2006

2006 Archives



1/28/2006: Note the smell...walk away...

I am blessed with a bevy of straight male friends, but the blessing can become a curse when I am the sole woman at a table of my friends, trying to console another male friend over a break-up.

It becomes a curse because, more often than not, we're consoling the friend over someone who wasn't good enough for him to start with. For a single late-thirtysomething who considers herself a quality woman undeserving of her continued single state—despite enjoying it immensely—this can be painful.

It becomes more painful when you learn that quality isn't what your tablemates are seeking in a date. They are, apparently, seeking "dramatic" women who make good stories. Women whom I call psychotic, but they call "intriguing."

To use a very southern—and not very appetizing—metaphor, what disappointed me is that these men didn't know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. Just about all of them pretty much admitted that when faced with a choice of chicken salad and prettified chicken poop, they would pick the prettified poop, if only for the good story and the knowledge that, for once, they had something pretty. Either these men can't distinguish between the two or they know that it is chicken poop, but it really doesn't matter because it's pretty.

Now, guys, imagine you were the sole male at a table full of females. As they fondle their girl drinks, they all agree that they'd much rather have a jerk who beats the crap out of them because, well, at least they'll have an interesting story to tell, he wouldn't beat me unless he truly loved me and those brooding bad boys are oh-so cute: How would you feel?

Disappointed at the state of humanity, even if you suspected it all along!?!

Would it not irritate you that, although you're the type who wouldn't conceive of hitting any of these women and you would treat them like the super foxes they are if only they gave you a fighting chance (but, of course, they don’t, because they love you like a brother, right?) they'd pass you over for a guy who is indifferent at best or, at worst, so "intense" they'd knock them down the stairs and walk out?

Well, that's how I was feeling.

Consider all the time the average man wastes on chicken poop—dating it, pining for it or hell, even marrying it. Why? All that time wasted on chicken crap makes you feel that all's out there is chicken crap… and it ruins you.

You lower your standards to tolerate the poop because you assume all you're going to get is poop and you're tired of being disappointed. Eventually you become afraid of even trying the chicken salad because you assume it's just poop because it's all been poop and you wouldn't know chicken salad if someone threw it at you.

Then, when you happen upon the real thing, which is not only edible for once but tastes wonderful and is very satisfying, you wind up rejecting it because something that great will only hurt you in the end. Maybe it will give you salmonella or raise your cholesterol. Isn’t it always something?

But to paraphrase Chris Rock, what kind of low-expectation-having crap is that?! Have some dignity—note the smell and stay away from the chicken poop. It might be intriguing, but it's still chicken shit!

I honestly don't think all men are knuckle-dragging Neanderthals—I don't have as many male friends as I do by assuming the worst in them. I don't even think all men are stupid, even after being bombarded with evidence to the contrary.

But, even if I did, I wouldn't settle for the stupid, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals because I DESERVE BETTER. Sure, it makes for a lonely night or two, if that's how I choose to spend my time, but that's infinitely better than putting up with an abusive jackass. A lot of women don't have the same dignity and that's a shame, because it only lowers the standards.

That's how men should feel about psychos—you deserve better and putting up with their crap only lowers the standards and taints your collective male unconscious. The sooner you say "no" and hold out for someone better, the closer they come to shaping up. Or not. Either way, it isn't your problem.

If, instead, she just drives other men insane, well, that's their concern, not yours. You've done your part for evolution.

As with anything worthy, finding the right person takes some time, effort and attention span. You may just have to take an emotional risk or two. Sorry. I understand that it's much easier to pick the low-hanging fruit, despite the fact that you're never sure what you're going to get, but just realize it hangs low for a reason and don't be terribly shocked or bent out of shape that it's rotten, even though it looks real shiny and nice on the outside.

Meanwhile, those good apples on the top of the tree are wondering why you're wasting time with that low-hanging stuff, and when will you take the necessary risks to find out just how good they are?

Don't give up until you're willing to climb the tree and risk falling off to pick the good apples. They will be worth the extra work.

Granted, not every good apple is going to be right for you, and some will fall off the tree into someone else's basket and you'll have no idea why, but realize that the experience of picking one quality apple after another will always be much more satisfying in the long run than picking one rotten apple after another.



3/31/2006: The female of the species is more deadly than the male -Space

Another proud example of "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. Brody Mullins' article, "Behind Unraveling of DeLay's Team, A Jilted Fiancee" made the hole where my heart used to be thump a little faster. The lede reads:

The engagement of Emily Miller and Michael Scanlon was supposed to mark the coming out of a new Washington power couple. The two had met on Capitol Hill, where they worked as press secretaries to Rep. Tom DeLay, the feared Texas Republican. They got engaged in September 2001 on the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., and planned an August 2002 wedding. As the date approached, Mr. Scanlon bought a $4.7 million Oceanside mansion and guest house, formerly part of the du Pont estate, in Rehoboth Beach, Del. He furnished it down to the monogrammed towels and presented it to his bride-to-be. Then, with the wedding a few months away, he called off the engagement and started dating a 24-year-old waitress.

Who cares? Well, that's the most important part:

Mr. Scanlon and Ms. Miller, now both 35 years old, were among a tight-knit group of aides who helped Mr. DeLay rise to the pinnacle of Capitol Hill in the 1990s and cement his power as House majority leader. Some of those aides provided a link between their boss and Jack Abramoff, a Republican lobbyist. The end of the engagement was part of that group's unraveling—which has had significant consequences for official Washington. The aides have since turned on one another, feeding the ethics scandal surrounding Mr. Abramoff that now roils the capitol .... Prosecutors came to Ms. Miller to help them build a case that drove her ex-fiance to plead guilty, according to a person familiar with the situation.(emphasis mine)


Scorned women the world over should WORSHIP Emily Miller: not only does she get her revenge, but she inadvertently makes the world a better place. She used her pain to help the greater good, although I understand if Republicans don't see it that way.

If you're skeptical—and I understand—chew on this: She could have just left DeLay's organization in humiliation and never said anything. She could have clammed up to prosecutors because she still loved her cheating bridegroom. She could have clammed up to protect herself. She could have just done what any other basic woman would have done: throw a few drinks in Scanlon's face, provoke a catfight with the waitress he left her for, drunk dial Scanlon a few times to tell him what a monumental jerk he is and come up with a gazillion other ways to make Scanlon miserable with his new mistress.

