Bark Bark Woof Woof

6:15 a.m. This is my first post from the house. BellSouth was really quick to shut off my old number; I tried to dial out from the apartment and got a dead line. But one of the new numbers is working at the house (obviously), so here I am, typing on end table, sitting on the coffee table, letting you know that at least part of the transition has taken place. The second phone line at the house isn't working yet, but I'll get on BellSouth's case when the sun comes up.

Drat! Blogger is behaving badly and refusing to publish. Well, I will thus turn this into a day-long narrative and it is to be hoped that by the time I get the furniture in and in place Blogger will be back to its usual state.

1:41 p.m. I went back to the apartment and called BellSouth on my cell. They were very nice and said they'd get the second line straightened out. I was internally skeptical, but I give them the benefit of the doubt. Joe's Moving and Storage was supposed to show up between 9 and 10; they hit the door at 8:43. Three very friendly guys who had the furniture padded, the desk disassembled and wrapped, and the piano loaded in an hour and a half. All I did was stand around and vacuum after them. I stopped by the leasing office and said I'd turn in my keys tomorrow. The guys from Joe's tailed me over to the house, and by 12:30 everything was in, the bed, desk and piano reassembled, and the credit card slip signed. What a difference between this and my nightmare with Bekins when I moved from Albuquerque in 2001!

Either BellSouth did their thing remotely they came out and missed them, but both lines are working now. The nice thing about being in this part of town is that dial-up connects at 52.0 kbps versus the 24.0 I had at the apartment. Yeah, yeah, I know it ain't DSL or cable. But I'm a stubborn cuss, and if I can get this thing to move twice as fast as it did at the old place for the same price, that's fine with me.

Comcast showed up an hour early (Holy Ned, with the luck I'm having today, I should buy a lottery ticket) and is reconnecting the cable. The previous tenant had a dish. I am wondering if Comcast will charge me extra for the work even though they told me that they had service at this address.

Anyway, so far so good. And by the way, rule number one on moving into a new place: first thing you do is make the bed. That way when you're ready to crash after all this work, it's all done.

This will probably be it for the blogging today. In lieu of the Blogaround, scroll down the blogrolls and drop in on my friends at The Liberal Coalition, and visit some of my new additions, including Blah 3, masstone effect, Peevish and Unpopular Ideas. I may stick an update in here after I get back from dinner, but for now...where did I put the screwdriver?

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter'' Libby, has been pegged as a possible leaker of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to a syndicated columnist, according to accounts in a book by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband.

In "The Politics of Truth,'' to be published Friday, Wilson says Libby is "quite possibly the person who exposed my wife's identity,'' according to The Washington Post, which obtained an early copy.

The vice president's office did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.

Wilson writes that a "workup'' of his background was done by the White House in March 2003, after his public criticism of the administration's Iraq policy.

"The other name that has most often been repeated to me in connection with the inquiry and disclosure into my background and Valerie's is that of Elliott Abrams, who gained infamy in the Iran-Contra scandal,'' he writes.

Another suspect named in Wilson's book: White House chief political adviser Karl Rove. "The workup on me that turned up the information on Valerie was shared with Karl Rove, who then circulated it in administration and neoconservative circles,'' Wilson writes.

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak will only say that he got the name from "two senior administration officials." Knowing Washington as we do, we can rest assured that all three will issue strong denials, leaving us with the conclusion that either Wilson is wrong or at least two of these men are lying. Heh. My money is on the latter.

I've heard George H.W. Bush speak. I've heard Barbara Bush speak. I've heard Jeb and Neil Bush speak. I've even heard Laura Bush speak. So why is George W. Bush the only one in that group with that half-assed Gabby Hayes Texas twangy accent?

The Faithful Correspondent sent this photo of the crowd around her at the March for Women's Lives last Sunday.

Contrary to what the VRWC has been saying - that the march was mainly a bunch of whacked-out feminazis, this looks like a pretty diverse group to me - men, women, children, dogs, all out there having their say.

Pen-Elayne is in the throes of moving. And so am I, yet I've been blessed with being able to do it in slow motion, as it were. My landlord has generously allowed me to move things in since the end of March, and so every day for the past month I've taken things over in small doses on the way to the office. This morning I took over the last of my clothes and financial records, along with groceries and laundry supplies. Tonight I'll swap the Mustang for the Pontiac wagon so I can pick up the floor lamps, the small TV and VCR, and the Last Box and take them over first thing in the morning. Tomorrow morning the folks from Joe's Moving and Storage are scheduled to show up to take the large pieces of furniture (living room chairs, couch, dining table and chairs, office desk and bookcases, my grandmother's 1928 Mason & Hamlin baby grand piano, and bedroom furniture). Comcast says they will be at the house between 2 and 5 tomorrow to hook me up; it took three phone calls and some rather terse conversation to convince them that I do not want digital cable with 300 channels of music just so I can get one channel of HBO. I understand the concept of "upselling," but sheesh! And if they show up on time...well, yeah, that'll happen...

BellSouth will be switching the phones tomorrow, so I'm not sure when I'll be on-line from the house. The blogging outlook for Friday will be light if at all. I'll try to get in the Friday Blogaround before the line goes dead or I might to it tonight, so get your entries in and up to date so I can include them.

After nearly three years living in an apartment twenty miles from my office, I'm really looking forward to being in a house in a nice (and quiet) neighborhood six miles from downtown. No more hour-long commutes home. No more car alarms in the parking lot at three a.m. No more overly-amorous upstairs neighbors. It's like I'll finally get the chance to enjoy living here.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

TALLAHASSEE -- One of Palm Beach County's top legislative priorities, $1.2 million to help clean up the Lake Worth Lagoon, was dropped from the final version of the state budget, apparently because House Speaker Johnnie Byrd was displeased with state Rep. Carl Domino, R-Jupiter.

Domino says it's because he voted against Byrd's position on an unrelated issue.

Domino confirmed Wednesday what others were talking about privately. He said a member of Byrd's leadership team told him that the Lake Worth Lagoon money, which was in an earlier version of the state budget, was removed because of his vote on a telecommunications measure that was a Byrd priority.

Domino termed it retaliation.

"I was told that was so by someone more senior than I," he said, declining to name the leader. "Obviously I feel that it was unfortunate and I wish it didn't happen."

Tom Denham, Byrd's press secretary, said deletion of the money was simply a matter of financial priorities.

He said $640 million in projects fit the criteria for a $100 million pot of money. "It didn't have anything to do with his [Domino's] telecom vote."

Denham stopped short of saying that the people who believe Byrd was retaliating were wrong. "I wouldn't say that they're wrong. They can apply whatever motives they want to apply to it, but the truth of it is, there were $540 million in projects that weren't funded. That happened to be one of them."

What an amazing bunch of infantile and petty nimrods. No wonder nothing ever gets done. I think they should all be sent to bed without dessert.

Via Salon.com's War Room:

You can now search a database of conservative distortions courtesy of the Center for American Progress. And the folks there are asking for help in making the database as robust as we know it can be, bursting at the seams with right-wing claims that are just plain wrong.

From the CAP: "Conservatives have spent the last 20 years distorting reality and getting away with it. That is about to change. The Center for American Progress has launched this new database project to chart the dishonesty and lies of conservatives -- and compare them with the truth. In this database, each conservative quote will be matched against well-documented facts. And we need your help. If we're missing a lie or distortion you know of, please submit an entry. If it checks out, we will gladly add it to the database."

Check it out yourself here, and don't be shy about contributing to it.

From KOB-TV in Albuquerque:

Rio Rancho police responded to an unusual hit-and-run report Wednesday morning as a hot air balloon struck a house and flew off.

The 80-foot balloon owned by Rainbow Ryders carried ten passengers when it hit the side of a home at 4005 Foxwood Trail SE just before 9 a.m. The balloon then continued its journey before landing safely about a half-mile away.

The home had minor damage visible on the outside, including some broken windows, a bent gutter and missing roof shingles. Inside, the home’s owner said plaster cracked across one room and her ceiling was pushed in.

Minor damage could also be seen on the balloon’s basket.

No one was injured in the incident.

“Basically as the balloon was on approach, it got hit by a downdraft. The wind speeds went from about 9 to 18 miles-an-hour in about a one minute period of time, and when those changes happen… the balloon’s natural tendency will be to go down,” said Scott Appleman of Rainbow Ryders.

Appleman said the balloon was not attempting to leave the scene of an accident. The pilot’s only option was to fly to a safe landing area.

He said Rainbow Ryders would pay for all damage to the home.

Rio Rancho police say the incident is under investigation.

Support for the war in Iraq is eroding quickly, according to the lastest CBS/New York Times poll:

Asked whether the United States had done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, 47 percent of respondents said it had, down from 58 percent a month earlier and 63 percent in December, just after American forces captured Saddam Hussein. Forty-six percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, up from 37 percent last month and 31 percent in December.

It's not all roses and moonbeams for Kerry, though.

The diminished public support for the war did not translate into any significant advantage for Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The poll showed the two men remaining in a statistical dead heat, both in a head-to-head matchup and in a three-way race that included Ralph Nader.

Support for Mr. Bush is stronger in other areas vital to his re-election, including his handling of the threat from terrorism, which won the approval of 60 percent of respondents.

[edit]

The survey held hints of trouble for Mr. Kerry as he seeks to introduce himself to an electorate that knows relatively little about him. While 55 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters said they strongly favored the president, only 32 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters strongly favored their candidate.

Sixty-one percent of voters said Mr. Kerry says what he thinks people want to hear, versus 29 percent who said he says what he believes. The Bush campaign has attacked Mr. Kerry for months on that score, portraying him as a flip-flopper with no convictions.

On the same question, 43 percent said Mr. Bush says what people want to hear and 53 percent said he says what he believes.

Which means that Rove and Cheney have been successful in getting the poison into the well. Which means the public needs to hear more from John Kerry than reactions to Rove and Cheney.

From The American Prospect

W.'s Second Term: If You Think the First is Bad...
by Robert B. Reich

Musings about a second Bush term typically assume another four years of the same right-wing policies we've had to date. But it'd likely be far worse. So far, the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone. Knowing that voters can no longer turn them out, and that this will be their last shot at remaking America, the radical conservatives will be unleashed.

A friend who specializes in foreign policy and hobnobs with subcabinet officials in the Defense and State departments told me that the only thing that's stopped the Bushies from storming into Iran and North Korea is the upcoming election. If Bush is re-elected, "[Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld are out of the box," he said. "They'll take Bush's re-election as a mandate to wage the 'war on terror' everywhere and anywhere."

The second term's defense team will be even harder line than the current one. Colin Powell will go. Condoleezza Rice will take over at the State Department. Rumsfeld will consolidate power as the president's national-security adviser. Paul Wolfowitz will run the Defense Department.

Domestic policy will swing further right. A re-election would strengthen the White House's hand on issues that even many congressional Republicans have a hard time accepting, such as the assault on civil liberties. Bush will seek to push "Patriot II" through Congress, giving the Justice Department and the FBI powers to inspect mail, eavesdrop on phone conversations and e-mail, and examine personal medical records, insurance claims, and bank accounts.

Right-wing evangelicals will solidify their control over the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services -- curtailing abortions, putting federal funds into the hands of private religious groups, pushing prayer in the public schools, and promoting creationism.

Economic policy, meanwhile, will be tilted even more brazenly toward the rich. Republican strategist Grover Norquist smugly predicts larger tax benefits for high earners in a second Bush administration. The goal will be to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and other forms of unearned income and move toward a "flat tax." The plan will be for deficits to continue to balloon until Wall Street demands large spending cuts as a condition for holding down long-term interest rates. Homeowners, facing potential losses on their major nest eggs as mortgage rates move upward, might be persuaded to join the chorus.

In consequence, Bush will slash all domestic spending outside of defense. He will also argue that Social Security cannot be maintained in its present form, and will push for legislation to transform it into private accounts. Meanwhile, the few shards of regulation still protecting the environment and the safety of American workers will be eliminated.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will surely step down from the Supreme Court, possibly joined by at least one other jurist, opening the way for the White House to nominate a series of right-wing justices, a list that could easily include Charles Pickering Sr. and William Pryor Jr. After Chief Justice William Rehnquist resigns, Bush may well nominate Antonin Scalia for the top slot -- opening the way for Scalia and Clarence Thomas to dominate the Court. Such a court will curtail abortion rights, whittle down the Fourth and Fifth amendments, end all affirmative action, and eliminate much of what's left of the barrier between church and state.

Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, meanwhile, will have four more years to fulfill their goal of transforming American democracy into a one-party state. Congressional redistricting across the nation will make Texas' recent antics seem a model of democratic deliberation. Automated voting machines will be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses. Changes in campaign-finance laws will permit larger "hard money" donations by corporate executives and federal contractors who have benefited by Republican policies.

Finally, the Federal Communications Commission will allow three or four giant media empires -- all tightly connected to the Republican Party -- to consolidate their ownership over all television and radio broadcasting.

Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have.

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg on Wednesday called Vice President Dick Cheney "the lead chickenhawk" against Sen. John Kerry and criticized other Republicans for questioning the Democratic presidential contender's military credentials.

[edit]

In a scathing speech on the Senate floor, Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, said that he did not think politicians should be judged by whether they had military service but added that "when those who didn't serve attack the heroism of those who did, I find it particularly offensive."

"We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others," he said. "When it was their turn to serve where were they? AWOL, that's where they were."

Lautenberg pointed to a poster with a drawing of a chicken in a military uniform defining a chickenhawk as "a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it."

"They shriek like a hawk, but they have the backbone of the chicken," he said.

