Long Time No Blog

Been feeding kids and agitating. Oh, and taking in the Dar Williams show. That was awesome. (Lending ever more credence to the West Coast fave bumper sticker, "Subvert the dominant paradigm: play accordion")

I'll be right back with an ode to Michelle Malkin, because I've gone soft on y'all. But first, from American Prospect, Al Gore in 2008?

Himillsy for RAC

Sometimes I'm not sure why I still live here.

And then I remember: my mother-in-law is here. Right.

Anyway, I left NoVA on the Blue line at 8:20 this morning. The train kept stalling in the tunnel. The conductor said this was due to "mechanical problems" in the train in front of us. Sometime around Rosslyn, there was a blue spark outside the car and we lost power. By 9:20, we'd pulled into Foggy Bottom, where we were unceremoniously dumped. I walked the rest of the way to my office, arriving sometime before 10:00.

Of course, there were no mechanical problems. There was a "suspicious package" somewhere else on the line. And the blue spark? Stopping at Foggy Bottom? Well, who knows the deal there.

What I do know is that if I am going to continue to take this stupid train every day for the rest of my life or until we finally move to a humble homestead with attached recording studio somewhere in Oregon, I can't keep up the lemming-like reliance on the system to sort itself out.

Thankfully, WMATA is searching for members to fill up its Rider Advisory Council. Who would like to bet with me whether those selected are regular riders of rail and bus, or even patrons of systems in New York, San Francisco, London and Paris? Will they have even ridden Metro in the last year? How many own and drive cars on days when Metro is unreliable (like, say, the month of January)?

Insert laughter. Acerbic laughter. And the requisite Metro board joke.

Apply here.

Where the Leaders Are - Daschle Edition

So the line out now is that Tom Daschle is interested in getting back into politics, possibly for a 2008 run. Here's what he has been up to since his term expired in January:

Joined CB Richard Ellis Board of Directors. Will be keynote speaker at Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner on Nov. 5.

....And that's about it.

Porn Squad, Female Chauvinist Pigs, and Other Names for Nonexistent Rock Bands

There's an old slam-poem by a married couple from Brooklyn that says something like "we'll keep our money in between the pages of a homosexual erotica coffee table book/and call it a savings account/and that's as patriotic as this family gets."

So it is in a lot of houses, the Dodd-Sorbeck house not excluded. But erotica, porn, hardcore -whatever you call it- is having a bad week. The Washington FBI field office is now recruiting for a Porn Squad, a ridiculous new initiative aimed at eliminating "obscenity", a nebulous idea that has historically failed definition. We're not talking about protecting kids here: the WP reported that the FBI "must devote 10 agents to adult pornography" (emphasis mine). Obscenity, as it turns out, is an offshoot of public corruption, and as such falls fourth on the FBI's list of priorities (just behind terrorism, cyber attacks, and international espionage, but before civil rights and violent crime. I am not kidding). Rest well tonight, children of America, in the knowledge that you could inherit a porn-free United States. It may be violent, discriminatory, and grossly unprepared for natural disaster, but it will be porn-free.

Additionally, two new books have landed blaming porn for a variety of ills: Pornified and Female Chauvinist Pigs. The former is a sad account of a dismal society in which women want men, men want sex, and the porn industry wants to make a buck off them all. Ultimately, warns author Pamela Paul, men will become so engaged with the airbrushed, instant-gratification world of porn, that men won't want real, live women at all. She shares alarmist vignettes from men who find live women frustrating for their smells, shapes, or individual needs, and stops short of claiming that this is the beginning of the end of live male-female relationships. Female Chauvinist Pigs focuses on what Pornified ignores completely: the sharp rise in female consumption of porn. Porn has always had fans, but FCP argues that it's modern women who have pushed it into the mainstream. Echoing Pamela Paul, author Ariel Levy provides anecdotes outlining women's actual, secret dislike of porn, while they outwardly embrace and promote it. Women don't watch porn because they like it, Levy writes, but because they want to be the porn stars that men appreciate.

So what? If a handful of women are silly enough to pretend to love something they hate so that they'll attract a certain man, then this is the stuff of individual therapy visits, not national policy. And if two people have a disagreement about whether porn is appropriate within the context of their relationship, then that's something for them to work out, not call in the FBI. Whether Paul or Levy had any sense of the possibility of a Porn Squad when they wrote their books isn't important; their books and the Porn Squad come from a fundamentally similar position: that people can't be trusted to make their own decisions and must be protected from themselves.