While it would have been momentarily satisfying to Miller, none of this would have benefited anyone and all she would have gotten out of that was a bitchy reputation by Scanlon and his new woman, whether or not her behavior was completely justified. While it probably isn't justified, as a woman, I completely understand.

Now, don't get me wrong, the best thing about the article is that everyone seems to have gotten what they deserve, including Miller, who would have become the second Mrs. Scanlon had the wedding occurred.

Now, the article doesn't state that Miller was a mistress. While I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, here's a truism that most women seem to have too much ego to acknowledge until it is too late—if he leaves someone for you, he is capable of leaving you for someone else.

And she's quite the Republican pit-bull herself, according to Mullins' story:

Ms. Miller shared the pugnacious style of her new colleagues. She was once quoted in a Washington Post profile of Mr. DeLay yelling at a reporter: "You lied! ... You betrayed him! You twisted his words! .... We don't know you. You don't exist ... You are dead to us."

Lovely. So why Scanlon didn't also see this coming is beyond me. After all, he only was getting the wife he deserved:

The two [Scanlon and fellow former DeLay press aide Tony Rudy] shared a pit-bull political style and pushed Mr. DeLay to lead the charge in 1998 for the impeachment of President Clinton. "This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is B.S.," Mr. Scanlon once wrote to Mr. Rudy in an e-mail published in "The Breach," a book by Peter Baker about the impeachment. "Not only do you kick him—you kick him until he passes out—then beat him over the head with a baseball bat—then roll him up in an old rug—and throw him off a cliff into the pound surf below!!!!!"

When you think of it, that is exactly what Miller did. Emily-san learned so well from her master.


4/26/2006: In case there was any doubt left…

According to news reports, the White House plans to announce that Faux News commentator Tony Snow is going to replace Scott McClellan as White House press secretary.

If there was any question remaining in your mind whether the Fox News Channel is truly "fair and balanced" or the Bush administration's propaganda arm, this appointment should clear it up. Tony Snow gets to lie for the president directly instead of as a Fox News commentator. I'm sure he's pleased with himself, despite recent attempts of making a show at criticizing the president. It’s really kind of cute how The New York Times mentioned his criticism, like it matters.

Snow is a product of the Right-Wing Noise Machine. He wrote for The Washington Times, he’s a commentator with Fox News and he used to write speeches for Poppa Bush. None of these are bonafide journalistic credentials by any stretch of the imagination—if I had a lobotomy, but still could be programmed to attack Cindy Sheehan, Hillary Clinton and anyone who looks at the president funny, I could easily rack up the same credentials. I’m not impressed.

Honestly, sometimes I fantasize about boosting my profile by pulling a Dennis Miller—suddenly going from reasonably sane to becoming a cog in the Right-Wing Noise Machine. Think if it: If only I could sell my soul for cheap and spew the administration’s lines without cracking a smile, I could be famous! I could be rolling in dough! And I’d be set for life—even if I get caught doing something egregiously wrong, I could always be assured a cushy think-tank post where I could bide my time until the public forgets about my sins.

If only I could do that and still be able to sleep at night!

Unfortunately getting a good night's sleep is really important to me, so I crank out a living in a “maintenance job” and post an occasional rant on a web site that only my friends know about. That’s the problem with having integrity and dignity—you’ll never achieve fame and fortune and you’ll never be tapped for a White House job.

So congratulations, Tony. I mean that sincerely. I know for a fact that you don’t have a drip of journalistic ink in your veins, so lying for the president is a good career move. I’ll even be charitable and not wish for a lightning bolt to strike you every time you lie, because I know from the start you don’t have an ounce of integrity and having lightning strike the likes of you is a waste of electricity.


5/1/2006: Correspondents Dinner

Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know—fiction.

That was my favorite part of Steven Colbert’s performance at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but I’m not going to be one who slaps Colbert on the back and thank him for making the speech. That’s what he was there to do. Besides, my appreciation for what the man said is tempered by the fact that he probably still ate with these people afterward—just like a White House Press Corps member.

The annual rite of the correspondents' dinner makes me itch. I've never been invited, but it isn’t about that. I wouldn’t go even if I were. I actually believe the press and the powers-that-be they cover should be adversaries—respectful adversaries, but adversaries nonetheless.

OK, call me unrealistic—you’d probably have a point—but I think part of the problem of the Washington-based press corps of today is that they’re too enamored by fame, fortune and power to do their jobs properly. Their heads are too easily turned. And when their heads are too easily turned, they soon forget they are working for us.

Their job—and their only job—is this: to give us the information we need to participate in free society. When they start sucking up to the White House, to Congress and to the federal agencies, it jeopardizes that job. Here's the deal: They don't want you to really know what they're doing, so sucking up to them does not serve the public trust, which is your job. I cannot make this any clearer. Helen Thomas seems to know that and the disdain that the Bush administration shows her is evidence of that, but no one else seems to have a clue. That's why I loved that particular part of Colbert's speech—it should have cut like a knife into every mainstream reporter who was there, but it probably didn't, since they all believe they're doing their jobs to the best of their ability, which is more funny than anything Colbert said.

OK, so this is probably why cultivating sources was never my strong suit as a reporter. I don’t schmooze and don’t believe I owe sources anything, particularly when they lie to me, which they almost always do.

I certainly don't owe them a ticket and the privilege of dining with me at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. That’s where I draw the line.


5/4/2006: A deep thought, stumbled upon…

Something I wanted to share, from Po Bronson’s Why Do I Love These People? Honest and Amazing Stories of Real Families, because I know I’m not the only one who occasionally grapples with issues of trust, forgiveness and redemption.

One of the most striking stories in the book, to me, is "The Butcher's Wife," about a Protestant divorcee in Belfast who did the unthinkable—she fell in love with, and married, a Catholic butcher. The story is not only about them but the underlying hatred between British Protestants and Irish Catholics that persists in Northern Ireland and how the couple and their family struggled to overcome a pervasive hatred that seems to be drilled into you from birth.

