Blue Dot Blog

Empty Nest

2006-05-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago I was going through my daughter's clothes, pulling out all of the newborn and 0-3 month sizes. Some of my favorite outfits were in that group. So tiny and so sweet!

I can't believe how fast it is all going by. I miss my little tiny baby girl! And as I put away her smallest outfits I suddenly realized that before I know it, she'll be going off to college! I got all teary-eyed.

"Empty Nest Syndrome," and she's only five months old!

Hello Again

2006-05-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've taken a very long leave from blogging and just checked back to see if the fate that had befallen ol' Red Dirt's blog had come to mine. His was taken over by some weird commercial site from India, I think, and then disappeared.

I don't have too much to say. I suspect this may turn into a "family" blog because I am now a mom. It's amazing how much room that takes up in my brain.

Our Senators Supported Torture

2005-10-06T03:33:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma's senators were two of only nine to vote against the McCain amendment limiting torture.

I'm embarrassed.

Read about it here.

How To Help President Bush

2005-09-16T06:51:00.000-07:00

Just when the flaws in the Bush administration were becoming apparent to the American people, just when the fog was beginning to lift, Democrats have to ruin it by kicking the guy when he's down. They play every card that relates to the disaster without an ounce of subtlety or diplomacy or tact. Americans love an underdog and can smell political opportunism a mile away. I fear that they will rush to the defense of our dear leader and will dismiss needed reforms and legitimate complaints as more of the political piling on.

Why can't the Democrats let incompetence speak for itself?

What Are They Afraid Of?

2005-09-15T04:02:00.000-07:00

Why did Republican Senators kill a bid to set up a balanced, independent Katrina commission?

There is, as we all know, plenty of blame to go around. Evaluating our actions and learning from our mistakes are extremely high priorities if we are going to have any hope of responding better to the next disaster.

When Republicans want a Republican majority on the committee, how is this not partisan? This is just cras CYA from the party in charge. They would rather bury our heads in the sand until we suffocate to death than allow us to see any mistakes on their part, even if there are plenty of mistakes by the other guys, too.

It makes me sick.

American Muslims

2005-09-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a story out of Houston about the generosity and hurricane relief efforts of American Muslims there. I know that there are plenty of Muslims who don't believe that terrorism is okay or that Israel must be destroyed, but it is hard to find any good stories about Muslims in the media. So, thanks, Houston Chronicle, for the heartening story. We need more like it.

Mind-Boggling Statistic

2005-09-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times (again):

"the world's richest 500 individuals have the same income as the world's poorest 416 million people"

Read the rest of Nicholas Kristof's op-ed here.

A Fair Criticism of Bush

2005-09-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

You can't blame President Bush for everything, but you can blame him for helping to take the usefulness out of government.

"...what we really should be asking is whether FEMA's decline and fall is unique, or part of a larger pattern. What other government functions have been crippled by politicization, cronyism and/or the departure of experienced professionals? How many FEMA's are there?
Unfortunately, it's easy to find other agencies suffering from some version of the FEMA syndrome."

Read on. (From the New York Times).

The Biggest Problem with FEMA

2005-09-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times:

"Under the Bush administration, FEMA redefined its role, offering assistance but remaining subordinate to state and local governments. "Our typical role is to work with the state in support of local and state agencies," said David Passey, a FEMA spokesman.
With Hurricane Katrina, that meant the agency most experienced in dealing with disasters and with access to the greatest resources followed, rather than led."

Disasters may be common to the country as a whole, but they are rare for individual locations. The people who do disasters ought to run disasters.

The NY Times article is terrific, the best I've read about the hurricane and its aftermath. It is also long. Read it here.

It's a Start

2005-09-11T05:31:00.000-07:00

The Oklahoman today reports on a new requirement that schools receiving federal funding teach their students about the Constitution.

Apparently Senator Byrd put the new requirement into a spending bill.

While I think saying of the Pledge of Allegiance is a fine idea, it can become an almost empty act if We the People have no idea what our nation stands for. I think that learning the Constitution is a far more patriotic act, and one that will help our students become better citizens.

This is a drop in the bucket, but at least it's a start.

Mystery Man Revealed

2005-09-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare's Sister reveals the identity of the man who voiced the feelings of many Americans when speaking to Vice President Cheney a few days ago.

I tip my hat to the man who broke through the bubble. [The hat goes firmly back on for his attempts to make a buck on this via eBay, though.]

The Disconnect From Civic Life

2005-09-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

This week's New Republic has an article by Lawrence Kaplan that I found both depressing and inspiring. He contrasts the continued lack of engagement by Americans in civic life after 9/11 with the increased civic activity noted during previous times of national peril:

"Civic attachments, a sense of shared purpose, a propensity to sacrifice for the common good--if historical precedent offers any guide, all of these should have been renewed in the aftermath of September 11. As Harvard's Theda Skocpol noted in her 2001 study, "Patriotic Partnerships: Why Great Wars Nourished American Civil Voluntarism," "America's civic vigor was greatly enhanced, both following the national fratricide of the 1860s and amidst the plunge into global conflict between 1917 and 1919." The pattern held during World War II and the cold war, conflicts that boosted everything from membership in voluntary associations to the fortunes of the civil rights movement. And, yet, not only has everything not changed since September 11; nothing has. According to a mountain of attitudinal and behavioral data collected in the past four years, the post- September 11 mood that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge dubbed "the new normalcy" resembles nothing so much as the old normalcy."

Some of the blame is laid at the feet of the Bush Administration, for not calling our countrymen to shared sacrifice.

"The circumstances that required mass mobilization during World War II are, of course, not the circumstances the United States confronts today. In Bush's telling, however, the war on terrorism requires something closer to mass demobilization. "Get on board," he urged in the immediate aftermath of September 11. "Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life." As for sacrifice, the president elaborated, "I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before." Nor, in the ensuing four years, has Bush asked ordinary Americans to sacrifice much of anything else."

But a lot of it is blamed on the general state of our society.

"Those who most enjoy the benefits and freedoms of this country now serve it the least. There is a very simple reason for this: With the coming of an all-volunteer military in 1973--applauded at the time as a gesture of heightened moral awareness--the definition of American citizenship narrowed to the point of excluding the obligation to defend one's country. Aside from the 1.4 million men and women in the Armed Forces, their families, and members of law enforcement, virtually no one participates in today's effort."

I would encourage everyone to read the entire article. Perhaps now, when 53% of Americans say our country is headed in the wrong direction, we may begin a serious national discussion on how to turn things around.

We need a great leader who will call us all to greatness and unity. I hope someone worthy will step into the job in the next few years.

You Got That Right

2005-09-10T04:27:00.000-07:00

This says it all.

Katrina and the US As Viewed From the UK

2005-09-10T03:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a sobering editorial from the UK's The Guardian, describing the US's superpower status as having been exposed as nothing but smoke and mirrors by the twin blows of Iraq and Katrina.

It seems that, at least in their view, the "American Century" is not going to have a repeat performance.

Censorship of the Dead

2005-09-08T01:48:00.000-07:00

And then there is this.

Just as Americans aren't allowed to see photos of coffins coming back from Iraq, it appears we won't be allowed to see photos of the dead in New Orleans, even if they aren't identifiable.

That's us. "Land of the free."

Could we possibly dehumanize death any more?

Right now the most prominent images of people from the disaster are of the desperate, angry crowds at the convention center and Superdome, and of the looters. Images of the dead bodies floating in the water and lying abandoned on the streets do a heck of a lot more than words to explain the desperation and anger and some (though certainly not all) of the looting. Death is a huge part of this story, and we do our nation, those who died, and the survivors all a disservice by sanitizing the bodies out of the picture.

We Need a Real Commission

2005-09-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

Josh Marshall's site led me to this disappointing article from the Washington Post, in which it is stated that calls for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the failings of the Katrina response have been ignored. Instead, the investigation will be GOP-led.

We have already seen so much bitter partisan debate on what has happened and is happening, that I don't think non-Republican citizens of our nation will have confidence in the hearings. I suspect even some Republicans may have lost trust in our elected officials' ability to investigate themselves and their leaders. There are simply too many recent, pre-Katrina, instances of fact distortion and master spinning to trust a Republican-led process. I wouldn't want or trust a Democrat-led process, either. I want an independent and bipartisan one. How about a rational look, for a change?

The stakes are so very high. We must get our disaster response on track. We cannot afford to let this most critical of investigations even have a whiff of partisan cover-up about it.

The Families of September 11 organized to force the government to investigate the 9/11 attacks with an independent, bipartisan commission. Will the families of Katrina be able to do the same? Will the underprivileged people of Louisiana and Mississippi have the same clout as families of NYC financial district and Pentagon workers?

I want answers, not politics. We all deserve an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate this catastrophe, as well as our nation's systems for disaster preparedness and response. We can't afford to keep screwing up.

Congratulations to Chase!

2005-09-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to add my congratulations to Chase for winning Best Overall Blog recently, as well as to all the other winners in the Okie Blog Awards.

I am a big fan of Cutting to the Chase. One of my favorite aspects of that site is all the links, particularly under "Shout it Out Loud." In fact, I think I am too big of a fan, and have lost many hours reading blogs, especially since the hurricane struck.

But thanks, Chase! Keep it up!

Excellent Post on Politics

2005-09-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a post from T. Rex's Guide to Life:

Scoring Political Points

I'm pretty tired of hearing conservatives accuse liberals of trying to "score political points." Anyone who makes such an accusation is part of the problem. Such people just don't understand anything, it seems. They see the whole thing as a game, wherein whoever gets the most points "wins." In this game, there are certain times when you stop "playing" the game to observe a moment of silence for some particular occasion (not that they actually observe the moment of silence, but they condemn us for not doing so). But those of us on the left don't look at this as a game and we aren't trying to score points in some mythical "game."

The way we look at all of this stuff is on one measure -- how does this help the American people and make America a better place (and by extension, the people of the world and making the world a better place). Everything we do and say is designed around that one measure -- making America better. We don't care who wins as long as the people win. If we thought that conservatives in all branches of government would actually make America (and the world) a better place, then we'd certainly support them being in place. The problem is, that isn't the case. They're in control and things are getting worse both here and abroad. That's why we attack them -- so that we can shame them into doing the right thing, or, at a minimum, make the people aware enough of their crap in order to vote for different candidates.

One way you can tell the difference between them and us is that when a Democrat is in charge, we continue to attack them for not doing a good enough job, when a Republican is in charge, they check their critical thinking skills at the door. We know that neither party is going to 100% do what it can to improve our country, so we are critical of both. They think their party is God's gift (literally in many cases) and can't get past that no matter how bad someone fucks up.

