"Those Damn Kids"

Is every generation doomed to sound like this about the generation that comes after it?

Dear Cary,

I'm in my late 40s. My interests and personality traits span those of the baby boomers (activism, idealism, community) and those of Gen Xers (technology, new music, adaptation).

I work in a trendy Internet firm with people who are 15-25 years younger than I am. I love working with the younger 20-somethings, but I find myself increasingly frustrated with the Gen Xers -- those from 28 to 39. The stereotypes seem to be true: They're cynical, selfish, noncommittal, addicted to pop culture, oddly nostalgic, smart but not wise, suspicious of sentimentality but hypersensitive to criticism.

To work effectively with this group, I've had to tone down my natural openness and honesty (it's interpreted as weakness) and tread lightly in any political discussion. (Most of my 30-something co-workers are resigned and apathetic libertarians.) I avert my eyes during their flames and outbursts. I ignore their gross misunderstandings of history and their lapses in logic. I'm not intellectually superior; they're much quicker and brighter than I am, but it's an odd sort of knowledge -- broad but not deep.

So, my co-workers drive me nuts, but it gets worse. My beloved Internet is filling up with blogs, columns and essays by Gen Xers who don't seem to have any framework for their arguments and who are militantly post-feminist (embrace your inner slut), post-hippie (I care only about my family -- fuck the community), post-vegan (I raise my own meat, slaughter it lovingly, then serve it up to my foodie friends).

I don't want to quit my job and go work for a nonprofit like all the other boomers. I love this brave new world. My hardcore hippie friends seem naive and outdated.

Does every generation decry the upcoming one? Or are the Xers some sort of aberration -- a blot on humanity that will be overcome by the millennial generation (who, by the way, seem to be a fine, innovative, idealistic and hopeful group of kids)?

Cautiously Optimistic Boomer

Dear Cautiously Optimistic,

Your observations are keenly stated. I do not know how to answer your questions. But it is a topic of endless fascination.

That is one reason Salon published its bracing exchange on the topic of contemporary generational differences in 2002. Of particular interest to you may be this memorable letter that I recall simply as the "I Hate You Guys" letter, and this one, fondly recalled as the "We're Sick of You" letter.

What was interesting in that exercise was the animosity. It wasn't just that certain Gen Xers thought differently or wished to live differently -- they think we suck. A certain cohort live in overt and uncomplicated hostility toward the generation they think of as boomers and hippies.

You may feel that like a good child of the '60s you must try even harder to empathize, to understand. That may not help.

I continue to believe that at the heart of this is the difference between us, the last high modernist generation, and them, the first postmodern generation. See Fredric Jameson on this.

Since you sound like you are pretty smart, I predict that if you begin to read about postmodernism you will get a sense of what I think is going on between generations. Here is a précis, or summation, of Jameson's "big book on postmodernism," "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." It touches on many of the differences in perspective that one encounters today. It is a dizzying sensation to find that someone only a few years distant in age has a radically different conception of the world. But that is the change that seems to have occurred. And without a shared intellectual basis, how can you talk about it? Perhaps you can say, "You are obviously a postmodernist and I am a modernist and each of us takes certain truths -- or untruths! -- to be self-evident," but where does that lead you? This is complicated material -- that's part of the problem. It's not simple to understand.

I don't know what you can do about it. Our cherished world of consensus, my friend, is gone! Maybe it will come back. I don't know. I always liked that line from Theodore Roethke, "A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait."

But now I'm not so sure it's worth waiting around for. This may be as good as it gets. Mind you, I had a sleepless night and seem to be running a fever, so this could all be the ravings of a disturbed mind -- which sounds so very '60s, doesn't it?

And this kind of rant differs from "You kids don't appreciate what we fought for in World War II we went through the depression and walked to school uphill both ways in the snow, and we ate dirt, and we were THANKFUL to do it" -- exactly how?

I don't know what I find more disheartening -- the fact that my generation is starting to sound like our parents or the fact that Gen-X hates us as much as we hated our parents at the same time as they are so much like us.

I can't tell you how many blog entries I've read from Gen-X and Gen-Y-ers who wish we would just die off already, because after all, we're clogging up the workplace and what use are we, since we had the reins of Very Real Change in our hands and then we sold out. And as for navel-gazing, well, I am very fond of MaryAnn Johanson as a person, but I had to stop reading her blog because the relentless "aren't we just the specialest"-ness was making me crazy. Of course, as a member of the "older generation", that's probably my job, just as it was our parents' job to be made crazy by OUR delusions of specialness.

This is not to say that some of the fallout of the aging of the baby-boom generation isn't embarrassing. I mean, is there anyone my age who DOESN'T feel a little ill watching Dennis Hopper shill for retirement investments? Or seeing Paul McCartney on the cover of AARP Magazine? And yes, it is as uncomfortable to watch advertisements and movies and news footage from the late 1960's and realize just how SILLY we look by today's standards. But does it look any sillier than those clips of high schoolers from the early 1950's demonstrating their school dress code, or clips from coffee houses from the late 1950's and early 1960's of clean-cut guys in sweaters playing bongo drums and reciting free-form poetry?

The great cosmic joke is that no one is the same later on in life as we were when we were young. There are many of us who are no less idealistic than we were 30 years ago; but the demands of real life force us to sell out. I've known people who didn't sell out, and what seems brave and committed in your twenties puts you on the verge of homelessness when you're 40. Once you enter the mammography and colonoscopy years, having health insurance becomes a lot more important.

Of course you can't tell Gen-X-ers this, because they aren't there yet. But they will be, and when they are, they'll look back at mosh pits and standing in line overnight for tickets to a science fiction movie and they'll look at their MySpace pages on Wayback Machine and feel just about the way I do when I read my diaries from high school. Because that's just the way life is.

We are all a product of the times in which we grew up. Boomers of all people ought to realize that. Frankly, Cautiously Optimistic Boomer ought to thank his or her lucky stars that an internet firm was willing to hire her. Internet firms are notoriously ageist, and attitudes like this are probably one reason why.

There's a lot of common ground among generations, as you find when you get older. But there's no more sure way to alienate both those who came before you and those who are coming up after you than to assume that you are somehow special, either because there's a lot of you, or because you grew up with Sesame Street and the Internet, or because you grew up in the Depression, or whatever.

Face it. You're not.

Do we really want to waste 1 in 32 Americans

That's the proportion of Americans who were in prison, on probation, or on parole at the end of 2005.

One in every 32 Americans. That's like one kid from your kid's class.

And the growth isn't among young black males, it's among women; and much of the growth is for drug offenses:

Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent while the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year's end, 7 percent of all inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails.

"Today's figures fail to capture incarceration's impact on the thousands of children left behind by mothers in prison," Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group supporting criminal justice reform, said in a statement. "Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails."

From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth.

The "meth effect" is indicated here:

Certain states saw more significant changes in prison population. In South Dakota, the number of inmates increased 11 percent over the past year, more than any other state. Montana and Kentucky were next in line with increases of 10.4 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively.

While David Brooks is talking about single mothers and broken homes, what is this country doing locking up this large a percentage of its citizenry for drug offenses? Given that the so-called war on drugs has been going on now for over a generation, and we still have seven million people in the justice system, isn't it time to try something else?

There will always be people trying to alter their consciousness, but I am convinced that if you have a society that offers people real opportunity for a life with long-lasting pleasures that go beyond big-screen TVs, fewer of them will seek solace for a shrinking job base, hypocritical Christianists, politicians who care about corporations more than people, and dysfunctional families by abusing drugs.

It's topsy-turvy time in Bobo's world

Is it just me, or is David Brooks recycling one of his old columns about Democrats here?

First, don’t listen to your consultants. Over the next few months, pollsters are going to pick out the key demographic groups (left-handed Catholic orthopedists) and offer advice on how to kiss up to those people. Majorities are never built that way. You end up proposing inconsequential micropolicies and selling your soul.

Don’t focus on groups, focus on problems. If you have persuasive proposals to address big problems, the majority coalition will build itself.

Second, be policy-centric, not philosophy-centric. American conservatism grew up out of power and has always placed great emphasis on doctrine. Today, in the wake of this month’s defeat, Republicans are firing up the old debate among social conservatives, free-market conservatives and others about the proper role of the state. This stale, abstract debate will never lead anywhere and only inhibits creative thinking.

The Republican weakness is not a lack of grand principles, it’s a lack of concrete policies commensurate with the size of 21st-century problems. If they would shelve the doctrinal debate for a second, Republicans — while not doing violence to their belief in the market, traditional values or anything else — could find plenty of policy ideas to deal with China and India, the entitlement crisis and so on.

Third, create a Republican Leadership Council. In the realm of ideas, Democrats own the center. Moderate Democrats have the Democratic Leadership Council, the Third Way and various cells within the Brookings Institution, such as the Hamilton Project. Republican moderates are intellectual weaklings. They have no independent identity, so it’s no wonder centrist voters prefer Democrats on one domestic issue after another.