Near the end of the story, Bronson mulled a bit about forgiveness and redemption, and a passage contrasting the Protestant and Catholic notions of forgiveness and redemption really affected me, mainly in light of recent events:

One school of thought evolved from the Calvinist idea that good people are chosen by God before birth. Their souls are predestined, and they do not redeem themselves; God or Jesus did the redeeming. Character is fate, and someone who acted badly in the past will probably act badly again. It’s that hard-liner mentality, very suspicious of anyone who argues, “Hey, but I’m nice now.”

People who hurt us in the past are to be regarded with great skepticism, and we must be wary that their cleansing ritual wasn’t just an empty pantomime. Every time people screw up, it’s proof that they have not really changed. This is the guarded voice in our ear, the one that wants to lay out tests before forgiving. At heart, it’s the voice of someone deeply hurt who wants never to be hurt again.

The other school of thought evolved from the Catholic notion that everyone since Adam and Eve has screwed up. We are all marked with stain and sin. Only through continual examination of our faults and repentance can we redeem ourselves. Not only can our fate be changed, but it must be changed to lead a good life....We are expected to believe that people can change. We are supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt. We have to forgive them, from the moment they confess or atone….

Under the [Protestant] school of thought, the burden of proof is on the atoner. In [the Catholic] school of thought, the burden shifts to the forgiver. It is hard to forgive people when they simply tell us they’ve changed but they haven’t really offered any proof. This is the voice in our ear that says we need to forgive people in order to move on—regardless of whether they have properly apologized. This is the voice that knows holding on to resentment is poisonous. This is the voice that wants to let go of that anger, wipe it clean, despite legitimate fear that we might be opening the door to being hurt all over again.

Bronson concludes:

Forgiving our enemies is the easy part. The hard work is in forgiving those you trusted to care for you, those precious few you believed would keep your interests in mind, the one person you thought would never do that to you. Forgiving those that you love is not something you do once, like a ceremony. It’s required of you, in some form, every single day.


5/12/2006: National Security Agency redux
The politician, small or lofty, who menaces the people with frequent reminders of the possibility of crime, violence or terrorism, and who then uses their magnified fear to gain allegiance, is more likely to be a successful con artist than a legitimate leader.

Martha Stout,The Sociopath Next Door(2005)


There were two National Security Agency stories Thursday: one was important. That story, by AP writer Devlin Barrett, carries this chilling lede:
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
Yes, folks, you read that correctly: Lawyers with DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility—who were not so much probing the program as examining the roles their own lawyers played in it to make sure they didn't violate any ethical standards—could not do their job because they had to depend on the agency they were investigating for the security clearances to do a proper probe.

At this rate, details of the program will never see the light of day because all NSA has to do is be stingier-than-usual with security clearances and *poof,* the probe disappears in thin air! How convenient!

Ironically, this news was buried by the red herring that freaked everyone out. Why? I have no idea. USA Today is not exactly the hard-hitting, breaking-story news source and this story was no exception. If you dissect the piece, it was really reinventing the wheel the New York Times invented months ago, hitting those of you who need pretty color graphics for context with a well-deserved clue-by-four that, hey, this really does affect you, now pay attention!

If you took out what was important in the two stories, you essentially have: "Hey remember that program where we were spying on you—you know, the one that may not be legal—well, it's broader than we led you to believe, but guess what, you're never going to know about it because we're never going to allow anyone to investigate it!”

If you have the right tools—and according to Washington Post writer William Arkin in his "Early Warning" blog, the NSA does even if the FBI doesn't—"a database of every call ever made" isn't a Herculean task, particularly when your program is given the highest government priority, has a black-book budget and the cooperation of telecommunications companies who desire lucrative government contracts and quid pro quo treatment from the Federal Communications Commission.

So if you had been paying attention when The New York Times actually told you that a domestic spying program existed and then you learned that The Times sat on the story for a year at the administration's request, and if you already knew that companies like AT&T have no issues pimping out your information to anyone who asks, nothing in the USA Today story should have shocked or stunned you.

The only reason it could have is if you actually believed the president and his minions who said "hey, we're not spying on you, we're just using every tool we can to find the terrorists.” We're not data trolling or looking at your phone logs, because that would be illegal and this is a legal program.

After all, there's no reason whatsoever for the Bush administration to lie about this, is there?

OK, let me let you in on a few bits of information to tell you how utterly ridiculous this is: A database of every call ever made is useless minutiae. What a lot of companies and agencies do when they don't want you to really know what they're doing is drop reams of information on your desk. They do this, not to be helpful, but to essentially baffle you with b.s. They figure that you will do one of two things—you'll only skim the executive summary, which, of course, contains nothing useful, or you will throw up your hands and give up, because you’ll never have the time to give that pile the proper attention.

If the NSA is collecting a massive database of every phone call made in America, then how will the NSA, even with state-of-the-art software, be able to discern anything useful in all these reams of data? It will be information overload.

I'm not saying don't worry about the database because it will be too overwhelming for them to use it against you. What I'm wondering, instead, is why the agency is wasting valuable resources on compiling a data dump, in which an errant call or two to al Qaeda operatives is going to get lost? It seems to me horrendously inefficient, but since we can't even probe the program to see if it's legal or if the lawyers involved are violating ethical standards, we certainly can't get anyone to look at the books on our behalf to see how much we're wasting on compiling mind-numbing minutiae.

In other words, this is just another example of how the Bush administration is continuing to play at protecting us from terrorism while actually doing nothing. They reluctantly form a Homeland Security office that seems to be unprepared for everything and so disorganized the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. The CIA and the FBI cannot cooperate any better under this single umbrella than they could when they were separate. The office is underfunded and border and port security remain a joke.

And their default stance is that the fact that no terrorist attack has happened on our soil since 9/11 is proof that they are doing a bang-up job on the war on terrorism, which is to laugh. The only reason there hasn't been another attack on our soil is that the odds of it happening are infinitesimal to start with. The odds of 9/11 happening were tiny, too, but here's the thing about odds that people seem to forget—even in 2 billion-to-one odds, you will mainly be on one side, but occasionally you're THE one.

