Hmmmm.....is Paraguay the new Argentina?

Via Wonkette comes this interesting article that follows up on the 98,842 farm in Paraguay recently purchased by George W. Bush (emphases mine):

It has been reported that George W. Bush has recently purchased a 98,842 acre farm in Northern Paraguay. What on earth does the President of the United States need a 98,000+ acre farm in Northern Paraguay for?

On the surface it looks all very innocent, but lets add the very quiet trip that Jenna Bush made to the country earlier this month in which she met Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and his family at their official residence. She also met with U.S. Ambassador James Cason. Could it be that our little drunken Jenna is all grown up and playing diplomacy?

This all still seems very innocent on the surface, but now lets add the five hundred U.S. troops that arrived in Paraguay with planes, weapons and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate granted U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction. Neighboring countries and human rights organizations are concerned the massive air base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is potential real estate for the U.S. military.



Does Bush plan on being charged with something in the future? Does Bush foresee a collapse of the United States and feels a strong need to have a place to cut and run to, or does Bush just need a nice secret little place other than Gitmo where he can send people he doesn’t like?

Sounds like someone's afraid of being carted off to the Hague, and he's getting ready to head south -- just like the Nazis his grandfather financed.

If George W. Bush is Jesus, then to the mainstream media, Rush Limbaugh is the Holy Ghost

Great article at Media Matters about the media's kid-glove handling of Rush Limbaugh, and how they have participated in the manhandling of Michael J. Fox.

Fox was interviewed by David Gregory today in a segment shown on Countdown. It is absolutely heartbreaking to watch him, because damn it if he still LOOKS like Marty McFly. He's hardly aged a day since his mid-20's, and to see him so impaired, and to imagine how much it hurts to be the punching bag of a bunch of hate-filled right-wingers who don't give a rat's ass about human life or babies or anything else other than retaining Republican grasp on power is just heartbreaking. And yes, Laura Bush, I'm talking to you, you heartless, cold bitch.

The minute this election is over and I no longer need to donate to candidates, I am writing a nice fat check to the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

Who's with me?

Abstinence: It isn't just for teens anymore

In case you had any doubts whatsoever that Republicans are obsessed with other people's sex lives to the point that they don't want ANYONE to have one, here's the next frontier after teen abstinence:

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.
Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex.

The National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse.

But Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.

"The message is 'It's better to wait until you're married to bear or father children,' " Horn said. "The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence."

The revised guidelines specify that states seeking grants are "to identify groups ... most likely to bear children out-of-wedlock, targeting adolescents and/or adults within the 12- through 29-year-old age range." Previous guidelines didn't mention targeting of an age group.

"We wanted to remind states they could use these funds not only to target adolescents," Horn said. "It's a reminder."

This is what happens when you let sexually-repressed fundamentalist Christians make policy. Who needs the Taliban? Who needs "Islamic fascism", when you have the same old kind of religious fear and loathing right here in the good old U. S. and A.?

You think they'll stop with "guidelines"? Wait till they get hold of Griswold v. Connecticut.

Stephanie Miller must be doing something right

To get a frothing-at-the-mouth wingnut THIS riled.

Let's not have any more talk about "Democratic hate speech" from the likes of Lynne Cheney and Ann Coulter and the rest of them, not when THEIR followers are saying things like this:

As with Cindy Sheehan the best thing that could happen to you would be seeing some WONDERFUL activist sticking an AK-47 up your Glory Holes and sending you into eternity.

Nice. And what's with the right-wing obsession with sticking things into people's anuses? Huh?

Larry Johnson has more, including speculation on the letter-writer's sexual issues. And Brad Friedman digs up some more deathless prose from this moron.

2006 election-rigging update for Tuesday, October 31

Voters in Jefferson County, Texas are reporting casting their vote for one candidate and the ES&S machine on which they're voting show a vote for the other. Story and video here.

Election officials are claiming that the problem is that the "hot spot" touch area is too small. Didn't anyone at ES&S do any user testing to see how real-life users might be using these things? Or is the hot spot set to be too small for a reason?

I continue to be amazed at the sloppy design and coding practices used by these companies in making these voting machines. If you go to your bank's ATM, how often, when you touch "$60 Fastcash from Checking" do you get $100? Never? That's what I thought. So why is it that when these same companies create voting machine software, they can't achieve similar accuracy?

And isn't it interesting that EVERY DAMN REPORT OF VOTE-FLIPPING involves a flip from Democratic to Republican candidates?

Brad Friedman reports on vote flipping in states where Republican losses will be highly embarrassing to the party:

So far, the reports have all involved Democratic (or Green) votes flipping to, or otherwise benefitting, Republican candidates. In South Florida, St. Louis County, Missouri, Virginia, Arkansas, Dallas, and now San Antonio, Texas.

At last, a candidate who tells it like it is

I wonder if this is actually running on television?

So much for the idea that you can't be moral without Jesus

The idea that religion, preferably Christian religion, preferably evangelical Christian religion, is required for a person to be able to make morally right decisions just took another punch to the gut:

Primatologists like Frans de Waal have long argued that the roots of human morality are evident in social animals like apes and monkeys. The animals’ feelings of empathy and expectations of reciprocity are essential behaviors for mammalian group living and can be regarded as a counterpart of human morality.

Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist, has built on this idea to propose that people are born with a moral grammar wired into their neural circuits by evolution. In a new book, “Moral Minds” (HarperCollins 2006), he argues that the grammar generates instant moral judgments which, in part because of the quick decisions that must be made in life-or-death situations, are inaccessible to the conscious mind.

People are generally unaware of this process because the mind is adept at coming up with plausible rationalizations for why it arrived at a decision generated subconsciously.

Dr. Hauser presents his argument as a hypothesis to be proved, not as an established fact. But it is an idea that he roots in solid ground, including his own and others’ work with primates and in empirical results derived by moral philosophers.

The proposal, if true, would have far-reaching consequences. It implies that parents and teachers are not teaching children the rules of correct behavior from scratch but are, at best, giving shape to an innate behavior. And it suggests that religions are not the source of moral codes but, rather, social enforcers of instinctive moral behavior.

Both atheists and people belonging to a wide range of faiths make the same moral judgments, Dr. Hauser writes, implying “that the system that unconsciously generates moral judgments is immune to religious doctrine.” Dr. Hauser argues that the moral grammar operates in much the same way as the universal grammar proposed by the linguist Noam Chomsky as the innate neural machinery for language. The universal grammar is a system of rules for generating syntax and vocabulary but does not specify any particular language. That is supplied by the culture in which a child grows up.

The moral grammar too, in Dr. Hauser’s view, is a system for generating moral behavior and not a list of specific rules. It constrains human behavior so tightly that many rules are in fact the same or very similar in every society — do as you would be done by; care for children and the weak; don’t kill; avoid adultery and incest; don’t cheat, steal or lie.

[snip]

Dr. Hauser believes that the moral grammar may have evolved through the evolutionary mechanism known as group selection. A group bound by altruism toward its members and rigorous discouragement of cheaters would be more likely to prevail over a less cohesive society, so genes for moral grammar would become more common.

Many evolutionary biologists frown on the idea of group selection, noting that genes cannot become more frequent unless they benefit the individual who carries them, and a person who contributes altruistically to people not related to him will reduce his own fitness and leave fewer offspring.

But though group selection has not been proved to occur in animals, Dr. Hauser believes that it may have operated in people because of their greater social conformity and willingness to punish or ostracize those who disobey moral codes.

“That permits strong group cohesion you don’t see in other animals, which may make for group selection,” he said.

...which of course would mean that the 10 Commandments are less a function of the Word of God and more one of a book's author putting to paper in a succinct form the vague but ever-present precepts he saw around him.

Of course a hypothesis isn't fact, but if there are some universal moral behaviors that most people adhere to, it tends to debunk the idea advanced by many Christians that humans, left to their own devices, are savages who need religion to keep them on the straight and narrow. And given the preponderance of strict Christianity among the most corrupt people we see in Washington, perhaps it's time to examine those who seem to be lacking that innate moral code and find out why -- and what's missing from THEIR biology.