Of course, then he dips a toe into Thomas Friedman's pond:

Fifth, support free trade, while responding to the downside of globalization. When the industrial age kicked in, many European nations built an elaborate welfare state, but didn’t aggressively expand educational opportunity. Americans didn’t build as big a welfare system, but, as the blogger Reihan Salam pointed out recently, we spent a lot on schools to foster social mobility.

The American way is to help people compete, not shield them from competition. Today that means nurturing stable families in which children can develop the social and cultural capital they need to thrive. (A significant expansion of the child tax credit would ease the burden on young parents.) It means publicly funded, though not necessarily publicly run, preschool programs in which children from disorganized homes can learn how to learn. It means radical school reform: performance pay for teachers, an end to the stupid certification rules, urban boarding schools where educators can set up local cultures of achievement, locally run neighborhood child centers to service an array of health and day-care needs.

Would someone please tell Mr. Brooks that the reason Americans can't compete isn't single mothers or bad schools, but wage pressure from sweatshop nations? Brooks is fortunate in that he does not work in a field that hasn't been outsourced to India, but not all of us are as fortunate. Young people are lost today because they have no idea what to do with their lives. The college-bound don't know what to study that will help them get a job, those not college bound are considering the military as their only option. Yesterday I spoke with a co-worker who is encouraging her science-enthusiast 13-year-old to start looking into careers in medical imaging, under the assumption that those involved in CT scan and other such machines can't be outsourced. Of course the READING of the results of such scans CAN be outsourced, which leaves the jobs remaining in the US as operator/techs -- hardly the high-paying areas.

But let David Brooks tell Republicans to continue their policies of race-to-the-bottom. We've seen signs that Americans are waking up to reality as a result of the recent election. Now the challenge for Democrats is to come up with real solutions to this race-to-the-bottom into which American and multinational corporations have forced us.

Iraq Study Group advocates cutting and running

Well, not quite, because this is perhaps as mushy a conclusion as a so-called government commission has ever come to. But President Putz, who is still laboring under the delusion that his Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Iraq can be "won", is NOT going to be happy about this:

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

The report is clearly a way to try to extricate Dim Son from the more egregious parts of his Iraq failure without abandoning the whole mess, and as such, I don't know that it's a significant improvement over what's happening now. But then, I don't know what would be -- that's how badly he's fucked it up.

Kids....

I can't decide whether this is hilarious or terrifying:

Help Us Help Others

Could you help us feed the world's hungry? UPDATE: Check out the centralised list of prizes gathered by the Asia Pacific region here.Menu for Hope is an annual fundraising campaign originally devised by Chez Pim, perhaps the most well-known food blogger in the world. Last year the campaign raised US$17,000 for UNICEF in just twelve days. In 2006 we will be raising funds to support the United

At last, something the right and left can agree on

...the idiocy of a policy that disallows men from sitting on a plane next to a child they don't know:

British Airways has been accused of treating all men passengers as potential sex offenders after it was revealed it has banned children from sitting next to male strangers - even if their parents are on the same flight.

The bizarre regulation came to light when a nine-year-old girl was moved from her seat next to a 76-year-old passenger and his wife on a flight from Malaga to London.

Instead her mother was told by a stewardess to take the seat next to retired journalist Michael Kemp and his wife Frances, and the girl was moved to the back of the plane.

Mrs Kemp had booked an aisle seat because a bad leg meant she needed extra space. But as the Airbus A320 filled up, she was asked to swap seats with her husband so that she, not he, would be sitting next to the girl.

Mrs Kemp politely declined, explaining to the stewardess that she had asked for an aisle seat to avoid discomfort during the three-hour flight.

But when Mr Kemp offered to move to the window seat so that the girl could sit between him and his wife, the stewardess said it would still breach the airline's child-welfare regulations.

Mr Kemp, from Kensington, West London, said last night: "The little girl's mother put her in the window seat next to me and then went to her own seat further back.

"When everyone was seated, the stewardess asked my wife if she would sit next to the girl. Frances explained why she couldn't move and I thought I could resolve the problem by moving up and letting the girl sit between us.

"To my amazement, the stewardess said BA had a rule that no unaccompanied child under 16 may be seated next to an adult male stranger - even if there's a woman on the other side.

"The discussion went on for several minutes but she refused to back down and said we could not take off until the problem was sorted out. I heard her muttering to a colleague that everyone would have to disembark.

"She didn't seem embarrassed - just rather irritated that it was taking up so much time.

"The whole thing caused a good deal of inconvenience which could have been avoided if BA had spotted the problem when we booked our tickets."

Leading child protection campaigner Michele Elliot, director of the children's charity Kidscape, said she was astonished by the BA rule.

"It is utterly absurd. It brands all men as potential sex offenders," she said.

"What message does it send out to children - that men are not to be trusted? Women also abuse children. This is just totally lacking in common sense."

It most certainly is. If you're going to treat all adult males as potential sex offenders, well, there go male elementary school teachers, music teachers, martial arts instructors, youth sports coaches, male camp counselors and the Big Brothers organization. And And as Tracy Clark-Flory notes at Salon:

The memo delivered to children by BA's policy is: Men are scary and not to be trusted. As Wendy McElroy reasoned on libertarian feminist site iFeminists, "[Kids] may hesitate to approach a policeman or fireman who are, after all, still men...And how is that message being heard by the boys who will grow into men?" Not to mention that preventing kids from being seated next to strangers probably isn't the best way to prevent sexual assault; a mere 10 percent of child sex-abuse cases are perpetrated by strangers.

Frankly, I think it's all a giant plot to get fathers off the hook from diapering, bathing, and watching Bob the Builder with their kids.

Occasionally we win one

It's a small victory for free speech, but one that would not have been won if the blogosphere didn't exist:

A Pagosa Springs subdivision may have some peace again after a homeowners' association threatened to fine a resident for putting up a Christmas wreath shaped like a peace sign.

But the Loma Linda subdivision is now scrambling to assemble a new association board after the three members resigned today.

The directors of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association apologized Monday to Lisa Jensen and Bill Trimarco for threatening to fine the couple $25 a day if they didn't remove their lighted wreath. The wreath had been characterized as a divisive symbol that violated the subdivision rules against displaying signs or advertisements.

This morning, e-mails were sent to Loma Linda residents announcing that board

members Bob Kearns, Tammy Spezze and Jeff Heitz had resigned.
"We need to get our subdivision back in gear now," said Loma Linda resident Nancy Dunbar, who had to remove a wooden peace sign from in front of her home the week before Thanksgiving.

She said several members of association's architectural-control committee, who had resigned earlier in protest the board's actions, are working to form an ad hoc board before association elections next month.

Jensen and Trimarco said they have had hundreds of e-mails and phone calls since the wreath flap garnered headlines around the world.

Most have been supportive of their simple message of peace, they said - a message they did not intend to be a statement against the war in Iraq.

Kearns had said that some people with children serving in Iraq had complained about the peace sign, prompting his order that it be removed.

The article brings up an interesting question, though: What, if any, is our obligation to prop up the illusions of families with children serving in Iraq? Do we need sacrifice our freedom to speak out for what we believe is right out of courtesy to a neighbor with a need to believe in the cause his or her son or daughter is fighting for?

A friend of mine knows a family that lost a loved one in the World Trade Center. This family are staunch Bush supporters. They have supported him every step of the way, wearing flag pins and supporting the war and convincing themselves that their son died a hero because he happened to be sitting at his desk when a plane hit it. Nothing -- not the 9/11 Commission, not the fact of a president sitting in an elementary school classroom for seven minutes after a terrorist attack, not the revelation of the lies used to connect Saddam Hussein to the attacks -- nothing has swayed this family's faith in George W. Bush. Nothing CAN sway this family's faith in George W. Bush because to question is to face a reality so horrible that they might not be able to get out of bed in the morning. So who am I to interfere with this family's coping mechanism?

Of course, this family doesn't live near me. They don't know me. They don't read my blog. But what of a neighbor who INTERPRETS a peace sign as a rebuke of the Iraq War in which his son is fighting? It seems to me that if that neighbor's faith in the righteousness of the cause can be that shaken by a symbol, that neighbor probably ought to look inside himself and see just how much faith in this president's war he really has. Perhaps the presence of this symbol is simply bringing to the fore doubts he already has.

