ZenYenta 2.0

I'm So Proud

2010-05-06T15:10:00.001-04:00

GARDEN CITY -- A weekly newspaper photo depicting President Barack Obama and his wife as characters from the TV sitcom "Sanford and Son" was intended as political satire and not a racist commentary, the publisher said Wednesday.

Phillip Sciarello, publisher and part owner of the Smithtown Messenger on Long Island, defended publishing the photo, but said the newspaper would run a retraction for anyone who might have been offended.

How do you run a retraction of that? An apology, I can see, as insincere as it may be, but a retraction? Do you say, "We're very sorry but our depiction of the President and First Lady was inaccurate. They were never members of the cast of Sanford & Son", or what?

At least I don't live in Smithtown. That's something to be grateful for.

We're Short On Livestock

2010-04-23T22:36:00.000-04:00

Let's see....Mr. Yenta spent one full week in the hospital. He had an MRI, EKG, ultra sound and probably some other tests. His regular doctor called in a cardiologist and a neurologist. And now he says he needs a different ultra sound and at least one more specialist. The pharmacist is seeing a lot of us. Now I'm supposed to go for an x-ray of a problem area and pretty soon the doctor is going to notice that I'm late getting a mammogram. After checking with the very handy chicken converter it seems clear to me that if we didn't have insurance we'd have to buy the farm.

Pat Robertson, meet Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi

2010-04-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Why wasn't Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi invited to opine on the real cause of the attacks on 9/11/01 with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Where was he when blame was placed for Katrina? OK, I admit that I don't watch the 700 Club. Was he invited on? Maybe after the earthquake in Haiti? I'm just asking because he and Pat Robertson seem to have a lot in common. James Dobson would fit right in, too.

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

Has a familiar ring, doesn't it?

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."

It's always been hard to understand how extremely conservative Christians don't see how they are just the same as extremely conservative Islamics. The name you use to call on your God of intolerance is not the point. Fundamentalists are fundamentalists, no matter what the creed.

I Apologize, Google

2010-04-17T11:43:00.000-04:00

It wasn't you. It was me. I had a virus. More than one, actually. This one was the dreaded Google Redirect Virus or trojan or whatever the hell it really was. I also had something that was disabling my firewall. Not a good thing. Although it seems OK now I might still have it lurking in the system, ready to pounce on reboot. Actually, I've been very lax on security lately and I've had a few problems and used every kind of security software I'm familiar with and one or two that are new to me and other than Spybot Search and Destroy, which pretty much everyone has anyway, I'm not naming them until I know if we're really OK. Spybot's Tea Timer was what told me I had a problem to begin with, although it wasn't able to clean up the whole mess by itself.

What's kind of interesting, is how various browsers have reacted to the problems and maybe to the cures that have afflicted us in the last few days.

Google Chrome, my favorite, upon realizing it was being compromised in such a way committed suicide. Won't work. I uninstalled and reinstalled. Still wouldn't work. Now it won't re-install anymore. I'll try dealing with that more eventually. I think it's going to need therapy to deal with the humiliation.
Firefox - Gave into the enemy completely and went right along with the redirection. Didn't even put up a fight. I'm going to call it VichyFox from now on. After fixes were applied behavior is corrected and it's running normally and trying to pretend that this little incident never happened.
Safari for Windows - Wouldn't display Google search results while this was going on. Ultimately sacrificed itself, though. It took to freezing up as soon as it loaded after problem was dealt with. Finally had to uninstall.
Opera - Was never affected in the least. No redirection when searching on Google and no glitchy behavior before, during or after fixes. Guess which one is my favorite browser now?
Internet Explorer - Wouldn't have dreamed of opening it while any of that was going on. As of now it seem to be working normally, which I assume means it'll crash pretty soon because that's still SOP for IE on my system.

Google, Can We Talk?

2010-04-16T09:10:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Google, you know I love and respect you. I don't ever believe any of that "Google is evil" talk. Not really. I admire your competence and sheer genius in providing us with nifty user experiences. So it is with great anxiety that I have noticed that your search is getting spammed over. Make it stop! As recently as a few months ago you could put just about anything you happened to be wondering about in your search box and get a load of relevent results. I can't tell you how many pressing - and not so pressing - questions I've gotten answers to that way. But lately what appear to be search results are leading to pages that are clearly just created, probably by means of their own complex algorithms (whatever they really are), to capture hapless searchers. Once again, Google, make it stop before something really terrible happens. Please don't make me use Bling.

Update - It was my fault, not yours, Google. More here.

Happy Tax Day

2010-04-15T08:01:00.000-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It's tax day. Many protests are planned. Us - we're getting a refund for the first time since we had a dependent minor. That's more than a decade. Let's see what might have changed. Income - about the same. Maybe a teeny bit higher, but basically the same. Our deduction situation - exactly the same. So what could be different about 2009? Well, Barack Obama became president in 2009. Passed some tax relief for the middle class. I guess that must be the difference. Gee whiz, where can I go to protest that? On the way to the hospital, that is.

Has Everyone Gone to the Tea Party?

2010-04-13T20:30:00.001-04:00

Image by Fibonacci Blue via Flickr

It's true that life is currently consumed with trips back and forth to the hospital and consulting with doctors and I have no idea what's happening in the world. That much is true, but there was still something that made me go "Hmmm" I pretty much only travel the route to the hospital when we have someone there, but that's happened plenty in the last decade. I go past a Planned Parenthood office and there has always been one, two or three protesters outside with the usual signs. And now I've passed the place on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, every one of them featuring fine weather for protesting and there's no one. Nada. Not one angry soul hoping to harass some hapless female going in there for services - of which abortion is only one. Mentioning this to someone who passes a different Planned Parenthood office on her route to work caused her to realize she hasn't noticed anyone there lately either. So where'd they go? Nothing's changed recently and they were so dogged in the face of vast public indifference to their existence for so long. I can only conclude that they have probably taken up teabagging. The teabaggers have taken to setting up at local Post Offices, presumably to harass people who want to buy stamps, when there isn't a big event happening.

It does seem very likely that the Tea Party draws from the same group of sadsacks of disontent who were around anyway, with time on their hands since their income so often derives from SSI.

Even More Absent Than Usual

2010-04-12T09:15:00.000-04:00

Mr. Yenta is in the hospital at the moment. He's been there since Saturday and will probably be there a while longer, so I'm completely out of it. Has anything happened? Of course, the dog has been able to keep up her blog while all this is going on, but I figured out why. All she has to know is what's going on in her life. A dog's life is always interesting enough to warrant a blog post. Very few of us humans can say the same.

Breaking News - Conservative Republican Fails To Fan Flames of Hatred

2010-04-06T23:52:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

It's got to be a sign of the times when Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) hands out reality checks and it's big news. Lots of things happened today and some of them happened to the Republican party, but this morning that story was all over the web because unlike scandal, this was a singular sort of event. Thing is, being a very, very conservative Republican we have to wonder if Senator Coburn is feeling a little lonely right now. Not because he spoke his mind and maybe pissed off some Teabaggers or some Fox anchors. But it's got to be lonely being an arch-conservative who wants to keep a foot in reality right now, because the most of the breed departed on the USS Delusion by the time Caribou Barbie had spent a few weeks on the campaign trail in '08. Any stragglers were driven to madness by the election of Barack Obama. There's really nothing lonelier than being the one semi-sane person in a caucus full of lunatics.

Sarah Palin Wants Tea Baggers To Harass Drivers?

2010-03-30T23:31:00.002-04:00

That ditzburger has got to be kidding this time, doesn't she? She wants Tea Baggers to stop cars with Obama stickers and ask them how that hopey changey thing is going for them? I'll tell you what - if one of those fanatical loony tunes ever, ever tries to stop my car I will surely call 911 and I just hope things don't get out of hand to the point where it might seem necessary to ram into him or her before the cops arrive.. As far as I'm concerned those people are dangerous and very possibly armed and I don't want any of them within fifty feet of me. As to the hopey changey thing, it's going just fine, thank you, you low information psycho-bitch from hell. We got a start on health care and some improvement in the student loan situation and that was just what happened last week.

There, that feels better. And a good Pesach to all.

New One On Me

2010-03-29T04:14:00.000-04:00

I don't know if this one is going around. I heard it in the local drug store, not the media. I walked in while one of the pharmacists, the counter clerk and a customer were discussing yet another reason that Health Care reform is no good. Not enough Primary Care Physicians. The pharmacist wondered with 32 million more people in the system who would take care of them? The counter clerk said it wouldn't matter because it would take six months to get an appointment. The customer said it was scary, was what it was. Just scary.

Scarier than having a huge portion of our population without access to health care? Scarier than being priced out of the insurance market? I guess that was the idea.

Former Prez makes Handy Wipe for Former Prez

2010-03-24T22:50:00.000-04:00

I know there are much more relevant Republicans to make fun of right now. It's kind of silly even to bother with Dubya at this point, and to be fair, he's been staying out of the current president's business unlike Darth Cheney. So, it's almost wrong to highlight this video of him being him, but like the mountain, it was there.

The Misinformation Age

2010-03-23T06:50:00.001-04:00

I followed a link on Facebook and got drove through a backwater on the Information Superhighway. Even the name of the group is born of delusion - 304,059,724 against Obama's Healthcare takeover. A question for physics majors out there - Does ignorant really travel faster than informed or does it just seem that way?

The Dumbest Contention Of Them All?

2010-03-22T21:04:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

The Take - Washington Post

....former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrichsaid Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Well, let's take a look at where the similarities lie.

A. Both are monumental and contentious pieces of legislation that change the social contract between the government and the people. Check
The Democratic Party is a big tent coalition with diverse major factions. Check
Two of the largest of the Democratic factions are pro-labor New Dealers and conservative Dixiecrats. Oh, wait just a minute on that.

The latter started moving to the Republican party after the aforementioned Civil Rights and the GOP finished the job by appealing directly to them in what we all recall as the Southern Strategy. And the modern Democratic equivalent of those people would be? Who among the Democratic Party gathers at night in hoods to burn a caduceus on the lawn of the wrong sort of health care consumer? I'm thinking that's not really such a faction in the party these days.

Proud to be an American

2010-03-22T00:04:00.000-04:00

OK, not as proud as if we had single payer, but this is such a sweet moment. And to the racist, willfully ignorant teabaggers out there - well, you'll benefit, too. And that's as it should be. I guess.

G.E. Still Hearts Ronnie.

2010-03-17T23:12:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

G.E. is sponsoring the Reagan Centennial. And you might have noticed they're running TV commercials about it. A lot. I particularly enjoy the part where he would talk to G.E. employees and inspires them. Of course, once he became president he could inspire even more workers. The picture on the right depicts President Reagan saying inspiring things about air traffic controllers.

Dick Meister remembers Reagan's attitude toward working people the way I do, only better. If you'd like your memory refreshed read his Ronald Reagan's War on Labor.

My Life As A Dog

2010-03-16T22:22:00.002-04:00

I said, a few posts back that I'd been considering helping my dog blog. Well, I'm doing it. Not instead of this blog, but along with it. She's got her own blog and it's fun and it's easy. Not only that, but it's really therapeutic after a day of dealing with funding cuts and whatnot. I can take a break from human concerns and the Big Picture out there and really contemplate the joy of squirrel chasing.

This post is not meant to promote Lola's blog. In fact, I don't even know if I'm going to blogroll her. So far she won't blogroll me as hers is for animals only. No, this is more along the lines of a confession, because we went fully anthropomorphic on her blog. Yes, she's blogging in the first person and I'm just the ghostwriter. It's a little embarassing because I'm normally kind of nauseated by cutesy stuff. but I have to say that a fair number of blogging dogs out there are anything but cutesy. Quite a few have a pretty acerbic wit.

Of course there are those who argue that anthropomorphism isn't just silly, it's wrong, wrong, wrong. We must accept our furry, feathered or scaled brethren for what they are and not try to make them human and all that. Maybe. But where's the fun in that for anyone? Dogs and humans have lived, worked and played side by side for thousands of years. I think we're capable of understanding each other pretty well by now. Doing things this way has the side effect of making me look at things from what might really be her point of view. The only thing is, I think that all this attention may be going to her head, just a little.

Album Cover Mix and Match

2010-03-16T08:27:00.001-04:00

New design form or something you can try at home when you have insomnia and absolutely nothing left to do? You decide.

Album Cover Mix and Match

Daylight Savings Time - Could be better

2010-03-14T09:56:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

It's come to my attention that today begins Daylight Savings Time and it's an hour later than I thought it was. While the trade-off is kind of worth it and we get the hour back in the fall, I believe we can improve the way we do this.

My proposal is simple. We leave the end of Daylight Savings Time the way it is. The change officially arrives at 2AM on the designated Sunday morning. Nothing wrong with getting an extra hour on Sunday. However getting an hour less of Sunday is not as good. How about we move the Spring Ahead time to, say, around 4PM on a Friday? What do you think?

WTF, Zogby?

2010-03-14T09:15:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Zogby's e-mailed surveys often seem to be a little odd to me. I signed up to weigh in on political and social issues but sometimes I'm a couple of screens into it before I realize it must have been commissioned by someone interested in marketing something about which
I have zero interest or information. This latest one seems eclectic to say the least. Along with typical political questions it seems to be designed to fulfill contractual obligations to various entities. If I had to guess I'd have to say the entities in question might be Apple, some apparel marketing firm and the Heritage Foundation. It wouldn't be Zogby if there wasn't a question that raised my blood pressure. There were, but there was one clear winner.

