Five Years Out. Two Months In. Conclusion: Work Sucks.

I have been working part time since my daughter started kindergarten. I am in a very unusual position of having gone back to work for the guy I hired nine years ago to take over my job. At this point I'm sure he views me as subordinate to him, because in the interim my parents, who started the business, sold it to my brothers who each have a 40% share and to republican dude who has a 20% share.

I haven't being doing the job that I did way back when. I've been going in to do the financials. For two months it has been breaking my heart to see what this guy has been doing to the company that my dad built from the ground up. In essence, Mr. Republican Dude is returning it right back to the ground from which it came.

Everything blew up on Tuesday. No sense going into it here, just suffice it to say that at a point where he insulted MY intelligence by admitting that he was incapable of doing something therefore so would I, too, be incapable, I asked the accountant to explain the checks written out by Republican Dude to himself on a Cost of Goods Sold account and not a reimbursement account. It was not a clear accusation of theft, but a point of incompetence with serious repercussions. And I was making the point that both RD and the accountant are not doing their jobs.

Well, today I go back to work. Bet they're going to be happy to see me, eh?

Say What?

There's been a lot of chatter in the last few days about how a resurgent democratic party should treat the republicans who've just gotten tossed. I'm going to bet that no one ever told Newt Gingrich when he took over a republican congress in 95 that he ought to play nice. Demonizing the opposition was chapter one of his playbook.

Two of the conversations on this topic can be found at D-Caps place as well as D-Cups.

As far as republicans being utterly clueless and tone deaf, you've got to read this letter to the editor in my morning paper. Amazing me and that guy even exist on the same planet!

Too bad respect didn't extend to Bush

While your recent editorial urging the country to "pull together" following the election was right on the mark and appropriate, we should not overlook what we've witnessed over the past six or eight years. That has been the constant uncivil, cruel and disgraceful attacks launched against President Bush.

He has been disparaged, vilified, disrespected and demonized without end by commentators, political pundits, editorial cartoonists and late night comedians, among others.

Lost in this frenzy of ridicule is the fact that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Bush came to office or were beyond his control.

We do need more civility and respect for one another, as your editorial stated. It's just too bad such generous thoughts were not put forth long ago on behalf of President Bush. I'm sure the political right will give our new president better treatment and the respect he deserves.

- Fred Wagner, Clinton

I bet that this guy just HATES that he lives in a town named "Clinton".

Dear Family Values Voters: Thanks for bringing down the empire.

let us eat cake

Regular readers will attest that I am no genius. Just one of many (ha ha, I kid). But whenever I've come across a blog that asks what will be the legacy of the Bush presidency, for five years at least my answer has been "His presidency will mark the beginning of the end of the United States' role as world superpower". Generally, my opinion was that we wouldn't notice ourselves in a post-American era until after he left office, but it seems that the end of the empire is all too evident right this moment.

In 1989 I was an intern at the United Nations (yes, this gives me more foreign policy experience in spades than Sarah Palin.)That September, I saw George H. W. Bush give his speech before the UN General Assembly. At that time the Berlin Wall had a little less than two months left to go but the jokes at the UN went that GDR (the acronym for East Germany-German Democratic Republic) stood for Gradually Disappearing Republic. History was flipping over in those days, but honestly, inside the UN there wasn't alot of discussion of re-alignment, or the "New World Order".

I don't even recall what Bush talked about. I think it was fairly standard fare. The General Assembly hall was full to the rafters. I sat up in the gallery, next to a Russian staffer. When Bush concluded, the General Assembly cleared. "Who's next?" asked the Russian next to me. "I think Poland speaks next" I said. "Oh," contemplated the Russian" and then in thick Boris accent he said "Unnn Luckkky Poe-lund!" You see, the president of the United States was always such a big draw that any following speaker was left feeling deflated giving a speech to the backs of exiting diplomats.

Reports from Bush v.43.2 at Tuesday's UN General Assembly speech are that many attendants were anything but attentive.

According to the German journal Spiegel

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN

The Post American Era. Welcome to it.