Judgeships For Sale

Will Evans in Salon makes a strong case for the Bush Administration selling federal judgeships in exchange for campaign cash for Republicans:

At least two dozen federal judges appointed by President Bush since 2001 made political contributions to key Republicans or to the president himself while under consideration for their judgeships, government records show. A four-month investigation of Bush-appointed judges by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that six appellate court judges and 18 district court judges contributed a total of more than $44,000 to politicians who were influential in their appointments. Some gave money directly to Bush after he officially nominated them. Other judges contributed to Republican campaign committees while they were under consideration for a judgeship.

Republicans who received money from judges en route to the bench include Sens. Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Gov. George Pataki of New York

[snip]

The CIR investigation analyzed the campaign contribution records of 249 judges appointed by Bush nationwide since 2001. The money trail leading from Bush judges to influential politicians runs particularly deep through the political battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

[snip]
Political giving while serving on the federal bench is a violation of the official Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges. The code says that "A judge should not ... solicit funds for or pay an assessment or make a contribution to a political organization or candidate."

More here.

Legislating from the bench? Bad. Well, unless it's legislating for greater executive power? Buying your seat on the court? A-OK, where this bunch is concerned.

Sydney Food & Wine Fair, Hyde Park Sydney

Serge Dansereau from Bathers PavilionIt was a gorgeous day for the annual Sydney Food & Wine Fair, one of the final big events for Good Food Month.I was disappointed that Chiu Lee Luk and Claude's didn't have a stall this year but otherwise there were plenty of stalls to keep the stomach amused and the camera clicking.Duck confit, pickled beetroot, green beans, Persian fetta and chervil

Wolf, you shameless suckup, what did you THINK you were dealing with

Wolf Blitzer has done his best to be a good little lackey for the Bush Administration for as long as the Iraq War has been going on. So it's just a wee bit disingenuous for him to now get his knickers in a twist because Lynne Cheney, wife of a Vice President who has all but accused anyone who votes Democratic as being a traitor, called his patriotism into question.

That media whores like Wolf Blitzer, who have been such good little propagandists for the Bush Administration, should be surprised to just now discover who they're dealing with, is just a wee tad disingenuous, don't you think? Blind loyalty is the hallmark of this Administration, and if you don't toe the line at all times, they will cut you -- badly.

So spare me your righteous indignation, Mr. Blitzer. I knew what these people were. Why didn't you?

How the vote will be suppressed next week

This handy graphic from the New York Times shows the nine states in which vote suppression is most likely to occur next week. Start here to create your vote-rigging election pool sheets.

UPDATE: The vote-rigging in Florida has already begun:

After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors -- and a caution against the careless casting of ballots.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen -- the final voting step.

Election officials say they aren't aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don't know how widespread the machine problems are because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.

In Miami-Dade, incidents are logged and reported daily and recorded in a central database. Problem machines are shut down.

''In the past, Miami-Dade County would send someone to correct the machine on site,'' said Lester Sola, county supervisor of elections. Now, he said, ``We close the machine down and put a seal on it.''

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

Funny how these so-called "glitches" ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS work to favor Republicans, isn't it?

Nope. Nothing to see here. Just move along. Nothing going on. Just get out of here and go home.

Is there ANYTHING in Iraq that this bunch hasn't screwed up?

The bymbling incompetence is just mind boggling. John "Rumsfeld is the best thing that ever happened to the military" Boehner, take note:

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who recently expressed an assessment far darker than the Bush administration’s on the situation in Iraq.

Mr. Warner sent his request in May to a federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He also asked the inspector general to examine whether Iraqi security forces were developing a logistics operation capable of sustaining the hundreds of thousands of troops and police officers the American military says it has trained.

The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.

Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.

Can we please stop them before they "succeed" again?

Morris' Egyptian Restaurant, Dulwich Hill

You won't need a felucca to get to Dulwich Hill, just a short trip on a bus from the city to arrive at Morris', purportedly the only Egyptian restaurant in Sydney. Dulwich Hill has a village-like feel, but it has a healthy concentration of gastronomic highlights: Eumundi Smokehouse lures from across the road and giant wheels of rose-syrup soaked baklava await at Abla Pastry a few doors down.I've

At last, a CD to look forward to

Those who know me well know of my affinity for vintage popular music from before the rock 'n' roll era. One of my favorite radio programs is Rich Conaty's The Big Broadcast, which is on WFUV-FM from 8-11 Sunday nights, and which streams here. There are also treasure troves of vintage music on the Web, from the incomparable Red Hot Jazz Archive to the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project to the Antique Phonograph Music Program and Thomas Edison's Attic on WFMU.

But just ten days after the much anticipated opening of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan opens, the work of the forbears of Sacha Baron Cohen is being re-released in the form of a new CD, Jewface.

The New York Times explains:

But probably few of those shocked by the movie realize that long before Mr. Cohen shed his Ali G persona for Borat’s ill-fitting suit — in fact, long before the 1929 stock market crash — Berlin, the songwriter behind “White Christmas” and “God Bless America,” was reeling off satirical songs about Jews that might seem dodgy on the “Borat” soundtrack. One such Berlin number, “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars,” from 1916, concerns a businessman on his deathbed who cannot stop fretting over his unrepaid i.o.u.’s.

This song and others by long-dead Tin Pan Alley songwriters are featured on a new compact disc, “Jewface,” which is aimed not at the History Channel crowd, but at a hipper audience. The album, to be released Nov. 14, contains 16 songs salvaged from wax cylinder recordings and scratchy 78s, from a century-old genre that is essentially Jewish minstrelsy. Often known as Jewish dialect music, it was performed in vaudeville houses by singers in hooked putty noses, oversize derbies and tattered overcoats. Highly popular, if controversial, in its day, it has been largely lost to history — perhaps justifiably.

“It’s like Hitler’s playlist, but it’s not, because it was actually Fanny Brice’s playlist,” said Jody Rosen, 37, a music critic for the online magazine Slate, who has spent more than a decade researching the genre. (Brice was the Ziegfeld-era singer and comedian played by Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl.”) “It’s a more complicated and nuanced vision of Jewish history than what you absorb at Hebrew school.”

Mr. Holt pointed out that such dialect music was usually performed by Jews and was popular among Jewish as well as non-Jewish audiences when it was released. For many immigrants, laughing at even newer arrivals from the Old World was a way to make themselves feel more at home in their adopted country.

But even after a century, the music carries the potential to shock. “My Yiddisha Mammy,” a 1922 riff on Al Jolson’s “Mammy,” written by Eddie Cantor and others, may offend contemporary Jews and African-Americans equally with lyrics like these:

I’ve got a mammy,

But she don’t come from Alabammy.

Her heart is filled with love and real sentiment,

Her cabin door is in a Bronx tenement.

The “Jewface” project, however, does have historical as well as musical value, said Jeffrey Magee, an associate professor of musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“This album is a big step in repossessing this stuff that has been muted for a century,” said Dr. Magee, who explained that this music was generally ignored, except in academic works, by earlier generations of American Jews, who were trying to assimilate and wanted to run from painful stereotypes, not explore them. (Other groups, like the Irish and Italians, had their own vaudeville self-parodies.)

“Some generations had to come and go,” Dr. Magee said, “before younger people could listen with fresh ears, say: ‘Hey, let’s listen to this. It’s not us, but it’s our predecessors.’ ”

Many Jews in the vaudeville era ran from this music. In 1909, Mr. Rosen writes in the album liner notes, a prominent Reform rabbi said that such Hebrew comedy was “the cause of greater prejudice against the Jews as a class than all other causes combined,” and that same year it was denounced by the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Kenneth Jacobsen, the deputy national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that a project like this “gets very complicated.” It is on the one hand comedy, and that it was usually performed by Jews softens its impact. Still, he said, “our experience in this kind of thing is that inevitably somebody will probably use this for not such good purposes.”

Forget the shandeh far di goyim factor. I for one can't wait.

Suddenly Republicans are concerned about rigged voting machines

Oh, this is just too hilarious. Apparently Sequoia, the voting machine company, was taken over last year by a company called Smartmatic, which has links to anti-Bush Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. So all of a sudden, Republicans are concerned about DRE voting machines:

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.

