming even exists as a planetary peril, and has never shown the slightest interest in conservation, mass transport, or anything else that might prevent the paving over of every inch of countryside. He would plant oil rigs in Arlington Cemetery and shovel straight through the bones of dead soldiers if reserves were discovered beneath the rows of white crosses, and chainsaw the last tree in the rainforest out of pure spite. (Just this morning USA Today ran a frontpage piece about new rules that will enable more logging of national forests. I mean, could the current energy bill be more ghastly and backward-looking?)"
----------


BUT, unsuprisingly, I have a bone to pick. Not with the sentiment or tone, but with the single assertion that "Dubya places religion over science..."

Nope, not even close. He cares for religion less than he does for science, it is just that the real scientists get kind of uppity when he tries to run around in science drag. The real Christians do too, but they don't have the national microphone in the religion corner. Calling him a Christian is like calling him a scientist. It is just so much bad drag. He is interested in power and his own damn ego, the rest is all dress-up.

He warbles on about science too and tells everyone that it will all be ok, trust him. If you believe what he has to say about the environment, his opinion on global warming is based on science and his assertion that ANWR will be fine when the drilling starts is too. He talks to scientists. It's hard work.

All his religious supporters are like his scientists: paid stooges for an immoral industry complex. james dobson? He cares none too much for Christ or his flock. dobson cares about his influence and his money. He is a modern day money changer, plain and simple. His ministry is just as much an industry as the oil folks paying bush to let them provide the presidential science. He doesn't offer hope to people in Christ's teachings or help for the afflicted, he sells it. And he doesn't offer religious guidance to the prez, he sells him influence and mailing lists.

To every member of the reality based community out there, stop referring to the president's faith and 'religion' as anything but what it really is: poorly done drag. He didn't win on 'moral values,' he won on bigotry and fear; he isn't a good christian man, he is a theif in the temple and if he met Jesus to day, Jesus wouldn't know him. Jesus would turn over his table and chase him (and dobson/robertson/falwell) out of the temple.

We already know he wouldn't recognize Jesus; he turns away from him everyday in every starving man/woman/child he could feed and doesn't, in every homeless person he could give shelter to and doesn't, in every American soldier/Iraqi citizen that dies in the war he chose to begin. Jesus is a name he says, not anyone who lives in his heart or mind and not a philosopher who guides his actions or thoughts. Anyone who calls themselves a Christian and supports this man either knows very little about him or very little about their religion.

and one final note to make sure my criticism of bush's bad sci-fi/religious drag is not taken as a slight against drag in general: I appreciate wearing something which most might not at first expect one to wear, be it drag or costumes or whatever, for fun or in all sincerity but I will hold them responsible for what they do in that costume. If a man were dressed up in drag and tried to go into the ladies room to sneak a peak at the ladies, pretending that he was a woman all the while, everyone would be pissed off at him even if they could see it was just a man in a dress and kept telling him to get out (like bush in his science drag) but if he could actually pass and went about his lechery in all sincerity and made it inside? People would be pretty damn offended and probably ready to string him up, depending on how long he managed to pass and what he did with it, but that is exactly what bush is doing with religion, although following the said analogy, the religious ladies room he hangs out in for photo ops is already full of a bunch of boys in dresses wearing their momma's make-up. This is why bush doesn't actually go to church except to campaign: it wouldn't take a real congregation too long to figure out he belonged there about as much as he belonged in the ladies' room.

a few thoughts on being obsessive-compulsive.

I am working late (well, now I am just staying late to blog, but I was working late) and am in a lab which I normally work in and am often the last to leave, but to which I do not have a key. Even faced with the danger of locking yourself out of a room if you leave, there is only so long one can go without visiting the restroom. No big deal, I made sure it was unlocked before I allowed it to shut behind me.

About 8 times.

One must make sure a doornob will open again when they leave it, so trying out the lock (lock, try handle, unlock, turn handle, repeat...) isn't too out of the ordinary; it is appropriate cautiousness. But since checking locks and shutting and reshutting things has taken up a larger portion of my life to date than mere caution warrents, it got me to thinking.

I won't bore you with the details, but in college, when my bacon/corndog/salad/cereal/hawaiian punch/french fry/milkshake diet joined forces with my hypoglycemia to seize control of my mental health (never under estimate what your diet can do to your mind) while I was straddling being out/not out and attempting the reconciliation of my deep religious faith/wreckage of rural southern upbringing with my liberal arts/science education, I found myself on the receiving end of more than a few psychoanalyses. Which didn't really bother me too much, some of the tests are kind of fun, but the point is I was sudden faced with several pages detailing the specifics of what most people who have ever known me have known all along: I am smart and I am crazy. Specifically, suffering from anxiety, depression, attention-deficit, and obsession/compulsion. I don't like using the suffix 'disorder' when talking about these things, because I consider them pretty fundamental to who I am, even if there have been times when they have gotten the best of me. I have seen friends with their 'disorders' medicated out of them and I think I would rather just keep my crazy, thank you very much.

Anyway, playing with the door and feeling my blood rise and trying the lock a few too many times, it struck me how little of my time these days I spend retreading menial tasks and rechecking everything and began thinking that my tendency towards compulsions were rooted in what level of security I had that I could escape/undo the consequences of my action.

With this door, I realized that I retried it as a response to not having a key (if I had a key, I would have been feeling for it in my pocket before shutting the door) and what it would mean if I did lock myself out:

1) computer left on

2) workspace not cleared (workspace is shared; would affect other people)

3) planner and jacket trapped overnight

None of this is very interesting, but I was reminded that my compulsions don't affect me nearly as much as they used to. I still retry things and double (triple, quadruple...) check things sometimes, but not like I used to. I don't lean away from telephone poles as I pass them or meticulously avoid stepping on cracks or rearrange everything on my desk to sit at right angles. Why not?

Because I am less convinced that whatever disasterous consequence follows my lack of attention to detail will be permanent. Not that I ever thought that I would suffer forever for getting lost in conversation while driving and not leaning away from a telephone pole which I was passing, but there was some impending fear that something was missed and it was missed FOREVER. I should have leaned away from that telephone pole, and didn't and now couldn't. And at that point, I had generally missed a few more dire opportunities to lean away from more telephone poles but I couldn't care because I had already not leaned away from one, so what did it matter? But if missing one was bad, then isn't leaning away from even one good, so I should start leaning away from them again, right? Maybe I should also lean away from solid double lines and stop signs?