They call us Bush haters and rightfully so in many cases (I'm not a big fan of hate, hate leads to the dark side and all that). But they get the chronology mixed up. They think we've just decided abstractly to hate Bush or that we hate him because he's conservative or Republican and we construct things to support that hate. That's moronic. Those of us who hate (or dislike) Bush do so because of the things he does and says, not because of some abstract concept. It's concrete. It's practical. We dislike him because of the things he does that make our country (and previously, the state of Texas) worse than not only it can be, but should be.

We're not trying to "score political points" by pointing to the failures in the Katrina situation, we're trying to hold accountable those that screwed up so royally in this situation (and much of the damage is due to human error -- government official human error) and prevent the same type of thing (or worse) from happening again in the future. Fuck your points and fuck your game, this is about our country and our world and whether or not we should make it a better place. Liberals think we should and have an idea of how to do it. Conservatives don't.

Our Instant Gratification Society

2005-09-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

I left this as a comment to a post on Chase's blog, but feel passionately enough about it that I wanted to put it on my own blog, too:

"The other thing I think needs to be said is that it takes YEARS of planning and practicing and revising plans and practicing more, involving all the key players (including the citizenry)--in other words, constant attention--to make disaster plans work. While mayors and governors should make this kind of thing a priority, it is ridiculous to hold a single administration at any level responsible for the poor response. Officials whose sole responsibility is disaster management are and should be held to a higher standard.

Our nation has not had a commitment to disaster preparedness. How many families have a disaster plan? How many Oklahomans have safe rooms or some other really secure tornado shelter? How many Americans would be able to offer even basic first aid? Ours is a nation with a short memory and little concern for the future. Our citizens don't even save for their own retirement--an inevitable personal disaster absolutely guaranteed to affect them in the most personal way. Many of our citizens who can afford basic health insurance don't buy it, hoping blindly that no medical disaster will befall them.

This goes beyond preparedness for disasters like Katrina, with at least a big part of the problem being our country's inability, as both a government and as individuals, to plan for the future, even when many warnings are sounded. If it isn't pleasant and expedient for the present, we don't want to do it. We don't even want to think about it.

Anybody read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? We are, as a nation, ignoring that most important category of Not Urgent but Important. Add to the list our trade and budget deficits, environmental concerns, poverty in other nations that may destabilize the world, the impact of our foreign policy decisions on future relations with other countries, the poor education level of our children, crumbling infrastructure, etc.

Disaster management is just the very tip of the iceberg."

Wanna Get Mad?

2005-09-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

Atrios has several posts that make me so incredibly angry.
What a screw-up. What amazing incompetence. How incredibly unfair. That last one is especially telling. Poor planning and slow response are problems that need to be addressed but are not in themselves a sign of something rotten to the core about our nation. Classism and racism are different. Let's hope that the story is just a rumor. I have a sinking feeling that it isn't.

What we didn't see

2005-09-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a post from the Columbia Journalism Review on the images from the New Orleans Convention Center that NBC decided were too bad for us to see.

I personally think that seeing the dead babies might be the kick in the pants Americans need to get help to these people faster and to resolve never, ever, to let this happen again.

We don't need a sanitized view of this disaster. We need a real, eyes-wide-open view. We need to burn those images in our memories so that we have the resolve and the dedication and the long-term willingness to sacrifice in order to make our country a better and safer place. This process will take years, will require a permanent change in mindset. We need memories of this natural Pearl Harbor to be our sustaining rallying cry.

Remember the continuous coverage after 9/11? And now you see coverage on the cable channels, but people who want to can just drown themselves in their usual soaps and "reality" shows.

Before this disaster, the continuing no-news of Natalie Holloway got the public's attention more than Iraq and certainly more than Afghanistan. It's time Americans opened their eyes and paid attention for the long term, to this disaster as well as to the wars.

We need to see what is going on if we are to "never forget."

Overheard at the Salon

2005-09-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

While I was getting my hair done today I overheard a woman talking about Hurricane Katrina's victims while she was getting a manicure. Her comments went something like this:

"Those people were begged to leave the city. And what did they do? They went to the Super Bowl (sic) like they were having a big party. Now, you hate to call people stupid, but, well... Some people were too poor or too old but most of those people were, maybe not stupid, let's just say inadequate. And now they are mad because people aren't serving them!"

I wanted to bitch slap her. (I never use that kind of language, but it seems really appropriate.)

She must have missed it the day before the hurricane made landfall, when people were told to go to the Superdome if they couldn't leave the city. She must have missed the long, long lines of people waiting in the rain to get in, begging to get in. She must have missed all the interviews with people saying that they wanted out but couldn't get out. She must have missed the fact that people are mad because they are dying while they wait for aid.

She must not have one ounce of Christian compassion or forgiveness. (Not that compassion and forgiveness are limited to Christians, but I would bet $100 that she considers herself a Christian.) I suspect she must have a more than generous share of racism.

Wes Clark on Leadership

2005-09-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting post by Wes Clark on our country's need for leadership. Here's hoping someone steps up to the plate.

Racism and Katrina Coverage

2005-08-31T06:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a sobering post from Atrios. Read the captions.

I'm so mad I have to blog

2005-08-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

I couldn't sleep last night. The images of all the flooded houses kept returning to me. I could not get the thought out of my head that there are people there, stuck in their attics as the waters rise. If they didn't put an axe in the attic, they can't get out to the roof. And I think of all the elderly and disabled people who weren't able to get to the attic at all.

A few years ago I participated as a civilian in disaster drills with the California National Guard. One of the scenarios was a flood rescue. The guardsmen practiced rescuing people from rooftops that were floating in a lake.

I can't help but think that lives are being lost because the resources the Gulf states need are in Iraq. I had already thought that it was dangerous to use the National Guard so heavily in an overseas war, in case of disaster at home. We have that disaster now.

If the Guard hadn't been activated to Iraq, does anyone think Gov. Blanco of Louisiana or Gov. Barber of Mississippi would have done anything other than activate every single resource their states' guards had to offer? Don't you think those guardsmen who are in Iraq must be sick about not being able to help their home state, as they were trained to do?

As the Reuters article I linked to previously states:
"The Pentagon has sent about 40 percent of Mississippi's National Guard force to Iraq and 35 percent of Louisiana's -- a combined total of about 6,000 troops."

Saving lives is not the only issue. Controlling looting, clearing rubble, restoring services. The Gulf states have been left to fight this with one hand tied behind their backs.

All Hail the National Guard

2005-08-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

The members of the National Guard are now so incredibly overburdened. I just want to give a hats off to them and their families, as well as their employers and coworkers, for their sacrifices. Not only are members of the Guard bearing a heavy load in Iraq, they also now are being pressed into their traditional duty in responding to Hurricane Katrina. That is one exhausted group of heroes.

Attempt to Damage the National Parks

2005-08-30T05:47:00.000-07:00

The New York Times published this piece about a memo circulating in the Interior Department proposing damaging changes to the governance of the national parks.

I grew up going to Rocky Mountain National Park on a fairly regular basis. It's bad enough that pollution from Denver clouds the horizon now, and it is difficult enough as it is to keep the human impact in the park to a minimum. But allowing more commercial use of the land and encouraging more off-trail human activity would be terrible. I remember visiting Acadia National Park in Maine, and it did not fill me with the spiritual wonder that RMNP did, primarily because there were so many businesses everywhere I looked that I did not feel I was ever in the wilderness.

The pristine beauty of our parks needs to be better protected and not further undermined.

The Current State of American Military Justice

2005-08-29T01:45:00.000-07:00

Want some more to cry over about our handling of our current wars? Hilzoy over at Obsidian Wings gives us a post on the death of a taxi driver in Afghanistan that gives us every reason to. We've lost our credibility as a nation that values justice and human life. Do the enormously monstrous murders perpetrated by the 9/11 hijackers give us an excuse to be evil, too? I don't think so, though I know that plenty of people in our country now believe we have cart blanche to do whatever we want.

Where did my country go?

2005-08-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Rude Pundit has a new post on Fox News and ignorant vigilantes that makes me yearn for Americans to once again celebrate our better natures. What is wrong with our country?

Punishing the Press

2005-08-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here's another example of the use of access as a weapon to control reporters and news outlets, this time over John Bolton.

Did other administrations do this? I suspect they did, but did they do it to the extent that the Bush administration does?

What Can We Do About Iraq?

2005-08-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

I really have no answer to that question. But here's a great post from Obsidian Wings on that very subject.

My Thoughts on Cindy Sheehan

2005-08-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

I appreciate the dialogue that Cindy Sheehan's stance has begun. She wasn't elected to office and isn't a policy maker, so I don't really care whether or not she has a well-reasoned plan to solve the Iraq crisis.

The reason that her presence in Texas is a good thing is that Bush otherwise keeps every critic at arms length. All his staged campaign stops with loyalty-oath signing followers are great examples of this.

At last he has to face someone who won't go away and whose voice the lazy media won't ignore.

And it is harder to do a Rove-style hatchet job on the mother of a dead US soldier, though that hasn't kept them from trying. The "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" Tour is a nauseating example of their efforts.

But Cindy Sheehan's position and the Bush position are not the only options, and the debate needs to move to a higher, more reasoned level.

Read my previous post if you want my diatribe on that.

Is anyone else sick of all the mindless polarization and black-and-white thinking going on in this country? The anti-intellectualism? If we don't get smarter fast, I do think it will mean the end of our status as a great nation.

It isn't Bush's Way vs. Troop Pullout

2005-08-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

In the typical polarizing fashion of today's simpleton political arguments, people seem to say that either you are for Bush and everything he's doing (and not doing) regarding Iraq, or you want the troops pulled out of Iraq immediately.

I personally think that Bush misled us into war in Iraq. That is a moot point anyway. We are there. Even if you decide it was the right thing to do at the right time, there is no denying that the prosecution of the war has been horribly mismanaged.

The proper question is, what do we do from here? How do make the best of this very bad situation?

To say that we have to shut our eyes and pretend that everything is going as planned and is the only way to "fight terror" and that we need to just plod along on our current course [aka The Bush Plan] is folly.

To say that we should immediately pull out all of our troops is also folly.

Those are NOT the only two choices, as adherents to those positions might have us believe. What we need is for our best experts to really analyze the situation, without fear that they will be punished for finding mistakes. We then need to come up with a rational plan to salvage what we can from this mess, to make our world as safe and stable as we can. We then need to put all our energies behind that solution, and demand that Americans everywhere sacrifice what we must to get it done. And we need to analyze and re-analyze our progress, making course corrections as needed.

A rational middle ground just isn't as riveting as people shouting poster slogans at each other. Our media and a whole lot of our population just don't seem up to the challenge of complicated thought.

Wired's "Blogs of War"

2005-08-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

As discussed on last night's Daily Show, this month's edition of Wired Magazine has an artcle entitled Blogs of War. Fascinating.

Afghanistan and other rants

2005-08-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

The post following this one is a copy of today's editorial in the NY Times about Afghanistan.