Now here is the thing. The last two elections were so close that one was stolen and the next one was so close that it probably was stolen. What got W re-elected after a dismal four years was reportedly "Family Values Voters" meaning not family values at all, but hysterically anti-choice people voting for Bush on the dream and a prayer that he would make abortions illegal and that all cell divisions past the second one would be protected with the might and weight of the full United States Government-all the way up until birth. (And then those babies formerly known as fetuses are on their own.)

In two hundred years and beyond, students of history are going to be baffled by the idea that the right wing fundamentalist hope that women must be forced to bear children that they could not afford nor raise responsibly would be the issue that brought down the greatest superpower in history. This is particularly true because we are also at the end of an era where sustainability is a polite and hopeful word and turning toward an era where every activity of human commerce will need to be sustainable.

I use an easy definition of sustainable as "anything the 6 billion inhabitants of the world can engage in without destroying the earth". The stock market, because it measures progress only in growth is not sustainable. Our shopping malls and markets that produce more waste than useable products that will glut refuse sites and continue to pollute the earth are not sustainable. Having unlimited children and increasing the population further is not sustainable. How the future deals with over population is beyond me. I simply have no idea, but I do know there will be a fundamental shift in thinking between now and then. Perhaps it is a bit like looking back and trying to figure out how a fear of witches could produce hysteria in the new world. We're pretty far removed from the supernatural hopes and fears that guided people in the 17th century.

So, right wing fundie mouth breathers: for bringing us two terms of George W. Bush's reign of error- thanks so much for the Post-American Era. I hope you enjoy your Chinese overlords. BTW, have you heard about their ideas for family planning? Bet you're not too thrilled with those.

Welfare Queens

If I had a billion dollars for every time I heard a jackass on tee vee this week exclaim that corporate executives being handed free money FROM THE TAXPAYERS deserve to make whatever salary they can get away with cuz hey that's capitalism, I could actually bail us out of this mess.

If the government gives your company more money than it is worth to fix the mess you made that is not capitalism, no matter how hard you try to spin that onion.

I heard some con on the other day say that in America everyone has the right to go before their employer and ask for what they are worth. This in defense of the CEO's who brought down our economy. I thought 'damn, what an eloquent argument for collective bargaining'. Somehow I'm sure that's not what the guy had in mind.

UPDATE: If you are so inclined, here is a petition: http://action.seiu.org/bailout/

I think the Packer management did the right thing.

Hey, it's not a popular opinion, but then I recently got up the guts to announce my true hidden feelings about the Beatles.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll berate your dumb opinion love to see what y'all've got to say when I get back.

(Time for some vacation).

You Know What?

I don't like the Beatles.

There. I've said it. It was hard to do, but I feel like a great weight has been lifted.

Carry on.

Jonah Goldberg is a big fat moron

But you knew that.

I will never cease to be amazed that some of these right wing nutjob pundits get to keep their jobs. Wait, did I say some? In yesterday's column Goldberg says that he is shocked that Obama would tie federal college grants to some form of compulsory community service. This, Goldberg claims, is exactly like slavery, something a black man, and our constitution, should be against.

Well, I guess even white overstuffed idiots who write books in which they don't even understand their own premise (Nazis were liberals because they had "socialist" in their title) should be against slavery.

But it seems to me that when a democrat makes a proposal that a Republican ought to love - spending government money with an expectation of a return on that investment - the Republican talking point machine has to melt down and what it spits out need not make any sense whatsoever. It should invoke racial tensions, a fabricated air of fiscal intelligence where none actually exists and use all the hotpoint words.

Jonah Goldberg could easily be replaced by a machine. Or, more cheaply, his job could be off-shored to a ten year old Indian girl with a list of handy phrases next to her computer.

Perhaps that has already happened.

In the Whatever Happened To...Column

I am so glad that the Philadelphia Inquirer signed Rick Santorum on as a columnist. This way, we can continue to be amused at his batshit crazy fundamentalist logic. I mean, what's Mark Foley been up to? Who knows?

Now that California has said that creating separate language in the state constitution for a group of individuals amounts to discrimination, thus opening the doors for gay marriage, Rick is all 'uh hum, toldya the world would end' in his Inky column.

I plucked some bon mots:

First, he says his alarm! went unheeded. It's right in the title:

The Elephant in the Room: A wake-up call on gay marriage after '03 alarm went unheeded

One could just say you lost, Rick.

