[2005.09.30 - 06:50 P.M.] T-MINUS 10...
In ten minutes, the Major League Baseball post-season begins.
Well, if you live in the northeast, anyway.
In ten minutes, the Yankees take their one-game AL East lead into Fenway park for the start of a three-game series that should determine the division champ and could easily send the loser home for the year. (Barring a tie, etc., etc.)
Nobody in New York or Boston would have it be any other way.
Consider: 159 games in the books and this is what it comes down to.
We Yankee fans have waited eleven long months for this. After the... after the... events that precipitated Boston's trip to the World Series last year, we heard it all. "Biggest Choke in Sports History" they called it. And who could argue? Well, now, at long friggin' last, the chance has come to erase that memory, to salve the wounds, to heal the doubt.
Or to make it worse. We'll see.
Gotta say, though, if I were a Sox fan, I'd be a huge freakin' loser I'd be wiggin' just a little bit right now. The Yankees have all the momentum going their way. Our pitching staff, battered and bruised all year long, has come together nicely. We're actually deep now. Our bats are a veritable bonfire they're so hot. Every night promises a fireworks display. Jason Giambi has time-warped in from 1999. Robinson Ca-YES (cough-Rookie of the Year-cough) is lighting it up. A-Rod (cough-MVP-cough) is breaking franchise records. And Jeter is still Jeter.
Deep trouble for the Sox. Deep trouble.
Greatest. Rivalry. In. Sports.
Must-see TV.
Can't wait.
Ten minutes...
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[2005.09.30 - 05:30 P.M.] HUNTED BECOMES HUNTER
It's standard Hollywood boilerplate: Take a villain, have him (it's always a him) do incredibly nasty, twisted things to some innocent victim, and then, when said victim is at the end of his/her rope, have them turn the tables. Think "Pacific Heights". Now, for extra flavor, to make you loathe the bad guy even more than you already do, add this: Have him become angry and indignant that the protaganist has the unmitigated gall to actually try to get even.
Translated into political blogging, that's pretty much what we see ignorant maggot Mark Noonan doing over at Blogs for Bush. See, this poor, picked-upon GOPiece of Shit has been silently and stoically tolerating the underhanded antics of the Dems for sooooooo long, but now that Tom DeLay's been indicted... well, he's just had it:
This is not the actions [sic] of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority - it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself...it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made...
I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge - you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received. If you can't defeat Tom Delay in the electoral field, then you will simply have to accept him as Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives - and you'd better start accepting political reality before things get really bad.
Yes, that excerpt is real. A living, breathing human being wrote those words. Which causes one to wonder, just how far must the cancer penetrate into your intellect before you can see the world quite that way? How hopelessly detached from consensus reality do you have to be to assert that Democrats are the party that is, again:
"determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself."
Because, yeah, obviously whatever strategy the Dems have stumbled upon for "siezing all power" is really working out really well, what with the zero branches of government they control.
I've covered this ground many times here on this blog. Yes, we all craft a view of the world that's pleasing to our eyes. That's the way the human mind works. No one's exempt.
But on the one hand there are the normal filters and biases of human perception and then on the other hand there's you, Mark Noonan. You're fuckin' nuts.
Over at Daily Kos, Hunter takes this chump to the woodshed in what might -- no hyperbole -- be the Greatest Blog Post Ever Written:
Mark... may I call you Mark? I feel when someone has shown me the insides of their own rectum, we're pretty much on a first name basis... I have some words for you.
Whitewater. Rush Limbaugh. "Drug Dealer" Bill Clinton. Swift Boats.
Vince Fucking Foster.
Playing with fire, you say? Because the indictments ringing Tom DeLay finally reached up that one, final step from his ring of closest advisers to DeLay himself? Because the SEC has launched a formal investigation into the same behaviors by Bill Frist that put Martha Stewart recently in prison? Because one of the single most visible, highest profile Republican money men has been indicted for fraud, is being investigated for client shakedowns, and has his close business associates being investigated for a mob-connected murder?
What utter cowardice. What pathetic anti-American pedantry. What laughable protestation.
A big old TwoGlasses-style What He Said to that, yo.
Civil War, huh Noonan?
(Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn-OOOOONAN!)
Civil. War.
Okey doke. Come an' git it, asshole.
Civil War.
Right. What's next? You gonna steal the Presidency or something? Ooops...
Reading posts by guys like you, Noooo-nan, well, it's like dropping a stone into the well of my contempt and listening to see how deep it goes, only to never hear it splash.
People like you make me so sick to my fucking stomach that I am momentarily consumed with blind rage. You impeached my president over a blow job. You stole a presidential election. The fucking monkey you installed in the White House took us to war for no fucking reason and when those of us who knew better called him on it you called us traitors and terrorist sympathizers.
And you are going to sit there and lecture me about my side not playing fair? I think not.
Back to Hunter for the final three outs of the game (emphasis mine):
I know you hate me, and anyone else who dares disturb the thin strands of alternate reality in which George W. Bush is an intellectual giant, Saddam really was responsible for 9/11, the economy is getting better by the minute, and we capture the most very important members of al Qaeda on a weekly basis.