Last month, the President proposed raising taxes on U.S. companies who do business overseas. The higher taxes would significantly increase the operating costs that these companies must pay. This additional burden would make it even harder to compete in the global marketplace against companies based in countries where the taxes are lower and overhead costs like health care are paid for by the government. Would you support or oppose changes to the U.S. tax code that would hurt American companies trying to compete internationally?

Push polling much? The emphasis there is mine. Support or oppose, right. And the answers are...

Yes

No

Not Sure

As in "Yes, I support or oppose it.", "No, I don't support or oppose it." I guess "Not Sure" works with the wording of the question, but a lot of us are sure. So, it's not only push polling but the writer of the question seems to have been drunk at the time he wrote it. Keep up the fine work, guys.

Glenn Beck, meet Bruce Springsteen

2010-03-13T06:09:00.002-05:00

Glenn Beck got hold of the lyrics to Born in the USA and, like other conservatives before him, was chagrined. It happens over and over and demonstrates what must be obvious to everyone by now. Conservatives don't listen. Or read. Most albums used to come with lyric sheets. Springsteen is, of course, one of the most consistent, outspoken progressives in rock music. But then, who can a conservative rely on, musically speaking? Well, there's always good Ted Nugent. They've got Ted on their side all right. There are a few others in the world of rock music but not a whole lot of the important ones. The conservative will find greener pastures in the world of country music, but it's certainly not monolithic so even there, they'll need to listen to the words to be sure.

Conservatives need to give it up and chill with some nice Lawrence Welk. Rock music is inherently free-thinking and it was the idealogical forebears of Glenn Beck who saw that in early rock and roll and tried to kill it in its cradle. To put in high school terms - which seems appropriate - rock music is the always alluring Rebel and the Glenn Becks of the world are the Hall Monitor. And the Hall Monitor was pretty much beneath contempt.

A Giant Leap for Blogger

2010-03-11T21:11:00.001-05:00

You can read about it on the Official Google Blog, Blogger Buzz or for the most detail the Blogger in Draft blog. Blogger is introducing Template Designer. I know there are a lot of very iimportant things going on right now, but I have to admit that when I caught the post about this on the Google Blog it took my breath away. Of course there were some mixed feelings. I'd just finished finding a three column template and installing it and customizing it. That was a few days ago, really. And now you can do the same thing with a few clicks of the mouse.

This is why I came back to Blogger after a sojourn at Wordpress. Blogger, like many Google products, will seem to take forever to upgrade features like this. Their template sets had grown so old that they were recommending other sites to find more up to date ones not too long ago. Now, in a very short time they've burst forth with the features bloggers dream about. First they added pages about month ago. A much valued feature in Wordpress, pages can turn your blog into a whole website if you should want that. And now Template Designer, which lets you choose a more up to date template, and then customize it completely. The best thing about it is the way you can choose one, two or three columns, change that around whenever you want, and rearrange the layout of the columns. All very tricky stuff in CSS and now there's no need to hurt your brain doing it. You can also change the width of....everything. You can, in fact, have it your way.

So what are you waiting for? Go fool around with this.It'll take your mind off the health care debate and/or tea baggers for a while. Just save the old template first, just in case.

Somebody Blinked

2010-03-08T06:39:00.000-05:00

After an exciting stand-off that lasted all day some sort of face-saving agreement was reached all around and ABC was back on Cablevision in time for the first award. However, you would have missed two hours of pre-game excitement if you were relying on a Cablevision connection. So, there. We turned it on when we found out about it, mostly for my sister. She's a movie buff and makes sure to see each and every contender for the main Academy Awards. She fell asleep before the best supporting actor was announced. I don't blame her. I wasn't paying total attention, but it did seem like the show was a bit of a snoozer. I did notice one thing. Was it my imagination or did the actors and actresses seem to be going for looking good instead of bizarre this year? If so, it's a nice trend, but I may not have seen enough to judge.

All in all the show we got here leading up to it all day - Will they or won't they? - was a lot more exciting than the actual program.

The War Continues

2010-03-07T17:22:00.004-05:00

The war between Cablevision and ABC has gotten uglier. If you're accessing the web through Cablevision today this ad is EVERYWHERE.

Clicking it brings you here. If nothing else, this little contretemps is an advertising bonus for someone in the intertubes. That's got to be a good thing. Meanwhile, Cablevision is offering all on demand movies free of charge for today. Oh, wait, they just sent me another e-mail....

OK, back. They just wanted to keep us updated on where you can find the most online coverage of the Oscars in case you didn't run out and buy a digital antenna today. I say screw the Oscars. I'm never awake past a lot of "best short subject in a foreign language" stuff anyway. I want popcorn for this fight. It's more entertaining than the Oscars ever are.

The Monster In Our Living Rooms

2010-03-07T08:31:00.004-05:00

Image by gbaku via Flickr

In the years just B.C. - Before Cable - every time we went to the movies there would be a short feature warning of the dangers of Pay TV. "The monster in your living room..." was the only line that I can remember. The movie industry was terrified that access to full length, uncut movies at home would empty the theaters. No one was yet envisioning VCRs, let alone DVD sales. Nor were they thinking about the time when a few companies would own everything - movie studios, television networks and theaters, so profits would all flow in the same direction no matter how the public was viewing Weekend at Bernie's.

So here we are, a few decades later, and everything has turned out just fine. Instead of three networks and a handful of local channels for free we get to pay a small fortune each month for a bazillion channels. We have options we never had before. Shopping channels, for instance. More of them seem to spawn every day. Now even agoraphobics can be shopaholics without killing trees for catalogs. It's a win/win/win.

Reception is much improved unless the cable goes out and that doesn't happen nearly as often as it did in the early days. If you like that sort of thing you can set up your TV and computer to mate in some Byzantine way. Even if I could figure that out, I would not do it. It's just giving them license to gang up on us. Who knows what they'd get up to while we're out working to support them? The only things is, if you have Cablevision and you have a yen to see the Oscars - or anything else on ABC channel 7 - you better start working on that hook-up now because as things stand it won't be on your TV.

Cablevision and ABC are having a big fight. ABC wants more money. Cablevision says "no". This sort of thing happens a lot now. There was a big argument about the Yankees network a few years ago. That was a bit galling to Yankee fans because before cable, sports teams didn't have networks and their games were televised on local channels. For free. More recently HGTV and the Food Network were embroiled in one of these fights and were pulled from Cablevision. It was resolved after a grueling few weeks and everyone was able to go back to redecorating their homes and cooking up gourmet meals.

Whenever one of these squabbles occur Cablevision airs its own ads explaining how it's unfair to their subscribers to have to pay these inflated rates for whichever channels are involved. As one of those subscribers, I'm willing to buy into that. In fact, I think we're paying way too much already, considering how often there's nothing worth watching on. (I should admit here that most of what we do watch is on cable channels, not broadcast TV, so it would seem that I do rather like it.) Anyway, what with Cablevision owning Newsday it's unlikely we'll have to read about any other point of view. That may sound like a conflict of interest, but, hey, if Cablevision hadn't bought Newsday, Rupert Murdoch was going to.

All I'm saying is that it appears that media has turned into a regular old clusterf*ck in so many ways. It kind of provides its own kind of entertainment - at a price.

Thank you Bob Cesca, thank you John Cole

2010-03-07T08:19:00.000-05:00

First I saw this by Bob Cesca which linked to this by John Cole. All I want to say is, yeah, what they said. And to thank them for saying it.

Blogger Jon Swift

2010-03-03T22:42:00.001-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

"Sometimes there are no words" was the headline of the last ever post at Jon Swift's blog. It's a brief post in response to the loss of a son by a fellow blogger and commentor. And now, almost a year later the mother of Jon Swift - who was in fact Al Weisel - has posted in the comments section of her own son's blog to tell his friends and fans that he has died.

It turns out that Al Weisel was a professional writer, which probably comes as surprise to no one. His political satire was brilliant. He didn't ever post every day. His posts were mostly long and written perfectly. Usually there was one a week. Once in a while, two. But always worth checking for, back in the old days when you actually had to go to someone's site to find out if there was a new post.

I never knew him personally, of course, but I think he was probably a great guy. Even though his entire blog was impeccably done with a satirical persona his real humanity somehow made itself known. He kind of hung out with the little bloggers even though he'd earned himself a seat at the A-list table. Not only did he champion liberal linking policies, he'd take the time to leave comments on little blogs - like this one, for instance. If he was that generous to others in Blogtopia* he must have been one hell of a guy in real life.

My heart goes out to his mother and the rest of his family and real life friends. If so many people who never got to meet him feel his loss as we do, how devastating this must be to those closest to him.. He will be so very much missed.

Google + Picnik=Yummy photo editing goodness for all

2010-03-01T23:51:00.003-05:00

I saw it on Shelly's blog first. I was hoping for this day. Picnik had to get acquired. It was just a question of by whom. It's always had a Googlish attitude about itself, I thought. It does these impressive without letting on that it takes itself all that seriously. I love Picnik. It's incredibly handy to use from work where I don't have Photoshop. Actually, at work they think that the Adobe photo album thing that comes with most all PCs is Photoshop. For my rather simple needs there, Picnik does just fine. Sometimes I use it at home, too, where Photoshop is always available just because it's more fun and has such a pretty website.

Congratulations to both companies and their users. May this turn out to be a match made in Heaven.

Harold Ford Will Not Be NY's Senator

2010-03-01T22:15:00.003-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Well, just in the last couple of days we've learned who will not be New York's next governor and now we know who will not be the next Senator as well. Harold Ford has decided that it's not such a good idea to run a primary challenge for the nomination. I don't really know what in the world Gillibrand has done wrong that Democrats should be mounting challenges instead of supporting her. I admit I'd never heard of her before she was appointed to the seat but she seems just fine.Harold Ford, on the other hand, I'm not so sure. But then, who is?

Things That Suck

2010-02-28T19:04:00.003-05:00

This is a short and very incomplete list. Right now what sucks in my little world is changing my template. 3 columns! Just what I always wanted! Mostly to accomodate a nice, long blogroll, with snippets. Oh, yeah! Guess what was the only data that seems to have gotten lost in the transition? Yes, of course. The blogroll. Everything else is there. So if you belong on this blogroll - you know who you are - and I don't get it up there in the next few days, please leave a comment and a link.

Thanks.

Update: Following blogs is a good idea. I've only done that with blogs that have the option on the site which are all on Blogger. Those could be imported right onto the blogroll. It's a start.

Can He Govern?

2010-02-28T00:20:00.003-05:00

The New York Times (and probably everyone else) is asking the question about our future former Governor Paterson. Well, it would come as quite a surprise if all of a sudden he developed a talent for it. However, I really think having two governors step down inside of one term is a bit much, even for New York.

OK, So it's been a while.....

2010-02-27T22:58:00.000-05:00

What happened, oh, months and months ago, is that I missed a few days too many. It started to seem like there had to be a killer post to come back with and there wasn't one. And the health care debate was depressing the hell out of me. Now it's just begun to seem eternal. But to get away from it all I started reading books again. Novels, no less. Stopped watching much cable news. Had to do it for a while. I was coming home from work, dealing with my husband's considerable health problems and then getting my stomach in knots listening to Ed Schultz bash Obama all over the place.I just needed my personal time to be pure escapism for a while, I guess.

In the meantime, life here at Casa Yenta has become more and more complicated and less and less blogworthy. Mr. Yenta is having a harder time. We can't much go anywhere or do anything that's likely to be of interest to anyone and a recounting of our days would come across as very whiny. As a matter of fact we don't usually feel terribly whiny about any of it. We're slogging along and coping with what's in front of us as it comes up. It's occurred to me that humans need a certain amount of adversity - which we like to call challenge. If life is going well, we'll climb a mountain or go to see depressing but intellectual foreign films or do something else that's uncomfortable and somewhat dangerous to our well-being. If we encounter actual adversity, well, then our normal life becomes sufficiently challenging and our need to seek adventure is satisfied by just getting through the week. It's not such a bad system, really.

That said, the latter doesn't make for compelling blogging, does it? Not really. I do still love blogging and blogtopia, though, so I'm pondering whether to try to start up again. Alternatively I could just help my dog start a blog. Dogs are always blogworthy, even if they're not doing that much.

Birth Certificates

2009-07-22T19:20:00.000-04:00

The birthers have been competing with health care for the news cycle this week. There was the nutcase at the townhall meeting in Delaware, Chris Matthews' bravura performance as he insisted on calling a whacko a whacko, and the shameful performance by Lou Dobbs in fueling this conspiracy theory. A lot of these people, including Dobbs, seem to be hanging their argument on the theory that the birth certificate that the President has produced and posted is somehow a short form and incomplete. The crazy lady in Delaware listed a whole bunch of things that are on hers that don't appear on Obama's including the hospital where she was born and the doctor's name. Lou Dobbs referred to a "long form" document.

With all this noise I decided to have a look at what we have around the house in the way of birth cerficates. I don't have mine. I had an official copy with raised seal but had to provide it to someone for some purpose or other years ago and haven't had a need for it since. Mr. Yenta has his. We were both born in New York State in the same year - 1949. Our copies would never make it with these people. Document reproduction was not very good in those days and both were just barely legible even though they include the raised seal, making them "official". . I do believe that mine listed the hospital. His doesn't. No doctor's names on either of them. I also have my son's. It's the only copy we've ever had and it's what he's used for everything he's ever needed one for. It has less information than the president. It has the date of birth. No time listed. The president's has the time on his. It lists my name and Mr. Yenta's, but makes no mention of our ethnicity. It lists the state New York and town of his birth and is signed by the town official in charge of those things and there's a local regisration number and the seal. No hospital, no doctor. I'd like to ask Mr. Dobbs if that makes my son "undocumented" as far as he's concerned, because if so, I'd suspect that the same would apply to millions of native born Americans. Or is this only a problem with African-American presidents?
"

And That's The Way It Is

2009-07-17T20:41:00.003-04:00

It's not so much that Walter Conkrite will be missed. It's more that he's been so much missed since he's been gone from our living rooms on a daily basis. RIP, Mr. Cronkite

United Breaks Guitars

2009-07-08T07:35:00.003-04:00

No time to embed. Getting ready for work, but Blog de Ford has a video by a musician who turns his pain into art - and viral revenge.

