Inappropriate Content: November 2005

I went to a wonderful bakery near my office today. I've been going as often as possible the last several days, for the breakfast crissuants. There are several very nice Asian women in late middle age who work there. (The only French person I've ever seen was the owner; I once saw him walk in and go straight to the back office. He had his breakfast, from the place across the street. If someone )

Today as I was getting ready to leave one of the Asian women asked me if I was student. We talked for a moment, introduced each other, and other such things.

"I don't wish to be rude," I said, "But are you Vietnamese?"

"How did you know?" she asked.

"Well, this is a French bakery," I replied.

It's the second time I've been kicked out of a restaurant in my life, but it's the first time I regret it.

5:08 PM 4 Comments

Monday, November 28, 2005

Such Crazyness!

I've been teaching myself CSS Image Filters. "What is that crazyness?" you may ask. It's crazyness like this stuff:

I can take Bobby Kennedy (hotness) and apply the, say, an inverted image filter with an alpha mask(crazyness):

That's applying crazyness to the hotness! But what if you want the crazyness without the hotness? We can take a piece of styled text like so:

Where's the Beef?

And give it a glow filter with speed blur:

Where's the Beef?

Well, I don't know about the beef, but I can tell you where the cool shit is at: the CSS .img filter tag is where it's at!

I'm on such a total geek high right now. Geek the freak out!

(And by the way, we spell "craziness" with a Y now. Cause its l33t that way.)

1:31 PM 4 Comments

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Turkey Day

The first time I visited the District of Columbia, my family visited a friend of a friend who worked at the Washington Post and gave us a tour of the newsroom. I had a photograph of Tuesday's front page under a calendar showing it was still Monday, but I've misplaced it and now I can't tell you the exact date we visited. In fact, now I think about it, I can't even recall the year. I can, however, recall seeing a homeless man sleeping on the grate of a subway station right across the street from the White House. This was before I'd read The Jungle or seen the photography of Jacob Riis. When I did see Riis' photographs, or read about New York in the 1880s (or 1980s), I always came back to my memory of the bum at the White House.

I was there again last night; same place, different year. I know a bit more now. I know that it's called the Metro, not the subway, and that it's a good block-and-a-half from the White House. I know that there over 3.5 million Americans are homeless at some point each year; that in 2000, 36% of those people were families with children; that in the District of Columbia, there are 14,000 people on the streets or in shelters every night. I know homeless children staying at the family shelter a less than two blocks from my dorm. I remember when I was in Philadelphia; getting up at four in the morning on Sunday, cruising around downtown in a battered white van with donuts and coffee to hand out.

Less than a block away from taking the picture above, I walked past another battered white vans. About two dozen homeless men and a few women were lined up for coffee and food. Same thing, different year.

I kept walking. I didn't have any change, and was late for take-out Chinese with the boyfriend. (Also, it would have struck the people handing out food amiss if some kid in a shirt and tie had just showed up and asked to help.)

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a holiday about appreciating what you have. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I think the proper way to do that is by enjoying what we have, not wallowing in collective guilt. We should return to the way harvest festivals are celebrated in less puritan cultures—wine, women, and song. But every now and then, a little solemnity is not amiss. So, I'm going to spend a little time today being glad I'm not out in the cold, standing in line for a white van with bad coffee and worse food.

Besides, if it means giving up wine, women, or song, I won't have any trouble figuring out which one goes first.

3:14 PM 5 Comments

Forestry

It's obviously an immensely unethical and borderline illegal thing to use this blog to disseminate privileged information about ongoing lawsuits...but what the hell. The Forest Service is being sued in civil court because we

negligently caused the largest forest fire in the history of [state], by not attacking or attempting to surpress the [location] fire, even though they knew the fire danger to be high.

Um, it's hard to say the danger of a fire is low if the forest is already on fire, but whatever. I would advise the plaintiff to see if his/her attorney's diploma is signed—that's not usually the sort of document you send to the HR department.

