The Public Trust

What happens when you breed and buy real estate?

2006-01-02T12:17:00.000-05:00

You stop blogging.

I was already half way there with the real estate. That's why I have never been able to consistently write a blog. Or I am lazy and think all of you are fucking rejects unworthy of my mindless rambling ninny-words.

So, until Everett gets off his Duff, I am going to try to put down the Simpson's video game I received on New Years and give you some stuff to look at. Ev's the thinker. Ev will give you a link and supply cogent commentary. I supply links, insults and fart jokes. I'm like that.

Oh, where to begin?
Have I ever told you how much I hate sports. I fucking hate football, and I currently have a houseguest who intends to leave the teli tuned to football for the entire fucking day. I foresee a long day of garage cleaning to keep me out of the house so I don't have to watch the homo-erotic display of three-hundred pound men who are such pussies that they have to wear pads and helmets when they bump into each other playing grab-ass in between meaningless bouts of running, ball throwing, ass-slapping and a whole lotta standing around doing nothing.
How the fuck do educated people watch this pablum?
What is the FUCKING point!

Maybe I should give you some stuff to look at, so I can go spend some quality time in the garage with Lars Fredericksen cranked to 11.

Here's one for all you football lovers. Go buy a fucking hummer, you retards. There seems to be a few too many lying around.

Here's one for you internet junkies. You won't be able to hide the porny little picture and videos you want to read at work, but it does a nice job of hiding text so you can read all of your political blogs without people noticing. Or you can jerk off to football stats.

Amherst! Hah! Look, you can ask philosophers questions! I was going to put a link here that rewrote Superman's origin story, but I thought you football loving fucktards might need something a little more vacuous.

So, I either want an old trasher vespa to work on, or one of these. Americans are soft. When the Screamin' Yellow Hordes come roaring across North America riding these (and probably running us all through with lances like some kind of Mad Max Medieval Nightmare) I, for one, hope to join them. Call me a traitor, you pasty, drooling, moronic, football-watching chump.

The Unitarian Jihad? Must be a San Francisco thing. They have football there. I hate them. I don't mind Unitarians though. Even martyred one. Unless they like football, then they can suck a fuckin' root. Maybe we can all get Unitarian Jihad names, like mine "The Gatling Gun of Compassion," and go kick some football fan ass, those fat, slow, greasy rejects.

I guess pirates don't have much time for updatin' their blogs either. I don't think any self-respecting pirate would like a poofter sport like football, either.

Perhaps I shall try some of these tips to try and pass the time while the game of the weak and decadent is on boob tube. Though The Bastards and some gun cleaning sounds a lot more attractive.

This is a link for you bike loving pig-fuckers (some of whom never call, visit or write emails). If I ever decide to learn how to weld, it will be so I can build myself a pedal-powered chopper with ape-hangers and a turning radius that would put the Queen Mary to shame. Austin has a tall bike group. They make tall bikes, get drunk and joust. I don't think my sensai would approve. Not that I care. It might even be as fun as drunk shooting. It could involve coma and brain death and it would be better than the Opiate of the Feckless, Stupid Overpayed Fat Men in Tights, the Evidence of Cultural Decay, foot<>>ball. Waste of time, waste of resources, if you like it... ah fuck it, it sucks. Get bent.

I have an idea about who is going to respond first, the fucking limey!

Good!

2005-11-20T21:50:00.000-05:00

Please take a moment and relish this New York Times headline from today:

Corruption Inquiry Threatens to Ensnare Lawmakers

Then, click on the link and go read the article and revel in the fact that, for once, the story lives up to the hype. Oh, the sound of the piper about to get paid is so very sweet to the ear. America will be a better place if scumbag politicians accepting bribes from lobbyist vermin finally get the boot. I know Scanlan can only rat on so many, but our Congress needs a good purge. Send a good 20-30 of those doughy fuckers to jail, let G-dawg and friends pound their pucker holes to oblivions and, goddamit, let our political "leadership" realize that perhaps they ought to focus on their individual constituents rather than high-paying corporate and institutional donors.

Violence begets violence, I know. And as an American, I've been raised to accept violence as a reasonable solution to many problems. That, in turn, creates a multitude of problems for our socieity. In this case, though, I don't see anything but good flowing from the potential exposure of people like Scanlan, Abramoff, Delay, Ney, Blunt and others to the institutionalized violence of our federal penal system. In fact, that sort of goodness can't come soon enough.

DOJ, elections and race.

2005-11-18T07:46:00.000-05:00

And finally, I highly recommend this post from Publius on recent shenanigans at DOJ surrounding the pre-clearance of Georgia's new voter ID law. It's shameful. But hailing from Georgia myself, I can say it's not at all surprising. Atlanta, for all its metropolitan trappings and urban nature, still just mostly consists of a shiny veneer covering up rotten core of the state.

Anecdotal proof: I used to wait tables at a restaurant in Marietta. One day, while taking an order, I heard a table of five talking behind me. One woman at the table said, "We hired a gardener this week." One of her table mates, responded, "Oh, is he black." First woman, "Yes." Table mate, "Oh you better watch out, those people are just animals." Later on, I heard this table decrying the coarseness and general ignorance of "new money." Atleast they're equal opportunity haters...

Kinsley on abortion. What about the rest?

2005-11-18T07:29:00.000-05:00

I generally like what Michael Kinsley has to say. He's smart, erudite and funny. His commentary in today's Post, though not funny, highlights those qualities. He points out a rarely-discussed issue in the mainstream media, namely that there is no debate over abortion, merely a bunch of shouting. That's all well and good, but by that standard where in our society is there a debate anymore?

I'm busy shouting on this blog, right-wingers are busy shouting on their blogs, Congress is basically locked up in a shouting match, and our President regularly issues disjointed quasi-oracular statements on whatever topic du jour his disinformation campaigners think will motivate his base. He's not shouting I admit, but they've pumped him so full of pep-pills, anti-depressants and the occasional rufie that he probably can't muster the strength to shout anymore. Regardless, my point is, none of this constitutes debate.

So what does Kinsley want us to do? We don't debate abortion because 1) we don't know how to debate anymore, and 2) the hacks (as he rightly points out) like to manipulate hte polity through emotional issues. Which came first? Likely the 2nd. Question is, how do we return ourselves to a position wherein we can begin seeking grounds on which to debate. Let me suggest one method: compromise. (Yes, I said it again). The mouth-breating proto-fascist Christian stormtroopers probably won't agree, but I suspect that most of the rest of us might be able to find some shared ground. Perhaps it's the value of a woman's life, perhaps it's the links between poverty and teen pregnancy. I don't know. The point is, if we can find some shared values, we can then debate how those values inform the legal and political decisions that shape our national abortion policy. Until we do that, though, all the moaning in the world about the lack of debate isn't going to solve anything.

Whither the Republic?

2005-11-18T06:39:00.000-05:00

The Decemberist has written a fascinating analysis of the recent collapse of the Congressional Republican organization. Though this morning's passage of a spending bill might seem to undercut some of his arguments, I think he's spot on. What this morning's vote represents, if anything, is the Republican leadership having to fight tooth and nail to get legislation passed that's a mere shadow of its former self. Now, instead of radical crap foisted off on the American public through a lot of legislative arm twisting, we get much weaker, watered-down versions of the same designed to make moderate Republicans happy. It's not pretty, but I think it's more along the lines of our traditional political model than previous efforts from the Delay/Rove/Blunt slimebag contingent. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the spending vote comprises a real change in Republican leadership methods. Rather, I think it's a tempering.

Compromise, contrary to my regular assertions as a 20-something, and certainly contrary to the frothy ravings of the loony right wing, is not a bad thing. If the Republican Party focused more on finding a happy median for a majority of legislature regardless of their party, I think they'd get further in the long run. Today's vote seems like a step in that direction. And I, for one, think it's a positive sign.

229 years ago we declared independence from a country run by a monarch and a parliament. Over the last 5 years, we've seen a president asserting monarchical powers at every turn and a complacent Congress acting more and more like a parliament. Finally, it's nice to see atleast one half of that equation changing.

Free Bicycle Content!

2005-11-14T23:23:00.000-05:00

I put a new saddle on my fixed gear yesterday. It's a suspended Brooks B72. For the uninitiated, this may look like an ass-hatchet from hell. Appearances are deciving in this instance, the saddle feels very much like a leather barcalounger whilst riding. Very, very nice. For those of you out there riding somewhat upright bikes and having trouble with plastic saddles, cutouts and the like, I recommend finding a used B72 and riding it for a while. You might just like it.

Assholes in the news.

2005-11-14T22:54:00.000-05:00

Actually, it's only one asshole, but he's all over the news these days. Whose that asshole? Why that'd be George W. Bush, the Asshat-in-Chief. Or is that asshole...?

Anyway, in a sudden, unexplainable and painfully tardy burst of critical thinking, a sizeable majority of Americans have settled upon the painfully obvious conclusion that our President is basically a dunce and decided that they no longer approve of his "hard work". Yippee. The President, of course, doesn't give a shit. At least that's what little Scottie McClellan has to say in this article. According to Little Scottie, the President doesn't pay attention to these sorts of opinion polls. Why, you might ask? Well, because "You can get caught up in polls...Polls are snapshots in time."

That's right. And if you put all those little snapshots together, you can make a flip book. And if you flip through the book, you'd see this dandy scene. So yeah, out of context one little snapshot might not mean much, but goldang, taken together you suddenly get a sinking sensation.

So, imagine your a one-note wonder dry drunk asshole swinging by your foot into a rocky cliff. What do you do? The obvious choice: blame someone else.

"You dirty muthafuckas! You egged me on! You made me climb this cliff. You gave me beer. You made me leap head long off this cliff!"

Stupid fucking asshole. And a failure too.

Something worth reading.

2005-11-10T21:05:00.000-05:00

Actually, a few things worth reading. I don't have time to write, so instead I'll direct you to other people's writing.

1. The Decemberist writes an article for the American Prospect telling Democrats why they should ignore the model set by Newtie in 1994.

2. Publius has an interesting take on race in France and race in America.

3. The Church Sign Generator provides hours of family fun.

4. And finally, definitive proof that you'll be more comfortable in Hell.

A Personal Reflection

2005-11-08T23:02:00.000-05:00

All my life, I was never able to understand how parents put up with their crying children. I really couldn't. It just seemed to grating, so incessant, that I couldn't see how it wouldn't drive them crazy. Well, I think now I do. The peanut has been kind of fussy of late. In the evenings, she'll spend a good 10-15 minutes having a melt-down before falling to sleep. She'll cry and wail like all those kids who used to annoy me so much. And you know what? I can take it. I feel so sorry for her, so small and so limited in her ability to tell me what's bothering her, that I don't even pay attention to the fact that she's wailing in my ear. My focus on her well-being and comfort seems to overwhelm whatever sense of annoyane I might have at her cries. Love, it seems, is far stronger than fleeting concerns for personal comfort.

Dick Cheney is an evil troll.

2005-11-08T22:58:00.000-05:00

Don't take my word for it. Read this article from the Boston Globe laying out all the reasons why I can such a dastardly thing.

Hypocrisy ain't much of an argument, but it's oh so gratifying

2005-11-08T22:00:00.000-05:00

"Hypocrisy" or "hypocrite" is the gotcha assertion of the weak debater. I don't mean that people who toss about such charges have a weaker argument or, indeed, that the charge is not true. Rather, I tend to believe that bloggers and other such folk typically levy the charge when they lack the willingness, intelligence, or energy to offer a substantive argument. The latter, for example, is one reason why I regularly call Republicans hypocrites. And today, it's the reason why I'm going it again.

The curren Republican leadership in Congress is the slimiest group of ignorant, feckless hypocrites that ever clawed their way out of the sewer of American politics. Take a glance at this article and tell me that I'm not speaking the truth.

America's Fuckwit Contingent (AFC), formerly known as the Republican Party, has once again proven that there isn't an ethical, moral, or just plain common sense standard that they can't shit on in their pursuit for political points. This weeks Republican turdfest started when the WaPo published the unsurprising, but heretofore unsubstantiated story that contrary to domestic and international law, the CIA is running a de facto overseas gulag system. Every two-bit self-righteous red state assclown in Congress immediately began to fire up their inner whiney little bitches and bellyache about dire threats to national security and the virginal sanctity of classified information.

Now, ignoring the fact that the American gulag system is illegal, there may be some merit to their mush-mouthed caviling. There may be some information that is classified and whose release would harm the United States's best interest. In those instances, investigation into the source of leaks might be necessary to prevent further harm. I can accept that principal, though I would argue that it does not apply when the classification is used to hide illegal, immoral activities that violate every norm of human decency (i.e. torture). What I cannot accept is the AFC's uneven application of that principal.

Where, exactly, were Denny "Bi-partisan Bills are for Suckas" Hastert and Bill "Conflicts of Interest are for Pansies" Frist when they were asked to investigate the outing of Valerie Plame? They certainly weren't out there trying to ascertain "the actual and potential damage done to the national security of the United States and our partners in the Global War on Terrorism", that's for damn sure. So what gives? Well, I'm going to have to resort to the easy out to answer that question: they're all lying, cheating, stealing low-down hypocrites. It's as easy that.

The appearance of impropriety

2005-11-04T09:25:00.000-05:00

I was reading a story on Yahoo news the other day about Tom Delay getting the original judge on his case dismissed because that judge had, in the past, contributed money to Democratic causes. At the time, two things caught my attention. First, that's a pretty fucking ridiculous claim to apply to judges in Texas. Why? Because all judges are elected and, hence, almost all judges have political affiliations. If the mere act of contributing funds to a political cause makes a judge partial, are there any impartial judges in the state of Texas? Seemed to me that Delay ran the risk of starting a tit-for-tat snipe session at every judge that got appointed to the case. Sure enough, Ronnie Earl had the judge that dismissed the first judge dismissed as well, this time on the theory that he is a Republican partisan. Where, exactly, does this end in a state where there are no unelected judges?

The second thing that caught my attention was this quote: "He's not the right judge for this case. It's not personal; it's not about him. It's about the appearance of impropriety." Now that's rich. A man who has been chided by the House Ethics Commmittee for actions that, at a minimum, had the appearance of impropriety, who argues that those same actions are legal and ethical, now arguing that the appearance of impropriety must be avoided at allc costs in the judicial setting. This makes me wonder, does Tom Delay really hold the courts in such high regard and the legislature in such low regard that he's willing to hold members of each to such vastly different standards? If that's the case, does such a man really deserve to be a legislature? What possible justification can he provide for that different treatment. One body make laws that govern our country, the other reviews them. These seem like equally important roles and not ones to be pissed upon by some two-bit cretinous thug from Texas.

Stare decisis and super precedents...

2005-10-31T23:50:00.000-05:00

There's a great post over at Balkinization about the role of precedents in the Supreme Court and how that relates to cases such as Roe, which most right-wingers would like to see over-turned.

Failure?

2005-10-31T23:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a neat trick that jessmerk pointed out to me today. Go to Google and type in "failure", then click on "I'm feeling lucky." What should come up, but the official biography of George W. Bush.