We seem to have no problem with this concept when it applies to the lottery—the odds are firmly stacked against us, but it doesn't prevent us from buying a ticket if that is our inclination. Why would a terror attack be any different? Once in a blue moon a lucky bastard wins the lottery, and once in blue moon a terrorist attack happens in your town. That you know the lottery winner or that you watched the Twin Towers fall doesn't suddenly make those odds 50-50, it just takes the exhilaration of having money or the fear of random political violence off the backburner.

So please stop giving Bush undeserved credit and insist instead on a proper investigation to allow us, the American people, to see for ourselves if the program is following the letter of the 1978 FISA Act. If the program is following the law, as Bush continues to insist it is, then of what is he afraid?

***

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it."

Albert Einstein


In case you're one of those people who believe that all we need for our problems to be solved and for our nation to right itself is for Democrats to pick up 15 seats in the US House and have a simple majority in the Senate--well, looks like the esteemed House Minority Leader just pished away your dreams.

Buried in the The Washington Post's A section—A6, to be exact—was this:
Seeking to choke off a Republican rallying cry, the House's top Democrat has told colleagues that the party will not seek to impeach President Bush even if it gains control of the House in November's elections, her office said last night. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) told her caucus members during their weekly closed meeting Wednesday "that impeachment is off the table; she is not interested in pursuing it," spokesman Brendan Daly said.

Apparently this isn't what Pelosi told The Post last week:
In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Pelosi said a Democratic-controlled House would launch investigations of the administration on energy policy and other matters. She said impeachment would not be a goal of the investigations, but she added: "You never know where it leads to."

But this seemed to be too radical for some "Democratic activists," though not for any Democrat I happen to know:
Some Democratic activists criticized Pelosi, saying she made the party appear extreme while drawing attention away from more useful issues such as gasoline prices and Republican lobbying scandals. Daly said Pelosi never considered impeachment a priority. Republicans "are in such desperate shape," he said, "we don't want to give them anything to grab on to." He said [John] Conyers [Michigan Democrat who has called for impeachment hearings] agrees with Pelosi's thinking.

Now, I say we get drunk because I'm fresh out of ideas on how to hold the president accountable for anything.


5/16/2006: Mathematical backup

I had just assumed in an earlier post that there was no way the National Security Agency could possibly effectively find terrorist activity, or anything else, in the data dump that USA Today "uncovered" last week, but an op-ed in today's New York Times confirmed my suspicions.

Jonathan David Farley, a science fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said “legal or not, this sort of spying program probably isn’t worth infringing our civil liberties for—because it’s very unlikely that the type of information one can glean from it will help us win the war on terrorism.”

So, then, what would be the point?

According to Farley, the object of such data mining “is probably to collect data and draw a chart, with dots, or ‘nodes,’ representing individuals and lines between nodes if one person has called another.”

While this type of thing is right up the alley of graph theorists, whose job is to discern who the key players are or who cell leaders might be from such a graph—that is if the terrorists in question are stupid enough to use land lines or traceable cell phone accounts, which I don’t think they are—such graphs don’t really help with the big picture:
…without additional data, its reach is limited: as any mathematician will admit, even when you know everyone in the graph is a terrorist, it doesn’t directly portray information about the order or hierarchy of the cell. Social network researchers look, instead, for graph features like “centrality:” they try to identify nodes that are connected to a lot of other nodes, like spokes around the hub of a bicycle wheel.

But this isn't as helpful as you might imagine. First, the "central player"—the person with the most spokes—might not be as important as the hub metaphor suggests. For example, Jafar Adibi, an information scientist at the University of Southern California, analyzed email traffic among Enron employees before the company collapsed. He found that if you naively analyzed the resulting graph, you could conclude that one of the “central” players was Ken Lay’s…secretary.

And even if you manage to eliminate all the "central players," you may still leave enough lesser players that the cell retains a complete chain of command capable of carrying out a devastating terrorist attack.
Farley continues with this bit of gallows humor:
…the National Security Agency's entire spying program seems to based on a false assumption: that you can work out who might be a terrorist based on calling patterns. While I agree that anyone calling 1-800-ALQAEDA is probably a terrorist, in less obvious situations guilt by association is not just bad law, it's bad mathematics.
Farley gives two reasons that it is bad mathematics: first of all, it isn't just Kevin Bacon that exists in a “six degrees of separation” type of connectness—we all do. Secondly, terrorist groups operate most effectively through the weakest of ties. The principle under which terrorist sleeper cells operate is the same which compels you to share your living quarters with a college roommate you haven't seen in 10 years. "Thus for the most dangerous threats, the links between nodes that the agency is looking for simply might not exist," Farley said.

In other words, the information this data mining program would provide is, at best, academic. NSA would have to do a lot more than mine phone records to do what they’re purporting to do with this information.

It couldn't be relied upon to stop terrorist activity and it's about as effective as trying to get terrorist cell leaders by picking up random men in Middle Eastern nations and torturing them in Guantanamo—you may luck out and get one or two, but more likely you'll acquire a lot of useless people with useless information, which is a waste of time and resources.

That was my point in the May 12 post: whether the program is legal or not is probably a decent moral argument to make, although we know that Alberto Gonzales and the Bush administration will crap on our assumptions. The best argument—the one that's more difficult for the administration to refute—is whether this is the best use of our resources. A layperson like me cannot imagine that that it is. An expert like Farley doesn't seem too convinced, either.
Math is just a tool. Used wisely, math can indeed help in warfare: consider the Battle of Britain, won in part by breaking the German codes. But use it unwisely—as seems to be the case here—and your approval ratings might just hit a new all-time low.
***

No wonder George W. Bush is signing more tax cuts for the wealthy—seems like our illustrious president has steadily been losing some of his net worth during his own administration. From this morning’s Washington Post:
President Bush and his wife, Laura, had assets valued between $7.2 million and $20.9 million last year, up from as much as $18.1 million a year earlier, annual disclosure forms released last night showed. Bush, who says his economic policies have helped Americans increase their wealth, is still making up ground from the start of his first term in 2001, when he and his wife reported assets of as much as $24 million.

Giving Bush the benefit of the doubt and assuming he and his wife had assets of $20.9 million last year, they’ve lost 19% of their net worth since the first term. If their assets are on the $7.2 million end, they’ve lost 151% of their net worth since just the prior year, when they posted $18.1 million in assets, and 233% since the first term.