We have left that war half done, and we are going to pay for it. Does anyone else feel like Cassandra?

WHAT WAS BUSH THINKING??!!!! He is such an IDIOT! And too many Americans have drunk his Kool-Aid.

There was a letter to the editor in today's Oklahoman in which the author said that the good part about our war in Iraq is that Christian churches are being built and Iraqis are hearing the Gospel. No wonder they don't trust us! How can we argue that we aren't trying to convert them to Christianity with people spouting off like that?

The Lehrer News Hour last night had a round-table discussion with American Muslims talking about how to save their religion and the world from radical Islamists. It's about time! This kind of discussion is the key to our long-term security. We must all facilitate moderate Muslims in this task.

A disturbing part of the discussion last night was that the only Imam on the panel refused to condemn the killing of innocent Israelis by suicide bombers. Was this the most moderate Imam in the US? I have long feared that the reason we haven't heard from moderate Muslims is that there aren't any. The panel discussion showed that there are (and the woman on the panel has already had 3 death threats for her views), but I'm not sure they are in positions of authority so that they can actually make any difference.

From the New York Times

2005-08-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan's Forgotten War

Published: August 5, 2005

Afghanistan is out of the headlines, but its war against the Taliban goes on. These days, it is not going well. One of the most important reasons for that is the ambivalence of Pakistan, the nation that originally helped create, nurture and train the Taliban. Even now, Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, seems to invest far more energy in explaining his government's tolerance of Taliban activities than he does in trying to shut them down.

General Musharraf has provided logistical help to Pentagon operations and cooperation to American law enforcement agencies trying to track down Al Qaeda leaders. But his aid has been frustratingly selective. He has been an intermittent collaborator in the fight against international terrorism rather than a fully committed ally. Washington has been understandably reluctant to push him for more consistency, not wanting to risk losing the help he does offer.

Pakistan's passive enabling of the Taliban, however, is too important and dangerous for Washington to overlook. The current Taliban offensive is killing American soldiers - at least 38 have died in action so far this year, as well as hundreds of Afghans. It also endangers next month's parliamentary elections.

Successful elections are crucial to extending the geographical reach of Afghanistan's new national institutions. And they can provide needed political accountability for President Hamid Karzai, who now rules without an elected Parliament. Afghanistan will be a functioning democracy only when citizens can take their grievances against the central government to elected local representatives instead of to armed local warlords. Those grievances are real. Some governors and police chiefs Mr. Karzai has appointed are thuggish and corrupt. Antidrug efforts go after poor farmers while traffickers thrive. Alternative development lags. A lack of judges stymies the rule of law.

Earlier this year, there were reasons to be hopeful about Afghanistan's future. The presidential election had gone off remarkably smoothly, and the absence of major attacks on polling places suggested that Pakistan was at last responding to Washington's pleas to rein in the Taliban. Mr. Karzai had begun easing notorious warlords out of cabinet ministries and provincial governorships. More money was being directed at antinarcotics efforts.

But once the snows began to melt this March, Taliban fighters started showing up in greater numbers and with suspiciously sophisticated gear in regions of Afghanistan that border Pakistan. Afghan military and intelligence officers are convinced that they are coming from Pakistani training camps.

General Musharraf says that he has sent tens of thousands of troops to police border areas. Yet well-supplied Taliban fighters keep showing up to battle American troops in Afghanistan. He insists that the training camps are still shut down and that he is committed to thwarting the Taliban, but says he must proceed cautiously so he doesn't inflame militant groups in Pakistan. That would be more persuasive had the general not spent close to six years marginalizing mainstream parties and cutting deals with Islamic extremists to reinforce his rule.

When questioned about why he has repeatedly violated his promises to restore civilian democracy, General Musharraf argues that he must retain power because Pakistan needs his strong and effective hand. Washington needs to ask him why that strong hand seems so helpless against the Taliban.

England's Approach

2005-07-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

I was listening to BBC news on the radio today, and I couldn't help feeling envious of England's response to the bombings there. Tony Blair met with Islamic leaders to discuss ways to combat radical, hate- and violence-peddling Islamists.

I wish we had sustained such clarity here. Why couldn't our President keep us on that path? We were as united as a nation can be when we went into Afghanistan. Why did he have to muddy the issue with Saddam Hussein? And because the Iraq war was not properly justified, his administration had to purposefully mislead our citizens about who our real enemies are.

The answer is Islamists.

It's that simple. They are the Nazis of our day. We need to go after them from every angle, with all our allies.

We need to educate our citizens, not mislead them. We need to know our enemy to fight it. We need to be able to look beyond personal, partisan politics, to have the courage to face our mistakes and correct them. We need to value truth and logic in this fight, as they are necessary weapons in our arsenal. We need to be brave enough to consider all approaches in this war as guns and bombs can only do so much. We need to be smart enough to know that understanding the psychology and roots of our enemies' behavior does not make us wimpy "they want to send them to therapy" types but helps us fight them better, helps us stop their recruitment.

My fear is that the dumbing down of our society and of our politics, and our country's new-found inability to tolerate any discussion that isn't black and white and made for simpletons, is making us fight this war blindfolded and deaf and alone.

When any suggestion for course correction is equated with a lack of patriotism or a lack of resolve, we are destined to keep on the same path, however foolish, and it may very well lead to our demise as a superpower, in addition to needless loss of life.

Here is THE article, in case you missed it in 2003

2005-07-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

The New York Times
July 6, 2003 Sunday Late Edition

HEADLINE: What I Didn't Find in Africa
BYLINE: By Joseph C. Wilson 4th; Joseph C. Wilson 4th, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant.
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charge d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe; underPresident Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council. It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs.

Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me. In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq -- and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place. Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors -- they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government -- and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)

Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government. The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership.

If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.

I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program -- all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.

But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.

Living in a Matrix World

2005-06-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

I went to see Born into Brothels this past weekend at the Art Museum. It is a fascinating, moving, depressing, and inspiring documentary about children of prostitutes in India who are taught photography.

It was yet another reminder to me that we Americans are living in our little Matrix world, a world in which the realities of existence for most of the people on this planet are blissfully, and usually willfully, ignored. We live in our little bubble of paradise expected, and almost all of us feel entitled to every bit of it.

When I was eleven I was lucky enough to go with my family on a trip to Egypt, and I was overwhelmed by crowds of children, including a little girl with club foot, begging me for money.

A few years ago I went on a mission trip to Peru, where people live in shacks and lined up outside the clinic overnight for the chance to spend a few moments with a doctor. They were grateful even for a few ibuprofen pills and when we left hundreds were left waiting, unseen. There were old arthritic people who had to be dragged from place to place and children with cerebral palsy who could go nowhere their mothers couldn't carry them. There were 10-month-old babies the size of 2-month-olds because they didn't have enough to eat, and 10-year-olds with severe asthma who had no medications.

My brother has been on Rotary trips to Mexico and has seen similar things there.

And what do Americans think? We tend to think that God blessed us with this country and its riches, and screw everyone else. That we deserve state of the art medical care whenever we want it without having to feel its cost. That we, through our government, are already doing our part for the rest of the world, and we have no further responsibility. That foreign aid is a waste of money and if only people in other countries would actually work and wouldn't have sex out of marriage and use drugs then surely they would be happy, healthy, and wealthy too.

Sure, illegal aliens are a problem here. But part of the problem is that conditions are so bad in so many parts of the world that many people are desperate to come here, as a matter of survival for themselves and their families.

Americans tend to alienate the rest of the world with our outspoken sense of entitlement and superiority. It is for almost all of us an accident of our birth that we have what we have. It is time we acknowledged that, were truly grateful, and tried to share the blessing.

It is time that we stop calling ourselves a "culture of life" when the only lives a lot of people care about are the ones that aren't ever disagreeable, that never make mistakes, that don't place any psychological demands on us. We need to care as much about children who are going to be born, children who have been born, and adults, as about aborted fetuses and vegetative unfortunates.

Americans need to swallow the red pill. We need to open our eyes and open our hearts to the realities of the world we live in, including in our own country. We are a creative and compassionate nation, and we need to finally really look at and respond to the suffering on our planet. Not only will we help make a real difference in the world, we will enrich our cheapened culture.

Tests of Manhood

2005-06-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

How comfortable is the man you know with his own manhood and sexuality? Regardless of his sexual orientation, he should be able to:
1. sit next to another man at a movie theater
2. drive a mini-van
3. feel unthreatened by friendships with gay/straight men
4. feel unthreatened by successful women

The Oklahoman Dares Speak Truth

2005-05-31T13:26:00.000-07:00

My eyeballs nearly popped out of my head when I read this article on page 2 of yesterday's Oklahoman sports section. Evidently the Oklahoman editors were able to see truth and justice (or rather deceit and injustice) in the article about Pat Tillman's death. I had feared that even to breathe word of that would be seen by their editorial board as anti-American. Maybe there is hope for our hometown paper after all.

My Synopsis of the NR Article Below

2005-05-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

In 1994 the Republican Party sold its soul to the devil by forming tight alliances with the Washington K Street lobbyists. Those lobbyists who supported Republicans only were coddled and courted, while those who dared give money to Democrats were shunned. The result has been big spending (and a big deficit) that benefits those interests rather than the interests of the American people. And the result has been corruption as demonstrated by the behavior of Congressman DeLay.

Excellent New Republic Article

2005-05-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

(Pardon the exceedingly long post, but this is a great article and I couldn't figure out a way to link to it.)

PATRONAGE, BUSH-STYLE.

Wages of Sin by Jonathan Chait

Post date 05.11.05 Issue date 05.16.05

Everybody, with the exception of Jack Abramoff, agrees that Jack Abramoff is a very sleazy man. (You can get a sense of Abramoff's low repute from his ubiquitous description as a "disgraced lobbyist"; in a profession of such rock-bottom standards, to distinguish yourself as unethical requires villainy on a truly epic scale.) And most everybody agrees that Representative Tom DeLay, Abramoff's longtime friend and ally, is at least moderately sleazy.

"The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues," argued The Wall Street Journal in a widely noted editorial.

All that is certainly true. But DeLay and Abramoff are not merely a pair of ethically challenged individuals. They do not even merely represent the Republican leadership having grown "comfortable with the perks of power," as National Review noted with dismay. They are the inevitable byproducts of the governing ideology that has taken hold in George W. Bush's Washington. The ideology is called "big-government conservatism."

"Big-government conservatism" may sound like an oxymoron, but Bush has proved that it is not: He is undeniably a conservative, and, just as undeniably, he has expanded the power of the federal government. How, though, can a conservative preside over a larger and more intrusive government? Conservative intellectuals have made a series of attempts to explain (or, in some cases, explain away) the president's Leviathan tendencies. Three interwoven theories have emerged.