But here's some advice. You'd better start hating me more. This is the world you forged and, unfortunately for you, I'm beginning to take a fancy for it. Welcome to the politics of your own party, finally sprouting from the ground on which you planted the seeds and shat upon them.
..
Get used to the world you have created, and the stench your worshipped heroes have unleashed.
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[2005.09.28 - 05:30 P.M.] SOMETIMES REASONABLE PEOPLE CAN'T DISAGREE
The other night I dreamt that I had died and, since I was an evil liberal, had been sent to Hell. The 8th Circle of Hell, to be exact, where my punishment was to be lectured by Nicholas Kristof for all eternity on the need for Democrats to reach out to Evangelical Christians. As I strained at the red-hot manacles around my wrists, eyes bulging, veins pulsing, trying to get my hands around Kristof's throat, I happened to catch a glimpse over one of the prefabricated partitions Satan had installed -- Hell is a cube farm, wouldn't you know? -- into the loathsome 9th Circle, the Heart of the Pit itself, reserved for the worst transgressors. What I saw there made me reconsider my own plight, for while Kristof was certainly torture enough, in that worst of all Hells was none other than Amy Goodman, haranguing (now former) National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy for her refusal to endorse "Pro-Life" Democrats.
I woke up shaking, twitching, and generally ill-at-ease but deeply grateful that I was an Atheist and didn't believe in that "afterlife" crap.
Truly, reading Goodman as she rattles on about the tactical mistake that abortion rights advocates are making when they back pro-choice Republicans over pro-life Democrats is a brutal experience:
Now, no one expects pro-choice groups to endorse or fund pro-life candidates. That wouldn't make sense. But--and this is my point--they could just be neutral. That's what they've done in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign. Because if you care about choice, five Harry Reids (or Bob Caseys) are worth more than five Lincoln Chafees for the simple reason that a Harry Reid-led Senate wouldn't push anti-abortion legislation and a Bill Frist-led Senate does.
This is not a difficult calculation. And yet it gets lost in all of the yelling about "giving up our principles" and only wanting "the right kind of Democrats."
The impulse to engage in ideological cleansing is understandable and it is dangerously stupid. It is folly to pretend that pro-choice Dems stand an even or better chance against Republicans in some races. And it takes the eye off the ball.
Ah, silly abortion rights advocates. "Be Neutral!" Amy commands. Stand and sneer and give dirty looks if you must, but make way in the Big Tent for those who would, if they had the power, deny you one of the most fundamental rights imaginable -- a right so profound it has no analog for half of our species. Make way in the tent for those who would violate you! What's the matter with you??!! Would you close the tent flap to them? Elections are at stake!
Makes me nuts.
Makes me nuts because I don't see abortion rights as a political marker to be bargained with. I don't want to talk about the "optics" of the issue and I don't want to discuss how we should "frame" it. I simply do not see it as a subject about which reasonable people can disagree.
I am not, for the most part, an ideological purist. I realize there are plenty of issues which people in my party are going to disagree on. Tax breaks for Big Business? Not my first choice, but go ahead and make your case. Want to argue about where to set the minimum wage? Have at it. Think nuclear energy deserves another look? I disagree, for the moment at least, but I might be convinced I'm wrong. Backed the Iraq war? You're a fucking idiot, but hey, everyone makes stupid mistakes.
Abortion rights is not "just another issue", however. It is a foundational matter. It goes beyond the standard back-and-forth of the relationship between a government and its citizens. It goes to being human.
Social libertarians sometimes speak of abortion rights as being a matter of "control over one's body". I've fallen back on that argument myself, many a time, in fact. It sounds superficially right, but it's also misleading. That characterization makes it too easy to bucket the right to end a pregnancy in the same category as the right to drink or smoke or do illicit drugs or have deviant sex. All rights that I enthusiastically support, of course, but they're all things that "you" do with "your" body in the same way that you drive your car fast or slow, keep it spotlessly waxed or let it get dinged up.
That dualism evaporates when the subject is reproduction. The reproductive process is fundamentally human. It's not merely something we do, it's something we are. It's a distinction that's hard to convey, yes, but I'm trying. Put it this way: Would you let the government restrict how fast your heart beats? When you sweat? What gives you an erection or makes you wet? Gah. Better examples fail me. Nothing comes close.
The nature of what so-called "pro-lifers" are proposing when they talk about using the government to restrict reproductive freedom -- the depth of the violation involved -- is extra-hard to get across because for the male half of the species it requires a leap of empathy, a willingness to put ourselves in the position of the woman and imagine feeling something we can never feel, experiencing something we can never experience. Some men make that leap. Many don't. The ability to do so is, in my opinion, an absolutely necessary trait for anyone who's going to lead our party.
Harry Reid -- who is "pro life" -- has indeed been a fairly effective Senate Minority Leader. His political instincts are better than most of the leaders the Democrats have put forth recently. Would I replace him with a Pro-Choice Democrat if I had the chance? In a stone-cold heartbeat. Because his position on abortion leads me to doubt his other instincts. I cannot bring myself to trust his judgement in other matters when he is so wrong on this one.
No doubt Amy Goodman would say this is bad politics on my part, that I'm applying a "litmus test".