"The lead chickenhawk against Sen. Kerry [is] the vice president of the United States, Vice President Cheney," Lautenberg said. "He was in Missouri this week claiming that Sen. Kerry was not up to the job of protecting this nation. What nerve. Where was Dick Cheney when that war was going on?"

Lautenberg chastised members of the Bush administration for being overly eager to go to war when they had not been willing to fight themselves. He quoted a Cheney interview from the 1980s that he had "other priorities" in the '60s than military service.

[edit]

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday that Cheney criticized Kerry on policy issues and said that "no one is questioning his military service."

But Lautenberg compared Cheney's remarks with the GOP campaign against former Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat whose defeat in 2002 has been a sore spot to many in his party.

"Max Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam and they shamed him so, that he was pushed out of office because he was portrayed as weak on defense. Where do they come off with that kind of stuff?" he said.

Okay, now that the Senate is waking up to this shit, what about the rest of the country?

This is my new blogchalk:
United States, Florida, Miami, English, Bobby, Male, 51-55. :)

From the Sun-Sentinel:

TALLAHASSEE -- House and Senate leaders signed off on a near-$58 billion state budget late Tuesday that will short South Florida schools by nearly $18 million -- but does clear the way for an on-time Friday adjournment so legislators can concentrate on campaigning.

"If you're from South Florida, this is bad," said House Majority Leader Marco Rubio, R-Miami. "The only good news is that it was going to be worse. No one is celebrating. There'll be no parades. No one is going to win an award over this thing."

Countered Senate President Jim King, chief proponent of a revamping of the state's school funding formula that hurt Miami-Dade and Broward the worst out of the state's 67 counties: "They didn't lose as much as they could have."

His home county of Duval scores the most new money -- $8.8 million.

The final budget deal cuts the loss from the redistribution of state aid over at least the next year. Miami-Dade stands to lose about $13 million, not the $27.8 million feared. Broward can expect a $4.3 million hit, not $8.6 million. And Palm Beach County will lose $192,000 instead of $392,037.

"There is nothing for teacher pay increases, higher gasoline and insurance costs or program changes," said Vern Pickup-Crawford, lobbyist for Palm Beach County schools. "For those people who go home and run for re-election, I hope they don't campaign on how well they did for public schools."

Once again education gets the shaft. And go ahead - tell me it's not political.

An article in the March 1 edition of The American Prospect by Elizabeth Benedict got me to thinking about writers and writing. It also got me thinking about the foundation of where I come from as a writer and what forms my expression in words.

Tenth in a Series
(Part One)
(Part Two)
(Part Three)
(Part Four)
(Part Five)
(Part Six)
(Part Seven)
(Part Eight)
(Part Nine)

There’s an old saying that a play is never finished; it’s abandoned. And if it’s not abandoned, it’s re-written over and over, even after it’s produced and published. It’s not that playwrights are mercurial and indecisive (well, we can be); it’s because a play is a blueprint and in order for it to be fully formed, it has to go through many hands – the director, the actors, and the designers – and they have their own ideas. A play becomes a piece of clay, molded and re-shaped as it is growing. Sometimes it’s a good thing – Lanford Wilson made extensive revisions to 5th of July (including changing the title to Fifth of July) between its original production in 1978 and its revival in 1980. Neil Simon took his 1965 hit The Odd Couple and re-wrote it twenty years later for an all-female cast: Felix became Florence, Oscar became Olive, and Simon updated it from the 1960’s to the 1980’s by changing the opening scene to the gang playing Trivial Pursuit instead of poker.

Every so often a director will try to “improve” a play by making cuts or alterations, sure in his knowledge that he knows better than the playwright how the story should really be told. This usually happens when the play is new and the playwright – already a somewhat fragile creature and anxious to see the work on the stage – will consider making the requested changes, but it also happens with well-established plays. William Shakespeare has always the victim of this. It’s not really surprising, though. Shakespeare wrote before the advent of such modern conveniences as indoor stages, lights, and directors, and I daresay that very few audiences would sit still for Shakespeare played in the authentic Elizabethan setting of the “wooden O.” I’ve seen productions of his plays in all sorts of settings with all sorts of cuts and alterations to the stories. Some have been glorious successes – a production of The Comedy of Errors by the Stratford Festival of Canada was set in the Old West using TV cowboy stereotypes like the Maverick brothers and Gabby Hayes to tell the story. And I have seen real turkeys, such as a production of The Tempest in the mode of Star Wars with Ariel as R2-D2. Shakespeare should have sued.

Playwrights have no obligation to allow directors to run roughshod over their plays. After all, it’s their work and their vision, and they are entitled to see it done the way they meant it. There are supposed to be safeguards; the Dramatists Guild’s standard production contract forbids any alteration to the script without written permission from the playwright or his agent, and there have been cases where playwrights have sued to halt productions that violate the rules. Edward Albee closed down a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when a company did it with an all-female cast. But that’s the rare exception, and all too often the original message of the play is in danger of being lost if a careless or self-indulgent director or producer gets ahold of it. A playwright knows this. And yet we keep on writing…and re-writing.

Why? Few other creative forms are subject to this sort of humiliation. No one would dare go into a novel, shuffle around chapters, remove characters, or change the setting without recrimination. (Can you imagine someone trying to redo Gone With The Wind set in 1940’s France with Scarlett and Rhett as gay lovers? I don’t think so.) Who would put a Speedo on Michelangelo’s David (besides John Ashcroft)? Even architects don’t allow changes to their designs even if they have drawn something that is nearly impossible to build. (I used to sell windows and doors; I know whereof I speak with architects.) So why would an author write in a form that practically invites meddling? Because sometimes there is no other way to tell the story.

I’m often asked how I know how to tell a story as a play as opposed to a novel or short story. The simple answer is that if I see a setting first, and then see the characters, it’s going to be a play. The Hunter was in the wilderness. The set for Dark Twist – a cavernous study hall at a boarding school – had been in my head since my year at St. George’s; eighteen years later I found the people to go in it. The scene design for The Purer, Brighter Years was around me for years; it takes place in a summer cottage up in Michigan, and I saw the living room in the house on the Florida Keys that is the set for my current opus, Can’t Live Without You, then borrowed characters from other works to enjoy the sunshine. But if I meet the characters first and get to know them, then chances are they won’t be in a play. They will spend more time with me than in a locale, and that will become a tale told in a book - or at least in a manuscript.

That is how I met Bobby. In November 1994 I was on vacation with my partner on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. We were having dinner one night at a nice little open-air restaurant at the Belham Valley Hotel, and I was in the middle of a nice piece of red snapper when I looked up and glanced across the room. Standing there looking at me was a young man about twenty years old. He had blond hair, grey-blue eyes, a nice build, and he was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. Nobody else in the restaurant noticed him because he wasn’t really there, but I could see him, and in an instant, I knew everything there was to know about him and what I didn’t know, I knew he would tell me.

I did not dash back to my room at the Vue Pointe Hotel and start writing. I knew Bobby would wait for me, and besides, I was on vacation. But when I got back home the story of his life and his world began to take shape on my little Apple IIc, and nine years, two moves (to New Mexico and then to Florida), and two computers later, I’m still writing about him growing up alone, going to boarding school, finding love, losing hope, and struggling with all the little things that make up his life. I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish the story and I’m not sure I’ll even try to get it published if I do; I’m having far too much fun telling the story to let him go.

I know there are writers who write solely for the money. They crank stuff out and sell it immediately and make a comfortable living doing it. More power to them; I’d love to have an income source like that. But I have never sat down to write a story or a play with the goal that I would sell it. (Heck, with my plays I’m just happy to get a staged reading so I can hear someone else besides me read the lines.) I love the process of listening to the characters and having the scenes evolve as I write. Sometimes I have no idea where they’re taking me, but it’s always better than where I thought I would go by myself. And that makes it all worth it. Bobby’s story may never be finished, but at least he won’t be abandoned.

The Faithful Correspondent sent me this e-mail. I've made a couple of judicious edits in the interest of protecting the privacy of some individuals who didn't know they would be cited in a blog. Other than that, what you see is what she wrote.

We stayed with a friend in the Cathedral area or the northwest corner of the District, which meant that in order to get to the Mall by 10:00 in the morning when the gathering began we had to get to a Metro station, park our car and be on our way by 9:00. We found a parking garage behind Whole Foods in Tenley Town with a spot for our car on the first floor. As we began walking to the station we were joined by a group of young parents pushing strollers and a couple of students, probably from the American University nearby. More people carrying or wearing signs appeared on the platform and quickly the small group grew to a larger one. People from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from Texas, from Oberlin College, from Bend, Oregon - young ones and older ones. By the time the train pulled in there was just enough room for our little crowd to crowd into the car. We stood and held on all the while checking out the people. It was by then obvious that the train’s passengers were mostly those going to the March. Many had “tattooed” their faces or made homemade signs; there were many saying “It’s Our Choice Not Theirs” with the NARAL logo. We saw signs made by older women members of NOW and slogans from the 1982 march when Reagan was in office. We laughed at a t-shirt reading “Bush Stay Out Of My Bush." We were bemused by a sign saying “If Men Could Have An Abortion Abortion Would Be A Sacrament”. A group of about eight strapping young women announced they were “Texans For Choice” or “We Need A New Texan." Soon we saw “Defeat Bush Again!”, “I Had An Abortion And I Feel Fine”, “Gays For Choice”, “Never Go Back!” . . . and of course seas of shocking pink Planned Parenthood t’s (which we ourselves wore) touting reproductive rights were everywhere.

As we alighted at Metro Central to change to the Blue Line the crowds thickened and poured down the escalators. We had to wait for another train since the scheduled one was so packed. I was overcome with emotion at the same time we were being compressed and carried along by the wave of old and young people. I hadn’t seen so many like-minded people in one place at the same time in my entire life. I grabbed your father’s arm saying, “Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t it marvelous?” nearly in tears. We’ve spent our entire adult lives living in geographical locations where the bulk of the population is conservative; where they justify ignoring the Reagan and Bush attacks on women’s right to choose by saying, “I’m not a one-issue voter." Habitually accustomed to voting as their parents voted, my friends pull the Republican lever or send a check to the RNC because that’s what Our Kind do. We’ve lived in rural counties where farmers hate taxes and the suburbanites living on the edges of those farms send their children to private schools, join country clubs and choose to know nothing about the needs of their neighbors trapped in the urban communities below the high rise office buildings where the suburban Republicans work. But, interestingly, a “Barry Goldwater Award” was given at our PPFA annual conference Friday to a young Republican congressman from Connecticut for his support of women’s freedom to choose. He and his wife had been forced to choose to abort a badly damaged fetus of their own and he maintained that government had no business in that hugely difficult decision. He said that Republicans should agree that along with less government regulation of businesses, their compatriots should agree there should be no government interference in the bedroom or between a woman and her physician.

Our destination was the Smithsonian station where coming to the surface we were thrust into a swelling tide of humanity (cliché), of people answering questions, selling snacks, handing out signs and shirts, trying to register each of us (really!), trying to direct the gentle but excited mass of people. Hundreds of port-o-pots (Pot On The Spot) lined the streets bordering the Mall. The area we eventually filled stretched from the Washington Monument to the Capitol and from Independence Avenue to Madison Drive. If you’ve ever walked there you know how vast that area is . . .miles? acres upon acres? And by noon it was packed. We had gotten off at 12th Street but we quickly found out that our Ohio contingent was assigned the 4th Street quadrant. Your father and I necessarily marched before the march that long mile back toward the Capitol to find our northwestern Ohio Planned Parenthood group not far from the Akron, Cincinnati and Dayton ones. We found our buddies easily, lounging on the grass, eating and chatting and looking for the “lost” others that had set out Saturday midnight in four buses from the Kohl’s at US-20 and Simmons Road, driving through the night to march all afternoon and return before Monday morning. We never did find them. I hope they got there. By then it was around 11:00 with an hour to idle before the real march began. [Herein TFC lists friends from home, including one woman in her late eighties and a contingent from the hospice.] We were entertained by images on six enormous screens showing the celebrities whose speeches boomed god-like out to us and whose rock music echoed and roared across the crowds. There were Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Hillary Clinton (enormous cheers and applause - the introducer said “Thank you, President Clinton - oops”) and Ted Turner among many many others. The speeches and music lasted long after we left at 4:00. Finally, just past noon, we were told to step out. We started toward the southern path heading west toward the monument in step to a drum carried by a young enthusiastic “musician." Before long we stopped and waited as though we were in a traffic line where on-ramps merge into heavy traffic. We marched in place about a half block from where we’d started for nearly 45 minutes. When a marshall with a microphone urged us into the center grassy part of the Mall your father and I pulled out of line and, with accord, headed for an umbrella-ed Dove Ice Cream truck across the Mall in front of the National Gallery. We miraculously found an empty bench which we claimed while we ate our “lunch” - this being about 1:45.

We had been able to be in contact with your brother, who, with [his wife and a friend], had stayed overnight in Silver Spring with the idea of going to a lecture given by an Important Person at the Buddhist Center there. As it turned out, they decided to miss the lecture and sleep in and were intending to join the march around noon. At about 2:00 we again reached them by cellphone; they were in the marching crowd close to the Monument and would follow the designated route until it neared where we were camped, a trip of about an hour they estimated. In due time your father walked to where they’d arranged to meet him and, miraculously we found each other. The five of us walked toward the nearest Metro station, rode to our car-park in Tenley Town, found a nearby Mexican restaurant (not very good food, but food) and parted exhilarated and renewed in our determination to chuck Bush.