Whether you want to or not, the obsessive-compulsive finds himself with more of an understanding of rockslides and avalanches than one generally wants. If you have ever tried walking over loose gravel or dirt on an incline, what your legs feel like is what my mind felt like most of the time.

I find the world around me less inclined to avalanche lately, having been blessed with a few floods and earthquakes to move on some of the loose ground and crud that wouldn't support my weight, but tonight was struck that it isn't only that so much of the unsubstantial had been eliminated, but that I didn't really care so much if the door didn't open back up. That I have gotten to a place where I can believe that there is always another chance, that anything can be fixed or even if it can't, there will be something else. One indiscretion is no longer seen as the beginning of a disaster, but just one more thing.

This isn't coming out as clearly as it seemed in my head as I walked away from that door which I knew was unlocked, but there will be other times to sling around musings about obsessive/compulsive tendencies (or the lack there of).

Hit it til it breaks: focus on the network!

The focus on the family ad during the season finale to Super Nanny... can we just say 'WTF?'

Those folks are crazy. The organization is about power and money, Jesus is just a prop. I attended one of their 'love won out' seminars (the ex-gay things, and I went as an openly hostile combatant to supervise well-meaning and misguided relatives, not to 'straighten' myself out) and the whole thing was worse than I thought. It is a money changing operation, pure and simple. Thieves in the temple.

Anyway, MAX BLUMENTHAL is calling on folks to call the FCC, which i think is great, but I really don't have a whole lot of faith in the FCC these days and don't really feel like I have a whole lot of leverage with them.

But I can tell ABC to shove it if they piss me off. So I did.


this is the email address I got from their contact page: netaudr@abc.com

and this is what I sent them...

To whom it may concern,

In light of the rejected United Church of Christ ad promoting tolerance last year, I have to regard the decision to air a Focus on the Family ad during the season finale of Super Nanny hypocritical. For your network to reject an ad by a major denomination suggesting that they welcome everyone at their churches for being too 'controversial' but to then turn around and allow a religious group who agressively promote bigotry against homosexuals and the use of dominance and intimidation to control children as completely ok.

Super Nanny is an excellent show, and the child rearing techniques espoused on your show stand in stark contrast to what is espoused by dr. dobson and his organization, but you couldn't have told that from the ad. Seemingly, I was not alone in being horrified that this ad was shown during the finale, as several of my friends called during the comercial break to express similar sentiments and more have brought it up in later conversation. Had your company not earlier taken a stand against airing controversial religious groups ads (I still fail to see what the controversy of a church professing openess is), I would just consider this in poor taste and put myself on notice to change the channel next time I saw FOTF ads, but as it stands I felt this required a formal complaint. Please accept this letter as a formal complaint about the censorship of espressions of tolerance and the promotion of bigotry and abuse. I do believe that perhaps no one at the network may have understood previously that this is how this group is perceived in the country at large, but I consider focus on the family a hate group which is more political than religious and more facist than Christian and want to you to be very aware that the presence of their ads will affect my viewing habits. I would hate to give up Super Nanny and some of the other excellent programs on your network, but I will turn away and never look back if this becomes a regular occurance.

Thank you for your time,

FU MTA

When you have a 3-borough commute to start with and the two lines you take are already insanely crowded, you don't have much of a sense of humor about the delays that are incurred while the mta is 'improving' the lines. I originally wanted to believe that they really are trying to make things better and that they are concerned about the riders and how the system works, but I don't. You just can't ride the trains regularly and thing that the folks running the show are doing things right. They are jacking prices, reducing service, cutting maintainence crew then blaming delays on the riders, removing service booths, and screaming about money problems while they try to give away valuable propetry to an unpopular project. I'll bet you a dollar that none of the upper management has taken a pay cut in the last few years and those are the morons fucking things up for the rest of us. Not the drivers or the maintainence crews or the folks in the booths; they do their jobs and the assholes in suits who can't seem to run things in an effective way blame us and fire them.

Sorry, guys. An hour is too long to have to wait on the next train when you are inexplicably ushered out of your car at 125th to wait on the next train. People have to get to their jobs. If you can't do yours, you should resign.

FU MTA.

good americans...

I have kind of tried to stay out of the pope was a nazi fray. Really, his creepy looks and creepier politics are more than enough for me to dislike him, so going back and reminding us that he was ok being a part of one of the worst episodes in modern history is overkill. And there is the whole, "he was a kid" thing, which for damn near any other post, I would think is a perfectly reasonable argument, but if you are supposed to be called by God... whatever. Not my beef. I'm not Catholic so he is just one more old creepy fellow with bad politics and power that he will probably misuse.

but I am linking to this Billmon post about the whole thing so I can steal this quote:

"Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure!"

Whiskey Bar: The Good German

What are you willing to endure?

Thank you again, Jon Stewart, but...

Oliver Willis has a video from the daily show with Jon Stewart tearing into the new Texas law trying to keep gay people from being foster parents:

Lord Almighty, CNN Sucks | Oliver Willis

This is one of those moments where Jon is brilliantly indignant and terribly effective with his critisim and I salute him for calling out news hosts for not calling their guests on their bullshit.

BUT...

While B was house sitting last week (ie-staying at a great apartment in convenient Manhattan location with Tivo and good cable), I caught an episode of the Daily Show (can't remember which day specifically) and dennis miller was the guest. Jon might as well have licked the bottom of his shoes for all the fawning he was doing. Was dennis funny? Yeah, better than he has been the last few years and he was on a roll, but he isn't running around just doing stand up these days, he has a show on a news channel and he uses his visibility to promote right-wing trash. So he said a few things about the righties being silly about their stance on gay marriage. Awsome, but you don't say that and then turn around and start calling environmentalism a bunch of horse-shit and expect to get rid of your label as republican do-boy. Jon, it is great that you call out CNN anchors for not calling idiots out who are misrepresenting sides of a debate, but what do you do when you have a guest on who is misrepresenting the evidence of global climate change? You lick his hairy butthole and act like you have never heard anything so funny.

I don't care if he is a comedian or not, if he is that funny and fast on his toes, he can handle being called on his shit and make a joke about his own damn ignorance. Maybe Jon isn't up on his climate science, but miller's assertions were pretty bluntly dumb. Even just a question about the source of his assurance or a "Who knew dennis miller was an authority on global warming?" would have been better than the gobbling up of the crap coming out of his mouth. He wasn't presenting his stuff as just jokes, his monologue had a solid and visible agenda: ridicule the science asserting global warming and ideas of the effectiveness of alternative energy sources. Even Joe Scarborough is more progressive on this subject, fuck, even frist is more progressive.