The first defines big-government conservatism as a concession to public demand. As Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review has written, "[T]he constituency for smaller government is too weak to prevail." Many of the critics as well as the defenders of big-government conservatism agree on this point. The critics--like Ponnuru and his colleague Jonah Goldberg--see big-government conservatism as a simple ideological capitulation.

Defenders have tried to portray big-government conservatism as making virtue out of political necessity. George F. Will defines big-government conservatism as using government programs to promote moral values among the citizenry. Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes posits that big-government conservatives are "realistic and programmatic," embracing "programs that work." The Economist has endorsed both the virtue and the programmatic interpretations.

None of these accounts, though, goes very far toward explaining what Bush has done and why he has done it. If government has expanded under Bush because of hostile currents of public opinion, then it should have expanded even faster under President Clinton, who was less conservative than the current president. But, in fact, non-defense spending as a percentage of the economy actually declined under Clinton, from 17 percent of gross domestic product to 15.5 percent, before rising smartly under the present administration from 15.5 to 16.5 percent. (Did homeland security contribute to the rise in spending under Bush? Just a bit: It accounts for about one-seventh of the domestic spending hikes.) Conservatives haven't explained why a moderate liberal like Clinton had an easier time than Bush in resisting popular demand to spend.

And the efforts to put a positive spin on big-government conservatism are embarrassingly sparse. If you itemize the ways Bush has enlarged Washington's power, few of them have any plausible connection to moral values. (David Kuo, former White House deputy director of faith-based initiatives, complained that the administration "never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.'") Fewer still can be considered demonstrably effective. (Barnes musters only three examples of Bush supporting "programs that work": the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program, the National Weather Service, and the National Science Foundation, which combined represent a miniscule portion of the expansion of spending under his administration.)

The failure of intellectuals on the right to adequately define big-government conservatism reflects their failure to grasp the ways that DeLay and Abramoff became central to the conservative movement in Washington. To define big-government conservatism as a form of pragmatism or as the promotion of virtue is to miss its fundamentally corrupt nature. In truth, the most accurate definition--that is, the definition that explains the broadest scope of Bush's big-government initiatives--is far less edifying: Biggovernment conservatism consists of initiatives that benefit economic elites without using free-market mechanisms.

Conservatives before Bush did not, of course, oppose each and every way in which Washington commandeered society's resources. Some of Bush's biggest initiatives--increased spending on defense and security and the vast deficits that inevitably result when those are combined with huge tax cuts--are very much in keeping with mainstream, small-government conservatism. (Or, at least, to the extent that there's a contradiction between them and small-government principles, it's a contradiction that most conservatives have been willing to overlook since long before Bush took office.) But that still leaves plenty of new ways that Bush has expanded federal power to set him apart from the conservative tradition.

Begin with the Medicare bill, Bush's largest social spending initiative by far. It's true that Bush probably embraced the notion of adding prescription-drug coverage because opposition had grown untenable. But the distinctive characteristic of Bush's bill is its staggering array of handouts to private interests. The goodies included a $71 billion subsidy for corporate health care plans, $46 billion for Medicare HMOs, $25 billion for hospital chains, and more than $100 billion for pharmaceutical companies, not including a lucrative provision forbidding the federal government from negotiating lower drug prices.

Just about all of Bush's big-government conservative agenda works the same way. Whereas Clinton signed a law phasing out federal crop payments, Bush lavished $180 billion in subsidies for agribusiness. His energy plan, roundly condemned by free-market economists, would have done the same for the energy industry, which, after all, wrote much of it. Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, had he been more committed to their funding, could have turned thousands of charities into federal clients.

Bush's expansion of government is not limited to higher spending. At various points, he has imposed protective trade barriers on imports of textiles, steel, lumber, shrimp, and other goods. And he has been particularly shameless in creating narrowly targeted tax breaks of the sort that increase, rather than diminish, Washington's role in the economy. Last fall, Bush signed a little-noticed corporate tax bill that, rather than cut rates across the board, showered benefits on bow-and-arrow manufacturers, foreign dog-race gamblers, ceiling-fan importers, and other dubious beneficiaries whose only claim to preferential treatment lay in their ability to lobby for it.

Bush's big-government conservatism represents the coming to fruition of a Republican strategy ten years in the making. When the GOP took control of Congress after the 1994 elections, it undertook an ironclad alliance with the business lobbyists of K Street. The most famous aspect of this alliance was the K Street Strategy, the successful Republican campaign to force business donors to abandon their traditional bipartisanship and instead hire from and donate to the Republican Party exclusively.

The less well-known, but far more important, aspect of the GOP-K Street alliance revolved around policy. By steering government largesse toward their own donors, Republicans could create a self-perpetuating money machine. Industries whose profitability relies on government largesse--and especially those that depend on favors that only Republicans support--will naturally invest some of those profits back into the political party that provides them.

Nicholas Confessore explained how this machine works in a definitive 2003 Washington Monthly cover story. Taking the example of Medicare, he wrote, "[U]nder the GOP plan, the medical insurance industry would gradually become a captive of Washington, living off the business steered to it by the government but dependent upon its Beltway lobbyists--themselves Republican surrogates--to maintain this stream of wealth. Over time, private insurers would grow to resemble the defense sector: closely entwined with government, a revolving door for Republican officials, and vastly supportive, politically and financially, of the GOP."

Does that sound overly dramatic? Consider what Robert E. Moffitt, a policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said about Bush's Medicare bill last fall. "The Medicare program has now become a vast arena of special interest politics," he told The Boston Globe. "It has been transformed from a system where we were providing health care for seniors into a system where there is a massive redistribution of income among health care providers."

Social Security privatization would, over time, affect a similar transformation in the financial sector. While ideology surely motivates would-be privatizers more than money, they have no doubt given some thought to the future prospect of grateful Wall Street executives looking to protect the hundreds of billions of dollars of business steered their way by Republican Washington.

Conservatives protest that their close ties with K Street make them no different than the Democrats who once ruled Congress. It's certainly true that the old Democratic Hill barons, like their Republican successors, engaged in plenty of unseemly influence-peddling. But the contrast between the two is a difference in degree so great it is essentially a difference in kind.

The Democratic Party's capacity to raise money from, and provide favors to, business has always been limited by its alliance with other interest groups--labor, environmentalists, consumer groups--largely hostile to business. Liberals have traditionally seen K Street as an impediment to their agenda, even when Democrats controlled the White House and Congress.

In 1979, Michael Kinsley wrote in these pages about liberal Democrats (he took the example of famed New Dealer-turned-lobbyist Lloyd Cutler) who sold out to illiberal business interests:
The more sympathetic you seem to the general cause of progressive reform, the more sympathetic legislators and regulators will be to your suggestions for "compromise" or "delay" in a particular case. So the best Washington lawyers are ones with long and varied experience in government, lots of friends who are still there, and sterling liberal credentials. Such highly polished souls do not come cheap.

Contrast Kinsley's sentiment with that expressed in a recent column by Tony Blankley, the Washington Times editorial page editor and a former spokesman for Newt Gingrich. "In a thousand ways that are hard to publicly spot," writes Blankley in an impassioned defense of DeLay, "the K Street effort helped all Republicans win elections, pass legislation they believed in and generally govern the country."

Democrats often worked at cross-purposes with K Street. (Sometimes the two were at war, such as when business lobbyists helped kill Clinton's health care reform in 1993-1994.) Republicans, with their inherent mistrust of taxes and regulation, would have enjoyed friendlier relations with K Street no matter what. But the distinct contribution of big-government conservatism has been to cement an alliance between the two, to the point where the line between party and private interest has all but disappeared.

You simply cannot make big-government conservatism work without people like Abramoff and DeLay. News accounts have focused on Abramoff's personal lucre. But much of the money he wheedled from his clients did not go into his own pockets. He directed it instead to various financial cogs in the GOP machine--candidates, foundations, and think tanks (see "Writers' Bloc," page 27). His role was to find business interests--be they Indian casinos or sweatshops in the Northern Mariana Islands--whose profitability depended on Washington, and turn them into paid-up clients of big-government conservatism. As lobbyist and GOP operative Grover Norquist told National Journal ten years ago, "What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs. Then this becomes a different town."

DeLay, meanwhile, took it as his role to discipline K Street. He famously kept a list dividing lobbyists into "friendly" and "unfriendly" categories based on the partisan loyalty of their donations, threatening those in the latter category to throw themselves wholly into the GOP camp. "If you want to play in our revolution," he notoriously warned, "you have to live by our rules." His close alliance with lobbyists forced DeLay to tiptoe so lightly along the line of legality that he was bound to cross it eventually.

Most of the DeLay scandals--a memo suggesting he made promises to a company called Westar Energy Inc. in return for donations; members of his staff's (almost certainly)illegal funneling of corporate money into Texas races; his acceptance of prohibited gifts from lobbyists--stem from his efforts to build and operate a patronage machine for his party.

Whatever rules or laws DeLay may have broken were premised on the assumption that there is a distinction between the interests of elected officials and the interests of corporations and their lobbyists. It's no surprise that he lost sight of that distinction. In his world, it had long ago ceased to exist.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at TNR.

Mind Bogglingly Disappointed

2005-05-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

I have been struck again over these past few days with the amazing degree of disappointment I have for our country, our fellow countrymen, and especially the Republican Party.

I know that no country is perfect. I remember learning about slavery, the massacres of Native Americans, the interment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, medical experimentation on blacks in the South, forced sterilization of Hispanic women in LA, CIA drug experimentation on American citizens in the 1960s, our country's refusal to accept Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis in Europe, our various proxy wars in support of brutal little dictators here and there around the world. The list goes on and on.

But I remember believing that our country was different from others in that we faced our mistakes and were shamed by them. That we, as opposed to, for instance, Japan, told our citizens of our past sins in an effort to avoid them in the future. I felt that we were making forward progress toward being a just and good society.

I have felt great pride that the Germans in WWII wanted to surrender to Americans rather than the Soviets because the Americans treated prisoners with humanity rather than rape and torture.

I have been proud of Congress for holding hearings to keep the darker sides of our power in check, to hold our government accountable, and to shed healing light on dirty dealings.

I was proud that we did not have to have laws protecting our flag, like they did in the Soviet Union, because we believed that respect for our flag is our choice and by giving it, we show a true form of patriotism, not one demanded by law.

I was proud that our country was secure enough to hear the voices of dissent, and that those voices were celebrated as part of our heritage of freedom.

I have been proud of the religious and ethnic diversity in our country, proud of the "melting pot." I was taught this was one of our greatest gifts and a shining example of peaceful coexistence for the rest of the world.

I have been proud of our National Parks system and the fact that we value our great natural wonders. Proud that, unlike many places in the developing world, we don't destroy our environment for the short-term gains of industry.

I have been proud of our countrymen for being, more often than not, the good guys.