I know I’ve failed because I’m simply incapable of conveying with any exactitude the vastness of the crowd, the gentleness with which the message was delivered and the excitement everyone shared in simply being together. We were told it was the largest crowd ever to gather on the Washington Mall. The expected harassment was weak and well-controlled. A single panel truck painted with Biblical exhortations and a huge picture of a post-abortion late-term fetus cruised around the edges of the crowd. We personally saw a young, well-dressed gent wearing a prayer shawl and carrying a bible standing silently on our way out of the gathering on 14th Street. A few people were being arrested by a couple of polite cops. Our numbers were great and the counterreaction was tiny. We have no idea what effect this will have on Congress or the Administration, but it sure made us all feel better.

I'm very proud of her.

Vice President Cheney went after John Kerry yesterday for voting in the 1990's to cut defense spending. Well, Holy Ned, who's dumb idea was that? It was George Herbert Walker Bush in the State of the Union address in 1992.

Two years ago, I began planning cuts in military spending that reflected the changes of the new era. But now, this year, with Imperial Communism gone, that process can be accelerated. Tonight I can tell you of dramatic changes in our strategic nuclear force. These are actions we are taking on our own, because they are the right thing to do.

After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based missiles. We will stop all production of the peacekeeper missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles.

This weekend I will meet at Camp David with Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation. I have informed President Yeltsin that if the commonwealth, the former Soviet Union, will eliminate all land-based multiple-warhead ballistic missiles, I will do the following: We will eliminate all Peacekeeper missiles. We will reduce the number of warheads on Minuteman missiles to one and reduce the number of warheads on our sea-based missiles by about one-third. And we will concvert a substantial portion of our strategic to primarily conventional use.

President Yeltsin's early response has been very positive, and I expect our talks at Camp David to be fruitful. I want you to know that for half a century, American presidents have longed to make such decisions and say such words. But even in the midst of celebration, we must keep caution as a friend. For the world is still a dangerous place. Only the dead have seen the end of conflict. And though yesterday's challenges are behind us, tomorrow's are being born.

The Secretary of Defense recommended these cuts after consultation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And I make them with confidence. But do not misunderstand me: The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.

Remeber who the Secretary of Defense was in 1992? It was Dick Cheney. Who was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? It was General Colin Powell. So if Senator John Kerry voted to cut defense spending, he did it because he was going along with what President Bush asked for.

How stupid do they think we are?

The Faithful Correspondent is working on her story on the March for Women's Lives last weekend. But in the meanwhile, she heartily recommends the following for your reading pleasure.

Thomas Oliphant in the Boston Globe

ON THE WAY to the fence where he threw some of his military decorations 33 years ago, I was 4 or 5 feet behind John Kerry.

As he neared the spot from which members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War were parting with a few of the trappings of their difficult past to help them face their future more squarely, I watched Kerry reach with his right hand into the breast pocket of his fatigue shirt. The hand emerged with several of the ribbons that most of the vets had been wearing that unique week of protest, much as they are worn on a uniform blouse.

There couldn't have been all that many decorations in his hand -- six or seven -- because he made a closed fist around his collection with ease as he waited his turn. I recall him getting stopped by one or two wounded vets in wheelchairs, clearly worried that they wouldn't be able to get their stuff over the looming fence, who gave him a few more decorations. Kerry says he doesn't remember this.

It is true that Kerry was one of the veterans group's "leaders," but in this eclectic, aggressively individualistic collection of people who had been through a pointless war, there were no privileges of rank. Kerry was in the middle of a line of perhaps 1,000 guys -- only a third or even less of the total who had assembled on the Washington Mall that astonishing week.

At the spot where the men were symbolically letting go of their participation in the war, the authorities had erected a wood and wire fence that prevented them from getting close to the front of the US Capitol, and Kerry paused for several seconds. We had been talking for days -- about the war, politics, the veterans' demonstration -- but I could tell Kerry was upset to the point of anguish, and I decided to leave him be; his head was down as he approached the fence quietly.

In a voice I doubt I would have heard had I not been so close to him, Kerry said, as I recall vividly, "There is no violent reason for this; I'm doing this for peace and justice and to try to help this country wake up once and for all."

With that, he didn't really throw his handful toward the statue of John Marshall, America's first chief justice. Nor did he drop the decorations. He sort of lobbed them, and then walked off the stage.

E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

It was the classic question posed by Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy 50 years ago during the Red-hunter's hearings investigating the Army for alleged communist influence. With his query, Welch, the Army's special counsel, began the undoing of McCarthy.

Unfortunately, the question needs to be asked again. It needs to be posed to shamelessly partisan Republicans who can't stand the fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are facing off against a Democrat who fought and was wounded in Vietnam. Cheney said in 1989 that he didn't go to Vietnam because "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." While Kerry risked his life, Bush got himself into the National Guard.

Funny, isn't it? When Bill Clinton was running against Republican war veterans in 1992 and 1996, the most important thing to GOP propagandists and politicians was that Clinton didn't fight in Vietnam. Now that Republican candidates who didn't fight in Vietnam face a Democrat who did -- and was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts while he was there -- the Republican machine wants to change the subject.

[edit]

It seems to be a habit. When Bush faces a Vietnam War hero in an election, a Vietnam veteran perfectly happy to trash his opponent always turns up. In the case of Ted Sampley, the same guy who did Bush's dirty work in going after Sen. John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries is doing the job against Kerry this year. Sampley dared compare McCain, who spent five years as a Vietnam POW, with "the Manchurian Candidate." Now, Sampley says that Kerry "is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of U.S. veterans. . . . To us, he is 'Hanoi John.' " Is that where Sam Johnson got his line?

One person who is outraged by the attacks on Kerry is McCain. When I reached the Arizona Republican, I found him deeply troubled over the reopening of wounds from the Vietnam era, "the most divisive time since our Civil War." He called Sampley "one of the most despicable characters I've ever met." McCain said he hoped that in the midst of a war in Iraq, politicians "will confront the challenges facing us now, including the conflict we're presently engaged in, rather than refighting the one we were engaged in more than 30 years ago."

[edit]

Now that McCain has spoken, will Bush have the guts to endorse or condemn the attacks on Kerry's service? Or will he just sit by silently, hoping the assaults do their work while he evades responsibility? Once more, Welsh's [sic] words call out for an answer: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

To quote TFC, "Wish I thought the rest of the country could read."

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 2:29 PM  

Florida could be a tough nut for the Democrats this time around, and not just because the voting machines won't leave a paper trail. According to this article from Slate by Ann Louise Bardach, John Kerry has to walk a very fine line in courting all the generations of the Cuban community; the old guard going back to the Bay of Pigs, the Marielistas from 1980, and the following generation of young entrepreneurs whose only connection with Cuba is the dose of cafe con leche they get every morning. They're a mixed group politically and passionate about their causes. That makes it tough for any new candidate on the scene nationally, and Kerry's voting record on issues close to the heart of the Cuban community isn't clear-cut. Add to that the small detail that the governor is the brother of the current White House occupant and the state legislature is controlled by some of the more autocratic members of the Republican party and you have a pretty solid foundation of presumptive support for the Republican ticket.

But it's not that cut and dried. Recent polls show George W. Bush and John Kerry running very close in the Sunshine State. Why? Well, while the Cuban community may be vocal and have a strong anti-Castro / pro-embargo presence in Congress from Miami-Dade (the Diaz-Balart family has Mario and Lincoln in Congress, both of whom are advocating giving Fidel the Saddam rush and terminating any contacts between the exile community and families back in Cuba), their numbers are not overwhelming on a state-wide level. Once you get up into Broward and the counties to the north between Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, you find a large contingent of the older and more traditional Democratic base; retirees who are concerned about Social Security and Medicare and younger voters who are concerned about issues such as the environment, gay rights, and the economy. And if recent polls in places like Gainesville and Jacksonville - usually considered to be traditionally Southern in voting - are to be believed, Kerry is finding a base in the veterans and young professionals who are moving there for the high-tech and entertainment industries.

Both Bush and Kerry have to balance themselves carefully. So far Bush has the slight advantage in that he has a strong Republican machine in place and Governor Jeb! hasn't become the quite the caricature his brother has (although he's working on it), but it isn't a lock for sure. After all, it came down to less than 600 votes in 2000, and that was without counting all the votes.

From the New York Times:

In a day of piercing and personal exchanges, John Kerry questioned on Monday whether President Bush skipped National Guard duty 30 years ago, while Vice President Dick Cheney disparaged Mr. Kerry as an opportunist unfit to lead the nation in wartime.

Mr. Kerry had previously declined to join other Democrats in raising questions about Mr. Bush's National Guard attendance record. But during a contentious interview on national television on Monday, when pressed on whether he threw away his Vietnam war medals in a protest in 1971, he defended himself and attacked the president.

"This is a controversy that the Republicans are pushing," Mr. Kerry said on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "The Republicans have spent $60 million in the last few weeks trying to attack me, and this comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. I'm not going to stand for it."

Later in the day, Mr. Kerry challenged what he called attacks on his military record from Republicans who did not fight in Vietnam.

"I did obviously fight in Vietnam, and I was wounded there, and I served there and was very proud of my service," Mr. Kerry said. "To have these people, all of whom made a different choice, attack me for it is obviously disturbing."

It's *About F**king Time Kerry brought this issue up. Of course Bush can't get out there himself and talk about his service record, and neither can Cheney, who says he had "other priorities." And while it may not do much for advancing the argument for or against our current military situation, it does at least feel good to get it said.

James C. Moore wants to know why George W. Bush was abruptly grounded from flying and why he left the Texas Air National Guard two years early.

The story keeps changing. And regardless of what the White House says about George W. Bush and his time in the Texas Air National Guard, journalists tend to accept the explanation. I can't. The president of the United States is lying to hide his behavior while he was a young pilot during the Vietnam War, and he has almost taken away reporters' ability to get the whole story. Unfortunately, the national media have other distractions, and they apparently don't think the Guard story is important enough to warrant additional effort. I think they are wrong.

The president's behavior while under oath to serve in the military is an important matter. By George W. Bush's own admission, there were at least eight months in 1972 when he was not performing assigned Guard duty. What if today's Guard members behaved as irresponsibly as Bush did during his hitch? Where would our war on terrorism be if they all acted as capriciously as he did and they took off to go do something else while they were still under oath to serve? That's what the records prove George W. Bush did. Aren't there young Americans in Iraq, who have been called to active duty in a war zone, who would rather be in Alabama?

The president and his staff are doing a very good job of convincing the public he has released all of his National Guard records and that they prove he was responsible during his time in Alabama and Texas. But the critical documents have still not been seen. The mandatory written report about Bush's grounding is mysteriously not in the released file, nor is any other disciplinary evidence. A document showing a "roll-up," or the accumulation of his total retirement points, is also absent, and so are his actual pay stubs. If the president truly wanted to end the conjecture about his time in the Guard, he would allow an examination of his pay stubs and any IRS W-2 forms from his Guard years. These can be pieced together to determine when he was paid and whether he earned enough to have met his sworn obligations. [Salon.com]

If George W. Bush is going to ask others to fight his battles - something he has done all his life - than the least he could do is prove that he's paid his dues as well.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

Determined to find a superintendent experienced in running a large urban school district with a diverse student population, the Miami-Dade County School Board voted Monday to select Rudolph F. Crew, the former chancellor of the New York public schools, to lead the nation's fourth-largest school district.

The choice of Crew came after a selection committee had whittled the nationwide pool of applicants down from 70 candidates. Crew, who is black, was given the nod over Nashville superintendent Pedro E. Garcia, who came to Miami from Cuba in Operation Pedro Pan, a Catholic Church-organized airlift that brought 14,171 children out of Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power.

If Crew accepts the job, he would inherit a $4.3 billion system plagued by inadequate school construction, budget woes and allegations of nepotism and cronyism. But in taking the reins from Superintendent Merrett Stierheim, Crew also would have to navigate a system that, like Miami-Dade County, has often been beset by divisive politics and ethnic tension.

[edit]

In 1990, black residents held a one-day boycott to protest the selection of the county's first Cuban-born superintendent over a black 31-year veteran educator. Community observers say the board's decision to pick a black superintendent more than a decade later marks an important milestone.

Maybe we're coming full circle," said Bishop Victor T. Curry of the New Birth Baptist Church.

The first and last black superintendent, Johnny Jones, went to jail in 1980 for attempting to steal nearly $9,000 in gold-plated plumbing fixtures for a vacation home he was building in Naples. He denied the charges, and according to Marvin Dunn, a Florida International University professor who has written extensively about blacks in Miami, many Jones supporters felt he was under special scrutiny because of his race.

Dunn said the board's decision to pick Crew is important because he would likely have a special understanding of some of the disciplinary problems of black children. Also, Crew could be more effective in getting black parents involved in their children's education, Dunn said.

Curry, an influential black community activist, agreed. He hoped the board members picked the most qualified individual who just happens to be black.

"I wish the district well and I'm sure this gentleman is qualified," Curry said.

I wish him the best of luck, too.

Update: Here's a backgrounder on Dr. Crew from the Miami Herald (free registration required)

In a remarkably swift meeting, the School Board of Miami-Dade County has selected Dr. Rudolph F. Crew as the new superintendent to succeed Merrett R. Stierheim. Mr. Stierheim, who has served Dade County in a number of capacities including county manager, was selected in October 2001 to replace the previous superintendent, Roger Cuevas, who had been fired by the board the previous month. Mr. Stierheim, whose contract had been renewed in June 2003, announced his retirement the following December.

Dr. Crew will assume his duties on July 1. He takes over the leadership of the fourth-largest school district in the country with over 367,000 students and 40,000 employees - the largest public employer in the county.

I'll have more on this later, but I just thought I'd get the word out.

Karen Hughes wondered on CNN's Late Edition if John Kerry was making up his recounting of atrocities in Vietnam. She said, "I think the press ought to follow some line of inquiry about that."