I won't get into how we can trust with our economy a man who cannot disclose an asset range narrower than $7.2 million to $20.9 million. That's a guess-from-the-top-of-your-head range, not a range from someone who has retained an accountant.

So what is contained in this wealth? Most is in real estate and a diversified trust, which is worth as much as a combined $10 million. The rest are in US Treasury notes and certificates of deposit. Bush also disclosed a health savings account worth as much as $15,000 and a 401(k) retirement plan from his days as Texas governor valued at as much as $250,000.

The Crawford, Texas, ranch is estimated to be worth another guess-off–the-top-of-your-head range of $1 million to $5 million, the same range that was given in the prior year's filing.

So where is Bush and his wife losing money like a sieve? Could it be in the treasury notes and CDs? If it is, what does that say about our economy that Bush has yet to address?

Vice President Cheney, meanwhile, disclosed a portfolio worth as much as $94.6 million in 2005, which provides further proof, if there is any doubt remaining, that he is in league with Satan.


5/21/2006: Our legacy of debt starts now

In yet another unconscionable move by the Bush administration, the tax bill that President Bush recently signed into law tripled tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds.
Under the new law, teenagers age 14 to 17 with investment income will now be taxed at the same rate as their parents, not at their own rates. Long-term capital gains and dividends that had been taxed at 5% will now be taxed at 15%. Interest that had been taxed at 10% will now be taxed at as much as 35%.

The increases, which are retroactive to the first day of the year, are expected to generate nearly $2.2 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which issues the official estimates.

Over all, the tax bill that Mr. Bush signed Wednesday reduces taxes by $69 billion.

That's right folks—taxation without representation, which used to be just what District of Columbia residents had to endure, has extended to 14- to 17-year-olds who, unfortunately, had the foresight to save money for their exponentially increasing future college bills. I guess this is how foresight and ambition will be repaid in the future.

These kids not only are facing mountains of debt at the end of their college tenure, they're facing taxes before they're even old enough to vote on money they're trying to save to reduce some of that future debt. And yet those making money hand-over-fist, who are more than able to pay for the privilege of living in this great nation, are getting $69 billion in "tax relief."

That goes beyond pissing me off—it breaks my heart.

Somewhat like his father before, Bush pledged prior to the 2000 campaign that he would veto any bill that raised taxes. While his father reneged on his "no new taxes" pledge when faced with evidence that tax increases were necessary, Bush decided to be sneaky about it:
In response to a question about the tax increase on teenagers in the new legislation, the White House issued a statement Friday that made no reference to the tax increase, but recounted the tax cuts the administration has sponsored and stated that President Bush had “reduced taxes on all people who pay income taxes."

Challenged on that point, the White House modified its statement 21 minutes later to say that Mr. Bush had "reduced taxes on virtually all people who pay income taxes."
I, for one, am speechless.


5/22/2006: Bottom line: 1; Human beings, 0

From this morning's New York Times:
Most of the major breaches in the New Orleans levee system during Hurricane Katrina were caused by flaws in design, construction and maintenance—and parts of the system could still be dangerous even after the current round of repairs by the Army Corps of Engineers, according to a long-awaited independent report to be published Monday.

"People didn't die because the storm was bigger than the system could handle and people didn't die because the levees were overtopped," said Raymond B. Seed, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and the chief author of the report, in a weekend briefing for reporters here. "People died because mistakes were made," he said, "and because safety was exchanged for efficiency and reduced cost."
The 500-page report says, in a nutshell, that the design and construction of the New Orleans hurricane protection system was "inadequate to protect hundreds of thousands of people in an urban setting."

Which brings me to this: we were all so busy blaming Bush, blaming Nagin, blaming Blanco, blaming the folks who didn't have cars and didn't have anywhere else to go, but why didn't anyone blame the "invisible hand" free-market economy we seem to worship? The economy that says human consequences of decisions aren't as important as meeting cost projections?

This thinking is making us more disposable on a daily basis. It is taking away our health care, our pensions and our leisure time, sacrificing them to the god of the bottom line. Everyone sits back and lets it happen because to question it would somehow cause the whole system to collapse.

I think a system that exchanges safety for efficiency and reduced costs is somewhat deserving of collapse, don't you?

6/8/2006: Slaying the terrorist hydra

Before we commence a victory dance over the mortal remains of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, I’d like to acquaint you with the myth of the 12 labors of Hercules, which seems particularly apt in this case.

One labor is of particular interest to me because astrologer Liz Greene once used it to describe the ultimate destiny of my zodiac sign, Scorpio. In it, Hercules is called upon to slay the Lernean Hydra, a large, serpent-like beast with nine heads containing poisonous fangs. This frightening creature inhabited a dark cave in the swamp and terrorized the folks of the countryside.

First Hercules tries to use brute force to destroy the beast—clubbing it to death, slicing off its heads, but this doesn't work, because when you slice off a head, it instantly grows more heads. Hercules then remembers a sage's advice: The hydra cannot stand the light. Armed with this information, he lifts the beast to the sunlight, where it shrivels up but for one immortal head, which Hercules buries under a rock.

Al-Zarqawi is just a sliced-off head, as is Saddam, Uday and Qusay Hussein. As long as we use our brawn, club these "terrorist sponsors" and chop off their heads, nothing is going to come from it but more heads, making the hydra even more dangerous.

Perhaps if we use our brains, listen to advice and expose to the light festering conditions that created this monster, then actually DO something about those conditions, then maybe, just maybe, that monster could shrivel up into something with which we can more easily deal.


6/13/2006: Bitter? Really? I can't imagine why...
Don't you know when you're loving anybody, baby,
You're taking a gamble on a little sorrow,
But then who cares, baby,'cause we may not be here tomorrow.
And if anybody should come along,
He gonna give you any love and affection,
I'd say get it while you can, yeah!
Hey, hey, get it while you can,
Hey, hey, get it while you can.
Don't you turn your back on love.
"Get It While You Can," Janis Joplin

After reading this a few months ago, and seeing this discussion earlier this afternoon, I'm so sick of reading how undesirable I am as a black woman because I'm bitter and angry that I could puke blood!

I hope that didn't seem too bitter or angry, but since the bitter-and-angry sign will be hung around my neck no matter what I do, I might as well be pissed off for a minute.