My faith in our current government has been seriously shaken. Our countrymen who follow this administration with blind faith and who shout down any dissent frighten me. They are truly un-American.

My faith in our country itself remains strong. It is urgent, though, for true American Patriots to stand up and be heard. We must rescue our nation from those who want to destroy it for their own narrow political/religious/cultural/economic gain.

We need to restore our nation to its former position as a beacon of hope, a shining example of the better natures of humanity, a place where injustice and hypocrisy are not tolerated, and where freedom truly lives.

AP Story on Tillman's Death

2005-05-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Tillman family critical of army probe
11:28 AM CDT on Monday, May 23, 2005
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The family of former professional football Pat Tillman says the Army disrespected his memory by lying in its investigation of his death in Afghanistan last year.

In interviews with The Washington Post, the Army Ranger's mother and father said they believe the military and the government created a heroic tale about how their son died to foster a patriotic response across the country.

"Pat had high ideals about the country; that's why he did what he did," Mary Tillman told the Post. "The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."

Tillman, a player for the Arizona Cardinals, left the National Football League after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to join the Rangers with his brother. After a tour in Iraq, they were sent to Afghanistan in 2004 to help hunt for the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Shortly after arriving in the mountains to fight, Tillman was killed in a barrage of gunfire from his own men, mistaken for the enemy as he got into position to defend them.

After a public memorial service, at which Tillman received the Silver Star, the Army told Tillman's family what had really happened. The separate interviews with Tillman's parents, who are divorced, appeared on the Post's Internet site for Monday's editions. Patrick Tillman Sr., a lawyer, told the Post he is furious about a "botched homicide investigation" and blames high-ranking Army officers for presenting "outright lies" to the family and to the public.

"After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," the father said. "They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy."

"In the case of the death of Corporal Patrick Tillman, the Army made mistakes in reporting the circumstances of his death to the family," Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks told the Post. "For these, we apologize. We cannot undo those early mistakes."

I Couldn't Say It Any Better

2005-05-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

so here's Bob Herbert's NYT article...

The Rumsfeld Stain

By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 23, 2005

How does Donald Rumsfeld survive as defense secretary?

Much of what has happened to the military on his watch has been catastrophic. In Iraq, more than 1,600 American troops have died and many thousands have been maimed in a war that Mr. Rumsfeld mishandled from the beginning and still has no idea how to win. The generals are telling us now that the U.S. is likely to be bogged down in Iraq for years, and there are whispers circulating about the possibility of "defeat."

Potential recruits are staying away from the armed forces in droves. Most Americans want no part of the administration's hapless venture in Iraq. A woman in Connecticut with two college-age sons said to me recently: "My boys should die in Baghdad? For what?"

Parents from coast to coast are going out of their way to dissuade their children from joining the military. Recruiters, desperate and in many cases emotionally distraught after repeatedly missing their monthly goals, began abandoning admission standards and signing up individuals who were physically, mentally or morally unfit for service.

The abuses became so widespread that the Army suspended recruiting on Friday so recruiters could spend the day being retrained in the legal and ethical standards they are supposed to maintain. The Army is going through its toughest year for recruiting since the nation went to an all-volunteer military in 1973.

The military spent decades rebuilding its reputation and regaining the respect of the vast majority of the American people after the debacle in Vietnam. Under Mr. Rumsfeld, that hard-won achievement is being reversed. He invaded Iraq with too few troops, and too many of them were poorly trained and inadequately equipped. The stories about American troops dying on the battlefield because of a lack of protective armor have now been widely told.

The insurgency in Iraq appeared to take Mr. Rumsfeld completely by surprise. He expected to win the war in a walk. Or, perhaps, a strut.

Now the military is in a fix. Many of the troops have served multiple tours in Iraq and are weary. The insurgency remains strong, and the Iraq military has proved to be a disappointing ally.

A senior American officer, quoted last week in The Times, said that while he still believed the effort in Iraq would succeed, it could take "many years."

As if all this were not enough, there is also the grotesque a
and deeply shameful issue that will always be a part of Mr. Rumsfeld's legacy - the manner in which American troops have treated prisoners under their control in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There is no longer any doubt that large numbers of troops responsible for guarding and interrogating detainees somehow loosed their moorings to humanity, and began behaving as sadists, perverts and criminals.

The catalog of confirmed atrocities is huge. Consider just one paragraph from a long and horrifying story on Friday by Tim Golden of The Times about the torture and brutal deaths of two Afghan inmates at the hands of U.S. troops:

"In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning."

These were among the milder abuses to come to light. The continuum of bad behavior that has been a hallmark of the so-called war on terror extends from this kind of activity to incidents of extreme torture and death.

Neither the troops nor the American public signed on for a war in Iraq that would last many years. And I can't believe there are many Americans who wanted their military sullied by the wanton behavior of the torture crowd.

The troops who do their jobs honestly and diligently, and who fight bravely when they have to, have been betrayed by leaders who encouraged abusive behavior and allowed atrocities to flourish.

Mr. Rumsfeld has driven the military into a ruinous quagmire, and there is no evidence at all that he's capable of finding a serviceable route out.

Freedom

2005-05-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

Isn't it sad that it takes going to Holland for President Bush to finally have someone ask him unscripted tough questions about his anti-terrorism and Iraq war policies? And then the press were asked to leave the room.

Ah, to live in the Land of the Free!

What a Greedy Bastard!

2005-05-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Just when I've been feeling sorry for the guy who found the fingertip in his ice cream, I find out that he found it there 30 minutes after the accident and refused to give it to the guy who lost it so that it could be reattached. Couldn't try to save the guy's finger---might lose out on lawsuit money. Any penny he gets should go to the guy who lost the finger. What an evil, greedy, selfish bastard.

Why the Difference?

2005-05-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

It's interesting to me that rightwingers have no trouble with our government's spending billions upon billions in Iraq, despite the repeated stories of fraud (often by our own contractors), and yet don't want to spend a penny more on education because the money isn't all used efficiently.

They may argue that the urgency of the situation in Iraq makes the inefficient use of funds somehow excusable. I say that there is also urgency about the state of education of our kids. And I also say that fraud and abuse need to be rooted out, wherever they are. No big checks without oversight.

This week's Time magazine has an article (Inside the Revolt over Bush's School Rules) about the No Child Left Behind initiatives, and about how the federal government is cutting its 2006 spending on education by $2.2 billion, making this even more of an unfunded mandate.

Why can't we spend money on educating our kids? An 87 billion here and there for Iraq, and cut our kids' funding by 2.2 billion?

This week's Newsweek cover story is on the emergence of China as this century's superpower. If we want to remain a superpower we must address the brain drain and brain stagnation in our country.

We have been resting on our laurels for too long. I am afraid that our country's collective memory is so short that since we don't remember ever NOT being a superpower, we won't do what we need to do to maintain our edge.

That edge comes from a highly educated, highly motivated population.

Best Line in the New Star Wars Movie

2005-05-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes."

(Comes right after, "You're either with us, or you are with our enemies.")

Conservatives

2005-04-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

Despite the "Proud Liberal" logo on my blog, I'm not sure I am actually a liberal. What I am certain I am NOT is a George W. Bush Republican, a.k.a. a fundamentalist conservative. I was actually registered first as a Republican, and switched to being an independent or Democrat when Christian fundamentalists took over the party.

I am a Christian, but because my religious views are not fundamentalist, I was told several times growing up that I would go to hell because my beliefs weren't those of my tormentors who were ostensibly trying to "save" me. I learned as a child that these people have no tolerance for dissenting views, and it is becoming clear that the Republican party of today is run by the same group of people with the same rigid, black-and-white thinking.

Andrew Sullivan writes an interesting article in this weeks New Republic, "Crisis of Faith: How fundamentalism is splitting the GOP."

It is well worth reading.

Here are some samples:

"...the Republican Party platform called for constitutional amendments banning all legal benefits and protections for gay couples everywhere in the United States. In a society with a big openly gay population, this was not a politics of moderation. It was and is a crusade.

"Crusades, however are not means of persuasion. They are means of coercion. And so it is no accident that the crusading Republicans are impatient with institutional obstacles in their way. The judiciary, which is designed to check executive and legislative decisions, is not the first object of attack. Bare-knuckled character assassination of opponents is part of the repertoire: Just look at the swift-boat smears of John Kerry. The filibuster is attacked. The mass media is targeted, not simply to correct bad or biased reporting, but to promote points of view that are openly sectarian, even if, as in the case of Armstrong Williams, you have to pay for people to endorse your views.

....

"What has to endure is not merely a reformed liberalism that can one day take government away from its current masters, but rather a conservatism that does not assent to its own corruption at the hands of zealots. This doesn't mean hostility to religion. It means keeping religion in its safest place - away from the trappings of power. And it means keeping politics in its safest place - as the proper arrangement of our common obligations, and not as a means to save or transform our lives and souls. If we are fighting such a conservatism of faith abroad - and that is the core of the war on Islamist terrorism - then why should it be so hard to confront it in much milder forms at home? This was, once upon a time, the central conservative calling. Why not again?"

You can read the entire article on-line at The New Republic's site. Registration is required.

Thievin' Pet Peeve

2005-04-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

To continue a rant I left as an anonymous poster on Cutting to the Chase, why do people feel they have a right to eat things at the grocery store before they pay for them? That is the tackiest, most presumptuous, trashiest behavior. Just a few days ago saw a young woman rip into a package of string cheese, telling her friend, "I want one NOW!" I've seen parents feeding cookies to their whining children. All of this while still loading up the basket. And then there are the ones who grab a Coke and take some swigs while in the check-out line.

Can anyone say, "Culture of Instant Gratification?"

What a bunch of spoiled brats!

Of course these sightings have all occurred at Lil'Red's favorite store, Wal-Mart. What else should I expect from the great unwashed?

Republican Conspiracy or Police Fabrication?

2005-04-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

Check out this report from the New York Times about the video-taped peaceful behavior of protestors arrested during the RNC in NYC.

Not a Democratic Hoax After All

2005-04-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

Senator's Office Is Source of Schiavo Memo
By MATT YANCEY, AP

WASHINGTON (April 6) - A one-page unsigned memo that became part of the debate preceding Congress' vote ordering a federal court review of the Terri Schiavo case originated in Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez' office, Martinez said Wednesday.
The memo - first reported by ABC News on March 18 and by The Washington Post and The Associated Press two days later - said the fight over removing Schiavo's feeding tube "is a great political issue ... and a tough issue for Democrats."
"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," said the memo, which was described at the time as being circulated among Senate Republicans.
Martinez said in a written statement he discovered Wednesday that the memo had been written by an aide in his office. "It is with profound disappointment and regret that I learned today that a senior member of my staff was unilaterally responsible for this document," Martinez said.
He said he accepted the resignation of the staffer who drafted and circulated the memo. "This type of behavior and sentiment will not be tolerated in my office," he said. Martinez did not identify the aide, but The Washington Post said he was the senator's legal counsel, Brian Darling.
"Until this afternoon, I had never seen it and had no idea a copy of it had ever been in my possession," Martinez said of the document. He had previously denied knowing anything about the memo and condemned its sentiments.