Moral relativism

2005-10-31T23:27:00.000-05:00

If you've ever had a chance to read it, Southern Appeal is a conservative legal blog written by a pretty smart guy. He and Publius of Legal Fiction often go at it, and the results can be entertaining. That said, the blog is basically crap, starting off with the tagline "Giving the bayonet to the 'dictatorship of relativism' since 2002." Why it is crap is perfectly exemplified by this post. Read it and read the comments. You'll see that it's a bunch of southern troglodyte conservatives (am I being redundant?) joking about the Reformation and deciding it's better to bag on liberals. Now isn't that nice. For 500 years Catholics and Protestants have been at each other's throats over the "fundamental" issues of their respective theologies. I mean, these battles were so important that members of each sect have willingly killed and tortured thousands of members of the other. And yet, this battle is unimportant, a laughing matter even, compared to the vicious attack of liberal thought and politics. Hmmmm... So are they acknowledging that relative to liberal ideas, the concepts they originally fought over are similar enough to merit cooperation? Doesnt' this seem to imply that their so-called dedication to moral objectivity exists only within the scale of inter-sectarian issues and fades away when they move out of sectarian topics? And how does that differ from relativism? Anybody?

It's all about control.

2005-10-31T22:15:00.000-05:00

Do you know what this article and this article have in common? If you do, do you know how they might relate to this article. Let me tell you: they're all about control. Specifically, they're all about the religious right's burning desire to control our sexuality and our lives. Really.

Consider the first article. It reports the heartening news that pharmaceutical companies have developed a vaccine for human papilloma virus (HPV), the leading cause of cervical cancer in this country. It also reports the appalling, yet unsurprising news, that our radical mullahs have severe misgivings about making this vaccine available to teenage girls because it might "send a subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage". Really? And what subtle message are these cracker-ass christopaths sending? Well, really, there's two. They are:

1. "I don't care if your cervix turns into a rotten pile of mush rendering you either sterile or dead, at least you weren't having sex."
2. "Our desire to see all woman conform to our views on sexuality and behavior outweighs any concern we might have for their health and welfare."

Both are equally disgusting and, ultimately, both are about controlling women's behavior. Consider what the wingnuts want to do: create disincentives to pre-marital sex. They want to make the avoidable risks of pre-marital sex unavoidable, thus ensuring that women inclined to consider such things won't engage in pre-marital sex. Unable to pass laws that explicitly penalize pre-marital sex, they're content to gamble away women's future for the sole purpose of controlling their behavior.

And look at the second article. It's all about Samuel Alito, Bush's new nominee to the Supreme Court and how the right-wing loves him. Why? Well, for one thing, he's opposed to abortion and seems likely to be another vote on the Court in any future challenges to Roe. Ask any right-winger why he opposes Roe and they'll try to stuff your ears, eyes and mouth full of putrescent shit about "the sanctity of life" and "save the babies" and "aren't you glad your mother didn't have an abortion?" Dig deeper, though, and you'll come up with this justification, "women should bear the consequences of their pre-marital sex and those consequences should always include a baby." Same argument, same topic. Make the risks of sexual activity so high that it creates disincentives to have pre-marital sex and do that regardless of the ultimate long-term effects. How many conservatives, despite their pathological willingness to suggest they might do so, have actually adopted a baby from a girl or woman who decided not to have an abortion? Not many, I'm quite certain.

So finally, we come to the third article. It reports that some drug companies are working on creating anti-HIV gels that can be inserted directly into a woman's vagina and, presumably, a man's anus so as to prevent the transmission of HIV. Sounds good, right? Well, it is. But what's going to happen if those companies are successful and start trying to market the gel in the United States. Well, suddenly, gay men might be better able to avoid a risk of unprotected gay sex. And, suddenly the raving lunatic fucktards of Kansas City won't be able to chant AIDS Kills Fags Dead with any factual basis. If the risk of gay sex decreases, what do you think the right-wing is going to have to say about that?

Etymology

2005-10-27T23:08:00.000-04:00

Last night on a South Park re-run Chef got engaged to a succubus. The boys of South Park went to their closeted gay teacher to ask why he might do such a thing. The teacher, trying to act hetero, said it was because no man can withstand the power of the poontang. I don't think I've heard that phrase since high school. So, for shits and giggles, I googled it. And guess what. There's a website that discusses the etymology of poontang.

Enjoy!

Evil bastards

2005-10-27T23:06:00.000-04:00

I'm posting this late, so you all have probably seen this story, but I'll post it anyway. Is there any better proof that we are being governed by a cabal of evil bastards? In public, IN FUCKING PUBLIC!, the Fat Bastard says that he wants to exempt the CIA or some such intelligence agency from bans on torture. Where are the psychotic Christopaths to rail against evil now? Goddam.

The market at work...

2005-10-27T22:40:00.000-04:00

The post has an informative article on how to avoid high heating bills this coming winter. High heating bills. Call me a naive moron, but why oh why do we only see this stuff when the price of gas goes up? I mean, why can't we have articles about how to save energy. Or articles about how to reduce fossil fuel consumption and stave off global warming. Or articles about efficiency as an aesthetic concern. Really, I mean it.

Having fathered a petite little lass recently, I (and my lovely wife) have been on a home ownership kick recently. We've looked at houses all over Capitol Hill and even in...gasp!...Virginia. One thing I've noticed is that, almost uniformly, houses currently on the market in DC lack good windows. Not only that, but they also lack efficient heating systems, insulation, and other such methods of energy savings. Last week we nearly put a bid down on a house. It was a beautiful house. We visited it four times, it was so beautiful. Each time we went, though, I was struck by the tall ceilings, the uninsulated sky lights, the single-pane windows and the 40s-era furnace in the basement. The wife and I worried about whether we could afford the heating bill this coming winter, much less the cost of making the house air-tight. Thus, on our fourth and last visit, I asked the owner what his heating bill was the previous two winters. His answer: $200-300 per month.

If gas prices really do double this winter, that dude (actually, the new owner) is going to be in a world of hurt. But had he done anything like insulate his skylights or replace his furnace? Nope. Of course, that might be because he's not sensitive to price changes. Or maybe he knew he was going to sell his house. I don't know. But even if I were wealthy, $300 a month to heat 1200 square feet seems downright foolish.

Rant rant rant.

Anyway, here's the thing. If you're a homeowner, read the article and contemplate which, if any, of the simpler steps in the article you could take. Weatherstripping is a breeze and caulking is easy too. Try it and see if your energy bills (and hence usage) don't improve this winter. And if you live in an older house like on we're going to buy on the Hill, try getting an energy audit. The link will take you to a self-audit, but energy firms will actually do a full audit on your house and tell you exactly how you can save energy and preserve natural resources.

Accelerating global warming

2005-10-25T20:39:00.000-04:00

There's a lengthy article in the Times today. It has an interesting discussion about how feedback mechanisms in the Artic act to amplify warming (and cooling) trends in that region. Though there are clearly scientists who think that current artic melting is likely not anthropogenic and that it may merely represent an amplification of a natural fluctuation in artic weather, the general consensus seems to be the current warming and melting is the result of human influence and must be halted to avert disastrous global effects. None of this is news to attentive environmentalists, but it's always nice to read in-depth articles on the subject.

Oh, that strange amphibious world.

2005-10-25T12:50:00.000-04:00

This woman wonders whether camel toads are hallucinogenic.

Here's the problem with me and blogs. I have many half-informed political opinions and a childish sense of humor. Which do you think is going to come through the most?

And..
This guy found the coolest flower in his yard. Someone claims to have seen it at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, but doesn't know what it's called. I think it looks freakin' cool.

Oh how I miss the days when I could fuck hookers, get the clap, take penicillin, marry a chaste young virgin and beat her uneducated ass with impunity

2005-10-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

Not me, of course. I wasn't born then. I'm a product of the sexual revolution. Thus, if I weren't happily married with a child, I'd be a sad and lonely, yet highly successful, predatory bachelor racking up the score. So you can see, I'm not complaining. Rather, the lamenting comes from none other than Mr. Leon Kass, former chairman and current member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

Mr. Kass, or Lonely Leon as his friends like to call him, begins his lament in this delightful piece. Read it and weep with the sorrow of our lost innocence, sacrificed on the bloody altar of female sovereignty. Think back to how lovely it was in the days of yore when the miracle of biochemical transmutation took the sodden contents of men's aching testicles and created love. As Lonely Leon so gracefully states it:

"For it is a woman's refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man's lust into love".

Cry for those bygone days for they are gone forever. Now, here in this gray and gloomy present; in this modern, loveless wasteland; in this barren cultural steppe, we are faced with certain doom. Why? Because, "For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties — their most fertile years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature."

That's right boys and girls, we're doomed because instead of abiding by their natural programming and fucking like rabbits after they marry at age 19 so that they can make lots and lots of babies during their fertile twenties, women are staying....gasp....SINGLE!

Wow. If it ain't those durn gays trying to get married and destroy the world, it's those durn single gurls trying not to get married and destroy the world.

Bobke on the Prez

2005-10-20T22:20:00.000-04:00

If you like Bob Roll, like Lance Armstrong and think our President is a two-bit nudnik, please check out this blogpost. It's worth a laugh.

We can return to the sea!

2005-10-16T01:46:00.000-04:00

I love the "theory" (idea? belief? mental illness?) that mankind is actually descended from a race of aquatic primates, hence our lack of hair, subcutaneous fat, bipedalism, blowholes, etc.

I also love the Simpson's episode where Lisa frees the king of the dolphins and he returns to drive the humans into the cold, wet ocean where his people had been exiled for millenia.

I might just be spending too much time reading garbage on the internet and watching television. No matter. When I saw this site I knew I had to share.
This person has a design for a functional dolphin suit. It might come in handy if we ever have to flee back to the seas.

And when you start to despair that you are in a world of shit, just stop and think about squirrels on crack.

Update: Or the Squirrel Full'o'Whiskey that would look perfect on top of my bar.

4:22 AM Update: I just about shat myself reading this guys blog. The best line?

(For God's sake, it comes with little bits of corn already in it! Talk about a time-saver.)

Maybe I should go to sleep.

Rational self-interest?

2005-10-12T08:01:00.000-04:00

So, I've been reading "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Tom Frank. I should have read it 9 months ago, but I've been distracted. I'm not terribly far into the book, but the thesis is pretty easy to distill:

Kansas is the state which best represents the changing winds of American politics. In recent years, Kansas has become overwhelmingly Republican. This has occurred as overwhelmingly poor to middle-class white counties and towns switch their political allegience from the Democratic party. These voters make this switch despite the fact that the economic policies espoused by Republicans have decimated their local economies and deprived them of the various social protections (i.e. affordable healthcare) that they have had in previous years. This seems irrational only until you realize that they are motivated almost entirely by their social conservatism and hatred of all things gay, elitist, east-coast, snobby, ad infinitum.

So far, this seems about right to me, atleast at first glance. I rail regularly on this blog (or used to when I posted regularly) against Americans who buy gas-guzzling cars and then whimper like beaten dogs about the high price of gasoline. Any half-wit who reads the newspaper knows, of course, that gas supplies are going to be more scarce in the future and will drive prices up. The fact that this has occurred in recent weeks due to hurrican impacts merely represents an acceleratoing of that that schedule. Either way, some suburban fucktard driving a Hummer is going to get dinked (and I'm going to laugh at his fat, ignorant ass). And that, of course, is why Tom Frank's thesis initially makes sense. If you're too fucking stupid to recognize the long-term financial impacts of your driving choices, how the fuck are you going to look beyond inflammatory social and plumb the economic impacts of voting Republican?

As it turns out, though, that Tom Frank's analysis may not be sufficiently precise and my sweeping generalizations may actually reflect voting changes in Kansas better than one might think. What do I mean by that?

A professor from Princeton has recently released a paper titled, What's the Mater with What's the Matter with Kansas. In it, he takes 50 years of National Election Survey data and tries to tease out voting trends in Kansas. I haven't yet read the whole thing, but the executive summary pretty much lays it out. Lower-income whites are not voting Republican at any greater rate now than they have in the past in Kansas. The people in Kansas who are voting Republican are the middle- and upper-classes. Thus, Joe Six-pack is likely to vote much like he did in 1950. It's Johnny McMansion who is more likely to vote Republican. And who is Johnny McMansion? That same fucktard in the Hummer with the "I Support Pres. Bush and Our Troops" stickers on his car bitching about the price of gas.

Hah! Anyway, once I finish the paper and the book, I might have something more intelligent to say.

Evolving viruses

2005-10-09T16:05:00.000-04:00

The Times has an article this morning that is well-worth reading. It concerns the spread of avian flu into Western Europe from Asia and mentions, ever so briefly, that though Asian bird flu is not yet transmittable from human to human, it may well gain that capacity through "a variety of biological processes".

Hmmm... What could those processes be? Evolution anyone? Certainly, the CDC seems to think so. What about our President? Well, it's hard to say. Given his seriously low poll numbers, the President has decided to prove to America that he's "serious" about keeping us safe and undertaken a new effort to address asian bird flu. But, isn't this the same President who endorsed Intelligent Design, a non-scientific theory whose pseudo-scientific proponents couldn't design an anti-viral drug if their lives (or, more importantly, our lives) depended on it? Why yes it is.

So what's an ignorant chump like Pres. Bush supposed to do? Well, he could recognize that ID is just a bunch of creationist claptrap, let the real scientists go to work, and get the fuck out of the way. Or, he could just use the Army to quarantine the entire country. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Black helicopters

2005-10-07T00:04:00.000-04:00

I saw a news story the other day which reported that President Bush is looking to either do away with or further limit the Posse Comitatus Act. The act, which is located at 18 USC 1385, says the following:

"Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

This language was written in 1878 during the last throes of Reconstruction. Federal troops had spent the last 13 years keeping the peace and, among other things, protecting polling stations. Though there are suggestions that its authors were concerned that the troops were preventing the imposition of Jim Crow, it is also clear that there were very real concerns about the politicization of a standing army. Whatever the case, this Act has stood since that time for the proposition that armed forces are intended to protect against foreign invaders and that they should not be involved in domestic law enforcement. In a world in which far too many purportedly democratic countries have fallen to rogue armies, this seems like a pretty smart idea.

Now, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina & Rita, Dear Leader and his cronies want to sink that idea. According to the principle conservative narrative coming out of Katrina, the federal response to the hurricane was not a disaster and any difficulties that arose were either the fault of Democratic state leaders or limitations, such as Posse Comitatus, on the President's ability to act. Thus, the only way for Americans to protect themselves in the future is to elect Republicans to state government and unfetter our President from the arduous confines of the law.

Such a step fits quite nicely withthe unitary executive theory, which Dear Leader and his apologists have adopted wholesale. The unitary executive is the idea that the structural separation of powers written into the Constitution isn't as clear cut as most people would assume. Whereas you or I view our government as a system where Congress creates laws, courts interpret them and the President executes them, a proponent of the unitary executive would argue that the President also has an important interpretive role and that it is his duty to refuse to execute laws he believes are unconstitutional.