The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year.

The committee’s formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald.

Officials of both Smartmatic and the Venezuelan government strongly denied yesterday that President Chávez’s administration, which has been bitterly at odds with Washington, has any role in Smartmatic.

“The government of Venezuela doesn’t have anything to do with the company aside from contracting it for our electoral process,” the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, said last night.

Now if you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you. But on the other hand, the sudden concern on the Republican side about Sequoia voting machines, after six years of complete unconcern about the Diebold and ES&S machines that are easily rigged, is kind of interesting. When the lack of security in a voting machine doesn't stand to benefit Republicans, now it's a problem.

The Carter Center only monitors elections in foreign countries. But maybe it's time for it to monitor this election just over a week from now. Because the U.S. has become about as foreign to what it's supposed to stand for as it's possible to be.

James Wolcott Explains It All For You

At last the truth can be told:

Josh Marshall asks: What's Bob Corker's deal with Harold Ford's sex life?"

I believe I can answer that, having seen a few Douglas Sirk movies in my time.

Bob Corker is gay. He may not know it yet, he may never know it, he may go to his sarcophagus wrapped in denial, but his fascination with Ford's prowess and good looks gives him away, as does his political affiliation. All Republican political figures are gay, especially the men. When President Bush insists on kissing one bald head after another, the psychosexual symbolism speaks for itself. He's planting his lips on big uncircumcised Kojak peckers. When Rush Limbaugh packs his Viagra and jets off on a tropical jaunt with the guys, it's assumed there are saucy wenches awaiting him under the sultry palms, but I wonder--I wonder if it's cabana boys making the hammock sway under the moonlight. Republican women--those masochistic saints--are more like Joan Allen playing Pat Nixon under layers of frosting, their rigid smiles forged by years of living a lie with a man infatuated with other men and too timid to take out a subscription to Details magazine, lest he be exposed. The closet in which he dwells doubles as a panic room with a convenient minibar, so that if he ever stumbles or strays, he can blame it on the creme de menthe, not the burning yearning of his heart. Perhaps Corker has a special thing for black men, and can't get enough of that smooth and creamy Blair Underwood. There's no shame in that. Many a significant look has been exchanged in the locker room at half-time.

The only shame is that Harold Ford can't run for office without his Republican opponent, Karl Rove, and Ken Mehlman leching on him and taking turns at the keyhole. The South has made such progress, yet in affairs of the groin, it still has so far to go.

Brilliant@Pop Culture: Dumbfoundedly Dazzled by Dexter

It's not easy boycotting ABC this season. From Lost to Boston Legal to a number of the new shows, it's been hard to not just say, "Aw, fuck it" and watch, despite my utter revulsion at the decisions of ABC's entertainment division to run The Path to 9/11. But sometimes ideological purity has to hurt.

Fortunately, Showtime, which I'd boycotted after they ran the historically revisionist propaganda piece DC 9/11: Time of Crisis, redeemed themselves by running the Reagan miniseries out of which CBS had chickened out, so when Dish Network offered us Starz AND Showtime for fifteen bucks a month in perpetuity, I snapped it up, largely so that I could watch Dexter. And so, four weeks into the season, I've finally caught up with Dexter Morgan.

I don't think I've ever been as involved in a series as I was in Six Feet Under. Not even The Sopranos has felt so real and so organic; nor have its characters felt like people we know. That Alan Ball understood this and provided us with closure when the series ended hasn't stopped me from wishing that the Fishers could come visit us every now and then, much the way I wish that the departed in my own life could come visit every now and then. But perhaps the most organic Fisher of all was David, whose journey out of the closet and into parenthood provided the most compelling storyline in the entire series.

David Fisher was such a complex and memorable character that it's hard to imagine Michael C. Hall in any other role. But any ghosts of David Fisher were banished about eight minutes into the first episode of Dexter.

Dexter feels like one of those British crime dramas where the protagonist is so deeply flawed as to be interesting. For my money, the British Cracker was one of the best series ever shown on television. With drunken, loutish Fitz (Robbie Coltrane) at its center, Cracker built an entirely credible universe around its so-unlikeable-he's-likeable antihero, and held it together with fine supporting actors, directors like Michael Winterbottom, and tight, clever scripts.

If Dexter doesn't quite reach the literate heights of the British series to which it so obviously owes a debt, it's certainly not the fault of Michael C. Hall. As David Fisher, Hall exuded a kind of buttoned-up irony combined with a desperate need to be loved. As the serial killer who only dispatches those who deserve it, Hall is completely transformed. His blandly handsome choirboy face effortlessly moves from detachment to irony to dementedness without missing a beat. Painfully aware of his own nature and how it interferes with his ability to live a normal life, Hall's performance turns Dexter into a twisted version of a comic book superhero. He's the sick and twisted big brother to Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker.

Hall has a few excellent actors around him, and where these people are on the screen, the show is as good as anything the U.K. ever put out. Of particular note are Lauren Velez as police Lt. Maria LaGuerta, a woman clearly insecure in her position as boss of a largely male staff of police officers; and Julie Benz as Dexter's sort-of girlfriend Rita. Rita is as damaged as Dexter, though in a very different way, and Benz plays her with an interestingly ditzy vulnerability. The ease with which Dexter interacts with Rita's two young children seem to make him a kind of single mother dream guy, and while the sheer normality of the interaction might serve as a sledgehammer driving home the duality of Dexter's personality, they never play as forced.

Alas, the preposterous flashbacks, in which we learn how Dexter's adoptive father seeks to channel his son's homicidal nature in a positive, vigilante direction, play as if written by someone else, with huge hulking chunks of dialogue plopping off the screen and laying in a fetid heap on the floor. Part of the problem is that James Remar, last seen as Samantha's rich boss/boyfrined on Sex and the City, is a perfectly ghastly actor, but he's given clunky lines to deliver. Under the best of circumstances, you would have to suspend huge amounts of disbelief when confronted with a by-the-books cop who enables homicidal behavior in his son, whatever kind of twisted moral code lies behind it. But in Dexter, these scenes seem to have walked in by mistake from another series entirely.

For those of us who don't really unwind from the workweek to the point of being ready for a weekend until Sunday night, and as a result have trouble sleeping, unsettling series like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos haven't helped matters any. Dexter fills that weirdness gap very nicely, thank you very much.

Blogger is bloggering

Blogger has been giving screwy error messages all weekend during publish, which is why we have the discrepancy between the post time and when it appears. If I weren't up to my eyeballs in the arcana of Drupal for another project, I'd look into switching to something else.

Where did my weekend go?

The Sydney Food and Wine Fair on Saturday. The Seven Bridges Walk today. Somehow we (surprisingly, unfathomably, ridiculously) made it all the way around the 22km route, taking us over seven bridges and past some spectacular harbour views.Exhausted?Absolutely.Photos to be uploaded from both events once I summon the strength :)

George W. Bush has run this country like a business, all right

It's just that he's run it like one of HIS businesses -- and as a result, it's on the verge of financial collapse:

The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.

There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them.

[snip]

Polls suggest that Americans have only a vague sense of their government's long-term fiscal prospects. When pollsters ask Americans to name the most important problem facing America today -- as a CBS News/New York Times poll of 1,131 Americans did in September -- issues such as the war in Iraq, terrorism, jobs and the economy are most frequently mentioned. The deficit doesn't even crack the top 10.

Yet on the rare occasions that pollsters ask directly about the deficit, at least some people appear to recognize it as a problem. In a survey of 807 Americans last year by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, 42 percent of respondents said reducing the deficit should be a top priority; another 38 percent said it was important but a lower priority.

So the majority of the public appears to agree with Walker that the deficit is a serious problem, but only when they're made to think about it. Walker's challenge is to get people not just to think about it, but to pressure politicians to make the hard choices that are needed to keep the situation from spiraling out of control.

To show that the looming fiscal crisis is not a partisan issue, he brings along economists and budget analysts from across the political spectrum. In Austin, he's accompanied by Diane Lim Rogers, a liberal economist from the Brookings Institution, and Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

''We all agree on what the choices are and what the numbers are,'' Fraser says.

Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America -- Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included.

A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today.