He says:

Five years later, do I regret sounding the alarm about marriage? No.

I'm just saddened that time has proved right those of us who worried about the future of marriage as the union of husband and wife, deeply rooted not only in our traditions, our faiths, but in the facts of human nature: as Pope Benedict said, "The cradle of life and love," connecting mothers and fathers to their children.

Okay, he's upfront in admitting that his notion of what is marriage comes from his faith. But then, get this and try not to giggle, he says that it's due to the facts of human nature that only men and only women should marry. His source? An anthropolgist? A genetic scientist? A biologist (known to Santorum as a Darwinist, btw). Nope. The Pope. Yeah, all us non-religious types who believe in equality and separation of church and state should look to that man of science and reason for our stand on human nature. The Pope. Who, I don't think, gets peer reviewed.

Then he raises the clouding of a spurious correlation to a high art. In Norway, he says, gay marriage was legalized in 1990 and then all hell broke loose. (If it's Norway, does that mean that Hell has frozen over? Just Wondering^TM)

Look at Norway. It began allowing same-sex marriage in the 1990s. In just the last decade, its heterosexual-marriage rates have nose-dived and its out-of-wedlock birthrate skyrocketed to 80 percent for firstborn children. Too bad for those kids who probably won't have a dad around, but we can't let the welfare of children stand in the way of social affirmation, can we?

How is this related to gay marriage? I haven't the foggiest idea and Santorum doesn't bother to explain. How does he know these children are growing up without father? Maybe some of them are growing up with two dads? Further, does he really want to use Norway as an example of a place where they suffer the little children? Norway has, since adopting the gay marriage law also raised itself to the top spot in standard of living among all countries of the world - a feat it has been repeating year after year. Since adopting the gay marriage law, Norway's infant mortality rate has steadily dropped every year. It currently stands at 3.64/1000 births compared to the US who's rate is 6.4/1000.

Okay, but that's the disingenuous part. What of the batshit crazy stuff? Well lookie here:

But what about love? That's the question a student asked this winter when I spoke at Georgetown University.

Is anyone saying same-sex couples can't love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too? Marriage is and always has been more than the acknowledgment of the love between two people.

What about the constitutional right to equal protection under the law? Marriage is not an inalienable right; it is a privilege, a license granted by government conferring certain governmental benefits.

There is a constitutional right that is under threat: the free exercise of religion.

Let me go out on another limb here and make another crazy prediction. Within 10 years, clergy will be sued or indicted for preaching on certain Bible passages dealing with homosexuality and churches, and church-related organizations will lose government contracts and even their tax-exempt status.

Wha? Where to begin?

Let's look at Santorum's Syllogism, shall we? (As if he didn't get enough abuse from his man-on-dog comments)

I love my brother. Marriage=Love. Therefore I have married my brother

I know the Appalachians run up through Pennsylvania, Rick. But really.

He rightly assigns the governance of marriage to the government. It is after all the government that issues the license. But then he goes on to say that it's a privilege. Then he collapses all sanity by saying that only the government is allowed to confer privilege on people and it can do so by saying which ones deserve the privilege. Which is exactly the point the Supreme Court of California made.

Going into foaming at the mouth mode, he claims that if two people in California get married my free expression of religion is going to be infringed upon. Again, we don't get the mechanics of how this works. Yes, if my religion says that I'm going to hell for casting my eyes upon an elderly gay couple sitting in a hospital room kissing each other goodbye on the day that death do them part, then yeah. But what kind of religion is that? Makes you want to run to your nearest atheist temple and lie prostrate upon the ground, doesn't it? Oh, I kid. There are no atheist temples. Maybe universities, or libraries, or possibly Unitarian churches. But we're not much into organization.

Then he says he's going to make a crazy prediction. (Oh, Rick? They've all been crazy, this isn't your first). All of his predictions center around Churches losing their federal advantages for promoting bigotry. And my response is: yeah, so?

Here's the deal. If you want to have a church that doesn't allow gay marriage go right ahead. But do it without the federal grants and the federal tax exemptions. In other words, religions, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. No one says you have to go out of existence. We're just saying our tax dollars don't have to support you.

