Hee hee.

"Every day, more than 1,000 people - 380,000 in 2003 - are caught watching television without a license. "

Doesn't it seem a bit disingenuous, in the face of recent disclosures by drug companies that their FDA-approved products are actually not so safe, to claim that drug importation is unfeasable because drugs from Canada aren't regulated by the FDA? Personally, I think I'm more inclined to trust Canada's regulatory agencies than our own. (Washingtonpost.com, NYTimes.com)

Compassionate conservatism in action.

There is finally an organized, vocal group of people, former military lawyers, actively opposing Gonzalez's nomination as Attorney General. Their opposition, not surprisingly, is based on his apparent acceptance of torture in interrogation proceedings, and his dismissal of international law. This is important and good.

Unfortunately, they are already murmuring about their lack of power and possible willingness to just let it go in the face of such seemingly strong support of Gonzalez. According to the NY Times:

Mr. Hutson said talks with other retired senior military officials had not yet
produced a decision on how to oppose the selection, though testifying at the
hearings was a possibility. He said that while several opposed the nomination,
some were unsure if opposition would be "worth the effort" because of little
expectation the nomination could be derailed.

The point of a confirmation hearing is to get all the evidence, all the information, in order to make an informed decision about an appointment. If everyone has already made up his mind before hand, what's the point of even having them in the first place? Evidence should be presented, if it exists, and opinions should be given. Then, let the cards fall where they may. But to say that opposition isn't even "worth the effort"? Lame.

Can anyone explain to me what this is supposed to mean?

In introducing Leavitt in the Roosevelt Room of the White House yesterday, Bush
made no mention of the Kerik debacle, which was unusual for an administration
known for its discipline...

(Baker and Connolly in the Washington Post)

I've been awfully silent lately; that's because I've actually had work to do at work, and hence, not so much time for pontificating needlessly on the internet. Ahh well. I'll be back someday soon. Being useful at work probably won't last long. Sigh.

And just for kicks, here's my sweet and touching essay on the holiday season: "Merry Christmas, I Fucked Your Snowman."

This is not a good time to be a woman. Despite the fact a majority of people in this country still support abortion rights, the Senate seemingly does not.

And in the ridiculous legislation file today: The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. Which would require women who want abortions after the 20 week mark to be informed that the fetus can feel pain, and be offered pain relievers. For the fetus. I'm not kidding.

Dark days, getting darker.

Wow. It's stuff like this that makes me want to stop paying taxes, Thoreau style. I never cease to be shocked by how ignorant people can be, but what's frightening is that our government is paying stupid people to ensure that high school students end up equally stupid. Sweet.

Uh-oh. Here we go again:

'President Bush increased the administration's pressure on Iran on Saturday, saying there were indications that the country was speeding forward in its production of a key ingredient for nuclear weapons fuel, a move he said was "a very serious matter'' that undercut Iran's denials that it was seeking to build weapons.'

I just hope we demand a little more hard evidence this time, before we let Bush & Co. start dropping bombs.

I saw Control Room this weekend: phenomenal. What is most compelling about it is how clearly it shows the complexity of war, and the media's roles in war, and the complexity of the relationships between the Arab world and the Western world.

This made me step back and realize that there are no right and wrong sides in this situation. It's been so easy, I think, to become subsumed in a totalizing position on this war--distaste (er, hatred) for Bush & Co., and certainty that we should not be in Iraq, quickly balloon into a simplified perspective about all of it. Watching this movie drew out my understanding of the endless ambiguities, the impossibilities of rightness or wrongness in the Middle East right now.

Be very afraid.

Even Howard Dean hears the call for a more responsible media. From his speech at Yale for a "The Media and the Election: A Postmortem" symposium, he cracked the whip on our failing media institutions, pointing out that corporate ownership, and a too-heavy focus on entertainment, are making it impossible for the media to fulfill their role in the democratic process.

And another excellent article on media failures by Frank Rich. This one is, well, much more chilling. And I applaud him. We need to hold the media accountable, we need to point out their failures, and we need to make sure they stop happening.

Some words of wisdom regarding the networks from Alessandra Stanley. (And an example of my favorite kind of writing--humour and sarcasm as trojan horse for pointing out the very sad and pathetic parts of our political and popular culture.)

Hmm. Curious.

This is what I like to hear:

'In a conversation with the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, Mr. Powell once referred in frustration to Mr. Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz as "[expletive] crazies," according to a recent British biography of Tony Blair.'

And other fun tidbits from Kristof.

Christopher Hayes's article on undecided voters is both funny and painful. But the most significant point comes at the very end, after he's revealed just how little connection people have with politics, and how separate they believe it is from their lives. He writes,

As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon
"issues" as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of
values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and
arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary--of
convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues.
The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008.
But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a
majority party again.

This is not even a question in my mind, and the former suggestion not an option. Adopting non-policy-based language just to get candidates elected directly contradicts any efforts to seriously re-engage citizens in politics, and re-create that political language Hayes is talking about.

People were more engaged in politics, and shared a common language and understanding of how policy fit into their lives, up until the last twenty years or so. It is not impossible, although it's not easy, to bring this engagement back. But it's worth it, and if we allow the degeneracy of politics the Republicans have instituted to continue, with our blessing and collusion, it will just become harder.

Yet more proof that the right wing likes to use "ethics" and "morality" when it suits them, and disregard them when it doesn't.

The House is trying to change current rules so that a member who is indicted by a state grand jury can still hold a leadership position. It's assumed they're doing this so that, in the eventuality that DeLay is indicted in Texas, he can retain his leadership position.

Aha, but "House Republicans adopted the indictment rule in 1993, when they were trying to end four decades of Democratic control of the House, in part by highlighting Democrats' ethical lapses. They said at the time that they held themselves to higher standards than prominent Democrats..."

They claim that they're changing the rule now because DeLay's potential indictment is nothing more than political revenge by partisans in Texas. It's amazing how they can turn everything around and blame it on the Democrats.

Er, scary:

'Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, has told Central Intelligence Agency employees that their job is to "support the administration and its policies in our work,'' a copy of an internal memorandum shows.
"As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," Mr. Goss said in the memorandum, which was circulated late on Monday. He said in the document that he was seeking "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road."'

Does anyone know of any very thorough books on the history of CIA? I've become a bit obsessed in recent months (again, blame Chomsky). I'm reading The Cultural Cold War right now, which deals primarily with CIA propaganda campaigns after World War II, in Europe and elsewhere, to promote "liberty" and "freedom," as defined in a capitalist democracy. It's interesting, and includes a lot of history of the development of the Agency, but I want more.

Oh, gross. This is not the right way for the Democrats to gain votes and strength in the national spotlight. This just makes liberals look even more weak in our standards and beliefs, more easily changeable.

We cannot water down or change fundamental and important aspects of our beliefs in order to win votes. We can't become mini-Republicans to win, because then it will mean nothing that we did win. I don't argue against trying to win more religiously-minded people to the Democratic party, but we can't do it by pandering to the worst aspect of that population. We have to find those whose faith and religiosity includes ideas about social justice, honesty, and helping fellow citizens. We we can win over those who are backing Bush & Co. by pointing out just how far their actual policies are from Christian morality. Show their hypocrisy, and they will lose support.

Er, I hate watching people make bad choices, and knowing I have very little power to do anything about it.

In the "Too Much Analysis" category: Maps and Cartograms of the 2004 election.

Ultimately pointless, but amusing nonetheless. Acid trip geography.

What I'm reading these days: Against Love by Laura Kipsis (again), The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth, Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Election by Tom Perotta, The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick. Bracing myself to read: Don Quixote.

This is probably not something Phillip Roth expected people to come away from his most recent novel, The Plot Against America, thinking about, but I'm thinking about it nonetheless. And maybe it's some kind of misguided nostalgia talking, but Robert Putnam adroitly points out that I'm not misguided feeling this way:

Technological advancements in newsmedia dissemination have weakened American communities and their relationships to politics, and the relative absence of a social base for political knowledge-gathering has drastically affected the workings of American politics.