Indeed I am. I'm pretty confident about the accuracy of that test too.
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[2005.09.26 - 05:30 P.M.] JAGUARS 26 - JETS 20
This is the worst kind of loss. Not just because it came in overtime, either. No, this was one of those games where you sit there for three hours thinking "Yes, they can win, but I know they're not going to." And the reason you're thinking this is the stupid mistakes and miscues -- the one play in 20 that gives away an otherwise hard fought game. It was the two Pennington interceptions. It was the punt return fumbled away and recovered by Jacksonville in our red zone that wasted a great defensive stand. It was David Barrett keeping Jimmy Smith under wraps for 60 minutes, then giving up the crucial catch that ends the game. It was a game where there was the tiniest margin for error and our guys just made one mistake too many.
Doesn't help, of course, that Shadow Chad is back. That's the Chad Pennington that is a frustrating ghost of what his fans know he can be -- what he was for one shining fragment of a season -- Great. Back was The QB Who Wasn't Quite There. Once again, Pennington got his shoulder sent out of whack yesterday, prompting me to put my head in my hands and ask "Will this ever end? Is this his career in a nutshell?" Could be. Oh and -- damn you, football gods -- our backup, Jay Fiedler, a decent game manager we were hoping to rely on in these instances, went in to spell Pennington for a series and promptly hurt his shoulder. Cursed much?
I do want to point something out -- not to excuse Pennington but just because it needs to be said: Our receivers aren't doing much to help the cause. Yes, Chad's having difficulty with some throws. A yard off here, a floater there. Well maybe one of our guys -- I'm pointing to you, Lavernaeus -- needs to stop just mechanically running routes and jump up there and get the fucking thing. That'd be nice, no? Show a little creativity. Throw your QB a life preserver. Because if Pennington is going to do anything this season he's going to need a hell of a lot more help than I've seen yet from any of the guys heading downfield.
On the bright side, after facing arguably the league's most ferocious defense, the next two weeks we get creampuff assignments against the Ravens and Bucs. Fucking bullshit. I'm hating this season already...
NEW YORK (AP) -- Jets quarterback Chad Pennington will miss the rest of the season because of a torn right rotator cuff, The Associated Press learned Monday night.
Pennington's injury was confirmed by a person with knowledge of his condition, but who declined to be identified because the team had not made an official announcement.
An MRI exam showed Pennington tore his rotator cuff in Sunday's 26-20 overtime loss to Jacksonville. The NFL Network originally reported the injury, the second time Pennington has had this tear in less than a year.
Fuck. Just...
Fuck.
[2005.09.21 - 07:30 P.M.] HACK CLIMATOLOGY
As Rita, the second category five hurricane of the season, stomps across the Gulf of Mexico looking to wreak havoc on another American city (Houston, the latest predictions indicate), it's important to remember that the trend we're seeing towards bigger, badder, more destructive storms has nothing to do with global warming.
At least that's what we've been assured by no less an authority than Washington Post Columnist/Psychologist/Climatologist Charles Krauthammer, who recently stated:
"There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period."
Where does Krauthammer come by this iron-clad certainty? It's hard to imagine.
Since interest first began to build in global warming, one of the most consistent predictions of scientists studying the phenomenon has been that we would see an increase in violently intense storms including, of course, hurricanes. These storms feed off of warm ocean water, building in strength as they cross it. Now, given that it is a fact that our oceans are trending warmer due to global warming, it would certainly seem that global warming is one of the reasons for the more severe hurricanes we've been experiencing in recent years, no? And in fact that is the conclusion a team of researchers recently came to (emphasis mine):
Storms with the power of Hurricane Katrina are becoming more common, in part because of global warming, according to a report from a team of researchers that will be published Friday.
The number of storms in the two most powerful categories, 4 and 5, rose to an average of 18 a year worldwide since 1990, up from 11 in the 1970's, according to the report, which will be published in the journal Science.
There was no increase in storms over all, the researchers said, just in their intensity. But the rise in intensity, they said, coincided with an increase of nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in the surfaces of tropical seas around the world.
Now, as a friend of mine tediously felt the need to remind me, correlation does not imply causality. This is true. We are not, however, talking about a phenomenon such as the well-known inverse relationship between number of pirates and global mean temperature. We are looking at a case where the causal mechanism for these fierce storms is known and it would take a willfully obtuse frame of mind not to see the connection to rising ocean temperatures caused by global warming.
So again, what would it take to make one assert in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary that there's no connection between global warming and more destructive hurricanes? I'm guessing a big enough paycheck from the Right Wing Noise Machine would do it.
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[2005.09.18 - 07:40 P.M.] JETS 17 - DOLPHINS 7
The Word in Jet Nation right about now is... Phew.
They don't suck.
They're not all the way to where they should be yet, but they don't suck.
The defense was pretty solid today. Miami was only able to put together two drives against us all game, only one of which resulted in a score. John Abraham was in full berserker mode. Ty Law is now my second-favorite ex-Patriot (behind Curtis Martin, of course). Nice all-around effort in stymieing a 'Phins offense that looked pretty damned good against Denver last week.
The Jets offense was hit or miss. Which, of course, represents a million percent improvement over last week, when they were just miss.