That's a position you ought to understand.

Ticks!

We went for a hike in the country yesterday. I came home with three ticks. The problem is that I didn't find them until 1:45, 2:15 and 3:30. AM. Then I stayed awake for a very long time with the itchy creepy crawlies.

Fortunately, Lotta (7yo) had given me a pebble that she found interesting which was on the base of my lamp. I used it to crush those little bastards and line them up in a row like frontier rattlesnakes on my nightstand. Now they rest in peace in a baggie I can give my doctor when the lyme disease sets in.

Oh, and I'm tired as hell.

Shame on Ben Stein

All cultures have their creation myths - the ancient Egyptians believed that the god Atum, deity of the solar disk and the sun itself, masturbated himself, exploding a life-giving burst of energy that seeded the dark unformed void with countless galazies. In the land of the pyramids there was no impropriety in the concept that 'self abuse' created the universe, although millennia later Victorian archaeologists wer predictably shocked to the core by the ancient Egyptians' melding of sex and divinity.

In the first act of creation, Aten was perceived as an androgynous figure, the hand that made the world being the female aspect, while his phallus represented the equal and opposite male principle. As the eminent American scholar Professor Karl Luckert writes: 'The entire system can be visualized as a flow of creative vitality, emanating outward from the godhead, thinning out as it flows further from the source.'

However, this apparently primitive - if somewhat explicit - tale actually encompasses a highly sophisticated understanding of the cosmology...It literally describes the 'Big Bang', in which all matter explodes from a point of singularity and then expands and unfolds, becoming more complex as fundamental forces come into being and interact, finally reaching the level of elemental matter.

-From Lynn Picknett's Secret History of Lucifer.

Ben Stein has a new movie coming out. Seeing the trailer I thought that maybe the movie was a gentle castigation of his comrades on the right who persist in their victim fantasies and pout about how schools don't teach their religion. Well, flip that on its head.

Stein's movie 'Expelled' is a screed against science, though the people who work in science related industries, laboratories and classrooms are not labeled 'scientists' by Stein. They are 'Darwinists'. I guess that's probably all you need to know to ascertain that there won't be much even-handed discussion of the current debate between science (particularly any science related to evolution) versus intelligent design.

Though the movie's not out yet, its producers have invited people like Richard Dawkins and the editorial board of Scientific American to preview it. According to John Rennie at Scientific American

No one could have been more surprised than I when the producers called, unbidden, offering Scientific American's editors a private screening. Given that our magazine's positions on evolution and intelligent design (ID) creationism reflect those of the scientific mainstream (that is, evolution: good science; ID: not science), you have to wonder why they would bother. It's not as though anything in Expelled would have been likely to change our views. And they can't have been looking for a critique of the science in the movie, because there isn't much to speak of.

Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, "You can't handle the truth!") Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie—which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.

A quick look at the Expelled website shows Rennie has pegged their motivation. Headlines show a particular taunting of Dawkins, not even worth looking into. You can guess what's there.

Wouldn't you think that a movie that is all about how Intelligent Design isn't being given its props as a science might try to spend a little time trying to establish its own scientific underpinnings? You and I might. I don't understand why Stein doesn't. It's as if he has a stake in the dumbing down of America.

Alonzo Fyfe, who writes the blog "The Atheist Ethicist" begins his open letter of critique to Stein of the movie (which he acknowledges not to have seen) this way:

I want to begin by pointing that your legacy, as a result of your work on this particular project, will be the suffering and early death of countless people who otherwise could have been saved or benefited from advances in science.

No punches pulled there.

Fyfe offers up such a simple rebuttal to the nonsense that intelligent design has to be accepted as science in our schools and colleges:

I am going to have to say something about the nature of science to demonstrate this point. Science is involved in explaining and predicting real-world events. This includes real-world events that cause real-world death and suffering. The better we are at understanding the real world, the better we will be at avoiding the death and suffering that nature would otherwise inflict on us.

