Goin on Vacay - See you after labor day!

I'm headed up nort' to the land of sky blue waters. See ya later, decorators! I'll crack some cold ones for you while I'm away, or you can enjoy this:

Happy Birthday Paul!

Fortunately, when you sign up to adopt an actor, Splotchy himself helps out as your case-worker, advising you on whether you should send your actor to join Amy Winehouse in rehab, or giving gentle reminders on special days in the life of the actor.

And thus, was I informed that it is Paul Reubens 55th birthday. I also learned through IMDb that Mr. Reubens is currently in production on the film version of "Pee Wee's Playhouse". whoot! whoot!

I guess it is important to talk to the kids once in a while.

Can I Adopt This Actor?

Apparently, this actor's bio includes only an advertisement for a now defunct wakeup call service. But still, that's acting!

I wonder if that makes him adoptable?

OK, I won't adopt you D-Cap. Since I have a blog crush on your stone cold foxiness, it would be too Woody Allen/Soon Yi.

Is Alberto leaving to spend more time with his family?

Unbelievably, I've heard Michael Chertoff's name mentioned as a replacement.

Today I learned new things about Katrina

Thanks to a post at Buzzflash by the incredible journalist Greg Palast (if there was just one Greg Palast at the NYT, WaPo, and the three major networks the world could be saved - alas there is only one)



I learned two amazing things about New Orleans today.



1. Federal helicopters witnessed damaged levees and knew they were going to fail but told no one. Local emergency centers were not told. They were not told on purpose because it is the federal governments' responsibility to rebuild if a federal levee breaks. It happened in 1992 in Westhampton Dunes and the government rebuilt the million dollar homes along the seashore. They even trucked in sand.

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistleblower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

I'd come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the White House, FEMA, and the Army Corps hid, for critical hours, their discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to burst and drown the city.

Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now safe -- and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with the storm.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

Van Heerden revealed: "FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2 p.m., they flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

2. There are NOLA residents who have been locked out of their public housing since the storm even though these public housing units were NEVER damaged in any way by the storm.

Here are the links:

Greg Palast editorial
Greg Palast video

Thanks, FranIam! And BAC! Yikes!!!

Last week Fran gave me the Partisan Pissant Provocateur Award. Thank goodness there wasn't too much drinking at the awards banquet or we would have all been spitting on each other just trying to get the name of the award out.

This is a meme award and thusly, I am supposed to name five other bloggers who I think are Partisan Pissant Provocateurs like the newly inducted me. I am not going to do that for two reasons: 1) I only read the blogs of Partisan Pissant Provocateurs. If I have ever left a message at your place, you are one and you know it. And I love you and I thank you for being in cyber land and not letting me think I am the only one who is totally hacked off by the events of the day. And B) well there's no b.

Thanks Fran. But thank you too, Mr. George "W is for Wrecks" Bush! I mean, sure we were partisans in the eighties and nineties. But your particular brand of diviseness has driven Americans to frothy levels of foaming at the mouth hate for one another that I am only too happy to participate in! Without you, people might have continued to consider conservatives as old guys in yellow cardigans who smelled like aftershave and loved the Wall Street Journal. Really rich old farts who would only spare a silver dollar for your birthday. Guys who lived in Colonial style homes with eagle plaques above the door. Oh, those halcyon days. No, now we know our partisan enemy is NOT those conservatives. Those conservatives we'd like to give a little hug to. Barry Goldwater, even though you are dead, people are practically remembering you as a liberal! Here are the conservatives that have taken over rending the fabric of our nation into two partisan shammycloths.


UPDATE: BAC at Yikes gave me one too. Thanks times two!

Why are the GOP such whiny little snot-nosed brats?