Chad definitely gave me reason to hope today. Sure, there were plenty of missed opportunities and bad throws, but there were also stretches where he put it together. One of the announcers pointed out something that, if true, definitely shed some light on last week's dismal performance. After his shoulder surgery, Pennington is now supposed to have full range-of-motion on his throw. While this could be a great thing in the long term, it implies growing pains in the here and now, as Chad has to essentially re-learn his throwing motion. In any case, he looked a hell of a lot better this week than I was expecting after last week's debacle.
All in all, I get a sense that this is a team that's still getting their shit together. If they can keep progressing at this rate, by week 4 or 5 they might qualify as "Good". We'll see.
As promised, we'll look at my predictions and see how I've done so far:
Yep. So far, I'm as good as a coin flip.
Can't tell you how happy that makes me. They are human after all. Nice to know.
[2005.09.16 - 07:35 A.M.] SAFE IN CT
Last week, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I speculated that Connecticut might just be one of the safest places one could pick to live in terms of danger from natural disasters. Well, it turns out Slate's Brendan Koerner decided to answer this very question, and I was right:
Of the 18 [remaining] states, only three had a fatality rate lower than 0.01 per thousand for the last decade: Connecticut (0.00587 per thousand), Massachusetts (0.00299), and Rhode Island (0.00286). These figures are somewhat surprising, given that all three of these New England states have ample coastlines and are thus susceptible to fierce storms. But they are also more immune to hurricanes than their southerly counterparts, virtually free of tornadoes, and blessed with relatively cool summers and winters that, although cold, aren't quite North Dakota cold. They're also affluent—all three boast family median incomes above the national average—and, as Hurricane Katrina reminded us, socioeconomics matter when it comes to preserving life during natural disasters.
Based solely on the numbers, then, Rhode Island would seem to be the winner. But the tiny state's cities are clustered around bays and rivers, which means a major hurricane could cause flooding. During the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, for example, a violent storm surge hit Providence.
Eastern Massachusetts is dicey because its long coastline is exposed to the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean. The rural west has proven statistically safer, but winter in the Berkshires can be snowy and harsh.
That leaves Connecticut, whose coastline faces the Long Island Sound rather than the open ocean.
So there you go.
New State Slogan: Connecticut - Basking in Mother Nature's blind spot.
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[2005.09.08 - 05:15 P.M.] WHY YES, I AM READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!
Tonight the NFL kicks off the 2005 season with the now-traditional Thursday Night Opening Game (more on this in a moment). Pro Football being my favorite spectator sport, I am brimming with anticipation. Visions of the Jets winning the Superbowl -- a victorious Chad Pennington with arm raised high carried off of the field by his jubilant teammates -- tease me in my idle moments. (Barring that, I can always hope for a spectacular Patriots' collapse. But I'm not betting on it.) Both of my fantasy lineups are set and ready to go. My initial picks are submitted for the two pools I've got money in this year. Let the games begin!
(sigh)
Well, actually, it's "Let the game begin".
See, this Thursday night thing really isn't my first choice. Not that I don't watch -- you couldn't pry me away from the TV tonight. But still, I'd much prefer to go back to the old days when eight or so games kicked off all at once on that glorious Opening Sunday. The Thursday night opener is like... Well, it's like that little taste of Spring that we always get here in New England around February, just before Winter comes back and says "Psyche!" Tonight's game will be great, sure, but then I'm stuck with a two-day case of NFL Blue Balls waiting for my Jets and the rest of the league to get it on. Memo to Tagliabue: If you want an initial showcase, do it on Saturday night, or even Friday. Thursday is just too far out ahead of things.
Anyhow, I digress. Tonight's game is between the Patriots and the Raiders, so all I can say about that is:
"GO RAIDERS!!!"
Now, as for my Jets...
I weren't kiddin' about that Superbowl thing. Maybe it's a little far-fetched. They'll probably need a full year working with new O Coordinator Mike Heimerdinger before they're truly ready to crush the rest of the league. But still. It could happen.
What's beyond doubt is that this year's Jets will be a hell of a lot more fun to watch than the 2004 version. Gone is the despicable Paul Hackett, author of the Most Conservative Offense Known to Man -- an offense that made the players look like they were playing with handcuffs and leg irons on. Now we have the aforementioned Mr. Heimerdinger, whose guiding philosophy is "Fling That Thang!" That's right, this is the guy who made Titans second-stringer Billy Volek look like Dan Marino down the stretch last year. Heimerdinger is going to show the world a whole new look for Gang Green. We are going vertical, and win or lose, that's the kind of football I want to see.
You see, in sports as in politics, "conservative" is just another word for ugly and stupid.
Unlike pretty much every other warm body in the sports-watching world, I am not the least bit worried about Chad Pennington's shoulder or his ability to handle Heimerdinger's new schemes. I am a hard-core Chad Believer -- have been since Day One -- and I know he's going to get it done. His offseason surgery appears to have finally given him the proper mechanics to get the ball way downfield, and contra his many critics, I don't think his past struggles in that regard have anything to do with arm strength. The guy was hobbled by chronic shoulder issues and a chronically shitty offensive play-caller. This year all you Chad nay-sayers are going to get an eyeful of what he can do. He's always had the accuracy, the intelligence, and the leadership qualities to be a Great Quarterback. Now he's got his arm out of the sling and a guy who wants to go long calling the shots. Watch out.