Friedman Fudges the Friedman Unit (TM Atrios)

Thomas Friedman has been saying that the next six months are critical since 2003:

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
(New York Times, 11/30/03)

"What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?"
(NPR's Fresh Air, 6/3/04)

"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."
(CBS's Face the Nation, 10/3/04)

"Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile."
(New York Times, 11/28/04)

"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one."
(NBC's Meet the Press, 9/25/05)

"Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time."
(New York Times, 9/28/05)

"We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together."
(CBS's Face the Nation, 12/18/05)

"We're at the beginning of I think the decisive I would say six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election—you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it."
(PBS's Charlie Rose Show, 12/20/05)

"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."
(New York Times, 12/21/05)

"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand."
(Oprah Winfrey Show, 1/23/06)

"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they're not, in which case I think the bottom's going to fall out."
(CBS, 1/31/06)

"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq."
(NBC's Today, 3/2/06)

"Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us."
(CNN, 4/23/06)

"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
(MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)

It's astounding, really, when you look at these quotes all in one place. It makes you wonder why on earth anyone still thinks Friedman knows anything. And yet today, it's as if he never said these things:

we need to face our real choices in Iraq, which are: 10 months or 10 years. Either we just get out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal over 10 months, and try to stabilize it some other way, or we accept the fact that the only way it will not be a failed state is if we start over and rebuild it from the ground up, which would take 10 years. This would require reinvading Iraq, with at least 150,000 more troops, crushing the Sunni and Shiite militias, controlling borders, and building Iraq’s institutions and political culture from scratch.

Anyone who tells you that we can just train a few more Iraqi troops and police officers and then slip out in two or three years is either lying or a fool. The minute we would leave, Iraq would collapse. There is nothing we can do by the end of the Bush presidency that would produce a self-sustaining stable Iraq — and “self-sustaining” is the key metric.

[snip]

On Feb. 12, 2003, before the war, I wrote a column offering what I called my “pottery store” rule for Iraq: “You break it, you own it.” It was not an argument against the war, but rather a cautionary note about the need to do it with allies, because transforming Iraq would be such a huge undertaking. (Colin Powell later picked up on this and used the phrase to try to get President Bush to act with more caution, but Mr. Bush did not heed Mr. Powell’s advice.)

But my Pottery Barn rule was wrong, because Iraq was already pretty broken before we got there — broken, it seems, by 1,000 years of Arab-Muslim authoritarianism, three brutal decades of Sunni Baathist rule, and a crippling decade of U.N. sanctions. It was held together only by Saddam’s iron fist. Had we properly occupied the country, and begun political therapy, it is possible an American iron fist could have held Iraq together long enough to put it on a new course. But instead we created a vacuum by not deploying enough troops.

That vacuum was filled by murderous Sunni Baathists and Al Qaeda types, who butchered Iraqi Shiites until they finally wouldn’t take it any longer and started butchering back, which brought us to where we are today. The Sunni Muslim world should hang its head in shame for the barbarism it has tolerated and tacitly supported by the Sunnis of Iraq, whose violence, from the start, has had only one goal: America must fail in its effort to bring progressive politics or democracy to this region. America must fail — no matter how many Iraqis have to be killed, America must fail.

This has left us with two impossible choices. If we’re not ready to do what is necessary to crush the dark forces in Iraq and properly rebuild it, then we need to leave — because to just keep stumbling along as we have been makes no sense. It will only mean throwing more good lives after good lives into a deeper and deeper hole filled with more and more broken pieces.

And your point, Mr. Friedman, is -- what? For three years, you've been saying that what Bush is doing is just fine, that we just need to wait six months....and six months....and six months.... -- and now you dredge out not these quotes, but the "Pottery Barn Rule" (which Pottery Barn disavows) as a shining example of your knowledgeable punditry.

Why do people still believe these guys actually know anything? Friedman. Broder. Buchanan. Every week on the Sabbath Gasbag shows, it's the same old faces, blathering on and on, as if they actually knew what they're talking about. Nick Kristof may piss me off at times, but he's at least out there in Darfur talking to the actual people who are affected by the genocide there. Michael Ware is actually in Iraq. And yet every week, every night on cable TV, these same morons are trotted out, news anchors hanging on their every word.

It's guys like Thomas Friedman who continued to support this war long after it was clear that it was a disaster who need to do some soul-searching and think about the thousands of American kids who have died because they sat snugly at their typewriters and in their studios and insisted that we just need six months....six months....six months. In every one of the six month periods that Friedman has talked about, Americans have died, Iraqis have died, and the reputation of this country is tattered just a bit more.

If Thomas Friedman won't get out of his ivory tower and report on reality, maybe it's time for him to find a new line of work.

(hat tip for Friedman quotes: Rad Geek

The Constitution may be shredded and battered, but it's still here

...thanks to U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins:

A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutionally vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday.


The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush's order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as "specially designated global terrorists" after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists," said David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the group. "It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era."

The case centered on two groups, the Liberation Tigers, which seeks a separate homeland for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan, a political organization representing the interests of Kurds in Turkey.

U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins enjoined the government from blocking the assets of the two groups. The same judge two years ago invalidated portions of the Patriot Act.

Both groups consider the Nov. 21 ruling a victory; both had been designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations.

Cole said the judge's ruling does not invalidate the hundreds of other designated terrorist groups on the list but "calls them into question."

I guess this means the Bush Administration is going to have trouble designating peace activists, Quakers and the Veterans for Peace groups as terrorists.

Newt, go back under the rock you were hiding under until recently

In the World According to Newt, we have to restrict freedom of speech in order to save it:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.

Excuse me, Newt, but does the name "New Orleans" mean anything to you?

President Putz

What an asshole:

President Bush has pledged to work with the new Democratic majorities in Congress, but he has already gotten off on the wrong foot with Jim Webb, whose surprise victory over Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) tipped the Senate to the Democrats.

Webb, a decorated former Marine officer, hammered Allen and Bush over the unpopular war in Iraq while wearing his son’s old combat boots on the campaign trail. It seems the president may have some lingering resentment.

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

(via Talking Points Memo)

Culture break: Not all music today sucks

It's hard to be an aging music listener who doesn't much care for the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen or any of the other geezers still doing the rock concert circuit. Sure, someone occasionally comes down the pike who's listenable, like K.T. Tunstall or John Mayer. And there's a song here and there that I like, but nothing that tells me to rush out and buy CDs; nothing that says "I want to hear more." Death Cab for Cutie's latest heavy-rotation song I'll Follow You Into the Dark, which I posted here a few weeks ago, may be the most achingly beautiful song in a generation, but if I had to listen to an entire CD or concert of similar stuff, I'd want to stick my head in the oven. And while I will probably run out and buy the next effort from the maturing Green Day, I'm hardly likely to leave the house to see them live.

So like many people of my generation, I mostly listen to various forms of ethnic and roots music. Over Thanksgiving weekend, Mr. Brilliant and I went to see Hot Tuna, who can usually be counted on to deliver a terrific exhibition of musical virtuousity in the service of bluegrass-tinged rock 'n' roll. The last time we'd seen Hot Tuna was as an opening act to the Allman Bros. Band during the unfortunate Jimmy Herring years. And they were sensational.

But whether due to muddy amplification, the replacement of a keyboard AND rhythm guitar with for some reason a mandolin, a bunch of middle-aged guys in the audience who simply had to get up 27 times during the show to either buy beer or excrete beer, or the drunken asshole in the back of the loge screaming "JAAACCCKKK!!!!" at the top of his lungs, the grizzled veterans Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady had the show stolen from right under their noses by these guys:

Like what you hear? There's more here and here.

No surprise here

Despite significant gains in 2004, the total income Americans reported to the tax collector that year, adjusted for inflation, was still below its peak in 2000, new government data shows.

Reported income totaled $7.044 trillion in 2004, the latest year for which data is available, down from more than $7.143 trillion in 2000, new Internal Revenue Service data shows.

Total reported income, in 2004 dollars, fell 1.4 percent, but because the population grew during that period average real incomes declined more than twice as much, falling $1,641, or 3 percent, to $53,974.

Since 2004, the Census Department has found, the income of the typical American household has grown along with the rise in average incomes but at a slow pace that, until recent months, had barely kept ahead of inflation.

The tax data, while not as up to date, helps spell out whose incomes were most affected in the recent downturn and why.

The overall income declines of that extended era came despite a series of tax cuts that President Bush and Congressional Republicans promoted as the best way to stimulate both short- and long-term growth after the Internet bubble burst on Wall Street in 2000 and the economy fell into a brief recession in 2001.

The tax cuts contributed to a big decline in individual income tax receipts, which fell at a rate 14 times that of the drop in incomes.

In 2004 individual income tax receipts were 21.6 percent smaller than in 2000 — and indeed smaller than they were in 1997, the new I.R.S. report shows. The government collected $831.8 billion in individual income taxes in 2004, down from $980.4 billion in 2000 and $848.6 billion in 1997.

Those figures have risen since then, but rather than pay for themselves through economic growth, the Bush tax cuts, at least through 2004, were financed with borrowed money.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said the decline in income through 2004 was a predictable result of “what we all know now was a bubble economy with inflated asset values, which is why $7 trillion of equity in the stock markets evaporated.”