When was the last time you heard the hue and cry for term limits? 15 years ago that was the hot political topic. But then, through the normal political process Republicans gained control of congress and those rallying cries were silent. You also don't hear as much bitching about gerrymandering these days as you did in the 70's and 80's. Same reason. You knew these bastards on the playground, they haven't changed. If the game's not going their way they have to change the rules and act indignant the whole time - it's not that America is beginning to hate the GOP and is voting that way. No. It's just that the rules, they're not *sob* fair! I could go on about the filibuster dust up, but I've got lots to do today.

Here's the latest GOP ploy to retain control of the White House even though Americans are sick to fucking death of them:

Award California's electoral votes by congressional district to each presidential candidate. Currently, like every other state, California awards all of its electoral votes to a single candidate. It has 10% of all electoral votes at 55. The split is assumed to be somewhere between 33/22 and 36/19. The result is to move those 19 or 22 votes out of the democratic candidates tally over to the republicans, which would win the country for the republican.

Or so goes the thinking.

Here is the USA red/blue state map for 2004:
Does look like half of California would be the cherry on the GOP's cupcake doesn't it?

Let's look at the red/blue divide by county in California. This is where we get a better idea of the logic of the GOP:

Ooh. That does look good for you, GOP. Those blue counties are only in the affluent coastal areas. Limousine liberals. But let's look at another map. This is again of the 2004 race but it includes shades of purple to indicate how solidly each county fits into its respective category:

This map represents sentiments from three years ago. The blue counties remain blue but the red counties become quite purple. Even Orange County doesn't glow bright red like parts of Utah and Nevada. Feelings have changed.

California is a big prize, dems could counter with similar proposals in North Carolina (15 votes) Ohio (20 votes) and Louisiana (15 votes). These are states with winner take all that went red in '04 but which would evenly counter California's 19 or 22 net bleed. They also all have democratic governors. A similiar proposal might be harder in Texas with a republican governor and legislature, but with very solid blue counties and 34 electoral votes, I wouldn't bet the farm on it either. Texas has a legacy of producing some very strong democrats. While it will go in the red column in '08, would you want to be so sure of it in '12? I dare you to open that box, Pandora.

Meanwhile, back in California, dems are proposing doing away with electoral college votes and granting votes based on the popular vote.

If you want to know about there, go here

If you haven't already seen the amazing vlog series "Hometown Baghdad" you need to spend some time watching it.

It is about a group of young twenty something men and their friends and families. These are guys who are trying to get through dental college, play in bands, play basketball. You can watch and sometimes forget that they are not young Americans.

If you want to understand why the professionals are leaving Baghdad in droves, watch. I was going to say if you want to understand their anger at Americans, watch. But, there is not as much out and out anger as you might expect. In one webisode the subject is the death of a favorite uncle in an ambush at a busy intersection. There is anger, sorrow, grief but not rage.

There are about 38 webisodes in all. Each one fills in the missing spaces that our sad lack of coverage of the Iraq occupation leaves out.

The humanity.

Happy Birthday Suzy

Suzy at Luminiferous Ether has just turned 32! Amazing since she also just sent her first born off to college, armed with magical soap and handcrafted slippers.

How stupid do they think we are?

Don't answer that question.

Caught the news story on Michael Vick this morning. He has pleaded guilty in his dog abuse case. There is a possibility of sentencing. And though he skipped a trial through his guilty plea and though sentencing has not yet been imposed, this morning on the teevee we heard the inevitable:

Mr. Vick is being treated unfairly due to his celebrity.

I wish I could tell you who said it. I don't think it was any of his counsel. Still, Virginia, the state where the crimes took place, has some of the most draconian of the nation's capital punishment laws. Sister Helen Prejean (the nun in Dead Man Walking) has outlined cases where demonstrably innocent people in Virginia have been executed because the ability to appeal a death sentence there is severely restricted. I'm trying to think of ways in which our system of justice treats people more unfairly than executing the innocent. Ummm, I got nothing.