It's About the Country! And Stuff.

2009-07-05T09:46:00.005-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Poor, misunderstood Sarah.

The response in the main stream media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the “politics of personal destruction”. How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country. And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it’s right for all, including your family.

She did this for her country. Presumably because Sarah Palin being governor of just one state past the end of the month was damaging to the USA. I guess. Your guess is as good as anyone's. As of this morning there's still no one who seems to have any idea what she was talking about, except that not quitting would be the quitter's way out. Sarah Palin is no quitter, except for quitting her job, of course.

Sarah will keep busy. She has a book to sell and fortune to be made of her fame before it goes stale. What she does not have, as far as her lawyer is aware, are federal indictments coming up any time soon. Best not speculate about any rumors floating around out there or he'll sue your ass. Even though the Alaska constitution guarantees free speech. I'd have thought that the federal Bill of Rights had that covered, but apparently up there they rely on Alaska's constitution for such things. Repeating such rumors is probably defamation of character, unlike, say, referring to Barack Obama as "palling around with terrorists" which is just artistic license.

The important thing is that no one who is not up for re-election should stay in office because they'll inevitably goof off and not do the work. That new standard is going to create some sticky situations in the case of any office involving term limits. If you follow the logic, it goes like this:

If you're a lame duck you should leave office.
If you're limited to two terms, which is common enough, your second term is all lame duckitude, so if re-elected you should quit.
Campaigns are expensive, exhausting and they eat your soul. So, why bother standing for re-election if you're quitting.
If you're not standing for re-election then you're now a lame duck, ala Palin, so you need to quit.

Seems to me that logic is going to cause quite a few politicians to wonder, "Why run in the first place?" Well, clearly so that you can be plucked from obscurity to run for national office and thereby develop a national fan base and massive earning potential, also. You betcha!

At Long Last, Franken!

2009-06-30T22:12:00.001-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

What a nice surprise. I was off in the other office today. That means using a computer that struggles to handle the software I need to do my job. To try browsing the web at the same time is to invite it to freeze up and refuse to do a thing. So I didn’t know that the Al Franken decade had begun until I got home.

Of course, I was watching MSNBC which meant there was no sparing a minute to be happy about it. We had to start worrying about the added pressure of nominally having 60 senators in the caucus. Why enjoy the moment when you can wring your hands instead? If I wasn’t a bit of a political junkie I’d stop watching it and try having a normal life. But I am and it’s the only game in town. I plan to bitch about it quite a bit, though. Some of the shows there are getting on my last nerve.

In other intriguing news, Governor Mark Sanford has seen his Argentinean soul mate more than he’d initially admitted. He also seems to have grabbed some non-soul mate ass – or something – from time to time. Color me surprised – not. How can Jenny Sanford let this ~~horndog~~ prize go? I don’t know, but somehow I think she will. Even though he’s trying hard to fall back in love with her. Without much success, apparently.

Passings

2009-06-25T21:33:00.006-04:00

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Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. That's a lot for one day. I walked in from work just a few minutes before TMZ announced that Michael Jackson had died. That was several hours ago. They're still covering the story on all the cable news channels. I know this is big, but once the LA coroner confirmed that he'd died there wasn't really anything more to cover, other than his brother's brief statement.

There have been numerous phone interviews with people in Jacko's life from which you could get the definite impression that Michael's world was full of people pretty much as whacked as he was. Al Sharpton managed to make the death of Jackson into an opportunity to get some camera time even though he's in New York and doesn't seem to have anything particularly to do with the current situation.

Good Lord, now they're showing the helicopter carring his body landing on a heliport on the way to the coroner's office. Isn't this just a little creepy? Now they're following the van that's taking the body to the coroner, ala OJ's SUV. Papparazzi to the bitter end.

It's getting harder to think of things to talk about and even Keith Olbermann is beginning to lapse into babble occasionally. One thing no one's talking about is Farrah Fawcett. That was so earlier today. We've forgotten about poor Farrah now. There is talk about whether or not Michael Jackson found the life he wanted. The consensus was, "No". Probably a fair bet.

Now they're talking about how we're all going to die and that gives us something in common with Michael Jackson. Presumably we have that in common with such folks as Aristotle and Attila the Hun as well.

Now there's that lunatic lawyer who Keith spoke to over the phone. He's out there talking on camera now. He looks just like he sounded on the phone. Oh, I looked away for a moment and now Reverend Al has thrown on a suit and tie and gotten his ass to the MSNBC New York studios. The man is alert. You have to give him that.

I'm sorry. All due respect to the berieved and the news guys who are just doing their best to do their jobs, but it's time to let this rest in peace at least until the autopsy or toxicology reports come out because it's turning into a parody of a celebrity death. Michael Jackson is still dead.

Hardball WTF Moment of the Day

2009-06-24T00:14:00.001-04:00

Image by seiuhealthcare775nw via Flickr

There were a lot of them today. It would have been hard to choose which was the most bewildering bit of conversation but then there was THE moment. It was about the presidential press conference, health care reform and the public option. They played a quick clip of Jake Tapper asking Obama what would become of his promise that the insured portion of the American people wouldn’t have to change their plan to a public option if they didn’t want to in the event that the public plan was a good deal and employers decided to switch to it. Yeah, what then? Then they played a small portion of the president’s reply.

"When I say if you have your plan and you like it, ... or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform," the president said.

At that point, Tweety, Chuck Todd and another head on the screen whose name I don’t recall right now generally agreed that Obama got caught a little on that answer. Actually, the only way Obama got caught short is in that he probably still can’t believe people who get paid huge sums of money to report are asking such stupid, stupid questions. Sure, he should know by now, but it’s still hard to wrap your head around it.

I’d just like to know who these people have been working for for the last couple of decades. When both Mr. Yenta and I had jobs with private, for profit companies we had our health insurance changed almost every year – and rarely for the better from where we sat. The same thing has happened to almost everyone we know, too. When I started working at my present place of employment it was a little different. There were about five plans to choose from. Now there are two. In these instances the insurance companies dropped us. Not enough people on some of the plans to make it worthwhile to insure our aging workforce. Of the two that remain, one of them has been taken over by another company and it’s hard to find specialists that take it. That’s the one I have and I’m not complaining. I’m not even complaining that they declined to cover a medication that was prescribed to me this week. Hasn’t been out long enough to be on their list. The co-pays are low, though, and at least we have insurance. With Mr. Yenta’s medical expenses that’s the most important thing to us. We’ll cope with the rest.

If Jake Tapper, Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd or the other head on the screen think for a moment that most Americans really have choice when it comes to health insurers they need to get in touch with reality. When they’re at a presidential press conference they’re asking questions for all of us. They should ask smarter ones.

Profiles In Courage - Cynthia Davis

2009-06-22T22:48:00.004-04:00

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You have to hand it to Rep. Cynthia Davis. Most politicians would feel like they had to pander to constituents who might be soft on hungry children - at least a little. It takes a special kind of person to come out against providing nutritious meals for kids, but Rep. Davis goes there.

Her suggestion that the older kids could get jobs at McDonald's and get fed on their break makes a lot of sense. Maybe they could grab some extra ketchup packets and take them home so their younger siblings could have vegetables. And why did she not suggest that the kids stand on busy thoroughfares holding up, "Will Work for Food" signs? She probably wishes she did.

The Whole Wide World Is Tweeting

2009-06-21T11:36:00.007-04:00

Image by harrystaab via Flickr

BoingBoing.net has posted the Cyberwar guide for Iran elections. Me, I'm just reading on Twitter right now. I don't think adding, "Go protestors", "I'm with you, from here in the comfort my living room." would be much of a help. I could be wrong, though. Who knows what effect having so much of the world engaged in a people's struggle will have?

Along with news, Twitter's full of handy tips, first aid advice and other helpful info. Of course it's also full of rumor and misinformation. There's help to sort out what you should be suspicious of and what's reasonably reliable in the form of Twitspam's Iranian Election page to help you identify sources of BS. You gotta hand it to them - Twitter's on top of things. Can you imagine trying to run a revolution on early IRC chatrooms or even early instant messging?

Between Twitter and Nico Pitney's excellent liveblogging at Huffington Post, I'm once again having a hard time focusing on the things I can more directly affect - such as the state of my kitchen floor, laundry, etc.

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

2009-06-16T23:01:00.001-04:00

Image via CrunchBase

I don’t know what’s going to happen in Iran, of course. I hope something good comes out of all this for the Iranian people, but one huge winner has already emerged. Twitter has grown up so fast. Biz Stone and all the Twitter folks have to be walking on air even as they take their new responsibility to the world seriously. The were even asked to stay online and delay planned maintenance – asked by the State Department, no less.

Seldom, if ever, has a web service become so consequential so quickly. YouTube is a vital part of it all, too, of course, but it’s been around long enough to have established that it’s not just about stupid pet tricks. Not that there’s anything wrong with stupid pet tricks. Can’t get enough of them really. But nowadays you can’t run a political campaign without it, and the stupid candidate tricks can change the fate of nations. When all this is said and done citizen journalism will have come of age and proved its worth to any remaining doubters.

Sunday Evening Pleasures

2009-06-14T22:16:00.004-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

First, Indulgence

This was a pretty good Sunday night as those things go. First we got taken out for a Mothers' Day/Fathers' Day/Anniversary dinner. Our son and his girlfriend (who I think of as my future daughter-in-law) took us to a lovely café where we had a fantastic meal. Everything was good, but the most sinful part was the dessert I shared with my son. A "chocolate bag". We had to see what that was and OMG that was good. Pure chocolate shaped like a bag and filled with white chocolate mousse, whipped cream and berries.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Then home and the season premier of True Blood. The living room was packed for it. It really hit the ground running and the second season is looking even better than the first. I'd watch anyway. It's worth watching just for the theme song and opening credits. I think the song for the closing credits is new this season.

On A More Serious Note - Iran

I'm in total awe of the reform movement in Iran. It was heartbreaking to see what had happened in the election, but those people are so amazingly courageous. And they've had it. I guess there's no way for them to win this battle, but down the road I hope there's some way that they can win their war.

DIY – Diagnose It Yourself

2009-06-14T16:20:00.001-04:00

The story of Jessica Terry diagnosing her own ailment in AP science class says a lot about how smart Jessica is, but I have to wonder how smart her doctors are. Or are we just a little too reliant on tests that aren’t 100% reliable?

For eight years, Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain so horrible, it brought her to her knees. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick, she lost weight and often had to miss school.

During a science class, Jessica Terry, 18, discovered a tell-tale granuloma in her own pathology slide.

Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn't figure out the cause of Jessica's abdominal distress.

Here’s the thing. Without any particular expertise or even aptitude for things medical I read that first sentence and thought it sounded like Crohn’s, which was that granuloma proved it to be. I’d never heard of a granuloma. I just have one friend – count ‘em – one – who has Crohn’s and those are her symptoms. By now I know people with all kinds of other gastrointestinal disorders too, but none of the symptoms seem to be exactly the same as Crohn’s, especially over such a long period of time. Seems to me that since Crohn’s is very serious condition and, if left untreated, it can be fatal they might have wanted to make that leap and see if she responded to treatment. Of course, treatment for that particular disease is nothing to take lightly, so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t have jumped right in. But eight years? Have we gotten to the point in the CYA department where doctors don’t so much diagnose as just test?

I don’t mean to be all cranky about what’s supposed to be a good news kind of story and I have nothing against doctors or the medical profession in general. I’m very grateful for what ours have done for us over the years. It’s just that it seems that if you’re having a side effect that isn’t written about or a symptom that doesn’t produce a test result, sometimes they kind of stop paying attention. I see this happening a lot and I saw it with my mother as she aged. So this is more of a reflection and wondering if things are more this way now that so much testing is available or if it’s nothing new at all.

Frank Rich on Hate and the People Who Enable It

2009-06-14T08:24:00.007-04:00

Frank Rich has a must read, must spread column on the kind of rhetoric that is ramping up the hate in those who feel most threatened by Obama's presidency. It includes a call to conservative leaders to show some responsibility in light of recent events.

The question, Shepard Smith said on Fox last week, is “if there is really a way to put a hold on” those who might run amok. We’re not about to repeal the First or Second Amendments. Hard-core haters resolutely dismiss any “mainstream media” debunking of their conspiracy theories. The only voices that might penetrate their alternative reality — I emphasize might — belong to conservative leaders with the guts and clout to step up as McCain did last fall. Where are they? The genteel public debate in right-leaning intellectual circles about the conservative movement’s future will be buried by history if these insistent alarms are met with silence.

It’s typical of this dereliction of responsibility that when the Department of Homeland Security released a plausible (and, tragically, prescient) report about far-right domestic terrorism two months ago, the conservative response was to trash it as “the height of insult,” in the words of the G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele. But as Smith also said last week, Homeland Security was “warning us for a reason.”

Ironically, some conservative leaders did demonstrate some guts and common sense that bit of bravery might also serve to begin digging them out of the deep, dark hole they're in -especially if said conservative leaders are also closely identified with the GOP. At the moment, serious people can't take most Republicans or conservatives seriously. Their fortunes might start to change if they began acting like adults.