Science does this by comparing theories. Theory A predicts that under conditions C, that R will result. Theory B predicts that under conditions C, S will result. Scientists then set up or observe conditions C, and see if they detect R or S. If they detect R, they go with theory A. If they detect S, they go with Theory B. [snip]

Now, please, try for me to put the concept of intelligent design into the description that I wrote above about how to compare scientific theories. Come up with a condition C, and a result R1 or R2, that will tell us whether or not to accept Theory A or Theory B, where Theory B is intelligent design.

You will fail.

No scientist has yet been able to present a “Theory B” that includes a God variable that produces more accurate results under Conditions C than any comparable theory that lacks a God variable.

If it seems that Fyfe is over-the-top in saying that Stein's Expelled will lead to human suffering consider that one of Stein's claims in the movie is that 'Darwinism' led to the Holocaust!

The movie claims to show several Americans who have been persecuted for trying to bring about an open and honest debate between intelligent design and evolution. The problem is that in each case major parts of the victims case are left out.

Rennie describes the situation of one such victim:

Expelled then trots out some of the people whom it claims have been persecuted by the Darwinist establishment. First among them is Richard Sternberg*, former editor of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, who published an article on ID by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Sternberg tells Stein that he subsequently lost his editorship, his old position at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and his original office. Looking a bit smug in his self-martyrdom, Sternberg also reports that a colleague compared him with an "intellectual terrorist."

What most viewers of Expelled may not realize—because the film doesn't even hint at it—is that Sternberg's case is not quite what it sounds. Biologists criticized Sternberg's choice to publish the paper not only because it supported ID but also because Sternberg approved it by himself rather than sending it out for independent expert review. He didn't lose his editorship; he published the paper in what was already scheduled to be his last issue as editor. He didn't lose his job at the Smithsonian; his appointment there as an unpaid research associate had a limited term, and when it was over he was given a new one. His office move was scheduled before the paper ever appeared.

Michael Schermer who is the publisher of Skeptic and who is interviewed for the movie says that the film opens with Stein giving a lecture to a group of enthusiastic Pepperdine students who adoringly approve of his anti-evolutionary jeremiad. Problem: those students presented on the film are extras. The film production company paid for the use of the auditorium and filled it with paid shills. A provost at the university estimates that there may have been three or four actual students in attendance.


Shermer's article describes what it was like to be interviewed for this movie. I don't need to go into it. You can guess that it involved being duped. I would encourage you to read it.



Back to our jack-off theory of the origin of the cosmos: If Stein is really interested in promoting the idea that God created the universe maybe we should press him to explain why, with thousands and thousands of creation theories to choose from, we can't accept the early Egyptians as true science. It melds much more closely with actual scientific theory than the story that goes 'And God said...'.

Just wondering.

P.S. for a beautiful take on the cosmos by my favorite mathmetician head over to mattyboy's ponderance of the galaxies

UPDATE: PZ Meyers at Pharyngula has asked that bloggers post a link to the site that is devoted to debunking the movie so that it moves up in technorati and google authoritay. Here is that link . Click away like you're Atum creating the universe, my friends!

Your Very Own Torture Memo

It was a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU that showed that Bush was in on the torture from the get go. He has admitted as much himself.

In case you are not a card-carrying member of the ACLU (what?), here is the call to action from the ACLU (It's one of those messages I'm supposed to cut 'n' paste into an e-mail):

Subject: Bush's top-down torture policies

On Friday night, in a national television interview on ABC News, President Bush directly admitted that the White House was deeply involved in decisions about the CIA’s use of torture.

Recent reports indicate that members of the Bush administration including Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet met regularly and approved the CIA’s use of “combined” “enhanced” interrogation techniques -- tactics that amount to torture.

I just demanded that my members of Congress support strenuous efforts, including the appointment of an independent prosecutor, to hold President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and other high-ranking officials accountable for their role in crafting torture policy.

I thought you would like to know about this and would also want to do something about it. To take action, just follow the link below.

http://action.aclu.org/topdowntorture

Calling Bullshit on Bitter

By now you've heard:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

And though he's responded and though this has been a theme of Barack's: the divisive anger bitterness and fear that the republicans spoon out like fake potatoes in the school lunch line; Hillary has gone to full pearl clutching mode over Barack Obama's 'elitism'.