It's a small example, and a friend of mine rightly pointed out that this is not the whole story behind our current political disengagement. But here is the picture that Roth painted in my mind: Prior to the widespread appearance of television, and television news, people had to go to theaters to watch the news, where they were surrounded by many other people, all also there to watch the news. They sat in dark rooms, and learned, collectively, what was going on in the world.

This simple act created a sense of community that we are sorely lacking, and which is a fundamental necessity in a functioning democracy. Now, we can all come after an arduous day at work, and watch the nightly news while we're cooking dinner and trying to make our kids do their homework, half paying attention, and feeling that we're actively engaged and knowledgeable, because, hey, at least we watch the nightly news. There's no effort involved, and, more significantly, there's no community involved. Everyone is in his own home, watching his own television, and not, afterwards, talking about what he just saw with everyone else who just watched the same thing.

There are new communities developing--I will use this word once, and only once, ever in the history of my writing here: the blogosphere. But one has already to be politically curious and driven to bother seeking this community out in the first place. It is simply too easy now to disavow any community, and any connection to politics, and to news events generally.

And the eternal question--how to re-engage people, in an intelligent and reality-based way, in public policy? Do we, as my friend's comments perhaps inadvertantly imply, need another Great Depression? Another Great War? Or are we too jaded and satiated by SUVs for things even of this magnitude to be able to impact us anymore?

Maybe I'm just too disheartened and full of hatred for humanity these days to formuate a rational argument, or even a rational thought, anyways.

We're going to hell, in a nicely tailored Kate Spade handbag. Sweet, dude.

The outcry over Specter's innocuous comments just points up the hypocrisy of the right wing. They attack liberals for attempting to apply "litmus tests" to any potential Supreme Court judges, claiming that it's flawed and partisan to ask a potential judge how he feels about abortion, or whether he would try to overturn Roe v. Wade. But they freak out and cry foul against one of their own when he merely mentions that an explicitly anti-abortion judge might have a hard time in confirmation hearings. Apparently, it's only considered a "litmus test" if the Democrats are asking the question. The illogic of this whole issue makes my head spin, so much, obviously, that I'm rendered inarticulate.

Charles Krauthammer has a good point: the whole "moral issues drove Bush's re-election" story is a media-concocted load of crap. He deftly juggles and re-arranges survey statistics (which seems to be a necessary skill these days) to point out that War and Foreign Policy, and Economic Issues, were, in fact, of much greater concern to the electorate.

But in his attempt to point out how something so unfounded and meaningless is picked up and ballooned out by the media in order to have a coherent story and sell advertisements, he falls prey himself to another annoying media habit: accusing the "liberals" of, well, of everything, or at least of being patently ridiculous.

Aren't the Republican Party leaders themselves claiming a great moral mandate, and attributing their win to the religious right? Wasn't it Karl Rove's great strategy to mobilize those missing evangelicals? Bush has made no secret of leading with his faith, relying on churches and other religious organizations to help him campaign. How is this suddenly a liberal bogeyman? Why is it brilliant strategizing for the Republicans to scream wildly about morality and God, but a sign of liberals' humiliation and sense of moral superiority to talk about how the Republicans are screaming wildly about morality and God?

Newpapermen irk me. I can't believe I sometimes still want to be one of them.

I thought our federal judges and Supreme court judges were supposed to be the best of the best. Why would we want someone who's barely qualified nominated to our highest courts? Someone who practiced law without a license in two separate instances?

From Washingtonpost.com's Washington in Brief:

Nomination Hearing Set for Griffith

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) has scheduled a nomination hearing Tuesday for Thomas B. Griffith, President Bush's choice for an open seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, committee sources said.

Griffith's nomination has been stalled by revelations that he practiced law without a valid license in the District and Utah. Hatch's office scheduled the Tuesday hearing before the Judiciary Committee without naming the nominee to be considered, but committee sources said Hatch has indicated it is for Griffith, a former counsel to the U.S. Senate and now the general counsel for Brigham Young University in Utah.

Hatch told reporters last week that he hoped to hold Griffith's hearing before Congress adjourns its lame-duck session in the next two weeks and Hatch's committee chairmanship ends, even if there is no time to have the Senate vote on Griffith's nomination this year.

After an unusually long investigation into Griffith's past this summer and fall, the American Bar Association on Sept. 29 gave Griffith a vote of "qualified," with a large minority voting "not qualified." That is the lowest possible passing grade the bar association gives judicial nominees.

Of the 10 Bush administration appeals court nominees who received the same rating, six were confirmed to the bench.

What are "moral issues?" A recent Zogby poll reveals exactly what I suspected in the first place--the values people voted on aren't so narrow as to include only gay marriage and abortion. The morality of being in Iraq, and the values of social and economic justice in America were higher on people's minds than either of the two "moral issues" the Republicans keep talking about. You can read a more articulate break down of that poll here.

Oh, thank buddha. At least one small piece of good news has entered my life in the past week: Ashcroft is out.

I find it pretty humourous, and awfully indicative of the non-reality based lives of Bush & Co., that he had this to say about his tenure as Atty General:

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

Oh, certainly.

Eh, fuck him. Maybe they'll finally uncover the statue of Justice, with her indecent bare breasts.

Larry Thompson, the oft-mentioned possible successor of Ashcroft, doesn't seem too bad. Ok, his "crack down" on corporate crime was a bit of a joke. But I feel less wary that he'll bring us into a Handmaid's Tale kind of religious right future.

In the Oh, really? How very interesting files:

"In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, the oil services company [Halliburton] said that the Justice Department expanded its investigation into Halliburton, that government probes have found that bribes may have been made in Nigeria and that A. Jack Stanley, a former senior executive, may have been involved. "

And you don't say?

"[T]he FBI expanded a probe into charges of contract irregularities by Halliburton in Iraq and Kuwait. Lawyers for a Pentagon official said the FBI requested an interview with her over her complaints that the Army gave a Halliburton unit preferential treatment when granting it a $7 billion contract to restore Iraq's oil fields. "

And more...

"The Justice Department's Public Integrity Section is examining whether Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, when he served in the Senate, violated criminal campaign funding laws or federal disclosure laws relating to the transfer of a mailing list to his campaign committee. "

Oh, I'm not done:

"Also proceeding is special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's probe into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's employment to columnist Robert D. Novak. Novak said his sources were two senior administration officials."

(All quotes stolen straight from Dana Millbank's White House Notebook.)

Did I just read this?

"African Americans continued to marginalize themselves, again voting nearly unanimously (88 percent) for the Democratic nominee."

Yes. Yes, I did. And I read it here.

(Alright, so it is George Will, but still--wow.)

Apparently, the leaders of the left are experiencing "waves of angst."

This guy is, at least:

"'I think we have come to an ending point in a long transition that began in 1968,' said Donald L. Fowler, a former national chairman of the party. 'During that time, the old Roosevelt Democratic majority coalition has creaked and cracked away under various kinds of racial, religious, social and international forces, and this election was the end point in that transition. I think we live in a country that is majority Republican now.'"

I don't think this country is majority Republican. I think this country is really dominated by people who don't much care one way or the other, and really just want their own lives to be better. They'll vote for whoever they think will accomplish that for them, if they vote at all. Think about it: just barely 60 per cent of voters was a "record turn out." The way you do better than that is to engage all those people who don't give a shit about politics at all, and make them realize that it can, and will, effect their daily lives. I think we've started that monumental project, but it's going to take time. And all these freaked out lefties need to stop wringing their hands, and keep working.

I was hoping Kerry would keep himself visible and take on a stronger role in the Senate after this election, and it sounds like he's hoping to do so, too. Pete Wallsten writes about Kerry's future, and the future of the DNC, here. This is particularly refreshing, after all the "Kerry failed us" talk I'm getting so sick of hearing:

"'There's a tradition,' [Robert] Farmer said. 'Nixon ran and lost and then won, Reagan ran and lost, then won. In this case, you'll have to look at the field and say to yourself, 'Could another candidate have won states that John Kerry didn't win?' And my sense is that I don't think anybody could have done much better than John Kerry did.'"