Old Bigot Prefers Old Bigotry

2009-06-13T11:07:00.001-04:00

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In yet another blatantly racist attack on Sonia Sotomayer, Pat Buchanan attributes every her every accomplishment to affirmative action and opines,

One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated "with the base alloy of hypocrisy."

In other news salmon swim upstream to spawn and the sun rises in the east. So, let’s review. Pat thinks Sonia Sotomayor is not smart enough for a SCOTUS appointment but Sarah Palin is fit to be president.

He, of course, also prone to hanging around with a very bad crowd, as his speaking invitation to a white nationalist demonstrates.

It’s time to retire him from MSNBC and mainstream media. His xenophobic, racist ideology is showing bigtime and should not be legitimized as part of the national discourse . Please let’s leave the unabashed racists to themselves.

Sorry Wingnuts - He's All Yours

2009-06-11T23:00:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Of course the people who make their livings off of the worst instincts of the right wing base are anxious to deflect any blame for the most recent murder by a far right extremist. And given their propensity for opposite logic it’s not a big surprise that they’ve decided that Von Brunn is a leftist.

Ironically, the voices of vitriol – Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, right wing bloggers and the rest might be less responsible for this individual’s actions than the other murders that have taken place in recent months. It’s complicated. Von Brunn’s world view intersects with the birthers and tea baggers who are encouraged by the right wing punditizers. He would meet kindred spirits at any Palin rally. But still and all,he’s 88 years old. He’s been who he is for a long, long time. He’s done reckless things before, even serving time in jail. It’s just possible that something as simple as having a black president could have sent him out to do this murder. That doesn’t mean they don’t have real responsibility for the violent climate that’s been emerging since the election. Their rhetoric is dangerous. And they should be very afraid that a critical mass of people will finally call them on it. Much more of this and that could happen.

By people, I mean the Republicans that line up to genuflect to them. I mean mainstream media which treats them as voices on one side of the political spectrum instead of the irresponsible shock jocks that they are. That includes the media that we mostly like. Why does Frank Gaffney get a platform on Hardball, for instance? The things he’s said recently should completely marginalize him, and yewe pretend he has something to say? When it comes to Limbaugh and Beck, maybe we’re all guilty. They’re such trainwrecks that it’s hard to look away, but perhaps we should all try.

Fire In A Crowded Theater

2009-06-10T23:43:00.003-04:00

How many people have been killed in the last few months by domestic extremists? Well, I was about to write a post about that very thing but turns out TPM poster known as The Commenter Formerly Known As NCSteve pretty much covered all the ground I had in mind.

So my question is this. How many more murderous rampages by enraged rightists--whether executed or merely in the planning stage--are we going to have to endure before the traditional media is willing to acknowledge and address the obvious? How many people are going to die, and how highly placed will the victims have to be, before someone connects the dots and starts calling out the ever more violent, hateful and apocalyptic rhetoric of the likes of Coulter, Malkin, O'Reilly, Hannity and Savage as bearing some responsibility for creating this climate of insanity?

Raving mad rhetoric has been mainstreamed by right wing radio, cable news and, of course, the intertubes and to some extent even by elected officials. This rash of killings is not, as was posited on Hardball tonight, completely separate from any political party. It is lunacy that is absolutely predictably inflamed by talking points that are treated as just another point of view.

It’s clear that having our first African-American president, the economic climate and the repudiation of conservatism has combined to send some lunatics right over the edge. There’s no question of shutting down freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that the kind of hate speech that’s become so commonplace shouldn’t be much more seriously marginalized by mainstream media and strenuously criticized by mainstream political figures – Republicans and Democrats alike.

Also, I’m just wondering if Shep Smith (and others who receive them) are turning over those untold number of hate filled e-mails to the appropriate authorities? I assume that the Secret Service is already spending a fair amount of time at Free Republic where the legitimacy our our duly elected president is questioned with regularity. I just hope they’re taking every thread like that very seriously.

*Updated to add quotes and clarity

Greetings from the Banana Republic State

2009-06-10T06:29:00.001-04:00

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I don’t know how long we’ll be able to communicate. I’m sure you’ve heard there’s been a coup in NY State. Even now we don’t know who will be disappeared. You can’t tell for sure who’s a loyalist and who’s working with the Republicanistas. Governor Paterson is a prisoner of the state at the moment. A resistance movement has been mounted.

More later if they don’t seize our means of communication. Keep good thoughts for us.

Barack Obama, International Man of History

2009-06-05T23:19:00.001-04:00

Ancient history, that is. I’ve been catching up on Obama’s Cairo speech. Of course, that was a couple of countries ago, already. I don’t know if even President Obama can bring world peace, but at the very least, Americans with the inclination and the funds to travel should be able to stop pretending to be Canadian.

The absolute kicker of it all to me, though, was Obama finding a look-alike on the wall of an ancient Egyptian tomb.

This guy looks enough like Obama to be a caricature at the very least. His name was Kar. Which of course could be short for Barack, backwards. Anderson Cooper and his commenters are impressed, too. I don’t think we should let this go until it’s available as a t-shirt.

TV Night

2009-06-02T20:56:00.001-04:00

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Tonight the family will be in front of the teevee machine watching the Inside the White House special on NBC. It’s such a luxury to have a president that doesn’t make us want to puke upon seeing him. We’re just going to revel in that tonight.

Before I settle in, though, I’d just like to say to Rick Santorum – Corner bar. A shot and a beer? Are you out of your freaking little mind? Thought so. If the Obamas couldn’t afford a night out on the town then I’m sure there are about a thousand more appealing things they could do for a cheaper date night. But they can. And it’s a much shorter flight to NYC than to Crawford, TX.

Can We Learn Anything From George Tiller’s Murder?

2009-06-01T00:26:00.001-04:00

When I read about the murder a few hours ago, I was going to post something to the effect that the apologists should be making statements shortly. There was always a script for it. Pro-life groups would condemn the act and after about 24 hours or so there’d be a“but” attached to the condemnation. It’s always something to the effect that the victim of the murder was, after all, someone who took innocent life, but killing is never, ever acceptable. Well, things are moving a lot faster these days and not everyone is quite so delicate about it.Statements have been pouring out from pro-life groups, abortion rights groups and everyone else who will make a statement. Randall Terry, for one, does not seem to feel constrained to express any condemnation other than to regret that Dr. Tiller was not afforded time to meet his Maker.

Grandpa Eddie reminds us of that report that had some right wing panties in a bunch. The one that referred to home grown terrorists. Sounds like it was right on to me. He also provides a retrospective of violent acts of terrorism targeting abortion providers.

Fitness for the Occasion makes the very simple, but insightful, point that things like this are the problem with calling abortion murder.

So, there are lessons about domestic terrorism, lessons about rhetoric and how not to use it, and I’d hope there is a lesson about thinking hard about how a public message might affect persons who have serious mental health issues.

Been Memed

2009-05-30T21:24:00.001-04:00

Agi has a meme and was kind enough to tag me. This one is not going to be stellar, but I’ll do my best. It’s about your movie rental history or, if you don’t have one of those, then whatever the last ten movies you’ve rented or watched. I’m headed for Epic Fail here because I’m about two decades behind on my movie watching. What makes it even worse is that when I do get around to seeing one it’s likely not going to be anything I’m terribly proud of.

First let me say that Mr.Yenta is in charge of media acquisition around here. If I want to see something I let him know and he’ll see to getting it. He doesn’t rent. He usually buys on eBay. Then he either keeps it if he likes it enough or else sells it back on eBay. Frequently a movie comes out that I think I’d like to see when it’s available on DVD, but by the time it is, I’ve entirely forgotten. So, my recent movie history goes like this:

The two Queen Elizabeth movies. I’m a sucker for historical drama and books, too. Novels and actual biographies. I prefer more pre-Renaissance stuff, but I’ll watch what’s available.

Hancock. Was fun.

Lakeview Terrace. Well, we started it, but neither Mr. Yenta or I was having fun watching it so we decided we didn’t have to finish it if we didn’t want to.

We bought Slumdog Millionaire last week, but haven’t remembered to actually watch it.

Also, bits of whatever inexecrable thing Mr. Yenta is watching on Sci-Fi or Chiller. They often involve giant snakes or other reptiles.

Consider yourselves all tagged if you want to be. You know who you are.

Another Study, Similar Conclusion

2009-05-29T23:19:00.002-04:00

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I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. - John Stuart Mill -

Yet another study shows linkage between dumbassness and conservatism.

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States' universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.

This time it’s all about cognitive ability. The results seem to be strikingly similar in all the studies that come out. There’s more stupidity in the conservative camp. Surprised? Not so much.

Sonia Sotomayor v Bigotry

2009-05-27T22:05:00.005-04:00

Image by dbking via Flickr

It's kind of redundant to post about this at this point. Every blog that even dabbles in politics is writing about, most better than I could. BUT - just how blatantly bigoted to the Republicans think it's a good idea to be? Do they think that their base of white, angry, frightened senior citizens is going to...um...grow over time? They're exquisitely expressing fear of ethnicity and gender all over the freaking place. Rush says she's an "angry woman". Although I'm not seeing it, I don't really see where he's in a position to criticize anger. It's made him a bundle. Although, of course, he also says that Obama has a chip on his shoulder. Transference much, Rush? Obama surely does have a lot on his shoulders. Not many people can legitimately claim to have the weight of the world on their shoulders, but the POTUS can and when you add all the shit left behind by the Bushies it's a wonder he can stand up, but he does. But you never see a sign of a chip.

This whole "reverse racism" thing might have seemed like a good idea for stirring up the low information, white, male, unemployed demographic, but they're taking it way too far like they've done with everything else and allowing everyone to see exactly what they're about.

The Goode Family

2009-05-27T21:35:00.004-04:00

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The Goode Family premier tonight was pretty funny. Because liberals can laugh at themselves - or at least at their friends. We enjoyed it.

This Is Unbelievable

2009-05-24T10:17:00.002-04:00

Well, it's not really unbelievable but I wish that it was a lot harder to believe. Writechic Press has been devoting a lot of her blog to helping with one particular person's battle to receive lifesaving medical care. This most recent roadblock is just the latest news read backward to learn more.

And if anyone ever again says to you that - A. "People don't die from lack of health care in this country" or B. "Universal health care will lead to rationing and waits for care", you should probably just spit in his eye.

Let's Take Up A Collection

2009-05-24T09:57:00.002-04:00

And give Cheney an all expenses paid trip to Spain including one-way airfare. In appreciation for his service to the country and all.

Let Me Talk You Down, Rachel, Hilzoy, et al

2009-05-22T08:13:00.004-04:00

This is going to be quick because I'm literally on my way out to work. I've asked my lefty lawyer sister about Obama and preventative detention for some of the Gitmo detainees and the issues surrounding it. By the way, I'd put money on her in a constitutional cage match with any lawyer from the Center for Constitutional Rights or just about any other for that matter. She's wicked smart and very good. She also predicted that there would be this problem of tainted evidence against people we might not be able to let go. What she says, just from reading that part of the speech - is that what Obama is talking about is within the Geneva Convention rules. It does not appear to be about any "unprecedented presidential power" as was asserted on the Rachel Maddow show last night. She's going to study the whole thing and tell me more over the weekend, but this is what I've got off the top of her head:

First a military commision designates who is and who isn't a POW. The Bush administration decided to get around all that by making up the designation of "unlawful enemy combatant" and the Obama administraton is now forced to sort that out years later. Then, once designated a POW we can detain the person for the legnth of the conflict. What could pose a political problem for the administration is that POWs are supposed to be held in humane - very humane - conditions. They are not charged with a crime. The principle is that they're being held to keep them off the battlefield. They wouldn't have to go as far as we did during WWII with some Italian POWs held in the NY area. Some of them got furloughs to go visit Little Italy. We probably wouldn't be doing that. But they should properly be kept in better conditions than prisoners who have been convicted of a crime.

It's not pretty, but it's not ad hoc either. There are complications due to the fact that this conflict is of a different nature, of course. For one thing, if you're designated a POW and the conflict is an insurgency, you could be detained for a long, long time. If the previous administration had been interested in the rule of law everything would be in place by now, but it was more interested in getting around the law. That is one of the many huge differences between the Obama and Bush administrations.

Governor Perry Says He's Not A Rebel, No, No, No

2009-05-17T23:47:00.003-04:00

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr

Now Rick Perry writes that he never advocated for secession. And he never will. It was just a case of twisting his words. He's clearing it up now. He's just understandably upset over Democratic deficit spending, as opposed to Republican deficit spending which is just fine.

My only question is whether this is something he'll have to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for. Or is it Hannity who's in charge of secession related apologies?

The Mentally Stable Need Not Apply

2009-05-16T22:27:00.006-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Acting Globally

I don't really know very much about Governor Huntsman of Utah, other than what I've read recently. The graviment of that is that he's that increasingly rare bird - a Republican and not demonstrably mentally ill. Therefore, he might be able to make a credible run for the presidency in 2012 and apparently was considering doing so. It's early, but it was serious enough for the Michigan County Republican Party to cancel an appearance by Huntsman because of his not being enough of a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging bigot support for civil unions. And now he's going to China to be an ambassador. Ambassador to China is a hugely important job at this moment in history and he seems to be well qualified for it. It's also about as far away from Republican Party politics as he can get.

I was thinking about doing a longer post, speculating about Huntsman's motivation for accepting this post, but it turned out that Steven Benen had already posted exactly what I was thinking, only better. This might be the sort of of post-partisanship that President Obama was talking about. A rival goes to the other side of the world and Jon Huntsman gets to take himself out of action while he sees if the Republican Party is ever going to have room for normal people again. And of course, the crazies don't have to go to the trouble of running off another moderate. They've got enough to do with expelling Charlie Crist and Colin Powell.