2:36 PM 3 Comments

Not Exactly Terry Gross

Way to research your interviews, AVClub! Woah.

AVC: Reginald Hudlin is one of the executive producers of The Boondocks. What do you think he brings to your partnership?

Aaron McGruder: Uh, we don't have a partnership anymore. Reginald Hudlin left the show at the end of the Fox pilot. He is now running BET, and I have not spoken with him in over a year. We have a contractual obligation to give him a credit.

Heh. "Oh. Um, nevermind then."

11:18 AM 2 Comments

Monday, November 21, 2005

Monday, Monday

Being a secretary entails being prepared for the unusual. Today I helped a gentlemen secure employment at The Brookings Institution.

I feel unclean.

Oh, I'm moving into an apartment tomorrow morning. Independence and all that, for the first time, really. Milestone in my life, new experiences, blah blah blah fishcakes. I'll try to blog it without being a navel-gazing self-obsessed loon. Well, without being more of a navel-gazing self-obsessed loon.

Anyhoodles, I can't figure out if Ariel Sharon is an awesome old man like Gandalf the White or a really-bad-crazy old man like Bilbo Baggins. It can be hard to tell, in the holy land. When Al-Jazeera is talking about your "bold gamble," you're either visionary or crazy.

1:51 PM 3 Comments

Friday, November 18, 2005

The Greater of Many Evils

As morally bankrupt as the GOP leadership is, and as dizzyingly malevolent as Sony-DMG is (and they're really, really evil) we shouldn't forget that there are people out there who are a thousand times worse:

A doctor and head of a Baghdad hospital was shot dead Thursday inside his clinic in the Abu Ghraib district of western Baghdad, said an Iraqi police official with Baghdad emergency police. Four gunmen stormed Dr. Kadhim Abbood Alwash's clinic and shot him to death, said Qassim Allawi, a Health Ministry official. Alwash was head of Karama General Hospital in Baghdad.

2:05 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Onion Day!

Hooray! It's Onion Day. The day when The Onion puts out it's new headlines, like Anti-Homosexuality Sermon Suspiciously Well-Informed, Long-Awaited 'Beer With Bush' Rally Awkward, Voters Report, and Guatemalan Anti-Drug Chief Caught Dealing Cocaine.

Oh, no, wait, that one's real.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- The chief of Guatemala's national drug squad and two of his officers have been arrested in Washington for conspiring to import and distribute cocaine.

Castillo is Chief of the Servicio de Analisis e Informaction Antinarcoticos and the highest ranking anti-narcotics officer in Guatemala. Aguilar is the second in command at SAIA. Orlando is also a member of the same special police force and was responsible for security sweeps at Santo Tomas, a port on Guatemala's Caribbean coast.

The President of Guatemala, Oscar Jose Rafael Berger Perdomo, said through a spokesman that he is shocked—shocked—to discover drug dealing in his anti-drug agency.

2:19 PM 2 Comments

The Halls of Power

Members of the Senate have been overheard discussing the nomination of Samuel Alito:

SEN LINCOLN CHAFEE (R-RI): It was really very embarrassing. Danny Eddison had been buggering the pool boy in the sauna for months. One afternoon he went to actually have a sauna and discovered the pool boy buggering Mrs. Eddison. Naturally one of them had to go.

SEN OLYMPIA SNOWE (R-ME): Naturally. And he can't keep the pool boy: he'd be seen as violating the principles of his organization.

CHAFEE: Oh? The Kato Institute hardly shares the principles of Focus on Family.

SNOWE: Yes, but a new pool boy costs far less than a divorce settlement.

CHAFEE: Of course. Oh, Olympia, you're such a cut-up. Never change. Hi, Ted. What's the word?

SEN TED KENNEDY (D-MA): Spoiling for a fight, Linc. Alito's opened up the floodgate. Same for you, I trust.

SNOWE: You would not believe the pressure. A protestor threw a turkey at me this morning on the way to my office. Swear to Buckley, a turkey.