I have avoided saying anything thus far post-election, mostly because my rage and frustration were so blinding, nothing coherent or meaningful could come out. But here we are, a week later, and I think I'm finally calm enough to put my thoughts (of which there are too many) into some kind of intelligible form.

The only question I've been able to ask myself, like some kind of malfunctioning Stepford-robot, for the past week is, how did this happen? How is it at all possible that this man, rather than being impeached, was re-elected? What colossal failures, and on whose watch, occured to allow Bush & Co. another term in office?

And, of course, as everyone is asking (in more or less irritating and nauseating ways), where do we go from here? There has been much chattering about the "confusion" of the Democratic party, like we're all running around in circles, with dazed looks on our faces, bumping into walls and knocking each other over. The prevalent image of the Democratic party now is one of struggle and (very polite) infighting, as we bicker over what direction the party should take, and how we go about reclaiming the "red states." (Some people have other ideas about what to do with those red states--I don't think they're entirely wrong).

There are two huge thoughts that have been taking up most of my mental space, two things that we need to take a very close look at, and bring into a brighter spotlight nationally. (Well, there are certainly more than two, overall, but I'm starting small.) First, and foremost in my mind right now (blame Noam Chomsky) is the role of the media in our national politics.

Bob Herbert, in the New York Times yesterday, argued that "ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values." I can't argue with that, and I've been saying it for months. Herbert points out all the completely untrue things that Bush supporters believed as they cast their ballots last week: that Iraq is definitively connected to Al Qaeda, that weapons of mass destruction certainly were found in Iraq, that Bush is not, in fact, a big, fat, evil lying man. (Er, alright, that last part wasn't actually in Herbert's column.) The American people have been hugely mislead, and many have not been set straight.

Of course we can blame Bush & Co. for that. They based their campaign on distortions and lies, and have made it a signature element of their administration to ignore facts they'd rather were not true. But there is something else we can blame, as well, and I was a bit perturbed that Herbert didn't mention it in his column.

The mainstream media have fallen down on the job. Their role as government watchdog is a freakin' joke. Of course, this is really nothing new, but I think perhaps their complicity with government has reached new heights (or would that be depths?) of ridiculousness. I could string together a very dirty laundry list of various media omissions, biases, propaganda-machine moments, and outright lies. It is a filthy and corrupted institution in need of serious surgery. That would be step one.

And major-topic-I'm-obsessing-over number two? What the hell are "morals" anymore, anyway? If Bush & Co. could win another term thanks to all those people who cited "moral issues" as their main concern in this election, the very idea of morality is seriously up for debate. And I think it damn well should be. I think it's time for the Democratic party, and the left generally, to pick up this ball and run with it. If the right wants morality to be a pillar of electoral strategy, that isn't a problem. Because if you look closely, beyond the rhetoric and the push-button "moral" issues that have been dominating this field for the past decade, if you start thinking about real morality, there's no question who stands up to criticism here. I'm sorry, but fig fat liars who send people to die in a war meant to benefit themselves and their business partners simply do not meet my criteria for morality.

There are many, many things I've been pondering for this past week. But they all tend to center around these two poles, gravitating back and making me realize the same things, over and over. And these are the things I will continue to talk about, and much more loudly than I have been. Because we cannot let this happen again. And I'll be damned if I let them run around freely with their "mandate."

"Voters who cited honesty as the most important quality in a candidate broke 2 to 1 in Mr. Bush's favor."

Thus proving that no one in this country pays attention to anything.

I think I'm going to throw up.

Wanna know what Bush has given his corporate backers? This Public Citizen report (available at the excellent misleader.org site) will tell you.

From Maureen Dowd:
"President Bush is like one of the blissfully ignorant teenagers in "Friday the 13th'' movies, spouting slogans like "Freedom is on the march'' while Freddy Krueger is in the closet, ready to claw his skin off."

We should be so lucky.

I've never loved Tom Friedman, but I like this. Specifically, this:

"How do we begin to repair this jagged hole [the lack of a moderate center in politics]? There is no cure-all, but three big things would help. One is a different U.S. approach to the world. The Bush-Cheney team bears a big responsibility for this hole because it nakedly exploited 9/11 to push a far-right Republican agenda, domestically and globally, for which it had no mandate. When U.S. policy makes such a profound lurch to the right, when we start exporting fear instead of hope, the whole center of gravity of the world is affected. Countries reposition themselves in relation to us.
...When the world liked Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, America had more power in the world. When much of the world detests George Bush, America has less power. People do not want to be seen standing next to us. It doesn't mean we should run our foreign policy as a popularity contest, but it does mean that leading is not just about making decisions - it's also the ability to communicate, follow through and persuade."

Now that baseball is over, I can get back to obsessing about the election.

"The number of flipflops and missteps committed by the Bush administration in Iraq far exceeds anything John Kerry can be accused of. First we dissolved the Iraqi army, then we tried to reconstitute it. First we tried to eliminate the Baathists, then we turned to them for help. First we installed General Jay Garner to run the country, then we gave it to Paul Bremer and when the insurgency became intractable, we installed an Iraqi government. The man we chose was a protégé of the CIA with the reputation of a strong man - a far cry from democracy. First we attacked Falluja over the objections of the Marine commander on the ground, then pulled them out when the assault was half-way through, again over his objections. "Once you commit, you got to stay committed," he said publicly. More recently, we started bombing Falluja again. " - George Soros

(I think it's freakin' hilarious that Cheney inadvertently directed people to Soros's website during the debate.)

Saying it does not make it so. The Bush administration can continue to claim it was necessary and right to go to Iraq, but they are liars. Bush says, "He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction." This is blatantly untrue. It is exactly the opposite of what Duelfer's reports said, which is that Iraq no longer had the knowledge, materials, means, or, really, intent to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Why can't I get away with that?

Fighting the War on Terror.

Wow.

Oblivious isn't even the word. Oh, wait, what is it? Willful ignorance.

What a surprise!

More in fundamental, ideological differences between me and the Bush administration:
Tax cuts for big businesses don't automatically equal new (well-paying) jobs. Sometimes they only equal bigger paychecks for CEOs. Capitalism isn't an inherently moral economic system. I don't think I really need to give proof of this. Making America a "good place to do business" doesn't necessarily make America a good place to work.

Wasn't the trickle-down theory already proved a failure?

Liars.

Sanctions were working. The UN was doing its job just fine.

Why did we really go to war in Iraq, Mr. President?

More in TWPWEH files:

There is increasing evidence that Bush's No Child Properly Educated, ahem, I'm sorry, I mean No Child Left Behind education initiative is a monumental failure. Here's more, pointing out that testing data is insufficient in most states, and that little to no guidance was ever given for implementing these plans. Yay!

Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose dedicate a chapter of Bushwhacked to the educational failures in Texas under Bush's "leadership," including (and most damning, in my opinion) the method of encouraging students to drop out in order to raise test scores. It reminds me a little of "Pump Up the Volume." Is that terrible? The point is Bush took a bunch of bad policies and made them national. Brilliant.

Testing is not educating.

"Panders to voters."

An interesting to phrase to apply to a presidential candidate, or anyone running for public office in a representational democracy. How does someone whose job it is to represent voters "pander" to them? He is SUPPOSED to do what they want. That's his job. "Panders to large corporate donors," ok, I understand that. "Panders to international opinion," alright, I can see that. "Panders to voters"?

That that phrase can make sense in election season shows that we have greatly lost perspective on what a representational democracy is meant to be.

Rummy's sexy look:

You know what I think I'd like to see? Kerry and Cheney debate. It would be much more equal in terms of policy knowledge and history in Washington, and they might actually be able to discuss real, important policy-related things. It's not as if Bush actually makes policy. Yes, a Kerry-Cheney debate might actually be meaningful.