Acting Out Locally

Meanwhile, here on Long Island, the teabaggers were at it again. They had what looked to be a pretty lively event on tax day last month, so they decided to do it again for Armed Forces Day. I haven't been able to find any coverage of it online as yet. The only reason I knew about it was that my sister passed it on the road today. She said it was as charming as all these things, with signs that said "Waterboard Pelosi" mixed in with other assorted complaints. I'm not surprised that we have some wingnuts in our midst. Not in the least. Hell, there's a couple down that have matching "Sarah Palin 2012" stickers on their cars already. If that's not scary stupid, I don't know what is.

Still, I was curious about our local teabaggers so I checked them out in the Google and found a Meet-Up site where some of them could be found. There's a message board. There are practical discussions about logistics of their events and stuff like that, but keep going and the crazy rears its head. My favorite was a birther post about an April Fool's joke that they ate up like it was dipped in chocolate. They may live in the area, but they haven't moved into the reality based community.

Speaking of which, where's our daily Cheney? I haven't heard anything new from him for two days now. Have I just missed it?

Let's Keep Not Investigating Torture

2009-05-14T22:41:00.003-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

I have to say that for something that's not being pursued we're getting a lot of new information about the previous administration's actions regarding torture every day. I hope we keep not investigating the whole thing and I certainly hope that the Cheney Family Torture Tour keep doing what they've been doing so well. We're learning a lot more than the details of the Cheney/Bush administrations adventures in " enhanced interrogation".

We might well be learning the why and the who of it. And we're getting daily confirmation that Cheney really was running the show for a long time. And apparently thinks he still is, but hey, don't tell him yet. He's on a pace to move popular opinion firmly to the side of prosecution for war crimes within a few more weeks. That can only help.

So, let's see more of this inaction. It's working pretty well so far.

Secession is Busting Out All Over

2009-05-13T23:42:00.008-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

It seems here in Suffolk County, NY, we're really mad and we're going to talk about not taking it anymore. It all has to do with some taxes that are being levied on us to bail out the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority). And maybe we send Albany 3 million dollars more a year than we get back, which is entirely possible. So some lawmakers want to have a task force to study secession. This happens periodically. Sometimes it's all of Long Island that wants to secede. Sometimes the East End of Long Island wants to secede from Suffolk County. This year it's just Suffolk wanting out of New York State. Given the regularity with which this kind of sentiment appears I'm not too concerned that anything is going to come of it, other than possibly having to pay to fund a study. It did start me thinking about what secession from a state would entail. Quite a lot, I'd think. Just a few off the top of my head:

Stationery, business cards, changes to websites and everything else for every business and government office in Suffolk.
License plates. I hope we could at least have pretty ones, like Arizona, for instance.
Speaking of license plates, we'll be needing a prison system. We have a county jail. That's suitable for people awaiting trial and maybe people in trouble for not paying child support. If a person if convicted of a serious felony they go "upstate", now. Won't have that option.
We have to work out what happens to state property, like the state parkways and the state parks. We have some nice state parks.
Counties? We'd be very small. I wonder if Rhode Island has counties.
Updated court system. Right now we have things like State Supreme Court.
Marriage. We register marriage by town, but we get married "by the power vested in me by the State of New York".
Motto, bird, flower, seal
Insurance regulations
Every single state government function. I think there are a lot of those.

OK, that was just a partial list because I'm too sleepy to keep typing. I just wonder how long it would take to see a return on our investment if we decide to go ahead and secede. I'm betting that could take a while.

Morning addenda:

Oh, and the state university system. That's going to be awkward. Just for starters we have a large state university here, complete with a medical school and a big hospital. I think the state will want that back. And then there's the fact that residents have access to a whole lot of state universities and colleges at lower costs than they'd pay if they lived out of state. How we gonna replace that?
Health care for lower income people. It's not all medicare and medicaid, folks. We have two state administered plans for health insurance for some of the people that would otherwise be uninsured. One is free and one is lower cost than the same policy would cost on the free market. Are we going to replace that? Just wondering.

It seems like there might be a lot of reasons why this idea never goes anywhere. But I guess we have to vent.

Democrat Socialist Checking In

2009-05-13T21:34:00.007-04:00

All I can say about this is it that I guess maybe if they wanted to follow suit the Democrats could introduce a resolution to rename the Republicans the Poopy Head Party. Then the Republicans could counter with the I'm Rubber, You're Glue resolution. The Democrats would then have to answer with the Oh Yeah, Well Nobody Likes You measure which the Republicans would be hard put to answer.

And people say that the GOP has no ideas...

Evening Pundits on Wanda

2009-05-11T22:54:00.006-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The evening returns are in.

Chris Matthews thinks Wanda Sykes thinks wishing kidney failure on Rush Limbaugh was over the top. This is not a surprise. Tweety had to have been a weeny in Catholic school.

Keith Olbermann also thinks she went over the top, not caring for the suggestion that Rushbo was supposed to be the 20th hijacker. You can't bring 911 into a joke. Well, most people shouldn't try it, but Sykes has special comedic abilities. I'm not sure that Olbermann really meant that bit of censure or just feels like it was the fair and balanced thing to say.

Ed Schultz thought she was wonderful. I'm with Ed.

John Stewart is doing a pretty good piece on it right now.

Happy Mother’s Day

2009-05-09T22:47:00.001-04:00

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there. I thought I’d meditate on my mom a little bit. I think I’ve posted all this before in other places, but it’s what I’m thinking about this Mother’s Day, so there you go. I’ve posted this photo before, too, but I love to remember the time this was taken. We went down to Ocean City, NJ, where we met up with a bunch of friends and went to see Arlo at the Music Pier there and hung out around the boardwalk for a couple of days. I don’t remember exactly what year it was, but I do know it was the last big thing we did together and I’m so glad she decided to come along on that trip. When she was feeling like herself she was up for anything. Actually, one of the things that made her last year or so so hard was that she believed she was still up for anything but it was simply no longer true.

Mom died at the age of 85 – which is fantastic for her side of the family – in 2006. I can tell you exactly what day she started her decline into dementia. It was Election Night, 2004. We had to call 911 and spent much of the night at the ER as she had the first and most likely the worst of a whole lot of mini-strokes which first took her short term memory and then took away more and more brain functions, including some that keep you alive. That Election Night is what did it. God, she hated Bush. Every time she regained consciousness she asked about the Election and insisted that it could be a mistake and we could all wake up and found that Kerry had actually won.

How I wish she could have held on at least until the Democrats took Congress in 2006. And if she could have voted for Obama and seen him elected, well, she could have gone with the feeling that the world had made some progress after all, instead of going downhill and backwards with astonishing speed. It would have made her truly happy. Anyway, I miss her. I don’t think that you ever really get over missing people that are gone. I think you just learn to co-exist with the inevitable losses that life brings.

The Not Necessarily Final Frontier

2009-05-09T00:41:00.001-04:00

Image by Las Valley 702 via Flickr

We went to see the new Star Trek movie tonight. If you have the least little bit of trekkie in you, you should see it. Whether it stands up entirely on its own, I couldn’t really say. I do know that the audience applauded at the end, and no one was in costume. Not even a set of Vulcan ears that I noticed.

There was a plot. It involved timeline confusion and a lot of disaster of apocalyptic proportions and lots and lots of heroism. The usual stuff. I was pretty impressed with the visuals, but I would guess that fantastic effects are par for the course with today’s technology. The acting was just fine all around. Zachary Quinto did a bang-up job of evolving from not quite Spock to a damned good Spock as as the film went on. Chris Pine – hotter than William Shatner ever was. I’m just saying. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Shatner as Kirk and I like him as the Priceline guy today, but I never really got what the big intergalactic attraction was. It was Spock who was the real sex god in the original series. In this movie, when you find a green girl wrapped around Kirk it’s much easier to see why. This guy would appeal to any species, I’m sure.

What really impressed me most were the costume designers and the make-up artists. They should win something for blending the Sixties vibe and a futuristic look so successfully. The men were relatively simple. They mostly wore original series Star Fleet threads, although in his pre-Star Fleet days they did a James Dean thing with Kirk that definitely worked. What was kind of amazing is how they managed to modernize the women’s looks while keeping them in the absurd miniskirts and make-up – including Cleopatra eyeliner and false eyelashes – that they wore in the original series. They toned it all down and sleeked it all up and it worked, assuming that you’re suspending disbelief anyway. Even the hair was just right. Kind of sixties, but nothing bouffant. A triumph of art and science.

The film cries out for a sequel. Or…what would you call a sequel to the prequel? I don’t know. But I’d go to see it.

ADDENDUM: How could I forget to mention the Romulans. They looked fabulous. These Romulans didn’t just look like Vulcans only less so. They had their own outlaw villain thing going on. Tattooed heads, black duster looking garments and their own special ears. Very effective.

Happy Birthday, Chanel

2009-05-07T22:24:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to say Happy 21st to our local celebrity.

Happy Birthday, Chanel. Hope you’re enjoying all all the buzz. You definitely prove that it’s never too late to be a star.

Next to Leave?

2009-05-07T21:02:00.002-04:00

Well, there are some rumors. Elephants have been heard to trumpet their discomfort with the message of the Grumpy Old Party. Frankly, they’re embarrassed at this point. The Republican Party of today no longer reflects pachyderm culture, values, nor their interests, which run to environmentalism and wildlife preservation and refuge. Would it really be a surprise if they decided to end their relationship with the Republican Party?

P. S. - Also, too, they're endangered enough on their own. They shouldn't have to worry about two kinds of extinction at once.

There Will Be No Listening - per Rush

2009-05-06T21:36:00.006-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

The Old Kids on the Block wanted to listen to you. Well, some of you. Mostly just the ones who had thoughts about rebranding the cool new version of the GOP. Not so much anyone who was looking for more substantive changes. So Eric, Jeb, John and Mittens started this listening tour.

Even that is too much for Rush Limbaugh to allow. After all, why would Boss Rush want anyone to listen to anyone but him? Soooo - now it's a "La-la-la, I can't hear you!" tour. Doesn't make much difference. The Republican party is not currently inclined to learn anything by listening to regular people.

It's kind of interesting. Today's Republicans seem to be very hierarchical. They certainly don't listen to anyone below them - like voters, for instance. But they do seem to love being led around by the nose by anyone who can pass as the Alpha Male. Right now that's Rush Limbaugh, in the absence of any serious leadership, I suppose. Maybe they got used to be slapped around by Dick Cheney for eight years and decided they enjoyed the abuse.

We Can Haz Cheezburger

2009-05-05T22:38:00.003-04:00

But not without carping from the right, of course!

Specter Working On Remembering Which Team He's On - or Whoops!

2009-05-05T21:42:00.003-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Arlen Specter either kind of forgot which party he was in or else he just remembered he wants to be the Democratic candidate for his seat next year. So when he said, "There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner." he was just a little confused and now he's sort of taken it back.

Good thinking, Arlen. After all, he could have just stayed where he was if he was interested in losing the primary, right? Maybe he'll rethink some of his positions, too, or is that too much to hope for?

Outliving the Bastards

2009-05-04T06:27:00.001-04:00

Image by earmuffboy via Flickr

I was going to write something about Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday, even though I was sadly absent from the concert but got kind of absorbed in the situation described iin the post below. Now the first thing in the morning there’s this interesting take on the show on TPM. It’s about how the audience cheered every time the President’s name was mentioned and that there was a letter from President Obama, saluting Pete. And it’s about how unusual this kind of thing is at a concert, let alone a leftie concert.

Best of all was this:

Springsteen said that he never saw Seeger more happy than at Obama's inauguration, noting that Seeger saw Obama's ascendancy as proof that he, Seeger, had "outlived the bastards."

My favorite place to see Pete Seeger is right near New York City because the old commies come. And I mean old. You can tell who they are because they fly their old style commie flag high in the form of headgear. Fiddler’s caps for the men and berets for the women. And they’re about a hundred years old and have been going to see Pete for many decades, since he performed with Woody Guthrie and so many others. They come out for Arlo, too, if he’s right in the city. And now they get to feel they’ve outlived the bastards. They deserve it. May it be true.

Weird Condition r Us

2009-05-03T23:27:00.001-04:00

We’ve been spending the evening trying to diagnose Mr. Yenta, and by “we” I mean my sister and me. Mr. Yenta is asleep, and is likely to stay that way for some time. That’s the problem. As I’ve mentioned before, Mr. Yenta has a number of things wrong with him. Physical things, I mean. This is not a critique of a husband. There’s Type I Diabetes with related complications including an unusually bad case of neuropathy. To complicate matters he lost a kidney to cancer and has phlebitis. Naturally this all involves a lot of different medications and getting to the cause of something new can be complicated. Which is why we’re working on the diagnosis ourselves. Doctors have done tests and not found anything that explains it yet. But he sleeps. And when I say sleeps I mean he sleeps deeply for a couple of days at a time. Sometimes more. He gets up only to answer nature’s call and when I wake him for meals. In between these bouts he’s reasonably energetic, busy and – well – normal. But this episodes have been getting more frequent and lasting longer since right after the holidays. They usually come right before or after a painful bout of neuropathy, so I’m assuming it’s related, but since it can be before or after it’s probably a little complicated.

This is completely contrary to his normal nature. He’s been an early riser since we’ve been married. Sure he might take an afternoon nap or fall asleep earlier than he plans in the evening, but this is a whole different thing. The closest we’ve really come is finding a rare syndrome that normally affects adolescent boys. Of course we have to go back to the doctor and probably get a new referral to a neurologist for this, but being sure he’ll be awake to keep an appointment is a challenge. I mean, once this takes hold, he cannot be moved.