They did, Karen. And won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for it, too.

I meant to note this last night when I got home, but better late than never.

While Arthur Laurents's comments at the close of his tribute at the William Inge Theatre Festival may have been well-received by most of the audience, the chances are that liberalism will not overwhelm Independence, Kansas. After all, the Conventional Wisdom holds that a small town in southeast Kansas is red-state territory in microcosm. But as I was crossing the parking lot of the Apple Tree Inn to get in the rented Mustang and drive back to Tulsa, I noticed a couple of pickup trucks in the lot. They had local plates...and John Kerry for President bumperstickers.

The Detroit Tigers are over .500 (11 - 8) and it's almost May. And the Boston Red Sox opened a can on the Yankees. I know at least two friends who will be insufferable over this.

Here's one that I am glad to add to the roll. It doesn't mince words: Bush Campaign Lies. Check it out for a healthy dose of reality.

My Faithful Correspondent has not yet returned from the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C. When she does, you will get a full report on her journey. From what I hear, it was quite the event.

Via TAPPED, which cites the Chicago Reader:

"The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit."

Give up? It was L. Paul Bremer, the current viceroy of Iraq, on February 26, 2001.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

BATON ROUGE, La. -- People who wear low-slung pants that expose skin or "intimate clothing" would face a fine of up to $500 and possible jail time under a bill filed by a Jefferson Parish lawmaker.

State Rep. Derrick Shepherd said he filed the bill because he was tired of catching glimpses of boxer shorts and G-strings over the lowered belt lines of young adults.

The bill would punish anyone caught wearing low-riding pants with a fine of as much as $500 or as many as six months in jail, or both.

"I'm sick of seeing it," said Shepherd, a first-term legislator. "The community's outraged. And if parents can't do their job, if parents can't regulate what their children wear, then there should be a law."

The bill would be tacked onto the state's obscenity law, which restricts sexual activity in public places and the sale of sexually explicit items.

Joe Cook, head of the American Civil Liberties Union's Louisiana chapter, said the bill probably does not meet the U.S. Supreme Court's standard for the prohibition of obscene behavior under the First Amendment.

"What about a woman who is wearing a bathing suit under her garment or she has something like a sarong wrapped around her and it's below her waist," he said. "I can think of a lot of workers, plumbers, who are working and expose their buttocks ..."

Much as I agree with the sentiment - seeing kids running around with their pants around their knees is a fashion trend that I wouldn't be sorry to see go away - I can't think it's any more "obscene" or provocative than fashions that emphasize physical attributes; i.e. the Wonder Bra for women or the well-placed sock for men, and those trends go back through time immemorial.

I hope this State Representative Shepherd is a Republican. He'd be yet another entry in the Hypocrisy Hall of Fame under the category of "Less Government Unless It's Icky."

Update: Greg at News from the Sixth Borough found out this dude is a Democrat. But a Louisiana Democrat is just a Republican in drag at Mardi Gras.

Just rolled in from Miami International and The William Inge Theatre Festival. The trip was uneventful except that the man sitting next to me on the flight from Tulsa to Dallas was reading a copy of The Tulsa Beacon newspaper, which is apparently the Oklahoma version of the Moonie Times; it's published by Oral Roberts University. A glance at the headlines and you could tell it was a far-right rag. Fortunately he did not strike up a conversation with me because if he had, I probably would have gone all Arthur Laurents on him (see previous post).

Anyway, home again and the last week in this apartment before I move into the house. I can't wait. And back to regular blogging tomorrow. I'm sure there's a lot to catch up on.

Oh, by the way, if you ever get the chance to upgrade to first class on an American Airlines Boeing 777, take it.

The William Inge Theatre Festival came to a close last night with a lengthy tribute to playwright Arthur Laurents, covering his career from his earliest plays through West Side Story, Gypsy, Hallelujah, Baby, The Way We Were, The Turning Point, and up to his most recent production, Attacks of the Heart, which encompasses 9/11.

Arthur Laurents is not one to mince words. He will tell you his opinion of anything with very little prompting, and that kind of rattled the cage here in Independence...which needs it on occasion. During the fundraising dinner on Friday night when Mr. Laurents was brought to the podium, Bill Kurtis, acting like James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio, asked Mr. Laurents what he thought of William Inge, whom he had known in New York in the early 1950's. Mr. Laurents allowed as how since this was such a nice gathering he didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable - especially with Inge's family in attendance - but he said that "I am gay and comfortable with it. Bill Inge was gay and tormented by it," and that pretty much framed their friendship, such as it was, back then. Mr. Laurents has also been outspoken throughtout the festival as a supporter of liberal causes, usually finding a way during his talks to make pointed references to the "mendacities" of the current administration. That might have rattled the cages of some of the locals, but it always got a strong voice of support from the audience in the theatre.

At last night's tribute, when it was finally time to welcome Mr. Laurents on to the stage, he reminded us that he had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era - and pointed to The Way We Were as part of his story. And as he was thanking us for honoring him, he reminded us of J.M. Barrie's play Peter Pan where Peter, finding Tinker Bell on the verge of death, implores the audience to clap if they believe in fairies, which always makes the audience go wild. In that vein, Mr. Laurents implored the audience to clap "if you love liberals, who have been so horribly abused over the last thirty years." The audience went wild, and Mr. Laurents quipped, "It works for liberals...and fairies!"

Arthur Laurents isn't the first openly gay honoree that The William Inge Festival has had, nor is he the most outspoken in terms of his political views. But in light of the current climate, he was certainly the most refreshing - and based on the audience reaction last night, one of the most encouraging.

(I would love to post a link to the Independence Daily Reporter with pictures and stories about the Festival (they gave Mr. Laurents's closing speech short shrift - either due to deadline pressure or the fact that they're in a very conservative town) but they have yet to go on-line.)

There's been some news going on out there while I've been absorbed in the world of theatre.

The War Room at Salon.com (sbscription or free Day Pass required) has a couple of interesting notes, including the fact that while the Vatican has been dragging its feet to do much about pedophile priests, they're quick to basically excommunicate any pro-choice practicing Catholic politician...i.e. John Kerry, although he is not mentioned by name.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reveals that some companies did business with Iraq during the 1990's including - tada - Halliburton.

Halliburton, which has won business in the Gulf country since the war, did tens of millions of dollars of business with Iraq in the late 1990s, when it was still led by the current U.S. vice president, Dick Cheney. Much of that business was done through French units. Halliburton won more than $30 million worth of deals with Mr. Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s, U.N. documents show.

The largest part came when Mr. Cheney led the company from 1996 to 2000. Mr. Cheney said during the 2000 election campaign that Halliburton had a policy against trading with Iraq. The Halliburton contracts mentioned in the U.N. documents involved units and joint ventures that came with the purchase of Dresser Inc. in 1998. Those units were sold from December 1999 to April 2001. 'Contracts were initiated prior to the merger,' a spokeswoman for Halliburton said.

But at least one French unit, Dresser-Rand SA, part of a joint venture in which Halliburton had a 51% stake, registered $6 million of oil spare-parts sales with the U.N. oil-for-food program between 1998 and 2000, after Halliburton acquired Dresser, U.N. documents show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., the French unit of another joint venture, signed about $25 million of Iraqi contracts at a time when Halliburton owned 49%, documents show.

And just to show you that the FCC is really on the job, they are considering fining a Miami station for placing a prank phone call to Fidel Castro. The reason for the fine? They didn't notify Castro that they were going to make the call and put him on the air. So let me get this straight: the government is looking out for the privacy rights of a dictator, but it won't let prisoners held for two years at Gitmo see a lawyer. Well, it's nice to see that Absurdism is still alive and well even outside of the theatre.

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 8:38 AM  

It was a raw and rainy day here at the William Inge Theatre Festival on Friday, but it didn't keep the crowds down and we had a great turn-out for the workshops and the scholar's conference. Arthur Laurents was very entertaining with his stories about writing the librettos for West Side Story and Gypsy and passing along bits of gossip from those days; for example, Stephen Sondheim used to refer to Ethel Merman as "the talking dog." Mr. Laurents also said that he is currently working on a revision of his 1967 Tony-award winning musical Hallelujah, Baby! which I saw on Broadway in September 1967, and the show that gave Leslie Uggams her big break. It closed after a nine-month run and has never been heard from again.

I attended several of the panel discussions, including one with director David Saint on the playwright/director relationship (which is an interest of mine). Then we all gathered at the Independence Country Club for a gala fundraising dinner for the Inge Foundation, emceed by Independence native Bill Kurtis (formerly of CBS News, now a guiding force on A&E). The gala included a silent auction (I got a framed poster from the 2001 Inge Festival which honored Lanford Wilson), and a hilarious little play by Paul Dooley and Winnie Holtzman called Post-Its; a take-off on A.R. Gurney's Love Letters. The evening ended with a tribute to my friend Jo Ann Kirchmaier, who was William Inge's niece and a long-time festival supporter. Three of her four children were here to help us remember this remarkable woman.

Saturday we'll have a reading of a new play by our New Voices playwright Mary Portser, a picnic at Riverside Park, where the picnic in Picnic takes place, and we'll wrap it up with "Curtain Up!", the tribute to Arthur Laurents. That ought to keep me out of trouble for a little while, at least.

Here at the William Inge Theatre Festival it's kind of fun to go to a gathering and be greeted by people you've seen on TV or the films for as long as you can remember. Last night as I was standing in the buffet line at the Independence Museum, I happened to notice I was standing next to Paul Dooley, one of the best character actors out there. He's been in everything from film to practically every sitcom on TV, usually playing the grumpy dad or father-in-law. He's also an accomplished vaudevillian. And then as I was crossing the room I was introduced to Elizabeth Wilson. Both are here to put on acting workshops and participate in Saturday night's tribute to Arthur Laurents.

There are also a lot of new faces, including playwrights, directors, and actors, including John Lloyd Young, who just finished a run playing Danny Saunders in the stage version of Chaim Potok's The Chosen at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami and the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. And the Inge Festival also brings in the second generation. One of our stellar guests in years past was the late Eileen Heckart. Her son, Luke Yankee, has become a regular now, carrying on his mother's tradition of sharing his knowledge and skills with the aspiring actors in his workshops.

Also here is Robert Ellenstein, whom you might remember as the Federation Council president in Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home. It just so happens that his son Peter is the artistic director of the Inge Festival. See, I told you this was like a family reunion.

This morning we'll have a Conversation with Arthur Laurents followed by workshops and the scholar's conference. Tonight we'll have the gala dinner at the Independence Country Club including a tribute to my friend Jo Ann Kirchmaier (yours truly will contribute to a small portion of the program). So much to see and do!

Today's edition will be a little abbreviated due to the full day scheduled here at the William Inge Theatre Festival. But there are a couple of things you should check out.

First, as noted below, there's a nasty worm going around that plays on the hopes of capturing OBL. Some of the TLC gang got the e-mail (I didn't), allegedly from "Joan Lamb." Stay away from it.

Musing's musings is looking at the Mike Danton case; the story of the NHL hockey player who is alleged to have hired a hit man to kill a another man who is claiming to have been his lover.

The news outlets are all over the photos of coffins coming back from Iraq. This story was broken by The Memory Hole and picked up (of course) by the blogosphere including Dohiyi Mir and corrente. As they say in the trade, this gets you where you live.

Steve at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat celebrates the win by the Sierra Club to beat back the attempt by anti-immigrant lobbyists to take over the organization.

The Fulcrum has the story on Colorado's attempt to head back down the road to perdition and ignominy yet again, barely ten years after the disasterous Amendment 2 tried to codify discrimination against gays and lesbians. What the hell has happened to Colorado? When I lived there it was very much a live-and-let-live state, but now the crazies (Focus on the Family and other spawn of Satan) have taken over places like Colorado Springs and they're getting worse.

There's a lot more out there on The Liberal Coalition, and you can preview it at correnteWire, the live feed service. Happy Friday!

There's a virus going around being spread under an e-mail with the subject "Osama Bin Laden Captured!" If you get the e-mail, don't open it. I quote from an e-mail alert I received from fellow blogger the farmer of corrente who was first alerted to it by Rook's Rant:

DON'T TOUCH THAT LINK! ( see below info from news.netcraft )

"'Bin Laden Captured' E-mail Downloads Trojan Security
A new e-mail attack bearing the subject "Osama Bin Laden Captured" downloads a trojan onto the computers of recipients who click on a link promising additional details, according to antivirus vendor Panda Software. The scam spam provides a prime example of social engineering, masquerading as a news bulletin that, if legitimate, would generate click-throughs from a significant number of users."

"The text of the e-mail:
Subject: "Osama Bin Laden Captured",
Message text: "Hey, Just got this from CNN, Osama Bin Laden
has been captured! Go to the link below to view the pics and
to download the video if you so wish: (Internet address)
"Murderous coward he is." God bless America!""

Don't say you weren't warned.

The flights were uneventful, the airports not horribly crowded (although they're tearing up the A concourse at DFW again for who knows what reason), and I arrived in Tulsa pretty close to on time. I got my rental car - a red Mustang, of course - and made the journey through the fields and farms of Oklahoma and Kansas under lowering skies.

The trip takes me through Bartlesville, past Ponca City, past the Will Rogers Museum, all of which is on the Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma issues Cherokee Nation license plates, too, to tribe members). The radio stations play everything from NPR to Golden Oldies, from Jesus Shouters to Rush Limbaugh. This is Bush/Cheney land; you won't hear Air America here.

The radio warned of a tornado watch until eight o'clock, which is common for this time of year. (Once, after a terrible thunderstorm here a few years back, I went outside and exclaimed, "Look, there's a dead witch under the house and everything's in color!") But the skies are just patchy grey here in Independence, and the town looks much the same as it did last year. I find that comforting.