As you could probably discern from both the discussion and the column, some people believe me and all other women who share my skin color are bitter, angry, nasty (and, as Courtland Milloy puts it, who wants to deal with a nasty woman?), materialistic, uncultured, too sexually inhibited—how this is reconciled by the "oversexed" stereotype that we've been traditionally saddled with is beyond me— and just too damned independent and strong!

Oh boo-freakin'-hoo!

Of course, not all black women are these things. I'm not even sure any more than a couple of black women on this planet outside of old Amos and Andy reruns are these things if you actually try to get to know them and not rely solely on stereotypes.

But I can only speak for myself, and so I shall.

I'm not terribly bothered seeing black men with non-black women. As long as the love is true and genuine, wherever, and with whomever, you find it is fine.

Most importantly, I also don't date exclusively black—the last black man I dated was in 1986, the summer before my freshman year of college. If I had limited myself to only black men, I would be one frustrated woman after 20 years of absolutely nothing and no prospect of anything.

And I haven't been rejecting black men right and left or deciding that black men were unworthy due to some stupid stereotype. It just hasn't worked out.

Have I given up on black men? Hardly. Have they given up on me? It sure seems so, but not for any reason I can discern. Will I wait forever for a black man to give me a real chance? Hell no! That's why I date whomever I fancy, as long as he abides by the "golden rule," is well-read, is worthy of my respect, is a genuinely kind person and has a sense of humor. I can work around the rest.

That said, if black women are bitter and angry, I think I understand why:

If we are bitter and angry, it may have something to do with this: for most of us— I'm not counting the Halle Berrys, Tyra Banks or Imans of the world—no matter how beautiful, how educated, how cultured or how evolved we are, it's never going to be enough. And it's never going to be enough simply because we're black.

Unless she has other traits that most men consider undesirable, a woman of any other race can turn heads of ALL men with the slightest toss of the hair. She can make them ache with longing with the slightest seductive flitter of an eyelash. She can send them to the altar with the most meaningless ultimatum. We can never do this, and that hurts. It hurts even more when we're not even good enough for the brothers, who are supposed to understand us more than anyone else.

As with nearly everything else we do, many of us have to work twice as hard to get half as much. And on some occasions, particularly in interracial relationships, the deal is predestined NOT to close no matter who we are or what we do. Although I don't think the prohibition is widespread enough to reach "taboo" status, as Audrey Chapman believes, maybe that's the reason why some black women won't date outside their race. Why do the extra work needed to get the interest of a white/Hispanic/Asian man when, in the end, they're terrified of what will happen if they—gasp—introduce you to their parents!?!

If your parents are so cruel that they'd disown you for following your heart, your problem isn't your girlfriend-of-color, it's your parents. If you find someone who treats you wonderfully, and your parents don't like that, they need help.

And another thing that can make me bitter, if I allowed myself to be, is getting grief from other women as well. Here's the paradox: I'm not considered desirable enough to turn male heads unless I'm the only woman in the room, but I am still considered attractive enough by many women to be deemed a threat to be neutralized.

A single, black woman who is interesting, witty and pretty? I MUST keep my man away from her or she'll take everything away from me!

And what the hell am I supposed to do with that!?!

I was at a party nearly a year ago where, after I revealed that I was a member of the Science Fiction/Fantasy Guild in college, a white woman actually told her black husband—a sci-fi fan—that he wasn't allowed to talk to me because he might find me desirable. She was only joking, which I knew, but I didn't find the joke to be terribly funny.

A final few words: I know you mean well, but please don't be terribly offended if I say "fuck you" the next time you tell me I should have no problem at all finding a man because I'm pretty, smart and have a great personality. Particularly if you're a single man. Especially if you're a single man I'm interested in and you're telling me this to console me after telling me why we can't be together.

It's no consolation, and I've reached my tolerance threshold for ever wanting to hear it again. It doesn't make me feel better.

But just so I won't be labeled as bitter or angry, I promise I will try my best to smile when I give you the finger.


7/8/06: What is worse than incompetence? How about intent?

The Bush administration's competence, or lack thereof, was "debated" last week via two fascinating pieces that were posted on Alternet. In the first, posted July 3, University of California-Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff said that progressives and liberals should refrain from using the word "incompetent" to describe the Bush administration. As he puts it:
Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush's disasters—Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit—are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable, result of his conservative governing philosophy.

It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative officeholders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.

In a longer piece from the Washington Monthly posted July 6, Boston College political science teacher Alan Wolfe essentially counters with why not call them incompetent? They can't govern their way out of a taxicab!

To me, the stories were flip sides of the same coin: It isn't the Bush administration that's the failure or the problem, it's their brand of conservatism.

As Wolfe writes, "this conservative presidency and Congress imploded, not despite their conservatism but because of it."

I concur that the administration's philosophy is at fault, but take issue with calling it "conservative." Blaming conservatism risks throwing out a few decent babies (fiscal responsibility, for instance—whatever happened to that?) with the bathwater. The administration, instead, is a radical entity.
I can live with conservatives, it's the radical right wing that chaps my behind every time.

But, hey, let's not get bogged down in semantics. Here's the main point I took from both articles: Just because the policy is monumentally stupid, hurts people and gives the impression that this gang can't shoot straight, it doesn't mean the Bush administration is as stupid as a suitcase of rocks. It means something more diabolical—Bush meant to do what he did because it's all part of the radical "master plan." Lakoff makes this point in a chilling way, saying "the idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one, consider[ing] the list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished."

The incomplete list includes:

So the administration has been able to accomplish far too much to be incompetent buffoons. Reading that list a couple times makes it apparent that we dismiss the administration and their supporter at our peril.

But Wolfe makes a couple interesting points as well:
Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class [beef] bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.
So you get what happened in New Orleans last year. The radical right stands against everything that truly could have helped. As a result, you wind up with a poor excuse for disaster relief, anchored by an agency the radical right doesn't want to take seriously.
Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference— expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding.
"The end result," Wolfe writes, "is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government."

Wolfe then quotes conservative Richard Weaver: "Ideas have consequences."