So yes, dennis, you are still a dumb right wing stooge. We are all happy that you realize that you can't reform all the gay men, but until you stop pushing the oil industry's propaganda line, fuck you.

Big 30 test results

I kind of love taking personality tests and similar things. I came across this one today through some google search I was doing. Anyway, here are the results if anyone cares to have a detailed explanation of my personality.

this is from SimilarMinds.com:

Advanced Big 30 Personality Test Results Sociability |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 85% Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 72% Assertiveness |||||||||||||||||| 51% Activity Level |||||||||||||||||||||||| 77% Excitement-Seeking ||||||||||||||| 45% Enthusiasm |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 86% Extroversion ||||||||||||||||||||| 69% Trust |||||||||||||||||| 56% Morality |||||||||||| 40% Altruism |||||||||||||||||||||||| 78% Cooperation ||||||||| 29% Modesty ||||||||| 24% Sympathy |||||||||||||||||| 59% Friendliness ||||||||||||||| 47% Confidence ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Neatness |||||||||||||||||| 52% Dutifulness |||||||||||||||||| 56% Achievement ||||||||||||||| 41% Self-Discipline ||||||||||||||| 49% Cautiousness |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 86% Orderliness |||||||||||||||||| 59% Anxiety |||||||||||||||||| 59% Volatility |||||||||||| 31% Depression ||| 7% Self-Consciousness ||| 8% Impulsiveness |||||||||||| 37% Vulnerability |||||||||||| 38% Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Imagination |||||||||||||||||||||||| 71% Artistic Interests |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 86% Introspection |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 87% Adventurousness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 71% Intellect |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 84% Liberalism |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Openmindedness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 80%

Take Free Advanced Big 30 Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Where will we get our batteries?

If you don't live in NYC, this post may make no sense to you, but if you have a commute long distances on the subway, you are no doubt familiar with the folks selling batteries and other assorted junk on the train. This may be a product of my conspiracy leaning mind, but I have noticed lately that the battery folks aren't as bold as usual and was wondering if the cops have been cracking down? I ride the same train and see the same little Asian ladies with their batteries everyday. They used to be bold, belting out their warning cry of 'baaaaaaaaaaaaaterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss' and shaking noise-makers so even if I fell asleep I would hear them coming from the other end of the car. These days they keep their wares almost hidden and their announcement demure, so you almost don't see them til they are on top of you.

They look gun-shy lately and I can't help but assume there is a reason for this. I pray they are left alone because batteries are expensive and inconvienent and expensive to buy elsewhere. Please leave the battery sellers alone.

apology for a problem I am not quite sure how to fix.

Blogger has been kind of funny lately and eaten a few posts and done various strange things. The most recent and annoying of these quirks is that the sidebar on the blog now comes at the bottom of the page instead of on the SIDE where one expects a sidebar to be. I haven't changed anything on the template which would account for this so there is nothing I can change back. I am not sure if this problem shows up on all computers, so hopefully on your computer everything is hunky-dory and you have no idea what I am talking about, but on my computer if I look at the blog I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to get to links and archive stuff. Anyone else had similar problems?

scarborough on Maher

I always liked Politically Incorrect, and have only seen a few episodes of Real Time but have liked what I have seen. I watched friday for the first time in a long while and I guess I should say I liked the show, but some of the dialogue on it was fairly painful. Bill Maher does a pretty good job as the comedian gadfly, but he cowed to some pretty silly arguments by joe scarborough.

There was plenty to complain about in what scarborough said, although it was less annoying than he usually comes across, but the argument which he was given a pass for which left smoke shooting from my ears was his glib dismissal of religious leaders'(specifically the pope in this case) responsibility in the spread of HIV, particularly in Africa. His argument was that if folks were going around having multiple partners and extramarital sex, then they obviously aren't paying too much attention to what the church thinks about moral matters anyway and the church's position on condoms is not why they aren't using them.

In so far as the assertion that the church's position on condoms is not directly influencing most individual decisions directly, he is ok. The problem is that his assertion deflects attention away from the real issue in which the church is implicated: influencing public policy to make birth control and information about disease and prevention less accessible to the public.

I have no beef with a preacher telling his congregation that they should not use condoms and should only have sex in matrimony and that when they follow his advice and have children coming out their ears that they shouldn't have an abortion. I would argue with what he says, but I got nothing against his right to say it, in so far as he is explicit about his intentions towards influencing the hearts of individuals. The second it steps over into attempting to directly affect public policy to take away options from those individuals whose hearts he can't sway, he is implicated in the outcome of his efforts (rather than the individual, since he was no longer trying to influence their choice but rather control it).

This is the fundamental difference and one which joe either missed or intentionally ignores. A religious leader telling his flock that they are to do this or that or face an unhappy deity in the after life is fine with me (so long as his flock can choose another shepherd if they think he is crazy); a religious leader who works to influence public policy to limit the availability of health care options and disease prevention to the public is way, way out of bounds. The Catholic church has enormous influence in Africa and has used this influence to affect public policy in such a way as to make contraception and other reproductive information and services less available. president bush and his cronies are guilty of the same crime with all their riders on HIV funding requiring abstinance only bullshit and emphasis of the imperfection of condoms. Both groups are knowingly killing people.

So, if you are a curmudgeonly comedian with a political antagonism show and one of your guests makes the assertion that the church has no responsibility in the spread of AIDS in Africa because the sinners doing the dangerous deeds ain't been listening to the pope anyway or they wouldn't be screwing around so much, tell that guest to STFU until the the church stops trying to influence public policy to limit access to condoms and information about reproductive health.

Right-wing Cry Babies on the march.

My crazy cousin (who, incidentally, is a joy to be around in real life and who I can't actually remember her ever bring up politics around me but who sends lunatic fringe junk via email, so if I am writing about her on the computer, she is my crazy cousin) sent me a link to this petition: http://www.reclaimamerica.org/Pages/Campaigns/Houseworship/housesWorshiphm.asp (I am not linking to it, but you can go to the site if you wish).

Basically, it is load of horse shit. Since when did religious leaders tip-toe around about social and moral issues? They just aren't allowed to campaign for political candidates in the pulpit. They can address the issues all they want, and if they really want to campaign, then they can give up their tax exempt status. But the biggest cry-babies in the country, the radical religious right, are playing the martyr again to try to get their way so they can consolidate even more power in the loony fringe hand.

you can read more about their efforts here:

American Civil Liberties Union : Letter to the House Urging Opposition to H.R. 235, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act

This is one of those things that I wish I could just ignore and say, "this will never pass" but that is kind of how I always regarded the creationist morons and now they are crippling science classes all over the country and getting the NYTimes to run op-eds on ID. So lets watch this one. And for God's sake, if you hear one of your friends or relatives mentioning this stuff and trying to get people to sign it, speak up. Don't let these things go.