I'm not making the comparison because I think the degree of the crimes are comparable. Rather, my point is one regarding the nature of regular people who cannot afford to hire an entire law firm v. celebrities who cry when their abundant supply of privilege dries up leaving them to face the consequences. It is expected that Michael Vick will receive a 10 to 18 month sentence. It is longer than his co-defendents because they squealed on him. It is not longer than it would have been were he Buford T. Scratchizass.

Did you know who is today's TCM star?!

All day. ZZOMGBBQ!!

Auntie Mame will be on TCM tonight at 9pm central time, 10 pm Fran Time.

Remember: "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death"



"

Three examples of personal wardrobe malfunction

The year - 1986.

I was a cocktail waitress at a nice restaurant. The backbar in the lounge was about 15 feet high and had glass shelves over a mirror that held liquor bottles all the way to the top. To reach the top shelf the bartenders used an old fashioned sliding library ladder.

One night someone brought a camera and we workers posed for pictures on the ladder. I was wearing a short wool mini-skirt with a tan houndstooth pattern and a cream colored sweater. Classy. But in posing for the picture I failed to put my knees together and the photographer got a shot straight up my skirt. Because I was sitting on the ladder my crotch was at about eye level, and hence was perfectly centered in the picture. Bad, yeah. But what was worse was that I was wearing my nylons inside out, so the crotch shot is of that white cotton panel that should have been on the inside.

The year 1989 -

Before Manhattan became the 'New Disneyworld', like in the David Dinkins days, people were actually kind of afraid to go to New York. Saying you were going to New York was akin to saying you were going to Beirut. I had my college internship in Manhattan and was really nervous. People said things like 'don't make eye contact' as if Manhattanites were zoo animals likely to throw you to the sidewalk and sever your achilles tendon with their teeth. On my first day on my own in Manhattan I was wearing a tailored rayon blouse (this was the 80's, remember. Rayon was stylish!) and some of those really wide legged Kate Hepburn pants with the "paper bag" waist that was cinched in with a belt.

As I walked around midtown I realized that everything I heard about New Yorkers was wrong. Lots of people were making eye contact with me and lots of people were smiling too! I had heard that this vile breed never smiled. I strolled down Madison Avenue and swung into an irish pub (Dwyer's, I think) to go to the bathroom and get a beer so they wouldn't mind me using the bathroom. Once I got into the bathroom I realized that all the smiles were because my big pants with the extra long fly -thanks to the high waist that meant from about my bottom rib to my crotch - were unzipped. This was not a subtle 'oh, your barndoor is open'. This was hey, I can read all of the word 'Monday' on your undies, open.

I still think most New Yorkers are nice.

The year 2007 -

At the pool last week my two girls were throwing their swim goggles and then swimming to the bottom of the pool to get them. Eldest threw her goggles over to the swim lane area and couldn't find them. Though I was at the pool in my suit I didn't plan on swimming, but lost goggles are getting to be a thing around here so I went in after them. My child was characteristically vague about where she thought the goggles might be so I ended up covering most of the swim lane area of the pool as well as the big kid area. This space is governed by no less than three life guards. I was trying my best not to get in the way of the swimmers in the lanes. I kept making surface dives, at one point coming up beneath a lifeguard chair. The lifeguard looked at me and started to say something but then she stopped. I thought maybe she could see the pink goggles from the surface, but no.

Finally I found them lying on top of a black lane stripe on the bottom of the pool. I went over to the side and when I reached out of the pool I noticed that my left breast was about 3/4's out of my swimsuit top. The 3/4's part that includes nipple.

Have a nice weekend! Don't forget to use your condoms!

What did you do on your summer vacation?

The summer I was eleven my mother took my two older brothers, my younger sister and me to a cabin on a little lake near Minocqua, Wisconsin. Dad wasn't with us for the first few days because he had a big work project that he couldn't get away from. It was August but the weather was cold and gray. My brothers weren't too keen on fishing, so mom took us into Minocqua for t-shirt shopping and salt water taffy. We also went to see the movie "The Deep" which launched my two older brothers into fits of professed love for Jacqueline Bissett. Our little house-keeping cabin wasn't much. Tawdry comes to mind. The vacation itself was feeling a little tawdry. We just didn't seem right without dad there.