Mr. Fratto said that the benefits of lowered tax rates were shown by more recent gains in incomes and tax receipts and the creation of more than 6.5 million jobs since 2003, the year that he contended should be used as the benchmark to assess the value of the Bush tax cuts on incomes, jobs and increased wealth.

Incomes in 2004 did rise above those in 2003, with an overall average gain of 6.8 percent. The average year-over-year increases from 2003 to 2004 ranged from 1.8 percent for the poorest fifth of Americans to a 27.5 percent increase for the top tenth of 1 percent.

But those gains were not enough to make up for the drop in 2001, the further drop in 2002 and the almost unchanged overall income total in 2003, when only the top 1 percent made any significant gains, primarily by selling assets at a profit to take advantage of lowered tax rates on capital gains that took effect that year.

Analysis of the I.R.S. data by The New York Times found that average reported incomes fell or were virtually flat at the end of the period at every level of income except for the poorest 26 million taxpayers, the bottom fifth. Those impoverished taxpayers made less than $11,166 each in 2004 and had an average income of $5,743, up $135 or 2.4 percent, from the year 2000.

I guess the conservatives will laud that $135 increase. Don't spend it all in one place.

More here...

Rush Limbaugh is a broken-down old car by the side of the road in a desert

This is the sound of an ideology dying:

LIMBAUGH: So anyway, [This Week host George] Stephanopoulos asks King Abdullah II of Jordan if this is the case:

ABDULLAH [audio clip]: George, the difficulty that we're tackling with here is we're juggling with the strong potential of three civil wars in the region. Whether it's the Palestinians of Lebanon or of Iraq, and I hope my discussions at least with the president --

LIMBAUGH: [heavy sigh]

ABDULLAH [audio clip]: -- will be to provide whatever we can do for the Iraqi people, but the same time we do want to concentrate ourselves on the core issues which we believe are the Palestinians and the Palestinian peace process, because that is a must today --

LIMBAUGH: Oh, give me a break.

ABDULLAH [audio clip]: -- as well as the tremendous concern we have had over the last several days with what's happening in Lebanon. And we could possibly imagine going into 2007 and having three civil wars on our hands.

LIMBAUGH: All right, well, let's just have them. Let's just have the civil wars and let the crumbs crumble and the cookie crumble where -- because I'm fed up with this. The Palestinian situation -- for 50 years we've had the Palestinian situation, and it's not going to be solved until the Limbaugh Doctrine is imposed or tried. And that is, this is a war, and until somebody loses it, it isn't going to stop. And now, you know, we've done everything we can to make Lebanon a democracy, and it's crumbling because Syria keeps killing the popular leaders there. Meanwhile, the Hezbos [Hezbollah] keep expanding their influence in Lebanon.

But what the hell! We're going to bring Syria and Iran in to fix Iraq, why not let them just fix the whole region? If we're heading to civil war -- I mean, everybody comes to us: "You got to fix this and you got to fix that." So we go and try to fix it, and our own people, Democrats and the left in our country do their best to sabotage our efforts, and then we get blamed for trying to clean up the messes that these people start. And then they come on our television show: "[Gibberish] George [gibberish] civil war [gibberish] we gotta do something. Palestinians it's a must, it's a must, we must [gibberish] right now [gibberish] war."

Fine, just blow the place up. Just let these natural forces take place over there instead of trying to stop them, instead of trying to use -- I just -- sometimes natural force is going to happen. You're going to have to let it take place. You can spend all the time you like with diplomacy, and you can spend all the time you want massaging these things with diplomatic -- you're just -- you're just delaying the inevitable.

First of all, name one person not affiliated with PNAC or Ahmad Chalabi who said of Iraq, "You've got to fix this." Second of all, how can a party completely out of power, many of whose memebers voted for this war, do whatever they can to sabotage the effort? And third of all, if your child felt a need to blow up everything that isn't to his liking, wouldn't you take him for a psychiatric evaluation?

The offspring of two political families

This is Chelsea Clinton:

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton has joined Avenue Capital Group, a hedge fund manager whose founder has contributed to many Democratic Party campaigns, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

People familiar with the matter reported that Clinton, 26, is quitting her job at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and will take a position at the New York-based hedge fund Avenue Capital Group.

This is the Bush Twins:

Amid a growing barrage of front-page headlines, U.S. embassy officials "strongly suggested" President Bush's twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, cut short their trip to Buenos Aires because of security issues, U.S. diplomatic and security sources tell ABC News.

But the girls have stayed on, celebrating their 25th birthday over the weekend and producing even more headlines about their activities.

[snip]

Stories of the twins' visit took on wild proportions in the Argentinean press. One tabloid headline had the young women running nude in the hallway of their hotel, a report the hotel staff denied to ABC News.

According to sources, the U.S. embassy encouraged the two girls to cut their stay short because the added attention was making their security very difficult.

But to the dismay and anger of some U.S. embassy and security staff, the girls stayed on.

Thursday night, an ABC News producer was able to walk into their hotel unchecked and engage Barbara Bush in conversation while she checked her e-mail on a computer in the lobby. Jenna sat talking with friends on a sofa nearby. No Secret Service agents were anywhere to be seen in the lobby, according to ABC News' Joe Goldman.

And yesterday the Bush twins were spotted at the Sunday soccer matches, wearing team jerseys and sitting in the owner's box, watching Argentina's top team Boca Juniors compete. Several games have been canceled due to violence in the crowds this year. In fact, last weekend no spectators were allowed to attend the match other than season ticket holders.

Sources tell ABC News the twins plan to stick to their original itinerary and stay in Buenos Aires until Thursday.

These girls are twenty-five years old. Shouldn't they be holding down a job by now? Yes, Chelsea Clinton's new employers are Democratic donors -- but at least she's working, not gallivanting around the world on taxpayer money like Paris Hilton creating disruption everywhere they go.

John Aravosis:

...at some point, you put aside your tiara as most powerful brat in the world and start acting like an adult. But not in the Bush family. Oh no. The US embassy warned that they could not provide adequate security for the Bush twins during their current visit, and the Bush twins basically told the embassy to go to hell. They're staying anyway.

Let me repeat that. George Bush's daughters are in a developing country where American officials cannot guarantee their safety. What does George Bush do? Absolutely nothing And before anyone says this is his daughters and not Bush, bull. He is the president of the United States. These are his children. They are traveling as representatives of the US whether they like it or not. They are traveling with American Secret Service protection, whether they like it or not. They are tying up the resources of the US Embassy whether they like it or not. And if they get shot and killed, or kidnapped, or drugged while they are in Argentina, that will directly affect the national security of the United States because our president will be subject to blackmail or worse.

A Dinner Party with J

Veal cutlet with capersJ was my fellow foodie at work until he recently moved onto greener pastures. *sigh* The end of an era. No more clustering around the desk as he revealed last night's baking efforts: a huge batch of cookies, a lemon meringue pie, or a dozen melting moments whipped up "because I felt peckish at 11pm".No more impromptu excursions at lunchtime, in search of good tasty cheap

What part of Luke 2:14 do these morons not understand?

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ... -- Luke 2:14

And now, a dispatch from Idiot America:

A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti- Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

"Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."

Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000, and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she's not going to take it down until after Christmas.

"Now that it has come to this I feel I can't get bullied," she said. "What if they don't like my Santa Claus."

The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board "will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive."

The subdivision's rules say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee.

Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members.

Interesting how a peace symbol at Christmastime can be divisive. I suppose it just might make people think about their behavior while shopping:

(Rex Babin, Sacramento Bee)

Shoe, fits, etc. Bob Herbert, in today's New York Times:

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City — where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs — and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.

A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. “All I can tell you,” said a Wal-Mart employee, “is that they were fired up and ready to spend money.”

There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.

Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman’s proposal — it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. — but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war.

With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: “I definitely don’t know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don’t even think about the war. They’re more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday’s test.”

His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. “No, definitely not,” he said. “None of my friends even really care about what’s going on in Iraq.”

This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.

According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.

In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: “The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or ‘honor killings.’ Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives.”

Journalists in Iraq are being “assassinated with utmost impunity,” the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months.

Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference — no longer than a few seconds — in a television news account of the latest political ditherings.

The ugly truth that lies behind the faux merriment of the holiday season -- the Wal-Mart stampedes, the cheap plastic inflatable Santa Clauses that lie flat and deflated on suburban lawns each morning as if sleeping off a bender, the relentless advertising and sales and exhortations to consumption, is that most Americans really don't care what's going on in Iraq. As long as their kid gets the Playstation 3 to which he is richly entitled, who cares if the Iraqis are burning each other alive? And the ignorer-in-chief is the President of the United States, who seems to have left Iraq out on the sidewalk in the rain like a broken and abandoned toy in which he's lost interest. As Josh Marshall noted last week:

Is it just me or has George W. Bush checked out of the stumbling national crisis we know as 'Iraq'?