New Pope Reconsidered

Early I stated that it seemed like this new pope might just be more of the same so maybe it wasn't too much worse than it could have been. I think I have to reconsider that statement.

I'm not Catholic, so I don't come to the table with a mound of knowledge about who is who in the church and am only slowly piecing together an understanding of who this pope is. And the more I learn, the more he scares me.

Perhaps it is juvenile, but when I look at him, I can't help but feel like he is evil. John Paul II looked jovial even when his politics werer scary, but Benedict XVI would look frightening even if he were kissing a baby or petting a kitten. Maybe especially if he were kissing a baby or petting a kitten. Perhaps this is from the Star Wars movies being too strong an influence in my developmental years and his uncanny resemblence to the Emperor, but I can't shake it.

Last night at dinner friends suggested that it was ok that he was creepy and scary, cause he is old and will die soon. I somehow don't buy it for a second. Evil old men keep right on living for terribly long times. I have this gut feeling that he is going to cling to that position til he is over 100.

But again, who knows? I just find the fellow creepy and wish the papers would stop putting his face on everything. I keep expecting lightning to shoot out of his hands as he cackles watching the suffering of a young jedi knight.

Little League Prayer: Hit It Till It Breaks.

Steve Gilliard links to a post over at Kos by a mother whose son's little league team has just found the power of prayer and decided to start the games off with it and play Dobson's radio show in the refreshment stand. She is annoyed by this intentional poke in the eye, and questions what to do, basically liking the folks she is being irked by and not wanting to cause a stink. Steve echoes her concern:

"But how does one stand up for one's principles and not start a fight? Or maybe one does start a fight."

Exactly, you do start a fight. Every damn one of us should be picking a fight with our families and friends right now. As I said a few months ago, hit it til it breaks!!!!

I realized over Christmas that my family expects the more reasonable folks to just take things in stride and kind of ignore the stupider statements and politics that some members of our family and community sling around. Deference is given to their statements because everyone knows that they will blow up and not let an argument go no matter how wrong they may be. So people avoid talking politics with them and just kind of 'un-huh' s their views.

But thankfully, I am at least marginally known for being obstinant and stubborn as well and folks seem to be getting the idea that if they really want to step to me on politics or religion, they had better be ready to go the distance because I am not just going to agree with them and they won't get a pass for being annoying and they better be able to back up their assumptions because I am going to ask them their sources and I am going to check them.

After a while they start backing off. I am living away from home, but I have put every relative who I can find an email address for on an email list and I send them forwards of progressive articles and cartoons and whatever else damn near every day, often several a day. And I often write prologues to give them a little bit of an idea as to why I am sending them what I am sending. From some, I still get the occasional retaliatory letter, criticising me for criticising the prez, but I just take that as an invitation to tell them why I think the prez needs to be criticised.

I am under no delusion that suddenly my family is going to be transformed into this super liberal, progressive bunch, but the next time I am home and someone wants to crow about how great the president is, they are going to try real damn hard to make sure I am not around and if someone does make the mistake of doing it at the dinner table or in a room full of people and the rest of the room gets tired of politics, the peacemakers and soothers are going to target the otherside when they try to pick a party to calm down. Because I have taken the offensive and put them on notice that being dumb about politics will not be fun if I am around.

Be nice, don't make it personal, and don't budge an inch. Don't scream, don't huff, don't accuse, but be firm and clear and make your objections known. Become the one they don't want to piss off and those in your association who hate conflict will do the work for you.

In Steve's comments, there was a link to this article:slacktivist: And whenever you pray

The people's comments are pretty damn idiotic, but you know why they are saying them? Because they can. Because no one is calling them out for being retarded. No one is making the point this article is making (and that their preachers should be making instead of feeding their damn idiocy) that if anything, prayer should be private and that praying as a public show of faith is anathema to Jesus' teachings.

You don't have to just sit back and take it. At this point sitting back and taking it is a luxury none of us can afford. When you are confronted by idiocy, oppression, bigotry, intolerance, or ignorance, hit it til it breaks. It will take a few swings to make the first crack, but after that it is easy.

New links...

I am a slow moving. At least when I can be. So sometimes I am slow to post things and often times I am slow to update things about the blog, but I felt that I had to add a few links to reflect my daily reading.

Majikthise and Steve Gilliard came to me by way of James Wolcott's blog (I should link to them in the text here and now, but since I am not commenting on a specific post and they are now in the side bar of links, I'll let you click over there). Both are great and have become daily stops for me.

Lizz just got her new site up and running and although I am sad to no longer have her on the radio, I am happy to have her on the web.

New Pope...

so there is a new pope now. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I'm not Catholic, so the pope matters to me only in so far as he is a world leader. This fellow(can't spell his name and you can google it anyway) seems to be more of the same -#2 under Pope John Paul II, 78 yo, from the vatican powers that be- so I guess that is about the best we could have hoped for. It didn't look like there were really a lot of terribly progressive candidates and there were some terribly scary possibilities, so more of the same is at least not a loss.

but who knows what the future holds or what an old man will do. So now we enter into another pope-out wash of all news and events, so I have already had to turn my radio station away from NPR so I can listen to music and not hear pope stuff all the time. I turned to the lovely KEXP out of Seattle which has a reliable and user-friendly webcast. I think I am going to go listen to their archived live performance by the Decemberists.

KEXP 90.3 FM - where the music matters

"So friggin' what?"

James Wolcott lead me to reading roger simon's simpleton crap about the new play about Rachel Corrie. Unfortunately I continued to read down into the comments:

Roger L. Simon: Raising Rickman: "A third point, mine, is, what if the dozer DID run over her on purpose? So friggin' what?"

What a fucking prick. Culture of life, my ass.

These goddamned idiots who run and scream about Hollywood/the liberal elite's lack of values and cry and moan about all these abortions and assisted suicides are a bunch of heartless pricks who just want to control other people when it comes down to it. A young woman feels so strongly about a cause that she stands in front of a bulldozer which mows her down and the commentary comes to, "So friggin' what?"

roger simons, buddy larsen, and the rest of your pals: fuck you and the crusty little emptinesses where your hearts should be.