I watched "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" last night. If you can stomach the Capra cheesiness, it's a good election-season movie, all about one idealist uncovering graft and corruption in Washington, and initiating an epic (kind of silly) battle on the Senate floor against it. I think they should show it on network television some Sunday night before the elections. Maybe it would get people fired up to throw out the corrupt, corporate-owned politics currently dominating Washington. Ok, probably not. But I can dream, right?

I think it's a bit nauseating that the Republican party constantly tries to paint Edwards as beholden to trial lawyers, claiming he uses his influence for their benefit. "Kettle! Kettle! Black! Kettle!"

In frenzy for tort reform, we seem to have overlooked a very important thing about the American judicial system--the courts are the main tool the American people have to exert some regulatory authority over business. If we could not sue corporations and professional service providers for providing bad services and products, they would have no reason not to do so. We'd be driving cars with malfunctioning seatbelts, our children would be playing with dangerous toys, we'd be eating poisonous food on a regular basis, and there would be nothing we could do about it.

Trial lawyers are not evil creatures. They do a very important job. Yes, there are some frivolous, meaningless lawsuits happening. But reform shouldn't mean eliminating civil suits altogether. Balance, people. Balance.

How much power does the Vice President have? A lot, apparently. At least in this administration.

Misunderstanding the War on Terror:

Naomi Klein in The Nation:
"Most alarming, the attacks [on Sadr in Iraq] appear to be boosting support not only for Sadr personally but for theocracy generally. In February, the month before Paul Bremer closed down Sadr's newspaper, an Oxford Research International survey found that a majority of Iraqis wanted a secular government: Only 21 percent of respondents said their favored political system was "an Islamic state" and only 14 percent ranked "religious politicians" as their preferred political actors. Fast-forward to August, with Najaf under siege by US forces: The International Republican Institute reported that a staggering 70 percent of Iraqis want Islam and Shariah as the basis of the state."

We went into a secular-Islamic country, in order to "spread democracy" and "liberate the Iraqis," and have inspired instead an increasingly fundamentalist populace and a breeding ground for potential terrorists.

Sweet.

It comes down to there being two fundamentally different views on America's place in the world, and what kinds of international actions will best keep us safer, and those views were on display clearly last night.

Our current administration has pursued a course of action defined by an America that is bellicose, headstrong, and independent to a fault. An America defined by the cold war, and cold war policies. They have consistenly mistaken resolution for leadership. From this perspective, America is meant to rule the world. We don't have to co-operate, we don't have to answer to anyone, and our national security depends on offensive action.

Kerry and the Democratic party think America should be a more equal player in the world. They value negotiation, communication, building alliances, working with others, and not just for our own advantage.

I think this is what it comes down to, at least on the foreign policy front. So the question is, are there two kinds of people in America? Do people even have an opinion about our role internationally? Can people who perhaps have supported Bush, for various other reasons, recognize that "stubborn bully" is not necessarily the personality America wants to have internationally?

A very good article from the Washingtonpost.com, comparing Bush and Kerry statements (and mis-statements) on Iraq, the economy, and healthcare.

Of course, they've both emphasized different statistics, and used language selectively to tell the stories they want to tell. But Bush is the only one who has out and out lied.

Not a surprise.

On a slightly lighter and, somehow, more uplifting note.

At House Hearing, Quips, Insults and Some Official Business

"So, Mr. Menendez asked Mr. Armitage, "did you fail to give the president a briefing that the Taliban is still in existence?"

Mr. Armitage said the president meant that the Taliban "is not shackling 28 million people anymore," not that it had literally vanished.

The reply did not entirely satisfy Mr. Menendez, who said, "I think we have to stop sugar-coating the realities of what is happening in Afghanistan and in our other conflicts and be honest with the American people."

Mr. Armitage did not respond directly to Mr. Menendez's "sugar-coating" metaphor, choosing instead to use one of his own. "The Taliban is very much running from hidey hole to hidey hole," he said.

Moments later, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, opined that "nitpicking the president of the United States' words is not really constructive in this type of situation." Mr. Rohrabacher said Mr. Bush had driven the Taliban out instead of unwisely tolerating it, as he said President Bill Clinton had.

A bit later, emotions warmed even more as Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, asserted that Mr. Bush had misled the American people by taking the country to war against Iraq ("It wasn't difficult, because many people have a difficult time getting the details straight"), while the main mission was still Afghanistan.

"And I have never seen such a misuse of our power," Mr. Payne observed.

That was too much for Representative Henry J. Hyde, the Illinois Republican who heads the committee. He said that "calling the commander in chief a liar by every hour on the hour" was simply wrong, and was helpful to "the other side," by which he appeared to mean America's terrorist enemies.

Moments later, Representative Gary Ackerman, Democrat of New York, said he and his colleagues were "sick and tired" of hearing their patriotism questioned whenever they exercised their responsibilities and rights, as citizens as well as members of Congress.

Mr. Hyde did not mollify Mr. Ackerman a bit. "Nobody questions your patriotism," Mr. Hyde said. "It's your judgment that's under question."

The two lawmakers interrupted each other a few more times, until Mr. Ackerman said, "What's obvious, Mr. Chairman, is that you are a rather vicious partisan."

"Now you're really getting personal," Mr. Hyde observed.

"Well," Mr. Ackerman countered, "I think that willful ignorance is kind of personal also, Mr. Chairman."
"Just remember," Mr. Hyde shot back, "ignorance is salvageable, but stupid is forever."

"I know that," Mr. Ackerman said, "and I'm glad that you've memorized that." He went on to say that Mr. Hyde's insults notwithstanding, he had never called the president a liar.

If nothing else, the session underlined the importance of specificity in language, especially on the eve of President Bush's foreign-policy debate with Senator John Kerry, and the dangers of hyperbole.

"The time has expired, happily," Mr. Hyde said on adjournment."

--If nothing else, the session underlined that Republicans really had nothing good to counter with. Nitpicking the president is helpful to "the other side"? "Ignorance is salvageable, but stupid is forever"? Wow...
Or maybe it simply underlines the fact that Congress often resembles a playground.

From the NYTimes.com:

"Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, suggested that Mr. Cheney had a different view [of Iraq] now, linking the Iraq war to the fight against terrorism.

"The Kerry campaign has continually displayed a misunderstanding of the war on terror," he said. "When America was attacked, the fundamental nature of the conflict changed, but John Kerry continues to approach the war on terror as if 9/11 never occurred."

But Mr. Edwards portrayed Mr. Cheney's remarks as an inconsistency on Iraq and said the beheadings of civilian contract workers, more than 1,000 American military deaths and insurgency in Iraq were proof the Bush administration had failed in the occupation."

Can they really be serious? I keep coming back to the same phrase, over and over: Willful Ignorance. This is just too much. Going to war in Iraq displays a very serious misunderstanding of the war on terror. Why couldn't Mr. Edwards have said that? Why didn't he say that the growing insurgency in Iraq, the increasing number of terrorist-group recruits in Iraq, which are the direct outcomes of our invasion and occupation, display a far greater misunderstanding than any Kerry has ever displayed. Why are they not coming right out and attacking the outright lies?

"Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban: the one place on Earth where they could force everyone to live by the most literal, unyielding interpretation of their sacred texts. One would think that the bloody results of this experiment would inspire a crisis of faith: in the country where they had absolute free reign, where there was no local government to blame, where economic reforms were introduced at their most shocking and most perfect, they created, instead of a model free market, a failed state no right-thinking investor would touch. And yet the Green Zone neocons and their masters in Washington are no more likely to reexamine their core beliefs than the Taliban mullahs were inclined to search their souls when their Islamic state slid into a debauched Hades of opium and sex slavery. When facts threaten true believers, they simply close their eyes and pray harder."

Behind the news of Iraq being reported in the New York Times and other like-minded media is the story of the Bush administrations' attempted economic "reform" of Iraq, which is frightening in both its results and implications. Naomi Wolf wrote all about it for Harper's here.