Let's roll some of those more consequential ideas around our heads one more time: preemptive warfare, spreading US-style democracy around the world, a stronger executive branch, tax cuts for the wealthy, fewer programs for the needy and elderly, No Child Left Behind, doing disaster relief and wars on the cheap.

Unfortunately, we have only scratched the surface of the consequences of these radical-right ideas. As much as it grieves me to agree with Lakoff about anything, I have to say that we need to start taking these people seriously and keep them as far away from public office as possible.

I've never advocated casting a vote in the direction of anyone who doesn't believe in his/her own job. After reading these articles, I now know why.


7/30/2006: Well, this is refreshing…

The most emailed article in the New York Times for Sunday is about the Rev. Gregory Boyd, the minister of a Maplewood, Minnesota-based megachurch who has managed to cull his flock by, amazingly, saying some very refreshing things from the pulpit, such as:
America wasn't founded as a theocracy. America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn't bloody and barbaric. That's why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state. I am sorry to tell you that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.

Or, of the propensity for conservative Christians to obsess about sex and the "violation" of their right to publicly display their faith: "Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act and those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed."

Amen, brother!

I'm not what you would call a fervently churchgoing American, but I do not disparage faith and Christian morals, either—to be fair, I don't agree that liberals disparage faith and Christian morals. They just aren't comfortable shoving their faith down other people's throats.

I happen to believe the 10 Commandments are a decent set of rules to follow for purely secular reasons—I've learned from experience, for instance, that one of the consequences of coveting is a painful trip through debt counseling or bankruptcy, at best, and a cap in the behind from a jealous rival at worst. And anyone who has known me for a period of time knows I'm also a big fan of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have done to you."

To me, the Golden Rule is the cornerstone of Judeo-Christian faith, so it's too bad it's the first thing to be forgotten when Christians and Jews feel threatened. It breaks my heart when the Golden Rule isn't applied, because applying it tends eliminate unnecessary problems. That's one of the lessons that seem to be lost in the current crisis in the Middle East—is this what Abraham, Mohammad or Jesus would have done?

So, yes, this preacher is speaking to me. Unfortunately, his message resulted in the departure of 1,000 church members, mainly white, middle-class suburbanites who apparently prefer to see America, and not Jesus Christ, as the light and hope of the world and don't mind their peaceable Sunday morning theology tinged with profane patriotic displays of fighter jets silhouetted with crosses.

But, as is usually the nature of doing the right thing, the immediate loss left Boyd with something better: a more diverse congregation that is at least responsive enough to his message to consider it seriously.
Some Woodland Hills members said they applauded the sermons because they had resolved their conflicted feelings. David Churchill, a truck driver for UPS and a Teamster for 26 years, said he had been "raised in a religious-right home" but was torn between the Republican expectations of faith and family and the Democratic expectations of his union. When Mr. Boyd preached his sermons, "it was liberating to me," Mr. Churchill said.

Now, I'm not saying Rev. Boyd and I agree on everything. I support reproductive choice and happen to have a religious stance on that—I believe it is only God's job to judge, not mine and certainly not the state's, but I'm willing to look past that to support the minister in bringing a little more rationality back to evangelism. It's long overdue.


8/15/2006: Life intervenes
Don't no good come outta bad.
Can’t get much bad outta real good.
Hold on to your good, your essence,
Until you find the people and situations that match it.

Marita Golden, author, "Don't Play in the Sun"


My apologies for all but abandoning rants for much of the past month, but life—both the good and bad aspects of it—has been getting in the way of caring about the news enough to rant about it.

Considering most people don't bother to read a newspaper regularly or vote, and seem proud of that, I think I've earned the right to wallow in some temporary apathy. While I could do my normal backdates, it seems so silly after a month has gone by. I'd rather start anew.

Since my last post, I've shaken off some unworthy friends, fallen head-over-heels in love again with the quality friends who remain and enjoyed the company of some of the most wonderful dogs and cats in three states, many of whom had been abused previously by poor excuses for human beings, but managed to turn out reasonably fine in spite of that.

If I am still able to hold on to my good—my essence—after all I've been through in the past month or so, it is because Hunter, Bone, Courage, Dahlie, Reuben, Buddha, Wobblie, Rocky, Zeus, Babygirl, Theo and all my wonderful friends, family and surrogate family who care for them not only matched that essence, but far exceeded it.

It feels great to be surrounded by love and genuine friendship when you're unsure if you have any love or friendship left to give.

And I learned a valuable lesson from at least one of those simple creatures: Even if you've been—literally—kicked in the teeth, you can still learn to trust people again, as long as you stick with the right people. If Courage can go through what he's been through and learn to trust again, the least I can do is give it a try.


9/11/2006: Something to ponder after five years

As you're watching CNN, pondering whether or not we're safer now than we were five years ago, here's a sobering thought, courtesy of the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
An exodus of key leaders and scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has raised "great concern" among five of the six former directors who led the agency over the past 40 years…. The most visible sign of potential trouble at CDC is the loss of more than a dozen high-profile leaders and scientists since 2004. By the end of this year, all but two of the directors of CDC's eight primary scientific centers will have left the Atlanta-based federal agency. The wave of departures—which numerous CDC leaders call unprecedented—also includes the agency's top vaccine expert and world experts in several diseases. Just last week CDC's pandemic flu coordinator said he's leaving.

The infrastructure is starting to crumble at our nation's last line of defense against disease. These are the people who track SARS, pandemic flu and bioterror, and these experts are passing through CDC like water through a sieve.

If you're shocked and stunned, don't be. What's happening to CDC is what happened to the CIA and FEMA and probably several other agencies we don't even know about until their screw-ups become public.

You remember Grover Norquist? The one who said he and his minions want to make government so small that you can drown it into a bathtub.

Well, folks, welcome to CDC drowning in a bathtub. Hope you enjoy the show.

This, again, shows that what looks, smells and quacks like incompetence is really more diabolical than that.

You see, CDC, like FEMA and the CIA before it, are things the US government traditionally did well. These agencies, in fact, are what government is made for. If you believe—like the radical right does—that government can't do anything right, well, you can't have an agency that does something right. You'll look like a complete fool.

But you can't dispatch these agencies in the way the administration prefers: Unlike Energy, Commerce or Education, there really isn't any corporation to which CDC can be handed off. No corporation in its right mind really wants to track diseases or help disaster victims merely because it's the right thing to do. How do you pad your bottom line with good intentions?