The festival officially began yesterday, but most of my cohorts arrived today. So I'm going off to the college to pick up my packet, see some friends, and to reclaim my secret identity as a theatre scholar for the one weekend a year when it really counts for something.

More later.

I'm heading out this morning for the William Inge Theatre Festival. The next posting should come from the Apple Tree Inn of Independence, Kansas. I'll have updates on who's attending the festival and any other observations I may have while traveling. See you then.

Headline in the New York Times: Kerry Opens New Bush Attack, Focusing on Iraq and Economy. Who will be the first Republican to whine about "attack ads" and the "politics of destruction?"

Here's a news flash: Michael Jackson Is Indicted on Child-Molesting Charges. I'm shocked, shocked.

From Salon.com/AP: Fifteen-year-old writes bestseller. Congratulations, kid. I hate you.

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 5:32 AM  

The March for Women's Lives takes place this Sunday in Washington, D.C. My Faithful Correspondent will be there in full participation as well as attending the annual meeting of Planned Parenthood. I have been promised a first-hand reflection on the events, which I will pass along here.

Florida is considering rolling back the state's 14.3 cent per gallon gas tax by ten cents in August...just in time to remind the voters what good and generous people we have running the state.

Oh, and did I mention the primary election is in August?

An article in the March 1 edition of The American Prospect by Elizabeth Benedict got me to thinking about writers and writing. It also got me thinking about the foundation of where I come from as a writer and what forms my expression in words.

Ninth in a Series
(Part One)
(Part Two)
(Part Three)
(Part Four)
(Part Five)
(Part Six)
(Part Seven)
(Part Eight)

Today is the first day of the 23rd Annual William Inge Theatre Festival, taking place at Independence Community College in Independence, Kansas. I'll be going there tomorrow. I’ve written about this event before, but I haven’t really examined the subject of this event and what his life and work represents to me and a lot of writers.

William Inge was born in Independence, Kansas (not to be confused with Independence, Missouri, the bustling suburb of Kansas City) in 1913. Located in the southeast corner of the state seventy miles north of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Independence is one of those idyllic places that you see depicted in Norman Rockwell illustrations that evoke small-town America right down to the white picket fences and kids cruising the main drag on Friday nights. Independence is what people think of when they say “the heartland.” And it was from this seemingly ideal place that Inge created some of the most interesting and tortured characters in American drama. His best-known plays; Picnic, Bus Stop, Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and Come Back, Little Sheba, as well as his Oscar-winning screenplay Splendor in the Grass, are all based on his life and times in this little town that today still looks much as it did when Inge was growing up.

Most playwrights have a common thread that runs through their work; in essence, they write the same play over and over. (If you have any doubts about that, look at the works of Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller.) This is because they are writing from the one thing they know best: their own life. Inge’s plays depict the lives and characters from his past; his family, his parents, his friends, and the hopes and dreams of a child who was not quite sure what was expected of him and who, as he grew up, became aware of things that were at odds with the only place he knew of as home. He never spoke of it in public or wrote openly about it, but Inge must have known as a young man that he was gay, and he dealt with it as most gay people of that time did – he suppressed it until he was able to escape so as not to embarrass himself or his family. Inge went to college at the University of Kansas and from there to a career in teaching, eventually ending up in St. Louis where he met Tennessee Williams. Inspired by Williams’s work, Inge began to write his own plays, and like Williams, he wrote about his life and his family and in doing so, he created an archetype character, the Handsome Young Man, that reflects many facets of Inge’s personality as well as his deeply-closeted feelings about himself and his desires.

Like a comet streaking across the sky, the Handsome Young Man, described in great detail by Inge in his stage directions as a muscular and confident youth in tight jeans and t-shirt, plays a role in nearly every play Inge wrote. Hal in Picnic, Bo in Bus Stop, Turk in Come Back, Little Sheba, and Sammy in Dark at the Top of the Stairs are all seen as breathtaking objects of envy, jealousy, and desire by both male and female characters. As a dramatic device they provide a turning point in the play – the focus of the action and reaction – and the danger and choice that must be faced by the people he touches. They are never depicted as evil or cruel; in fact, Inge paints them as lovable pups that blunder onto the scene and cause disruption through no fault of their own. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to see what Inge was writing about. What makes his work amazing is that he so well depicted the people who surround this character and how they pin some kind of fulfillment of their small-town hopes and dreams on him. And when he leaves, as he inevitably must, they have to adjust their lives to his passing through and see how he has changed their world.

When I first was invited to attend the William Inge Theatre Festival in 1991, I knew very little about him, other than the fact that his niece was a family friend from my hometown in Ohio and that I had read and seen several of his plays. But when I saw Independence and saw the house he grew up in that provided the setting for Picnic and Dark at the Top of the Stairs (and, by the way, it is dark up there), and saw the places such as the country club and the picnic grounds and the diner and met his now-aged childhood friends, it became clear to me that Inge wrote with such a true voice about his life and his inner dreams. Over the years at the Inge Festival I have met playwrights who were contemporaries of Inge; Jerome Lawrence, Robert Anderson, Arthur Miller, John Patrick, and playwrights who make no bones about acknowledging Inge’s influence on their own writing, such as Neil Simon, John Guare, A.R. Gurney, Wendy Wasserstein, and Edward Albee. All of them share the common bond of writing their lives onto the stage much as Inge did and much as every playwright – including this humble scribe – still does. They all realize that the genius of Inge was not in creating these characters as much as it was in listening to the people he knew and loved and depicting them so truly.

Inge received the Pulitzer Prize for Picnic, and Bus Stop was turned into a star vehicle for Marilyn Monroe. He was considered to be one of the great playwrights of the 1950’s, but by the mid 1960’s his writing began to falter. He also faced personal demons including depression and alcoholism, exacerbated no doubt by having spent all of his life in the closet, and in June 1973 he committed suicide. He was buried in the cemetery in Independence. His gravestone says simply William Motter Inge – 1913-1973 – Playwright. I will stop by that marker on Saturday and say a quiet thanks from one small-town boy to another.

All this time we've been looking at George W. Bush as the driving force to take us to war with Iraq. There's no doubt that he had a johnson about taking out Saddam Hussein, and if Bob Woodward's book is any guide, he's been that way since the day he got into office. But we also know that Bush has attention-deficit-disorder issues; I expected him to have a spell last week during the press conference: "Our goal is to win the war on terror - oh, look at the kitty!" So the only person with the power, the focus, and the inside drive to keep him on the track of taking us to war has got to be Dick Cheney. He had the people, the history (he had been Secretary of Defense during Gulf War I), and the connections to get what he wanted. The hell with taking it slow, as Colin Powell and other veterans of previous wars had counseled.

It's been a running joke since the time Cheney chose himself to be vice president that he was really the one in charge; all the jokes about Bush being one defibrillator away from the presidency, how Dick Cheney was really a good ventriloquist whose sole duty was to make the dummy look good, and so forth. The scary part is that it may really be true.

The Republicans are counting on the old adage that no one votes for a ticket because of who's running for vice president. That may be our biggest danger.

From the Miami Herald:

A proposal to add printers to Miami-Dade's touch screen voting machines by November's presidential election fizzled Monday. The culprit: The available technology is not state certified, election officials said.

''We simply cannot use the technology if it's not state certified, even if the printers were available,'' Supervisor of Elections Constance Kaplan told the County Commission's election subcommittee, while presenting the findings of a 309-page report.

Aware ''all eyes will be watching'' Miami-Dade in the upcoming presidential election, Commissioner Jimmy Morales had spearheaded an effort to install printers on the county's iVotronic machines, hoping the paper trail would restore more confidence in the process for Miami-Dade voters.

''It's hard to tell voters they can't have some sort of receipt when they vote. When you go to the ATM, you get a receipt; when you go the store, you get a receipt,'' Morales said Monday.

The reason the county cannot install the printers onto the touch-screen technology is because the state has not certified any printers for such use.

iVotronic vendors must wait for specifications from federal and state election officials before they can proceed with a prototype.

''They have to set standards and tell us what they want,'' said Meghan McCormick, spokeswoman for Election Systems & Software, the Nebraska-based makers of the iVotronic. ''They have to decide things like the size and weight of the paper used for the receipt, in what languages it will be printed, what would be on it,'' she said. Any such printer would first need to be certified by Florida, as required by law.

''Even if things would happen quickly, I doubt the printers could be available before early next year,'' McCormick said.

So far touch-screen voting has had a checkered past here in Florida; during the gubernatorial primary in 2002 some of the machines didn't work, some worked too well (showing more votes than there were voters in the precinct), and many of the people running the polling stations had not been properly trained on what to do in case there was a problem, such as a power failure. So if the lights go out during a thunderstorm (not an unlikely event in November), all the votes at that polling station could potentially be lost. And unlike the old system, there will be no recourse for a recount. So if we get gored again in 2004, the only thing we'll be able to do is scream and shout the old cheer we had in high school when the ref made a bad call during a basketball game: "Nuts and Bolts! Nuts and Bolts! We Got Screwed!"

It must be nice to live in a place where you can get a parking ticket voided by having the mayor on speed-dial.

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Contrary to popular belief, the city's parking department does have a forgiving side -- if you live in Rio Vista.

Public records from the Police Department and City Hall spell out the city's willingness to bend the laws for the influential neighborhood, a near-downtown enclave of the well-to-do.

That willingness has led to the voiding or refunding of thousands of dollars worth of tickets, the written censure of a police officer for issuing citations there, and an extended grace period for the local homeowner's association to find their own solution to the problem. All this in a city where the hard-line ticketing operation has long been a subject of complaints and which recently hired a collection agency to go after out-of-state scofflaws.

Parking Manager Doug Gottshall said the city has at times voided tickets en masse, such as to a crowd attending church, but no other neighborhood has a special standing arrangement like Rio Vista. "Not that I can ever remember or ever imagine,'' he said.

The latest "handful" of parking ticket write-offs came in March, he said. "We decided to do it in the interest of peace,'' Gottshall said. Before that, the records show, the city's interests came to the rescue of Rio Vista residents twice, with offers to refund or void 392 tickets worth at least $9,400. The police officer who worked the Rio Vista zone was disciplined for writing too many tickets, according to documents pertaining to the case, and he was ordered to back off.

[edit]

The hands-off policy was put to the test a month ago, when a resident's complaint led to another spate of tickets. Gottshall, the city's parking manager, said he voided the tickets in agreement with Andersen. "It was a decision I initiated after talking to [Sturman of the civic association], thinking we still had this arrangement,'' Gottshall said. For the future, he said, "We'd rather this thing get straightened out once and for all. It's just a mess.'' Andersen agreed. "If they just feel that all they have to do is call City Hall and complain, that's not the appropriate attitude,'' Andersen said. "Now they're aware they're in violation of the law.'' Sturman said the city has been willing to "jump through hoops'' for Rio Vista. Asked why, he lowered his voice. "The mayor lives in our neighborhood,'' he replied. [Sun-Sentinel]

If Richard Clarke were so inclined, I suspect that's what he's saying about his testimony before the 9/11 commission and what he wrote about in his book, Against All Enemies, thanks to Bob Woodward's book. David Sirota in Salon.com agrees.

The Faithful Correspondent sent me this long and very detailed report from the Wall Street Journal on how decisions made a year ago about how to implement the occupation of Iraq are now coming back to haunt both the occupying forces and the Iraqi people.

Early U.S. Decisions on Iraq Now Haunt American Efforts
By FARNAZ FASSIHI, GREG JAFFE, YAROSLAV TROFIMOV, CARLA ANNE ROBBINS and YOCHI J. DREAZEN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 19, 2004; Page A1

As soon as U.S. troops occupied Iraq a year ago, an orgy of looting erupted. Telephone wires were pulled out of the ground, while hospitals, schools and government buildings were stripped bare of windows, door frames and faucets.

The crime wave seemed a passing embarrassment at the time, so the U.S. made a conscious decision not to use military might to stop it.

It's now clear that decision led to lasting problems that have reverberated through this month's wave of violence in Iraq. The looting alienated Iraqis who questioned the intentions of their new U.S. protectors. It made the job of rebuilding Iraq much harder, delaying improvements that would have lessened the appeal of radicals. It even allowed a then-obscure cleric named Muqtada al Sadr to build up goodwill among the country's downtrodden by collecting and redistributing some looted merchandise.

The battles U.S. forces are waging, against Sunni insurgents around the town of Fallujah and Shiite forces loyal to Mr. Sadr across the south, may have seemed to erupt suddenly. In reality, they have been long in the making, fed by a year's worth of decisions and calculations about the Iraqi army and security, about the depth of popular tolerance for occupation and about the role of the country's important Shiite leaders.

The problems are rooted most firmly in one basic but faulty assumption about the level of postwar stability. In prewar days, the U.S. planned to administer Iraq for two years or more, as the country's Baath party was purged, war-crimes trials held, a new constitution written and new democratic institutions built from the ground up.

But the luxury of that long and quiet occupation never materialized. Iraq's infrastructure and its economy were in far worse shape than the U.S. had calculated, meaning public patience with the occupation wasn't as extensive as imagined. Difficulties in establishing a respected media network undercut U.S. efforts to turn around opinions.

The failure quickly to find and lock down the huge stocks of weaponry in Iraq meant insurgents could quietly arm themselves without much trouble. An early decision to disband the Iraqi army -- and a long debate over which of three new security forces to build up -- left the U.S. without any sizable Iraqi force to help quell the unrest. The security situation grew more troublesome yesterday when Spain's new prime minister announced he would withdraw his country's troops from Iraq as soon as possible. And in Baghdad, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said Iraqi forces won't be able on their own to deal with security threats by the time the U.S. hands power to an Iraqi government on June 30.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is still scrambling to recover from a key political miscalculation. When launching an accelerated plan to create an Iraqi government, U.S. officials assumed, incorrectly, that they would have the tacit support of the nation's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. An agreement with him would have left Mr. Sadr little room to maneuver among Shiites.