Say What?

2005-04-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

You mean it was baseball's opening day, and The Joker's Wife didn't comment? Nary a blip on her blog?

What gives?

Think Judges are Impartial?

2005-03-28T01:36:00.000-08:00

If you think that it doesn't matter which political party appoints judges, think again. Here's an interesting study that demonstrates marked differences in decisions on environmental law issues based on party of nomination. You can read an interview about the study on the Living on Earth website by clicking on "Weighing the Judges."

Ben Folds Does Dr. Dre

2005-03-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

Not that I'm a big fan of government censorship or anything, but I think a lot of rap "artists" (not all) are just plain toxic to society, particularly to black society, to non-black society's opinion of black society, and to women in general. Do you think they ever think about how their "art" impacts people? Do you think they could ever learn to censor themselves? Don't some of them have daughters by now? If so, how can they look them in the eye?

I think I've just gotten used to not being able to make out the words in most rap songs, or to not paying attention to the words I do understand, or to just plain changing the station when it comes on. But still, it creeps me out that people actually like this stuff.

Ben Folds's cover of Dr. Dre makes the offensiveness of the songs all too up-close-and-personal. In a way it is really funny, and in a way it is just soul sickening.

On or Not On

2005-03-22T10:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a question for you, prompted by my reading of The Joker's Wife and thoughts on my own personal Otto.

My husband said, "It's going great so far. Knock wood!"

I, in the same situation, would have said, "Knock on wood!"

To those of you who are superstitious enough to recite either version of the aforementioned saying, which way do you say it?

On Government

2005-03-17T07:17:00.000-08:00

I have a good friend who is a Rush fan. And I'm talking about the loud-mouthed, sanctimonious pill-popper, not the band.

My friend is of the opinion that the government doesn't produce anything, and that spending money on education is useless as long as the teacher's unions exist. She's also opposed to the national parks, but I'll leave that one alone for now.

Here's my point of view: government can help our society produce adults who contribute to society rather draining it. Government (and by that I mean We the People) should invest our money in programs that we know work, like Head Start and WIC, both of which are being cut by the Bush Administration. Of course there is waste in government. It is a human enterprise, and humans are fallible. We should look for waste and get rid of it. But that does not mean that all government programs are a waste.

Why don't conservatives understand this? And just where is the compassion in Bush's compassionate conservatism?

For a little perspective...

2005-03-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

...take a look at NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site. Great archives, too. Just when I get to thinking that all this business here on Earth is overwhelmingly important, I realize that the Milky Way isn't even that important, in the scheme of things.

Gay Marriage

2005-03-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

I need to go to sleep after working all night, but NPR news prompted some sleep deprived thoughts that I must share. Pardon the poor writing.

I have no problem with gay marriage. Furthermore, I don't understand why people who think gays are promiscuous would want to discourage monogamy and a life-long commitment. I also don't understand why banning gay marriage is a "defense of marriage." Gay marriages might interfere with a definition of marriage as being only between a man and a woman, but how does that threaten the actual marriages between men and women? How does a gay couple's committing to each other possibly wreck a straight couple's marriage? If gays are contributing to today's high divorce rate, that would be a shocker. And it's not like outlawing gay marriage is going to somehow make any difference in the number of gays in our society, as much as homophobes out there might wish otherwise.

The real question for today is this: Why haven't advocates of gay marriage pointed out that this really is a freedom of religion question? If your church says that marriage is only between a man and a woman, but my church says it can be between same sex couples, why should the law discriminate against my church's religious views? Why should one religion win out? And we are talking about mainstream churches here, not weird cults, that support gay marriage.

In my opinion, any couple that wants to commit to each other for life and in love ought to be able to do so. My husband and I are about to celebrate our first year anniversary. My wedding day was the best day of my life, and I am deliriously happy in our marriage. I want my gay friends to have a chance to have the same happiness and recognition of their love and commitment.

No thanks, George

2005-03-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else wish that George Lucas had left well enough alone with the Star Wars movies? I have zero, make that less than zero, interest in seeing the upcoming movie #3 of the "prequel" bunch. I have gone from the kid who thought that GL was the brilliant creator of a new myth for our era (What can I say? I was nine.) to the adult who thinks that he is a hack writer who has ruined what could have been great. My understanding from childhood was that there were to be three movies before the original series, and three movies after, for a total of nine. I haven't heard much about the last three. Here's hoping that someone else writes them.

A Simple Question

2005-03-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, so we know that the rest of the world really dislikes the United States right now, and that the Iraq war is almost uniformly unpopular outside our borders.
What I want to know is this: Did the rest of the world hate us this much during the Vietnam War?

Salad Sickness: An informal poll

2005-03-06T12:07:00.001-08:00

I have a theory that there is a vastly underreported phenomenon out there: GI distress following the consumption of salads and other vegetables from certain restaurants. Do you or does anyone you know get rapid onset and rapidly resolving intestinal distress after eating restaurant salads?

I already know of three people who have experienced this, but who usually don't say anything about it as it is sort of embarrassing. (Having recently written about my strange dreams, I figured I'd already crossed that particular line.) I am guessing there is a preservative that is the culprit.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

2005-03-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

Check out this amazing story of survival against the odds. It'll make you laugh. It'll make you cry. It'll make you go home at night and hug your little ones.

The Naked Dream, With a Twist

2005-03-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

I have never had the teeth falling out dream, but that doesn't mean I don't have my own recurrent nightmare. Not infrequently, when I wake up really needing to pee, I realize I have been having my recurrent dream about a fruitless search for a bathroom. It often involves being in an arena in which there are only two women's restrooms, with enormous lines. Even weirder, it sometimes involves finding out that the bathroom is co-ed and there are no walls around the stalls, and I just can't bring myself to pee in public. Freud would find that one a drop-kick, wouldn't he?

Lil Red will LOVE It!

2005-03-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

The Gazette writers must be checking out Lip Schtick. Have you seen their cover story? "Mulletude" is Rod Lott's well-done look at the life of mulleteers. The author concludes with his own theory on the matter:

People really do enjoy mullets. And by "enjoy," I mean "making fun of." It brings levity to their rigorous days. It makes them feel superior, having their DNA coded with an innate sense of grooming.

I particularly enjoyed the mulletized photos of Brad Henry, Frank Keating, and David Boren. Show us one of GW Bush! Or of the Mathis brothers! (oh, didn't they already live it, or does it just seem that way?)

Daytime TV

2005-03-01T05:32:00.000-08:00

I never have developed a taste for soap operas or daytime TV talk shows, but even if I did, I don't think I could stand to watch them without TiVo.
Have you ever noticed the commercials that are on during that time of day? Let me guess: the average daytime TV watcher is an overweight couch potato who is looking for that lucky break, perhaps to be "injured" in a car accident or on the job, and who loves to hear that if they are overweight and over 40 it isn't their fault and that fat will dissolve without diet or exercise if only they take the right pill.

"Tell me why yai yai yai..."

2005-02-22T16:13:00.000-08:00

I just bought Quicken. Why oh why do they put one teeny little CD in a big ol' box? Especially when they don't even give you any written instructions? Talk about excessive packaging! What a waste!

This Just In!

2005-02-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

It turns out that the Bush administration isn't the first to have questionable journalists in their midst.

An anonymous Clinton administration official now concedes that amidst their approved and credentialled White House press corps was a former female prostitute. She was repeatedly called on for questions by administration officials, including President Clinton, so that she could ask questions in a format highly favorable to Clinton and mocking of Republicans. She was an employee of a New York-based organization supportive of the Democratic party, that had only formed itself into a "media" outlet after she had been hired and installed in the White House press room.

None of that stuff was true, but if it were, wouldn't the right wingers be out in force? What hypocrisy they demonstrate! Where's the outrage over Gannon/Guckert?

Support Rebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq

2005-02-19T16:28:00.000-08:00

Spirit of America provides a great opportunity for all of us to pick a project we like and support it, to help in the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. It began with baseball equipment for kids and now has developed into numerous other projects. No matter how any of us feel about the way we got into these wars, we all agree that we want the people of those countries to have better lives and we want to support our troops. Involvement in projects such as this one, or this one, can go far in helping ordinary Americans feel what we have wanted to feel for a long time: that we are doing our part.

Slave Labor and Amnesty

2005-02-18T10:18:00.000-08:00

There are plenty of horror stories about illegal aliens working here as slave laborers. This report documents slave labor in the US and legislation from 2000 that aims to provide legal protection for the victims.

Oklahoma has a large population of immigrants, legal and illegal. Here's a case study from the report above, showing that forced labor happens here, too:

The Case against the John Pickle Company: Forced Labor in a Factory in Oklahoma:
Qualified skilled workers were recruited in September 2001 in India through the Al-Samit International labor-recruitment agency and promised good jobs in a factory that manufactures pressure valves in the state of Oklahoma. On arrival, the workers were forced to surrender their travel documents and to live in the factory and work twelve to sixteen hours a day, six days a week, for well below the legal minimum wage. By February 2002, all of the approximately fifty workers had managed to escape and later filed a civil suit against their former employer. Subsequently, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with investigating and filing cases of employment discrimination, filed a separate civil action against the John Pickle Company.

I hadn't even heard of that case until I stumbled across it today. We all need to be aware of forced labor so that we can recognize it and prosecute the scumbags who perpetrate it.

For a Little Shopping...

2005-02-17T13:10:00.000-08:00

I read Chase's latest with interest. The Guckert scandal (and the scandalous non-scandal view of it by right-wingers) as well as the usual parade of news from the Bush administration has made me find the perfect web address for a little on-line shopping. How can Bush supporters possibly keep turning a blind eye to the abuses of this administration? There's enough smoke to suggest many impeachment-worthy fires, and I only hope that there will be vigorous digging by the media, including bloggers, to find the truth and hold our President and his staff accountable. Oral sex in the Oval Office has nothing on outing a CIA agent, lying to justify a war, or turning the press into the President's own propaganda service.

And since Chase didn't mention it, I will. Check out the Blog Cabin Republicans video on The Daily Show site. Makes me proud to be even a peripheral part of the blogging world.

A Bunch of e-Hooey

2005-02-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest batch of mumbo jumbo to come across in my email. At least I think it is e-legend (or whatever we are calling the weird claims that circulate like internet urban legends). Case in point: My dictionary (and I got out the beefy Webster's Third New International Dictionary for this) says that "gossip" is from the Old English 'god' + 'sibb' kinsman. I suspect that the rest of the "histories" written below are also a bunch of malarkey, but I have no proof. Anyone know the real origins of the phrases? The one I really want to know is "Mind your p's and q's."