Dedicated to proving that Bush is The Worst President We've Ever Had (or, the TWPWEH files):

From NYTimes.com:
"Federal investigators said Monday that the Bush administration had improperly allowed some private health plans to limit Medicare patients' choice of health care providers, including doctors, nursing homes and home care agencies.

The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, also said that the private plans had increased out-of-pocket costs for the elderly and had not saved money for the government, contrary to predictions by Medicare officials.

The study, the most comprehensive assessment of a demonstration project that the administration has described as the best hope for Medicare's future, focused on the program's experience with a form of managed care known as preferred provider organizations, the type of health insurance most popular among people under 65.

Medicare is spending $650 to $750 a year more for each beneficiary in such private plans than it would have spent if the same people stayed in traditional Medicare, the investigators said.

In negotiations over the Medicare bill last year, the administration pressed for more money and authority to foster the growth of preferred provider plans, saying they would be more efficient and would save money over time. Administration officials reiterated that view on Monday." [emphasis mine]

This is pretty typical. The administration has a great new plan to reduce costs and increase efficiency by, in some way, privatizing a traditional government program. Later studies show that costs, in fact, were not reduced and in general the plan failed. Administration officials blindly stick by their original stance, refusing to recognize failure or change their opinions one iota. But hey, I bet they and their friends made some money.

To make it all even more fancy:
"The report was the fourth in two years to find that the administration had skirted federal law in pursuing health policy objectives. In July 2002 and last January, the accountability office said the administration had improperly allowed states to divert money from the Children's Health Insurance Program to provide coverage for childless adults. "

Someone recently took a very informal political poll on MySpace that just about killed my soul. I was sorely disturbed to realize what a large percentage of people around my age are planning on voting for Bush. I kind of feel like even 10% of the populace is more support than Bush deserves, so that more than half of the people who responded to a "Who are you voting for?" bulletin board question support The Worst President We've Ever Had was shocking.

Even more disturbing were the reasons given: Kerry would take all of our tax money and give it to lazy, welfare recipients. Kerry would let Osama bin Laden "go." And my personal favorite: Bush is cuter than Kerry.

I had this misguided notion that our generation were educating ourselves, that we were starting to pay attention to politics because we were afraid to see things get worse. But the inarticulate, uninformed statements I saw posted almost made me lose hope entirely.

There were a fair number of people, too, who said they were voting for Kerry as the "lesser of two evils." While I often tend to view electorial politics through this lens, myself, in this instance I have to say that I'm not. As I wrote to a friend recently, I think we'd be lucky to have a man like Kerry in office.

Being a strong leader requires all the qualities that Kerry possesses: intelligence, an ability to negotiate, a willingness to look at all sides of an issue, and to change his mind when the situation requires, eloquence, experience, diplomacy. NONE of these are qualities Bush possesses. Bush mistakes headstrong resolve for leadership. We cannot allow our foreign policy to be built on the model of a snow plow.

I don't know what to do. I said the other day that all I could do was keep talking. But I don't know that anyone is listening, and it's entirely likely that if they are, they already agree with me. We've allowed ourselves to be so polarized we can't hear the other side anymore. We've disfigured democracy so thoroughly that it's become a joke. And it feels like no one really knows what to do.

We're going to hell in a handbasket. All I can hope is that it will prove so terrible once we get there, we will finally be able to turn things around and come back.

"Blair's speech was interrupted twice by protesters, one yelling that the prime minister ``had blood on his hands,'' others opposing a planned ban on fox-hunting. They were bundled out of the hall."
(From NYTimes.com)

Hm. Only in England I think.

"Item #2-- Threat Posed By Proposed New FOIA Exemption:
According to the
American Library Association (ALA), the Senate has approved
a provision in
the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005
(H.R. 4200)
that would create a new exemption under the Freedom of
Information Act
(FOIA). This exemption would restrict public access to
unclassified
satellite images and related data, such as maps, reports
and
analysis. Even if government officials felt that the
public should have
access to the information under FOIA, the provision
prohibits the
disclosure. According to critics, this completely bars the
public from
accessing certain commercial images and would threaten
significant amounts
of unclassified information that journalists, public
interest groups,
scientists, and the public routinely use. This provision
has been
incorporated into the House's version of the National
Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2005 as an amendment which is now being
discussed in
House-Senate Conference. The ALA is urging concerned
individuals to
contact members of Congress and ask that they defer action
on this
amendment until its long-term impact has been adequately
assessed. To take
action, tap into the ALA Legislative Action Center ."

(From National Coalition for History Washington Update mailing)

From Washingtonpost.com:

"'Great countries, great democracies have a balance of power between central government and local governments, a balance of power within central governments between the executive branch and the legislative branch and the judicial branch,' [Bush] said."

Just last night I was talking with my housemate about how frustrating it is that current partisan politics seems to misunderstand the fundamental requirement of democracy, and the foundation of our government's structure: the balance of power between all branches of government, and between state and local power. To hold as the party's goal to control all branches of government strives to eliminate that very necessary balance. Not to mention the fact that Bush administration seems intent on reducing the state's control over education, policing, regulation of resources, and on and on.

I hate all this empty rhetoric. This administration operates consistently on the basis of the disconnection between what they say and what they do. They will be re-elected based on what they say, and no one will pay any attention to what they're actually doing.

"As described by the officials, the pessimistic tone of the new estimate [regarding Iraq's future] stands in contrast to recent statements by Bush administration officials, including comments on Wednesday by Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, who asserted that progress was being made." (Read about it here.)

Oh, really? What a surprise! The Bush administration might be less than forthcoming about the real situation in Iraq?

'"You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can't be done," Mr. McClellan said at a news briefing. "And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future."'

Yeah. Those damn pessimists in the National Intelligence Council and the National Foreign Intelligence Board. The obviously don't know what they're talking about, and are only out to make Bush look bad. They're against us. They must be evildoers.

I have a feeling things would unfold more smoothly in Iraq if we stopped operating there as though things were working the way we'd prefer them to work, and started operating with things as they are. Flexibility would be out greatest asset, and one which, unfortunately, the Bush administration does not possess.

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL ISSUE!!!!! Why are we discussing this? Why is this a headline story in the Washington Post? Why are we getting angry about a mis-pronounced name, instead of ridiculous budgeting, tax breaks that are crushing our economy, dangerous deregulation, disgusting political dishonesty, crippling "education" initiatives, and on and on and on.

There are much bigger problems facing us now than whether the Packers play at Lambeau or Lambert field. If anyone casts their vote based on this meaningless factor, I will be ashamed to consider myself an American.

$3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda (washingtonpost.com): "A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan. "

Basic economics lesson for Mr. Bush: without income (uh, taxes, moron) there can be no outcome. You can't spend money you don't have. Why do I have to balance my budget, if Bush doesn't have to balance his.

Oh wait, I meant to say "if Bush doesn't have to balance ours." Because it's NOT his money he's fooling around with here. It's ours. And he's giving it away to his friends.

I just finished reading Bushwhacked, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose. It's excellent. Read it. Get mad. Then GO VOTE!

" 'When it comes to Iraq, my opponent has more different positions than all his colleagues in the Senate combined,' Mr. Bush said. 'If he had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be a threat to the security and to the world.' " (Reported in NYTimes.org)

This kind of rhetoric makes me so mad. What does this even mean? What's even more frustrating is that this hyperbolic, ridiculous talk increases Bushie's lead over Kerry. He's not saying anything. He can't back up what he's talking about. It's big, ugly, empty talk, and it's going to help him win.

I hate politics.

Everytime I read that Bush's lead is growing, I feel sick to my stomach. And I feel even more sick when I read things like this:

"Pollsters suggested that the change was a result of a month of attacks on Mr. Kerry's war record by a group of Vietnam veterans, combined with the Republican convention, which featured searing attacks on Mr. Kerry and staging designed to portray Mr. Bush as strong and forward-looking." (Also from NYTimes.org)

Essentially, Bush's numbers are rising based on attacks that were proved unfounded, and on what is pointedly and unabashedly called convention "staging."