KENNEDY: Was it pro-life or pro-choice poultry?

SNOWE: All I know is, that's one less thing John has to buy for Thanksgiving dinner.

KENNEDY: How is your husband?

SNOWE: Emasculated, like all husbands of female politicians.

KENNEDY: Even the ones who are former two-term governors and now CEO's of major a major education-services company that operates the Art Institutes of America?

SNOWE: Especially the ones who are former two-term governors and—

CHAFEE: However the fight goes, Alito's got the donations pouring in.

KENNEDY: Soft and hard, as Bobby used to say. Left and right. The Dean tells me we're gearing up for a major political assault, old school Democratic party style.

SNOWE: That's so cute.

CHAFEE: Do you have novelty bobbly-heads?

KENNEDY: Yes. If you need me, I'll be

ALL: Sooo drunk!

KENNEDY: See ya.

CHAFEE: You coming to the Senate Christmas party?

SNOWE: Wouldn't miss it for the world. Remember last year, when Liddy Dole had way too many Boilermakers and got freaky with Jay Rockefeller in the bathroom?

11:14 AM 5 Comments

Monday, November 14, 2005

Good Enough for Government Work

My boss has been traveling for a week, on one of those four-cities-in-six-days business trips where life is a hectic mess and you complain about the fact that it's impossible to keep track of, but don't mention that you made an excuse to spend two days with your old friends from high school and also that the adrenaline rush makes you feel alive.

When she got back, I had everything that had piled up neatly organized and stacked like a good little secretary. I'd heard a horror story about the secretaries in the American embassy in Riyadh, who do literally nothing but play Solitaire and sleep at their desks. While I drink too much coffee to sleep at my desk, blogging is a lot like Solitaire and I do a lot of blogging, so I'd resolved to put on a show of competence that would make Radar O'Reilly himself Olive Drab with envy.

My boss has businesswoman style that would, in any other city, make her a dynamo powerhouse; but in a city where your competition is Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole, it can be harder to shine. (She's two cubes behind me as we speak, telling a mildly risqué joke to a colleague. It's been observed that executive women must be able to talk as dirty as their male counterparts. While my bosses humor would be shocking in most of the country, it again pales in the cuthroat competition of our nations capitol; Olympia Snowe makes Quentin Tarantino look like Jimmy Stewart.) I had a stack of papers and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

"This arrived from someone in the Sweetbark Forest. It's not urgent," I'd say.

"I'll look at it tonight," she'd say. "What's next?"

"The Chief's office sent this over, I'd say. "They approved the training session in Denver, but not in Salt Lake."

"Make sure that goes to Bill. It's his baby," she'd say.

"One of the printers is broken, smoking, and possibly on fire," I'd say, "I'm planning on putting it out."

"That's a priority," she'd say.

"First thing when we're done then," I'd promise. "I also need a copy of your airline tickets to finish your travel voucher, and this here is my time card."

She'd sign the paper. "E-tickets are in my e-mail inbox. I didn't just sign for a stolen jeep, did I, Radar?"

"I never watched L.A. Law, ma'am."

She'd pause and glare. "I know you're young, but if you're just pretending to be that young, I'll--"

"Klinger was trying for a Section 8 again while you were gone."

"That Klinger," she'd say. "He's a character."

Later I was talking with two of the other secretaries in the obvious.

"I've been working on this position description since six o'clock this morning," said one.

"You have fun with that," said the other.

"Fine, be sarcastic," the first replied.

"You don't have fifty CD's to Fed-Ex."

"I've got all these DVD's."

"Well, I can't stick around," I interrupted, "I've got my travel vouchers to finish."

Good times. The who-is-more-overworked contest is the secretarial equivalent of the my-God-has-a-bigger-dick-than-your-God contest that's been so popular, and deadly, in Western Civilization. It's also a gread way to avoid work. (The whos-more-overworked game, I mean; religious persecution and ritual stonings are, in fact, a terrible excuse for skipping the Tuesday staff meetings.) Anyway; now I'm spending my work day blogging. It's like an organized conspiracy to be inefficent with the taxpayer's dollars. Yay?