I know his name shows up in the headlines. He's meeting Iraq Prime Minister Maliki next week in Amman. Vice President Cheney is shuttling to Saudi Arabia. And all of this is being billed as a part of a new and broader 'regional' approach to getting the conflict under some measure of control.

But I don't hear the president. Not his voice. The one thing that's been a constant over the last three and a half years is the president as the voice of American Iraq policy. Whether he's the author of it is another question entirely. But the voice and pitbull of it, always.

And yet since the election he seems to have disappeared from the conversation entirely. Like he's just checked out. It's not his thing anymore.

To a degree, this has been the case since early 2004 -- the point by which it was clear the entire effort was a failure. But politics -- first his reelection and then the 2006 election -- has kept him powerfully in the game, constantly arguing staying the course or cutting and running or how a rebuke for his policies would amount to a win for the terrorists.

But now the rebuke has been given. And what is more than that he validated it, confirmed the rejection by summarily firing his Defense Secretary. By doing so, he admitted (even if he can't quite admit it to himself) that his war policy has been a failure.

With that admission out of the way, there's really no more cheerleading to be done for the whole effort. It's a hard slog, a tortuous battle to find some least bad outcome to the whole affair.

Back when he was riding high President Bush used to say that he 'didn't do nuance' -- a point on which he was unquestionably right. And that being the case, there's just nothing left for him to say. No more chest-thumping or rah-rah or daring his opponents to say he's wrong. So he's just gone silent. Like it's not his problem any more.

The problems is that Iraq is a very real problem -- a problem we created when we never held this secretive Administration accountable for lying to us and creating this war. Like it or not, this is OUR war. The blood of every Iraqi who dies in this civil war is on the hands of every American -- including more than a few Democratic Senators (*cough* John Kerry *cough*) -- who blindly nodded when George W. Bush insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and must be removed. A half-million of us marched in New York City in February 2003 because we KNEW that this president was lying. We might not have known the exact differences between Sunni and Sh'ia, but we knew that they didn't get along, and we knew, having studies our Yugoslavia, of the vacuum that happens when a strongman holding together a bunch of warring peoples is removed from power.

Americans can continue to stampede the stores, trampling other people to spend what remains of their home equity on tchotchkes and baubles and big-screen TVs and Playstations and the other accoutrements of the life we Americans take as our due. We can continue to shop because to stop for a moment and think about these Iraqis, or to think about Suad Ahmed, a woman in Darfur who allowed herself to be caught and gang-raped by the janjaweed militia in order to save her 10-year-old sister from the same fate, means that they become our responsibility.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. It takes ten minutes to fire off an e-mail to our representatives asking them to address the Darfur genocide or to come up with a timetable and a plan for extricating us from Iraq and provide the restitution in the form of rebuilding -- real rebuilding, not war profiteering -- that we owe these people. At the very least, we can take a few minutes to consider the people who are working in these war zones to try to make a difference -- not to make ourselves feel terrible because we're not down in the trenches, but just to realize just how lucky we are -- lucky to have a roof over our heads. Lucky that bombs aren't going to hit our homes at any moment. Lucky that gangs of roving militias aren't conducting campaigns of mass rape in our neighborhoods.

And maybe....just maybe....we can finally gain some perspective about what happened in this country five years ago, and realize that terrible things happen all over the world. We are not immune. We had a collective nervous breakdown on September 11, 2001, and we lost our humanity somewhere along the way, becoming no different from the barbarians whose acts we look on ini horror. I hope it's not too late to get it back.

Is this any worse than whoever they're going to put in charge?

At least with Saddam Hussein, we've already gone through the romance phase and have no illusions. With the next puppet the Bush Administration is likely to put in charge to keep order in Iraq, we'll have to buy him dinner, diamonds, and some nasty weapons in order to romance him before he turns on us.

Jonathan Chait, in the L.A. Times dares to suggest the preposterous (login required; go to bugmenot.com to snag an ID and password):

THE DEBATE about Iraq has moved past the question of whether it was a mistake (everybody knows it was) to the more depressing question of whether it is possible to avert total disaster. Every self-respecting foreign policy analyst has his own plan for Iraq. The trouble is that these tracts are inevitably unconvincing, except when they argue why all the other plans would fail. It's all terribly grim.

So allow me to propose the unthinkable: Maybe, just maybe, our best option is to restore Saddam Hussein to power.

Yes, I know. Hussein is a psychotic mass murderer. Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale.

At the outset of the war, I had no high hopes for Iraqi democracy, but I paid no attention to the possibility that the Iraqis would end up with a worse government than the one they had. It turns out, however, that there is something more awful than totalitarianism, and that is endless chaos and civil war.

Nobody seems to foresee the possibility of restoring order to Iraq. Here is the basic dilemma: The government is run by Shiites, and the security agencies have been overrun by militias and death squads. The government is strong enough to terrorize the Sunnis into rebellion but not strong enough to crush this rebellion.

Meanwhile, we have admirably directed our efforts into training a professional and nonsectarian Iraqi police force and encouraging reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites. But we haven't succeeded. We may be strong enough to stop large-scale warfare or genocide, but we're not strong enough to stop pervasive chaos.

Hussein, however, has a proven record in that department. It may well be possible to reconstitute the Iraqi army and state bureaucracy we disbanded, and if so, that may be the only force capable of imposing order in Iraq.

Chaos and order each have a powerful self-sustaining logic. When people perceive a lack of order, they act in ways that further the disorder. If a Sunni believes that he is in danger of being killed by Shiites, he will throw his support to Sunni insurgents who he sees as the only force that can protect him. The Sunni insurgents, in turn, will scare Shiites into supporting their own anti-Sunni militias.



And it's not just Iraqis who act this way. You could find a smaller-scale version of this dynamic in an urban riot here in the United States. But when there's an expectation of social order, people will act in a civilized fashion.

Restoring the expectation of order in Iraq will take some kind of large-scale psychological shock. The Iraqi elections were expected to offer that shock, but they didn't. The return of Saddam Hussein — a man every Iraqi knows, and whom many of them fear — would do the trick.

There's more...

Partying While Black

Sickening:

Crime


Police shooting leaves groom dead, two injured
BY DEBORAH S. MORRIS
NEWSDAY STAFF WRITERS


November 26, 2006, 12:01 AM EST

In a fusillade of 50 gunshots, undercover police officers shot and killed a Queens man who had been celebrating at his bachelor's party and shot and injured two of his friends after the three left a Jamaica strip club early Saturday morning, police said.

Circumstances before and during the shooting, just after 4 a.m. near the Kalua Cabaret at 143-08 94th Ave. in Jamaica, remained murky late Saturday night.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, at a 7:30 p.m. news conference, said the shots were fired by five officers. Asked if the shootings were justified, he said, "We're not in a position to characterize the shooting at this time."

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said there "will be a full, fair and complete investigation of this incident. . . . I would urge everyone to withhold judgment as well until all the facts are known."

Sean Bell, 23, of Far Rockaway, who had planned to marry his longtime girlfriend in an Ozone Park restaurant Saturday night, was shot in the neck and arm. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he died.

Bell's two friends were at Mary Immaculate Hospital. Joseph Guzman, 31, who Kelly said has 11 gunshot wounds, was in critical condition. Trent Benfield, 23, was shot three times and was in stable condition. Both are from Queens.

None of the three were armed.

Two police officers were taken to local hospitals. One was treated and released for an abrasion to his right shin, and another was held for observation at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. Two Port Authority officers -- they worked at the AirTrain across the street, at the Long Island Rail Road's Jamaica terminal -- were treated and released for minor facial injuries from flying glass from vehicles at the scene.

Throughout the day, family members, the Rev. Al Sharpton and local elected officials expressed outrage and bewilderment and called for answers.

"We don't want any cover-up on either side of this," Sharpton said Saturday night outside the Far Rockaway home that Bell shared with his fiancee, Nicole Paultre, 22, and their two young daughters. He said police had incomplete information and were presenting an incomplete version of events.

Sharpton said a prayer vigil and rally would be held Sunday at noon in a park across the street from Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica.

Police did not issue a report about the shooting, a departure from standard practice, and would make no official comment throughout the day.

"It's confusing as hell," said one police supervisor involved in the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The officers -- all in plainclothes -- were part of a team led by a lieutenant, carrying out what the police supervisor described as a joint narcotics/vice operation targeting the club, he said.

The supervisor said police have interviewed cops who were there but did not fire their weapons. Their accounts conflict, he said.

"It's not intentional," the supervisor said. "It's just one guy saying he didn't see anything. Another guy saying he wasn't in position. Another guy saying he only heard things."

Kelly, at his news conference, said the Kalua club had been a hot spot for trouble. "It had a chronic history of narcotics, prostitution and weapons complaints," he said.

Just before the shooting, Kelly said, one undercover officer in the club overheard a dancer who worked there complaining to a man that a patron was bothering her. The man she complained to patted his waist, Kelly said.