The problem with this idea, apart from the fact that it woven out of whole cloth by right-wing idealogues in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, is that it effectively removes the judicial check on presidential actions. And, when you've got an insular administration devoted to secrecy, inclined to fabrication and devoid of decency, that's a dangerous position. In such an administration, it's easy to find people willing to argue thatthe President has carte blanche to torture prisoners or imprison American citizens without charge and without an opportunity for a hearing. The question is, what would those people do if you took away any limit on their power to employ troops within our common boundaries?

I'm not saying there's black helicopters poised to cart us all of to the camps, but one has to wonder whether President Bush and his Republican minions have any outer limits on their will to power.

Peewee's Fun House

2005-10-05T00:03:00.000-04:00

Actually, it's a cool interactive site with GWB as Ragdoll in Chief.

If you want to live in a theocracy...

2005-10-04T23:41:00.000-04:00

I came across this lovely bit of reporting on Daily Kos today. Seems that some members of the Indiana state legislature have decided to criminalize artificial insemination by unwed women. That's right, if this law passes and you're, say, a single, professional woman in Indianapolis who wishes to bear a child, you better find yourself a man. The ol' turkey baster method is going to get you 3 to 5 in the slammer.

Query why exaclty the enlightened Republicans of Indiana decided to sponsor this bill. The sponsor claims that she is trying to get the law passed because she believes that marriage should be a requirement for motherhood. Obviously that is a lie. The bill doesn't bar unwed women from having babies through sexual intercourse, only through artificial insemination. If she really wanted marriage to be a requirement for motherhood, the sponsor should try to ban single-motherhood entirely (ignoring Constitutional questions for the time being). But that's not what she did. She targetted only women who get pregnant through artificial insemination. Again, I ask, why is that.

Here's what I think. I think that what this law is really trying to do is prevent gay couples from having children through artificial insemination. I doubt there's many single women in Indiana seeking artificial insemination (though there's probably a few). I bet, though, that if you went to Indianapolis or South Bend you'd find plenty of solid, middle-class gay couples who'd like to join us heteros in the joys of child-rearing and family life. Basically, this bill is just another salvo from the bible-thumping neanderthal proto-fascists; another assault on liberty from the people who brought you the Inquisition (except they're probably Protestant).

A parliamentary system?

2005-10-04T22:04:00.000-04:00

Leave it to Publius, my favorite blogger, to write a post that nearly convinces me that we need a parliamentary system. Given the profound corruption of the Republican Party leadership and the abject cowardice of most Democratic politicians, perhaps it is time for a parliamentary system that allows smaller parties to create governing coalitions. It's got to be better than our current system of governance, in which politicians either polarize their electorate to appeal to the 50.0001% of the voting population that is there base or mold themselves to every passing fancy of some faceless average voter they've discovered through polling.

On a not dissimilar note, my father made an interesting comment this weekend. While discussing the current political situation in this country, he wondered just how venal politicians have become if they're basically willing to give away the farm in return for a couple thousand dollar donation from corporate interests. He's so right.

Tom Delay is but the shiny, pus-filled head of a much larger and deeper boil on the ass of America.

2005-10-03T23:00:00.000-04:00

And that boil, dear readers, is called the Republican Party. As the linked article makes clear, you can lance the boil and let some pus out, but let it go untreated and it will grow another slimier, dirtier and more deeply infected head.

But this isn't a post about medicine, so much as one about legal procedure. If you read this CNN story you will see Tom Delay assert, as he has repeatedly over the last few days, that the indictments passed down against him are products of Ronnie Earl's partisan vendetta. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Given that Mr. Delay is making this accusation, I'd like to suggest that he has the burden of proof with regards to that statement. Specifically, I'd like to see Mr. Delay prove that a grand jury indictment has been fabricated with partisan ends.

Consider for a second, the following paragraph from the Travis County's court website concerning the rights of defendants in felony cases:

"In Texas, the law dictates that before a defendant can be forced to face trial in a felony case, a grand jury must return an indictment for the specific offense charged. A grand jury consists of 12 citizens who sit for a period of three months and listen to allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Nine members must determine that probable cause exists to believe the defendant has committed the offense and vote a true bill before the indictment will issue. The defendant has no right to appear before the grand jury or offer evidence before that body, but the grand jury can allow such evidence if it desires."

Huh. Assuming Ronnie Earl, in his vast and partisan conspiracy to deny Tom Delay his god-given right to subvert democracy hasn't altered the Travis County website and filled it with lies, this means that at least 9 out of 12 people viewed the evidence against Tom Delay and determined that there was probable cause that he broke the law. And what, exactly, is probable cause? Well, we know that it requires less evidence than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard used in trials. However, it requires more evidence than a "mere suspicion" that a crime has occurred. The exact definition is unclear and has traditionally been defined by courts to be some version of a "what would a reasonable man" believe.

Which brings us back to the issue of Tom Delay. Assuming that Ronnie Earl is out on some political witchhunt, how exactly did he get 9 or more grand jury members to agree that Tom Delay broke the law? Did he pay them? Did he coerce them? Did he just show them the evidence and let them decide? If he did, is it really a partisan witchhunt or is Tom Delay just the scuzzbucket fucktard we know him to be?

The problem with marketing

2005-10-02T12:30:00.000-04:00

The New York Times Magazine has a fairly interesting article today, arguing that resource conservation, especially energy conservation, will never succeed until it becomes "fashionable". The article contains a variety of quotes from various marketers and advertisers about the fact that conservation is currently just too uncool. Among other policies, the article suggests that environmentalists should move away from un-hip conservationists like Jimmy Carter and Ed Begley Jr. and lavish its attention (and presumably dollars) on people like Michael Stipe and Mos Def.

Personally, I think that's a load of crap. I agree that very few people will adopt energy conservation measures out of a sense of altruism. Shit, most people won't even do so out of a sense of duty to their offspring. If that's the case, is it really reasonable to expect "fashion" to be any more powerful a motivator than familial ties? I don't know.

I do know that even if it is, fashion is not the key to the sort of sustainable, systemic change that is necessary to provide the sort of environmental, economic and social benefits the article hints at. Consider the example of the 1970s. The early 1970s were, by any measure, the heyday of the environmental movement. We saw such landmark laws as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species movement come to fruition. As the article notes, these laws were driven by popular support and the clearly fashionable idea that protecting the environment was a good thing. Just a few years later, during the oil shocks of the mid-1970s, people even began to reject icons of the American car culture like the Nova SS muscle car in favor of smaller, fuel-sipping Japanese imports. These sorts of changes, driven either by fashion or by economics seemed to be lasting.

Fast-forward 30 years and consider the environmental landscape now. You've got a hairy-backed whore for the development lobby...um...I mean Richard Pombo, trying to "improve" the Endangered Species Act. Average fuel economy of cars purchased and driven in the United States has been declining since 1988 and the nation's administrative agencies and Senate refuse to improve or increase our national Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. The President, meanwhile, has spent the last five years trying to gut the Clean Air Act.

If the fashionable environmentalism of the early- and mid-1970s had been truly sustainable, would we be in this situation? I don't think so. Fashion, be it political or be it sartorial, is ephemeral at best and hardly the basis for a sound national policy. Admittedly, fashion can get people motivated, but I think the track record for America's environmental laws suggests that it cannot sustain them. What's the answer then?

I don't really know. I'd like to think it's education and appeals to reason, but I don't think so. I know far too many smart, liberal people who view the environment as a useful political cudgel but not as the fundamental underpinning of our economy and society (and for that matter, lives) that it actually is. And perhaps that is where the problem lies. The "environment" is just too big an idea. For that matter, so is "ecosystem". These words are abstractions representing systems that are so complex as to be impossible to fully understand. Asking someone to sustain an interest in "protecting the environment" is like asking someone to "define life". Most people are wiling to give it a go, but after a while they'll get bogged down and lose interest. Make it fashionable and they might try a little longer, but it won't last.

So what can we conclude from all this? Perhaps this: We're Doomed.

Isn't that cheery?

Ain't dead yet.

2005-09-26T12:43:00.000-04:00

To those of you who don't know me personally, my absence (if you even noticed it) has gone without explanation. I haven't been posting because about two weeks ago my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Thus, most of my time, free and otherwise, has been taken up with caring for my wife, caring for my daughter and work. I've been meaning to post here, but haven't found the time. I'm going to try and change that, but I thought I owed any readers I might still have an explanation. Please do check back in the coming weeks; I plan on blogging.

Pericles says, "Invade Patagonia NOW!"

2005-09-08T21:25:00.000-04:00

If you haven't forgotten about the war in Iraq, rest assured that neither has the President and friends. Once they get their spin machines back in order and convince the 51% of the public that doesn't know how to tie its shoes and relies on velcro sneakers to get them to the voting booth to vote Republican that Louisiana's Democratic governor is to blame for the entire fucking mess we call the post-Katrina recovery effort, the President and friends will still have to convince this same 51% that Iraq is a success and that we shouldn't ever leave. At that time, the President and friends will rely on sycophantic weasels like Victor David Hanson to fill our ears with shit and tell us its a symphony. Fortunately, for the 49% of us who know how to read and are permitted by the good graces of our native intellect and dexterity to wear shoes that tie and thus may walk to the voting booths like civilized people, there are articles like this to prove to us that VDH is, in fact, nothing but a weasel.

Collective action problems?

2005-09-08T20:58:00.000-04:00

Publius has a great post about why Democrats are making Hurricane Katrina a political issue and why Republicans should wash the sand out of their pussies and stop moaning about "politicizing the hurricane response" like the pathetic mass of whelping bitches they really are. Publius, being a smart and eloquent cookie, describes this phenomenon in terms of game theory and zero sum reasoning.

I prefer a more colloquial term. I call it the "You only wander into a dark alley and get mugged and ass-raped once" phenomenon. Fact is, if you wander into a dark alley and get mugged and ass-raped and survive, you will NEVER wander into a dark alley again. Why? Because you are a rational person and you learned your lesson. It's as easy as that. Now generalize that to politics. In the months after 9/11 Karl Rove and George Bush used tired tropes about "patriotism" and "national unity" to lure our weak-kneed and even weaker-willed Democratic representatives into a variety of political dark alleys. Having gotten them there, KR and GB got busy mugging and raping with reckless abandon.

Now, finally, four long fucking years later, it seems the Democrats have finally learned not to follow George Bush into a dark alley and, rationally and reasonably, have decided that being the royal fucknut that he is, he can busily mug and ass-rape himself which, as it turns out, he's pretty good at. Of course, Karl Rove (who is a big fat fruit with a gimp in his basement) is doing his level best to help the gullible swine called "red state voters" that that is not the case. We'll see if it works out. In the meantime, do please go over to Publius to read keen and inciteful blog posts.

More on the "general welfare"

2005-09-01T18:53:00.000-04:00

Michael, over at Nameless Rantings (congrats on the engagement!) helpfully pointed out in earlier comments that Jack Balkin over at Balkinization has a new post in which he lays out a debate from the early days of this country as to whether the "general welfare" clause allows the federal government to provide disaster relief. If you don't care the read the whole thing, rest assured that the pro-relief forces won out.

This, I think, makes sense. The Constitution, as Justice Jackson once wrote in the context of a free-speech case, is not a "suicide pact". If citizens should expect anything from their federal government, it should be assistance in their time of most dire need. I think what is happening in New Orleans qualifies.

Of course, two different things are happening in New Orleans: people are starving and dying and other people are creating a state of violent anarchy. Thus, I'd like to point out Justice Jackson's full quote:

"The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."

To whit, if the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not a suicide pact, than they should not prevent the government from providing relief and they should not prevent the government from fighting an orderless, liberty-less anarchy. In this case, I'm of the opinion that much harsher measures need to be taken with looters. There has been much commentary on the left side of the blogosphere about the lunacy of shoot-to-kill orders for looters. (I'll let you find the links, I'm short on time right now.) Today, I'm going to have to disagree. I think it's perfectly reasonable, albeit tragic and scary, to institute shoot-to-kill orders or something similar in cases where full-on anarchy is setting in. The question, it seems to me, is how do you differentiate between looters taking advantage of anarchy and looters trying to survive. I've got a simple answer: don't shoot anyone looting a pharmacy or grocery store. Everybody else, however, is fair game.

Harsh, reactionary and unpleasant, I know, but that's what I'd propose. I understand that shooting a looter no doubt violates his right to due process and forcefully rejects any assertion of human rights he might have made. However, the scope of process due in a state of anarchy is quite low I think, and I'm inclined to believe that human rights are not something that exist free of the fetters of civilized conduct (In other words, you don't just HAVE human rights, you earn them. HOw? I guess by acting human, whatever that means).

So, having put on my reactionary hat for the evening, I shall bid you farewell. Time to go contemplate building my arsenal and hoarding food and water for when the end-times hit DC....

Fucktards Unite!

2005-08-31T21:28:00.000-04:00

I don't usually link to Fox News. Usually, they're full-of-shitness is so absurd as to hardly merit a glance. Yesterday, however, Fox had an unusually full-of-shit-head on Your World with Neal Cavuto. The gues, Jack Chambliss, wasn't completely full of shit, mind you. He made some good points. However, his starting point, a point I should add, which relates hardly or not at all to the larger theme of his appearance, was so off-base, so patently wrong that I hardly know how to respond to it.

Mr. Chambliss began his appearance by stating that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution was never intended to give Congress the power to provide disaster relief in places like New Orleans, LA. That's quite a claim. This is the section of the Constitution, you may recall, that says that "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes...and provide for the...general welfare of the United States." It is, of course, a familiar conservative trope that any reference to something as broad as "general welfare" cannot be read literally and that the phrase is modified and limited by the ennumerated powers that follow. (Mind you, these same people will also argue "the right to keep and bear arms" is a specific and well-delineated concept and that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is a phrase which in no way limits or modifies it. That, however, is a topic for a different place and time.) Conservative complaints about the "general welfare" clause of Article I typically focus on the many government functions (roads, education, environmental regulations, etc.) which they believe to be unconstitutional and symptomatic of an overly-agressive nanny state. They may be right in some instances. However, what, may I ask, does the "general welfare" mean if it doesn't mean the ability to LIVE?

There are people in New Orleans right now who are dying for a lack of food, clean water, shelter. Regardless of why they are there or how they got to be where they are, those people's welfare, their very lives, rest in the hands of the federal government. Like it or not, providing these people with a means to survive the next few weeks falls pretty clearly within the ambit of the phrase "general welfare". To argue otherwise is, I would assert, a clear sign not only of one's inhumanity but also of a disturbing willingness to place abstraction on a higher plane than harsh and obvious reality. So, from the very get-go, Mr. Chambliss proves himself to rank high on the fucktard ladder.

And that, my friends, is a shame. Because I think Mr. Chambliss has a decent point to make. Namely, why does the federal government still subsidize insurance that allows people to live in highly sensitive ecological zones, many of which are subject to profound natural forces (flood, fire, wind, etc.)? New Orleans may have been built 250 years ago when people didn't know any better, but how about the countless golf and country clubs that you see around New Orleans and Lake Ponchartrain? How about the wealthy suburbs that are built, burned and rebuilt periodically in the fire zone in Malibu in California? Why are we building new communities in lahar zones around Mt. Rainier?