3:42 PM 4 Comments

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Elections—Were Those Today?

National

No, really, did some sort of election just happen?
Virginia

Congratulations to the big winner in the governor's race: outgoing Governor Mark Warner's presidential aspirations.

However, we can't dismiss winning Democrat Tim Kaine, no matter how tempting it must be for the folks at The Corner, as simply riding his successors coat-tails to victor. Kaine's campaign focused on substantive issues: transportation, early child care, fiscal responsibility (it's our issue now, GOPers, and if you've got a problem with that, stop going to Grover Norquist's luncheons). Kaine's victory address:
"We proved that Virginians want a governor who puts partisanship aside," Kaine told an ecstatic crowd of supporters at the Richmond Marriott Ballroom on Broad Street around 11 p.m. "We proved that people are more interested in fiscal responsibility than ideological bickering."
By contrast, the victory of Republican Bill Bolling for Lieutenant Governor came in a race that was much more of the Christians v. Commies dynamic a certain White House Deputy Chief of Staff would like every race to be about. Kaine proves we can get above that crap.
California & Ohio

First, mad props to California for sticking it to Schwarzenegger eight times. Also for voting down Proposition 73, which would have required parental notification when a minor seeks an abortion. Only a very blue state would endorse the idea that parents do not own their children.

The long-term issue was redistricting reform. Both California and Ohio had ballot initiatives that would have moved the responsibility for drawing congressional districts from the state legislatures to independent panels or councils. The failure of those initiatives is being called, in the better D.C. circles, a failure for the people and a victory for misleading campaign ads. However, both initiatives had serious flaws that were easily apparent to observers at the state level, which is why the Cali-based blog Phoblographer* and the Ohio blog Democracy Guy are such essential reading.

(The Phoblographer* was my boss during part of the 2004 campaign in West Virginia.)
New York City

Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg handily won re-election and Democrats like Hillary Clinton lined up to congratulate him. Because why the hell not?
Dover, Pennsylvania

The now-infamous ID trial is taking place in Harrisburg. However, Jason Zengerle recently wrote for TNR that
back in Dover, away from the glare of national attention, the intelligent design issue is not so theoretical. Instead of dueling experts, it pits neighbor against neighbor. And, instead of a judge, it will be regular citizens who issue a ruling, when, on November 8, they go to the polls to cast their votes in the school board race.
Well, in the very best news of the election, the voters in Dover ousted all but one of the nine school board members. Because the people of Dover, PA, as red-state as it gets, rock hard core:
"I don't think the attitude of including intelligent design was right. It's not part of science education, and it was poorly handled," said Charles Reed, 59. He added with a twinkle: "They underestimated the intelligence of voters."

And with that good news, I'm off to Gotham to celebrate Armistice Day with Michael Bloomberg. Okay, Veterans Day on the same island as Michael Bloomberg. But they never should have changed Armistice Day, and I recall reading somewhere that Bloomberg painted the town red during the 2004 GOP convention. Or maybe that was John McCain.

Anyhoodles, have a good weekend.

7:59 PM 5 Comments

Coryphella Pedata: the New Architeuthidae Architeuthis

Hundreds of meters down in the Mediterranean, this purple-and-white sea slug disproves many sterotypes about gay men by being able to color-coordinate better than me, despite living too deep for light to penetrate and also not having eyes or a brain. [Tarik Tinazay – AFP]

9:47 AM 3 Comments

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Paris Dispatch

If OxBlog is willing to take the risks, we should be willing to read the writing on the, uh, wall.

I had a little scrape in a cité in north Aulney, and so now need to modify two claims made in my previous post. I have now met some rioters, and I no longer have pictures to share, nor come to think of it, a camera. I got nothing of theirs. On the other hand, taking care of myself decently enough I rather nicely got to keep my unbacked up dissertation, wallet, and the passport and press card I'd kept with me in the off chance I had to give an accounting of myself to police. Nasty horrid villains. Pluck though being a virtue, OxBlog will be out there again tomorrow. With a disposable camera, this time. But a thousand words being worth a picture, I suspect I can make it up to you lads.