On defense (not my analytical strong suit, admittedly), coordinator Donnie Henderson is in his second year, and I expect the jump in progress this year to be commensurate with his first go-round, when he took us from laughingstock of the league to solidly middle-tier. The Vilma-led linebacking corps should put us in the top-5 in terms of stuffing the run, and the down-by-Law secondary will at the very least be markedly improved over last year.
Our special teams were already among the league's best. No worries there.
But the other piece of big news? And now... at kicker... MIKE NUGENT!!!
The Jets took a lot of crap from some quarters for taking a kicker in the second round. I think it was genius. This dude's got a cannon for a leg and he's got the accuracy we'll need to erase the memories of Doug Brien's betrayal in Pittsburgh last January.
So, I've said a lot here that ought to make you think I've got high hopes for the J-E-T-S. I do, but I'm not entirely blinded by homerdom. We play in the toughest division of the absolutely loaded AFC. It'll take double digits in the win column to even grab a wildcard this year. So it's a good thing I'm projecting an 11-5 finish. Here's how I break it down:
(I'll update the "Actual" column and re-post this table after each week so that we may all witness my awe-inspiring prognostication skills. Or my utter cluelessness. We'll see.)
Other thoughts. The hated Patriots will probably take the AFC East again (but unlike the rest of the league, my Jets can beat them at Foxborough.) Peyton Manning will throw 50 touchdowns, none of which will come on November 7th. Curtis Martin will rush for 1000 yards again. The Cowboys will struggle to a 6-10 record after which Bill Parcells will retire (again). The Panthers will win the NFC. And whatever team wins the AFC will, of course, win the Superbowl.
[2005.09.07 - 05:15 P.M.] NORMAL
The Washington Post this morning, in an article on the passage of California's Gay Marriage bill, quotes Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, an opponent of the bill, who makes the following point:
"It's not about civil rights or personal rights, it's about acceptance. They want to be accepted as normal. They are not normal."
I'd like to unpack Mr. Mountjoy's quote, because even though -- or perhaps because -- he's only a schmuck Assemblyman, I think he concisely voices the argument that the Right really wants to make and probably does make in living rooms and barrooms across the country. In order, I would score his assertions as Wrong, Right, Partially Right, and Right. Let's break it down:
"It's not about civil rights or personal rights..."
Wrong. Gay marriage most certainly is about civil rights and personal rights. That's not even open to debate. The rights accorded a married couple are numerous and substantial, and we have a clear-cut case here of an aggrieved minority demanding the same rights that the majority enjoys.
"...it's about acceptance..."
Right. I'm sure an awful lot of gays and lesbians, after a lifetime of scarring social experiences, have adopted a defensive posture of "fuck you, I don't care if you accept me or not". At bottom, however, we all want to be accepted as who we are and welcomed into society. That's human nature.
"...They want to be accepted as normal..."
Partially right. See above and below for details.
"They are not normal."
Right. And neither are you, sir.
This is the crux of the matter, the heart of the issue, the hot core that has fed so many social and religious conflicts over the years: The notion that sexual "norms" exist and that society can and should enforce them. I'm here to tell you it's bullshit.
As my favorite author, Robert Anton Wilson, is fond of pointing out, there are no "normal" human beings. Anywhere.
This is particularly true when it comes to human sexual behavior. Human beings are in a somewhat unique position as far as animals go. We have the same fairly ancient bimodal sexual brain as our evolutionary cousins, second cousins, and third cousins twice removed. We are either aroused or not. Horny or not. Turned on or turned off. The difference for us is that, on top of that, we've got this enormous stack of gray matter that can take our perceptions and sensations and use them as fodder for an infinite array of thoughts, fantasies, daydreams, and whatnot. This extraordinarily complex "higher" brain is wired into and on top of that simple sexual circuitry, and the results the two produce together are as endlessly varied and fascinating as humanity itself.
We have men who are turned on by women, men who are turned on by men, men who are turned on by latex, men who are turned on by wearing women's clothing, and men who are turned on by lurking in outhouse receptacles.
We have women who are turned on by men, women who are turned on by women, and women who prefer handheld appliances to either.
Some people like fucking, some don't. Some people like sucking, some don't. Some people really dig feet. Some people get all juiced up by the grossly overweight.
Some people are wildly dominant in the bedroom and some are hopelessly submissive.
Some people just aren't that interested in sex. Some people can barely think of anything but.
Finally, there are some people -- I'm talking to you, Assemblyman Mountjoy (and you, Senator Santorum) -- who are so terribly frightened of sex that they spend their careers trying to rein in the wild and varied sexual predilections of their neighbors, because to accept those behaviors might force them to confront something in themselves that makes them deeply uncomfortable, something that makes them go "Oh, gross" (while perhaps thinking to themselves "Oh, I want me some of that, but, but, but...").
In the end, it's not terribly important how we each come to have our "kinks", it's just important to recognize that we all have them, that there is not a single sexually "normal" human being on this planet, and that in light of that, "acceptance" should be granted with the utmost generosity to anyone who isn't hurting anyone else.