Yay.

I'm not prone to the overly sentimental. But you know that feeling you got when you were small and you were dropped off at preschool? That horrifying sense of dread that you would be there forever, with the group leader that mixed up the names of all the Thundercats, and the smelly kid who slurped his own mucus as it ran down his face? And you know that feeling you got when your dad finally showed up to take you home? This is sort of like that.

Open Letters - September 19, 2005

Dear Today,

You and I are so over. I don't mean that in a cute, "Himillsy's trying to write a clever letter to a manmade occurrence" way. I really do hate you, for the following reasons:

1. The debt collection agency that called me today and convinced me for a heart-stopping hour that I owed $4,000, payable this afternoon.
2. The university that neglected to process my consolidation paperwork, thus inducing a phone call from above debt collection agency.
3. Caffeine, and lack thereof.
4. Husband does not charge phone. This is a gripe we will likely revisit on other days.
5. The nonexistence of a birth control that is effective, safe, and has few side effects. This weekend, I gave up the crying jags and nightly vomiting to give charting a try. My colleague and good buddy just ran sobbing out of the office looking for a chart of her own. Science has had 50 years to perfect the Pill and all we get are variations on the same hormones?
6. Tori Spelling's divorce. No one ever thinks about the fans.
7. The implementation of TimesSelect, the most pompous, elitist move by a pompous, elitist institution this side of the Patriot Act. The New York Times is charging its readers for access to certain columnists. Which means that Nicholas Kristof's one-man-crying-in-the-wilderness op-eds on global poverty and social injustice, subjects no one ever cared about until TV told them to, will be ignored by the very people that were finally about to read them.

Actually, TimesSelect offers some tantalizing experiments with copyright infringement. It would be illegal and unethical for a blogger to purchase a subscription and post the columns on a blog for The People (trust me, I checked). But it wouldn't be illegal to post excerpts with full citation. So if anyone would like to make a lil Stick It To the Times blogring with me, I'd be delighted.

Anyway, Monday, I'm off to your visit your corporate underwriter for some much needed coffee.

Love,
Himillsy

Providing Fodder for Homophobes Nationwide

If a same-sex animal couple were to, say, break up and start seeing opposite-sex partners, it probably wouldn't be scientific, logical, or ethical to make any assumptions about what this means for the rest of the animal kingdom, especially humans. There are over 200 identified species that engage in homosexual, polysexual, and bisexual behavior. The breakup of one couple shouldn't mean jack.

Of course, if you're Fox News, it's one of your headlining stories today. Yay journalism!

You All Owe Me Ten Dollars.

I predicted this when Extreme Makeover first came out. And I'm not surprised at all.

Check out the self-proclaimed "ugly" woman's photograph. She's really very lovely.

Aren't you all glad that we're not in high school anymore?

Where the Leaders Are - Part 2

Thanks to kind words from the Senator and just because I'm curious, CI will regularly present updates on the activities of the 2008 presidential contenders.

In a week largely dedicated to Katrina action and Katrina finger-pointing, our usual suspects were much more on-target than they were last week.

Joe Biden: Attended a Democratic fundraiser. Will take part in the confirmation hearings of John Roberts beginning today in Washington.
Hillary Clinton: Appeared on all three morning shows Wednesday. Rejected Bush plan for administrative probe into Katrina response over independent inquiry. A WP article referred to Clinton as "the national spokesperson for the Democratic party" and suggested imminent backlash for her role in Katrina criticism. Remodeled her home, nicknamed "the White-House-in-waiting".
John McCain: Delayed hearings on mandatory drug testing in major league sports in the midst of Katrina relief. Introduced relief fund aimed at assisting LSU with over 3,000 students absorbed after the disaster.
Barack Obama: Appeared on ABC's "This Week" addressing race and ignorance about inner cities. Appeared on BET Saving OurSelves telethon for Katrina relief. Accused John Roberts of ignorance on matters of race and the law.
Condoleezza Rice: Released statement on Japanese elections. Welcomed new Human Rights Envoy to North Korea. Called for international support on Iran sanctions. Appeared on BET Saving OurSelves telethon for Katrina relief.

Who's off the Biden bandwagon? Times are a-changing, folks.