"He said he would take care of the problem," the commissioner said.

The officer, believing the man was armed and trouble was imminent, left the club to warn his superior and other cops, Kelly said.

Outside, the undercover cop came upon a group of eight men who seemed to be harassing a lone man. One of the men in the group, whom Kelly identified as Guzman, said, "Yo, go get my gun." Another man, whom Kelly identified as Bell, said, "We're going to -- -- you up."

Next, Kelly said, the group of eight stopped harassing the lone man and split into two groups of four, with Bell, Guzman and Benfield and a fourth man heading to Liverpool Street to a car, a Nissan Altima. The undercover officer followed them on foot, he said.

In quick succession, Kelly said, the following happened: The four men got into the Nissan just as an unmarked police Toyota Camry passed them. The undercover cop crossed Liverpool from west to east and was standing in front of the Nissan. Then, an unmarked police Ford minivan rounded the corner from 94th Avenue onto Liverpool. The Nissan pulled forward, struck the undercover cop, scraping his shin, and then crashed into the minivan. The Nissan backed up and then struck the minivan again.

That's when the shooting started, Kelly said. Kelly and other police sources said the fourth man fled the scene.

Appearing with the commissioner at One Police Plaza were seven high-ranking NYPD officials. On one easel was a large photograph of the street where the shooting occurred, taken from overhead, and on another easel was a diagram of the scene.

"The reason all these executives are here is because we've been looking at the facts of the case all day," Kelly said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a statement after Kelly's news conference.

"Although it is too early to draw conclusions about this morning's shootings in Jamaica, Queens, we know that the NYPD officers on the scene had reason to believe that an altercation involving a firearm was about to happen and were trying to stop it," Bloomberg said. "Commissioner Kelly, Deputy Mayor Wolcott and I have been in touch with community leaders throughout the day to hear their concerns and update them on what we know, and we will keep them informed as this investigation continues."

That's Ray Kelly's story, and he's sticking with it.

The New York Post, a paper hardly known for siding with victims against cops, reports that not everyone thinks this shooting was justified:

One detective on the scene shook his head as he told The Post that the shooting was "a major screw-up."

Another cop later said, "It could be like the guy with the wallet" - referring to unarmed Bronx man Amadou Diallo, who in 1999 was hit by 19 of 41 bullets fired by cops as he grabbed for his wallet.

[snip]

Among unanswered questions are:

* Why did Guzman spend half of yesterday handcuffed to his hospital bed?

* And why was Benefield shackled hand and foot to his?

Relatives said the two were initially placed under arrest, but the cuffs were removed after press inquiries.

Club photographer Roy Brown said the three friends were having a quiet, well-behaved evening at Kalua. He said they didn't have any drinks and were just enjoying the entertainment, at one point posing for pictures.

"They were just in there like the other guys, watching the girls, all having fun," he said. "None of them seemed drunk to me. They were just regular guys."

The New York Times account seems to indicate an uncontrolled hail of bullets:

Witnesses told of chaos, screams and a barrage of gunfire near Club Kalua at 143-08 94th Avenue in Jamaica about 4:15 a.m. after Mr. Bell and his friends walked out and got into their car. Mr. Bell drove the car half a block, turned a corner and struck a black unmarked police minivan bearing several plainclothes officers.

Mr. Bell’s car then backed up onto a sidewalk, hit a storefront’s rolled-down protective gate and nearly struck an undercover officer before shooting forward and slamming into the police van again, the police said.

In response, five police officers fired at least 50 rounds at the men’s car, a silver Nissan Altima; the bullets ripped into other cars and slammed through an apartment window near the shooting scene on Liverpool Street near 94th Avenue.

[snip]

One neighbor said his car was hit by three bullets and a fourth smashed through his front window, piercing a lamp in the living room. “There was bullets all over the place,” said Paul Gomes, 31, who awoke to the barrage of gunfire and pulled his wife and children onto the floor.

Robert and Vivian Hernandez, residents of Liverpool Street, were watching television when they heard the crashing of bullets and people yelling. When the gunfire finally died down, they went outside and saw a man leaning on a fence and moaning, “They shot me in the leg.”

Mr. Kelly said that two Port Authority Police Officers suffered minor facial injuries at a nearby AirTrain facility when one of the bullets shattered a window.

Obviously I wasn't there, so I don't now what happened, but if you read between the anguish of the relatives and the CYA tendencies of the police, what you're left with is four guys, loaded up on testosterone and bravado, talking tough outside a club that's under investigation. Perhaps the driver was impaired, perhaps not. They hit what turned out to be an undercover police car, then panicked. I'm not 100% convinced that the shooting didn't start with the first impact.

Still, there's nothing here that warrants summary execution by the police in a hail of 50 bullets. And you have a unarmed 23-year-old man, who was about to do what even George W. Bush thinks he should do and marry the mother of his children, and because he has his bachelor party in a club that's under investigation, fifty bullets are pumped into his car, and he sustains fatal injuries from anywhere from eight to seventeen of them. I'm sorry, but regardless of the situation, there's no justification for this.

How many times is this going to happen? And Republicans wonder why black Americans look at them incredulously when they say that racism no longer exists in this country?

Nagoya Japanese BBQ Restaurant, Haymarket Chinatown, Sydney

It seemed appropriate that for a pre-concert dinner for Kylie's Homecoming tour we indulge in a buffet of sizzling meat.Of course it helped too that Nagoya BBQ is only around the corner from the Entertainment Centre, perfect strolling distance to Kylie's opening concert in Australia after an 18-month hiatus.We elected for Barbecue Buffet A, the cheapest all-you-can-eat option at $28.80.

Fed up with cable?

I have two Dish Network gift cards that I'd be happy to send to the first two people who are fed up with their cable provider.

We've had Dish Network for six years, and for my money, they rock. No, you don't get "real" TiVO, so you can't set up their DVR boxes to record an entire season, but unlike most companies, they offer good customer service to their longtime customers. In addition to the channels you'd expect, Dish Network also has Worldlink, FSTV, and they've just added Reelz and the Documentary Channel (which is terrific).

Charlie Ergen, the CEO of Echostar, is a folk hero in the industry, and it's easy to understand why. He stood up to the Mighty Viacom and won. He yanked Lifetime off the system until its owner capitulated on the exorbitant pricing they wanted for their crap programming. I like Echostar so much I bought stock in the company for my IRA.

These gift cards provide:

- Free activation
- a $49.99 credit on your first bill (with an 18 month commitment)
- a free optional DVR receiver upgrade
- packages starting as low as $19.99/month.

If you're interested, e-mail me at the address shown in the right-hand sidebar, and either send you the cards, or give you the card and promotion codes.

Another example of the shining Bush record on national security

While you're putting 3-oz. bottles of your toiletries into 8" Ziploc bags this holiday season on your way to Grandma's house, don't forget to say a special thank you to Premier George Walter Bush [/Borat] for his exemplary work to keep Americans safe by making sure terrorism plots are foiled:

A team of suspected terrorists involved in an alleged UK plot to blow up trans-atlantic airliners escaped capture because of interference by the United States, The Independent has been told by counter-terrorism sources.

An investigation by MI5 and Scotland Yard into an alleged plan to smuggle explosive devices on up to 10 passenger jets was jeopardised in August, when the US put pressure on authorities in Pakistan to arrest a suspect allegedly linked to the airliner plot.

As a direct result of the surprise detention of the suspect, British police and MI5 were forced to rush forward plans to arrest an alleged UK gang accused of plotting to destroy the airliners. But a second group of suspected terrorists allegedly linked to the first evaded capture and is still at large, according to security sources.

Aren't you happy now to put your toiletries into plastic bags, to allow the government to tap your phones and read your e-mail, to arrive at the airport three hours in advance of your flight, not knowing what in your carry-on may be confiscated by overworked and confused security screeners? Of course if the Bush Administration hadn't been so concerned with obtaining a short-term bump in the polls, we might not have to worry about this second group. But what's the safety of the public when there's potential political gain for George W. Bush at stake?

The real Republican women's agenda

Is there a better indicator of just where the Bush Administration stands on women's health than the appointment of "Dr." Eric Keroack to head family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

This is a story I've missed over the last week, mostly because others have been doing the job so well. But since I've been saying for years that once the Christofascist Zombie Brigade gets the abortion ban they want, they'll go after birth control next, it's instructive to monitor this appointment.

For more background, The young women at Feministing and Pandagon, who have given me hope that not all women whom the Christofascist agenda will hurt are oblivious to the threat, have been on the case here, here, here (Oh my God, he's named Borat to oversee family planning!), here, and here.

Today even the Grey Lady has had quite enough of this appointment:

It sounds like a late-night parody of President Bush’s bad habit of filling key posts with extreme ideologues and incompetents. To head family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Bush has tapped Eric Keroack, a doctor affiliated with a group vehemently opposed to birth control and someone nationally known for his wacky theory about reproductive health.