5:04 PM 3 Comments

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

The Department of Too Little, Too Late

CBS News:

White House staffers began attending mandatory briefings Tuesday on ethical conduct and the handling of classified materials... President Bush ordered everyone in the White House with a security clearance to attend the ethics briefings to be held this week.

I've got to stop reading news at the office—when I laugh really hard, it can seem like I'm having trouble breathing. I wouldn't want my coworkers to worry.

Former Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby attempts to perform the Jedi Mind Trick on gathered reporters. "This is not the leak you're looking for. This is not the leak you're looking for. You are looking for some other leak," Libby was quoted as saying. After the conference, long-time White House reporter Helen Thomas spent the better part of an hour under the mistaken impression that she was a plumber.

5:10 PM 3 Comments

McCain's Posse

As I type, the McCain Amendment sits on the President's desk. I like to imagine George W. Bush in the Oval Office, living out his own version of The Telltale Heart, as H.R. 2863 (amendment 1977) sits unsigned in the desk drawer, it's hideous, er, unsigned-ed-ness growing louder, louder, louder...

In any case: it now seems that some conservatives are put in the awkward position of defending torture. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts has said "interrogating terrorists is some of the valuable information we get. It saves lives."

This is the argument put out by Dick Cheney, National Review, and other conservatives. But it is flat-out wrong. In January, The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum trotted out a string of military interrogators to explain, simply, that torture does not work. "If I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals," points out one Vietnam-era combat interrogator, "he's going to tell you just about anything."

The second argument is expressed, in a crude letter to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger with the claim that the McCain amendment will "place us in a disadvantage and will signal an unwillingness to act aggressively in our own self-defense." Even NR believes "the McCain amendment could do harm: It will be widely interpreted as making it impossible to treat enemy detainees any differently from U.S. criminal suspects. This is an unreasonable standard, and one we will come to regret."

The folks at Democracy Arsenal have repeatedly eviscerated this argument, but the most heartening view comes from conservative Ramesh Ponnuru:

I am inclined to disagree. I think this view undervalues three things. First, the amendment may have some effect in fighting a great evil, torture. (The editorial argues that it won't, since it merely codifies existing practice while creating opportunities for interpretive mischief; but if there is anything to the idea that previous policies have "sent the wrong signal" and that the amendment would send a better one, that would be a mark in its favor.) Second, the amendment may improve America's image in ways that help our foreign policy. (I think that the counterargument that some people, though not my colleagues, make, that it will make us look weak, misunderstands the nature of American power.) Third, the amendment may increase congressional involvement, and accountability, in the war on terrorism. As Reuel Gerecht and Tom Donnelly have argued, that buy-in may be worth some congressional excess--and I'm not sure that this is excess.

Ponnuru is a staff writer for NR. Much better than finding out you agree with someone you always agree with, is finding out someone you disagree with on practically everything agrees with you on the most important things. It reaffirms my faith in the idea that conservatives and liberals can sit down and have a drink without things sounding like Crossfire. And, y'kno, humanity.

10:38 AM 1 Comments

Monday, November 07, 2005

Elitist Liberals Look Down on Average Americans

Last week's episode of The West Wing was a live "debate" between the two presidential candidates, Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits, moderated by MSNBC newscaster Forrest Sawyer. I did not get to see the episode, but I did read the New York Post's Adam Buckman, who proclaimed that some

aspects of the telecast itself were poorly thought out. One gaffe was the use of the NBC News logo under the word "Live" on screen throughout the hour.

NBC does its news division a disservice by slapping a news label on a piece of prime-time entertainment. It is irresponsible, too, because it confuses some viewers.

Yes, you know—those people who might actually think Alan Alda is running for President.