And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion.

[snip]

Economists Jagadeesh Gokhale of the American Enterprise Institute and Kent Smetters of the University of Pennsylvania have an even scarier way of looking at Medicare. Their method calculates the program's long-term fiscal shortfall -- the annual difference between its dedicated revenues and costs -- over time.

By 2030 they calculate Medicare will be about $5 trillion in the hole, measured in 2004 dollars. By 2080, the fiscal imbalance will have risen to $25 trillion. And when you project the gap out to an infinite time horizon, it reaches $60 trillion.

Medicare so dominates the nation's fiscal future that some economists believe health care reform, rather than budget measures, is the best way to attack the problem.

''Obviously health care is a mess,'' says Dean Baker, a liberal economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank. ''No one's been willing to touch it, but that's what I see as front and center.''

Social Security is a much less serious problem. The program currently pays for itself with a 12.4 percent payroll tax, and even produces a surplus that the government raids every year to pay other bills. But Social Security will begin to run deficits during the next century, and ultimately would need an infusion of $8 trillion if the government planned to keep its promises to every beneficiary.

Calculations by Boston University economist Lawrence Kotlikoff indicate that closing those gaps -- $8 trillion for Social Security, many times that for Medicare -- and paying off the existing deficit would require either an immediate doubling of personal and corporate income taxes, a two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits, or some combination of the two.

Why is America so fiscally unprepared for the next century? Like many of its citizens, the United States has spent the last few years racking up debt instead of saving for the future. Foreign lenders -- primarily the central banks of China, Japan and other big U.S. trading partners -- have been eager to lend the government money at low interest rates, making the current $8.5-trillion deficit about as painful as a big balance on a zero-percent credit card.

Despite the propensity of Gen-Xers and the others who are girding their loins to blame baby-boomers for all of the upcoming financial mess, most of my baby-boom compatriots have been well aware of the coming crisis. In fact, most of us have worked under the assumption, fed by more than two decades of predominantly Republican rule, that neither Social Security nor Medicare will be there for us.

But it's not as if "no one could have anticipated" the coming burden on the national senior safety net. It's not as if we've exactly been quiet, as we make our way through this God-forsaken level of reality like an elephant passing through a snake. The Social Security surplus that was bandied about so much during the 2000 election no longer exists, having been looted to pay for other government expenditures. Believe me, we are well aware of this, and we are also well aware of the coming generational warfare as more Americans fight over an ever-diminishing pie.

George W. Bush came to office with a $400 billion surplus, and he has now spent us into oblivion by cutting taxes for his friends and embarking on a pointless war that has shoveled billions of our tax dollars that could have paid for education, investment in technology and infrastructure, health care, and shoring up our safety net programs. And we have nothing to show for it, other than an insurmountable debt, a war that we have no idea how to end, a health care system on the verge of collapse, a diminishing job base, and a bleak future for the very children this Administration professes to protect -- until they're born, anyway.

Perhaps the worst failure of Congressional Democrats over the last six years has been their failure to point out that it is Republicans who are the big debt spenders. In the post-WWII era, when Democrats control the White House increases in debt spendinig have been far less than under Republican presidents:

Since 1946 the Democratic Presidents increased the national debt an average of only 3.7% per year when they were in office. The Republican Presidents stay at an average increase of 9.3% per year. Over the last 59 years Republican Presidents have out borrowed Democratic Presidents by almost a three to one ratio. That is, for every dollar a Democratic President has raised the national debt in the past 59 years Republican Presidents have raised the debt by $2.87.

With the terrorism fear card not working for the Republicans this time, and the "Scary Oversexed Negroes" card not working, and the "Scary Oversexed Homosexuals who want to get married" not really working, it's only a matter of time before the "Democrats want to raise your taxes" card becomes the drumbeat in the days before the midterm election.

There was a Mark Alan Stamaty Washingtoon that appeared in the Village Voice during the 1988 campaign. Alas, it can't be found anywhere on the Web, but it depicts a hysterical George Bush Sr. jumping up and down and screaming "Killer negroes are coming to get you! Liberals want to take all your money! Read my lips! Read my lips!"

Like father, like son. We can't say we weren't warned. So you might want to ask your friends who voted for the son to start thinking about how they're going to tell their children why they let it happen.

At last the Bush Administration admits what the Iraq War is about

And this truth comes from the most unlikely source:

Presidential advisor Karl Rove blasted Democrats on Friday for even suggesting the U.S. withdraw from Iraq, saying the U.S. can't leave one of the world's largest oil reserves in terrorist hands.

Almost 3000 American kids dead, tens of thousands more maimed for life, and God only knows how many Iraqi civilians dead or made homeless so that Americans can drive Ford Excursions.

Good idea, but...

I'm all for anything that helps women stop hating themselves for being too fat, too thin, having breasts that are too small or too large, having hips, having thighs, having a big nose, having blonde eyelashes, having cellulite, wearing a double-digit size, having hair that is too curly or hair that is too straight, being too old, being too young, and on and on.

Even if it is sponsored by a line of skin care products.

But this is sort of like Philip Morris giving you information on how to quit smoking. I mean, if you go to Dove's product web site, you can read things like this:

Don't have all day to primp in front of a mirror? Not to worry. With these simple tricks, you'll look and feel like a million bucks in one sweep of the second hand.

When Life Gives You Lemons...
Use them to get velvety skin. After whipping up a batch of lemonade, take the leftover lemon halves and rub your knees, elbows, heels and other dry spots. The Vitamin C-rich pulp helps skin feel soft and silky.
Time elapsed: 45 seconds

Buy a Bunch
Of flowers, that is. When you surround yourself with beautiful colors and scents, your mood can't help but improve. Plus, oxygenating your surroundings is always good for your skin, and you.
Time elapsed: 30 seconds

Go for the (Faux) Glow
Lounging in the sun is both time-consuming and bad for your skin. Slathering on a shimmery self-tanner, however, is neither. Opt for the tinted kind, and you'll look and feel radiant instantly.
Time elapsed: 60 seconds

Ditch the Heels
Your posture will improve, you'll step more confidently—and that pained, pinched look will disappear from your face.
Time elapsed: 8 seconds

Treat Tired Eyes
Soak caffeinated tea bags and chill them in the freezer for a few minutes, then place them on your eyes to reduce puffiness. Cold cucumber slices achieve the same effect.
Time elapsed: 60 seconds

Replace Your Blade
If it's been months since you changed your razor blade, you may not remember how smooth and silky your skin can feel. Replace the blade every week or two, and say goodbye to nasty nicks and cuts.
Time elapsed: 15 seconds

Now these are pretty benign and do-able things to do, but are tips like this, and the one called "High-Altitude Beauty: Tips for a Face-Fabulous Flight", and things like interactive beauty tools and products like "Dove's Energy Glow Skin Brightening Facial Cleanser" and "Gentle Exfoliating Cleansing Pillows" inconsistent with the "Campaign for Real Beauty" message? Is real beauty only about avoiding Botox and plastic surgery?

OK, count me in

Googly-Goo:

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Homeland Absurdity

The Transportation Safety Administration: Working with the Zip-Loc Bag industry to keep you safe from hand sanitzer:

Although we were carefully checked out in Kiev, we must now endure another shoe removal and bag scan. Somebody help me with this: We require foreign countries to implement the same tedious and wasteful preflight checks we've adopted at home. Yet, after your plane has landed in the United States, suddenly the checks weren't good enough, and everybody is marched through a metal detector all over again.

Apparently, we are worried more about those departing for Pittsburgh, Houston, Indianapolis or Salt Lake City than about those arriving from Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait or Pakistan. In the convoluted circuitry of Homeland Security logic, passengers coming from abroad are not adequately screened but are allowed onto U.S.-bound flights regardless. The only restriction is, they cannot proceed onward without a follow-up shakedown, presumably to make sure those foreign screeners didn't miss any deadly stashes of shaving cream.

[snip]

"Whose bag is this?" yelps a woman in a red TSA vest.

Naturally it's mine, and naturally she has to scan it again, because "there's something in there." That something turns out to be a 2.5-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer. In a rush, I'd packed it separately from my other lethal fluids and forgotten about it.