The Bush administration says the political situation is being sorted out with help from the United Nations and that this month's violence obscures a much brighter overall picture. "It's not a popular uprising," President Bush said last week. "Most of Iraq is relatively stable. Most Iraqis by far reject violence and oppose dictatorship."

Read the rest of it here (PDF). It is a tale of short-sighted and hubristic planning - if you can call it that - and a complete lack of understanding of what we were getting into, and we will be paying for this for a long, long time.

What is most interesting is that this story appears in one of the most editorially conservative papers in the country - I usually refer to it as Der Volkischer Beobachter. For the Wall Street Journal to run a story like this on Page A1 should tell us something. Perhaps even the intellectual right wing is beginning to see that we failed to learn the first lesson of boot camp: plan for the worst and know how to deal with it before it happens.

[Update: Changed article file from Word document to PDF.]

President Bush is losing ground in farm country according to a poll in the Los Angeles Times.

SHERMAN COUNTY, Ore. — Like much of rural America, this isolated community south of the Columbia River Gorge is a place where people — like their parents before them — vote Republican when they pick their presidents. They went with George W. Bush four years ago. And most are likely to support him again this year.

But cracks have surfaced in President Bush's once-solid rural constituency. From places like Sherman County to Montcalm County, Mich., and Mahoning County, Ohio, some Republicans are so concerned about crop prices and high unemployment that they're considering voting Democratic for the first time.

[edit]

A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed that among rural voters, Bush leads Democrat John F. Kerry, 47% to 41%. But the president's support has slipped — down from 55% in November — for reasons ranging from the troubled economy to growing dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq.

While chances are that Bush will win the rural vote, he's going to have to win it by a landslide to offset the urban vote, and if he slips, that could be good news for Kerry and the Congress.

*This is an homage to the legendary Variety headline in their patented Hollywood shorthand, HIX NIX STIX FLIXS, which translates into "Rural People Take a Dim View of Motion Pictures That Depict Them As Clods," an apparent reference to the Ma and Pa Kettle movies of the 1930's and '40's.

Ted Olson is concerned about the 9/11 commission getting bogged down in partisan politics. And while 9/11 is a personal tragedy for him (his wife Barbara was on the plane that hit the Pentagon), hearing Mr. Olson, a leader of Richard Melon Scaife's Arkansas Project that went after the Clintons like banshees, get upset about partisanship is a little too ripe for sale.

Not to be outdone, Tom DeLay is also complaining that the 9/11 commission is succumbing to partisan politics. "Partisan mudslinging, circus-atmosphere pyrotechnics, and gotcha-style questioning do not get us closer to the truth," he wrote to commission chairman Thomas Kean.

Funny, I never heard Mr. DeLay complain about partisanhip during the mudslinging and circus-like atmosphere pyrotechnics during Clinton's impeachment. IOKIYAR.

John Kerry made a quick trip to South Florida on Sunday which included the usual rounds of rallys, church services, and fund-raising. Of course, whenever a presidential candidate comes down here the one topic he'll get grilled on is relations with Cuba. Tim Russert, who brought his Meet The Press gang to the WTVJ studios in Miramar so he could interview Kerry, brought it up. Kerry artfully handled the question and got back to safer ground - Iraq.

Russert reminded Kerry that in 2000 he seemed to suggest that the United States' Cuba policy was kept in place ''because of the power of the Cuban-American lobby'' and that a reevaluation of relations with the island was "way overdue.''

Kerry replied that efforts to bring democracy to Cuba have failed and that politics today are different from 2000.

He added: "I think there's been a dramatic change in the community in Florida itself. Now, I met with members of that community. All through the years I've been in the Senate, for 20 years, Tim, I have never suggested lifting the embargo. I don't suggest you just lift the embargo. That's not what I'm talking about. But for anybody to suggest that what we've been doing has worked, that it has somehow -- I mean, look what happened with the Varela program recently. A whole bunch of people got arrested and put in jail.''

The Varela Project sought thousands of signatures on the island to petition the Cuban government for basic civil liberties. Last year 75 Cuban dissidents were sentenced to harsh prison terms.

''I wouldn't just give something for nothing, but I would begin to encourage travel,'' Kerry added. "I've suggested that. I think that's appropriate. I think remittances might be considered and might be helpful.'' [Miami Herald]

Rule Number 1 in South Florida politics: Learn to play dominoes with the guys on Calle Ocho - the main street of Little Havana - and everything will be muy bueno. If not, adios, cholo.

The Commissar at The Political Diktat has come up with a handy-dandy guide to some of the top blogs arranged in easy (and subjective) categories. Check it out here and make your own suggestions for inclusion.

It's an epithet we toss around pretty easily because it's the ultimate political insult. But what does the word mean and does it apply to our current situation? This article in Salon.com by Laura Miller takes a look at the word and what it means historically and today.

In today's ever more polarized political climate, "fascist," the accusation, is making a comeback. Plug the word into Google and the first item you get is an essay by Anis Shivani titled "Is America Becoming Fascist?" in which the chief argument seems to be that if "left-liberals" don't take the question very seriously, the answer must be yes. Two entries submitted to a MoveOn contest seeking ads that "tell the truth" about George W. Bush compared the president to Adolf Hitler, providing right-wing pundits with another luscious opportunity to play martyr to a gang of slanderous leftist know-nothings. How could anyone reasonably propose such a comparison, the right demands; how can anyone not, cries Shivani with equal fervor, since the "similarities" are so "remarkable"?

Neither side sheds very much light on exactly what a fascist is and how such a person or regime might be identified; it's assumed everyone already knows. In truth, the introduction of Hitler into most conversations is a sign that passions have flared to a point that civility has become impossible. (Hence, Godwin's famous Law of Nazi Analogies, formulated by Internet free-speech advocate Mike Godwin to describe particularly heated exchanges: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one" -- that is, becomes inevitable.) "Hitler was a vegetarian!" is only the most gratuitous example of this sort of gambit.

It turns out, though, that even those who have devoted themselves to studying fascism can't quite agree on what it is. Robert O. Paxton, a former professor of social sciences at Columbia University and longtime historian of the political movement, sets out to formulate a working definition in his new book, "The Anatomy of Fascism." According to Paxton, there have only been two true fascist regimes, Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini, the man who gave fascism its name. And some of what you think you know about them is wrong.

Given the nation's short attention span (quick, who did Trump hire as his "Apprentice?"), using bumperstickers makes it easy to toss around labels our opponents or allies. But calling anyone we don't agree with a "Fascist" wears off rather quickly, and also diminishes the history of the word. George W. Bush is no more like Hitler on his global desires for democracy than Osama bin Laden is like Mahatma Gandhi seeking religious freedom for his people. Likening to two for political or blogging expediency just makes it harder to be heard over the din.

I just watched the Bob Woodward interview on 60 Minutes regarding his new book, Plan of Attack, on how Bush and his administration made their decisions to go to war in Iraq.

If what Woodward described in his interview is any guide to what really went on in the White House in 2002 and leading up to the attack in March 2003, we are so far up Shit Creek they're going to have to pipe in daylight for us to see our way out of it.

The scariest part came at the end when Woodward described Bush as believing - and as Bush himself said as much in his press conference last Tuesday - that he has a mission to liberate the world and that he sees himself appointed to the task. I may not be a psychologist, but I know megalomania when I hear it, and to describe oneself as being on a mission to save the world strikes me as not only megalomaniacal but delusional as well. Not to mention that it has the echo of every dictator who ever stood on a platform and decreed that he has been appointed by the Almighty to lead his nation and the world to a greater glory and woe betide anyone who stands in his way. Add to that his disdain for intellectual thought and the idea that perhaps he might want to consult with those who might have more experience in both foreign affairs and battle, and you have a very dangerous combination. (Not to mention that trivial little sidebar of violating the Constitution by diverting funds for one war to another; but, as one notable White House resident said in 1972, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.")

So what do we do now? George W. Bush has already proven that he will get whatever he wants without regard to life, limb, or the assent of Congress. Surely if he wants to conquer another country, he can get himself re-elected without so much as a popcorn fart of consideration for the rule of law or the wishes of the people. He has proven time and again that whatever he decides to do is perfectly legal as long as it is in the name of national security (again an old excuse used by lawbreaking presidents in the past). He can get away with it.

Only if we let him.

I've got a cold or allergies or something - I've been sneezing and blowing my nose since Friday. I usually deal with these occasional inconveniences by taking a zinc tablet, extra vitamins, lots of water and toughing it out. But last night after a five-sneeze explosion that set off a car alarm, I went and got some NyQuil. I normally stay away from those kind of medicines since they contain alcohol, and I don't drink. But I figured what the hell, and last night before I went to bed I took a dose and went to sleep.

I've also been having some trouble with my main phone line. I have two lines; one for regular calls and another for the computer. The main line has been acting up, so I hooked up an old red dial phone to the compuer line in case I needed to make a call while the main line was on the fritz.

At 3:44 a.m. I was awakened by a ringing telephone. It was not the phone on the bedside table but the one in the study hooked up to the computer line. I stumbled through the dark into the study.

ME: (groggily) Hullo?

CALLER: (self-assured female voice) So, when are you leaving?

ME: I think you have the wrong number.

CALLER: No, I don't. Did I wake you up?

ME: No, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway. What number did you dial?

CALLER: (brief pause) Is Scott there?

ME: No. I don't know anyone named Scott.

CALLER: (another brief pause) Oh, I'm sorry. (click)

I went back to bed and had some very interesting dreams, and when I got up, I wondered if the phone call was just part of it. If it was, it was the only dream I remembered.

Better living through chemistry.

I'm glad to welcome Greg and News from the Sixth Borough to the blogroll. Greg has been a commenter here since the beginning and always had something good and sharp to add to the conversation, and now he's got his own blog up and running from here in Miami.

For those of you who don't know, Miami has long been referred to as the sixth borough of New York City because every winter it seemed that everyone up there would head down here. (When I was at the University of Miami in the early '70's, it seemed that every car in the Mahoney Hall parking lot had New York plates.) Hence, I assume, Greg's apropos title of his blog. At any rate, I'm glad to have him with us and I look forward to sharing the news and views from here with him - and you.

PS: Thanks to andante at Collective Sigh for the lead.

Former Illinois Senator Adlai E. Stevenson III has a great op-ed piece in today's New York Times.

Intelligence failures are to blame, so we are told, for the tragedy of 9/11 and the unfolding catastrophe in Iraq. If the Bush administration had heeded its intelligence agencies, say its opponents, it might have prevented the 9/11 attacks and avoided its mishaps in Iraq. Administration officials, meanwhile, say that their intelligence was either not accurate or not "actionable." This finger-pointing reflects misconceptions about the nature of intelligence — and suggests an intelligence failure of a different sort.

[edit]

Before 9/11, neoconservatives like Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Vice President Dick Cheney inhabited a world of contending great powers in which force and technology were transcendent. Terrorists armed with box cutters — and now Iraqis resisting the occupation — have exploded their fantasy. The failures of the Bush administration are not those of foreign intelligence but of a cerebral sort of intelligence.

In other words, all the spying and phone taps and clandestine IMF stuff doesn't mean shit if you're too fucking dumb to put the pieces together.

When Senator Stevenson's father ran for president against Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, the Republicans said he was too much of an "egghead" to be president, and they convinced the country that we didn't need an intellectual in the Oval Office. And they've been running on that theme ever since.

I mean the automobile - I'm way beyond 40.

On April 17, 1964, the Ford Motor Company unveiled their new car, the Mustang, at the opening of the New York Worlds Fair at Flushing Meadow. It sold like crazy - over 600,000 in the first year alone - and changed the face of the American automotive scene. Just like the Beatles changed American popular music two months before when they arrived in New York, this car got us out of the 1950's. It was labeled as a "sports car," which raised the hackles of the true sports car enthusiast since they believe that a sports car is a two-seater with a powerful engine and tightly-sprung suspension. The original Mustang had room for four, a small six-cylinder engine, and the same suspension as the compact Ford Falcon; after all, the Mustang was a Falcon with a different body. But image was everything, and the long hood/short deck and clean lines made the car look "sporty," and it was inexpensive - $2,300 got you a well-equipped version - and it had an option list that meant you could trick it out for a secretary or a teenager.

I have picture somewhere of me standing next to my first Mustang taken back in the spring of 1969. There I was in my long hair, fringe jacket, and boots at the end of my sophomore year in high school. (I'm glad I can't post that picture; some things are just not meant for publication.) But I do have a picture of my current Mustang.

Happy birthday, Mustang - you're in better shape than a lot of other forty-somethings.

Update: blunted via the comments tips me off to the next generation of Mustang. All I can say is Woof! And the previous owner of my Mustang tells me that the car was originally purchased to be the parade car for the Queen of the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, Michigan in 1995. Whether that's true or not remains a mystery. (And no snide comments about it still transporting a queen...)

First, let me officially welcome some new members to the blogroll:

Basket Full of Puppies which takes off-the-wall humor and amusement to new heights

Billmon / Whiskey Bar, who needs no introduction to many bloggers, but stop by for a shot and a pretzel. [Update: Billmon is taking a hiatus. But he still has good links and good archived material.]

BlogWood: Norwood's Fair and Balanced Nattering chimes in from the West Coast - of Florida, that is. We're growing a good crop of bloggers down here this year.