Before his appointment, Dr. Keroack served as the medical director of A Woman’s Concern, a network of pregnancy counseling clinics across Massachusetts whose method of trying to dissuade women from having an abortion includes spreading the scary and medically inaccurate myth that having an abortion steeply increases the risk of breast cancer. The group also has a policy against dispensing contraception even to married women. It has stated on its Web site that the distribution of contraceptive drugs or devices is “demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.” Dr. Keroack now claims that he disagrees with these approaches, a repositioning that seems very belated.

When speaking at abstinence conferences across the country, and in his writings, Dr. Keroack has promoted the novel argument that sex with multiple partners alters brain chemistry in a way that makes it harder for women to form bonding relationships. One of the researchers cited by Dr. Keroack has called the claim “complete pseudoscience” unsupported by her findings.

Armed with these credentials, Dr. Keroack has been drafted to lead the federal office that finances birth control, pregnancy tests, breast cancer screening and other critical health care services for five million poor people annually, and to advise Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt on family planning issues. Americans who were expecting a more moderate administration in the wake of this month’s elections may find all this shocking. But to the unchastened Bush White House, apparent opposition to contraceptives, abortion and science was the opposite of disqualifying. It was a winning trifecta.

So much for that bipartisanship Bush was talking about in the immediate shock of the election's aftermath.

Bush said "We'll succeed unless we quit." Succeed at what?

What would "success" in Iraq look like, anyway? Does anyone know? It sure as hell doesn't look like this:

Two bombs exploded in northern Iraq on Friday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 26, police said. It was the first major attack by suspected insurgents since bombings in Baghdad's Sadr City Shiite district killed more than 200 people the day before during widespread sectarian violence in the capital.

Followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned Friday they will suspend their membership in parliament and the Cabinet if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with U.S. President George W. Bush in Jordan next week, a member of parliament said. Bush and al-Maliki were scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

The al-Sadr bloc in parliament and government is the back bone of al-Maliki's political support, and its withdrawal, if only temporarily, would be a severe blow to the prime minister's already shaky hold on power.

Legislator Qusai Abdul-Wahab, an al-Sadr follower, said in a statement that U.S. forces were to blame for Thursday's bombings in Sadr City that killed 215 people and wounding 257 because they failed to provide security.

"We say occupation forces are fully responsible for these acts, and we call for the withdrawal of occupation forces or setting a timetable for their withdrawal," Abdul-Wahab said.

Al-Sadr's followers hold six Cabinet seats and have 30 members in the 275-member parliament.

The attack in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, involved explosives hidden in a parked car and in a suicide belt worn by a pedestrian that detonated simultaneously outside a car dealership at 11 a.m., said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri. He said the casualties — 22 dead, 26 wounded — were expected to rise.

And feeding 20,000 more troops into this meatgrinder -- as St. John McCain, a man obviously willing to resort to human sacrifice if it means he'll get into the White House in 2008, wants to do -- is going to reduce this kind of violence, exactly how?

I fully expect to see pigs on the platform in Glen Rock on Christmas Eve

A gaggle of turkeys hoping to get outta Dodge (well, Ramsey, NJ) before Thanksgiving. They probably didn't get very far; I'm told there was an accident in Mahwah not long after this security camera video shot was taken involving some wild turkeys.

There are a flock of wild turkeys near my workplace. Obviously people have been feeding them, because they will surround your car, peck at your tires, and not let you leave. You really haven't felt foolish until you've been shaken down by a turkey.

Will Americans let themselves be fooled again?

The neocons are at it again, and they already have their Iran versions of Curveball and Ahmad Chalabi:

Unchastened by the catastrophe of the Iraq war or the setback delivered to the White House and Republicans in the midterm elections in part as a result of it, Iran hawks have organized new efforts to promote U.S. support for regime change in Tehran.

Among the latest efforts is the creation earlier this month of the Iran Enterprise Institute, a privately funded nonprofit drawing not just its name but inspiration and moral support from leading figures associated with the American Enterprise Institute. The Iran Enterprise Institute is directed by a newly arrived Iranian dissident whose cause has recently been championed by AEI fellow and former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle. Amir Abbas Fakhravar, 31, served time in Iran’s notorious Evin prison before arriving in Washington in May, with Perle’s help. Fakhravar, who advocates U.S. intervention to promote secular democracy in Iran, now seeks Washington’s backing to lead an organization that would unite Iranian student dissidents. (I profile Fakhravar in this month’s Mother Jones). Some other Iranian activists and journalists say Fakhravar and his supporters exaggerate his importance as a dissident leader in Iran. "Student circles and journalistic circles don’t recognize him as a student leader,” says Najmeh Bozorgmehr, the Financial Times’ Tehran correspondent who closely followed the 1999 pro-democracy Tehran student uprisings.

Incorporation papers received last week by the Washington, D.C., corporate registration office indicate that among those on the Iran Enterprise Institute's initial board of director are Fakhravar; Bijan Karimi, a professor of engineering at the University of New Haven; and Farzad Farahani, the Los Angeles-based half-brother of the U.S. leader of the exile Iranian political party, the Constitutionalist Party, which is closely tied with Fakhravar.

The Institute was created after a three-day meeting in Washington last month. According to one of the Iranians who participated in the meetings and who asked that his name not be used, among those in attendance were Fakhravar; Reza Pahlavi, son of the ousted shah of Iran; former Reagan era official and AEI scholar Michael Ledeen; a Dallas-based Iranian rug dealer who has funded anti-Tehran dissidents; and several other young Iranian oppositionists. According to sources, the group’s initial funding will come primarily from Iranian exiles. Perle’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry to his office about the new group.

According to Iranian sources, the shah’s son, Pahlavi, announced at the meeting that the group should right then and there form a new leadership council for the Iran opposition movement, consisting mostly of the younger people present at the meeting rather than the aging cadre of monarchist supporters who have debated how to overthrow the mullahs for 25 years.

Sounds like what we have here is a "student leader" of dubious credentials, and the son of the man who precipitated the 1970's Iran revolution in the first place.

Swell. Just fucking swell. Now the neocons want to shed the blood of even MORE American kids so we can install a new Shah in Iran. After all, it worked so well the last time:

Thanksgiving Thankful Thread

I don't expect many visitors today, but for those of you who stopped by to get away from Uncle Frank's tirade about how George W. Bush was anointed by God to be president and how Hillary will force everyone to be homosexual, welcome. Pour yourself a drink (you look like you need one), pull up a chair, and join Mr. Brilliant and I in watching that great Thanksgiving favorite, Dexter.

Because that's just the kind of people we are.

I kind of like Thanksgiving, especially now that we keep it simple -- dinner at a restaurant right here in town, a nap, and a movie. The only real down side of Thanksgiving is that it means that there just is NO driving on Route 17, for any reason, from now till the middle of January -- except on Sundays, because Paramus still mercifully has blue laws, the better for local residents to be able to get around the county ONE day a week.

Thanksgiving is the one holiday that isn't political, it isn't religious, and it actually glorifies one of the seven deadly sins -- gluttony. What's more, its primary function is as a kickoff to an entire month of celebrating MORE deadly sins -- primarily greed, envy, and pride, though wrath and lust often figure into the Christmas shopping season as well. And while there are those who insist that Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday (if these people had their way, they'd co-opt everything including Ramadan), it's still a secular holiday.

Like a kind of self-help George Lakoff, I try to frame my life in terms of what I have, rather than what I lack. Nothing saps the psyche like "Everybody but me has..." syndrome, which is probably more likely to kick in today for most people than any other day of the year, Thanksgiving being as fraught with Normal Rockwell imagery that no longer exists, if indeed it ever did, as it is. But if one does nothing else constructive on Thanksgiving, a little self-inventory of things we're thankful for is good for the soul.

I'm thankful that I get along with everyone in my family. Given that my parents are divorced and there's still a fair amount of acrimony after nearly 40 years, and that my sister and I were estranged for 20, that is no small feat.

I'm thankful for the 23 years I've spent with Mr. Brilliant, a most unlikely suitor who turned out to be the right guy for me when just about everything about him when we met would to any sane person have indicated otherwise.

I'm thankful for my friends. Friendship is something I never appreciated when I was younger and always waiting to be betrayed, so I never let anyone into my life.

I'm thankful that I'm employed, doing interesting work close to home for good pay and great benefits.

I'm thankful that I live in a country where people can even THINK of eating Quorn. And no, Mr. Bush 43, that isn't a mark of support for your son. Your son is not equal to the United States. In fact, people like me are trying to SAVE the country from your son.

I'm thankful for those who told me when I was young that I'd be glad I was smart and funny because looks fade.

I'm thinkful that I'm still alive and that I have my health.

I'm thankful that I called in all my markers and insisted we buy a house in 1996.