Experience shows us that the risk in each of these instances is high. Was it any great surprise that a giant hurricane hit New Orleans? Or Biloxi? Or Gulfport? Or Mobile. No, no, no and no. Is any great surprise that houses built in a dry, mediterranean-type climate burn at the slightest provocation in Malibu? No. Will it be any surprise when sulfuric acid finally eats through one side of Rainier and Puyallup is buried under 35 feet of boiling mud? No. Yeah, it's difficult to predict when these will happen. But that they WILL happen is a certainty. We don't bet on sure losses, so why do we develop on them? As Mr. Chambliss rightly points out, because the federal government assumes much of the risk that the individual used to have to bear.

I, for one, fully support the idea that the federal government and society at large should help absorb some of the risk that life entails. There are risks, like those related to economic downturns, catastrophic accidents and health crises that are both unforeseeable and unavoidable. Government should be there to help. There are risks, like fire in Topanga Canyon that are foreseeable and avoidable. Government should stay the hell away. More importantly, government shouldn't be actively promoting policies that increase the number of people and entities who take such avoidable, foreseeable risks.

Thus, I kind of agree with Mr. Chambliss on the deleterious role of federal policies that promote risky behavior. I completely disagree that providing disaster relief to starving, homeless people is one of those policies.

My new job

2005-08-31T21:16:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I last posted. I spent last week in a flurry of house preparation for the peanut and I started my new job on Monday. Both have conspired to keep me away from the keyboard and, hence, out of the blogosphere. For a bit there, I was considering stopping this thing altogether in a witty little post called "The Demise of the Public Trust". I would have somehow tied together the re-election of George Bush (the obvious reason for the demise of the public trust) and the federal government's decision to hire me on (the ironic and potentially humorous reason for the demise of the public trust).

Anyway, my wife of all people suggested that I don't quit on the blog just yet. As she noted, I'm going to need something to do when it's 3:30 in the morning and a colic-y peanut won't sleep. Hmmmm... I don't like the sound of that. In any case, the PT is here to stay for a while longer. I hope the long absence hasn't scared anyone off.

Incidentally, my new job is in the enforcement branch of our nation's environmental agency. I'm going to draw an sharp line between work and blog and you may, as a result, see somewhat fewer environmental themes on here for a while. I need to feel my way around and do a little reading to make sure there's no ethical or legal impediments to blogging and federal employment. I mean, it's not like I do this anonymously or anything. Any Joe Blow could see my name on a federal document, type "Everett Volk" into google and get taken straight to this site. I can't say off-hand that that sounds like a good thing to me. Oh well, we'll see. If I get dinged, I get dinged and I'll stop blogging then.

Something to think about

2005-08-24T12:06:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I last posted. Too much work getting the house in order for the penaut and too little time, I guess. That, and I'm a lazy bum. Anyway, as you all know, Pat Robertson, America's favorite Christian psychopath, announced the other day that America should assasinate Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. According to Mr. Robertson, such a move would protect us from communists and Muslims and, presumably, feminists, abortionists, gays, the ACLU and People for the American Way.

With Mr. Robertson waving his "Christian ethics" around for everyone to see, I suggest reading the following two articles. The first article is all about training young Christians to inject their ethics into the political process. Keep in mind while reading this article that there is a sizable sub-culture of American Christians devoted to promoting Reconstructionism and Theonomy as a means of governing this country. The similarities between reconstructionist beliefs and the folks described in the article are not, I believe, mere coincidence.

It is easy, though, to focus on the evil that arises when politics and religion mix, especially when the bartenders are right-wingers. Thus, I point you to The second article in which the author relates his story of travelling through the middle east with a diverse group of seminarians and laity. The kindness, compassion and thoughtfulness displayed by most of the people in this group are heartening, and I think you'll appreciate the author's discussion of the struggle between exclusionary and inclusionary impulses in many thoughtful theists. Point is, although there are lots of batshit insane religious believers in this world (many of whom would gladly imprison or kill you for disagreeing with them), there are probably just as many who believe otherwise and who understand the diverse nature of humanity and its religious beliefs.

P.S. Anybody else notice the theme running through the Post article of how spiritual awareness often comes most easily in natural settings. Interesting.

On being a host

2005-08-19T15:37:00.000-04:00

I'm feeling uninspired and apathetic and so I have nothing to write. Thus, for your reading pleasure, I will point you to The Worm Within, an object lesson on why one should always eat their meat roasted, not raw.

Not (just) for kitties.

2005-08-17T19:16:00.000-04:00

When I was in Thailand I marvelled at the ubiquity of roasted meat on sticks. They had sausage on sticks, cuttlefish on sticks, grasshoppers on sticks, and squid on sticks. They did not, however, have roasted rats on sticks. For that, you have to cross the Mekong and go to Laos.

You call that a voice?

2005-08-17T10:56:00.000-04:00

THIS is the conservative voice? Good god, can someone give the conservative voice a muzzle? Or atleast and editor.

And hey, guess what! Women's right to control their bodies is "a bunch of crap because it ain't in the Bible. And did you know there's an invisible "L" in the acronym NOW? Yup. It really stands for the "National Organization of Lesbian Women".

Good fucking god, will somebody please tell me that this is a joke? Please. Can these knuckle-dragging fucktards believe everything they write? I know, maybe Torquemada invented a time-machine and is sending his legions of religion-addled psychopaths to the future!

Right.

In Cod We Trusted

2005-08-17T10:19:00.000-04:00

The Post has a short article today reporting that cod stocks in the Northeast have dropped 25% over the last 4 years. For anyone who has read the book Cod: A Biography of a Fish that Changed the World, this will likely come as no surprise. Trawling fleets pretty much decimated the cod population off of America's Northeast Shelf from about the late 1950s through the early 1990s. At the time, fisherman couldn't be convinced that cod were in danger of going extinct, much less suffering a population collapse. Their argument to the contrary: "Look at the all fish we pull in, there must be healthy stocks." That is sort of like using a bigger spoon to eat your cereal and averring that because your mouth is fuller, there must be plenty of cereal in your bowl. It is, of course, total bullshit. Take a peek at this page and look at the chart about half-way down. It shows commercial landing amounts and trawler population surveys for 1965-1995. The population surveys show a steady if erratic decline over those years, while the landing amounts climb until 1989 when they begin to plummet.

Fast forward ten years and what are the people saying about cod now? Fish stocks have declined 25% in four years. The NEFMC and National Marine Fisheries Service dragged their heels for most of those four years trying to avoid implementing a recovery plan that would burden the cod industry with catch limits or other regulations. They finally put a plan in place and when population figures show declining numbers of cod, they argue that we must wait "several more months" for the plan to start working. C'mon now people, do I look like an idiot. I know the NOAA folk and the regional fishery management councils must deal with political realities, but if political realities are divorced from physical reality something is very wrong.

The political reality is, northeastern fisherman want to continue fishing for cod and nobody wants to limit their catch. The physical reality is, the cod stocks are crashing again. We put in a plan that allows overfishing to preserve local economies. If you're trying to recover fish stocks alrady decimated by overfishing, how will more overfishing help them recover? I find this all very frustrating. I know every fishing town in the Northeast can't become a tourist mecca, but there must be a better way than our current myopic and irrational system.

American competitiveness?

2005-08-16T10:57:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has a story today outlining how the Bush Administration is going to exempt the biggest SUVs from new CAFE standards. CAFE, or corporate average fuel economy, is the means by which the government has traditionally regulated automobile fuel economy (and, incidentally, greenhouse gas emissions). For years the CAFE standards have exempted light trucks which, when the standards were initially created, were used primarily for commercial and industrial uses. In recent decades, though, this has obviously changed and the standards are finally being adjusted to confront that reality.

American manufacturers, of course, hate this regulation because it places some constraints on the size and capacity of the vehicles they make for regular sale. Given their current dependence on high-profit margin SUVs, the manufacturers are especially opposed to including these SUVs in the CAFE standards arguing that Americans won't buy their trucks anymore. On that point, I think they're wrong. Crackheads buy crack regardless of the quality or size of the rock they're buying. They might bitch and moan, but they still buy the rock. Americans and cars are the same way. You'll get a bunch of carping from gasoline-addicted suburbanites and republican "think"-tanks, but people will keep laying out the dough for whatever shiny behemoth Detroit shits out.

But American's buying habits and environmental affects aside, I think the article brings up an interesting point about the competitiveness of the American auto manufacturers. Consider the following two quotes:

"[D]omestic automakers are likely to see [the Bush plan] as a victory, since the new plan will decrease advantages that some foreign automakers, like Honda, have in the current system because they do not make the heaviest trucks and S.U.V.'s."

First, I have a complaint about the logic of this sentence. It says that Honda has an advantage under the current system because they don't make big SUVs. Actually, if the current system doesn't regulate big SUVs and only the American manufacturers make such vehicles, then it is the American manufacturers that have the advantage. At least some portion of their products go un-regulated while all foreign manufactured products are regulated. Regardless, the basic gist of the sentence is correct: American manufacturers are pleased that the Bush Administration is foregoing regulation of big SUVs because it ensures some slant in the playing field to their benefit. The question is, why is such a slant necessary? The answer is here:

"Automakers have had powerful incentives to produce such [large] vehicles because they are exempt from fuel regulations, have had rich profit margins, and many consumers can claim tax breaks for them. The administration had suggested including larger S.U.V.'s in fuel economy regulations in a first wave of proposals in December 2003, but domestic automakers objected that such a move would harm their fragile bottom lines."

There you have it, American car manufacturers are opposed to fuel regulations on large SUVs because they think they'll go bankrupt if such rules are put in place. Of course, I think that Americans will buy SUVs regardless of their fuel economy. So why will fuel economy rules on big SUVs hurt American manufacturers? Because they can't build small SUVs that Americans will buy or, at a minimum, buy in sufficiently large numbers to keep them solvent. That's got to be the reason. Our domestic manufacturers rely on uneven regulations to give them an advantage in a market in which they otherwise can't compete.

Suppose we stopped regulating fuel economy altogether. What then? I guess the Big Three (or is that two?) would build nothing but giant gas guzzlers and hope that Americans keep on buying them. Would that be a prudent decision? The article suggests not. As gas prices have gone up, manufacturers have had to begin planning for smaller SUVs. The foreign manufacturers? They've already got 'em. They call this competition?

Playing the numbers

2005-08-15T12:15:00.000-04:00

In that great big gambling game Republicans like to call "Governance", the real prize does not come when your man wins the Presidency. Nope, the real prize comes when your man puts his weasels into the administrative agencies. Only then, can you really load the dice in your favor and begin to reap the rewards of elective office. Whether we're talking about ergonomics rules in workplaces, media ownership limits in local markets, or FTEs filled for Clean Air Act enforcement, the last five years have proven that President Bush is willing to stick every corporate give away he can think of up our collective rectum.

Of course, while he is busy lubing the national anus for another deregulatory assault, he has to comply with that annoying thing called "the law". The real trick for President Bush and his crony weasels is to stick with the letter of "the law" while finding ways to circumvent its spirit. One excellent way they have found to do this is by way of cost-benefit analysis, which has been required of most or all federal regulations since atleast the 1970s. Since that time, OMB has been analyzing regulations to ensure that the burdens and benfits of a regulation are in some way commensurate.

The Bush Administration has become adept at developing new ways of driving down the estimated benefits of regulations, thus making it possible to argue that the such regulations should not be implemented due to their heavy burden. Back in 2002, for example, the Administration started using valuations that estimated that old people's lives were worth only 63% of a younger person's. Through this actuarial sleight of hand, the Administration could then argue that regulation of pollutants which disproportionately harmed older people provided too few monetary benefits relative to the cost imposed on the polluter. Nice, eh?

In any case, to the informed observer of this Administration, it came as no surprise when it was reported this morning that the Forest Service is scaling back estimated values of recreational benefits created by national forest resources. What is the net effect of such a decision? First and foremost, it increases the relative value of logging and other resource extracting activities in national forests. And this is important why? Because economic value is one of the factors included in timber sale decisions. An excellent way of arguing for the approval of a timber sale is to show that it will produce net economic benefits. If recreational values decrease relative to extraction value, that job becomes immediately easier.

The question, of course, is whether the Bush Administration artificially de-valued recreational values, or whether the Clinton Administration artificially inflated recreational values. It's hard to say but a 90% reduction certainly seems extreme to me.

Chocolate Polenta Cake

2005-08-15T08:08:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I last posted a recipe, so I thought I'd give you all something tasty and easy. It's vaguely Italian, but not really. Use hazelnuts and it's almost like a moist Gianduia. Regardless, I liked this recipe A LOT and plan on making it again.

Ingredients

1/2 c. butter
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate OR 12 tbsp. cocoa
4 eggs
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp cinammon
1/2 tsp. baking poweder
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. polenta or cornmeal
1/2 c. toasted pine nuts or toasted, chopped hazelnuts

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt the chocolate or cocoa in a double boiler with the butter. Cool this mixture. Beat the eggs until they are foamy. Mix in sugar, cinammon, and baking powder. Sift the flour and cornmeal/polenta into a separate bowl, then add to the egg mixture and fold in by hand. Fold the chocolate into the batter and, just before finishing this folding add the nuts. Pour into a greased 8" x 8" pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Notes
I don't have a double boiler. I use a smaller saucepan inside a larger saucepan, the larger of which has about 3 inches of water in it. This works like a charm, but is a little more difficult because the small sauce pan bobs in the water...

If you're unfamiliar with folding, you might check out this article. Folding in this recipe is not as important as when you're making meringues or something, but you want to keep the mixture fairly light. Basically, just don't mix vigorously. Draw your spatula through the mixture and turn it up onto itself. It's easy!

You can use either cornmeal or polenta. The meal will be finer and you'll get a pretty dense crumb. The polenta will be coarser and you may find the cake to be crumblier. Likewise sometimes the polenta will not fully cook so there can be crunchy bits. I like that, but some people prefer the cornmeal approach.

Finally, with regards to baking time: DO NOT OVERDO IT. This recipe can be a little dry, so you want to underbake a little rather than overbake. The eggs will be done and baking less will give you a moister product.

Boxing us in

2005-08-12T10:41:00.000-04:00

Who the fuck are these people and do they even know any liberals or progressives? Jesus Christ, if I hear one more Republican try to put me in some cramped little "liberal" box, I'm going to puke. Yeah, I hate America. Yeah, I want my peanut to be a drug-addicted, amoral, sexually-deviant, playwright. Yeah, I love islamic radicals. Yeah, I love tiny little insects more than other people. The list goes on and fucking on and I do not understand where these people are coming from.

I insult Republicans. A lot. I call them douchebags. I suggest they have theocratic tendencies. I say that they would willingly shit on my head. I say a lot of nasty things. But I don't ever recall writing a "You must do X becuase you're a Y" sort of post about them. Fact is, I've known waaaaay too many conservatives to think that they're easily pigeonholed. Moreover, I know many, many liberals and I know that it's just as difficult.