Our usual family vacations have been portrayed with painstaking accuracy by National Lampoon in their movie of the same name. Our green station wagon had wood siding but the rest was pretty much spot on. In fact, a vacation to a northern Wisconsin tourist town where we stayed put was very unlike us. Our trips were marathon drive through the country affairs. Ball of Twine? Yes. Flintstonesland? Yes. Rickety fricking bridge over some gulch 1000 feet below? Oh, we'd go out of the way. We had driven through South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa on one trip. We looped the Great Lakes and drove on to Quebec on another. Another trip was south to Knoxville, where dad attended an Ace Hardware convention. He owned a hardware store just long enough for us kids to get a lifetime supply of left-over ice skates in every size. From there we went to Georgia (See Rock City!) and to Florida where he bought a piece of investment property in the panhandle for $5000. 32 years later he unloaded that same piece of panhandle property for $5200. We got to go to Disneyworld that year, which must have been a stretch for my dad because he hated crowds, cities, large groups of people. My dad's favorite move on vacation was to drive on mountain roads as close to the edge of the road as was physically possible. My mom would scream for dear life each and every time clutching wildy at the door handle as if to throw herself out before the car caromed off a cliff.

The best part of these road trip vacations was getting up early in the morning and getting on the road. My parents big metal thermos filled the car with the smell of coffee. We'd stop after a while and have cereal in those little boxes where you can cut an 'H' shape in the box and pour the milk right in. We got to buy comic books. My brothers were all 'Conan the Barbarian', which I really liked, too, but my sister and I felt compelled toward the Archie comics. The worst parts mostly had to do with my big brothers trying to out-fart each other in a closed-up car. And the time we drove through Utah and it was my turn to ride in the back of the station wagon where the greenhouse effect raised the temperatures to 160 degrees farenheit and the air conditioning couldn't hope to reach that far back in the car but the fart contest miraculously could. I laid in the back of the car and croaked out my very last dying words for at least three hours.

So the Minocqua trip was static. It lacked my dad, lacked the good times on the road, lacked movement. Finally after three days dad drove up and met us at the tawdry cabin. The weather got colder. We had to turn on the furnace in cabin to keep warm at night it was that cold.

Dad woke up during the night and felt odd. He realized the pilot light had gone out on the furnace and that we were all being gassed. He managed to wake us up, got us out of the cabin and threw all the windows open. I can't imagine we'd have survived if he wasn't there.

The next day the sun was shining but it was still brisk outside. We drove a little west of Minocqua and dad pulled the car over on a stretch of highway that had nothing of any tourist value whatsoever. It seems he found out about a small lake that was for sale. Technically you can't buy a lake but this one was small enough that you could buy all of the property surrounding this lake. I'm sure that today that lake is utterly surrounded by condos that go for several times the asking price of the whole lake back in the '70's.

We started out down a trail and were maybe four hundred yards from the road when my little sister, who was nine, stepped on a ground hornet's nest. In an instant hundreds of bees were on her. I remember crouching down and seeing bees swarming up the inseam of her jeans and collecting in yellow fistfuls in her crotch. Dad picked her up and ran for the car.

We all climbed in the station wagon. Before car seats and seat belt laws four kids could sit on one bench seat. Dad had just pulled out onto the road when I casually informed him that my sister was puking on the floor of the car where my feet had just been.

Have you ever seen a Pontiac station wagon, green with wood side panels fly? Dad got that car up to a speed that passed the 90 mile hour top out on the spedometer. There was a hospital in Woodruff, a town right next to Minocqua, that mom and dad knew all about because somehow the hospital got Elizabeth Taylor to come and cut the ribbon when the hospital opened, just a year or so earlier. So dad, who had EMT training knew how serious her condition was when she started vomiting, and knew right where to go to get her help.