Five minutes later, after the bag finally completes its second trip down the belt, the woman unzips it, digs down inside and emerges with the sanitizer. She holds it up for inspection, making a tsk-tsk noise. "You can't have this."

"Why not? It's fewer than 3 ounces."

"It's not in a zip-lock bag."

"That's because my zip-lock bag is over here, with these other things inside."

"Well, it has to be in a zip-lock bag."

"But it's right there in your hand! You can see what it is."

"I told you, it has to be in a zip-lock bag."

"You realize I just stepped off a 10-hour flight, and that bottle was with me the whole time?"

No reply, just a stare.

There's a pause now while I attempt to make sure that I'm not dreaming. There are those times in life when you simply can't believe you're having the conversation you appear to be having, and this is one of them.

"So," I say to the woman. "You mean to tell me that if I take that bottle, and put it into this bag with the other tubes and bottles, everything is OK. But if it stays by itself, you have to confiscate it?"

"I told you, it has to be in a zip-lock bag."

And into the zip-lock bag it went, and off I staggered to catch my connecting flight, which by now had departed.

There you have it: Tiny containers of hand sanitizer in zip-lock bags are harmless and approved. Those not in zip-lock bags are dangerous contraband. Meanwhile, the TSA still cannot justify its methods of confiscation: If certain liquids and gels are taken from a passenger, the assumption has to be that those materials are potentially hazardous. If so, why are they tossed unceremoniously into the trash? At every checkpoint you'll see a bin or barrel brimming with illegal containers. They are not quarantined or handed over to the bomb squad; they are thrown away. In effect, the agency readily admits that it knows these things are harmless. But it's going to steal them anyway, and either you like it or you don't fly.

Who's really playing the victim card?

Rush Limbaugh's comments about Michael J. Fox aren't the first time he's accused Democrats of "playing the infallible victim card":

On the October 24 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh claimed that actor Michael J. Fox -- who has Parkinson's disease and appeared in a recent campaign ad for Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill -- is part of "a script that they [Democrats] have written for years" in which "Senate Democrats used to parade victims of various diseases or social concerns or poverty up before congressional committees and let them testify and they were infallible." Limbaugh also compared Fox to "the Jersey Girls ... in the period of time when the 9-11 Commission was meeting publicly. Victims -- infallible, whatever they say cannot be challenged."

Might I remind Mr. Limbaugh of this? And this.

George W. Bush's entire presidency has been about playing the victim card. Almost 3000 Americans lost their lives on 9/11/01, and George Bush has been exploiting their "victimhood" ever since to justify all of the most heinous acts of his presidency. From starting an unjustified and unwarranted war in Iraq based on lies, to repealing the Magna Carta and setting us up as the Nation of Torture, to warrantless spying -- all of this has been done in the name of those who died in the 9/11 attacks.

Not a speech comes out of George W. Bush's mouth in which he does not invoke 9/11. Sometimes I think that if the contestant he liked most got voted off of Survivor, he'd say it was unjustified in view of the fact that we were hit on 9/11.

This entire country has been one huge victim card for George Bush for the last five years, especially those people who represent his base who were in no way affected by the attacks. These aren't the people who ride the subway every day and go to work in the skyscrapers. These aren't the people who go about their business because they have to even though, thanks to this president, the threat is not only still there but worse than ever before -- only next time, no one in the world will say "We are all Americans now."

What constitutes playing the victim card more than a president exploiting a tragedy to promote his own greedy, venal, destructive policies? Michael J. Fox just wants to live and to see his children grow up and be able to know his eventual grandchildren, just as we all do. If he's seizing on research that even MIGHT hold the keys to a cure, who the hell is Rush Limbaugh, or any of the right-wing gasbags, to say one god damn word about it, given their blind, slaving support to a president who has cynically used the deaths of people he didn't even know to dismantle an entire democracy.

Y2K, Haymarket, Chinatown

Black sticky rice with puff pastry $4.50 Y2K reminds me of an era gone by: when pre-millennium hysteria gripped the world and people stockpiled tinned food and filled bathtubs with water, in case of a date-driven computer meltdown.Like its moniker, Y2K is looking a little tired these days, and the gaudy new paint job inside only reminds me of a giant licorice allsort.But sometimes you're in

"If bringing the message means the messenger gets roughed up a bit, I'm happy to be that guy."

Message to all you ignorant, Chrisofascist twits, who think lies about a guy who's been sick with an incurable disease since his 30's, and will probably not live to see his children grow up, is "fair game":

THIS is what Jesus would do.

(Transcript here.)

Yes, you could make the argument that having put himself out in a political advertisement, Michael J. Fox has willingly painted a bright red target on himself. But let's not forget that Fox did a similar ad for Republican Arlen Specter, and that if Jim Talent were the one favoring stem cell research and Claire McCaskill were the one opposed, he would have done the ad for Jim Talent.

I mean, LOOK at him. Does anyone honestly think that this guy is some kind of ideologue, that this is about impeaching the president or withdrawing from Iraq or gay marriage or any of the other Very Scary Things Republicans predict if Democrats take over Congress?

The Michael J. Fox Foundation has funded or helped fund over $80 million in projects in just six years. But the fact remains that the United States government remains the primary source of funding for medical research. Foundations and private industry can only do so much. If the job of government is to protect the American people, then government funding of medical research is part of that.

There are people, both religious and not, who are concerned about the "slippery slope" of stem cell research. That's a concern we can talk about and deal with. But to take the most extreme lunatic fringe of "religion" and decide that their view that life-saving research involving cells from embryos from IVF clinics that would otherwise be thrown away is equal to killing a full-term baby, is somehow more important than public health, is irresponsible and befits a 12th century theocracy more than an advanced industrial nation. And I'm sorry, but a guy who can't even claim religious concern as the reason for his attacks, an unrepentant drug addict who gets prescriptions in someone else's name for boner drugs for his sex tourism jaunts to the Dominican Republic, has nothing to say about morality, certainly not the morality of a 45-year-old man who can hardly speak anymore who just wants to see his kids grow up.

Perhaps Michael J. Fox understands that he's made himself a target, and perhaps he's okay with being roughed up a bit. That doesn't mean we should be okay with it.

Mr. Limbaugh, forget about political agendas. Here's what it comes down to: Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no decency?

I think we already know the answer.

What if they held a scare-a-thon for Southern White Males...

....and nobody came?

What if the same old race-baiting, gay-baiting, hatemongering that has been the heart of the Rove playbook stopped working?

There are signs out there that this is the case.

Billmon:

I have no idea if the Rovians will somehow manage to slash and bite their way to "victory" (i.e. continued GOP control of Congress) next month, but the sheer lunacy of some of their ads -- like this one insisting that an Ohio Democrat wants to zap little pig-tailed school girls with a taser -- has a distinct aura of death about it.

[snip for the weak of stomach]

And then, abruptly, the howling stopped, and I knew what had happened. But I kept on running -- for blocks it seemed like. And then I stopped and threw up into the bushes.

I think I hear that same sound coming from the Rovian machine right now -- a doomed, crazed animal in its final death throes.

He goes on to say that he could be wrong, and "Maybe what I'm really hearing is the feral, triumphant howl of a wolf who is proving to the world that he's still the leader of the pack -- by ripping the throats out of a few of the weaker members."

I think both could be true, except that he may be proving he's the leader of the pack by gaming the system to ensure his continued leadership. Between voting machines in Virginia that cut off Jim Webb's name, rumblings of mass disenfranchisement in Ohio, the voting apparatus is still so broken that I for one have no faith that what we hear are the results on November 8th are going to be the real results. What IS clear, however, is that the old tricks just aren't working the way they used to. Harold Ford's opponent, Bob Corker, is calling for the pulling of a TV spot that plays on Southern White Male fears of black men -- but the RNC says "No dice." This is the old "White Hands" used against Harvey Gantt years ago on steroids, only this time even those Southern White Males may be able to see that this, along with the "Fancy Ford" ads, crosses the line.

We will soon see.

Jerry Springer: Thumbing his nose at power

We already know that Jerry Springer has made a career out of saying "Fuck you!" to decorum and exposing the dark underbelly of red-state America. But who knew that he was going to make a second career out of saying "Fuck you!" to the people who syndicate his radio show?