6:23 PM 3 Comments

Don Quixote and the French

So: The situation in France is so appalling I haven't been able to blog, or read news, (or, incidentally, do any work) all day. This has left me with very little to do. A couple hours ago, I embarked on a quest to find something that was a) related to France, b) worth blogging, and c) did not involve anyone being dragged into the street and beaten. I ended up spending most of the afternoon playing around with Babel Fish—which is, a most of you will already know, a fish that lives in your ears and has the same job as Nicole Kidman had in the film The Interpreter, only the fish spends less time pointing a gun at a thinly disguised version of Robert Mugabe and more time living in your ear.

I decided to find some fluffy French site about, say, Elijah Wood, and translate it into English. First, I plugged the phrase "elijah wood film" into Babel Fish and did a google search on the result, film en bois d'elijah. Of course, film en bois d'elijah means "film out of wooden elijah," which seemed odd, even if you don't count the mental association between the last couplet of the French and English versions of that phrase...but I was having an odd enough day as it was and decided to press ahead. I Googled film en bois d'elijah hit the Feelin' Lucky button, and ended up at a French message board devoted to Tobey Maguire.

I plugged the address of the message board into Babel Fish and it spat out a version of the page written in something that closely resembles English, which at one point included the phrase "thank you my tite casserole, they are supers these photographs..."

In conclusion, today was one of those Mondays that makes you question your connection to reality.

Now I'll repeat my post dans le Francais tres mauvais.

Ainsi : La situation en France est si effroyable je n'ai pas pu en mesure au blog, ou lisez les nouvelles, (ou, par ailleurs, effectuez n'importe quel travail) toute la journée. Ceci m'a laissé avec très peu pour faire. Un couple il y a des heures, je me suis embarqué sur une recherche pour trouver quelque chose qui était a) lié à la France, b) intéressant blogging, et c) n'a pas impliqué n'importe qui étant traîné dans la rue et battu. J'ai fini vers le haut de dépenser la majeure partie de l'après-midi jouant autour avec le poisson de Babel qui est, une plupart d'entre vous saurai déjà, un poisson que les vies dans des vos oreilles et a le même travail que Nicole Kidman a eu dans le film l'interprète, seulement le poisson passe moins de temps dirigeant un pistolet à a disquised légèrement la version de Robert Mugabe et plus de temps vivant dans votre oreille.

I a décidé de trouver un certain emplacement français pelucheux au sujet par exemple de bois d'Elijah, et le traduit en anglais. D'abord, j'ai branché l'expression "film en bois d'elijah" aux poissons de Babel et ai fait une recherche de google sur le résultat, d'elijah de bois d'en de film. Naturellement, le d'elijah de bois d'en de film signifie le "film hors de l'elijah en bois," qui a semblé impair, même si vous ne comptez pas l'association mentale entre le dernier couplet des versions françaises et anglaises de cette expression... mais de moi avait assez impair un jour comme il était et décidé d'aller de l'avant. I le d'elijah de bois d'en de film de Googled bouton chanceux a frappé Feelin ', et a fini vers le haut à un panneau français de message consacré à Tobey Maguire.

I a branché l'adresse du panneau de message aux poissons de Babel et il a craché hors d'une version de la page écrite dans quelque chose qui ressemble étroitement à l'anglais, qui à un point a inclus l'expression "vous remercie ma cocotte en terre de tite, ils sont des supers ces photographies..."

en conclusion, était aujourd'hui un de ces lundi que les marques vous remettent en cause votre raccordement à la réalité.

5:15 PM 2 Comments

Rage

"This is just the beginning," said Moussa Diallo, 22, a tall, unemployed French-African man in Clichy-sous-Bois, the working-class Parisian suburb where the violence started Oct. 27. "It's not going to end until there are two policemen dead."

The New York Times, which is reporting the first death in the Paris riots. Not even Ronald McDonald escaped the mobs.

I can't blog about this. Blinding rage. Anger. Stupid people.