Stella's Cup comes into her own as a new blogger and highly recommended by one of our TLC stalwart contributors, Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat. I think Steve's opinion might be slightly biased, so find out for yourself.

The Meat of the Matter got my attention by posting a two-word comment on my posting about Tax Day. I'll show him, I thought, and immediately blogrolled him. See what happens when you mess with me?

I've also added The Nation to the Newspapers and Magazines roll at the urging of My Faithful Correspondent. This magazine has been a font of progressive thought since the Civil War.

As for what else has caught my attention:

Did Dick Cheney spend time in a hospital last week? Corrente seems to think so.

Hey, if you're going to be in the NYC area on April 24th and want to help a friend, Pen-Elayne will feed you pizza if you help her pack in preparation for her move. I can't come - I'm going to be in Kansas (no, not seeing Auntie Em...)

Rook's Rant begins the 200 day countdown...

Chris has thoughts on how the election is shaping up as a referendum.

Keith is making movie plans for a little more than a year from now.

edwardpig has a good Google bomb going.

Wanda worries about our Flounder in Chief.

Upyernoz is joining Ms. Noz at a conference in the City By the Bay. What fun!

SoonerThought links to Right Wing Eye, brought to you by Planned Parenthood and their March on Washington next week. Coincidentally, my parental units will be participating in that march, along with several other representatives of Planned Parenthood of Northwest Ohio. Go get 'em!

archy tells us about another assault on education, this time in Montana in the form of mythology being taught as science.

The Fulcrum has a picture that breaks my heart.

And NTodd has a picture that reminds me that new hope and life can and will always be a part of this world, no matter how maddeningly tragic some moments are. If only...

There's a lot more to read and wonder about. Check out the live feed at correnteWire for the latest from The Liberal Coalition, and please stop by as many of them as you can. It does a heart and mind good.

From The Blade/AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry, according to intelligence officials.

Though hauntingly prescient, the CIA's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate did not yet name Osama bin Laden as a terrorist threat.

But within months the intelligence agency developed enough concern about the wealthy, Saudi-born militant to create a specific unit to track him and his followers, the officials told The Associated Press.

And in 1997, the CIA updated its intelligence estimate to ensure bin Laden appeared on its very first page as an emerging threat, cautioning that his growing movement might translate into attacks on U.S. soil, the officials said, divulging new details about the CIA's 1990s response to the terrorist threat.

The officials took the rare step Thursday of disclosing information in the closely held National Intelligence Estimates and other secret briefings to counter criticisms in a staff report released this week by the independent commission examining pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures.

That commission report accused the CIA of failing to recognize al-Qaida as a formal terrorist organization until 1999. It characterized the agency as regarding bin Laden mostly as a financier instead of a charismatic leader of the terrorist movement.

But one senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the 1997 National Intelligence Estimate "identified bin Laden and his followers and threats they were making and said it might portend attacks inside the United States." [emphasis added]

So it's not like they hadn't heard of the guy, and the agencies were at least beginning to take steps to track him. Now add that to the attitude of the incoming Bush administration that anything done by those evildoers in the Clinton White House was not to be believed, and you have the makings of a real disconnect. (See Joe Conason's piece in Salon.com about how the right wing, including Ashcroft, is pre-emptively attacking the 9/11 commission for political cover.)

This raises an interesting question. If Al Gore had been president in the spring and summer of 2001, and assuming he had kept many of the cabinet and agency heads from the previous eight years, would there have been any chance that his administration would have been more on the ball when the threat levels and chatter were going up?

There's going to be a delay in the Friday Blogaround today due to a software glitch; apparently blogspot.com now falls under the virus blocking software's hammer, so I can't read a majority of the blogs that would be included in the review. Stay tuned; I hope to have the problem resolved by the end of the day.

Update 4:15 p.m. - Blogspot.com has been released from Purgatory (for those of you who believe in that sort of thing). Yip yah! The Friday Blogaround will appear ere the iron tongue of midnight doth toll twelve.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- A business owner opening a shipment of 400 bird cages sent from China got an additional order he didn't expect - a severely undernourished cat.

The female cat, named China by animal service staff members, tips the scale at just over 3 pounds after being trapped in the container for the nearly monthlong trip.

Norman Goldberg, owner of Quality Discount Cages, said he discovered the cat Friday when he received the shipment at his warehouse. Several cardboard boxes holding cages had been chewed up.

"I opened it up, and out jumped the cat," he said.

The traveling feline apparently began her journey at a factory in China where workers started loading the parrot cages into a 40-foot metal container the first week of March, Goldberg said. The container arrived by boat in Los Angeles on April 1 and then traveled by rail to Tampa.

Well, that's not exactly what he said. But it's close.

What is right, and what is terribly important and engaging, is the genuine idealism that informs George Bush's basic policy decisions. He embodies and gives voice to the belief that goes back to the very founding of this nation -- that America's historic role is to demonstrate the blessings of freedom here at home, to be the bulwark of freedom in the world and to share the gift of freedom as widely as possible.

[edit]

All this is to the good. But by themselves, these qualities do not suffice for the presidency in times as troubled as these. The public also expects prudent judgment, candor and enough attention to the complexity of real-world choices to sustain confidence that the leader is up to the challenge.

And here Bush failed as completely as he succeeded in projecting those other attributes of leadership.

The failures came whenever he was asked substantive questions about pending or past decisions. My Post colleague Mike Allen asked the question that no one in Congress, not even such leading foreign policy spokesmen as Sens. Dick Lugar and Joe Biden, has been able to get the White House to answer: Given the president's insistence that civil authority will be transferred to Iraqis come June 30, who will actually take the helm?

[edit]

Idealism is a wonderful and attractive trait in a leader. But visions unhinged from strategies and heedless of risks can lead to disasters, especially when impatience produces hasty decision making. We have seen too much of that in the Bush presidency.

Bush's new campaign slogan: "Reality? I only go there as a tourist."

Did them in January; got my refund the first week of February. Neener, neener.

From CNN:

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The U.S. Army on Wednesday dropped its remaining charges against Capt. James Yee, the Muslim chaplain once jailed on accusations of espionage while assigned as a cleric for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A reprimand issued to Yee for lesser sex-related violations was dismissed by Gen. James T. Hill, head of the Army's Southern Command in Miami.

A month ago, the Army abandoned charges of mishandling classified information, after it had postponed proceedings against Yee five times without introducing evidence of what he was supposed to have done wrong.

When Yee was jailed on espionage charges last September at a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, his lawyers were told he might face the death penalty.

[edit]

Yee's civilian defense attorney, Eugene Fidell, issued a statement saying Yee was pleased.

"At the same time, however, it is regrettable that the Army has not yet apologized for the indignities to which he was subjected -- including 76 days of unwarranted solitary confinement," Fidell said.

"We hope that higher authority will agree that an apology is overdue."

Or, as someone (can't remember who) once said after a similar episode, "Pray tell, sir; where do I go to get my good name back?"

I am no expert on the Israel/Palestinian conflict, but this just doesn't sound like the roadmap to peace:

For the first time in American diplomacy in the Middle East, Mr. Bush announced that major Jewish settlements on the West Bank had achieved the status they aimed for: rooted "facts on the ground," or, as Mr. Bush called them, "already existing major Israeli population centers." The innovative, though risky, element in Mr. Sharon's strategy was to trade his concessions in Gaza and the West Bank not to the Palestinians as part of a negotiated agreement but to the Americans, over outraged Palestinian opposition.

For Israel, the risk is that the Palestinians will now reject as imposed on them any peace plan along the lines Mr. Bush laid out, in his White House statement and a letter he gave Mr. Sharon. For the United States, the risk is that, with Arabs and Muslims already suspicious of American motives, the Bush administration will be seen as teaming with Israel to void Palestinian rights.

Mr. Bush emphasized his support for an eventual Palestinian state. He repeatedly indicated that he was merely sketching the realistic outline of any peace agreement, as suggested by past, American-brokered negotiations over issues like settlements and the right of return. But Palestinians were not mollified. [New York Times]

I think the diplomatic term for this is "pissing on the campfire."

I guess my phone number is one digit off to a doctor's office because on occasion I've gotten messages on my answering machine by people who are cancelling their physical therapy appointments or other doctors' office managers calling to get files sent over on so-and-so's x-rays. Usually I'd just erase them, but a couple of weeks ago I had five messages in one day. So I decided to change the message on the machine, getting away from the normal "Hi, you've reached [my name]. Leave a message and I'll call you back." Instead I decided to get the point across:

Please listen carefully to the following information. You have reached [my name] at [my number, including area code]. This is a private residence. If you believe you have reached this number in error, please hang up and try again. If not, leave a message. Thank you.

I figured that would get through. So when I got home last night, there were two messages. One was from a woman who was cancelling her 7:00 a.m. physical therapy appointment and the second was from Dr. Sanchez's office requesting a call back from Angie regarding the results of the angioplasty.

I'll be glad when I change phone numbers in two weeks - maybe I'll have a number that's close to a dating service for open-minded lifeguards.

I'm on Michael Moore's mailing list. Here's his latest dispatch.

Heads Up

April 14, 2004

Friends,

I have never seen a head so far up a Presidential ass (pardon my Falluja) than the one I saw last night at the "news conference" given by George W. Bush. He's still talking about finding "weapons of mass destruction" -- this time on Saddam's "turkey farm." Turkey indeed. Clearly the White House believes there are enough idiots in the 17 swing states who will buy this. I think they are in for a rude awakening.

I've been holed up for weeks in the editing room finishing my film ("Fahrenheit 911"). That's why you haven't heard from me lately. But after last night's Lyndon Johnson impersonation from the East Room -- essentially promising to send even more troops into the Iraq sinkhole -- I had to write you all a note.

First, can we stop the Orwellian language and start using the proper names for things? Those are not “contractors” in Iraq. They are not there to fix a roof or to pour concrete in a driveway. They are MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. They are there for the money, and the money is very good if you live long enough to spend it.

Halliburton is not a "company" doing business in Iraq. It is a WAR PROFITEER, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars they would have been arrested -- or worse.

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush? You closed down a friggin' weekly newspaper, you great giver of freedom and democracy! Then all hell broke loose. The paper only had 10,000 readers! Why are you smirking?

One year after we wiped the face of the Saddam statue with our American flag before yanking him down, it is now too dangerous for a single media person to go to that square in Baghdad and file a report on the wonderful one-year anniversary celebration. Of course, there is no celebration, and those brave blow-dried "embeds" can't even leave the safety of the fort in downtown Baghdad. They never actually SEE what is taking place across Iraq (most of the pictures we see on TV are shot by Arab media and some Europeans). When you watch a report "from Iraq" what you are getting is the press release handed out by the U.S. occupation force and repeated to you as "news."

I currently have two cameramen/reporters doing work for me in Iraq for my movie (unbeknownst to the Army). They are talking to soldiers and gathering the true sentiment about what is really going on. They Fed Ex the footage back to me each week. That's right, Fed Ex. Who said we haven't brought freedom to Iraq! The funniest story my guys tell me is how when they fly into Baghdad, they don't have to show a passport or go through immigration. Why not? Because they have not traveled from a foreign country -- they're coming from America TO America, a place that is ours, a new American territory called Iraq.

There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

Until then, enjoy the "pacification" of Falluja, the "containment" of Sadr City, and the next Tet Offensive – oops, I mean, "terrorist attack by a small group of Baathist loyalists" (Hahaha! I love writing those words, Baathist loyalists, it makes me sound so Peter Jennings!) -- followed by a "news conference" where we will be told that we must "stay the course" because we are "winning the hearts and minds of the people."

I'll write again soon. Don't despair. Remember, the American people are not that stupid. Sure, we can be frightened into a war, but we always come around sooner or later -- and the one way this is NOT like Vietnam is that it hasn't taken the public four long years to figure out they were lied to.

Now if Bush would just quit speaking in public and giving me more free material for my movie, I can get back to work and get it done. I've got four weeks left 'til completion.

Yours,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

Between him, Air America, and Howard Stern, the left is certainly turning up the volume. I'm not sure how much good it will do come the election - but I sure would like to go to one of their parties.

From the New York Times:

An article in the March 1 edition of The American Prospect by Elizabeth Benedict got me to thinking about writers and writing. It also got me thinking about the foundation of where I come from as a writer and what forms my expression in words.

Eighth in a Series
(Part One)
(Part Two)
(Part Three)
(Part Four)
(Part Five)
(Part Six)
(Part Seven)

Inspiration, at least with me, shows up unexpectedly. More often than not I will be doing something completely unrelated to a creative effort when all of a sudden, there is an idea which leads to a thought which then leads on to more ideas, and finally to the keyboard. There have been at least two times when such inspiration has changed the direction of my life.

In October of 1983 I was in my second year of grad school at the University of Colorado and working in the scene shop building sets. As a grad student I got to share a small office with a couple of other grad students, one of whom was a TA in an acting class. On his desk was a copy of 5th of July by Lanford Wilson, and one afternoon while waiting to go down to the shop I picked it up and started reading the play.

I'd heard of Wilson and even seen a snippet of 5th of July when Showtime filmed it with Richard Thomas and Swoozie Kurtz, but I'd never paid much attention to his work. I knew another play of his, Talley's Folly, had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979. But this play nailed me. The characters were real, their dialogue was genuine, and Wilson's ear for the rhythm of their interaction was infallible. I read the script in forty-five minutes and went to work with the story running through my head. After work I borrowed the script from my colleague, took it home, and read it again. I was both in love with the play and extremely envious of the playwright - he was writing the way I thought plays should be written. I got my hands on every play of Wilson's that I could find. It turned out to be a lot; Lanford Wilson was (and still is) a very prolific writer. I read ten of his plays - everything from little one-acts to Broadway productions - over the next couple of weeks. No two plays were alike, yet it was clear they were all from the same voice, and while the characters were wildly different, they were all honest and strong. I was about to start reading the next batch when my advisor stopped by one day to ask if I'd given any thought to my plans for coming up with a topic for my dissertation.