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[2005.09.06 - 05:45 P.M.] IMAGINE YOU'RE THE PRESIDENT
Shakespeare's Sister is having a hard time understanding Bush's We'll-Get-To-The-Bottom-Of-This-Eventually approach to the Katrina clusterfuck:
Dude, time is the very thing we don't know how much we got. The next hurricane, the next flood, the next terrorist attack, the next infectious outbreak, the next disaster of any kind could be tomorrow. You’d better get your shit in gear and figure out right fucking now what went wrong and how to fix it and get feeding us rubbish about how the rescue effort has to be completed first. It's called multitasking, Mr. CEO President, and you’d better sort out a way to accomplish it immediately.
Thing is, Bush will never figure out what "went wrong" over the last week because the answer is in his blind spot -- namely, the mirror.
Bush went wrong this past week. Even given everything his ideological band of Merry Men had done to set the stage, you have to believe that if he really wanted to take charge of the situation, he could have. He is the President. And not only that, he is a president who has arrogated unprecedented powers for the executive branch. Put yourself in his shoes last week as you're flying home on Air Force One and you see those thousands of people at the NOLA convention center -- see them dropping like flies -- and you see that the vast machinery of government at your command is doing nothing. What do you do?
Here's what I do: I get out my stopwatch, then I turn to cabinet and say "You have 24 hours to get all of those people to safety. Do whatever is necessary. Assume you have my approval. If you fail, I will hold a press conference tomorrow at exactly this hour to announce that you're all fired."
And then I would walk up to the cockpit and tell the pilot to land us in New Orleans.
Think that wouldn't have gotten the job done?
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[2005.09.06 - 05:45 P.M.] DISGUSTING
If Ed Kilgore is onto something with this interpretation of the administration's blame-shifting efforts as a nakedly partisan attempt to pin Katrina on Louisiana Dems, then they really do think we're stupider than the stupidest of stupids:
it's now pretty clear the White House is politicizing the situation even more starkly and much more divisively. The underlying theme of the president's tour of the region today is that things are going very well in places like Alabama and Mississippi with the right (literally and figuratively) state and local leadership. Meanwhile, the storyline continues, Bush has to go down to New Orleans (with the wrong, i.e., Democratic leadership) himself to get things turned around.
This is apparently what Bush meant this morning before his departure from Washington when he said the relief effort wasn't "acceptable." He wasn't talking about FEMA's universally derided initial response; in Mobile, he told FEMA Director Michael Brown (or "Brownie," as he called him) he was doing a great job. No, Bush's stern disapproval was aimed at New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
On the one hand, this would answer the burning question of "Who the hell does Bush think he's leveling the word 'unacceptable' at?"
On the other...
Are you fucking kidding me?
So the problem isn't that New Orleans is in Louisiana -- and not, say, Mississippi or Alabama -- it's that Louisiana is run by Democrats. The problem isn't that Louisiana was smack in the middle of the storm track and Alabama wasn't, it's that Louisiana is run by Democrats. That's the new spin???
Has Limbaugh picked up on this yet? I can just hear him: "Only a librul would be stupid enough to build a city below sea level..."
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[2005.09.06 - 05:30 P.M.] OOOOOOH, NICE LIE YOU'VE GOT THERE
As much as the entire Washington D.C. insider class -- including pundits and politicians from both sides of the aisle -- like to give the Bush administration credit for running such a masterful political operation, all that's ever really been at the heart of their awe-inspiring and tremble-inducing machine is the ability to lie without shame. Yes, granted, there's also the not-inconsiderable talent of being able to get everyone on the team to tell the same exact lie, and there's the stamina and endurance necessary to keep telling the lie over the long term. Don't think for a minute that I'm not impressed by that.
At the end of the day, however, none of this would be possible without a core group of people who are pathological liars, and I do mean "pathological" in the clinical sense. Although I am not a licensed psychiatrist, I think I'm being accurate when I say that a "pathological" liar is someone who is utterly lacking in the basic social conditioning that causes us normal people to fret, or blush, or get otherwise squirrelly when we state something we know to be untrue. It's a pretty rare personality trait. So rare that I wouldn't be surprised if the White House administered lie-detector tests to potential staff members to make certain that they really can lie without giving anything away.
Whatever the case, that's 99% of the Bush administration's power right there. They are the best team of liars we've ever had in the White House, and it gives them enormous leverage over the national dialog. I think all of us on the left have this figured out, and the rest of the country is coming along. While this is "old news" to some of us, however, it doesn't prevent me from experiencing a perverse thrill at seeing a perfect example of Bush's Lie Squad in action. It's like the rush that a collector must get when they find that perfectly preserved coin or, perhaps, the thrill a bird watcher gets when they see a textbook example of some denizen of the treetops.
So it was that I found myself spellbound by the Bushies' claims that Governor Blanco of Louisiana never declared a state of emergency for Hurricane Katrina.