Seamus Mitwurst is a gun-totin', beer-guzzlin', smack-talkin' paranoiac fruitcake. He's a progressive. Doc Shlomo is a pacifist, Christian, bookwormish, bicycling activist fruitcake. He's a progressive. I'm a potty-mouthed, bicycling, beer-brewing environmentalist fruitcake. I consider myself a progressive. Do any of us want our potential future progeny to grow up to be X? I don't know. Do any of us hate America? Hell fucking no. Do we love humanity? Without a doubt. Well, sort of. Do any of us fit some neat definition of "liberal" or "progressive"? I don't think so.

So why the fucking hell do Republicans insist on trying to do that? One answer: If they can convince voters that liberals are limp-wristed aesthetes, they can win their votes. I don't buy everything George Lakoff says, but it sure seems like Republicans making these sorts of statements are striving for a sort of cultural or sociological framing. So far, I think, they've been pretty successful.

I ain't talking about the Fuckemos

2005-08-11T18:08:00.000-04:00

I've got one simple rule that I use to guide my everyday life. It is the following:

Any magazine article that includes the sentence, "The black helicopters that deliver The New York Times every morning must have skipped my street." has got to be worth reading.

Really, it's that easy. If I am reading a magazine and I come across this sentence, I know that I must finish the article because it is well-worth reading. So, imagine my delight this afternoon when I saw that exact sentence (!) in this article about Rick Santorum in the American Prospect. Some people scoff at my fundamental principal, but today it really payed off!

Paul Hackett is the antithesis of a douchebag.

2005-08-11T16:14:00.000-04:00

About three weeks ago, after reading much about Paul Hackett's run against a right-wing Republican in Ohio, I donated $50 to his campaign. Hacket is a Marine in the active reserves and a trial lawyer. He recently served in Iraq and decided to run as a Democrat in the heavily Republican 2nd district when the sitting representative, Rob Portman, was appointed to be the US Trade Representative. Hackett proved to be a fantastic candidate and he pulled in nearly 48% of the vote. No doubt, part of Hackett's appeal to the voters of the 2nd District was his willingness to tell the truth (that, and own a couple of guns and ride a Harley).

Anyway, Daily Kos reports today that Mr. Hackett has responded to recent attacks against him by Rush Limbaugh. Why does Rush attack Mr. Hackett? Probably because, as Hackett says, Rush is a "fat ass drug addict" who doesn't knot shit from shinola, and Rush (and his fucktard listeners) are scared that some Democrat somewhere finally grew himself (or herself) a set of balls.

A cosmic confluence

2005-08-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

On Monday, I had a post in which I suggested that Freepers are "batshit insane".

Yesterday, I called Miguel Miranda a "douchebag".

Today, I had a post in which I noted that I would like to keep chickens, and a second post in which I noted that some people might think that I hate America.

Now, go to Google and type in "batshit insane". The 9th link down takes you to a blog called...GASP!...Doucheblog. Look to the archived posts. The 3rd post down is titled...GASP!...Anti-American Chickens.

Coincidence? I think not! Proof that I have too much time on my hands? I think so.

Ain't it cute

2005-08-11T12:15:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of roasted meat, I offer you this picture of a jovial young lass cavorting with a well-braised guinea pig.

Why do I hate America?

2005-08-11T09:59:00.000-04:00

I don't. But if I did, it would be because:

a) There are endless numbers of fucktards who like to tell me that I hate America, and

b) Americans generate demand for things like this.

The fireman is right. I'm a tree-hugger, literally and figuratively, and this truck pisses me off to no end.

Why not keep fowl?

2005-08-11T09:42:00.000-04:00

Another great article in the Times this morning, but on suburban chicken husbandry not proto-lesbianism. My brother- and sister-in-law keep chickens at their house on Bainbridge Island. They get delicious eggs and have something to eat a lot of their chicken scraps. The birds are beautiful, their coop is small, and they aren't smelly or dirty. They've been doing it for years, and I've always been impressed. So much so, that I've often thought about getting a couple of chickens. It'd be impossible to do in our current house, but when the wife, peanut and I finally move someplace nicer than DC, you can bet your ass we're going to have some chickens.

On a related note, here's further proof that douchebag yuppie Californians all need to be rounded up and shot because they will otherwise ruin this world. Wait, I take that back. It's actually proof that douchebag yuppies everywhere need to be rounded up and shot because they will otherwise ruin this world. However, in my nearly infinite munificence, I make the following offer in lieue of being shot: all the douchebag yuppie busybodies in this world can get their pale and droopy asses to Dallas, TX, where they can call the health department on each other; paint their 4500 sq. ft. McMansions any one of the three different shades of periwinkle; and drive their American-flag plastered H1s, H2s and H3s to fucking Chilis where they can gorge their bloated selves on 3,000 calorie fatty mcfat burgers to their heart's content. Aren't I nice?

What would James Dobson do?

2005-08-11T09:35:00.000-04:00

He'd probably pass a law forbidding such crushes and then amend the constitution to outlaw non-supervised contact between females.

What am I talking about? This article in this morning's New York Times about the biology and social import of female crushes. It's pretty interesting stuff, though I wish they'd gone a bit more into the evolutionary aspect of it all. Without a more in depth discussion of the biology, the article seems to verge on (thought not quite extend into) tittilation. Not that it matters, I suppose; the article IS in the Style section of the paper.

Manuel Miranda, douchebag

2005-08-10T16:47:00.000-04:00

Why, oh why, must I engage in childish name calling? Don't I have the intellectual wherewithal to come up with compelling and evocative posts to my blog, much less substantive blog content? Apparently not.

That's why I recommend that you immediately leave this blog and head on over to Lawyers, Guns and Money for a very nice post on why Manuel Miranda is a hack and why Judge Roberts should not become Justice Roberts.

Benefit without the burden.

2005-08-10T10:58:00.000-04:00

NPR has had an interesting series these past few weeks in which they send correspondents around the country to interview people about their relationship with the government. This morning, they interviewed cattle farmers in Missouri who are currently suffering from a fairly extended drought.

As you may know, Missouri is, on the whole, very conservative and, not surprisingly, so are its ranchers. Thus, in the course of the five minute spot, I heard the sort of small government complaints that I tend to expect. Towards the end of the post, the interviewer spoke with a rancher by the name of Vernon Zelch. Mr. Zelch raises beefaloes, a creature that is half cow, half buffalo. Mr. Zelch pointedly complained about the Conservation Reserve Program, a program which pays farmers to keep certain environmentally-sensitive acreage free from tilling and planting. The lands the CRP typically pays for are in riparian zones or free-standing wetlands, the preservation of which is generally essential to ground and surface water quality and which often serves as excellent wildlife habitat. Mr. Zelch's complaint is that the CRP drives up land prices for ranchers because the government will pay more per acre for preservation than the rancher can pay a farmer per acre to plant a feed crop. Moreover, Mr. Zelch pointed out that his tax money is being used to drive up his operating costs.

When I first heard this, I rashly assumed that Mr. Zelch was just another one of the subsidy-grubbing rural welfare queens in Missouri who voted Republican and than took his share of the $62 million that Missouri ranchers received in livestock subsidies in 2002. I was wrong. Mr. Zelch, it turns out, received a mere $5,605 in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2003. Compared to the teat-sucking corporate welfare whores like Missouri Delta Farms, Mr. Zelch is hardly a speck in the farm subsidy universe. If I could apologize to Mr. Zelch, I would.

However, let us consider the merits of his argument for a second. He's basically arguing that subsidy programs like the CRP distort the market and lead to inefficiency in the agricultural system. In fact, in the interview, he says that the government should leave the agriculture business alone and let farmers plant where, when and how they want. This is, of course, the typical free market argument. My problem, as always when discussing economics and free markets, is the underlying assumption in Mr. Zelch's argument. Namely, Mr. Zelch assumes that he and other ranchers are operating with perfect or near perfect information. Moreover, his argument suggests that the government is over-paying for land conservation. Is that the case?

I can't say, it's really an empirical question. However, given the history of human endeavours, particularly as they affect the natural environment, I'd say that Mr. Zelch is probably incorrect. Market failure is common when discussing environmental values, and commodity markets typically undervalue environmental services. Thus, when Mr. Zelch asserts that he can only pay $28 per acre for tillable land, I doubt very much that his figure includes external costs of tilling such as water pollution. Meanwhile, by definition, the government's payments of $35 per acre DO include the productive value of preserved land and, perhaps, other environmental service values.

Consider this water quality report from the State of Missouri for 2002. If you go to page 9, you will see that the greatest source of pollution for classified water bodies in Missouri is none other than agricultural runoff. This certainly suggests that farmers and ranchers, generally, are externalizing some of the costs of their operations in the form of water pollution. Again, whether this holds true of Mr. Zelch, I cannot say. However, atleast with regards to the Conservation Reserve Program, there seems to be some reason to believe that the prices it pays are not so much inflated as inclusive of values not typically captured in market prices.

In any case, I owe an apology to Mr. Zelch for my rash assumption about his acceptance of farm subsidies. I owe no such apology to the other ranchers on the program who bitch about big government and then demand disaster relief. Boys, that's what we pay taxes for. As contract law suggests, there's bound to be some burden to go with the benefits you receive.

Why we need environmental education.

2005-08-09T11:23:00.000-04:00

The Times has a story this morning on the discovery of snakehead fish in a lake in Queens. The snakehead as you may or may not know, is a voracious and effective predator from eastern Asia which, when introduced into non-native ecosystems, is quite capable of decimating fish populations and permanently altering the balance of those ecosystems. What I found interesting about the article was this quote:

"He said someone might have bought several in an Asian fish store a few years ago before the ban was enforced and deliberately released them in the lake, hoping they would reproduce there and provide some inexpensive dinners. Of course, it would not be the first time that an ecological nightmare was unleashed by someone who did not know any better."

How many of you would know better? I'm guessing, most. Why? Because, I think, all of us have had some degree of environmental education in the course of our secondary and post-secondary educational careers. At the very minimum, in high school biology, we heard about ecosystems and ecosystem change. The question is, without such exposure to topics like invasive species and ecosystem health, would we be aware of the risks of introducing new species to non-native environments? It's hard to say.

I suspect that most southerners are familiar with destructive introduced species like the nutria. Moreover, lots of folks on the East Coast and in the midwest are probably familiar with chestnut blight and dutch elm disease, both of which are due to introduced species. But these are only a few examples of the hundreds of introduced species that affect America's various ecosystem complexes. Relying on word of mouth, alone, to pass this sort of knowledge along is a precarious way to educate the public. That's why I applaud state curricula that include environmental science requirements. Even Texas, where the certifiably insane Republican party controls state government, the state education standards include a comprehensive "environmental systems" requirement for high schoolers.

Of course, there are people on the right who think that environmental education is a liberal plot ot institute communism. Why? Presumably because educated voters recognize the value of environmental legislation and regulation, and such laws and regulations stand in the way of the perfect corporate state. Back in 2001, for example, The Nation had a great article describing how much of the anti-environmental and anti-environmental movement is basically a front for the polluting industries. It makes sense, if natural heritage means nothing to you and money means everything what do you do? (That's easy! You lie about your policy goals, you manipulate gullible Christians to vote for your candidate, you spend billions in soft money, and you get George W. Bush elected to office! I'm kidding...kind of.)

Logically, if you want to operate unfettered as a polluting industry, you must game the system that currently regulates most industrial activity in this country. You must attempt to influence the policy and political debates, but you also must influence the electorate. The easiest way to do this? Change educational standards and use modern marketing and outreach methods to weaken Americans' scientific understanding and call the very institution of "science" into question.

I would argue that this process is already under way. As The Nation article points out, folks like John Stosser and the people at the Competitive Enterprise institute have already begun attacking science and environmental education. At the political level, moreover, we are faced with the unpleasant image of Joe Barton, the sleazy north Texan who represents the Dallas area, recently attacking scientists and the scientific method itself. Why? If Republicans and their corporate funders can make enough people believe that scientists have a political agenda and if enough people lack sufficient education to understand the basics of the scientific method, then presumably it will be that much easier for them to gut the corpus of legal and administrative protections that constitute our primary protection against a degraded and debilitated natural environment.

Call me crazy, but that's atleast one reason why we need environmental education in this country. That, and to stop people from releasing snake heads into local lakes...

Aborting a food baby.

2005-08-08T18:13:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, before I realized it is impossible to rationally debate or otherwise communicate to members of the modern American right-wing, I attempted to engage in a debate over abortion over at Free Republic. Given my generally libertarian tendencies with regards to civil liberties and the right to privacy, I expected to find at least a few people who shared my views on abortion. I was, of course, totally wrong. Over the course of a day, the discussion devolved into a shouting match in which Freepers vied to see who could write the longest message in capital letters in which they asserted, among other things, that birth control pills when used as a contraceptive are abortifacients.

You read that correctly, abortifacients. In other words, these people, and there must have been atleast 12 or 15 who wrote something like this, women who take birth control pills are aborting unborn babies every single month. The logic behind this? I don't know, there is no logic to such an argument. However, given that most bc pills act to prevent ovulation, the argument would seem to rest on the assumption that unfertilized eggs are the equivalent to a fetus. By that logic, though, menstruation is equivalent to abortion. Clearly, the people I was "conversing" with didn't know their asses from apple butter and were mostly likely totally batshit insane.

Whatever the case, the folks I "debated" at Free Republic have a lot in common iwth the members of an organization known as the National Association for the Advancement of Pre-born Children (NAAPC). These fruitcakes have actually sued the administrators of California's stem cell institute, claiming that stem cell research violates the civil rights of embryoes. This, my friends, is yet another example of George Bush's "base". They think contraception is abortion, they think that undifferentiated cell masses are people, they think that God is on their side. Dangerous, dangerous people, and George Bush and the Republican party pander to them every single day so they can have a voting majority to institute their corporate state. Nice.

Incidentally, the subject of this post has no relation to anything.

I'm a sexist pig.

2005-08-08T18:01:00.000-04:00

Take a trip over to Fables of the Reconstruction and check out his stunningly funny and spot-on taxonomy of conservative blogs. If you've spent any time at all wading through the inanity of the right-wing blogosphere, you should appreciate the post.

Some folks have complained about the author's characterization of Michelle Malkin, especially his reference to her tits being the basis for her success. On the whole, though, I have to think that he's correct. There are other far more intelligent, far more interesting female bloggers out there who happen to be right-wingers. Why does MM get the nod? Same reason that monkeyfuck nut-job Ann Coulter does: Cheetoh stained right-wingers cowering in their mother's basements need something to whack off to. Call me a sexist pig, but in this instance I think there's something to FOTR's theory.

And now for something completely different.

2005-08-05T13:49:00.000-04:00

Here, you will find a small fraction of everything you never wanted to know about anything.

Cabrito!

2005-08-05T12:02:00.000-04:00

Here is a gratuitous picture of goat meat.