She'd a been a good women if there had been someone there to throw a pie in her face every day of her life.

My apologies to (1 you my readers for linking to ann coulter and (2 Flannery O'connor.

I link to ann because when people first tried to describe her to me I thought their descriptions to be impossibly ridiculous and stupid. Surely this person they described was a creation from a SNL skit, or just some joking exageration. No one could be that stupid and annoying and rude and still be published or allowed to talk on tv. This thing just couldn't be real.

Then I read some of her columns. And saw her on tv. And changed the channel as it was the only appropriate response. It is hard to describe her without using explitives and cruder slang terms, so I won't bother. She couldn't be parodied; she is the parody.

But what gets me most about her and all these other retarded idiots given air time (notably rush, sean, bill) is that they are all cry-baby wimps. It is one thing for a child to act tough and then cry alot and try to get their parents to retaliate when the kids on the playground get tired of their shit, but for grown adults to act this way is pathetic. So you have a show or a column and lots of cash and can berate anyone who doesn't bend to your whims. You still whine and whine and whine like a baby when ever anyone disagrees with you or calls you on your shit.

Or throws food at you.

I am of the ilk that thinks that food throwing is one of the nicer ways that people can express their dissatisfaction with this type of high-profile trash. But if you have been hit with (or missed being hit by) a pie hurled at you, this is not the equivalent of someone trying to inflict serious bodily damage. They obviously chose something soft and mushy to hit you with. They could have thrown bricks.

Reading more of her whining cry-baby shit makes me think that perhaps they should have.

Ann Coulter: It's only funny until someone loses a pie

There are not enough pies in all the world to express the scorn with which this woman should be regarded.

The bitter taste of one's own medicine.

Turn-about is fair play.

New York Post Online Edition:: "'One gay student asked whether government had any business enacting and enforcing laws against consensual sodomy. Following Scalia's answer, the student asked a follow-up: 'Do you sodomize your wife?' The audience was shocked, especially since Mrs. Scalia [Maureen] was in attendance. The justice replied that the question was unworthy of an answer.' "

Why the hell isn't it worthy of an answer? If you, in your capacity as a judge, are willing to say that the government has a right to intrude upon and sanction private citizens for consensual private acts, it is fairly pathetic for you to then suggest that one should not question another about private sexual behaviour between concenting adults. If you support the law being able to intrude upon another's bedroom behavior, you should be ready and willing to stand firm and discuss your own.

Either your refusal suggests guilt on your own part ('I won't incriminate myself') or that the subject matter of the question (sodomy between consenting adults) should be off-limits to third party scrutiny. Which is it?

hyperhydration...

The New York Times has an article and an editorial about a new study showing that over-hydrating can be lethal or lead to brain damage. I remember reading something about our now at peace Teri who had suffered braindamage caused by low sodium, how she drank copious amounts of liquids as part of her dieting. I know it was supposed to be all about the bulemia, but one wonders...

Regardless, this is scary and something to think about:

The New York Times > Health > Study Cautions Runners to Limit Their Water Intake: "That year, a 28-year-old woman reached Heartbreak Hill, at Mile 20, after five hours of running and drinking sports drinks. She struggled to the top. Feeling terrible and assuming she was dehydrated, she chugged 16 ounces of the liquid.
'She collapsed within minutes,' Dr. Siegel said.
She was later declared brain dead. Her blood sodium level was dangerously low, at 113 micromoles per liter of blood. (Hyponatremia starts at sodium levels below 135 micromoles, when brain swelling can cause confusion and grogginess. Levels below 120 can be fatal.) "

Please, please let Lynn Magulis respond to these idiots.

so something is funky on their page that makes copying specific sections damn near impossible, so you will just have to go there to read the stuff for yourself, but really folks, if you are familiar enough with Lynn Margulis's work to quote her, you probably shouldn't be quoting her in support of intelligent design/creationism bullshit. Yeah, she picks fights with other biologists and isn't really gentle about it, but she is still a scientist and a damn good biologist. Scientist argue with one another all the time.

go read their idiot invocation of her:

Intelligent Design the Future - Evolution: Cloaking Ignorance in Terminology

now tell me their characterization of her squares with this synopsis from her bio on the U Mass website:

Lynn Margulis: "Her publications, spanning a wide range of scientific topics, include original contributions to cell biology and microbial evolution. She is best known for her theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges a central tenet of neodarwinism. She argues that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations. Rather new tissues, organs, and even new species evolve primarily through the long-lasting intimacy of strangers. The fusion of genomes in symbioses followed by natural selection, she suggests, leads to increasingly complex levels of individuality. Dr. Margulis is also acknowledged for her contribution to James E. Lovelock�s Gaia concept. Gaia theory posits that the Earth�s surface interactions among living beings sediment, air, and water have created a vast self-regulating system."

She doesn't attack natural selection. She is no enemy of Darwin. She takes a different route on what is the most significant in terms of origin of variation. But perhaps I speak too much for her. If she becomes aware of this charterization of her work, I would love to hear her response.

jonah goldberg Opens His Trap About Science Jobs

I am not going to attempt to smack ol' Jonah Bologna down. Already been done a couple of times by folks who are better equipped to do it than I am.

This was my first visit to the Abstract Factory, but I think I will visit there again:

The Abstract Factory: In which Jonah Goldberg performs feats that bend the laws of space and time

In the comments section following this, some one wrote, "Maybe professors are liberal because teaching involves helping people." Nope, nice sentiment, but professors tend towards liberal because they are smart. jonah is a right-wing pundit for the opposite reason.

hysTERRIa: another fucking idiot opens his trap - powerline's hinderacker

This was commented on by Tbogg, more concisely and amusingly than I may manage, but caught my eye none the less:
��TBogg��: "I don't know how to account for it, unless one concludes that for some liberals, politics is about hate, period."

"... for some liberals, politics is about hate, period." ?!?!?!

WTF????

It gets under my skin when some holier than thou prick decides to suddenly play the nice voice of reason and restraint and pull some why-can't-we-all-get-along bull when the crazies in their constituency have taken over and turned the thing into a shameful freakshow. They call her husband a killer, pass special legislation interfering in a private life-and-death decision, parade a brain dead lady around for (attempted) political gain and WE are the hysterical fools for whom politics is all about hate? Don't you dare.

Take your fake piety and fake rationality and shove it. We will be lucky if someone doesn't end up shot in this whole ordeal and it ain't going to be the side I am standing on that pulls the trigger if it happens.