So that’s a lot of what’s been keeping us busy of late. Sleeping.

Republican Fail of the Day

2009-04-28T22:47:00.001-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It’s all Arlen today. Our newest Democrat. I know that not every progressive is sure that Arlen Specter’s party switch is something to celebrate. I’m on the side of it being a huge plus for a couple of reasons. Oh, I know he’s going to be a lousy Democrat by my standards. But that isn’t always everything.

There is, of course, the obvious. He’s not just joining the Democrats – he’s leaving the Republicans. It’s sweet, no question. But it’s also an important kick in the ass. I’m all for a more moderate GOP. It would be a lot less scary to lose an election if it was the party of Rockefeller that did the winning. Instead it’s the John Birch Society. It’s Joe McCarthy apologists and religious extremists. It’s more like a radical right wing organization than a major political party. Since they will no longer support their moderates, it’s far better that their moderates give up supporting them. At this point it’s just enabling.

Then of course, there’s the voting. He didn’t have to tell us that he won’t be the automatic 60th vote. That’s obvious. Even if he was going to vote our way all the time there’s still Ben Nelson and other blue dogs to contend with. While I’m sure that other Democrats who’ve been considering a run for Specter’s seat in 2010 would be better for the Democratic agenda, it’s not 2010 yet and there’s a lot of important stuff coming up before that election. Better to have Specter thinking about the general election voters than Republican primary voters.

Does anyone think it’s time to put the Republican Party on the endangered species list?

Conservative Fail, Part Deux

2009-04-27T22:40:00.001-04:00

Image by bobster1985 via Flickr

I think we have to be timely and add stripping money for pandemic preparation from the stimulus bill. While we’re at it, lets throw in mocking volcano monitoring funds.

So, far we have:

Bobby Jindal’s Speech Fail

Sarah Palin’s public pissing match with teenage grandbaby daddy.

Via Annette one hilariously ironic fail involving Sarah Palin, the New York Post and the self-same article that inspired these posts.

Yoga for cynics give us:

Actually expecting people to believe that the "tea parties" were a "grassroots" and "populist" phenomenon.

In those same "tea parties," failing to see the difference between protesting taxation without representation and protesting because your side lost.

Numerous prominent Republicans downplaying the importance of Rush Limbaugh only to have to publically apologize the next day.

Governor Perry of Texas talking about seceding a week ago and today asking for federal money to deal with swine flu...

Continuing to push Joe the Plumber.

Joe the Plumber.

I’d have to add, regarding the tea parties, failing to realize that when “teabag” is used as a verb, it doesn’t mean what they seemed to think it meant.

Finding volcano monitoring mock-worthy, followed immediately by volcanic activity

Just for today there are three no-brainers:

The cutting of pandemic money from the stimulus bill

Glenn Beck’s speculation that the swine flu alert is a plot to get our Secretary of Health and Human Services confirmed, while Rush Limbaugh has his own conspiracy theories about it all.

And, of course, yet another poll showing that the Republican Party is more popular than swine flu, but not much else. Meanwhile, people really like President Obama.

100 Days of Conservative Fail

2009-04-26T21:04:00.001-04:00

I think by now everyone who has the stomach has read the NY Post’s 100 Day, 100 Mistakes, in which selected wingnuts get to say what they think President Obama has done wrong. Notwithstanding the poll in the more respectable Post that agrees with all the other polls that say that our President still enjoys high approval ratings, according to the wingnuts it’s just been one mistake after another. In response I thought it might be nice to start another meme, in a loose kind of way. No tagging, it’s for anyone who stops by and feels like playing. I thought we could start a list of conservative mistakes made in the same hundred days. I know there are a lot more than a hundred, but let’s keep it manageable. What I was thinking was I could post a couple and someone else could take those and post a couple more and so on. Just come back and let me know about your post and I’ll come by and add them to this one. Links are optional, but you should be able to back up your items with references if challenged. So, what do you say? Want to play?

I’m not going to glom up all the easy ones. I’m just starting with two:

1. Bobby Jindal’s Speech Fail

2. Sarah Palin’s public pissing match with teenage grandbaby daddy.

There are so many more. So very many.

Honored As I Am

2009-04-26T12:12:00.001-04:00

I’ve Award Memed by Annette! I’m honored to be considered for this prestigious thingy. So here go the instructions:

1.You must brag about the award
Check
2.You must include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on you and link back to the blogger
Check

3.You must choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
MMM..this is harder. It’s easy to come up with seven brilliant blogs – or 70 for that matter - but some of them are just not going to do memes. Will try.
4.Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
Leftist Grandpa
That’s Right, Nate
Write Chic
Soup Is Not a Fingerfood
Rabbit Hole
The View From Here
Citizen K

Half check. The links are up – obviously – but it’s going to take a little time to get around to tagging everyone in their own comments.

5.List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself.

Oh, lordy me. I don’t think there ARE ten things about me. I’ll try.

I was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and lived there for the first decade of my life before we moved to Long Island. (Lawn Guyland). Both of things are more significant as an ethnic heritage than any fluid running in my veins.
I’m not a very good housekeeper. I try, but it’s so damned boring. I’d rather be blogging. Like right now. Should be cleaning, but I’m blogging.
I’m an unenthusiastic cook most of the time. I do it, but I’d rather be blogging. I don’t have a lot of strong feelings about food either. A slice of pizza or a gourmet meal are both good. Too good.
Music is an overarching theme in my life but I have a tin ear and can’t even slightly carry a tune. My own children asked me to stop singing to them as soon as they could say “No!”
I love my job. I’ve only been there six years, which I think helps me truly appreciate it all the more. Working for an organization that has as its goal helping people instead of enriching some is a whole different thing. The working conditions suit me very well, too. Besides lots of compensated time off and paid medical, I have my own little office and I can wear jeans pretty much every day. Never thought the former cold go with the latter. Not a lot of money, of course, but then I kind of forgot to have the kind of career that would pay well anyway.
I’m 59 years old and I still hate dressing up as much as I did when I was 9. Way to mature – not. I’m still most comfortable in jeans. See #5
My first love was art. My grandmother was an artist and the early consensus in the family was that I’d inherited some of her talent. I think that they may have been grasping at straws. I did study art when I was younger, but I haven’t painted in years and while I still like one or two of the things I did, great art, they ain’t. I sure do still like looking at art, though.
I have a rare disease. It’s not troubling me at the moment and it might never be a problem again, but I have CTCL, which is unusual enough that treatment for it has been developed under the orphan drug act. It took years to get a diagnosis so it was pretty far along when I finally knew I had it and got radiation and had to be on an oral medication for a year.
There was a husband before Mr. Yenta. That marriage ended while I was still in my twenties but it did produce my daughter so it can’t really be ignored. But Mr. Yenta and I have been married for over thirty years.
Mr. Yenta is somewhat disabled. He has a combination of things wrong with him that result in some days when he seems as fine as anyone but other periods of time when he can’t really get around at all and is in a lot of pain. The ratio of bad time to up time has been increasing of late, which causes us a lot of concern. He’s been home on Social Security Disability for the last couple of years. Life has been somewhat turbulent as we’ve had more changes in the last decade than in all the ones before, or so it seems.

The Ironic Thing Is…

2009-04-23T23:05:00.001-04:00

This cat is named Happy.

Actually, the cat photo is to serve as a distraction from the fact that I haven’t posted at all this week. The excuses are as follows:

Been feeling a little under the weather. Not bad enough to stay home from work, but enough so that I fall asleep before any blogging can take place.
Lola, the new dog, is getting to be a bit more high maintenance. She’s al settled in and still well behaved, but wants attention and walks and things. She’s got a lot more energy than one would think just by looking at her.
And the top reason for not posting this week – TORTURE. As the situation regarding Bush era torture of detainees has taken on a life of its own it’s been a lot more absorbing to watch coverage of it and read about it than to write about it. Even though we already knew about it, those memos seemed newly shocking. There’s so much to say about it, but others are saying it much better than I could, so I watch and read.

As an addendum, I hope that Sean Hannity realizes that Keith Olbermann isn’t going to let him alone on his offer to be waterboarded for charity. Olbermann is taking him up on it and putting up a thousand dollars a second for the families of the troops, and I doubt Hannity is going to hear the last of it unless he agrees to do it.

Oh, and it’s kind of riveting to watch the GOP get nuttier and nuttier. It’s hard to look away from that for long enough to post this.

Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind

2009-04-19T10:47:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Trouble ahead, lady in red,
Take my advice you’d be better off dead.

Chris from Paris at Americablog laid some hate on The Grateful Dead and the people who love them last night. Overall, not well received. Last I looked there were 84 replies – mostly suggesting that Chris knew not whereof he wrote, or as more than one commenter explained, “Fuck You!” It was fairly entertaining. Happily, Joelle showed Chris the error of his ways and while he might not exactly be ready to shine his love light on the Dead he’s at least admitting he just might have come off like an arrogant ass. I didn’t care for the original post either, but I have to admire anyone who’ll admit to such an error. A couple more trips to YouTube and he’ll be on Dead tour. OK, maybe not, but stranger things have happened.

You know, even if you never, ever get the music, any blogging, internet type should be giving credit where it’s due. Dead.net was bringing its own netroots together years before almost anyone. Macs were hippies before they were hipsters. And long before that the Dead was laying down the pre-digital foundation for viral marketing and allowed their live music to be freely shared. Encouraged it, in fact.

I doubt I’ll be going to any shows on this tour, but not because it wouldn’t be a great time. It surely would.

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Shouldn’t Keep An Eye On You

2009-04-18T23:53:00.001-04:00

A number of people think that RNC Chairman Michael Steele is displaying signs of paranoia because he thinks that right wing events are being monitored by…someone. I kind of hope he’s right. I doubt that either Steele or Palin are themselves under surveillance for their views, but I wouldn’t be all that surprised if the Secret Service was paying some special attention to events that are likely to attract right wing nutbags. That being pretty much the definition of any event that features Sarah Palin there is a chance that someone is taking an interest and that the interest is warranted now that Barack Hussein Obama, or “the Kenyan” as some of them call him, is the President of the United States.

Bye-Bye Texas?

2009-04-17T06:47:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Update: Nate has posted a beautiful break-up video just for Texas at ThatsRightNate.com. Bring a hanky. Nate is very sensitive for a conservative.

Texas is seceding? I was just catching up on teabagging news only to find out that Texas might be leaving the union. I have such mixed feelings. If it must be then it must, but we just can’t let them get hold of weapons of mass destruction. Or at least not any more than they’ve already got.

It’ll be sad to see them go, but as long as they’re going can we put Tom Delay on some kind of terrorist watch list and keep him out of the USA once Texas is a separate country. That would be a pretty big upside to the situation.

And It's Only Tuesday

2009-04-14T23:21:00.001-04:00

Image by ChrisGoldNY via Flickr

There won't be a whole lot of blogging from me for the next day or so. It's a sort of busy week. We had EastOver dinner here on Sunday followed by company on Monday. Some of our best friends came down from Massachusetts to see the Mets lose their home opener on our TV instead of the one that they’ve got at home. Normally they go to the actual ballpark to see the opener, but what with it being the first home game at the brand new Citi Field (otherwise known as Bailout Field) they couldn’t get hold of affordable tickets. One thing about your team losing is it can make you feel a lot better about not blowing the grocery money on tickets to the game. At least at our house they were on the same land mass as the stadium.

So we had our three friends and they brought along two of their dogs, making it the first time Lola has played hostess since she’s been living with us. Turns out she loves having her own company and all the dogs had a wonderful time romping around the backyard and then milling around the house. She definitely had a thing for the border collie mix and I think it was mutual. Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t love after spaying and neutering. There’s also humping. But you probably knew that.

Today was my day in the other office which is located an hour away instead of a few minutes and I don’t get much chance to keep up with events outside the office on those days. I missed the live coverage of the First Dog. I hope to catch up with that in the days ahead.

Tomorrow night Stevie the cat goes to the vet to get his stitches out, but I hope to be able to get up to speed on Tea Bagging day somehow. I don’t want to completely miss this. So that’s it. Not exactly a real post. More like just checking in.

If Cheney Was Still In Charge

2009-04-13T11:17:00.001-04:00

The whole right wing is in a state of mourning today because the very courageous Captain Phillips was rescued from Somali pirates. They’re afraid that this might reflect well on President Obama and that’s put them in full attack mode, even though by any sane standards, there’s nothing to attack. That’s not going to stop lunatic fringe that has become the right of center.

They are either constructing scenarios that didn’t happen in which President Obama provided some sort of impediment to the rescue that did happen or superfluously pointing out that President Obama himself didn’t perform the rescue. The Mahablog very correctly identifies this as a severe case of Obama Derangement Syndrome. On Steroids.

We can play, too. As long as we’re imagining, let’s think how Cheney would have handled it. Now, Cheney’s administration could go any which way. Given the kind of rhetoric they liked to use it’s easy to assume that they’d have blown that lifeboat right out of the water, Captain Phillips and all. We do not negotiate with pirates! But it’s hard to say. They might also have dillied and dallied and futzed around until the pirates managed to break away and make for Somalia with Phillips. Or they might have thrown a hissy fit when the USS Bainbridge offered to tow the lifeboat to safer waters. Coddling pirates, you know. Really, when Cheney was in charge just about anything was possible. What was for sure was that no matter what the outcome, former President Bush would be called away from his bike ride to show up and take credit for a victory and then we’d have invaded Madagascar, just for the hell of it.

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T07:21:00.001-04:00

Don’t forget to keep the Peep in Easter by visiting the 2009 Washington Post Peep Diorama contest if you haven’t already. There are some great ones in there this year.