I think I'm going to throw up. And start making plans to emigrate.

Why?! For the love of buddha, why?!

I'm still in the dark as to how anyone can support Bush, especially how anyone can be "pro-Bush all the way." (Notwithstanding the fact that this woman seems not to understand "all the way," when she later expresses reservations about the war on Iraq, and wants to know "what Bush was thinking." I'll tell you what Bush was thinking: Money and Control.)

I feel nauseated. Revulsed. Terrified.

The double plusgood duckspeaking is, apparently, working for them.

In the "very well said" category:

"We can only end the threat of terrorism by addressing constructively the routine violence of poverty, hunger, and exploitation which characterizes the daily existence of several billion people on this planet."
-Manning Marable, The Failure of U.S. Foreign Policies (from Znet)

Ahh, New York. I'm enamored. Any doubts I had that I want to move there after I finish my master's have been dispelled. This book store did much of the dispelling. I now know what heaven looks like.

I just finished read The Age of Innocence, and I think Edith Wharton has made her way into the pantheon of my all-time favorite authors.

I don't want to go back to work.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but morally treasonable to the American public."
-President Theodore Roosevelt

I wonder if Dubya knows what "morally treasonable" means? That's an awfully big word...

For the past week, I've been going through the most recent revision to our Composition Reader project: an addition of about 80 new articles and short stories, many by "women of color." And I keep noticing, over and over, something that has me a little disturbed.

It seems that "women of color" only ever write about being women of color. I think, though, it has more to do with the fact that the only black and hispanic women writers who get any recognition do so because they write about being black and hispanic women. It's a niche. The industry of words has a place for them, and it's a limited place. But we sure are opening up the canon!

Your mission (or mine) if it should be accepted: to find black women, and hispanic women, and asian women whose writing is published without being contained to the limited scope of their identities.

The Republican Women's Forum held a little gathering last night. It was called "W Stands for Women."

Who thinks these things up?

(You can watch video of this gathering here. Just scroll down and look for it under the C-SPAN video heading in the left hand column. I'm not sure how long it's going to be here, but hey.)

In related news, a federal district judge in New York ruled last Thursday, in National Abortion Federation v. Ashcroft, to permanently block the 2003 law banning Intact D&E abortions (more commonly called partial-birth). It was ruled unconstitutional because there was no exception allowing for the health of the woman. NONE!

Because W stands for women.

Just something to keep in mind:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Goverment..."

"This American government,--what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage...Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way."

-Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

Hey, thanks to whatever anonymous person told me the link to True Majority's online voter registration stuffy stuff was not working. That's what I get for not double checking. It should work now.

True Majority has an online voter registration toolkit. I didn't know you could register to vote online, but it's about time. If you haven't done this yet, do it immediately. And then vote. Don't be stupid.

The dangers of television news. Lazy journalism, sensationalism winning out over reportage, sound bites sound bites sound bites.

Ugh.

Why are we anti-Castro, again?

Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival has some very thorough, very interesting background to US interventions in Cuba, and the reasoning behind our anti-Castro actions. There aren't many.

Willful ignorance. Dana Milbank's column points out how Bush's campaign consistently distorts and manipulates other people's words for its own benefit. They hear what they want to hear, simplify complicated statements, and mislead the American people. It's Orwellian in the extreme. They have perfected Newspeak in ways Orwell himself could never have imagined.

Reading Forbes

As a raving liberal living in the city of Boston, it's not often that I come across Bush supporters, and I've had many occasions to ask myself in the past year who in their right mind would vote for Bush this November. I don't get many opportunities to sit down with right-wing Bushites and pick their brains, and I tend to avoid ultra-conservative publications.

That's why I decided to start reading Forbes. It's good to get some kind of idea of what the opposition thinks, right? Reading nothing but Noam Chomsky can only serve to isolate me in my liberal ideas, and further convince me that no sane people could possibly be Republican.

I'm still not sure Republicans are sane, but I am fully convinced that they excel at the art of willful ignorance. I'll take just one column from the September 6 issue of Forbes: Current Events, by Paul Johnson.

Johnson is "keen" to see Bush in the White House because he was "revolted by Bill Clinton's lies and reassured by George Bush's straight talk." I'm not going to say Clinton didn't lie. Of course he did. He's a politician. But "George Bush's straight talk?" Giving the appearance of being a straight-shooting man of integrity does not actually make the words that come out of his mouth true. The tenacious belief in Bush as an honest man reveals how firmly image and illusion play into our politics.

Johnson, further, is "suspicious" of Kerry because he enjoys French support. He asks why the French are "so keen to see Kerry in the White House," but nowhere does he attempt to answer his own question. His distate for Kerry, in this regard, seems to stem mostly from what it appears Chirac expects from the US if Kerry should take office in January. A perfect example of right-wing use of inflated suspicions and rhetoric to paint a picture of something that doesn't, actually, exist.

Johnson then moves on to Kerry's supporters, namely Michael Moore and Goerge Soros.

I'll let Johnson's own words speak for his ignorance re: Moore:

"I haven't seen Michael Moore's anti-Bush movie. But all I have to do is to mentally line up Moore alonside Bush to decide whom I prefer...Bush looks to be a man who keeps himself trim through self-discipline, while Moore is a gross, shapeless, unshaven monument to self-indulgence and gobbling."

Way to judge the issues on their merits.

And finally, in a beautiful bit of irony worthy only of a hard-line fiscal Republican, Johnson complains about Soros's donations to the Democratic party and liberal think tanks. He writes, "No other financier of modern times has made such abusive use of his money to exercise power." Riiight.

Johnson sees in the Democratic campaign "a species of conspiracy by money men, showbiz celebrities, and other self-important pseudo-idealists to hijack the presidential election." He trusts that "ordinary American voters will recognize what is happening and vote accordingly."

So do I.

I'm starting to understand why all my friends are leaving the country.

Is Florida on the way to becoming the next Florida? Here's some stuff.

This is not in the least big surprising, but it is frightening.

I've been waiting for this since the beginning of the "war on terror," wondering when they were going to start including domestic political activists in the definition of potential terrorists.

I don't know what to say.

And something I haven't done in awhile...

What I've been reading: Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift, The Ambassadors by Henry James, The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman, All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve, The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde, Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion.

I attempted to calculate how many books I've read since I learned to read. I came up with 4,160. In the "I'm slightly obsessive" category: I wish I'd kept track of every book I ever read since the day I read my first book. That'd be interesting, wouldn't it...

Alright, alright. I'm horrifically embarrassed to admit that I even thought of watching this moving, much less having spent an hour and a half actually doing so, but man. The Mandy Moore phenomenon that is "How To Deal" shored up almost every point I made in my thesis so perfectly, how can I not mention it?

I knew this movie would be bad, but I had no idea just how bad it would really be. I thought bad in a "Clueless" kind of way. Maybe even in a "Freaky Friday" kind of way. Oh no. It was bad in a "why am I watching this shlocky badness?" kind of way. The screenwriters seemed to never have met a teenage person ever in their lives. The predictability factor was off the charts. For the love of buddha, it was bloody awful.

But here's why I'm writing about it anyway: there are some very basic themes that prevade in "female coming-of-age stories written in the past decade." These include divorced, inept parents, who can't teach their daughters how to truly love another person; young girls learning how to trust other people; young girls tormented by popular, bitchy other girls; young girls with fathers who aren't willing to grow up; young girls whose mothers are experiencing the same dating/relationship things (and hence are not much in the way of role models); on and on ad nauseum.

My god, this movie fit into my thesis perfectly. How can I not write about it, despite it's inherent, unacceptable, painful badness?

(And as an aside: After having spent the past few years examining female coming-of-age stories in the past decade in literature, might it be worthwhile to study it in real life, too?)