Like the lovely Ms. Dickenson I do not have time for hate, but I do keep a healthy reserve of rage around so perhaps from time to time I do need to be told to be little nicer and more positive. And there are many from whom I will happily take such a calling out, but I'm not taking fake-conciliatory finger pointing passive-aggressive bullshit from anybody.


(here is the crap in its original habitat: Power Line: March 2005 Archives)

Angry attack nerds invade moron town.

Who will stop the insanity? When is the reality-based community going to leave the lunatic idiots all to their lonesome and let them be dumb and annoying in peace?

"'We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture,' "

Really though, it appears from reading the article that it is the sane folks in town who are under attack by the loonies. The science teachers were already teaching SCIENCE in their classes, it is they who are being attacked by the space-cadet fringe who think they should also be teaching religion.

Really, I don't care too much if these folks wanted to just pull away form everything and leave science alone and not bother with it. I would kind of feel bad for the kids born into it, but hey, the sins of the father and all. If they really want nothing to do with evolution or science, fine. Give us back our technology and take your bible off to some commune and do things your own way. Leave your phones, your tv's, your modern pharmaceudicals, your modern crops, your plastic, you cars, and your airtravel at the door and don't let it hit your fat butt as you exit the 20th century. We are taking our biology/geology/physics/astronomy/meteorology and going home. We try to share, but you just want to break our toys and boss around so we are leaving and you can just play amongst yourselves.

Honestly, people. Can we start calling these lunatics out? Want to believe that God created the world in 7 days? I don't care; fine. Have any faith you like and teach it at church, but don't call it science and don't try to use it to attack something which couldn't have less concern with how you want to organize your mind. You have your faith and I'll have mine, but keep your faith or lack there of the hell off of our science.

Marriage schmarriage...

Having been told to leave the gay kids alone til 2006 when we can be paraded out in front of the bigots and all the ashamed parents with homo offspring can vote against our gayness, the republican bullies had to find someone new to pick on. Trying to beat up on social security is going about as well as trying to beat up a brick wall, so they needed something nice and soft to kick around. Having tired of hurting kittens (yeah, you mister frist) and knowing the nekkid emperor kind of has a thing for puppies, they decided to slap around a brain-dead lady.

Sure, we all know this is beyond the pale, but really, you shouldn't be suprised. All in all, I would kind of rather them stick to picking on the gays. We can at least fight back. Everybody loves our gay dollars and needs a decent haircut every now and then, so they kind of have to pull punches some of the time.

It is interesting to see what happens when their 'culture of life' bullshit runs smack into their 'sanctity of marriage' load of crap. Well, Mullah Delay is here to tell us which is more important: "The sanctity of life overshadows the sanctity of marriage."

Interesting how that goes.

Funny that the sanctity of marriage folks are trying remove this husband's right to try to carry out his wife's wishes after she became incapacitated. These are the same folks that said Hillary should have divorced Bill and actually fault them for working things out and staying together. They support marriage, but then don't want to let some people get married. Huh?

But I guess that is what you expect for folks who scream about a culture of life, but support the death penalty and creamed over going to war with a nation which didn't present a real threat to us and who want less restrictions on gun-ownership and who have destroyed sex ed in this nation and with that are actively working to help HIV infection and unwanted pregnancies increase.

They don't care about life, they don't care about marriage. They want to control you, they want to control me. If we have something they want, they are all friendly and nice. If not, they will push you in the gutter and kick you every which a way they can.

Gay folks are learning to kick back. That is why they are going after invalids now. Shameless bastards.

frozen in time

the posting below was not one for this blog but in advertantly ended up here and now refuses to go away. I deleted it after putting it in it's proper place, and yet it remains on this blog. my blogger, my blogger, why have you forsaken me? I appreciate the service, but glitches like this will drive a person batty.

UPDATE: so now said post is gone and all is right in the world again. Thank you.

I want Lizz back. Now.

Lizz Winstead is unfortunately no longer on Unfiltered, the moring radio show she hosted with Rachel Maddow and Chuck D on Air America. Right from the start, Unfiltered was my favorite show on the station. I used to listen to it every morning (my responsibilities have changed at my job keeping me away from my desk more often or I would still be a regular listener), and always walked away informed and entertained. I like Al's show and Randi's too, but really Unfiltered has always been my favorite.

During the republican convention, the Unfiltered crew came down and did their broadcast from a restarant, inviting us to come join them and standing with us at the front lines. They helped keep me sane while trying to find my brother who had been swept up in one of the mass arrests and kept incommunicado and without arraignment for several days. When he finally did get free, he met me at their show and they took one look at him and put him on the air to tell his story.

Now Lizz is gone and the show itself faces an uncertain future. Why? I have my thoughts, but the people directly involved seem to be keeping mum on the subject, so I will defer to their judgement on the matter.

But I will point to Gawker's nice words on Lizz and her mystery disappearance:

Gawker : Archive for Media: Commentary

Lizz, we miss you. (PS-thank you for the Chrismas tree stand. It is still safe and sound and I will get B to return it soon)

Cunning realism: social security and the stock market

A new blog that I found through Josh Marshall:

-THE CUNNING REALIST-: SOME OPENING COMMENTS AND A BIT ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM: "With an even greater public focus and reliance on the stock market, the political pressure to take extraordinary, unconventional measures to boost stock prices--pressure that already exists--will be overwhelming."

This is just his first post, but wow. Will be one to watch.

Don't like being called Nazis?

Then stop acting like them:

My Way News: "WASHINGTON (AP) - A pair of Jewish groups accused Sen. Robert Byrd on Wednesday of making an outrageous and reprehensible comparison between Adolf Hitler's Nazis and a Senate GOP plan to block Democrats from filibustering. A GOP senator called for Byrd to retract his remarks.
Byrd spokesman Tom Gavin denied that Byrd, D-W.Va., had compared Republicans to Hitler. He said that instead, the reference to Nazis in a Senate speech on Tuesday was meant to underscore that the past should not be ignored.
'Terrible chapters of history ought never be repeated,' Gavin said. 'All one needs to do is to look at history to see how dangerous it is to curb the rights of the minority.'
Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the Senate's No. 3 Republican, called for Byrd to retract his comments, saying they 'lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate.'
Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the remarks 'poisonous rhetoric' that are 'reprehensible and beyond the pale.'
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Byrd's remarks showed 'a profound lack of understanding as to who Hitler was' and that the senator should apologize to the American people.
'It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party's tactics could in any way resemble those of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party,' Foxman said.
In his comments Tuesday, Byrd defended the right senators have to use filibusters - procedural delays that can kill an item unless 60 of the 100 senators vote to move ahead.
Byrd cited Hitler's 1930s rise to power by, in part, pushing legislation through the German parliament that seemed to legitimize his ascension.
'We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men," Byrd said. "But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends."