"Passive indifference is just as bad as active malice."

So says Barack Obama, who has emerged from the hurricane disaster as a hands-on, reasoned counterpart to all the administration's nonsense. I have nothing to add to this. Just wanted to make sure that no one missed it amidst the junk that passes for sagacity.

Work is very busy today, so look for another update on your 2008 leaders later on this afternoon.

This isn't news, it's a timeout

It's official: Brown was relieved of duty this afternoon. On the same day that I bring Super-Nutty Brownies to the office. I like to think I'm responsbile.

Really, though: relieved of duty just means "sent back to the office". The administration looked at Brown's gross mismanagement of a long-anticipated natural disaster, his failure to own up to his mistakes, the apparent falsification of his own credentials and responded by...giving him a timeout.

What does it take to get incompetent people fired from this administration? Dead Iraqis, dead American soldiers, and now dead American citizens clearly haven't made any impact.

Oh, Those Interns . . .

Time Magazine is reporting that Michael Brown padded his resume.

Brown has a biographical section on the FEMA Web site (which I'm sure has been taken down by now, but I haven't chekced) said he served "as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." in Edmond, Okla. A spokeswoman for the city, however, tells Time that Brown's position was "more like an intern."

Know what the only truth on his resume that makes him qualified for the FEMA job?

Fundraiser for George W. Bush.

And I'm not even kidding.

Like I said: Business as usual.

Update: Time also reported that, while Brown's profile on FindLaw.com lists him as an "outstanding Political Science Professor" at Central State University, the school contends that he was merely a student. He also claimed to be director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, but no one at the home has ever heard of Brown. You can't make this stuff up!

Update: Michael Brown has been relieved of any and all duties relating to the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief efforts. Hurl all future insults toward Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen.

In Case You Missed It

Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee and the Texas Association of Business have been indicted by a federal grand jury. District Attorney Ronnie Earle said that the two organizations worked to sidestep the election code and funnel corporate wealth into republican congressional campaigns. His laundry list of alleged offenses and ethics violations notwithstanding, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) has not been indicted himself, though he was a founding member of TRMPAC. I will not charge that Tom DeLay is guilty of anything, but it seems a little odd that everyone with whom he's shared a handshake is being indicted . . .

One could argue that it's not just the presidency that has been held fraudulently over the past five years, but several seats in the House as well. Florida, Ohio, and now Texas. Political corruption and scandal on a nationwide scale!

Looks like it's business as usual for the Grand Ol' Party . . .

Playing the Blame Game - On the Victims

In an essay titled, "Katrina's Silver Lining", David Brooks writes in today's NYT that the storm has provided an opportunity for extremely poor people to do a lot better.

David, have you met Barbara? I think you two would hit it off.

Brooks outlines the typical conservative explanations for poverty: teenagers having babies, men that can't commit to a woman or a workplace, and poor social skills. Gee, no wonder his buddies were so slow to respond to the disaster. Who'd want to save this lot of lazy, sex-crazed, illiterates? They probably wear their pants low, too.

The solution that he proposes: rebuild New Orleans as a middle class city, and then integrate the poor into it. The poor will learn what Brooks calls "middle-class skills" and standards of behavior. They will then take these skills and build a better life. Brooks cites the Clinton program, "Moving to Opportunity" as an example of a successful cultural integration. What he doesn't mention is that although the progam worked well for many of the children, the parents saw no increase (either immediately or over time) in earnings or job opportunities. That makes cultural integration difficult to maintain, if not impossible. Unless, of course, Brooks is proposing government subsidies. But he's not; he proposes tax cuts for the working poor, many of whom don't actually pay taxes.

People like Brooks can't wrap their minds around the notion that widespread poverty is created by institutions and ignorance just like his. They like their poor noble and tragic, or unquestionably deserving. What a person's poverty has to do with their infidelity is beyond me, but to conservatives of Brooks' ilk, it's just karmic retribution for not obeying a moral code, and lacking access to the social training that bred the middle class. What is this middle-class skill set and why is it so valuable? Cut through the bullshit: Brooks is suggesting that if poor people changed their names from Diamonte and Tiffany, wore different clothes, and changed their tastes, they'd be more employable. Katrina's silver lining is the opportunity to colonize the culture of the poor.

But what do you expect from a crowd that bombed a city to give its children a better place to live?