I know that Unfiltered fans hate, hate, hate Springer's radio show, but I've always found it to be at worst listenable, and sometimes even providing a valuable service in terms of Springer's name recognition with the red staters. But with Air America's reorganization, and Springer's banishment to syndication, he's obviously decided to thumb his nose at the AAR suits and remind them of their folly by having fired AAR hosts as substitutes. Springer absences used to be filled by guys like Jay Diamond and occasionally Paul Hackett. But last Thursday and Friday, it was the vocally anti-AAR (and for good reason) Mike Malloy doing his patented Mike Malloy ranting during the post-drive-time hours, and today and tomorrow it's the equally-screwed-over-by-AAR Marc Maron and Jim Earl, presumably bringing Sammy the Stem Cell and the Milfingtons.

Jerry Springer is an unlikely candidate for a real life Peter Gibbons, but if it gives us even a taste of the talent AAR was stupid enough to toss under the bus, well, we'll take it.

You should be able to stream this week's Fired Air America Host here.

At last, a reason to be proud to live in New Jersey

...Or at least somewhat less ashamed.

I've long felt that the answer to the "gay marriage" semantics issue is for the government to get out of the "marriage" business entirely.

Marriage has two components: the legal, sanctioned-by-government one, which the NJ State Supreme Court said yesterday may not be granted in a discriminatory way so as to include gay couples; and the religious one. The law doesn't distinguish between the two, and calls both "marriage". So if you were married by a clergyman deputized by the state to perform what it calls "marriage", it's the same as if you were married by a judge, or at City Hall, or by a captain of a ship. The Catholic church and other religious organizations may not recognize civil marriages like mine, but the five-minute, largely self-written civil ceremony that Mr. Brilliant and I participated in 20 years ago is regarded by society-at-large as marriage.

Perhaps that's the problem. Or perhaps we need to tell these religious organizations who don't regard me as married either that it's none of their damn business.

This argument that same-sex marriage somehow "threatens marriage" is ridiculous. I am still married nearly a year and a half after attending a gay wedding. I haven't felt "threatened" for one minute because my friends chose to make a lifetime commitment. The very notion that gay marriage should be called something else is simply semantics.

The obvious answer is for the government to get out of the marriage business entirely, and call what it does "granting civil unions". That means that couples like Mr. Brilliant and I are "civilly united", and so are the Messrs. ModFab, Jay and Greg, Shelly and Jen, and all the other gay couples who have managed to live together for longer than many hetero couples and the world hasn't come to an end.

The problem is that just as with the rest of this silly society we live in, where we are unable to acknowledge difference among people because of this compulsion we have to rank things and the characteristics of white, hetersexual males always seem to rank higher on the worthiness scale; as long as we give gay marriage a different name, it's always going to rank lower on the acceptability scale -- and that's just not acceptable.

It's easy for people like me, who can just go down to city hall with a birth certificate and get a piece of paper that says "Certificate of Marriage", to say "One step at a time, people just have to get used to it; the more they see that gay marriage doesn't make the world come to an end, the less opposition there will be." But what's to get used to? If we don't want the Bible-thumpers pushing their religion down our throats in any other area, why on earth should we let them do it when it comes to denying the full rights and recognition to some Americans that we do to others?

I'm sorry, but members of the political party that gave us pedophile Mark Foley, mistress-beater Don Sherwood, rape-and-death-threatener Jim Gibbons, and the rest of the perverts that comprise their ranks, have nothing to say about what threatens marriage. The best couple role model I know are the guy who does my hair and his partner. They have been together for over 30 years. They live AND work together, and they are just as solicitous and kind to each other today as they were 20 years ago when I started going to their shop. How many Republican politicians and so-called evangelical Christians can say the same?

THIS is one reason why it's important:

"I am Oz, the Great and Powerful" (Don't look at the man behind the curtain)

Marty Kaplan:

At his press conference today, President Bush rallied his remaining base -- those scattered cult members who can always be counted on to agree with whatever he says. To all other Americans, his message is: It's my way, or the die-way.

I'm the decider.

Except for deciding how many troops we have in Iraq, in which case, General Casey is the decider.

Except for deciding what benchmarks the Iraqis have to meet, in which case, Prime Minister al-Maliki is the decider.

Except for deciding what "getting the job done" in Iraq means, in which case, Muqtada al-Sadr and Osama Bin Laden are the deciders.

Except for deciding if it's "stay the course," or "strategy for victory," in which case Karl is the decider.

I'm looking forward to the Baker-Hamilton report. If it agrees with my strategy for victory and getting the job done, I will read it. I call this attitude "flexibility."

There's a big difference between timetables and "timetables." When I talk about them, they're good. When Democrats talk about them, what they're saying is, the terrorists should have a caliphate from Spain to Indonesia.

Some people in Washington say we're not at war. Those people are enabling cold-blooded killers. I do not question these people's patriotism, just their IQ. I will not say who they are.

If I personally did not believe that we will achieve victory in Iraq, then I would not keep your loved ones in Iraq. So the thing I want you to remember as you go to the polls is that whether American kids die in Iraq or come home to America depends totally and completely on what I, George W. Bush, personally believe.

One would think that the people feeding the clichés into Bush's earpiece would recognize how absurd this chain of inconsistencies sounds. But then, these are the people who think Ken Mehlman doesn't look ridiculous when he says he has no authority to ask that the ad telling Tennessee Republicans that Harold Ford and his Big Swinging Dick are going to take your lily-white women from you be pulled from the airwaves.

Good Food Month Spring Picnic, Centennial Park

Muffins from Shepherd's BakehouseAfter checking out the Danks Street Festival on Sunday morning, it was a quick hop onto a bus heading towards Centennial Park for the Good Food Month Spring Picnic.Mandarins await juicing at Parker's OrganicsI'm not sure whether it was the overcast weather, the freezing cold temperatures from the day before, lack of publicity or just a spreading out of (more)

So much for the Republicans being the party of choice for the military

As George W. Bush has continued to save his own psyche by refusing to admit what a clusterfuck his Iraq adventure has become, the military has decided it's had quite enough of sacrificing American lives for the Bush family psychodrama:

Two retired senior Army generals, who served in Iraq and previously voted Republican, are now openly endorsing a Democratic takeover of Congress. The generals, and an active-duty senior military official, told Salon in separate interviews that they believe a Democratic victory will help reverse course from what they consider to be a disastrous Bush administration policy in Iraq. The two retired generals, Maj. Gen. John Batiste and Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, first openly criticized the handling of the war last spring, when they called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"The best thing that can happen right now is for one or both of our houses to go Democratic so we can have some oversight," Batiste, who led the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, told Salon. Batiste describes himself as a "lifelong Republican." But now, he said, "It is time for a change."

Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004, agrees that Democratic control of Congress could be the best way to wrest control from the Bush administration and steer the United States away from a gravely flawed strategy in Iraq. "The way out that I see is to hand the House and the Senate to the Democrats and get this thing turned around," Eaton explained, adding that such sentiment is growing among retired and active-duty military leaders. "Most of us see two more years of the same if the Republicans stay in power," he said. He also noted, "You could not have tortured me enough to vote for Mr. Kerry or Mr. Gore, but I'm not at all thrilled with who I did vote for."

An active-duty senior military official who also served in Iraq said that, among a surprising number of his otherwise "very conservative" colleagues, there is hope that Democrats will gain control of Congress. "I will tell you, in the circles I talk to, the only way to enable or enact change is to change the leadership," he said.

[snip]

Batiste said he was tormented by reading daily casualty reports and knowing that the deaths are, in part, the result of a bungled, backward strategy that focuses on lofty but unattainable goals. But while he and others admit they have no particular love for the Democrats, they see the party as perhaps their last, best hope of reaping anything other than more death and destruction in Iraq.

What this means is that should the Democrats manage to prevail on November 7 (and I still believe that when the dust settles, nothing much will have changed, thanks to Diebold, HartCivic, GOP race-baiting, etc.) they will be charged with the awesome responsibility of living up to the leap of faith these generals, and the 65 active-duty military personnel who are going to petition Congress today to end the war in Iraq, have put in them.