History Fun
In George Washington's days, there were no cameras. One's image was
either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of George Washington showed
him
standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back while others showed
both legs
and both arms. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many
people
were to be painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted. Arms and
legs
are "limbs," therefore painting them would cost the buyer more. Hence
the
_expression, "Okay, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg."
**************************************************************
As incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year
(May and October)! Women kept their hair covered, while men shaved their
heads (because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford
good
wigs made from wool. They couldn't wash the wigs, so to clean them they
would
carve out a loaf of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30
minutes. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big
wig." Today we often use the term "here comes the Big Wig" because
someone appears to be or is powerful and wealthy.
**************************************************************
In the late 1700s, many houses consisted of a large room with only one
chair. Commonly, a long wide board folded down from the wall, and was
used for dining. The "head of the household" always sat in the chair
while
everyone else ate sitting on the floor. Occasionally a guest, who was
usually a man, would be invited to sit in this chair during a meal. To
sit
in the chair meant you were important and in charge. They called the one
sitting in the chair the "chairman." Today in business, we use the
_expression or title "Chairman" or "Chairman of the Board."
**************************************************************
Personal hygiene left much room for improvement. As a result, many women
and men had developed acne scars by adulthood. The women would spread
bee's
wax over their facial skin to smooth out their complexions. When they
were
speaking to each other, if a woman began to stare at another woman's
face
she was told, "mind your own bee's wax." Should the woman smile, the wax
would crack, hence the term "crack a smile." In addition, when they sat
too close to the fire, the wax would melt . . . therefore, the
_expression
"losing face."
**************************************************************
Ladies wore corsets, which would lace up in the front. A proper and
dignified woman ... as in "straight laced". . . wore a tightly tied
lace.
**************************************************************
Common entertainment included playing cards. However, there was a tax
levied when purchasing playing cards but only applicable to the "Ace of
Spades." To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase 51 cards
instead.
Yet, since most games require 52 cards, these people were thought to be
stupid or dumb because they weren't "playing with a full deck."
**************************************************************
Early politicians required feedback from the public to determine what
the
people considered important. Since there were no telephones, TV's or
radios, the politicians sent their assistants to local taverns, pubs,
and bars.
They were told to "go sip some ale" and listen to people's conversations
and
political concerns. Many assistants were dispatched at different times.
"You go sip here" and "You go sip there." The two words "go sip" were
eventually
combined when referring to the local opinion and, thus we have the term
"gossip."
**************************************************************
At local taverns, pubs, and bars, people drank from pint and quart-sized
containers. A bar maid's job was to keep an eye on the customers and
keep
the drinks coming. She had to pay close attention and remember who was
drinking in "pints" and who was drinking in "quarts," hence the term
"minding your "P's and Q's."
**************************************************************
One more: bet you didn't know this!
In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters
carried iron cannons. Those cannons fired round iron cannon balls.
It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. However,
how to prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage
method devised was a square-based pyramid with one ball on top,
resting on four resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply
of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the
cannon. There was only one problem...how to prevent
the bottom layer from sliding or rolling from under the others. The
solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey" with 16 round indentations.
However, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly
rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass
Monkeys."
Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster
than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too
far,
the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannonballs
would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally,
"Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey."
(All this time, you thought that was an improper _expression, didn't
you.)
You must send this fabulous bit of historic knowledge to unsuspecting
friends. If you don't, your floppy is going to fall off your hard drive
and kill your mouse.
"If you can read this, thank a teacher"

On Another Subject, Revisited

2005-02-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

Enough of that overly serious sappy stuff. When's my eyebrow going to grow back?

The Person Within

2005-02-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

One of the things that always strikes me as somehow poetic and beautiful is seeing a photograph of a young, happy, healthy person at the head of an obituary of someone who has just died after a debilitating, chronic illness, usually at an old age. It's not that I think the older, debilitated person is less worthy of remembrance, but more a feeling that in death we are freed from the illusion that who we are is who we currently appear to be.

I once visited the bedside of a woman in her 40's who was dying after a failed liver transplant. Her body was yellow and bloated, and she was awake but completely incapacitated. Her family had placed a photograph of her, taken only a few years previously, at the head of her bed to remind the hospital staff that she wasn't just a lump of jaundiced flesh waiting to die, but a real person, with a real life of hopes and fears and family.

We keep hearing about the abuses of nursing home residents. As people slip into dementia and become difficult, sometimes abusive, and dependent, it could be hard for those caring for them, who have never known them as anyone else, to remember and honor the human beings that they are. I wonder if pinning on photo buttons, showing the people they were in better days, would be a reminder that would help.

Not only do these photographs recall the individuals they portray, but they also remind us that we, too, who may now be healthy, will likely become weak, physically broken, and dependent. Out of that empathy may grow compassion, and from that compassion may come further action to improve the lives of our weakest citizens.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2005-02-14T06:34:00.000-08:00

May you spend today face-to-face with your true love.

Could anything be cuter?

Environmentalists: Join 'em!

2005-02-12T05:34:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that a lot of Republicans are doing their best to make "environmentalist" into a dirty word, as they have pretty much succeeded in doing with the word, "feminist."

As part of a new series of posts, I'm going to occasionally mention some events in history that prove that the environment matters, that regulations are important and not just anti-business. Perhaps we don't see the effects of pollution unless babies are born with severe deformities or cerebral palsy, but that doesn't mean that pollution isn't having more subtle effects. Sure, there are some real crazies out there who go nuts about any chemical that isn't "natural," but don't let them color your whole view about environmentalism. There are plenty of rational reasons for wanting to live in a clean and healthy environment.

Today's case in point: Minimata Disease, in which thousands of Japanese citizens were poisoned by eating fish contaminated with organic mercury, because of the Chisso corporation's dumping of mercury-containing waste into Minimata Bay. If you want the details, you can find them here.

On the Nature of Evil

2005-02-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

Here's another interesting article from the New York Times. Psychiatrists are now arguing that in some cases, "evil" is the only way to describe certain people and their behaviors. Since everything in the human body can and does go wrong, creating diseases known and unknown, I believe that the biology that gives us a normal conscience also can get screwed up. The problem is that there are no cures, at least not yet, for personality disorders such as sociopathy.

Call The White House!

2005-02-08T06:45:00.000-08:00

I am so impressed with Thomas Friedman's case for dumping the reward for Bin Laden, that I believe it is time we harness the power of the Blogosphere and get that message to the Bush Administration. I'm new at this game, but some of you have a lot of blogger contacts. Spread the word! Devalue that tapeworm!

Here are the phone numbers for the White House:
Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414

And here's how to email the President:
president@whitehouse.gov

A Quick Question

2005-02-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

Any current or former fast food workers out there? Does anyone know if the fountain colas have more caffeine than the canned stuff? I just drank half of my Sonic Diet Coke and I'm shaking like a leaf and my heart is beating out of my chest. This usually only happens after about five cups of coffee.

Excellent Column from Friedman

2005-02-07T06:04:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's New York Times is a great op-ed (registration required but worth it) by Thomas Friedman , suggesting that the Bush administration should not double the reward for Bin Laden from $25 million to $50 million, but instead drop it to one penny and an autographed photo of Bush. He points out that all that the money is doing is feeding Bin Laden's ego and helping make him out to be an underworld hero. He has an interesting suggestion on what to do with the money instead that he feels would do far more to help our security: fund essay contests with US college scholarships as rewards.

Excellent points, Mr. Friedman.

If we do drop the reward, I would suggest that we drop it with a deadline. "You have 2 weeks to turn in Bin Laden and get $25 million. After that, you get nothing but our thanks."

Interesting New (to me) Blog

2005-02-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

I've enjoyed reading a little bit of Okie Funk: Notes from the Outback. New to me, but has been here at least as far back as May 2004. Weird how the blog world works. There are so many sites from people who are right in the neighborhood, yet you can go forever and not stumble across them.

Anyway, I read with interest his 2/1 entry on Robin Meyers and his take on the inauguration. KH's contention is that we need to be able to view morality outside a religious framework, and that even the liberal views of Meyers's are oppressive.

I certainly understand feeling on the outside of the mainstream discussions around here, where conservative Christianity is taken for granted as the basis for the conversation.

I am a Christian, though, and I feel my religion is in danger of being taken over by literalist, right wing elements that have lost the true meaning that Jesus taught. I think that true meaning started being lost from the earliest years of squabbling over the contents of the Bible. I think the point of Meyers's article was that if someone (such as Bush) decides to wrap himself up in his religion, then his behavior shouldn't be something that the key figure in that religion would find abhorrent.

I don't want Meyers to stop being a champion for Christianity. We need all of these voices we can get. I don't have a problem with literalist Christians, either, as long as they neither force their views of Christianity on others nor try to define the religion for the rest of us.

One of the best voices on the Christian left is John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal priest and author of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. That book spoke a lot about why literal interpretations of the Bible are not supported by Biblical research. He tore down a lot of standard beliefs (the literal virgin birth, the literal resurrection, etc) but didn't explain why he remains a Christian. I was left wondering why he saw any point to continuing not only as a Christian but as a priest. I am very pleased to be reading his latest book, A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying and How a New Faith is Being Born. He explains his reasons why he is passionately Christian and how he thinks Christianity's relevance remains and is even strengthened in this modern new world. It's interesting reading and I highly recommend it. He makes no claim for an exclusive path to God through Jesus, so I think even KH might not feel oppressed by the religion he describes.

Million Dollar Baby

2005-02-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

See Chase's entry on the controversy surrounding this movie and its critics. I'll leave that part to him.

I have other issues with this movie.

I thought Million Dollar Baby was, overall, a very good movie, but there were a couple of parts that jarringly rang false. First was the hick from Texas, who was clearly mentally challenged. No problem with that, but why the Forrest Gump accent? Even mentally challenged people from Texas (I know, that's redundant) don't speak faux-Cajun-cum-Nell English. My main beef with the movie, though, was Maggie's one-dimentional, white trash, caricature of a family. I don't think even bumpkins from Missouri could be that consistently stupid and evil. Perhaps people on the US coasts don't realize that these portrayals are cartoonish and unbelievable. Or perhaps the political correctness in critics makes them feel sanctimonious about the movie because of the ending. In any case, my view is that this movie tries to be both drama and mindless sports cartoon at the same time, and it doesn't work.

TERRIBLE MOVIE ALERT!!!!!

2005-01-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

WARNING!!! Do NOT go see Being Julia, unless you are an aspiring screenwriter or director and want to be inspired, as it sets a very low hurdle to jump over. It is one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. Poorly written, poorly edited, poorly everything. Perhaps Annette Bening acted well, but I guess it takes a trained eye to see good acting and forgive a truly rotten movie. I have my suspicions that critics and awards committees have political correctness clouding their judgment when it comes to films about aging actresses crying on cue. Alfie still takes the prize for the worst movie I have seen in the last year, but this comes in a close second.