In the "Completely Pointless Thoughts" category:
Y'know when someone wins a big monetary prize, or donates a lot of money to a foundation, how the exchange of very large fake cardboard checks is often involved? Um, why? Where did this bizarre symb0lic ritual originate? Does the size of the piece of cardboard ever correspond to the monetary value of the donation? Whose idea was this?

Wow. Everything you ever wanted to know about food safety. And crossing the border with meat and poulty.

(Yes, it's USDA day. I'm that bored.)

And in the "Bureaucracy is Confusing" category: the USDA administers food stamps, WIC, the school lunch program, and several other similar programs. Wouldn't you think programs like these would be under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services? I would. The USDA also deals with housing and telecommunications issues in rural America, something I would, were I in charge of these things, likely assign to, oh, say the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

No wonder it's so hard to get anything done.

Hm. Another fun fact: South Dakota has more cattle than people.

Some interesting statistics from the 2002 USDA Census of Agriculture:

"Ninety percent of farms are operated by an individual or family. The number of corporate farms declined by 18.4 percent from 1997 to 2002, which reverses a trend that has continued without interruption since 1974.

Direct sales to consumers increased 37 percent from 1997, totaling $812.2 million in 2002.

The value of organically produced commodities reached $392.8 million in 2002. "

I have been thinking a lot lately about agriculture (call it a side effect of my trip to Iowa), and specifically about sustainable agriculture. I started wondering whether recent moves toward organic farming, and greater publicity of CSAs and farmers' markets, were making an impact on agriculture trends of the past decade. Reading Fast Food Nation a few times certainly instilled in me the desire to know better where my food is coming from. And after eating locally-grown organic produce, and realizing that the difference really is tremendous, I thought a transition away from corporate farms was inevitable.

It looks like maybe, for once, I was right.

(The USDA website is kind of interesting. But maybe only t0 me...)

From Washingtonpost.com:

"While local police were providing security for the candidates at the morning events [in Davenport, Iowa], three nearby banks were robbed within a one-hour period. Authorities provided few details of the holdups and declined to say how much money was taken."

Hee hee hee.

I'm always a sucker for a funny quote:

From The New York Times Online:

'"This shows that unless we do something now - or it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the coalition.'
 

Ok, I haven't written anything here in a long, long time. I guess I just haven't had much to say.

I'm pleased with the selection of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate. I think they've made a very balanced ticket, and the choice definitely increased the likelihood of a Democratic win this November.

I was out in the midwest this weekend, for a family reunion (I'll put some fun soybean field pictures up somewhere shortly), and, of course, started talking politics with my dad. My parents live in San Diego, a highly conservative city, which is a huge contrast from where I live, in Boston. I think we've been entertaining opposite feelings about the upcoming election, largely because of the kinds of politics with which we're surrounded: Dad's almost certain Bush will win again, and I'm almost certain he'll go down in flames (ok, I don't really think he'll lose that badly, but I feel sure he'll lose). Of course, our prophesies about this election have a lot to do with the people we're around, and I've long been aware that those in Massachusetts might not represent the rest of the country. I was curious to see what people in Sioux Falls, South Dakota think about Bush, and where they're planning on throwing their votes.

Both my Dad and I were surprised to discover that many, many people in South Dakota (usually a Republican state, despite Daschle's long tenure as Senator) are almost as rabidly anti-Bush as we are. My uncle Paul, an ex-Army man and ROTC teacher, vehemently decried Bush as "dumb as a rock." In fact, my dad told me the only person he spoke to who was planning on voting Republican was a crazy pro-life woman wandering the streets at midnight, shouting about Jesus and the dead babies.

This gives me great hope.

Boston's not nearly as hectic with the DNC as I was expecting. I was even early to work this morning, because no one was on the trains. It's empty around here. A comedian at the MW last night said to check out this website, showing the streets of Boston, to see what it will be like here after the zombies come.

I'm tired and I'm going home.

I'm in love with T.S. Eliot. It sucks being in love with a dead guy.

He was only 23 when he wrote 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'

I'm not one to say "vast right-wing conspiracy," but...

From Washingtonpost.com:

"While drafted in terms applicable mainly to the case before it, the opinion [of the court, regarding Cheney's 2001 energy task force and the request for documents regarding that task force to be turned over,] revealed a court now sympathetic to the White House's need to insulate itself from lawsuits. In 1997, the court ruled 9 to 0 that President Bill Clinton would not be unduly hampered by Paula Jones's lawsuit for sexual harassment he had allegedly committed while governor of Arkansas; yesterday, the court warned of 'meritless claims against the executive branch.'"

(Oh, ok, I am one to say "vast right-wing conspiracy.")

We went to see the new HP this weekend, and, as usual, the empress and I had entirely opposite reactions. Where I thought it was lovely and more visually, hmm, stimulating than the first two, I found there to be more gaps in the narration, more holes, the story moving too quickly, not as compelling. It's as though there was simply too much story to put into a movie, so they decided to focus on making it very, very pretty. And of course C thought that narratively, it was the best of the three. I will never understand how we can walk out of a theater together feeling as though we'd seen two completely different movies.

I really wanted to go down to the MW afterwards, but curses! They were having some silly Hyde Park Community fund raiser and everyone was wearing hula shirts and leis. No thank you. We ended up sitting in the arboretum until 2:30 in the morning, drinking beer and talking about every random thing. Despite the plethora of bugbites I now find myself covered with, we had a spectacular night. It's our new summer night hang out. Who needs crowded, noisy bars when there's the arboretum right there?

I've been reading Nancy Mitford the past few days, and am finding myself thinking like a turn-of-the-century British aristocrat. These novels are actually pretty fun to read. It's like stepping into a world completely different from my own, but in the opposite way from reading Mahfouz. It's all landed gentry and coming-out balls and marriage marriage marriage (but only the right and proper kind). Very fascinating. And Mitford writes with the most subtle, quiet wit, I absolutely adore it. It all feels very frivolous and fun, in the way "The Nanny Diaries" was supposed to be last weekend. Instead, "The Nanny Diaries" just made me sad (there are people in this world who should never give birth). Nancy Mitford is perfect summer reading.

Hmmm. Burnt coffee...it smells like hot dogs. Has anyone ever noticed this? Why is this? What is the connection between burnt coffee and processed pork products? Discuss.

In the "oh, so that's who our vice president is" files:

From Washingtonpost.com:

"You know who the White House thinks should pay for their deficit? They think it ought to be children in Head Start, women with young babies who need nutritional help, veterans who need health care. . . . And if you think that's compassionate conservatism, then Dick Cheney is Mr. Rogers." - John F. Kerry

Heh. Heh heh.

From Washingtonpost.com:

"During the Clinton years, Jeremy Tuck said he had been selling mobile homes in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, at $45,000 a year, making good money. Last year, he was assembling mobile homes, earning $15,000 and living hand-to-mouth. But Bush has his vote this November. Had Gore been elected in 2000, Tuck said, 'we would've been taken over by Saddam Hussein or [Osama] bin Laden.' "

Yup. Definitely would have been taken over by Saddam Hussein. It was soley the aegis of Dubya that prevented us from becoming A-rabs. If them stinkin' liberals had been in power, the United States of America would have been left unprotected. Hell! those stinkin' liberals prolly woulda LET them A-rabs in. They woulda INVITED 'em! We'd all be worshippin' Allah and sendin' our kids to Israel with bombs strapped to their chests.

Should one laugh at these kinds of sentiments, or just feel supremely sorrowful?

Alright, curse me if you will for being irreverant in the face of a man's death, but, truth be told, I never had much love for Mr. Reagan, anyway.

I can't help but reflect on the irony of the false security alert that occurred just before Reagan's service in Washington. Todd Purdum, in the New York Times, describes it like this:

In a vivid sign of the intense anxiety over security, a little more than two hours before the service was to begin the entire Capitol and adjoining offices were hastily evacuated in what turned out to be a false alarm. The Federal Aviation Administration said a radio transmitter had malfunctioned on a Beech King aircraft belonging to the Kentucky State Police as it neared Washington airspace. The device is supposed to identify the craft to air controllers, but it failed intermittently, prompting a heightened alert.