I'm thankful that I have enough to save for retirement.

I'm thankful that I'm a liberal and unashamed to say so, because it means I still have a soul.

I'm thankful for all of you, who for whatever reason, come her to read my rantings and ravings.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Harry's Cafe De Wheels, Haymarket

Harry's Hot Dog de Wheels elevates the humble hot dog to new heights of existence. Sure there's a frankfurt, and yes there's a soft hot dog bun, but there's also a slathering of mushy peas, a layer of chilli con carne, a couple of cooked onion rings and then a zigzagging crown of creamy cheese sauce and lip-tingling chilli.Harry's Hot Dog de Wheels $4.95It's certainly the most filling hot dog

Do you live longer this way...or does it just FEEL longer?

On this day before the caloric minefield known as Thanksgiving, Rebecca Traister in Salon takes on a recent New York Magazine article on Extreme Calorie Restriction, based on the premise that the less you eat, the longer you'll live. As is predictable for New York Magazine, this is less about spiritual enlightenment than it is about personal endurance testing:

I’ve been starving for the past two months, actually, and that’s precisely what the party is about: My dinner guests—five successful urban professionals who for years have subsisted on a caloric intake the average sub-Saharan African would find austere—have been at it much, much longer, and I’ve invited them here to show me how it’s done. They are master practitioners of Calorie Restriction, a diet whose central, radical premise is that the less you eat, the longer you’ll live. Having taken this diet for a nine-week test drive, I’m hoping now for an up-close glimpse of what it means to go all the way. I want to find out what it looks, feels, and tastes like to commit to the ultimate in dietary trade-offs: a lifetime lived as close to the brink of starvation as your body can stand, in exchange for the promise of a life span longer than any human has ever known.

I don't know about you, but to me the idea of a half-dozen successful urban professionals playing "Can You Top This" on who can eat the least is just about as close as you can get to Hell on Earth without involving fundamentalist Christian conservatives.

But a look at Traister's article makes me laugh, because of this:

Calorie-restricted dieters cut their food intake drastically, to around 1,200-1,400 calories a day for a woman and 1,800-2,000 for a man, depending on the individual's height and weight. Those meager metrics of tastiness must be further apportioned to constitute 30 percent protein, 30 percent fat and 40 percent carbs. It's an eating regimen that is greatly aided by calculators, computer software and postal scales.

I have lost Z"significant" weight exactly once in my life. It was in 1983, it took place over a period of four months, and it involved an 800-calorie-a-day diet that consisted of a daily food regimen of two liquid Cambridge Diet shake "meals" and one meal of baked skinless chicken and carrot sticks, and a one-hour aerobics class five nights a week. Total weightloss: 13 pounds. I weighed 118 when I started and 105 at the end. I had no tits, and I'd go out with Mr. Brilliant, whom I was dating at the time, and throw food around my plate and cry because I was hungry and didn't dare eat.

The idea of 1200-1400 calories a day constituting "extreme calorie restriction" is laughable to someone like me, who tries mightily, only rarely succeeding, at keeping total calories consumed per day to as close to 1500-1600 as possible and who is still a size 16.

There is some scientific evidence that this kind of calorie restriction does result in longer life, but if that life involves a greater obsession with food than even the most gluttonous overeater has, and if those few years require this kind of ascetic lack of enjoyment, there's some question as to whether it's worth it. None of this research takes into account accidents of birth, either. I had two grandmothers who lived into their nineties. My own mother is 79 years old, a fifteen-year-plus lung cancer survivor, is overweight, and still smokes. And aside from the COPD, she's perfectly healthy. Given that I don't have unlimited financial resources, I figure if I can make it to eighty, I'll have nothing to complain about, especially since both of those grandmothers spent their final years in nursing homes.

One thing I've found about the "Oh, fuck it" method of eating is that over time, you tend to stop the unhealthy habits. I don't gorge on chips, I don't eat fistfuls of chocolate. My breakfast is usually either a banana/yogurt smoothie with flaxseed or oatmeal with almonds and dried cranberries, and a small side of cottage cheese. This isn't because I'm dieting, it's because this is what I like for breakfast. I've even gotten to the point where the chocolates in the office next to mine, because I've realized that cheap chocolate just makes you want more. So after lunch I have a square of the 71% cacao bars they sell at Trader Joe's, and I'm set for the afternoon. The big issue for me right now is cutting back on salt, because hypertension is another one of the wonderful things that tends to happen after menopause.

Many years ago a friend and I used to run support groups out of a local church basement that ran according to the precept that if we could accept ourselves, demystify food, and stop defining our worth as human beings based on what we did or did not eat, we'd be healthier. Some of would lose weight, some wouldn't. But we'd be healthier. At first we did very well, but as the women who showed up realized that we were not a diet group and weren't promising magic, little by little they dwindled until we disbanded completely.

So it isn't just the Christofascist Zombie Brigade that has a vested interest in the perpetuation of self-loathing.

Traister:

Part of what's so damaging about diseases like anorexia and bulimia -- besides the body-image distortions -- is their fixation on control. What could be more tightly controlled than CR?

As Bob Cavanaugh, secretary for the Calorie Restriction Society, wrote in a letter to New York, "CR practitioners must be in the habit of monitoring their micronutrients. Balancing caloric intake with essential nutrition requires diligence." A diet like this sounds like a full-time job, one that could impede the rituals and opportunities of a full life. Restaurant dinners, accepting invitations to friends' houses, traveling to countries where dietary information is in another language -- all made more difficult by a voice in your head ascribing some higher value to keeping calories at an absolute minimum. Forget even the satisfaction of a particular food. What about the contentment of coming home after a busy day, ordering Chinese, putting your feet up and watching a movie?

And who gets to do this thing right? People with access to spreadsheets and dietitians, yes, but also those with the time to shop for specialties and fiddle-faddle with microproteins at every meal. In other words: not people who get 15 minutes for lunch, work night shifts, and just want to sit with friends over a bottle of wine or a six pack on the weekend.

Diligently monitoring and balancing and weighing and considering and adding and subtracting and measuring and constantly, constantly contemplating every morsel that enters your body, including the two Brazil nuts and two-thirds bag of microwave popcorn: How much time do these people have on their hands anyway? Oh right, centuries.

As CR dieter Paul McGlothin asked on "Today," "Who wouldn't really like to experience the joys of life for a little bit longer?" And McGlothin's CR buddy Meredith Averill crowed to Lauer about "planning [her] 125th birthday for absolutely decades now!"

Bully for McGlothin and Averill, though one would hope that neither has the misfortune of getting hit by a bus or contracting a degenerative disease like CR god Roy Walford. Walford pioneered calorie restriction after his years in Biosphere 2, wrote the book "Beyond the 120 Year Diet : How to Double Your Vital Years," and died at 79 from ALS. If these bodies are all juiced to live for more than a century, let's hope they are also hermetically sealed against dementia, stroke, broken hips, and other afflictions that could make all those additional decades more endless hell than ultimate reward.

And while the CR dieter is enjoying all the moral and physical superiority that comes with self-abnegation and endless gnawing hunger, what toll must it take on friends and loved ones? Imagine spending time with people who eat one-third of what you do and make you feel like a glutton on a suicide mission when you spoon yourself an extra helping of squash. In fact, one of the horrifying things about this diet is the creeping realization of how easy it would be to come to see your every tasty snack as a sin against yourself, every culinary concoction a reason for self-flagellation.

I think about the new pizza place near me. It has weathered yellow walls and a chef whose focused attention to the blistering crust and sweet creamy full-fat ricotta on his menu recalls Nicholas Cage in "Moonstruck." I consider the dinner I just ate at an Italian place: short-rib ravioli in a sauce of smoked marrow, Brussels sprouts with a poached egg and pancetta, chicken liver mousse with fig jam, and pickled green beans on toast. I think about the carafes of wine, the first briny sip of a hard-earned martini, the malty cool of a second beer at a sultry summer barbecue.

And I think: From my side of the short-rib ravioli, immortality really is overrated.

Now I think most of these things sound vile, but Traister makes a good point. Is an extended life this controlled, this devoid of enjoyment, worth living? After all, there's a lot of gray area between flaming out at 26 of a drug overdose, and living a completely humorless 125 years. I'll take that tradeoff, thank you very much.

And then there's this:

A 150-year life sounds sort of tiring. Isn't it the sort of thing that makes vampires so grumpy? Imagine living through all those wars, all the tragedies. You think teenagers and their loud music and LOL-isms annoy you now? Imagine if there were 100 culturally unbridgeable years between you and them. Think of all those presidential administrations you'd have to endure! Those of us who, barring illness or accident, can expect to live several more decades are probably already looking down the barrel of a Jenna Bush administration. Do you really need to live through George VI?

That thought alone is enough to make me reach for the lasagna.

Happy erev Thanksgiving, everyone.