Give me an Arkansas Black

2005-08-05T10:31:00.000-04:00

The Post has a really great story on the market forces that led to the generification and blandification of the Red Delicious apple. For any of you unfortunate enough to have eaten a red delicious in the last 15 years, this should be a good read. More importantly, the experience of the Red Delicious can be generalized to larger trends in our society like, say, the growth of the McMansion a la yesterday's rant. But, seeing as I'm busy at work, I'll have to leave that sort of bloviation to another time.

Is it me?

2005-08-04T14:43:00.000-04:00

What is this ad trying to say? It may be me, but I'm picking up on atleast two almost overt references to fellatio....

A world of shit.

2005-08-04T12:41:00.000-04:00

Even if we don't already live in a world of shit (which is debatable), the profit motive will ensure that eventually we will. The LA Times has an article today about suburban swine buying and selling pieces of the West Texas desert to other suburban swine, all with an eye to make money. I don't understand this desire to "develop". What, besides the profit motive, drives people to buy beautiful pieces of land and "develop" it into leperous tract housing? They want to build some god-forsaken McMansion with all its accompanying demands for water, electricity, and other vital resources IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DESERT?

ARRGGGGHHHH!

These people make me crazy. It's a goddam shame that my peanut is going to come into a world full of people like this. What happened to making a living? What happened to trying to lead a good, ethical life? What happened to concepts of virtue, excellence, and the like? When did lucre become the final goal and the perfected self something to scoff at? Why, may I ask, does everybody want to be Donald Fucking Trump?

I was talking to someone yesterday and she told me how she's moving to Greensborough, NC, where she bought a house. She was ecstatic that the house is 3000 sq. feet with three bedrooms, 2 baths, a jacuzzi, and a two car garage. I wanted to ask her who, exactly, was going to live in all those rooms, given that she is single. I didn't, of course, but this weird American desire for hugeness certainly seems to feed into the cult of development.

Anyway, all my Texas readers should appreciate the article. I know you guys are just watching the same shit happen all around you.

Thinking about Roberts

2005-08-03T23:11:00.000-04:00

Last week, I suggested in a post that I would withhold judgment on John Roberts, President Bush's nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor until I felt I could better judge his fitness for the Court. At the time, the only thing I really knew about him was that he was just another pro-corporate, anti-environment jurist of the right-wing variety. If I had the luxury of being choosy, I would vote against such a person on that basis alone. I do not, however, and thus I was wondering whether there was anything in Roberts' record to suggest that he was unfit for the Court.

I held that opinion until Monday when I read this article in the Post. In my mind, this article makes it very clear why Roberts (and probably every other reactionary the President would care to appoint to the Court) should not be consented to by the Senate. Two key passages helped change my mind. The first concerns voting rights:

"[M]emos by Roberts...argued for reining in the federal government's role in civil rights disputes. They indicate, for example, that he was at the center of articulating and defending the administration's policy that the Voting Rights Act -- a seminal law passed in 1965 and up for renewal in 1982 -- should in the future bar only voting rules that discriminate intentionally, rather than those that were shown to have a discriminatory effect."

The second passage concerns whether Title IX of the Civil Rights Act requires equal treatment of men and women in prison:

"Roberts argued against intervening in a sex discrimination case involving alleged disparities between training programs available to male and female prisoners in Kentucky. 'If equal treatment is required, the end result in this time of tight state prison budgets may be no programs for anyone,' he wrote."

Mull over those two passages. Assuming they correctly capture Roberts' approach to civil rights issues, I find them quite disturbing.

With regards to voting rights, the first passage strongly suggests that Roberts' does not view infringement of an individual's ability to vote as problematic as long as the action creating the infringement is not intended to discriminate against the person. Polls only open from 10AM until 2PM? That's okay, as long as it applies to everybody. Literacy tests? That's fine, as long as every one takes it. All polling places located on the 3rd floor? That's okay, as long as you're not doing it to burden the handicapped. See where this goes? Voting, one of the bedrock principals of our democracy, is protected ONLY against overt racial bias under Roberts' vision.

With regards to gender discrimination, Roberts' quote is just inane. Equal treatment leads to programs for none. I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Certainly, requiring equal treatment for male and female prisoners may place strain on prison budgets. But that hardly means that tight state budgets combined with equal programmatic requirements will lead to the demise of prison programs. Even if you assume that a state decreases its public safety budget by 20% in a budget year, that just means that prisons will have less to provide the programs with. But budget issues aside, the real problem here is that Roberts' appears to be saying that gender equality is bad because it might be expensive.

Did you know the price of cotton went up between 1860 and 1865 when, suddenly, there weren't any slaves to pick all that cotton for free? Imagine how expensive it was in 1918 for states who had to suddenly print twice as many ballots as they did the previous year when all those women came to vote. I don't think any rational person would argue, however, that we shouldn't have emancipated slaves or recognized that women have an equal right to vote. To deny those things would be wrong, and to deny them on the basis of cost (COST!) is downright despicable. This is what Roberts' seems to have said, and this is just another reason I have doubts about whether he ought to be confirmed.

Freedom isn't free

2005-08-03T14:41:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you have to brutalize a few sand niggers, preferably by beating their bodies into bloody pulp and smothering them in sleeping bags while their screams reverberate throughout the un-torture chamber you are not torturing them in. Un-fucking-believable. This, my friends, is exactly what 51% of your fellow Americans voted for when they made George Bush president again. When you see a big, proud "W" sticker, just know that that person would gladly shit all over you, the Constitution and our collective humanity if George Bush asked them to.

Mobile sources and particulate pollution

2005-08-03T12:12:00.000-04:00

If you have ever taken some time to wade through the ocean of ignorance, irrationalism, fear and loathing that constitutes the right-wing blogosphere, you've probably had the opportunity to read some hysterical rant against the evil and murderous EPA. If you've ever choked back your bile and opened the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal or National Review, you've probably read something similar there as well. In each of these venues, there is a familiar and recurring theme: that the EPA has become an abusive and obsolete bureaucratic stronghold which ought to be limited or dissolved because the environment is much cleaner than it was 30 years ago.

As with most right-wing arguments, there is a grain of truth here. Our environment IS much cleaner than it was in 1970 (or 1975 for that matter). The air is cleaner, the water is cleaner, emissions of 300 toxic substances on the TRI have declined dramatically. But these facts do not mean that the battle is over. This article in the New York Times makes this very effectively. Compare the two pictures of Los Angeles' City Hall for a perfect visual comparison. As the article points out, though Los Angeles ozone problem may be greatly decreased it now faces increased health risks from growing particulate pollution attributable to mobile sources. More importantly, because mobile sources are so diverse and because any regulation of them has a more direct impact on individuals, the problems posed by particulate pollution will be harder to address than ozone and its precursors.

Whatever the case, do read the article. It's a nice piece of environmental reporting and, even better, discusses lots of issues my lovely wife has been working on of late.

Environmental tidbits

2005-08-02T14:49:00.000-04:00

For your reading pleasure:

The LA Times has a cool article about being hunted by a grizzly while rafting in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Post has a brief article highlighting the disheartening fact that we still view the oceans as a sump of infinite dimension.

USA Today reports that scientists preparing to contest recent evidence of the continued existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker are withdrawing their article after hearing tapes of the woodpecker's knocking.

Finally, the AP reports that times are a changin' on the Pacific Coast, but don't nobody want to blame global warming.

Potty mouth

2005-08-02T11:46:00.000-04:00

Would I be less potty-mouthed if more people read this blog? I don't know. But seeing as I can identify nearly every single one of my readers by IP address (Big Brother is watching!), I'm not especially worried about insulting y'all. But if a larger audience suddenly started checking this site? Hmmmm...

Reading around on the blogosphere, I have to say that there does seem to be some inverse relationship between readership levels and potty mouthing (barring the occasional exception such as the Rude Pundit who, by definition, must be a potty mouth). Anyway, seeing as I'm contemplating shutting this blog down anyway, I wonder if it even matters.

Hey World. Fuck You!

2005-08-01T10:37:00.000-04:00

Today, George Bush bent the Senate over a handy coffee table and rammed John Bolton straight up its ass. He quickly extracted Mr. Bolton and repeated the process on the United Nation's collective rectum. It appears that Mr. Bolton will lodged in this position until atleast the end of the 109th Congress.

Why I hope Utah doesn't get hit by a giant meteorite and turned into a radioctive pit of space dust.

2005-07-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

Because the 256 or so sane people who live there would accompany the other 2,316,000 who are obviously totally and completely fucking batshit insane.

Fatigue

2005-07-29T11:48:00.000-04:00

I'm beginning to think that I'm suffering from outrage fatigue. I haven't been overwhelmed with work of late, but I can't seem to find the time to write anything for the blog. The New York Times tells me that politicals at EPA have delayed the release of this year's fuel economy report so it doesn't coincide with the passage of the free corporate blowjob called our "Energy Policy". The Post tells me that the sniveling sawbones who purports to run our Senate has delayed a vote on the defense spending bill to permit a vote on a liability shield for gun manufacturers and did so claiming that it was to protect our national security. Both papers report that House Republicans kept voting open for an additional 45 minutes (something Dick Cheney once called the "greatest abuse of democracy") so that CAFTA could be passed 217-215. The Times tells that to ensure the passage of this "free trade agreement", Dennis Hastert promised Robin Hayes (R-NC) that he would do whatever he could to "restrict imports" of Chinese textiles.

I read all these things and yet I'm unable to find anything to say about them. Yeah, they piss me off. Yeah, they're hallmarks of the sort of craven, feckless lying and cheating we now associate with the Republican party. Yeah, they make me wonder whether things will fall apart and whether the center of this democracy will be able to hold. These sorts of stories do all those things, and yet I can't bring myself to write about them. Why? It's got to be the outrage fatigue.

I can't, it appears, sustain the feelings of outrage the modern Republican party so easily evoke in me. I have to stop writing and start reading. And, in those instances, I read Driftglass who gives us blog posts with obscene eloquence such as this passage regarding the Republican "base":

The reliable base who happily sit like baby chicks and believes every little thing that the traitors in their party regurgitate into their mouths. The have no critical thinking facilities. No higher brain function. The GOP has carefully cultivated these Christopaths as their loyal orc army. Pig-ignorant, Creationist-ranting fucktards bred for loyalty and their ability to vote Republican as automatically and mindlessly as a meth whore raising nickel-bag money one $2 handjob at a time.

Anyway, no doubt you've noticed that my posting has slacked off of late. Mostly, it's because I'm too pissed off to care anymore. Another few days of reading Driftglass, though, and I might find my muse again.

Finger that hairline crack please.

2005-07-26T14:53:00.000-04:00

I may have to re-read my old Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. I had NO idea.

Brain-dead or cave-dwelling, you decide

2005-07-26T14:15:00.000-04:00

It's been a slow couple of weeks on ye olde blogge. Work has been busy, I've been taking my evenings to put some extra miles on the bike, and my sense of outrage has waned as I focus more on the peanuts impending arrival (query the logic of that last assertion). Anyway, I was trolling about today, trying to find something to write about for your reading and my ranting pleasure. I could write more about John G. Roberts (he'll get confirmed), Karl Rove (he's a big, fat fruit with a gimp in his basement), or Joe Barton's role in the new "energy policy" (if ever a swinier swine ever commingled such abject hackitude with utter feckless sleaziness, his name would have to be Tom Delay), but you've heard it all before and probably more eloquently. So what to write?

While checking my mail, Yahoo showed me this headline Court nominee does well in poll; Rove does not. I followed the link and read the article, which revealed the unsurprising fact that John Roberts, essentially a handsome cipher with a nice resume, is well-regarded in polls and that Karl Rove, a degenerate machiavellian, is poorly-regarded by a plurality of respondents. The amazing (and I mean AMAZING) thing about the poll is that 25% of the respondents have never heard of Karl Rove.

Never heard of Karl Rove?!?! Now, I may be a Beltway insider with scarcely a clue for what "real Americans" think about politics, but can it be that a full quarter of Americans don't know about the man who made George W. Bush? That's just flabbergasting. The President's closest advisor, axe-man, truffle-hunter, and all-round henchman, and they've never heard of him? Wow.

The ignorance is astounding. But I shouldn't be surprised I suppose. I toured the Supreme Court with some friends yesterday. After the obligatory 20 minute talk in the Court's chambers by the tour guide, she took questions. One person asked, "How do they pick the Chief Justice? Is it just the next oldest person in line?"

Oh I wish.

Donkey Justice

2005-07-24T17:35:00.000-04:00

Last week I served with Christian Peacemaker Teams’ (CPT) at their international accompaniment project in the West Bank village of At-Tuwani. This 1,000 year old Palestinian village lies in the south Hebron District where many of the 50 or so families live in stone cottages that are at least 500 years old. At-Tuwani boasts of one spring-fed well for drinking and one diesel generator which provides enough electricity for four hours per night.

The village is surrounded by three major hilltop settlements: Ma’on and Havat Ma’on to the east and Carmel to the northeast. All three settlements are connected by the Israeli “by-pass” road 317, which is closed to most Palestinians and cuts At-Tuwani off from the neighboring pastures of Ja-wayaa. Ever since caravans of Israeli settlers arrived to establish Ma’on in the mid 1980s, they have been on a systematic campaign of harassment and intimidation with the aim of frightening the villagers and seizing their land. Settlers have beaten shepherds with sticks and stones; attacked children on their way to school; stolen and burned their crops; destroyed valuable olive groves; and poisoned their wells and sheep. According to Israeli human rights activists and Palestinian sources, the settlements manage to confiscate the equivalent of 100 dunams of land every year.

Last September, in cooperation with the Israeli group Ta’ayush, CPT accepted an invitation from the village to establish an international presence in the area to monitor the human rights situation. CPT was joined by an Italian-based NGO, Operation Dove, and together they provided a permanent presence in At-Tuwani as villagers planted and harvested their crops and children went to and from school. The presence of internationals in At-Tuwani has had an appreciable effect in deterring the violence: Villagers have noticed a marked decline in settler harassment, and the Israeli military and police even met with the village to offer their protection from the settlers – something that has never happened before – in an effort to mitigate the negative publicity that the Israeli government has received due to their relative indifference to the human rights situation there.

But the internationals working in At-Tuwani aren’t immune to the settler violence. Settlers from Ma’on have attacked and beaten several members of CPT and OD on separate occasions. In one notable case, CPT member Chris Brown was beaten with a baseball bat and chains for daring to accompany Palestinian children on their way to school. Brown apparently veered too close to the settlement boundary on the only path that children can take without having to make a lengthy and hazardous detour. For Palestinian students, the choice is stark: If you want to go to school, you risk getting a beating.

During my week in At-Tuwani, the school season was just finished, and the harvest season was still a full month away. For the most part, my days and nights were filled with getting to know the slow pace of village life. Days were often spent underneath a lone tree on top of a hill with a good view of the village and surrounding countryside. Nights were spent sleeping atop the roof of a concrete block home watching an infinite night sky lit up by innumerable stars and even the occasional shooting star. If it weren’t for the constant threat that armed Ma’on settlers with bad intentions could come strolling down the hill at any time, At-Tuwani would be a rustic but relaxing getaway from the city.