Byrd then quoted historian Alan Bullock, saying Hitler "turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

Byrd added, "That is what the nuclear option seeks to do." "

Divide and conquer.

I recently had coffee with a friend who I am just getting to know, and the conversation forced me to try to articulate some thoughts on some issues that have been rolling around in my head lately, mainly about race and sexuality.

J is an African-American fellow who grew up in predominantly black communities in Chicago and Minneapolis. I am a European-American chap who grew up in rural and small town Mississippi and Alabama, in predominantly white neighborhoods but in close proximity to black people in the larger community. Both of us are 27, homosexual, college educated, and have lived in NYC for slightly more than 2 years.

As we talked about family and how we interact with our families, he said positions race, religion, and homosexuality caused some tension with his mother (and family/community at large, but it sounded as if she was where general family attitudes collided with his so I will use her as the representative voice of that community as I understood it). They come from the south side in Chicago, and she viewed white people with suspicion and seemed almost hostile to the mixing of the races (this is meant as much culturally and community wise as it is meant in the 'mixed baby' sense). I got the feeling that she would not have been happy that her son was spending his evening in New York talking to this white kid. It didn't sound like it was so much animosity towards white people in general, but just wanting to keep things segregated. Black (and conversely, white) people were better off sticking with their own kind. Mixing things up just introduced troublesome things.

Like homosexuality. It seemed that she viewed homosexuality as a mainly white perversion or like some affliction which the black community is dragged into by the white folk. That her son sometimes hung out with white folks and was gay seemed intimately connected in some way.

I can't say that I ever got the impression from my parents that my having black friends and being a homo are connected in their minds. If you are uncomfortable with basic social interaction between people of different races, our corner of Alabama/Mississippi probably isn't a place you should live, so perhaps it this is partially because of a more casual regard for racial interaction from a less effectively segregated community at large (or one which was more aggresively integrated in the previous generation), but more importantly, there is little reason for my parents to associate homosexuality with black people, while there are, unfortunately, many reasons for a black person to associate gay culture with white culture.

Much to all of our detriment, the major gay organizations turn a blind and negligent eye to gay people of color and only really represent the wealthy and fairly secure middle/upper middle class white homosexuals. The battles they pick are the battles for those who have already made it to have it just a little better. Partner benefits, gay marriage, cheaper and better HIV meds. Yes, I am perhaps being unfair; all of these are important issues, but you have to have a certain amount of security and safety to really enjoy any of these. The poor, the rural, the inner city (of any color), and (most) people of color aren't really seen as part of the 'gay community'. The 'gay community' is Will and Grace or Queer as Folk (I have never seen the L Word, so I hesitate to include it in my example; not trying to exclude the lezzies on purpose). Black people aren't seen as part of the 'gay community' unless they are somewhat assimilated into this 'white' world. The rest act on their sexuality in more of a 'down low' fashion and that is more of a black community issue than a gay issue, right? Sounds ridiculous, but you would be suprised how prevalent these attitudes are amongst some in the gay community.

Instead of partnering with black community leaders on issues of HIV and discrimination, the big gay powers that be have somewhat pitted them against us and aligned themselves with the corporate and political elite (isn't that whose feet we are supposed to be holding to the fire?). And the black community as noticed.

And so have many of us in the gay community who no longer feel represented by the HRC or Lambda or the Advocate, etc. I have been discussing similar things with friends who are working with the new gay group Queer Fist. They don't quite fully have their direction yet, but they have the anger and they are getting organized.

For me personally, this divide between the black community and the gay community is particularly painful and bewildering. As I was telling J tonight, for me, issues of racism and homophobia have never seemed very different. Dealing with one helped me deal with the other. In fact, the underly basic issue is inseperable in my mind: it is all about bigotry and assumptions about some 'other'. About 'Them'. When first beginning to come to terms personally with being gay, with this meaning something in my life other than dirty secrets and hidden shame, with it being a part of my identity/personality/worldview, it was Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin who led me safely through to the otherside (the 'otherside' not meaning 'gay' instead of 'straight', but rather acceptance and comfort instead of shame and discomfort). Their lessons weren't just for the black reader, but for any black sheep, any outsider, any disadvantaged.

_Invisible Man_ is easily the single most important book to my mental/emotional development. It wasn't just the external racism which Ellison was dealing with, but also how a person deals with their own internalized bigotries and how a person can be limited and damaged by their own misunderstandings of themselves and how they relate to society. It was about learning how others see (or don't see) you. It was a personal journey, not just a lament or indictment.

Other than Ellison, no single author has made such an impact on my worldview except perhaps James Baldwin. I will admit freely to having read few of his works of fiction, but his essays and interviews I have pored over. And it was this voice, which railed against the injustices of American bigotry and fear with unmatched anger and passion, which warned that it isn't only those on the receiving end of oppression who suffer. Being the oppressor is also debilitating (even if more comfortable). When given the choice of being hammer or nail, demand more choices.

I still have to believe that for most of us, bigotry is a singular vice. Fighting it on one front furthers the fight on the others. Perhaps this is why gays are the new popular target; they aren't targeting just us. It is easier to go on TV and talk about how the gay people are ruining our country and our culture and our marriages and our children, but notice which communities had fewer voting booths this year and increased challenges and more contested votes. They used us to embolden people's bigotry and biases, and they stole your black vote. And it isn't benign or 'just politics': they want my gay ass just as dead as they want your black ass.

Hyperbole? Maybe, but the effect of their abstinance only education isn't reduced unwanted pregnacy or lower STD rates, it is a rise in HIV/syphilis/etc. in our communities. It is gay kids and black kids (and poor kids of any race) dying. And they know that, the politicians pushing it, and that is why they support it. The gay marriage amendment? It ain't about keeping gay people apart, it is about saying that we matter less to the law. It is an implicit threat: get in your place, boy or the law may not pay too much attention when somebody puts you back there. This is what the HRC should be screaming bloody murder about, not just whatever individual benefits we can get, not just what AIDS drugs cost. The rhetoric of the right is that we, in what we, gay people, are an abomination and are destroying the country. They aren't calling us a national threat because they like us and want to be friends.
The HRC doesn't care because even if you belong to a marginal group, with enough money or influence, you can buy a pass. They have enough money now, so they don't care.