So they can't delegate these agencies away, but they also can't eliminate them, because the American people really aren't that stupid. You can't say you're fighting a war on terror when you eliminate CDC, your main defense against bioterror. No one is going to allow that to happen without a little fuss.

So, instead, you go with plan C: Appoint as head of the agency a crony who has no fundamental understanding of what the agency does. Provide the agency with so little funding and support that it can't properly do its job. Watch with (hopefully restrained) glee the mass exodus of the conscientious, but frustrated, people who normally would stand in your way, then replace them with people more concerned about the bottom line/politics/kissing the right behind than doing the agency's job.

Plan C is working quite well at the CDC and, like with FEMA, it's the American people who will suffer. The worst part is that you won't know how bad it is until you really need the CDC, just like you didn't know how bad it was at FEMA until after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Here's the kicker: The Bush administration will respond with an exaggerated shrug: "Hey, big government just doesn't work."

This, folks, is intentional. It's diabolical. They shouldn't get away with this. But they probably will anyway.

11/3/2006: Shooting the messenger…again!

In The New York Times this morning, further proof that the Bush administration would rather shoot the messenger than fix anything that could possibly be wrong, particularly when it involves Iraq:
Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.
Great! He did what the American taxpayers paid him to do! But wait, there’s more…
…[T]ucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference and has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation. emphasis mine
Granted, the office was intended to be temporary. Of course, so was the war, but the office should still exist as long as reconstruction efforts continue, as long as the administration's corporate favorites receive no-bid contracts and as long as the American people are footing the bill.

Once again, those who blindly do the administration's dirty work in Congress slipped the rider in the bill at the last minute. No one saw it, thus no one got a chance to discuss it or strike it out. It's no different than how these guys have been operating for the past six years.

If you're still searching for a reason to kick these guys out of Congress, here's the only one you need: You want a representative who won't insult you by inserting bad ideas in bills under cover of darkness because he knows if the idea finds light, he won't be able to get away with it. They've been allowed to do this far too often for comfort, and they shouldn't get any more chances.


11/12/2006: ...And now, for a reality check...

OK, so it's been like Christmas since the first media talking head uttered the words "House Speaker-to-Be Nancy Pelosi" Wednesday morning.

The time has come for a reality check, however. The sooner we accept that voting a new party into power may not exactly get the change we want can bring us a bit closer to forgiving them, and keeping them in office for longer than two years.

Simpsons creator Matt Groening once said, "If you keep your expectations tiny, you'll get through life without being so whiny." That would be a good mantra for progressives, liberals and Democrats right about now.

This Democratic sweep is not the Republican "Contract with America" sweep of 1994. What brought the Democrats in was moderation and relative sanity, not extremity. But for Bernie Sanders in the Senate and possibly John Hall in the House, we're not talking a hell of a lot of true leftists here. Most of the "new blood" are like Jim Webb of Virginia—a former Republican with, at best, a little libertarian attitude on social issues.

Part of the reason the Virginia Senate race came down to the wire is that very few people I know supported Webb because they liked the man or thought he'd usher in real change—They supported him simply because he wasn't George Allen. As a native Virginian, I can guarantee that, one, this is normal, and two, and he's probably more like George Allen than he is like any of the liberals who held their noses to support him. But hey, we'll have to accept that for now, because Democratic National Committee strategy was not to "play to the base," it was to get Democrats in no matter what. If you have to recruit a few Democrats in Name Only's to win Congress, that's what you do.

And that's what they did.

So we have a lot of DINOs in Congress who may play along with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on some things (hopefully the important things), but will be as different from them as fingers on a hand in others. You might see more infighting than fighting with the executive branch, especially if Reid and Pelosi "go too far" in seeking what many of us progressives really want.

The New York Times today put it this way:
In general, [the newly elected Democrats] set themselves an extraordinary (political veterans might say impossible) task: to avoid the ideological wars that have so dominated Congress in recent years, to be pragmatists, and to change the tone in Washington after a sharply partisan campaign.

"I see myself, hopefully, as a bridge builder, a consensus person," said Harry Mitchell, 66, a longtime state senator and former mayor of Tempe, Ariz., who defeated Representative J. D. Hayworth, an emblematic member of the class of 1994. "I can't be a rabid partisan Democrat and represent this district."

You're going to hear a lot of "I can't be a rabid partisan Democrat and represent this district" over the next two years. And they're right, they can't. That's why they were recruited and that's why they’re there.

So if you voted for Democrats in hopes of impeachment, the word is final: it's so off the table it isn't funny. Don't even get your hopes up. The whole world could call for it, Pelosi and Reid could really want to do it, the evidence could be a slam dunk (and quite a bit of it already is) but populist DINOs like Harry Mitchell and Jim Webb are not going to want to piss off their conservative constituency by going after the president, so it won't go very far.

It's quite the shame that a new era has been ushered in by voters, but the folks who were ushered in read the tea leaves differently than the people who voted for them. I'm one of those independents both parties were courting, and I can tell you that I didn't vote for pragmatism and consensus building with the radical right wing. If that's what I wanted, Ben Cardin and Al Wynn were my men—that's why they didn't get my vote. I voted for Kevin Zeese and wrote in Donna Edwards.

I voted for gridlock—not the stubborn, bullying-for-no-good-reason kind that shut down the federal government several times when I first moved to the DC area in 1995, but the kind of intimidating gridlock that faithfully obstructs when the president makes clear he's going to flout the law or lie to the American people (even if it is for their own good). I think we're six years overdue for that kind of gridlock and, if it comes, I welcome it with open arms.

You see, I don't want to pragmatically build a consensus with someone who is intent on breaking the law. That's the difference. And I hope that doesn't seem to be too radical to these populists. If it is, then we're royally screwed.

This is what I voted for:
If you do just that, you might be able to keep your jobs for a while without impeaching Bush/Cheney (although I REALLY wish you'd reconsider) or doing anything else "radical" that would freak out your constituency, who, by the way, weren't terribly frightened of "radical" when it was being served up by the right wing.

In the meantime, I wish you the best of luck. You'll need it.

Back to Random Rantings

Back to Valarie's Planet