One Leading Indicator Is Up

2009-04-10T21:26:00.001-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I got the first direct mail credit offer I’ve seen in months in today’s mail. They used to come every day, but since the economy melted down – nada. So I guess that’s good news for the economy. Bad news for trees. This was from Bank of America. After hearing all the news about how BofA was planning on burning some customers and dropping others I was curious about what they were offering. This was quite the deal.

This offering was for a loan. I was invited to take advantage of my excellent credit history and help myself to up to $30,000 of Bank of America’s (taxpayers?) money. Preapproved. This doesn’t sound as if they’ve learned a lot. But you can’t beat the terms. They laid out what the payments would be based on various amounts and the length of the loan all based on 8.99%. But, there are a couple of catches. I might not be approved for 8.99%. That’s the lowest APR I can hope for but it might be higher. Also, it’s a variable rate ranging anywhere from 8.99% to 24.99%. Bank of America can adjust the rate any time at their discretion. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like I could take this loan on Monday and they could hike up the rate on Tuesday if that’s what they were in the mood to do. But wait, there’s more! If I was to fail to pay my full minimum payment or pay it late on any two occasions during a 12 month period (possibly as a result of big rise in the interest rate on a loan I couldn’t really afford to begin with) the rate goes to 27.99% and that, of course, is not variable. That one’s fixed.

So, no thanks Bank of America. I’m going to have to pass, but I’m glad to see you’re back in the business of offering credit to people on terms that are risky to the lender and borrower. It must mean the economy is on the mend. Right?

La, La, La, I Can’t Hear You (Getting Gay Married)

2009-04-08T23:20:00.001-04:00

We’re all familiar with the argument that same-sex marriage is somehow going to change the nature of heterosexual marriage as well. This makes no sense whatever to me, but it’s a compelling argument when compared to the one put forth in The Gay Marriage Fantasy by William Murchison. He seems to be saying that even as gays and lesbians get the right to marry, it’s not real somehow.

You really can't have "gay marriage," you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say.

You can have something some people call gay marriage because to them the idea sounds worthy and necessary, but to say a thing is other than it is, is to stand reality on its head, hoping to shake out its pockets.

Such is the supposed effect of the Iowa Supreme Court's declaration last week that gays and heterosexuals enjoy equal rights to marital bliss. Nope. They don't and won't, even if liberal Vermont follows Iowa's lead.

The human race -- sorry ladies, sorry gents -- understands marriage as a compact reinforcing social survival and projection. It has always been so. It will always be so, even if every state Supreme Court pretended to declare that what isn't suddenly is. Life does not work in this manner.

Here’s the thing - that’s crazy talk. What Mr. Murchison is saying that gay marriage won’t be real to him. He can’t accept it. OK, he doesn’t have to. For a long time I didn’t really believe in Wyoming because I’d never met anyone who’d even been there. I mean it was the only one! The fact that Dick Cheney was supposed to come from there only served to convince me it didn’t really exist. Well, now I’ve met credible people who’ve been to Wyoming and even lived there and I’ve come around to accepting that I was wrong. So it is with gay marriage. Pretending it isn’t real is what’s fantasy.

Vermont Will Not Cede Coolness Factor

2009-04-07T22:52:00.001-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Vermont was out in front with civil unions, but with three states legalizing gay marriage ahead of Vermont, something had to be done and they did it. With Vermont being the first state to legalize gay marriage by way of legislation they’re out in front again. Go Vermont! You’ve got brains and heart as well as beauty.

So, let’s look at the scoreboard. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and now Vermont have legal same-sex marriage and those marriages are also recognized in New York and as of today the District of Columbia. You’d really have to say that same-sex marriage is happening and it will not be stopped. Wedding planners are celebrating. And, of course, so are divorce lawyers. That’s just nature’s balancing act.

Social conservatives might want to take note. Social progress just keeps happening in a free nation, no matter how much it bothers you. Working your little black hearts out to prevent others from pursuing happiness in their own ways will never be rewarding.

Ooh la la, Lola! La Chienne Parle Français

2009-04-06T21:23:00.001-04:00

Lola came to the office for a couple of hours this morning. Everyone had to be out and we hadn't even had time to get a crate up. Not having any way of knowing if Lola has separation anxiety issues we figured better she spend the morning at work. My sister and I work at the same place, but she's in management and in meetings and running around putting out fires and all kinds of things, whereas I can usually be found in my office, so I took Lola. I learned that she gets really bored when you try to work on spreadsheets.

While she was keeping me from my actual work I got to wondering why such a well behaved, well socialized canine didn't seem to know the most basic commands apart from "No". Almost every adult dog I've ever met knows "Sit" and most of them have at least a passing familiarity with "Stay" even if they aren't really so good at it. Then it occured to me that Lola's from Brooklyn. There are a lot of different languages spoken in Brooklyn homes. Maybe English is not her first language.

A Google search produced a number of sites with lists of common dog commands in other languages. The first one I tried was TalkingTales.com. They list the same five basic commands in a whole bunch of languages. I naturally tried Spanish first, since so many people speak it, but “Sientate” just produced the same blank look that “Sit” does. Next, figuring there’s a good sized Haitian population in Brooklyn, I tried French. “Assis”, I said firmly and….she sat. “Attend!” and she stayed. Say, “Ici” and she comes to you. So Lola is a French speaking dog. None of us speak French but we’re learning a little now, and we have to work on our pronunciation. She seems willing to put up with our atrocious accents for now and I do feel we’ve made a big step in communication.

We’re Going To Need A Bigger Net

2009-04-06T20:12:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

If by any chance you missed Hardball tonight, Think Progress has the video wherein Frank Gaffney maintains that President Obama speaks in code. See, when he says, “respect”, in regard to Muslims it really means “submission”. He’s telling Muslim nations – in code – that we’ll submit to them. Yeah. That’s what Gaffney said. There’s a lot of mental illness going around on the right this season.

Between Michelle Bachman, Newt, Michael Steele and the rest of the gang, I’m obligated to add a “Batshit Crazy” label for this blog.

Dog Day Afternoon

2009-04-05T22:38:00.001-04:00

Yesterday afternoon my sister and I set out for Brooklyn to interview with a dog, as mentioned below. I have to tell you all about the place that we went to do this. It was a lot more interesting than we could have imagined.

All we knew was that we were going to see a beautiful cream color 2 and a half year old Shar Pei that we’d found on Petfinder at a privately run shelter in Brooklyn. On Saturday afternoon the Windsor Terrace neighborhood where Sean Casey Animal Rescue is located was pretty quiet. Except in the immediate vicinity of the shelter. Two regulation size storefronts seem to comprise both the shelter and Hamilton Dog House, which sells pet supplies. The pet supply store part also serves as housing for a few cats, birds and reptiles, including at least 3 free range Sulcata tortoises, the smallest of which has a shell at least a foot square. They wandered around the place at will and everyone was careful to step around them. And by everyone I mean a lot of people. The activity spilled out onto the street. People and pets occupied the bench out front, were conversing on the sidewalk and an alleyway next to the building was being used for a training session. There was an impressive amount of staff, including volunteers and there were people buying supplies, adopting animals and I think there were some just stopping by. In the center of this controlled chaos was Sean Casey himself. At the time we had no idea that he and his shelter were kind of famous. Turns out they’ve sent three dogs to the Animal Planet show, Underdog to Wonderdog. I’d even seen one of the episodes, but I didn’t remember anything about it until after we got home and I saw the links on the shelter’s website. We had no idea at the time we were having a brush with celebrity.

We did meet Violet, the dog we went to see and she was just as beautiful as her photo and I fell in love immediately, but she’s not the one we went home with. We were also introduced to Lola, a six year old Shar Pei. Given the totality of our situation, including Stevie’s condition, the quieter, older dog seemed the better choice. It was my sister who came to that conclusion first, but I could see she was right. It was hard to leave either of them behind and if anyone, anywhere near Brooklyn is looking for a gorgeous blonde Shar Pei, Violet will make a wonderful addition to someone or some family’s life.

Sean Casey works fast, but thoroughly. Once we’d decided what we wanted to do we were given an application to fill out. Three personal and at least one veterinary references had to be given. And they called every one of them.

Lola bonded with us on the way home by showering us with kisses, putting the car in neutral twice while it was moving and somehow or other undoing my sister’s seatbelt. We didn’t get home until about eight last night. Lola met Mr.Yenta. He was sound asleep when we got in, but Lola didn’t feel that was any impediment to getting acquainted. Once he was fully awake he pronounced her the perfect dog for us. When it comes to the cats she seems to be willing to play with them, but since they don’t seem so inclined that’s OK too. We’re still learning about her. She’s well behaved but seems to know absolutely no commands. She does respond to “No!”, thank God, but sit, stay, lie down – nothing. She just looks at you like, “I’d like to help you out but I have no idea what you’re trying to say. So far, everything’s going well, for us, for Lola and the cats.

We had a hardly used dog bed. She likes it.

You can’t really see it well here, but she has a pink camouflage collar. We thought it was feminine and yet little edgy. There’s a matching leash, of course.

Outreach Fail

2009-04-04T13:03:00.001-04:00

Image by feastoffools via Flickr

Outreach to Hispanic voters. Ur doin it wrong.

John McCain sounds angry and frustrated that, despite the risks he took in pushing immigration reform, Hispanic voters flocked to Democrat Barack Obama in last year's presidential contest. McCain's raw emotions burst forth recently as he heatedly told Hispanic business leaders that they should now look to Obama, not him, to take the lead on immigration.

The meeting in the Capitol's Strom Thurmond Room on March 11 was a Republican effort led by Sens. McCain of Arizona, John Thune of South Dakota, and Mel Martinez of Florida to reach out to Hispanics. But two people who attended the session say they were taken aback by McCain's anger.

While it may be true that McCain has been more reasonable than some other Republicans on the issue of immigration he’s not thinking this thing out too clearly. If he was, he might see that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for people to vote to empower the party that had just designated their entire ethnic group as the scapegoat of the year. And McCain wasn’t exactly Mr. Maverick during campaign season, was he? In any case, this isn’t going to help much:

McCain's message was obvious, the source continued: After bucking his party on immigration, he had no sympathy for Hispanics who are dissatisfied with President Obama's pace on the issue. "He threw out [the words] 'You people -- you people made your choice. You made your choice during the election,' " the source said. "It was almost as if [he was saying] 'You're cut off!' We felt very uncomfortable when we walked away from the meeting because of that."

I’m no politician but just for starters I’m guessing it’s almost always a good idea to stay away from using the term, “you people” when addressing a particular demographic group. Read the whole thing. It’s really interesting.

Sad Cat News

2009-04-04T10:52:00.001-04:00

We got the pathology report on Stevie. Not good. Not good at all. It’s cancer, it will recur and probably pretty soon. With radiation he has a few months to a year. Without, just a few months. The doctor doesn’t even recommend chemo. He wants us to see a veterinary oncologist, but he’s basically talking quality of life at this point and not so much quantity. I’m not inclined to torture him with treatments that aren’t going to cure him or extend decent quality of life for long. He’s had a good one except for a couple of rough patches.

He got dumped in our neighborhood when he was just a tiny kitten and wound up in our garage. My son and a friend found him there. It took a while but we – mostly Mr. Yenta, the cat whisperer among us – convinced him that he’d be better off living inside with us. They’ve been best friends ever since. They have a lot of personality traits in common. Mr. Yenta doesn’t know about this development yet. When he’s back and I tell him it’s going to be quite a blow.

When he was a couple of years old he developed a polyp in his ear that had to come out, and that was a painful surgery to recover from. But he did and he rose pretty quickly through our ranks to become the senior cat. That came with a lot of perks and he enjoyed them. Just recently, through attrition, he became the senior pet. The last dog who was here before him passed away last fall. In fact, we are without a dog at all for the first time in memory right now. At thirteen, Stevie’s not really a very old cat, but he’s certainly not young either. Some of them live a lot longer than Stevie is likely to, but a lot don’t make it past fifteen. Things could have gone a lot differently for an abandoned gray tabby, not to mention that he could have been found by a different type of teenage boy, so he’s really done OK in life.

On the dog front, we have an appointment, made before we got this news, to interview with a dog at a shelter in Brooklyn this afternoon. Now the timing doesn’t seem so good, but we’ll keep the appointment. The dog is going to be cat tested while we’re there to see and we’ll just be a little more hypercritical about it than usual. Usually I just assume that everyone will manage to work out an acceptable pecking order and that’s what’s always happened, but we really have to be a little more protective of Stevie’s comfort than that under the circumstances. The doggie appointment is a whole new experience. I don’t recall ever going looking for any pet before. My experience is that the house will fill up with animals almost on its own if you allow it, but no dog has turned up this time. I’ll update later if possible.

Hats Off to Iowa

2009-04-03T21:09:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

If there was an award for Most Valuable State, I think Iowa should get it for last year and this one. They pretty much gave us our president. This president. The one that people like. So many people said they decided to vote for Barack Obama in their primaries after he won Iowa. I was one of those. It was only after Iowa that I thought, hey, this might just be possible. That turned out well, so there’s reason to have high hopes that the overturning of the ban on gay marriage will hold up as well.

Iowa has a habit of doing cool things, so this isn’t really new. They’re just not all flashy and braggy about it. But Iowa has a long history of being a cool state.

Iowa has enforced its constitution in a series of landmark court decisions, including those that struck down slavery (in 1839) and segregation (cases in 1868 and 1873), and upheld women’s rights by becoming the first state in the nation to allow a woman to practice law, in 1869.