Because really it isn't just about black or gay: the powerful elite care nothing of the fact that we are gay or black or polka-dotted; it is just about power. They look to bully whoever is weak and if any group of traditionally down-trodden or marginal people is gaining ground, they focus on them. Gay, black, brown, female, poor, whatever. It is all the same as long as someone stays stuck at the bottom for them to feed off of. Back to hammer or nail. I refuse to be either. I still want more choices.

happy birthday!

It is Atrios' birthday, so I will stop being lazy and add a link to him on my page. Don't have that much traffic here, so it may not be noticed, but I read Eschaton damn near daily so it only makes sense.

So, Happy birthday Atrios!

Eschaton

The War On Not-War

Pandagon used the phrase 'the War on Not-War' and I thought it was worth spreading. I'll be using it from here on out.

Pandagon: Five Years, Same As Debt: "the War on Not-War"

Hit it til it breaks!!!!

Every year at our family farm down in the epicenter of the Deep South, we have a huge multi-day New Year's party. We've been doing it for years, originally just a gathering of my siblings with our similarly aged cousins and an excuse for us to run around like fools shooting bottle-rockets at one another and burn/blow things up. More fun than you might imagine if you have never tried it, but this post isn't specifically about the joys of redneck amusements and the fine art of entertaining yourself in life-endangering ways in rural regions, but rather what has come out of this annual gathering and how it can guide us in the year to come.

This gathering has been perhaps the single most stable recurring event in my life to date, and I think it is treated similarly by many of those who attend (which now numbers far beyond the bounds of blood kinship). There are several people who I only ever see at this party, but I see them there every year. There is something comforting in having a little bit of regularity in a chaotic world and we have some solid traditions that have become a part of the ritual.

The Burning Caldron of Death is probably the oldest and the most important and car chase is a favorite when we can get the old cars running and my mom's marinated sandwiches are the most beloved edible tradition. But the one that sets the tone for the year is the motto.

The motto is decided by a fairly undemocratic process of taking silly and misunderstood statements that come across as unintentionally profound and after little discussion, declaring one of the statements the motto for the year, our guiding light to help get everyone back safely to the next New Year's.

I can't remember them all, should have been writing them down all these years but I can remember a few.

See with your feet. (can't remember the origin)

There may be no point in sitting either. (statement made by my drunk brother to our youngest brother who had just implored him to sit down because 'there is no point in standing'.)

Last year's motto was two fold:

Don't hurt beautiful things/Don't be hurt by beautiful things. (don't remember the origin clearly enough to recount, but I managed to fail on both counts, although I did make it safely through to a new year and reflected on the motto continuously the whole long way.)

Anyway, enough of years past, this year keeping the homemade, woodburning hottub running required chopping a lot of damn firewood and most of it was being chopped out of this huge hickory that had fallen. The cross-sections of the tree were near three feet in diameter, and the wood split easily once you made that first break, but getting that first split took a hell of a lot of hitting. In coaching my brother to get the first crack in a particularly stubborn piece, our friend Mike cheered him on with "Just hit it til it breaks!" Looking forward to an uncertain year and coming off of one in which we had all been frustrated out of our minds and begun to question our generally positive view of folks in general, my brother and I almost instantly looked at one another and knew this had the potential for being our new motto. And as it became clear that no one was going to utter anything close to as appropriate, the official motto it became. No more kinder gentler crap. This is a tough year and it calls for tough action. No more playing nice and expecting others to. This year, if something gets in your way, hit it til it breaks. Faced with inane stupidity? Apathy? Misinformation? HIT IT TIL IT BREAKS!!!!

I don't know the identity of the Rude Pundit, so he may have been at my New Year's shindig (although I doubt it), but he seems to be on the same page, as does Digby:

The Rude Pundit: "this story should be hammered on until something cracks."

Hullabaloo (Read Digby's post and tell me he isn't ready to hit it til it breaks, too)

No more chickenshit politeness while assholes and hypocrites direct the public dialogue through bullying and lies.

I have personally adopted my whole family (ok, anyone whose email I could find on the forward lists that various family members included me on) and am forwarding them obsessively from progressing sources. Yes, they can delete some of the stuff and they can ignore it all, but most of these folks that don't really read the newspaper or digest it very well seem to read most anything you put in their in box (which, judging from the sampling I have seen of what they are sending around, may be part of why this country is in such a funk currently) and actually most folks are responding pretty positively so far, even if they are disagreeing with lots of it. So all of you Awareniks out there (both of you), I am calling on all liberals to adopt the whitesheep idiots in their redstate bloodlines and start bombarding them with progressive lefty infuriating stuff. I am going to start a sister blog archiving everything (and what I get back!), so if folks want to just forward the same things they can. Remember, we are the current underdogs and them on top is dangerous. Don't be afraid of ruffling feathers or pissing off relatives; that is the point. Hit it til it breaks!

Keyes Family Values

from
DC Media Girl: "Maya Marcel-Keyes, self-described 'queer activist' and daughter of right-wing lunatic Alan Keyes, has outed herself. In a hearwarming demonstration of family values, Keyes has reportedly booted Maya out of the house."

Thankfully, I come from a better class of Christian than that. Compassion and love, folks, if that ain't what your god calls on you to show towards your fellow man, he ain't Jesus. Keyes is fun to watch on tv, but as a real person kicking his daughter out because he's too self-righteous and bigoted, he is disgusting.

Like that mean, nasty woman on WifeSwap last night who accused the other wife of being a pedophilic sexual predator who would try to molest her daughter. Because she was a lesbian. And lesbians can't be trusted around children because they might...what, what the fuck goes through some idiot's mind to make them say something like that? Her defense was that she was just being protective of her daughter. Bullshit, she was just being a bigot. If protection of her children was her concern, then why would she think it was any safer to put a straight woman in her house with her sons? More pedophiles are straight than gay and the gay pedophiles tend to be the ones who aren't out of the closet so where does the assertion that she needed to worry about her daughter being around married lesbian who was raising a daughter with a life-partner come from? Her own personal bigotries. What if someone had said that she shouldn't be trusted around the lesbians' daughter because she was black? She told the woman she stayed with that discriminating against gay people wasn't like discriminating against black people, because gay people can pretend to be straight and if they just kept their mouths shut and acted straight then they wouldn' have any problem. It's our fault. Yeah, lady, and you won't consider it discrimination when some one tells you you should act more 'white'. That is bullshit. People should be treated with tolerance and respect regardless of how close they manage to mimic some dumb idea of what is normal.