11:11 AM 1 Comments

Friday, November 04, 2005

Paris? Broken!

SkyNews:

A handicapped woman was doused with petrol and set on fire by youths during another night of rioting in Paris.

That's it. Protest the oppressive conditions you live in by setting a handicapped woman on fire. That'll bring people around!

Fuckwads.

4:52 PM 3 Comments

RIP Michael Piller

Wil Wheaton has a eulogy for Michael Piller, seen here on the set of Voyager.

4:15 PM 1 Comments

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Kakistocracy©

Second Judge Out for DeLay Trial

Two days after U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay won a fight to get a new judge in his case, prosecutors on Thursday succeeded in ousting the Republican jurist responsible for selecting the new judge.

DeLay's case will eventually be decided some guy in the mail room of the Supreme Court. Of Hawaii.

3:32 PM 1 Comments

The Democrats' Dilemma

OxBlog quotes a Dean TV appearance where he discussed abortion:

I guess Dean should've said something like "Safe, legal and rare." But I think it's significant that Dean attempted to ground his position in a broad philosophical principle, i.e. the exclusion of government from family life, only then to back off from the logical application of that principle to the issue of abortion.

One might say that Dean's position is admirable. He is trying to return tolerance and civility to an issue plagued by divisiveness and resentment. Yet as a result, he comes of looking confused and/or disingenuous.

This is the Democrats' dilemma.

That's pretty much it in a nut-shell. Me, I think "safe, legal, and rare" is an excellent position to have. But Dems have this tic: they insist on pointing out how complex an issue is and complaining the Republicans are dumbing-down an issue--when there is a perfectly reasonable and relatively complete way to simplify the Dems position!

For example, in life, you often get something like this:

GOP: Patrick Fitzgerald is criminalizing politics.

DEMS: Well, politically motivated leaks that reveal classified information pose a great risk to American blah blah blah...

Which is bull, when it should be this:

GOP: Patrick Fitzgerald is criminalizing politics.

DEMS: Scooter Libby is a crook.

See how simple that is! This way the terms of the debate have been set and are easily understood, and each side can set back and present the evidence—and which of those two points do you think is easier to prove?

10:53 AM 1 Comments

How Low Can You Go?

Approval ratings don't mean as much as the papers would have you believe. But this does make my day a little brighter.

Poll: More Bad News For Bush

And the picture looks like it should be on The Onion! (Hat tip: Matt) So much fun to watch a president in freefall. Now he can go skydiving with his father.

10:26 AM 3 Comments

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

The New England Journal of Giant Fibreglass Foodstuffs

So: I work in the government. I work in a department with a d that is part of an operations area that is part of a service that is part of a Department with a D. I'm the secretary with an s for the director of the department with a d, as opposed to the director of the Department with a D, who is a Secretary with an S. (Go ahead and read that sentence again. I promise it makes sense.)

The old director retired a couple months ago, leaving behind a few awards, a legacy of 32 years of civil service, and a couple of magazine subscriptions. One of those magazines is National Journal, which bills itself as 'The Weekly on Politics and Government.' It's not as good as The New Republic, of course, but then again, what is? Considering what I pay for it--nothing--it's the best value in the District.

One of the more interesting features is called the "Political Insider's Poll." Of course all polls, whether of insiders, outsiders, or supply-siders, have a certain fascinating yet tenuous connection to reality. Still, the last two issues of this poll have given us some interesting feedback on the 2006 congressional dog and pony show. I mean, election.

Last week 76 senators and congress-critters were asked who will be the house speaker in January 2007. (A coveted position because the speaker is third in line to be president, although the only House Speaker in history to go all the way was the brief "acting-presidency" of John Goodman in the fifth season of The West Wing. Speaking of John Goodman...Takei?)

Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming bi-partisan majority of legislators believe that, if the GOP maintains control of the House, Dennis Hastert will extend his term as House Speaker. After all, Denny is one of the few prominent Republicans on the hill who is not prominent because of an association with Jack Abramoff or Tom DeLay, which is all it takes to be the GOP equivalent of a big ol' teddy bear. His blog is a down-home aw, shucks-y blog.