Appearances, however, are deceiving. Even when there is no overt violence, there is a structural violence that is always lurking underneath. It is the omnipresent type of violence that comes not only from living at the mercy of hostile neighbors who want your land, but also from an occupying military and police apparatus meant to protect and serve Israelis and not Palestinians. When a foreign nation is occupying your land and one of its citizens commits a crime against your person or property, who are you supposed to call for help? The police?

This was made very clear to me during what was supposed to be a routine accompaniment assignment last Wednesday. Al-Hajj (not his real name), one of the Palestinian Bedouins in nearby Ja-wayaa, had his donkey stolen three days earlier by Israeli settlers from Carmel. Members of Operation Dove confirmed this when they photographed the donkey inside Carmel tied up next to the settler security office. Al-Hajj asked CPT and OD to accompany him to the Israeli police station in Kiryat Arba, a settlement on the outskirts of Hebron and a full 20 minutes away by car if you take the Israeli-only “by-pass” road. If you’re a Palestinian like Al-Hajj, however, the trip along dusty and narrow side roads can take at least an hour under the best of conditions.

And that’s just the beginning. As I soon learned, filing a simple complaint for Palestinians can turn into an all day affair. When we arrived at the police station, we had to enter at the rear entrance where there was a locked gate with a phone and no one around. Compared to the busy front entrance where Israelis and internationals (but not Palestinians) are allowed to go, the rear entrance to the Kiryat Arba police station felt like the narrow back alley of an Italian restaurant where the alley cats are allowed to feed on table scraps. Al-Hajj dialed the phone first. The irritated voice in Hebrew told him to try dialing some other number which turned out to be a dead end. He called again and this time someone else answered and hung up. When my CPT colleague called the station from her cell phone, a somewhat surprised officer assured us that someone would be out in a few minutes. After waiting almost 40 minutes outside the gate, an officer finally walked out to let us in. Within a few minutes, we were directed to an Arabic speaking officer who told us that we would have to make the complaint at the Carmel settlement – at least an hour away by Palestinian taxi – but a police jeep was being prepared to take us there and would depart in 45 minutes.

While we waited an Israeli settler (presumably from Kiryat Arba?) pulled up to the internal parking lot with his car decked out in the familiar orange ribbons that signified opposition to the planned evacuation of the Gush Katif settlement and withdrawal from Gaza. The settler turned out to be very friendly and spoke fluent Arabic. He engaged Al-Hajj and other nearby Palestinians in a spirited dialogue assuring them that he was a settler but, as he pulled up his shirt to demonstrate the point, he carried no weapons and only wanted to live in peace. Even assuming his sincerity, the settler still missed what was obvious to the Palestinians sitting in an Israeli police station: He didn’t have to carry weapons. There was arrayed around him a very sophisticated police and military apparatus that is dedicated to protecting him and his settler cohorts first and foremost, twenty-four hours a day. Any Palestinian concerns (like Al-Hajj filing a criminal complaint against a settler) are at best of a secondary nature, and more often, directly conflict with their intended mandate.

My time spent with Al-Hajj that day bears this out. We waited for the police jeep for almost two hours before we were told again by the same Arabic speaking officer that, unfortunately, the police jeep will not be going out today and, if Al-Hajj wishes to file a complaint, he will have to show up to Carmel and file one with the police there. Even assuming we could the Israeli-only “by-pass” roads – which we couldn’t – it would have meant at least another hour lost after having spent most of the morning trying to do what most citizen-nationals have the inherent right to do, namely filing a grievance with their local constable in a respectful, timely manner. But Al-Hajj was a Palestinian, and that meant he would take a very indirect route that eventually cost him most of his afternoon. Seeking justice took an Olympian determination and an enormous amount of time. Al-Hajj may have had the former in ample supply but the lost time in jumping through intended bureaucratic obstacles cost him time spent in working in his fields where he depends on for survival.

Our Homeric trek to Carmel began as we walked out of the Kiryat Arba police station and toward the center of Hebron where we could catch a taxi to the outskirts of town to catch another taxi headed toward Yatta. To catch that taxi, we had to cross an Israeli military roadblock that included passing through a sandy ravine and climbing over several boulders. The second taxi could only take us to the other side of Yatta, where a second military roadblock greeted us. This time, however, there were no more taxis, and thus we had no choice but to begin a 10 mile walk along highway 317, the road used almost exclusively by the Israeli military, settlers, and the occasional tour bus headed for the settlements. Walking along the highway with vehicles speeding past can be dangerous in any country, but in the West Bank this is especially risky for Palestinians. What if an armed settler or a soldier decides to pull over and provoke a confrontation? What would Al-Hajj do then? Again, call the police?

Remarkably, Al-Hajj didn’t seem too bothered by this risk. He had his donkey to get back after all. After failing to reach the police by cell phone to alert them of our situation, he flagged down an Israeli army humvee to vainly plead his case to several surprised-looking soldiers. One of them wore goggles and a mask to protect him from the dust storms, but it had the unintended effect of making him look like a gangster. After several more miles of walking, Al-Hajj managed to flag a Palestinian taxi near At-Tuwani that was able to take us up to the entrance at Carmel. As we got out of the taxi and walked toward the entrance, I could see a police jeep waiting in the driveway in front of the gate. Behind the gate were four settlers, a private settler security officer, and a donkey.

The officers in the police jeep took Al-Hajj’s complaint, and I gave them photographs of the donkey inside the settlement that were taken earlier by members of Operation Dove. The gate opened up and the settlers walked up to the police jeep with the donkey. Remarkably, they seemed to take this token defeat in stride and with a little sarcasm. They photographed themselves next to the donkey, saying ‘Salaam’ as they posed in front of the beast, and one of them even turned to me and smirked, “Peace and love, right?”

The most remarkable part of the story is not that Al-Hajj got his donkey back. It is rather the manner in which the Israeli police handled his case. It was obvious to me from the very first moment that Al-Hajj would have never seen any justice if he hadn’t had an international friend with him at every step advocating on his behalf. And even with my help, the whole affair cost him dearly in taxi fare and time. By the time he was able to file a formal complaint, all of the morning and most of the afternoon had passed. And the biggest scandal of all was the barely concealed fact that the Israeli police knew all along who had the donkey and where. There was no need for a large manhunt. The donkey was there when we arrived. Perhaps the most outrageous sight was watching one of the Israeli police officers get chummy with the settlers. He even put his arm around one of them and patted him on the back while they exchanged a good laugh. Imagine you called the police to report a stolen television, and the officers show up with the perpetrator acting as if they were schoolyard buddies. You, too, would wonder whose side they are on.

But not so busy I can't post about the Tour.

2005-07-21T14:45:00.000-04:00

As most of you probably know, the Tour de France is still being raced and Lance Armstong seems to be on track to win his 7th in a row. This year, I've had the luxury of being able to watch the Tour on OLN. For the first time since Greg Lemond was racing in the late 80s, I've watched a LOT of bike racing. And I've loved it. I'm a bike junky, and watching the Tour for free is like stumbling across a dime bag in a parking garage.

Anyway, I was watching the Tour this weekend with some friends. I found myself trying to explain why the race was exciting to watch, how the tactics worked, and why Lance didn't really care if the 10-man breakaway was 4.5 minutes ahead of him on the stage that day. The hardest thing to explain, it turned out, was the tactics. Why draft so closely? Why wait so late in the stage to sprint? Who decides who leads the peloton or the break away? Etc. If only I had had this article. It doesn't fully explain bicycle racing tactics, but it does give great insight into the tactics and protocols observed in the Tour. I recommend it, if only as a bit of sociological trivia.

Still busy

2005-07-21T13:48:00.000-04:00

Work is kind of crazy, so I won't have time to post anything of substance today. However, take a minute and go look at the VolcanoCam for Mount St. Helens. The picture with a 10:40 AM timestamp seems to be showing some sort of ash or steam cloud venting. Cool.

Stealth nominees

2005-07-20T13:33:00.000-04:00

Back in February, Bruce Ackerman wrote an article outlining the history of stealth nominees to the Supreme Court and warning of the dangers of new neo-conservative stealth nominees from GWB. I highly recommend the article, if only to get a sense of what is at stake with this nomination.

I don't know whether Ackerman would consider Roberts a stealth nominee. Roberts' track record doesn't really seem to be easily categorized as mainline conservative or neoconservative. However, as Lono points out in my comments, it's obvious that he holds environmental regulations in low regard and would likely side with those on the Court who seek to shrink Congress' commerce clause powers. Moreover, this Nation article suggests that Roberts has bought into the concept of the unitary executive and would support continued efforts to shift power into the hands of an increasingly monarchical executive branch. These facts, alone, should give any concerned progressive pause and certainly suggest that Roberts would shift the Supreme Court even further to the right.

Reading back over my intial post this morning, I seem to suggest that the Senate should defer to the President and vote for Roberts. I did not mean to suggest this. Rather, I was trying (and pretty much failing) to argue that citizens and Senators alike should hear a full vetting of Roberts' record and views before deciding whether he should be our next Justice. I don't know how to articulate it, but I still don't feel that his profound conservatism alone is enough to disqualify him. The real question is whether he will not only uphold the Constitution, but also support the values and beliefs that make our pluralistic democracy strong (i.e. separation of powers, right to privacy, etc.).

Thoughtful posts on Roberts

2005-07-20T11:10:00.000-04:00

Publius, over at Legal Fiction, has a really excellent post on the Roberts nomination. I suggest reading it, as I think his take on the matter is basically right.

Over at Balkinization, there's another great post that uses the french fry case to explain how Roberts will differ from O'Connor and what it means for the future of the Court.

If you want a sample of other opinions written by Roberts, try this post at SCOTUSBlog.

John Rodgers is not a hack.

2005-07-20T09:30:00.000-04:00

But that doesn't mean I automatically support his nomination. I, for one, am going to wait for his nomination hearings before I come to any decision on his fitness for the bench. I suspect over the next few weeks we're going to hear a lot out of the liberal advocacy groups about how we should oppose his nomination. Some will argue he's an activist, some will argue he's too conservative, others will argue that we should oppose him because he signed a brief during his stint as a deputy solicitor general which stated that Roe should be overruled. They may be right, they may not.

Roberts, as far as I can tell, isn't a lunatic like Janice Roberts Brown, he isn't an apologist hack like the Attorney General, and he isn't a budding theocrat like J. Harvey Wilkinson or Michael Luttig. Sure, he's written some ridiculous opinions such as the DC french fry case, but that opinion, for example, was based squarely on Supreme Court precedent. Basically, Roberts is a very conservative, very bright guy. No doubt his judicial and political philosophy differ greatly from mine, but I'm not sure that alone is sufficient reason to militate against his nomination.

The fact is George Bush - even if he is a sniveling, cheating, lying, cowardly, bastard son of Dick Nixon and Elmer Gantry - did win the election in November. It might not have been a mandate, but it did give him the Constitutional perogrative of choosing a nominee. The Senate's power of advice and consent only reaches so far, and the President should be given some deference in his choice. I might not like who he chooses, but I'll wait until the hearings to find out whether he's truly unfit to serve on the Surpeme Court.

On a final note, is anybody really surprised that Bush announced his decision yesterday? After a week of getting the bungo reamed, he obviously sped up his timeline so as to take attention off Karl Rove. The White House, of course, claims that "the president's timing had nothing to do with Mr. Rove and everything to do with giving the Senate adequate time before its recess next week to meet Judge Roberts and deal with the enormous amount of paperwork and logistics such a nomination requires." Sure, and I've got a lovely bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

Busy Today

2005-07-19T15:20:00.000-04:00

But no so busy that I can't give you this link. I implore those of you who might have opportunity to write my obituary to strive for this sort of tone...

Blame it on pirates!

2005-07-18T16:19:00.000-04:00

If you do nothing else today, please read this letter to the Kansas State School Board, in which Bobby Henderson explains his theory of Intelligent Design AND identifies the root cause of global warming. So much edification in such a short epistle hardly seems possible and yet the brilliant Mr. Henderson packs it in tight. I predict that this short note will soon join other paradigm-shifting articles (e.g. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) that occupy the highest ranks in the scientific canon. You should feel honored to be able to read it now...

Protecting transit

2005-07-18T11:48:00.000-04:00

Last week, Anne Applebaum had an op-ed in the Post in which she basically argued that we shouldn't spend homeland security dollars on transit because you can't really protect de-centralized, open access systems like trains. I thought she made a pretty good point. I mean, if there's 110 miles of Metro rail in DC and 86 stations, there's a lot of points of entry for a dedicated terrorist.

Mike the Mad Biolgist points out the folly of this argument. Namely, it's a mistake to think that homeland security money is going to be spent to prevent a terrorist attack. That's highly unlikely. However, you can spend a lot of money, very effectively, to reduce the impact of a terrorist event. He points out a fact I was unaware of: the London subway has backup ventilation and communications. No doubt, these proved valuable in clearing out smoke and allowing coordinated rescue efforts. Do American transit systems have these backups in place? If not, wouldn't that be a good way to spend homeland security money? Likewise, are there other structural or management changes that could be made to American transit that would mitigate the possible effects of a terrorist attack?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I'm having second thoughts about Applebaum's conclusion. I know homeland security dollars include vast quantities of pork, but maybe just maybe our transit systems could use a little bit of that wisely.

Long live Borf!!!

2005-07-18T10:34:00.000-04:00

The Post reported on Thursday that the DC police had arrested the artist known as Borf. I've posted about Borf in the past and hearing that he's been nabbed made me a little sad. I like Borf. His graffiti was a welcome change to the usual DC graffiti, which consists mostly of unimaginative "tagging" and a laundry list of predictable obscenity. Borf's graffiti, which was basically good-natured, lacked this sort of posturing. He mixed whimsy, absurdity, politics and some pretty decent artistry to make graffiti that I found interesting and entertaining. And now he's gone.

The Sewage Lagoon

2005-07-13T14:14:00.000-04:00

Click here and you, too, can share in the glory that is the RNC's talking points on Karl Rove. It's a rich and rewarding experience reading through these. I especially like point number one:

"Once again Democrats are engaging in blatant political attacks."

Oh those mean and nasty Democrats! Whatever shall we do? Those big bullies are being...gasp!... political.

If cognitive dissonance had actual physical manifestations, heads would be exploding all over DC right now. Consider this choice quote from none other Karl Rove himself:

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals believed it was time to… submit a petition."

Oh wait. This isn't a political attack. No sir. This is merely a statement of objective truth.

Swine. All of them.

Karl Rove

2005-07-13T11:44:00.000-04:00

The Post reports today that the Republican Party is about to turn on the slime machine and start hosing us down with a sewage lagoon's worth of filth, lies and over-the-top rhetoric (and I know it when I see it!) about the hate-filled Democrat's mission to destroy the pure-as-the-driven-snow Karl Rove. I'm surprised it took this long. I'd have expected them to start lobbing their execrations the second that Matt Cooper took the stand. Perhaps, for once, they got caught with their pants down?