We raced into the hospital, dad carrying my sister. An intern ran up and took her from my dad just as she passed out. I must have been hanging on the glamour of Elizabeth Taylor, because it seemed like the most romantic thing I had ever seen. She might have only been nine, but to me watching her being carried away by the young doctor- oh, Hollywood. Cue the music.

They gave her adrenaline and kept an eye on her for a while. When we left the hospital it was late in the afternoon and we were all starving. Dad stopped at the Hardees on the way out of town. Just as I opened the door of the Hardees my sister walked in and barfed so copiously that the puddle was a solid four feet across.

Mortified, I ran away. Mom and dad were welcome to stay by her and admit to knowing her, but I couldn't get far enough away. I ran up to the counter and pretended to be a world weary traveler all on her own in northern Wisconsin. A gypsy kid, maybe.

Two teen girls behind the counter were talking.

"Did you hear?" the first girl asked.

"Hear what?"

"Elvis is dead".

That's how I learned the news. You?

Life is hard when you're a monkey on the lam

Why am I not surprised?

From ABC News:

The Bush administration opposes a Democratic effort to restore full educational benefits for returning veterans, according to an official's comments last week.

Senate Democrats, led by Virginia's Jim Webb, want the government to pay every penny of veterans' educational costs, from tuition at a public university to books, housing and a monthly stipend.

Such a benefit was a major feature of the historic 1944 G.I. Bill, which put more than eight million U.S. soldiers through college and is now credited by historians as fueling the expansion of America's middle class in the post-war era.

I would argue that the GI Bill was one of the greatest pieces of legislation of the last century, and that had more impact on American's lives than almost any other.

Many of today's conservatives believe their parents pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to land themselves in the heart of the middle class. What they forget is that those were GI boots paid for by the government of the United States of America. Yes, I mean asshats like you Cal Thomas. Now that the middle class is again slipping away, I think the men and women who are fighting this war ought to at least have a promise of some security when they get home. On any given day in America there are more homeless veterans than there are veterans serving in the Gulf. (About 200,000 per day. As many as 400,000 at some point in a year).

The Administration is arguing that the cost of fully funding education for Afghan/Iraq war vets would be an additional $5.4 billion dollars.

This from the same people who sent $9 billion to Iraq --in cash --on pallets only to have it go missing. And they haven't even bothered to look for it.

A guest on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! program this morning discussed her psychological evaluation of Jose Padilla.

Result: Crazy.

Proof: Mr. Padilla wants his mother to contact George Bush because Padilla believes Mr. Bush can help him out of this situation.

That, my friends, is Stockholm Syndrome.

The rest of the details of his treatment are pretty shocking. Of course you know that. Her evaluation includes possible physical brain damage from his treatment, which she found unprecedented in her experience, which includes evaluations of prisoners in totalitarian regimes. (Am I being redundant?) When a link is available I will put it up.

Where will Dr. Monkey go?

BITING MONKEY ORDERED OUT OF CITY

By STEVEN ELBOW The Capital Times

A monkey that has bitten at least two people in recent months is getting its marching orders.

"We ended up declaring the monkey dangerous because of the number of bites," said Doug Voegeli, Madison Environmental Health Services supervisor. "We have ordered it to be out of the city." Suri Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein, a 46-year-old capuchin monkey, gained a lot of attention last Wednesday after he bit a 21-year-old woman on the thumb around 1 a.m. at the State Street Brats beer garden. It took police until 2 p.m. Wednesday to corral the animal.

Suri Dr. von Monkerstein is in quarantine at the Dane County Humane Society, where he will remain until Saturday so officials can monitor him for disease. He was earlier placed in home quarantine after biting someone on July 11, and there was another unconfirmed report of him biting someone on May 19.

Suri's Dr. von Monkerstein's owner, Hyacinth Kustin Samurai Frog, told police that Suri Dr. von Monkerstein was a service animal, but it was unclear what services he performed. Kustin Samurai Frog could not be reached by phone this morning for comment.