This assertion, peddled to media outlets including the Washington Post
and Now, the first aspect of this -- knowing it was false -- I think we've pretty much covered above. Karl and his Kretins care not one whit whether what they say is true or false. They're exemplary in that regard. But what about the "getting caught" part? Even the best liars worry about getting caught, no? Actually, I don't think they do. The purpose of the lie, if it needs a purpose at all, is to sew chaos and doubt in the minds of the lie-ees.
The false idea that Blanco did not declare a state of emergency is out there now, and no number of retractions will erase it. I guarantee you that, years from now, you will be at a family gathering, or at your local bar, or at the water cooler at work, and the Bush administration's horrible failure in responding to Katrina will come up, and some fool -- perhaps a 'winger, perhaps just a garden-variety rube -- will assert that the Governor of Louisiana never declared a state of emergency and therefore poor president Bush was helpless to respond.
"But she did", you'll say. "No she didn't!" the fool will respond.
And all the evidence in the world won't help you. The damage done by Bush's crack squad of liars will go unrepaired for decades to come. Maybe forever. That's all this awesome political machine knows how to do: Permanently rend the landscape of truth.
Heck of a talent. Their parents must be proud.
[2005.09.05 - 08:15 P.M.] BROOKS
David Brooks really is the King of the op-ed Weasels. In a piece expounding upon Katrina, placing the botched emergency response in the context of other recent "failures" -- Enron, Iraq's non-existent WMD's, Abu Ghraib, and, um, steroids in baseball (what the fuck?) -- Brooks spends half the column wringing his hands and the other half plunging them into the political swamp to muddy the waters and obscure the assorted predators and ground feeders who keep fucking the rest of us over. To wit:
[T]here is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.
No, Mr. Brooks, in case after case, there hasn't been a failure of administration, there has been a failure of the Bush administration. Virtually everything failure, fuck up, swindle, and catastrophe Brooks cites can be laid squarely at the feet of George W. Bush and his minions, but you will not find the word "Bush" mentioned once in Brooks' piece. Not once. The entire essay is a mendacious whimper of "Oh, these troubled times we live in", as if the shit we've gone through isn't the result of actions traceable to specific actors.
Well, perhaps Brooks has a convenient case of amnesia, but most of us who have been living through the hell that is America in the Bush years do not. After Bush's contemptible response to the victims of Katrina, I'm guessing everyone outside of the BushBot 30% -- that sad, brain-dead segment of the population whose minds have ossified beyond the ability to ever break free from their partisan bindings -- knows the score. I am confident that history will not record these years as a period of inexplicable darkness and chaos. It will record them as a time when a small group of bad actors at the vanguard of an intellectually bankrupt ideological movement brought America low.
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[2005.09.02 - 07:15 P.M.] BY ACCEPTING A GIFT...
So, in our hour of need, it looks like countries are lining up to give us help. Twenty two at last count. How does the arrogant fool in the White House respond?
"I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it."
"You know," he said, "we would love help, but we're going to take care of our own business as well, and there's no doubt in my mind we'll succeed…"
Translation: "We don't need your help. Fuck off.
Over at Shakes' place, people were wondering what conceivable urge could lead anyone -- even someone as fucking clueless as Bush -- to turn his back on offers of aid at a time like this. Well, I think I understand what's going on in his head. (shudder)
In the Thomas Covenant series, which I'm currently reading, the people of The Land have a saying:
"By accepting a gift, you honor the giver."
I think this pithy little statement accurately encapsulates one of the key psychological dynamics behind giving and receiving gifts, and assistance in time of need is certainly a kind of gift. Given that dynamic, it's clear why the last thing Bush wants is to accept help from other nations: It would honor them. It would grant them status. It would elevate them.
Is there anyone on Earth more averse to honoring others than George Bush?
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[2005.09.02 - 05:00 P.M.] IDEOLOGY KILLS
Back in college I had a political science professor, Ned Woodhouse, who had a banner that hung over the door to his office which simply read "Ideology Kills". I always understood what he was getting at at an intellectual level. It wasn't until now, a decade and a half later, that the visceral truth of that simple statement has come home to me. In an unlikely turn of events, it might be the message that finally sets things right in this country again.
As the terrible drama continues to unfold in New Orleans, a consensus seems to be emerging on the left about how to approach the political dimension of hurricane Katrina. The message we're hearing from both liberal pundits and the lefty blogosphere today is, yes, the Bush administration bears some culpability for this disaster, but in the end, it is conservative ideology itself which set and baited the trap and then led an unwitting population to its doom.
Rob Salkowitz, in a post yesterday evening, might have been the first to clearly articulate what so many appear to be thinking after standing by helpless for days watching Katrina's victims die because their government was too slow, too incompetent, and, it often seemed, too disinterested to help them:
It's moments like this when you need a party in power that actually believes in the affirmative power of government to help its citizens, rather than the party that sees government's role as protecting the property of the well-off from the predations of the underclass. It's when the true ugly soul of American conservatism is borne out for what it is: a rationalization of selfishness and the hysterical denial of community. America is about to see what happens when the government is staffed by people appointed to their jobs precisely for their disdain for the whole notion of policy in the public interest. It's won't be pretty.