Bullshit, Ms. Wellesley College. Can she get more republican than she has over the last few weeks? How are you going to run against John McCain by becoming John McCain? Rumors are that she's already calling Bill a 'cunt'. Okay, I made that up just to keep my cuss meter rating high. But really.

Here's your response to Obama's statement:

For the last eight years we've been given a steady diet of fear, fear, fear. And when people are afraid they grab for the things that make them feel safe. For some that is religion, for some that is guns. I say get rid of the fear, keep the religion and yes, keep the guns. But this country divided against itself, divided against those who look different or worship different cannot stand.

It's a Sad Day for Wisconsin Politics, (and for your state, too)

Yesterday was election day here in Wisconsin.

The biggest contest of the day was for our state Supreme Court. In theory, supreme court justices are supposed to be non-partisan and they do not run as democrat or republican. However, in Wisconsin as is happening in other states with electable SC justices, big business is buying the court. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Club for Growth along with the NRA and others threw several million dollars behind a candidate who can best be described as a guy who makes Clarence Thomas seem like a beacon of legal scholarship. In other words, the guy is dumb.

Last week Michael Gableman (conservative) and Louis Butler (moderate incumbent) had a debate. Gableman's every utterance sounded like it was scripted by Rush Limbaugh. He continued to characterize Butler as a 'judicial activist' and a 'liberal ideologue with a political agenda' though Butler made it clear that it was his job to apply the law regardless of his own personal opinion, while at the same time Gableman kept saying that his conservative worldview definately helps him to decide cases.

Wha?

Further, Gableman ran a 'Willie Horton' style campaign and blatantly distorted facts in cases decided by Butler. One would believe, from Gableman's campaign, that our state Supreme Court presides over nothing but criminal cases. The truth is far distant.

What the Wisonsin Manufacturers and Commerce and all other right wing support for Gableman knew is that they need their guy in there to shield big business from tort cases. In other words, suck it little guy.

While it is sad for us, I understand that this is another front in the republican war on America. Big business is dismantling consumer rights throughout the country by buying seats on state supreme courts. And because we all see only what is in front of us, we don't really notice what's going on elsewhere.

John Grisham has a new novel out called The Appeal. I read in Monday's paper that it eerily parallels our own state race. And as it turns out, in Grisham's novel the good guy loses too. From a customer review at Amazon:

It is obvious that John Grisham is up to more than spinning a fine yarn in this, his most recent legal novel. A former practicing trial lawyer in Mississippi, the setting for most of the story, as well as a member of the state legislature, Grisham is apparently, and quite rightly, concerned about a recent phenomenon relative to state supreme courts. As the novel illustrates, this is the increasing tactic of large business and ideological groups sweeping into various states and unloading large resources in elections for state supreme court justices--still not an uncommon way in which they are selected. Some states have adopted the so-called "Missouri system" where an expert panel recommends a slate of names to the governor, who must nominate one of the names, the individual serves a short term, and then stands for retention on a non-partisan basis. A simple majority of yes votes suffices to keep the judge in office for a full term.

But in Mississippi, and a number of other states, anyone can run in a competitive election for a seat on the state court. I expect this is particularly a hot issue in Mississippi, since it is the headquarters for gigantic tort recoveries in individual and class action suits returned by sympathetic juries. Grisham's previous novel, "King of Torts," was full of insights on this phenomenon. In the novel, business and ideological groups dissatisfied with the state court's decisions combine to run a candidate they pick and believe will be sympathetic to their viewpoints in rendering decisions. The target is a female Justice, by no means super liberal or extreme by any measure--but that is before the millions of dollars invested in campaign propaganda distort her record. The novel is designed to exhibit several of the major problems with this system: the potential for extraneous "hot button" issues to be injected into the campaign; the disparity in funds between judges and interest/business groups seeking to dislodge them; will judges render decisions based upon what they feel voters will like?; could judges who receive financial support from groups ignore that fact when rendering decisions that impact upon them?; will this tactic emasculate the tort law system that has "cleaned up a lot of bad products and protected a lot of people"?

It sounds like a good book. I just don't think I have the stomach for it right now.