Also unsurprisingly, the Republicans think they'll keep control of the house; the Democrats think they'll make a sweep. Of course, a good third on either side of the aisle gave responses like these:

"Democrats will pick up a few seats, but no surge."
"Republicans will suffer significant losses (eight to 12 seats) [but] retain the majority."
"Left with a razor-thin majority, Hastert."

National Journal prints those quotes without attribution; it does say that the first two are Republicans and the third a Democrat. But while we can see what our legislators think will happen in 2006, only one of them dares to speculate why:

The 2006 election will be a referendum on President Bush. If you like the way things are going—runaway budget deficit [and so on]—vote Republican...

"Referendum on the President" is a phrase that popped up again and again in this week's poll, which was of political 'insiders' such as Mary Matalin and Gary Bauer for the GOP and Terry McAuliffe and John Podesta for the Dems. Respondents were asked to name the top three issues of the 2006 elections. Democrats put Bush's performance as a solid first place while the GOP left the referendum theory in a distant fourth.

One interesting side note is that the perennial Democratic crutch issue, health care, came in sixth on the Democrats list and eighth on the GOP side. I hope that doesn't change. Because, yes, our national lack of good health care is one of the biggest problems in America--but whenever the Democrats come back to it, it sounds like we're harping, like we're out of 'real issues,' in short, it sounds desperate.

I've mentioned before a problem with blogging at work: my posts tend to lose discipline, and degenerate into a string of disconnected non-sequiters. This is one reason I enjoy blogs that just go ahead with a whole bunch of short posts each day, such as The Corner or OxBlog. But another problem is that somehow, every long post I try to do at work seems to devolve, sooner or later, in to some pointless navel-gazing about blogging. Which is why I'm going to stop writing now, before I turn into a caricature of myself, which would be an accomplishment for someone who doesn't yet have any caricature, or, arguably, any character. Here's a picture of a giant egg in Australia.

Is this giant fibreglass egg a terrorist fibreglass egg?

1:08 PM 3 Comments

China Shop Round-Up

What's been going on the past few days.

Germany: Broken
France: Broken
Canada: Broken
Iran: Broken A Lot
Bill Frist: Still Crazy
E. Howard Hunt: Still Alive, Still Crazy

10:42 AM 5 Comments

W&I©

Any reviewer who expresses rage or loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

—Kurt Vonnegut

9:32 AM 2 Comments

The Congressman and the Pumpkin

A couple of days ago, I'm doing my correspondence thing, and I notice a letter for Congressman John Doolittle (R-CA). It was boilerplate stuff. Every few months one congressman or another senator sends us a question on behalf of a constituent. "Why are seasonal firefighters subject to this or that pay limitation," usually. We send them back a boilerplate response. "Because congress passed a law that requires us to," usually. I was passing the letter along to my boss when

I stopped, and realized that there is an actual Congressman Doolittle serving in the House of Representatives right now. With a podcast and all.

Woah.

Anyhoodles, I'm not one for faces, so my Jack-O-Lantern this year was a little bit more verbose than most.

8:33 AM 3 Comments

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Sententia Mortuus

I knew I hated Star Trek: Nemesis, but I didn't know why I hated it until The Onion AV Club explained it. In the director's commentary on the DVD,

Baird's offhanded and repeated dismissal of pre-established Star Trek canon—characters, design, relationships, backstory, previous Trek films—strongly implies a fatal contempt for the series. He brightens noticeably when describing the parts of the film he got to design from scratch, or redesign to override previous series installments. Baird devotes a bare word or two of praise to actors Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, but mostly seems to regard them as props amid his more interesting sets and computerized cameras. Judging from an awkward reference to "Patrick and Brent and... Worf," he doesn't even necessarily remember their names.

In short: Those weren't real Romulans, just like I've been saying!

9:24 AM 1 Comments