Shakespeare's Sister, in her usual calm, measured way, elaborated on this nascent meme:
Damn straight. Take a look at the international analysis of what's happening in America right now—the entire world is appalled, watching the richest country in the world let its people die of thirst, and yet that is the inevitable result of a ruling party who feels little obligation to its citizens. I once wrote: "The Conservative view ultimately benefits a very small minority; the Liberal view benefits us all." Never has that been more glaringly apparent than in the aftermath of Katrina, as those for whom Bush and his ilk have the greatest contempt turn to their government for help in a time of crisis as the whole world watches, and their government offers not compassion but blame.
..
There are those now calling for Bush's impeachment. Fuck impeachment. The whole lot of them—every last conservative ideologue who has advocated "starving the beast," every last one of those selfish, soulless, anti-American bastards—ought to be rounded up and sent to the Superdome to live in the river of shit and piss until every single refugee has been provided safe sanctuary and a warm meal. Then Bush and his gang of cretins can clean up the trail of scattered corpses. Let the blood that belongs on their hands be a literal lesson for these pitiless pieces of human refuse. It's long overdue.
This is what it really comes down to: After all these decades of yelling and screaming and hollering by extremist right wingers to convince mainstream America that their government was a burden -- something to be feared and loathed, a bunch of useless bureaucrats who screwed up everything they touched -- reality has finally brought their ideological revival tent down on their heads. Turns out we need our government after all. It turns out that we need competent people, honestly striving to serve the public good, working away in their agencies, preparing, planning, doing all the mind-numbing logistical dirty work necessary so that, when the people have nowhere else to turn, they can be assured that their government will have their backs. The truth is that we never stopped needing our government -- that most essential tool of a free society -- we just required a really compelling object lesson in order to break through the right's propaganda and see the facts laid bare.
In his column When Government is "Good", E.J. Dionne quotes "Cohen's Law", an aphorism attributed to former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen:
"Government is the enemy until you need a friend."
Exactly.
I honestly don't know how America lost sight of this. I don't know why it was so easy for the right to convince so many people that the government of the world's oldest democracy was some sort of boogeyman. But I do know that in the wreckage of Katrina, we've been given an opportunity to take back the dialog and erase the misconceptions the right has so carefully cultivated.
Why wasn't FEMA ready to respond to the needs of Katrina's victims? Because conservative ideologues crippled FEMA. Deliberately hobbled it because of their dogmatic belief that government is incompetent and inefficient. Here's Bush's original budget director, Mitch Daniels, rationalizing the decision to weaken FEMA so that the Great God Market could step in:
"The general idea — that the business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided — seems self-evident to me."
Really? Why? What is self-evident about that? Why should we believe the government is inherently bad at providing services? Sure sounds like dogma to me.
It defies logic to imagine that national disaster relief is something that should be divvied up between regional "for profit" outfits. If ever their was an enterprise that required top-down central direction and absolutely no corner-cutting, this is it. But ideology trumps logic with this crowd. As Jonathan Chait devastatingly demonstrated in his article "The Anti-Dogma Dogma" a few months back, conservatives go into every situation already having decided on the correct approach, results be damned. (Liberals, on the other hand, are interested in finding out what actually works.)
This is the line of attack. This is the dialog we need to have. This is the seed we need to plant in every American's mind while they're still reeling from the pictures of people starving to death on their rooftops while the United States government sat idly by. And, hey, is this meme spreading like wild-fire or what? Here's Kevin Drum in a post this afternoon:
One of the things that Hurricane Katrina has done is shine a very bright light on the different worldviews of liberals and conservatives.
Conservatives fundamentally believe in a limited role for the federal government. They believe in downsizing, privatizing, and placing greater reliance on state and local government to provide essential services. It's easy — too easy — to blame George Bush in hindsight for specific things like cutting the Corps of Engineers budget for the New Orleans district, but the reason this criticism is legitimate is because this wasn't merely a specific incident. As even some conservatives tacitly admit, it was a direct result of George Bush's governing ideology.
Kevin's post, finally, brings me back to the subject of George Bush, and how we should treat his role in this. As you can see from my earlier, somewhat addled posts on this subject, I don't want to make this about Bush. A big part of this, I can now admit after some introspection, is personal. Recalling my reaction to 9-11 earlier today, I realized that whenever something really bad goes down, I tend to want to black out the fact that Bush is in the White House. I literally can't handle it. That's my thing, though, and I realize that other people might feel differently, might be able to allow themselves to feel rage at the man's bungling stupidity and callousness while simultaneously coping with grief and alarm. So if I came across as being a dick to any of those people, I'm sorry.
I do still believe, however, that we'd do better to at least focus more prominently on the ideological angle than on Bush's personal failings. Even supposing we could somehow break through to the BushBot Brigades this late in the game, what would really be the point? OK, so people might finally "get" that Bush is a terrible president. That would be a deeply satisfying event, yes, but it might have the perverse effect of giving the far right an emergency exit in their moment of peril. True, Bush is a terrible president and an execrable human being, but we need to get through to our fellow Americans that any president with hard-right conservative leanings will, inevitably, screw the pooch. It's the ideology, not the man, that ultimately needs to be brought down if America is to be great again.
This is the time to make that case. Katrina was the story. The positive role of a strong central government was the moral. Now we just need to hammer it home.
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Buddy of mine sent me a link to the 