What I like about Spring Break

Well, today is the last day of spring break for my kids. First grade and preschool. Thank goodness they give the preschoolers a little spring break, what with all the stress of not having potty accidents at school, of bringing acceptable yet mildly healthy snacks that dodge the thirty-eight allergy criteria, of finding your special square on the group rug. I think she's looking well rested and ready to return to the rat race.

It just dawned on me that what I like about spring break is that I have had zero contact with any other parents for two full weeks. DCup is my icon, my moral compass in the navigational sea chart of dealing with other parents. Her attitude, I believe, is to mostly avoid other parents if at all possible.

I am on the board of directors at my daughter's preschool with an UberMom (not Milf - there can be only one!). Her daughter also has ballet with my daughter so we spend a good deal of time around each other.

Once we had a chat about discussing politics with people you don't know that well. I said that personally, I am a very political person but I NEVER begin a political conversation with anyone. I am frequently engaged in political conversations by other people who know my leanings and I don't really mind that. (Essentially, I would never sit in an airport lobby and tell whoever was seating nearby that George W. Bush is a dry drunk delusional poop stain and that Dick Cheney is evil incarnate, even if 78% of the country now agrees with me.)

She said that she felt the same, but then gave up the ghost on her own leanings when she told me that a co-worker of hers was acting downright silly the day after Bush was given a second term. 'I mean, really,' she said. 'That lady thought the world would go to hell in a handbasket'. I wanted to say 'hasn't it?' but I did not.

Then one day we were talking about enrollment at our children's elementary schools. She was complaining about having to check the box that indicates her children's race. "Why do they have to know that?" she wondered. I said that it helps in a myriad of ways, particularly now that we have NCLB and so on. I did not mention that my children are enrolled as hispanic, easily forgettable since I am as pasty white as they come. Her daughter's school has about five non-caucasian non-christian children. My daughter's school (same school district) is about 40% minority.

Then she launched into a racist screed. I won't even go into details here, it was just banal, empty-headed, they are not like us thinking. I felt like the top of my head was going to roll back like a sardine can and my brain would just plop out. The things she was saying were not quite overt. Think of the scene between Mame and the Upsons in the film 'Auntie Mame' and you know what I mean. Wink wink, nudge, nudge.

You know what the problem is? I must not look liberal enough. If any of you have some cast-off hippy togs (preferably that reek of pot smoke, hemp and patchouli) send them my way. I might need to knit up a Cesar Chavez handbag. I could use a Kucinich pin if anyone has one of those.

Hurry though, the next dance class is Tuesday.

There is something seriously wrong here

Now if you watch this and don't get what the problem is, let me slightly revise the dialogue:

“You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Jew?” Kroft asked Sen. Clinton.

“Of course not. I mean, that, you know, there is no basis for that. I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that,” she replied.

“You said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not…a Jew. You don't believe that he's…,” Kroft said.

“No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know,” she said.

Makes my skin crawl. For the record, Kroft's sort of smarmy sneer at the word 'muslim' is probably the worst moment for me. Hillary Clinton, if she were Bill Clinton, would've given Kroft the smack down for incipient bigotry. Rather she plays into it.

He's a Moran. But you knew that

There's a petition. But be careful, if you sign it O'Reilly might come to your home and stick a camera up your nose.

The Cheerleaders are always with us

From John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley"

While I was still in Texas late in 1960 , the incident most reported and pictured in the newspapers was the matriculation of a couple of tiny Negro children in a New Orleans school. Behind these small dark mites were the law's majesty and the law's power to enforce--both the scales and the sword were allied with the infants--while against them were three hundred years of fear and anger and terror of change in a changing world. I had seen photographs in the papers every day and motion pictures on the television screen. What made the newsmen love the story was a group of stout middle-aged women who, by some curious definition of the word "mother," gathered every day to scream invectives at children. Further, a small group of them had become so expert that they were known as the Cheerleaders, and a crowd gathered every day to enjoy and to applaud their performance.

Last week I mentioned that I heard a brief snippet on Bill O'Reilly's radio program of a frightened woman asking O'Reilly if it were true that Barack Obama is a muslim who insisted on being sworn into the senate on a Koran.

The very next day I received an e-mail from a woman who is the wife of one of my husband's high school friends. I'll post the entire e-mail in comments. I'm guessing that it was the radio woman's source for her Obama misinformation, since it not only contains the Koran/swearing in nugget, but claims that Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance and turns his back to the flag and slouches when it is being said in his presence.