Capitol police officers, shouting "Airborne threat, four minutes out!" ordered an evacuation as loud alarms sounded, and dozens of dignitaries and former Reagan aides gathered in a reception room near the Senate floor went running down the north steps of the Senate wing. In dark suits and black dresses, mourners including former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, former Vice President Dan Quayle and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the former ambassador to the United Nations, hustled into the muggy late afternoon sunshine, with men shucking their jackets and women under orders to remove high heels if they could not run in them.

"They came in screaming at us like you can't believe," said Margaret D. Tutwiler, the former State Department spokeswoman, who with the others returned to the building when the alert was lifted after several minutes. "They said, 'you can't walk, you have to run.'"

The irony's not immediately clear?

Reagan's administration was responsible for some of the worse foreign policy offenses, especially in the Middle East. I'm not saying the intense hatred for America in Islamic countries is the fault of Reagan and his ilk; the reasons for that go much farther back and are the fault of far more than one person. But Reagan sure didn't help, and I do think that the "war on terror" we're currently facing likely wouldn't be happening were it not for some of the decisions and movements made during his administration.

Now we live in a state of constant alert, constant fear, seeing danger in every malfunctioning state police aircraft. It seems fitting that this fear should disrupt the funereal atmosphere of a man who helped make it so.

Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee this morning, and am making random, unfeasible connections here. Whatever. I thought it was funny.

I have been immersed in all things Islam lately. Well, literarally, anyway. I just finished reading Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk, the first book in the Cairo Trilogy. Reading this book sent me into culture shock, just sitting on my couch. I got so sucked into the story, the characters, and the strangeness of the traditional Islamic culture, that I would look up and forget that I was allowed to leave the house, despite being a woman.

Palace Walk was written in 1956, and maybe it's just the translation, but the formality of the prose really contributes to the sense of antiquity, of stepping backward into another world, one I could not imagine being part of. It made me wonder, over and over, whether life in places like Iran, or Afghanistan, is still as stifled, as repressive, as the life depicted by Mahfouz in Cairo at the turn of the century.

To follow up on my foray into Islamic studies, I started Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi. I've been looking foward to reading this book for months, and thus far, it's living up to all my expectations. Nafisi relates what is was like living in Iran during the revolution, contextualizing her memories in her story about a clandestine reading group she led in the early 1990s. It's fascinating.

All I ever hear about Islam, though, are these stories about fundamentalism, about its repressive side, its traditional side. I want a broader picture. I want to see the side that would make a Western woman, someone I've known since childhood, convert. I want to see the good things. I'm sure they exist.

Why is this what election campaigns are all about? Why the the Bush administration the biggest lyingest liars in the history of liars? Why isn't everyone as terrified of them as I am? Why hasn't Bush been impeached? What is wrong with this country!?!?!?

I love this picture. I love the idea of little old ladies as "hellraisers." Yeah!

Making the world safe for democracy...

I just watched A Decade Under the Influence, a documentary about the cinematic revolutions of the 1970s. Aside from capturing a very exciting period in film history, in a decidedly non-stuffy boring documentary way, it made me think about a similar period in more recent film history: the "independent revolution" of the early 90s.

There was the same realization, catalyzed by one film ("Easy Rider" in the 70s, "Pulp Fiction" in the 90s), that the big studio system was failing, unable to produce movies people wanted to see. There was suddenly something new and different and fresh, and thus are revoutions born.

However, revolutions also die. After the mind-opening films of the 70s came "Weekend at Bernie's" and "The Big Chill." After Richard Linklater and Tarantino came "Titanic."

My question: are we going to come soon upon another revolution in filmmaking? Or did the big studios finally co-opt revolutionary cinema when Disney bought Miramax and Fox opened their own "independent" imprint? Can we reclaim the real meaning of independent, instead of mistakenly linking it to anything that doesn't star Kate and Ashley Olsen?

Whatever. I'm still excited for "Harry Potter." Whoot whoot!

Mmm. Stepford Wives and tuna casserole last night. What more could a girl ask for? Since hearing about the soon-to-be-released Stepford Wives remake, I've become obsessed with the film, so we had a little screening last night.

The first thing I thought was how much it reminded me of Rosemary's Baby. It has the same themes: paranoia, the war between the sexes, and a husband who has (inexplicably) turned against his wife for his own selfish reasons. Well, duh. They are both based on novels by Ira Levin.

A stellar film, and I have a new cinematic hero: Paula Prentiss, who plays the feisty best friend, Bobby. Not only is she super saucy, she's fashionable to boot (in a hot, hot pants kind of way). How can you not admire a character who says, "Two things I always carry with me: Tampax and Ring Dings." Awww yeah.

So. I'm officially gainfully employed. After a year and a half, I finally got the job I moved to this weather-challenged city to find. I will start my new position as Editorial Assistant for Pearson Custom Publishing in 3 days. I am simulateously thrilled and terrified. I had a panic attack about twenty minutes after accepting the job.

My whole life is going to change. Admittedly, this is what I have been praying for for the past few weeks. Things at the Bella Luna have become...um...a bit unbearable. But I've never been so good with change. And the very structure of my life will be entirely different. The people I see, the places I inhabit, the times I wake up and go to bed, the nights I go out and don't go out (and I'm sure I will be going out much less frequently, which is probably a good thing). Everything will change.

In other news, California was spectacular. I am now tan. My brother's graduation was amusing and entertaining. Seeing my family was interesting, as always (we are all crazy). The drive up the coast was stunning, making me ponder again and again why I'm in Massachusetts.

The real killer, though, was being in San Francisco again. I probably had more fun in the day we spent there last week than I did in all the countless weekends I spent there in the past. I fell in love with San Francisco all over again, and actually accepted the possibility that I might, just might, want to move back there someday. If only for Amoeba Records...

What I'm reading: Rides of the Midway by Lee Durkee, On Love by Alain de Botton, Waiting: the True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

Against my will, the job search appears to have been restarted. I have an interview on Friday morning. Suddenly, I am forced to start considering all these factors again, these things I decided I didn't want to consider anymore: money, responsibility, the point at which I have to grow up and decide that having fun can't be the predominant element of my career.

I just want to get out of Boston for awhile. May 14 can't come soon enough.

Things have been super hectic, and I haven't had time to sit down, much less think of anything interesting to say. I hate to use this site to give updates about my boring life, but I feel the need to write something, and I don't have time to come up with something interesting. I'm still not reading the news...

My cousin has been in town for a week, and we've been having super fun. I suppose it's not that crazy that we get along so well, and are so much alike, seeing as we've known each other for 20 years. She's like my sister.

We went to Montreal this weekend. It sounds stupid, but I didn't expect it to feel so foreign. Montreal was very...strange. I was instantly obsessed with the frenchness, and wanted to move there the minute we drove across the border and saw signs that said "Bienvenue a Quebec." Yes, I'm a ridiculous francophile, especially regarding la langue. I loved it. Too bad I could barely speak it. Everytime we went somewhere, I would said "Bonjour, un cafe s'il vous plait." Then they would say something to me in very fast, unintelligible French, and I would get a blank, pained look on my face. Then they would smile, and say, "ahh, English." Yes, dammit. English.

We decided to spend our one night in Montreal on a Rue St. Denis pub crawl. The bars were very strange. When I have more time, I will write a more detailed account of the Official Montreal Pub Crawl. But I'll leave you with this tidbit: we ended the night in a hooker bar, where we watched a 25-year-old woman leave with an 80-year-old man, who had a frightening "I'm going to get laid" grin on his face. Ewww.

I'm going to California next week, and buddha knows I need the freakin' vacation. Screw Boston.

What I'm reading: Nalda Said by Stuart David. The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino. Found Magazine.