Your tax dollars at work

Yesterday, when Blogger was hosed even worse than it is this morning, Nick Kristof wrote in the New York Times about how the money being squandered in Iraq could be better spent:

For every additional second we stay in Iraq, we taxpayers will end up paying an additional $6,300.

[snip]

“The total costs of the war, including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion,” Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning economist at Columbia, writes in an updated new study with Linda Bilmes, a public finance specialist at Harvard. Their report has just appeared in the Milken Institute Review, as an update on a paper presented earlier this year.

Just to put that $2 trillion in perspective, it is four times the additional cost needed to provide health insurance for all uninsured Americans for the next decade. It is 1,600 times Mr. Bush’s financing for his vaunted hydrogen energy project.

[snip]

The bottom line is that not only have we squandered 2,800 American lives and considerable American prestige in Iraq, but we’re also paying $18,000 per household to do so.

To paraphrase Jeff Probst, wanna know what you're paying for?

Overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget of some reconstruction projects in Iraq, according to a government estimate released yesterday, leaving far less money than expected to provide the oil, water and electricity needed to improve the lives of Iraqis.

The report provided the first official estimate that, in some cases, more money was being spent on housing and feeding employees, completing paperwork and providing security than on actual construction.

Those overhead costs have ranged from under 20 percent to as much as 55 percent of the budgets, according to the report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. On similar projects in the United States, those costs generally run to a few percent.

The highest proportion of overhead was incurred in oil-facility contracts won by KBR Inc., the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, which has frequently been challenged by critics in Congress and elsewhere.

[snip]

One oil contract awarded to a joint venture between Parsons, an American company, and Worley, from Australia, had overhead costs of at least 43 percent, the report found. One contract held by Parsons alone to build hospitals and prisons had overhead of at least 35 percent; in another, it was 17 percent.

The lowest figure was found for certain contracts won by Lucent, at 11 percent, but the report indicates that substantial portions of the overhead in those cases could not be determined.

The report did not explain why KBR’s overhead costs on those contracts — the contracts totaled about $296 million — were more than 10 percent higher than those at the other companies audited. Despite past criticism of KBR, the Army, which administers those contracts, has generally agreed to pay most of the costs claimed by the company.

Isn't it funny how whenever the high cost in Iraq comes up, the company billing the government the most always comes up as Halliburton or KBR -- the company that Dick Cheney used to head and which still pays him $150,000 a year, and in which he still has $18 million in stock options which are now worth $69 million? But of course Mr. Cheney's financial interests have ABSOLUTELY NO impact on the government decision to give Halliburton/KBR no-bid contracts and look the other way on cost overruns, right?

So next time your friends start ranting about the Mexicans down the street using up all the health care dollars taking their kids to the emergency room, you might remind them of the huge sums of their tax dollars being shoveled into Dick Cheney's pocket from these contracts.

Doesn't anyone in this country know how to write voting machine software?

Is this supposed to be an example of good old American know-how? Are we supposed to believe that they can't make a fucking voting machine that doesn't cut off candidates' names?

U.S. Senate candidate James Webb's last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city officials said yesterday.

Although the problem creates some voter confusion, it will not cause votes to be cast incorrectly, election officials emphasized. The error shows up only on the summary page, where voters are asked to review their selections before hitting the button to cast their votes. Webb's full name appears on the page where voters choose for whom to vote.

Election officials attribute the mistake to an increase in the type size on the ballot. Although the larger type is easier to read, it also unintentionally shortens the longer names on the summary page of the ballot.

Thus, Democratic candidate Webb will appear with his first name and nickname only -- or "James H. 'Jim' " -- on summary pages in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, the only jurisdictions in Virginia that use balloting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic of Austin.

"We're not happy about it," Webb spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd said last night, adding that the campaign learned about the problem a week ago and has since been in touch with state election officials. "I don't think it can be remedied by Election Day. Obviously, that's a concern."

Every candidate on Alexandria's summary page has been affected in some way by the glitch. Even if candidates' full names appear, as is the case with Webb's Republican opponent, incumbent Sen. George F. Allen, their party affiliations have been cut off.

Jean Jensen, secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections, who said yesterday she only recently became aware of the problem, pledged to have it fixed by the 2007 statewide elections.

"You better believe it," Jensen said. "If I have to personally get on a plane and bring Hart InterCivic people here myself, it'll be corrected."

Absentee voters casting ballots in advance of the Nov. 7 election first noticed the problem. Election officials have been forced to post signs in voting booths and instruct poll workers to explain why some longer names appear cut-off.

There is absolutely no excuse for this. This is not a "computer glitch", it's either sloppy design or sloppy implementation.

You know, we have a guy in my department who does quality control of our software. NOTHING goes into production without being checked and validated by this guy, and he is the best damn QA guy I've ever seen. He finds just about anything you could imagine. If a field is supposed to take up to 3 initials, we have to make it wide enough so that WWW -- the widest alpha characters -- can be entered. If something is out of alignment, we fix it. If text is cut off, we make the necessary changes.

We aren't superstars. But we believe in putting out software that's as bulletproof as possible. Obviously we can't anticipate everything someone's going to do to the system, but we try as best as we can to break it BEFORE it goes out. And when a bug is found, we fix it as quickly as possible.

Do you mean to tell me that programmers at Hart InterCivic can't change a font size, or make a fucking field long enough to hold the candidate's full name? And isn't it interesting that it's Jim Webb who's being victimized here. I wonder if we can get them to show George Allen's name as "George Felix 'Macaca' Allen." Maybe then it would show up as "George Felix 'Macaca'."

Now THAT would be fitting.

&*#$&% Blogger!!

As most of you know, I can no longer blog at work, due to internet monitoring that's now going on (don't even ask why, but no, it's not just of me). So when Blogger goes down in the morning, we are kaputski for the day. It's a damn shame, too, because all kinds of interesting stuff went on today, too. So for now I'll just have to direct you to some articles you should read cool people who wrote about things on which I would have opined if the Google Bombers at Blogger hadn't messed up.

The perils of electronic voting finally hit the MSM.

Come home, Reagan Democrats, all is forgiven.

Keith was right last night. Rush Limbaugh IS the worst person in the world. And if you didn't catch Keith's special comment last night, read it and watch it now.

How the fuck many "20th hijackers" are there, anyway? As many as there are "#2 Al Qaeda members?

What Amanda said. And then some.

Fellow House Blend guestblogger Nancy writes about the psychological toll the Iraq war is taking on the men and women who are fighting it.

What the fuck is it with the Bush family and vehicular homicide, anyway?

Men just don't get it, do they? (Best comment on this agony column letter: "you seem pretty self-aware, so i doubt you really need to be told what to do. maybe having a thousand people call you a miserable prick is just what you need to clear your head, forget about ms. free spirit, and appreciate your good fortune. if that doesn't work, try what i do when i catch myself flirting with or fantasizing about someone other than my wife: picture your wife in bed having the best sex of her life with someone younger, smarter, richer, and better looking than you, with a johnson the size of rhode island, to boot. imagine her afterwards, reclining against the headboard sharing a cigarette with mr. big-unit, thinking 'i guess i love my husband, but SHIT!' that little exercise is usually does the trick."

Lynn runs Ned Lamont's chart, and predicts "a big change" for him. Which way that means remains to be seen, but Holy Joe's planets aren't showing a sure thing for him either.

That ought to do for now. See you tomorrow morning, Blogger willing!

Gordon Ramsay at David Jones Food Hall

Gordon RamsaySo Gordon Ramsay is in town, and he's leaving a trail of giggling lovesick women in his wake. I'm calling it the Mr Darcy effect: he's brusque but honest, stubborn but honourable, and women are convinced that they alone hold the flame that will magically melt that tough exterior.It helps too that he's rough and blokey, an ex-professional footballer whose reputation for flying off the

Danks Street Festival

It was a cool but sunny day that welcomed the second-ever Danks Street Festival. Billed as "the City's newest and liveliest village" there are art galleries a-plenty down this neck of the woods, and foodie distraction in the form of Danks Street Depot, Fratelli Fresh and Sopra.Unfortunately Fratelli Fresh wasn't open for the festival but there were photo opps of food nevertheless.Sourdough loaves

You can go home again

...if only for the afternoon.