It ends like this

"The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!
----Remember he only move [sic] to this country three years ago. It is scary. Who is funding his campaign? Who is pushing to get him in!!
How did he rise so high in 3 years?"

I was really angry after I read the entire e-mail. I thought of about eight different ways to respond to the e-mail. The first three started with 'fuck you, moron'. Instead, I put it away for a few days. Yesterday I wrote my answer. Here it is:

Snopes.com has a decent rebuttal of the claims made in this e-mail. You can read it here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

Without even going to Snopes for clarification, I should think a few glaring errors would have shown this e-mail to be highly flawed, such as the declaration that Obama has only been in the US for only 3 years, or that a United States' senator would refuse to say the pledge of allegiance.

I am saddened that this piece of bigoted misinformation is making the rounds. I respect anyone's right to make an informed choice about candidates-preferably based on their stand on the issues. But this hatchet piece reeks of the same kind of religious hatred used against John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The tenor of anti-muslim hatred in this country is fast approaching the German hatred for the Jews in the 1930s. I would like to think that if I were a German living then I'd have spoken up per the words of Reverend Neimoller who said
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." Well, as an American in the new millenium, I will speak up for the muslims. This e-mail is just wrong.

I would like to point out that much of the misinformation printed here came from a piece in the Washington Times - owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, just so you know your sources.

In the mean time, Mike Huckabee was hosted yesterday by a southern baptist minister who wrote the following:

"I'm going to submit to you that as believers in Christ Jesus, we are not even of America," Wilton said. "We march according to a different drumbeat. Ours is not the Constitution of America; ours is the constitution of the Almighty God."

http://www.biblicalrecorder.org/content/news/2006/06_14_2006/ne140606sc.shtml

That frightens me a whole lot more than a Harvard Law graduate community activist member of the United Church of Christ (Obama) running the country. That is a christian saying that christians are above the constitution. I imagine that if those words were uttered by a muslim you'd realize how frightening they are to those of us who aren't christian.

I tried to send my e-mail to everyone this woman had sent it to, but my e-mail editor doesn't allow me to do a batch mailing unless I set it up putting everyone in my address book. I would do it, but you can't change idiots with such complicated devices as the facts. I'm afraid I would be wasting my time.

If you get this e-mail and you would like to reply, feel free to use mine. And thank you internet lords for Snopes.

Maybe he should put little stickers on the insoles

to tell the left shoe from the right shoe.

It works for my 4yo.

(Image swiped from Commander Other's Otherwhirled)

Update: I think Franiam has helped solve the dilemma: Bush is so far right he refuses to wear the left shoe.

Who's Bugging Me Now

It's one thing to be a corporate tool. It's entirely different if you build your whole persona on being just the opposite. Is it irony or hypocrisy for Buffett to speak out about endangered species, to take a bit role in Carl Hiaasen's movie "Hoot" which has an environmental anti-overdevelopment message, all the while building 44 Cheeseburger in Paradise Restaurants and at least a dozen Margaritaville Resorts? The Margaritaville in Negril has helped change Negril from a laid back hippie enclave to an all-inclusive nightmare. BTW, friends at a small hotel are losing their beach. Hurricanes are largely responsible, but so too is the overdevelopment of the north end of the beach where Margaritaville, now joined by a dozen other all-inclusives, is located.

Remember Dennis Kozlowski, shamed CEO of Tyco? He threw a 2 million dollar birthday party for his wife - guess who was the entertainer? Jimmy Buffett. He was paid $250,000 for the bash. Here's a question, though. Why does a guy who nets 25 mil a year from concerts alone (not to mention what he makes writing books, building chain restaurants and theme hotels, plus royalties) go to the mediterranean for a $250k gig?

Greed.

How is Buffett different than a guy like Rush Limbaugh whose schtick is hating on the French and the Cubans all the while filling his fat gullet with French wine and Cuban cigars?

Just wondering.

Who's bugging me now

I don't know why. But that baby talk voice is really starting to grate. Renee, you are thirty-eight. Worldly wise is better than cutesy at this point.