Iowa Representative Steve King worries that Iowa will become a “Gay marriage Mecca”. There are a lot of worse things to be. In this economy being a Mecca for almost anything is a good thing. Enjoy it while it lasts. Eventually most states will have it, but right now there are opportunities for wedding chapels, catering halls, formal wear and all the other stuff that goes with weddings.

Throwing Rover from the Gravy Train

2009-04-02T22:40:00.001-04:00

Image by CREAMASTER via Flickr

The fact that pets are feeling the recession, and especially the foreclosure crisis isn’t new news. When people lose their homes, whether through foreclosure or eviction, sometimes they’re forced into housing that won’t accommodate pets. It’s a particularly sad part of a terrible situation. But it seems from this article in the New York Times, there are some newly not quite so rich New Yorkers who might be giving up their pets a little precipitously.

It’s happening to dogs all over Manhattan. Jennifer Bristol, director of operations at the private shelter Animal Haven downtown, said that she was seeing more surrenders of pure-bred dogs that typically cost owners more than $1,000. In one recent week, she received a Pekingese, a bulldog and a Shih-Tzu, all by owners who “definitely had means,” she said.

You have to wonder how these people think that the permanently non-wealthy afford to have pets at all. I’m not saying it’s always easy. Stevie’s surgery definitely set this household back. Over the thirteen years he’s lived with us he’s had two big medical expenses and that’s two more than either of the other cats. He’s really been pretty economical once you amortize. You can also buy pet health insurance which will defray part of those expenses and it’s a whole lot cheaper than human insurance. Of course pets have to be fed, but I bet that there are much better deals on pet food than you get at the specialty shops. It might be hard to believe, but people had dogs before there was doggy daycare. You can walk your own dog if necessary. Dogs don’t really care about dressing for success by and large and will even settle for inexpensive leashes and collars with barely a whimper.

It’s not that I want to judge people who are making what may be a very painful decision – I’m just saying that it sounds like there are some who are kind of panicking at the first sign of not having a ton of money. It’s those people I’d like to remind that it’s your dog who’s mostly likely to love you when you’re down and out.

We Bow to Cadie, Our AI Overlordess

2009-04-01T18:00:00.001-04:00

Cadie (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity) lives and blogs and vlogs and she does so much more than that. Might as well explore everything you can about her because it seems she’ll be running a lot of things from now on. Might as well get used to it.

St. Jing-Tao-Wow Day Special Feature – Interview With Nate Peele

2009-03-30T21:54:00.001-04:00

It’s St. Jing-Tao-Wow Eve and I wanted to do something very special to commemorate the occasion. As it stands, it looks like I’ll be absent from Blogtopia for much of the day. It’s all good, though, because a major champion of this holiday, Nate Peele of That’s Right Nate, very kindly agreed to do an interview for this blog. This is an opportunity for us to reach out to a rather exotic ethnic group to Long Islanders – a White Anglo Saxon Protestant. There are WASPs living here, but they’re few and far between and located in North Shore communities where the roads are named after their ancestors. Mostly, you don’t run into them. On the local level, I know more people from Nigeria (4) or Bangladesh (lots) than I do White Anglo Saxon Protestants. So, it seemed like a good idea to learn about this group of Americans before they’re all gone. Here, then, is our interview:

Q.First of all, I'd like to thank you for virtually sitting down with
me today, Nate. Here on Long Island you don't meet so many WASPs. It's my hope that this opportunity to learn about your culture and your people will help us all to understand each other a little better.

A. No blog has done more than Thatsrightnate.com to try and bridge understanding between WASPs and non-WASPs. I think we have a lot more in common that you'd think. If you could ever be admitted into our clubs and organizations I think you'd see that.

Q.Now, as well as being a WASP, you're a male, so are you angry? Very angry? Do you currently own any assault weapons or explosives?

A. LOL, no I've barely even begun researching my manifesto. I think a lot of the whole white male anger thing is overblown by the media. A lot of this is because WASPs are very quickly disappearing from local media markets. You have two anchors and one of them needs to be a woman and one needs to be a minority. Most television stations go with the black male and white female anchor team so you don't hear our viewpoints much.

Q.Thank you for clearing that up. Now, about St. Jing-Tao-Wow Day -This is a new holiday, suggested by Lou Dobbs and promoted by you, correct? And all that had something to do with ethnic holidays and the St. Patrick's Day parade. There are quite a few ethnic parades in New York now, especially if you count the Gay Pride parade, but no WASP parade as far as I know. I see you come from Illinois. There have been some WASP parades there, particularly in Skokie if I recall correctly. Did you attend or participate in those? How do WASP parades differ from, say, the Puerto Rican Day parade, if at all?

A. Wow, there are a lot of questions that you're asking there. There are no WASP parades. The problem is we hate walking. That's why when we build a new suburb or subdivision we don't bother putting in sidewalks. We also hate bumper to bumper traffic. We're not really a parade people. We do picnics though and we quite enjoy them.

Q. What kind of food is your people's soul food? If we wanted to go
out for some WASP, what sort of restaurant or fast food place should we look for?

A. It’s funny because most WASP foods are white. We're big consumers of marshmallow fluff, mayonnaise, white bread, and mashed potato flakes. We also love Fresca, but its hard to get anymore. As a culture I would say that our main contribution to food though is that we are able to take from other cultures and adapt them. Olive Garden, Panda Express, and Taco Bell are great examples of ethnic cuisine that we've transformed.

Q. Is there one particular person that you'd say is the epitome of a
WASP cultural icon? African-Americans have MLK, Jr. and now, President Obama, Irish-Americans still have John F. Kennedy plates on their walls, Jews have Paul Newman (he was a nice looking man with a social conscience who stayed married for about a hundred years to a woman who wasn't a pretty as he was) and Italians have Frank Sinatra. So who is absolutely IT for White Anglo Saxon Protestants?

A. Wow, I had no idea Paul Newman was Jewish. In entertainment we have a few that really stand out. Pat Boone did a lot to make black culture accessible to us without frightening. As actors go, I've really been fond of Jack Webb who was also quite a musician in his own right. In terms of a social figure like Martin Luther King, I'd have to hold up Henry Ford who united the car manufacturers against the workers.

Q. This comes from someone else. She wants to know if you have any native dances. I said that according to my research that would be line dancing, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. We're here to learn.

A. Line dancing is a good answer, but it does have ethnic moves in it. The dance form that I think is purely ours is called the overbite. It is actually a dance used by WASP males to court our females. We also do it at a lot of weddings. The nice thing is it is a versatile dance that can be done to most popular music.

Q. How do you feel about having a president who is not one of your
people? That's only happened one other time, I believe, and at least
JFK was pale. Do you think your best days are over?

A. Not at all. One of the things that we have come to believe in is that minorities and women should be allowed into our most exclusive organizations. The key is limiting their membership. My hope is that my grandchildren will never have to listen to anybody say that all the Presidents have been white males because he can just point to Obama's picture and remind people we had a black President too. I hope that in the next 40 or so years we will even have a woman President.

Q. Is there anything you'd like to tell us about the experience and
struggles of being a White Anglo Saxon Protestant in America?
Something that you'd like the rest of us to understand.

A. First, we are the largest minority group in this country. We're not going anywhere either. Without us there wouldn't be dinner theatre, golf pants, lawn ornaments, or jazzercise. I really think we need a WASP history month. Last year on my blog I tried to designate white males of distinction who had done something to truly stand out. You'd be surprised how few students even study the lives of people like Robert C. Baker who in my mind was the Thomas Edison of poultry. He not only invented turkey ham, but also the chicken nugget. Our textbooks and liberal teachers would rather spend their time on Pocahontas or George Washington Carver, but I think if you asked most people they'd rather have chicken nuggets than a peanut butter sandwich any day of the week and you also have what the nugget did for the whole honey mustard industry.

Q. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

A. I'd definitely be an ash. Thanks for interviewing me. Have a joyous Saint Jing-Tao-Wow Day! I'm going to take my daughter out to Olive Garden to celebrate.

I’d just like to thank Nate again, for helping us out. I feel like I learned quite a lot from that and I hope others did as well. I’d also like to wish all of you a happy, safe and healthy St. Jing-Tao-Wow Day. I look forward to getting back here tomorrow night and learning about the different ways that people have celebrated.

Stevie Ray’s Bad Day(s)

2009-03-29T22:23:00.001-04:00

Today, we spent the afternoon taking Stevie Ray Cat to the vet. That’s Stevie in the photo, before he had a big icky thing hanging off his face. He’s the most senior of our three cats at just about thirteen.

He has a tumor that wasn’t supposed to be anything to worry about but it turned nasty, naturally, on Sunday morning. The good news is that there is a highly recommended animal hospital that’s open for appointments on Sunday. The bad news is that it’s at least a 45 minute drive away. He hasn’t needed anything more than routine care since he was a couple of years old, and he has a home visit vet for that. So, he doesn’t get out much.

Stevie is normally a very reserved fellow, so I hate having to have him poked and prodded, but he seemed to like the vet OK and was a perfect gentleman about the whole thing. No scratching, hissing or anything. He just wanted us to stay very close in case anything went awry. They let us take him home tonight, but he’s scheduled for surgery in the morning. He’s ready to go, I guess. He’s sleeping in the cat carrier right now. He loves it. I suppose that means it’ll be part of the living room furnishings from now on. Of course, he doesn’t know that there’s one of those awful cones in his future. It’s going to be a difficult week or so all around.

I better make this an early night. We’re due at the animal hospital at 7 am. Which is at least 45 minutes away.

UPDATE: Stevie is home and purring like mad. We won’t know about the pathology for a couple of days, but right now he’s feeling OK. He’s a little unsteady on his pins, but that didn’t keep him from having a bit of late supper and now he’s relaxing as close to Mr. Yenta as possible. He thanks everyone for their expressions of concern and we’ll let you know about the lab report when we get it.

Fred Barnes Makes Case for Single Payer

2009-03-28T21:56:00.001-04:00

I never thought I’d be saying thanks to Fred Barnes, but, hey, life is full of surprises. I’d pretty much given up on single payer health insurance for the foreseeable future, but Fred Barnes has given me new hope in his article, The Liberal Dream Agenda.

Health care. President Obama is fond of saying his plan allows people to choose between the health insurance they get through their employer and a government program currently limited to federal workers. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? It's not. Rather, it's the path to a single-payer health care system--the kind Obama has said he prefers but isn't actually proposing.

His program would have the distinct advantage of not having to make a profit. So it would always be able to offer greater benefits at lower cost (with taxpayers taking up the slack when it lost money). Businesses would have an incentive to increase co-pays and trim benefits and, in effect, encourage employees to switch plans. And if employer-paid benefits are taxed, as administration officials have suggested, the incentive steering workers to the government program will be irresistible.
(Emphasis mine)

This is exactly what we’ve been saying like forever. A layer of profit in between the health care provider and consumer is just driving costs up with no real benefit to society as a whole. Now, no liberal that I know of wants to see employer-paid benefits taxed. That would be a huge hit for employees who get benefits now, and one that most us couldn’t afford, but if it were a single payer system, with all of us paying into it through progressive taxation, that’d be peachy.

"There won't be any private sector [in health insurance]," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says, should government-financed insurance be available to everyone. "It's a fast track to single payer." There's an additional fear. The stimulus bill set aside $1.1 billion to research and compare medical treatments and drugs, raising the prospect that government programs would pay for some treatments and medicines but not others and thus open the door to rationing.

“…a fast track to single payer.” Your mouth to God’s ears, Senator. Now, about that rationing. Does he mean a situation like my friend (and boss) ran into a week or so ago? Her doctor thought she should have an MRI before he went on to treat a painful condition she’s developed. It’s in the area of the neck and doctors like to be sure before messing with the neck or spine. Things can go wrong if you’re just kind of guessing and we have these amazing tests now and everything. Her insurance company said “No” to the MRI. She can fight it and she might win. But for now, no MRI. And she chose the insurance plan, of the ones we offer, that comes with higher co-pays for her, because it covers more and is accepted by more health care providers. That plan costs our organization over $1600 per month for a family plan. Less, of course, for singles and for couples, but still not affordable by middle class people. And that’s the group rate. So, it seems to me that what we’re doing is paying outrageous sums of money for something that, in effect, is not one bit better than rationed care.

It’s not every day that you find such a compelling case for a liberal agenda item at the Weekly Standard, but this makes up for a lot.

Election in El Salvador

2009-03-27T21:35:00.001-04:00

Image by LShave via Flickr

El Salvador just had a bit of revolution – by election. After all the years of war, death squads, repression and oppression, the people went to the polls and voted for change – and got it. It’s something that’s going around the world.

Angela, my friend and colleague, just returned from working as an international observer of the electoral process there. She and her family came here from El Salvador years ago, not to make a fortune, but just for some freedom and maybe some safety. Like most people who make such a move, it wasn’t their country they wanted to leave, but rather a terrible government. I don’t know how old Angela is, but I know she’s older than I am. She almost didn’t go to El Salvador because her husband’s been very sick and she didn’t want to leave him alone. He knew she wanted to go and he wanted her to do it, too. He and her sisters conspired to have him stay with them and be taken care of so Angela could go and go she did.

She said there were attempts to steal the election, but enough were uncovered so that they didn’t work. People were brought in from neighboring countries to vote illegally but were discovered and sent packing.

She also said that she was told, and it some cases shown, that if the election had gone differently, there was going to be an armed revolution. And she seems sure that the transition will take place. When it was all over, after days and nights of working hard, she said, “Wonderful. Now we can get some sleep.” She was told no, now it was time to celebrate! Which they did. For all that, she came back glowing and happy. It’s a good thing to get your country back, even if you don’t live there anymore.

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