Yesterday I accompanied some of my compatriots from last spring's Abate for Congress campaign down to Union County to canvass for Linda Stender, who had actively sought our help. It was a great opportunity to revisit the neighborhood in which I spent much of my childhood and all of my adolescence. The family had moved out in 1987, and it had been at least eight years since I'd been back for a drive-through. Last time I'd driven through, the neighborhood looked old and tired, but this time it had been significantly spruced up.

It seems that a single builder has not only remodeled many of the houses on the circle, but has been doing bash-and builds, but instead of replacing the houses with the charmless, stucco-front McMansions that are blighting the landscape in Bergen County, he's replacing them with neo-Queen Annes, Victorians, and Williamsburg-type colonials, and four-squares, with details such as wide porches, gables, and eyebrow windows. And most importantly, the trees are being retained, so the character of the neighborhood remains. I've decried bash-and-build where I live now, and of course there's the issue of who on earth is going to be able to afford these houses, but it's harder to hate this kind of effort when the product is as beautiful, without being at all ostentatious, as what's going on back where I spent my childhood.

Of more interest was the response we found while canvassing. The most disheartening finding was just how unenaged so many suburbanites still are about the world around them. It astounds me how adults with children can willfully close their eyes when their children's future is at stake. Most of the parents of young children we spoke with were apolitical, freely admitted to being not just uninformed, but uncaring, and weren't planning to vote. It's easy to just live in a little suburban cocoon, one or two generations removed from the days when kids like me attached Beatle cards to our bicycle spokes with clothespins to make them sound like motorcycles, and pretend that life for your kids is going to be the same as yours. Most of these people believe that the government shouldn't control what people do with their bodies, they support Social Security, and they want government to do what it does well and stay out of where it doesn't blong. But by remaining uninformed, they don't see that their children's future is going to resemble Mad Max more than the mid-1960's. The biggest challenge for Democrats is how to get these people to believe that they have a stake in the poligical process.

The other interesting people we encountered were staunch Republicans disgusted with Bush, disgusted with Congress, and yet unwilling to vote for Democrats. These people, every one of them polite and NOT emulating the right-wing shriekers they no doubt listened to, had obviously thought their positions through and reminded us that even when intelligent people of goodwill disagree, they can each have the nation's best interests at heart. For these people, some of whom were homophobic, some of whom were retirees who nevertheless supported privatization of Social Security, still thought all incumbents should be voted out.

What we found was a hunger for straight talk, for honesty, for politicians to tell them the truth, because if these affluent suburbanites are any indication, the alienation from the process comes from the mountains of crap that have been spewing for politicians' mouths. It's no longer about right and left for these people, it's about right and wrong. One older gentleman, who had fought in both WWII and Korea, told us he'd voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, for all that he didn't agree with some of his liberal positions, because he was a "good man who fought for his country." I had the sense that most of them would vote for someone with whom they didn't always agree -- if they had a sense that the candidate was at least true to what he or she said.

Then this morning I was greeted with a radio ad for Tom Kean, Jr. that made Bob Menendez sound like he'd committed every crime in human history except kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, fixing the 1919 World Series, and crucifying Jesus -- and the jury was still out on those. This ad was so over-the-top it reminded me of that old Al Franken/Tom Davis "Pete Tagliani" sketch from SNL. So it looks like we won't find any authenticity this year, at least.

Nova M Radio Update

Nova M's stream is now up. Give it a listen so they know how much bandwidth they're going to need.

Sydney Foodblogger Meetup: Night Noodle Markets and Sugar Hit #4: Sofitel Wentworth

"Oh my god, that's just toooooooo gorgeous!" cooed a gushing Julia, as she peered a little closer at the camera viewing screen."And ohhh," she flicked to the next image, "that is even more adorable!"Rebecca, who was beside her, puffed ever-so-slightly with pride and it was at that exact moment that I beamed with relief and toe-tingling glee; for it wasn't a series of baby photos that Julia was

Sydney Foodblogger Meetup: Night Noodle Markets and Sugar Hit #4: Sofitel Wentworth

"Oh my god, that's just toooooooo gorgeous!" cooed a gushing Julia, as she peered a little closer at the camera viewing screen."And ohhh," she flicked to the next image, "that is even more adorable!"Rebecca, who was beside her, puffed ever-so-slightly with pride and it was at that exact moment that I beamed with relief and toe-tingling glee; for it wasn't a series of baby photos that Julia was

Dying for the Bush Family Psychodrama

It's been clear to me since before George W. Bush took office that we were going to be feeling the consequences of the Bush family dynamic. I couldn't have anticipated (sic) the degree to which we've been victimized by George W. Bush's feelings of inadequacy within his own family, but I knew it was there and I knew that he would not be able to keep it in check.

Steve Gilliard has more on this today; about how Bush's need to simultaneous please and supplant his father are behind his stubborn refusal to admit mistakes in Iraq, or indeed in anything he's done since taking office:

For Bush, who has failed at every task ever put before him, from work, to the military to school, this was going to be his vindication. He so desperately wanted to be a hero and Iraq was going to solve all of his issues. He would defeat an enemy, prove himself worthy and gain the respect from his family he so desperately wanted.

Which is why he chose men his father kept at arms length. Bush never wanted advice, he wanted confirmation of his beliefs. His narrow world view, shaped by the dust dry plains of Midland as much as any movie, this idea thata man didn't need or want questions, he just did.

Which is how he approached the American people, not with facts, but an emotional appeal. He's out there, he's guilty, let's get him first. That was the goal, get them first, show them who is boss, Those who don't get that are weak, even if they are in uniform. We will show the world they better not fuck with us again. Iraq will be first, and the rest will bend to our will. We will show them what a superpower does.

This was never a logical argument, it was never a reasoned one, it was pure emotion, which the anti-war movement never got. Iraq was a challenge to us, our manhood, our power and anyone in the way just didn't care.

It wasn't anything to do with concrete facts. It wasn't just fear, but emasculation which Bush sold and that worked on women like a charm. People wanted to believe that the US could run down Iraq and then all manner of miracle would follow, not because of what people wanted but because people feared the US. It wasn't democracy, but control, to finally make Iraq like Israel, a Westernish country loyal to the US. It wasn't anything about what the Iraqis wanted, although the exiles fed into that delusions, which fell into their own delusions, that Iraq was just waiting for their leadership.

Which is why so many people believed in Bush for so long. That Iraq was to be beaten as psychological payback for 9/11. Osama lived in caves, Saddam in palaces. He was a villian worthy of our attention, not some cave dwelling nutjob. He was an enemy, despite the fact that he had pretty much left us alone.

Bush is a bully and a coward at heart. Iraq was chosen because Iraq would be easy, and then the rest of the Middle East would follow. It was the easy way to solve our problems, not our real problems, but our emotional pain, the unresolved conflict over being attacked. And Bush would resolve his lifelong lack of success.

Bush will not leave Iraq, not because he thinks we can win, or he thinks it's part of the war on terror. But because he cannot face another failure. Which is why Scowcroft and Baker have had no influence on him. They are his father's men, veterans, despite their politics, realists. Bush is not and never has been. When he wasn't hiding from his failure with booze and coke, he hid from it with Jesus. Now he has Henry Kissinger whispering in his ear, telling him what he wants to hear. He doesn't want advice, he wants support and only support. Those who do not support him, are diminished, then banished.

This is a man who has never honestly looked himself in the face and said I have failed. He has always been protected from failure.

Which is why Rumsfeld keeps his job. To admit he was incompetent, and some days he seems positively addled, would reflect poorly on Bush.

When people look to understand Iraq, they look at the facts and see failure, but that isn't what Bush sees. He sees one more chance for personal glory and he will not quit until he is forced to.

Many Republicans have no idea that they have bought into was as psychodrama. It isn't psychodrama to the Tillmans or the Sheehans, but it is for Bush, who seeks redemption as desperately as he drank. And his redemption is in Iraq.