SuriDr. von Monkerstein is being booted from the city under Madison regulations, Voegeli said, but he added that, if necessary, officials would likely eject him from the entire county under county ordinances.

Voegeli said Suri Dr. von Monkerstein will have to leave town immediately upon his release from quarantine.

Who is today's saint?

All my devout Catholic friends are saying "It's the Feast of the Assumption!" All non-Catholics are saying "when you assume you make an ass of u and me".

Wait, hoa, I say unto all of ye! There are so many saints that they have to stack them up like holy cordwood to get everybody a spot. That's why it is essential to look on holy days like this one at who is not getting their proper due because of everyone celebrating the beta test of the rapture on Mary the Mother of God who was assumed into heaven whole, just like that guy in the car in front of you this morning on the way to work will be because he has the bumper sticker that says "in case of rapture this car will be abandoned". Pretty cocksure, mr. guy driving the '89 brown Taurus.

Today's saint is Saint Arnulf of Soissons. The Patron Saint of Brewers!

According to my Saint-A-Day book:

Arnulf of Soissons was a French soldier turned clergyman. After reluctantly becoming the Bishop of Soissons, he was driven from his episcopate by invaders and moved to Flanders. When a plague broke out he noticed that the water drinkers were dropping like flies, but the beer drinkers were thriving. He hastened to brew up a big batch of beer and saved the town.

Beatified for Beer, hurrah!

On a side note, Saint Arnulf - we've lost eight of the last twelve games and are sliding down in contention. Please watch over our Milwaukee Brewers and do not allow them another 12-4 loss like that stinker last night. Amen.

Hey, did anybody notice this?

Apparently, Google Blogger has a new linked feature so that anyone with a Blogger account can compare the interests they listed in their profile with all other profiles and perhaps find a friend who shares said interests. Just click on each entry and it sends you to a list of all other like-minded Google Bloggers.

My first interest is Rosalind Russell films except for the one in which she plays a nun and co-stars with Hayley Mills. It is called "The Trouble With Angels". (Note to Sleestak - Hayley is kind of good in it, but Rosalind should never have starred in a vehicle that doesn't allow her character to drink martinis). In the interest of full disclosure I should add that my adopted actress, Mary Wickes, has a large supporting role in this film.

I am the only one. So lonely.

I also like dirty jokes. Only 62 of my fellow blogging brethren confess to this (I find the low number a little surprising). One of the 62 is this guy:

Interests: porn, girls, naked pictures, landscape pictures with naked girls in them, sex, sex with girls, girls who like to have sex, dirty jokes, dirty women, dirty hoes, dirty minds, and more naked pictures. ...and some other stuff.."

Uh, ok so we kind of begin and end with dirty jokes eh, compadre blogger?

I am also the only person who likes to do things involving lake water (I'm sure there are many other waterski, canoe, sail, pontoon party, swim, scuba, float, pee-in-the-water enthusiasts out there. It's just that none used my exact phrase.) And I am the only person who says she likes kid stuff. Grown men who say that could be problematic. No one else is interested in collecting antique globes. Thank you all non-collectors for leaving me the pre-WWI globes I would like to someday own. (Aside from the 1905 schoolhouse globe that I do own but which is still in storage wanting a place to be hung).

I like to knit. So does Threading Water, Blue Gal and 28,197 others. Wow, an enormous pool of potential friendsters! Let's see: "Books, cats, knitting, writing, Second Life, Church, Sunday School" Ummm. Nope.

"Knitting, scrapbooking, dance, music". Hey, that's my mother-in-law! But I already know and love her so what else?

Well there's "Zwar: WWE, footy, ultimate fighting Snodgrass: Warhammer, lego, knitting,".


You know, I think we used to have things called "bars" where we could go to meet others who had nothing in common with us. I wonder if I can find a babysitter.