If you want to watch a really great movie that got snubbed by the Oscars, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster was terrific, and I'm not even a fan (or I wasn't until I saw this movie).

Back to Serious (Deadly Serious) Issues

2005-01-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine's brother is about to be sent to Iraq for 18 months. He's with the Army (can't remember if Guard or Reserves). Anyway, he's trained in military intelligence, and is supposed to be armed with both a shotgun and a 9 mm handgun. That's what he's trained with. That's what he's supposed to have. Another unit has also gotten called up and they had no weapons. So, the Army decided that my friend's brother's unit has to split their weapons with the other unit. So now her brother will be going in to interview prisoners armed with only a shotgun. He has two of his own handguns but isn't allowed to take his own. A 9 mm apparently costs $250, but we aren't allowed to buy him one. How long have we been at this war? How much money have we been spending? Why the hell can't we arm our soldiers appropriately? $40 million for the inauguration? Sure, maybe it was donated, but couldn't they spend that to give our soldiers the protection and weapons they need? I have heard so many stories like this. Another friend's son was in Iraq in a tank that was unable to fire. Another family sent walkie talkies to their son/brother because the military didn't give them any. Are we really living in a Super Power?

On Another Subject

2005-01-24T13:53:00.000-08:00

So I get my hair cut. I go to work and one of my female coworkers says to me, "You got your hair cut." I reply, "Yes, I did," with a big smile on my face, as if saying, "Hey thanks! You noticed!" And then she just stares at me. Why are women so darn catty to each other? Unless she is a total moron (and I don't think she is) she was being, well, a bitch. You either ignore someone's haircut, or, if you start a conversation as she did, you then say, "It looks nice." Unless you want to be really rude. Hrumph.

I actually like my new haircut. I can't seem to do that curly thing with it that the stylist did, but then again I never have been good at that sort of stuff. Fairer game for commentary by my coworker would have been my left eyebrow. On the advice of a friend of mine I went to a particular mall to get my eyebrows waxed. Problem: I couldn't remember exactly which salon she had recommended so I went to the wrong one (!). I now have a bald patch in the middle of my left eyebrow. I am getting pretty good with the eyeliner and mascara, but by the end of the day the bald spot tends to make itself known.

On-Target Cartoon

2005-01-21T06:11:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this. I've been having a relapse of my intense feeling that Bush is the worst thing ever to happen to the US. I stumbled across the cartoon and was reminded of a few of the reasons why. I studied Russian for two summers in the Soviet Union, and Bush-Cheney and company would have fit right in with their disinformation campaigns, Orwellian doublespeak, and totalitarian tendencies.

It all makes me want to puke or scream or both.

The Lure of Good vs. Evil

2005-01-20T08:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to see a sneak preview of Hotel Rwanda, which I thought was an excellent movie. It reminded me, of course, of the extent of horror that humans perpetrate on each other over and over again. There have been so many examples of this in human history, involving all continents and all peoples. No one's forefathers are all innocents and no one's forefathers are all guilty. We are all descended from both oppressors and victims and cannot by virtue of our birth claim moral superiority over anyone. On this day in which George W. Bush is being inaugurated for the second time, I think it is especially important for us to remember that actions and some individuals are evil, but not groups of people. The same goes for goodness. Every person is capable of both good and evil. If our country is a great and good nation, it is because we as individuals and collectively dedicate ourselves every generation and every day to doing good, to doing the right thing, and to earnestly endeavoring to figure out what those good and right things are. We must honestly evaluate our actions and be willing to change course when we discover we are making mistakes. We must also dedicate ourselves to the task of recognizing, preventing, and punishing evil deeds committed by our own people. We were not born better than other people, as some Americans seem to think, but instead make ourselves a better nation by our actions. Our nation is a good and great nation, but we are in danger of losing this distinction. We must demand of ourselves and of our leaders that actions done in our name uphold our nation's ideals and work for the benefit of people here and around the world.

Swamped!

2005-01-18T04:37:00.000-08:00

I'm still here; just swamped at work. Main benefit: can't watch much news, which keeps me from itching to blog. Other good news: 3 things have kept my house from itself turning into a swamp: 1) recent first visit of my new parents-in-law, 2) my father-in-law's allergy to cats, which was a great incentive to break out the hand vac for every piece of furniture, and 3) my new-found devotion to Flylady.com, as previously mentioned. For once our 1700 square foot house actually feels big as all the rooms are usable!

Dowd-ing Thomas (for good reason)

2005-01-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

In her column in today's New York Times, Maureen Dowd paints a bleak and frightening picture of the situation in Iraq and the Bush administration's handling of it. Here's a portion of what she writes:

Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That's the backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you're golden; tell the truth, you're gone.
Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word "realist" into a "pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.
Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.
The Iraqi election that was meant to be the solution to the problem - like the installation of a new Iraqi government and the transfer of sovereignty and all the other steps that were supposed to make things better - may actually be making things worse. The election is going to expand the control of the Shiite theocrats, even beyond what their numbers would entitle them to have, because of the way the Bush team has set it up and the danger that if you're a Sunni, the vote you cast may be your last.

Okay, to those of you on the right. I know, I know. It's Maureen Dowd writing. But along with her sarcasm there is the ring of truth. What a horrible mess we have made of things, like a bull in a china shop, in which every piece of the china holds explosive nitroglycerin. Things are crashing down and blowing up all around us. I still shake my head in disbelief that our fellow countrymen re-elected Bush, knowing as surely they must have, that He Who Never Doubts Himself would find even less reason to question his mistakes than before he got this so-called mandate. No matter what the justification for going to war, its prosecution has been sheer incompetence. Our troops deserve better. Our country deserves better. Our world deserves better. The Iraqi people deserve better.

Here's What's Wrong with Major League Baseball

2005-01-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

Check out the article in the New York Times (registration required) about Boston Red Sox' first baseman, Doug Mientkiewicz, who caught the World Series winning ball to finally finally finally give Boston a championship. The guy makes $2.8 million last season alone and thinks he owns the ball and won't give it to his team. The era of team players is definitely a thing of the past. If a guy on the world championship, dreamiest dream team of them all isn't even loyal enough to his teammates and his team to get beyond his own self-centered money-grubbing, there's no hope for Major League Baseball.

Flylady.com

2005-01-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it's New Year's Resolution time, and mine is, as is has been for the past, oh, twenty years or so, to finally get myself organized. I have hit upon the perfect tool for me (I hope): Flylady.com. If you are a woman who can stand to read cutesy things like "DH" for "Dear Husband" and if you are, like me, hopelessly disorganized and awash in clutter, this site may be for you, too. Best advice: "You can't organize clutter, you can only get rid of it." Best acronym: CHAOS = Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. Main strategy: Work on a specific part of your house for 15 minutes per day. If you are a clutter-ridden man you may also like the daily email deluge ("Where are your shoes?" "Where is your laundry?") but you will have to ignore the fact that this site is definitely aimed at women.

Back in my young and foolish days I used to be a touchy feminist. Went to a really PC-driven school (land of "Freshperson Conference", etc.) and it took me a while to not be insulted by politenesses such as a man opening a door for me. Now that I am older and wiser I am still a feminist but I don't mind the cute and frilly and sappy touches of Flylady. I'm glad to be a girly girl, but I'm hoping to be a neat one too.

No Black-Eyed Peas

2005-01-01T22:57:00.000-08:00

Well, I missed my opportunity for New Year's black-eyed peas. I was beginning to feel a teensy bit of worry about this until I realized that I had had no black-eyed peas last year either, and it was the best year of my life. I married the best, most wonderful, smartest, kindest man in the world on a fabulous wedding day surrounded by friends and family. If 2005 is even half as good a year it will still be better than all years but 2004.

I shouldn't be surprised. My great grandmother was the 13th child born on a Friday the 13th. Quick! Someone get me a mirror to break!

Oh Where Oh Where Has Red Dirt Gone?

2004-12-29T10:49:00.000-08:00

No new posts from Red Dirt since Dec 24th. Are you sick, too, Red Dirt? Holidays take the wind out of your sails? Looking forward to your next rant.

Anxiously Awaiting the Joker's Wife

2004-12-29T07:19:00.000-08:00

One of the frequently posting anonymous authors on Red Dirt's, Chase's, and Lip Schtick's blogs has sworn that she will soon open up a blog of her own. I look forward to seeing her wit on her own pages! Hurry it up, JW!

Very Cool Blog

2004-12-29T07:07:00.000-08:00

I really like The Mainstream Baptist blog, which is "The personal blog of Dr. Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists and Webmaster for the Mainstream Baptist Network." Check it out. Take a look at his Christian Democrat site, too.

The Tsunamis

2004-12-29T06:06:00.000-08:00

The numbers killed and missing and still endangered from the tsunamis are staggering, unfathomable. More dead than the total number of US servicemen killed in Vietnam. About 20 times the number killed on 9/11. There is no evil human element at play in these numbers, but there is a need for a generous human response. Please consider donating to the American Red Cross's International relief fund.

I'm Back!

2004-12-29T05:53:00.000-08:00

To the two or three of you who actually read my blog, I'm sorry I haven't written anything in a while. I've been sick. I've watched while my good friend Chase has posted and posted, yet from me, nothing. But after two straight days of lying around, I am feeling much better. I now have the tell-tale signs of my favorite: the Post-Illness High. Does anyone else get that? All the sudden I feel physically well, happy, and energetic.
The PIH was not enough by itself to make me happy about going back to work, but last night I had an old standby dream that made going back seem wonderful. I dreamed (again) that I was in college and finals were in a couple of days and I had barely begun to study for most of my courses, and then there was that other course I had meant to drop that I hadn't been to at all since midterm. Even if I could get someone's class notes to study from, what about the big paper that was due? The wrinkle in this version of The Dream was that I had bills to pay and I was doomed to get an 'F' and would not be able to be employed. I woke up relieved to have already successfully jumped through all the hoops for my job. "I can work! I can work!"

Better Watch Out or It'll Be an eBay Christmas

2004-12-24T10:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a novel trick to enforce the Naughty/Nice policies of Santa: sell off Christmas gifts on eBay if the kids are rotten. The Dallas Morning News reports on a Houston father who is doing just that. Bye-bye Nintendo. Bye-bye $700 in video games.

Ooooh. I see a fix for our culture of entitlement! A new Christmas tradition. Since many kids now have absolutely everything already, make them behave to keep what they've got.

I can see it now...

The Grinch's heart shrinks back down to size
And a gleeful glimmer lights up his eyes.
Have you been naughty? Have you been bad?
The Grinch will make certain your Christmas is sad.
Away, away the presents will go
Up the chimney to eBay
With a Grinchy HO HO HO!