Whatever the case, I kind of wonder whether it even matters if the odious Mr. Rove does get fired from his position as Deputy Chief of Staff. I mean, does anybody really think his role, much less his influence, will change? Hell no. Barring a criminal conviction, Rove will continue to befoul White House policy, and hence our democracy, until the day Bush leaves office. The White House might take a little political hit from this, but don't expect much else to happen.

The subjective nature of asparagus pee.

2005-07-13T11:20:00.000-04:00

Yes, I am actually going to post something about asparagus pee. But only in the interest of pursuing objective truth. I stumbled across this short, but informative article about the excretor/non-excretor, perceiver/non-perceiver dichotomies in studies into the nature of stinky pee that results from asparagus consumption...

Yessir, nothing but good times on this blog.

Whither the puppet master?

2005-07-12T12:23:00.000-04:00

Over at TPM Cafe, Marshal Whitman suggests that Democrats probably shouldn't get too worked up about Karl Rove's involvement in the Valerie Plame affair. He predicts that barring a criminal dindictment, it will be business as usual at the "accountability-oriented" White House. In the midst of a very incisive analysis of Rove's role in the Republican Party, Whitman gives us this fantastic quote:

"[F]or Bush to get rid of Rove, would be like Charlie McCarthy firing Edgar Bergen."

HA! We liberals have a tendency to assume Dick Cheney is the brains in the White House. I think Whitman is right to suggest that that just ain't so. Cheney's more like the one-eyed, snarling pitbull tied up outside the front door. Rove is the man inside the double-wide, directing bidness from the naugahyde La-Z-Boy.

Abandon hope

2005-07-12T08:39:00.000-04:00

LGM has an interesting bit of insight into the Administration's drug policy which, I think, speaks volumes about their general approach to policy-making. Summary: we must defund meth enforcement programs because to increase funds would suggest that meth use is at epidemic levels. If we accept there is an epidemic, we would be forced to acknowledge that there is no hope of ever solving the meth problem. However, by cutting meth enforcement dollars, we deny the existence of an epidemic and make clear our willingness to "stay the course" and fight the non-epidemic of meth use. In other words, to spend money is to admit defeat, so we must continue the valiant fight against crystal meth by cutting funding.

Ah, no wonder we're doing so poorly in Iraq.

Bob Roll

2005-07-12T00:12:00.000-04:00

For all you TdF fans, you might appreciate the weirdness of this video. Bob Roll, naked, on a trainer. The point? I really don't know. But it's kind of funny.

Love of power

2005-07-11T21:36:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago I was paging through my wife's copy of "How to Read a Book" by Charles Van Doren. I didn't actually read the book, but I did find a suggested reading list in the back. According to Mr. Van Doren, this list constituted the necessary basis upon which any educated person might properly assert their literacy. Overtaken by a sudden, reckless desire to be truly literate, I bought the first few books on the list and read them. Among those books was "The Peloponnesian War" by Thucydides.

Having never really read any of the "classics", I expected Thucydides to be turgid, dry, and unsatisfying (insert Fighting 101st Keyboarders joke here). As it turns out, though, Thucydides actually earned his place in the pantheon. The book is a fascinating study of war and politics in ancient history, and it is full of sharp observations and pithy quotes. What is truly amazing, though, is the timeliness of Thucydides' observations. I know it's trite to say so, but much of what he wrote in 427 BC holds true today. I suppose this is primarily a testament to the abiding flaws of human nature, but I'll argue that is also due to the quality of his writing and analysis.

In any case, I was reading the Post this morning and had cause to think back to Thucydides. As you may be aware by now, the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case managed to elicit testimony from Time reporter Matthew Cooper that implicates Karl Rove in the affair. According to the Post story, "Rove apparently told Cooper that it was 'Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency.'" This is an important revelation because at issue is a federal law that forbids the knowing identification of undercover agents by people with access to classified materials. Now, to you and me, it no doubt sounds like Rove has met atleast one part of that test: identication. If I say, "it was my father", you know damn well who I'm referring to and I've pretty much identified the person I'm talking about. Even if you don't know my father, the relationship is so obvious as to make it possible to easily learn the identification of the referent.

Karl Rove and his lawyer, however, would apparently disagree. According to the Post article, Rove's lawyer "said yesterday that Rove did not know Plame's name and was not actively trying to push the information into the public realm." No sir. We know that Rove wasn't identifying Valerie Plame to Cooper or anyone else because, "Rove did not mention her name to Cooper."

And so I come back to Thucydides. In Book III, he describes a conflict between the oligarchs and the democrats who comprised the Hellenic states. As the conflict spread from city to city, the Greek language began to lose meaning as the two parties sought every means possible of gaining power over the other. Thucydides tells us that, "To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings."

That's a nice quote. It certainly seems to capture what Rove's lawyer is trying to achieve. However, read the next few paragraphs and suddenly Thucydides is painting a very familiar and very scary picture. In this day and age, most of us expect to hear politicians trying to change, manipulate and otherwise molest the English language. (What is the meaning of is?) When that trend shifts from one man or a few men to encompass the whole population, that is when we should be afraid. To continue on with Thucydides quote:

"What used to described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man...Parties were not formed to enjoy the benefits of the established laws, but to acquire power by overthrowing the existing regime...If an opponent made a reasonable speech, the party in power, so far from giving it a generous reception, took every precaution to see that it had no practical effect."

Now that sounds familiar, doesn't it? And you can see it in action. Consider what folks have to say about Valerie Plame at Free Republic, Powerline, or Little Green Footballs. Search those sites for articles on Iraq, the Supreme Court, et cetera and you're sure to find more of the same. Love of power and violent fanaticism it appears, are not phenomenon isolated in ancient history.

East coast elites

2005-07-08T16:23:00.000-04:00

The New Republic has a revealing article in its online edition today. One of their reporters decided to poll conservative trend-setters about their views on evolution. Turns out they almost universally accept evolution as an explanatory theory. In fact, most of them seem quite capable of differentiating between scientific hypothesis and theological assertion. Moreover, more than a few parse their answers to suggest that we live in a universe in which evolution and religion can peacefully co-exist.

Now, none of this should be especially surprising. All of these people are highly educated, intelligent folk. And, if you're highly educated and intelligent, you're probably going to understand that Darwinian evolution is a) not a satanic plot to subvert religion, b) the best explanation so far for speciation that comports with the scientific method, and c) integral to a rigorous biology curriculum. What's surprising to me is that these people willingly align themselves with and apologize for the mouth-breathing neanderthals who make up the theocratic Christian right. Why? To win elections?

That's a bullshit answer. You can let loose the dogs of war, but it's a hell of a job getting them back in the kennel. Now that the fundies run the show, you can bet your ass that they're not going to give East Coast conservative elites any more deference than they do we East Coast liberal elites.

Blogging job hunters (or is it jogging blob hunters?)

2005-07-08T15:07:00.000-04:00

In the past, I've had a post or two worrying whether potential employers would be turned off by the fact that I have a blog. I've generally concluded that unless they are vetting my partisan proclivities, probably not. I don't tend to rant and rave here, and most of my writing is, I think, generally civil in tone and language. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a recent article, however, suggesting that perhaps my optimism is unfounded. Judging from the article, academic hiring committees are reading blogs as a way to, as we used to say at Philmont, weed out the scronies. The author states towards the end that virtually every blog was considered a negative on their respective candidate's application. That, my friends, certainly gives me pause. I'm sincerely hoping that this blog doesn't constitute a blot on my hitherto pristine curriculum vitae...

P.S. I found the original link to the CHE article here at LGM.

Intelligent Litigation?

2005-07-08T11:43:00.000-04:00

The Post has an article today, noting that a group of plaintiffs have dropped a law suit against the District's water utility for it's failure to address lead levels in our drinking water. For those of you unfamiliar with the issue, about two years ago it was revealed that DC water had extremely high levels of lead which exceeded EPA's drinking water standards. It turned out that our utility, DCWASA, knew this and had done little to address the issue. After this was revealed the plaintiffs in this case sued, and the utility began efforts to reduce lead levels.

As an environmentalist and a lawyer, I wonder whether the lawsuit had any effect in goading the utility into action. At the time, there was much hue and cry in the press, from Congress, from EPA, etc. With or without the litigation, I suspect that DCWASA would have responded to these political and regulatory pressures and begun reducing lead levels. If that is true, then why file the suit? Conservatives love to moan about litigation abuse, and this might seem to be a case of litigants piling on to a problem already heading towards resolution. However, if it were truly an abuse of the court system, would the litigants have dropped the case seeing evidence of DCWASA successfully remediating the lead problem? Likely not. Damages ARE damages. What, then, was the point of the litigation?

I'd like to suggest that it is a method by which citizens can ensure their voices are heard in a system which can seem unresponsive at best. Given that DCWASA had failed to address the lead problem for years, given that the DC government has a history of (less so recently) of failing to provide effective services, given that the Bush Administration has shown no great zeal in regulating environmental problems, and given that the Congress could give a flying fuck about DC residents, it isn't entirely irrational for concerned citizens in DC to want to keep their finger in the pie, so to speak. In fact, I would argue that it's perfectly rational to have expected each of the players named above to fail to uphold the public trust. The fact that they didn't does not suggest that the litigation was pointless; it merely suggests that the system may be working. Bringing the litigation was just insurance in case it didn't. So, kudos to the folks who brought the case, and kudos to them for dropping it once it became obvious that it was redundant.

London Bombing

2005-07-07T08:47:00.000-04:00

All the war-mongering and police-stating in the world, it appears, aren't very effective at ending terrorist attacks. My heart goes out to the people of London who are suffering from these most recent bomb attacks.

Huh?

2005-07-05T19:44:00.000-04:00

How can a quadriplegic trapeze artist tape vacuum cleaner hose to a tailpipe?

Why did 36 new readers suddenly visit my blog today, when my daily average is usually around 6?

Who is The Chaos Gerbil? Is he any relation to the Platypus of Doom or the Aardvark of Despair?

Under God?

2005-07-05T16:05:00.000-04:00

The Post had an article this past weekend about an interesting guy in Virginia this weekend. He's a Mennonite (currently practicing at a Catholic Church) who has taken it upon himself to challenge the State of Virginia and Loudon County practices which either act to "establish" religion or which place undue influence on icons such as the American flag. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and wouldn't mind hearing more from the guy himself on what motivates him. What really caught my eye, however, was this one throw away quote concerning his litigation over the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance:

"Government lawyers have argued that the recitation of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance has become so routine that it holds a historical and not a religious meaning."

Is that right? Strangely enough, I seem to recall hearing any number of conservative Christians moaning that the 9th Circuit's decision that "under God" is unconstitutional is a direct assault on Christianity. The State, however, seems to be arguing that removing "under God" would instead be an assault on history. So which is it? Or is it both? Regardless, I'm glad to see a devout Christian arguing that "under God" should be removed. His religious beliefs probably won't prevent the theofascists from attacking his motives, but it might just take a little wind out of their rhetorical sails.

Flim-flam

2005-07-05T12:23:00.000-04:00

The guys over at LGM linked to two "tests" to determine your political and personal temperament. As always, these tests capture as much about the author's temperament as your own, but in the interest of blogging trivia I give you the links and my results below. Turns out, I'm a left-wing libertarian and all-round good guy. Ahhhhh.... So nice to see someone finally recognize the truth.

Political Temperament

My results:
Economic Left/Right: -5.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.90

Analysis: Apparently, I share the same small quadrant of the four-dimensional political spectrum with none other than Mahatma Ghandi. This alone should give you pause as to the accuracy of this test.

Personal Temperament

My results:

EXTRAVERSION................58 (average)
Friendliness.............82
Gregariousness...........61
Assertiveness............61
Activity Level...........40
Excitement-Seeking.......7
Cheerfulness.............81

AGREEABLENESS...............99 (high)
Trust....................82
Morality.................97
Altruism.................86
Cooperation..............94
Modesty..................81
Sympathy.................95

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS..........78 (high)
Self-Efficacy............64
Orderliness..............83
Dutifulness..............80
Achievement-Striving.....59
Self-Discipline..........73
Cautiousness.............62

NEUROTICISM................24 (low)
Anxiety..................26
Anger....................24
Depression...............26
Self-Consciousness.......28
Immoderation.............44
Vulnerability............32

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE.....69 (high)
Imagination..............44
Artistic Interests.......73
Emotionality.............63
Adventurousness..........40
Intellect................55
Liberalism...............86

Analysis: What can I say. This test must be right because I agree with it in a most agreeable and conscientious fashion...

Mark Souder and his gimp

2005-07-01T15:07:00.000-04:00

Once again, House Republicans have shown their utter disregard for the democratic process and taken steps to vitiate the duly-enacted, popularly-supported firearms restrictions that are currently included in the D.C. Code. Once again, Mark Souder from Indiana, has sponsored a bill that ignores the wishes of the vast majority of DC residents and imposes his insular, conservative worldview on our city. Unlike last year, though, Souder has stepped back from repealing the city's gun laws entirely. Now he just wants to prevent the city from spending any money enforcing its gun restrictions. The effect? Basically the same.

Now, as you all know, I'm a big fan of guns. I'd love to have one of these in my closet, one of these in my living room, one of these in my bedside stand, and one of these by the bedroom door. That said, I'm an even bigger fan of democracy and representative government. If the people of D.C. resoundingly pass a law to prevent me from owning such guns, I can accept that. They've clearly stated their desire to live in a relatively gun-free environment and if I really thought living under those conditions were such a huge burden, I could move to Virginia and begin rebuilding my arsenal.

Clearly, Mr. Souder disagrees. Or, even if he doesn't disagree, we're just so easy to mess with that he can't help himself. Like so many in his party, I'm sure he views DC as his own little, quadrapalegic fuck toy. Whenever he feels a little tense, he just comes down into the basement, unstraps us from the wheelchair and jam his conservative ideas straight up our collective ass. Not only can he get his rocks off, but we can't fight back and it doesn't cost him anything at home. Do the fine people of Indiana give a flying fuck about DC? I doubt it. Chances are, they can't even find us on the map...

It pisses me off to no end to see ignoramuses like Souder messing with this city. If he were truly concerned with our safety, he'd be addressing issues like street crime, poverty, child care costs, fair wages, and other such topics that directly affect the people of DC. Solve those problems and most of the crime in DC would likely disappear. As it is, letting me carry a locked and loaded Gold Tiger Stripe Desert Eagle .50 calibre semi-auto around my house isn't going to make me any safer, and it sure as hell isn't going to improve the quality of life in the District.

O'Connor Retires

2005-07-01T11:05:00.000-04:00

I just got word that Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement this afternoon. It comes as some surprise, as I was sure Rehnquist would go first. The next few weeks and months should be quite interesting for those who enjoy the spectacle of Supreme Court nominations. I think there will be much emphasis on spectacle. Personally, I'm just curious to see whether Bush promotes an idealogue like Luttig from the 4th, a craven henchman like Gonzales from Justice, or a well-repected albeit profoundly conservative like Michael McConnell from the 10th. I'm not making any bets, but given Bush's proclivity for radicalism and embrace of theocratic ideals, I'll give 3:1 odds that he's going to nominate someone like Luttig.