Frankly, I hadn't. I had no idea what topic I would research, knowing that whatever I chose would be with me for the rest of my scholarly life. I'd thought about looking into a study of the evolution of realistic drama starting with August Strindberg, but I didn't speak Swedish and Strindberg was a decidedly unhumorous playwright. And then, thumbing through another collection of Wilson plays, I noticed that most if not all of the plays had been originally directed by Marshall W. Mason. Hmm. I looked through the other plays, and there he was again; 5th of July, Talley's Folly, Hot l Baltimore...all directed by Marshall W. Mason. And that, as they say, is when the light came on. A week later I submitted a proposal to my doctoral advisor that I would study how a playwright and director work together and use the works of Lanford Wilson and Marshall W. Mason as my model.

For the next few years I was immersed in the plays and productions of Lanford Wilson. I directed a production of 5th of July at a community theatre, traveled to New York four times to meet with them, see their plays, and talk to other actors and directors about working with them. One such trip also launched my first foray into writing my first play since The Hunter.

I was sitting in the New York Public Library's Lincoln Center branch waiting for the copier to finish the clipping file of reviews of Wilson's plays. Out of boredom I thumbed through a thick book, a directory of New York actors. I stopped on the second page. There was the picture of a guy I'd gone to St. George's with. I hadn't seen him since 1968, but there he was, looking pretty much as he had eighteen years before. His phone number was listed, I jotted it down, and when I got back to where I was staying in Greenwich Village, I called him. After the usual exchange of "Wow, you remember me," we got together for lunch and spent three hours catching up, telling tales about our lives since those days and reliving the horrors of that freshman year. When I got back to Boulder, that three-hour meeting became the basis of Dark Twist, the story of two former classmates at a New England boarding school who return to become teachers at that school. They relive their time together; healing some old wounds, making some new ones, and coming to terms with themselves and their past.

When Dark Twist was produced, I wondered if after all the years of reading the plays of Lanford Wilson I was about to see a pale imitation of his writing with my own name on it. But Robert Anderson, who wrote Tea and Sympathy, once noted that while original ideas may be few and far between, every voice is unique. So is inspiration, no matter where it comes from. After all, Lanford Wilson hadn't gone to St. George's.

I wasn't able to tune into Bush's press conference last night until forty-five minutes into it; just in time to learn that we had found "fifty tons of mustard gas on a turkey farm" in Libya. (So where was the mayo?) And it went downhill from there.

My friend Brian said he listened to the whole sorry mess. It reminded of him of the dorky guy applying for a job for which he is way underqualified, answering simple questions with disjointed thoughts jumbled together in a string of dependant clauses followed by campaign slogans. There were no real answers to specific questions; for example, who's going to take over Iraq on June 30. "You'll see," is what you tell a five-year-old who keeps bugging his parents for a pony. It is not the answer to a question on international relations. And he fumbled the basic interview question that everyone gets - what's your biggest mistake? The answer is that you'll win a lot more support if you own up honestly to making an honest error, learning from it, putting it behind you, and going on.

I'm sure that Bush's supporters think he really rung the bell; someone on NPR said that Bush's poll numbers will go up after his "strong performance." But after hearing excerpts and reading some of the answers, it's clear that this is a man who can't think on his feet without looking at his notes. And it makes me want to ask my friends who are Bush supporters (I have a few, surprisingly) how they can honestly listen to this man and entrust their life, their fortune, and their future to somone who can't put together a coherent paragraph.

But at least he didn't lie about his sex life.

What we need in the Defense Department is not Donald Rumsfeld but Donald Trump.

What happened recently was that one Washington institution quoted another to ask a third about accountability. The questioner was PBS's Jim Lehrer, who cited the late James Reston of The New York Times to ask Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld why no one in Washington ever resigns for just being wrong. Rumsfeld, oozing cockiness, turned the personal into the theoretical and waltzed away from the question. I don't blame him. If, say, a Japanese government had performed as badly as the Bush administration has, there would be no one left to turn out the lights.

In his questioning of Rumsfeld, the nimble Lehrer brought up Lord Carrington, the British defense minister at the time Argentina seized the Falkland Islands. Carrington admitted that he had underestimated the threat, and his resignation was therefore in order. If Rumsfeld had applied that rule to himself, he would be thrice gone -- once for Sept. 11, once for the absence of WMD in Iraq and once more for not having enough troops in Iraq. If he were his own subordinate, he would fire himself.

But from the president on down, no one in the Bush administration ever admits a mistake or concedes having been wrong. Vice President Dick Cheney, whose slogan should be ''Wrong Where It Matters,'' nonetheless takes to the stump to lambaste John Kerry. After all, Cheney is the very man who warned us, assured us, promised us that we must go to war with Iraq because, among other things, that nation had an ongoing nuclear-weapons program. None has yet been found -- and no apology from Cheney has yet been issued. He was mistaken, or dishonest. We await his choice.

In his interview with Lehrer, Rumsfeld made the point that the United States does not have the British cabinet system or the Japanese culture regarding shame and accountability. For all the talk about the buck stopping ''here,'' it usually never stops at all -- the only example in physics of perpetual motion. But demanding resignations begs the question. It is not heads the American people want; it is humility.

That is what's so lacking in the Bush administration. The real reason -- the terribly secret reason -- why the administration was oh-so-slow to recognize the terrorist threat was precisely the quality so abundant in Rumsfeld: smugness. The Bushies knew it all. The very fact that the Clinton team told them to make terrorism their job No. 1 led them to denigrate it: What did those Clinton jerks know?

Instead, the Bush team had its eye on the ball -- missile defense and, of course, China and Russia. Missile defense was considered crucial, and opposition to this Reagan-era program was deemed both ideological and shortsighted. But it turned out that the ''missiles'' that struck the United States had the logos of American Airlines and United Airlines on their fuselages, and no Star Wars system could have stopped them. It would have taken hard spy work and, as they say, boots on the ground in Afghanistan. It would have taken a little humility.

That quality is precisely what commended the not-terribly-humble Richard Clarke to many of the 9/11 families: He apologized. He was sorry for what happened and sorry that, somehow, his efforts had not managed to avert a calamity. Lehrer cited Clarke's example to Rumsfeld, who just didn't get it.

In fact, he recited all the reasons why 9/11 was really not his fault -- or anyone else's in the Bush administration. In spirit, he echoed President Bush, who once said, ''Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.'' Yes, and had Custer known that he was attacking so many Indians, he might have chosen to wash his hair that day instead.

What is so perturbing about this administration is not that no one of note has resigned or been fired -- and some of them certainty deserve the ax -- but that there is not the slightest hint that anyone (except Powell) appreciates that mistakes were made not out of sheer bad luck, but because the assumptions, driven by ideology, were so bad.

Terrorism, not missile defense, should have been the top priority. Al Qaeda, not Iraq, was and remains the threat. (That explains why Hussein is in jail while bin Laden is still on the loose, having slipped the noose in Afghanistan because the Pentagon left the job to locals.)

Iraq was going to be a cakewalk -- the Middle Eastern version of the liberation of Paris -- and somehow that has not happened. In another country, some officials would quit in shame. In the United States, they can't even quit being smug. [Richard Cohen]

All it takes is "You're fired."

John Kerry has fought opponents more vitriolic than Karl Rove, according to Don Payne in Salon.com. And won.

Traitor. Two-faced. Aloof. Elitist. Sixties radical. Tax-and-spend liberal. Spoiled aristocrat. These are the familiar charges leveled against Sen. John Kerry. But they weren't invented by the Bush campaign. They're the same charges he has had to endure as long as he has run for office in Massachusetts. And in every race but one, his first, he took on his critics and won.

While President Bush and the country were enduring an awful week of hearings about 9/11 intelligence failures, and of widespread death and chaos in Iraq, Kerry did not join the fray. Instead he delivered a curiously timed economics speech. In not capitalizing on the disasters rocking the Bush administration, Kerry was, I hope, invoking the rule that in politics one should never commit homicide on an opponent who is committing suicide. Moreover, no one should have expected the Vietnam veteran to make political hay over the death of American soldiers. Even as the bloody violence in Iraq led critics, chief among them Kerry's Senate seat mate Ted Kennedy, to declare Iraq was becoming Bush's Vietnam, Bush campaign strategists were trying to use Vietnam against Kerry, rehashing old allegations that the decorated veteran's opposition to the war in which he heroically served was somehow unpatriotic, or worse.

But Kerry has endured bad weeks before, and the Vietnam smear campaign in particular isn't likely to work. Such strategies have been tried, and have failed, in virtually every race Kerry has ever run for public office. It's worth comparing Kerry with his fellow Massachussetts Democrat Michael Dukakis to understand why Kerry is more likely to prevail. For Kerry, unlike Dukakis, Massachusetts was a crucible that readied him for the national battle ahead. Dukakis' toughest fights were primaries. Kerry has had to run in both difficult primaries and general elections. In every case, he seems to need to feel the shape and impact of the attacks before he acts, which frustrates supporters who panic in the heat of battle and expect Kerry to act precipitously. But as soon as Kerry judges that the charges he's facing are similar to those he has faced before, he and those who have been with him know what to do, almost by instinct -- even if they disappoint the Beltway by not responding in the next e-mail.

Kerry's election is by no means certain, but he will not lose because he was thrown off balance by what will be hurled at him in the months ahead.

To paraphrase what the immortal Immanuel Kant might have said about Karl Rove: "Let's let him sweat."

From Salon.com:

Former Rep. Bob Barr is trying to revive a $30 million defamation suit against former President Clinton, Democratic political adviser James Carville and pornographer Larry Flynt.

The Georgia Republican alleges the three conspired to smear him by publishing embarrassing information about his private life in Flynt's Hustler magazine as retaliation for his outspoken role in the impeachment proceedings against Clinton.

The arguments Monday in front of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit focused on whether Barr had met a deadline to file his case. A lower federal court had dismissed the case in March 2003, ruling the alleged conspiracy occurred more than the allowable three years before Barr brought the lawsuit in 2002.

Barr's attorneys argued the 1999 publication of the article in Hustler was within the three years, but the alleged conspiracy they claim would have occurred earlier. Barr didn't know everything that was going on until he saw the article in print, they said.

[edit]

Clinton's attorney, Suzanne Woods, cautioned the judges not to award a defamation prize based on how factual information was obtained, saying it would create a "very large loophole" for public officials to file more defamation claims against media outlets.

Carville's attorney, William Alden McDaniel Jr., has called the allegations against his client "absolute horse manure."

"They don't have one shred of evidence James Carville ever saw any FBI file," McDaniel said. "These people are delusional."

Thrice-married Mr. Barr, as you will recall, was one of the sponsors of the Defense of Marriage Act. Sometimes irony goes way beyond lightspeed into a cosmic plane.

Did you ever go to the arcade and play the game where gophers pop up out of the holes and you have to smash them with a hammer before they hide and pop up somewhere else? Well, that seems to be the game we're playing in Iraq, according to Paul Krugman.

Again and again, administration officials have insisted that some particular evildoer is causing all our problems. Last July they confidently predicted an end to the insurgency after Saddam's sons were killed. In December, they predicted an end to the insurgency after capturing Saddam himself. Six weeks ago — was it only six weeks? — Al Qaeda was orchestrating the insurgency, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the root of all evil. The obvious point that we're facing widespread religious and nationalist resentment in Iraq, which is exploited but not caused by the bad guy du jour, never seems to sink in.

The situation in Falluja seems to have been greatly exacerbated by tough-guy posturing and wishful thinking. According to The Jerusalem Post, after the murder and mutilation of American contractors, Mr. Bush told officials that "I want heads to roll." Didn't someone warn him of the likely consequences of attempting to carry out a manhunt in a hostile, densely populated urban area?

And now we have a new villain. Yesterday Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez declared that "the mission of the U.S. forces is to kill or capture Moktada al-Sadr." If and when they do, we'll hear once again that we've turned the corner. Does anyone believe it?

When will we learn that we're not going to end the mess in Iraq by getting bad guys? There are always new bad guys to take their place. And let's can the rhetoric about staying the course. In fact, we desperately need a change in course.

I'm also reminded of the deranged Bill Murray in Caddyshack. And you'll remember that in that story, the gopher won.

Steve nails it.

You know what creek you're up when Pat Buchanan goes off the reservation.

''No one knows how America's occupation of Iraq will play out. Optimists say this will be like Germany and Japan after World War II. . . . Pessimists point to Lebanon and Israel's invasion of 1982. Put me down among the pessimists. I think Brer Rabbit just hit the tar baby.'' So I wrote, a year ago, as our tanks rolled into Baghdad.

The brutalization of four Americans in Fallujah and the upsurge in gun battles across the country suggest that we did indeed hit the tar baby when the 3rd Infantry Division crossed the Line of Demarcation.

Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. Saddam Hussein had no role in 9/11, no ties to al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction -- the programmed liars of the Iraqi National Congress notwithstanding. We all know it now.

Even State Secretary Colin Powell is saying that the case for war that he made to the United Nations was based on bad intelligence and that he might have argued differently in the war Cabinet had he known it. Nevertheless, as Dean Rusk, the state secretary under President John F. Kennedy, used to say, "We are there, and we are committed.''

What Fallujah and the Shi'ite attacks tell us is that failure is now an option. We have not pacified the Sunni Triangle. In towns such as Fallujah, Americans are at greater risk than Israelis in Gaza. Even before the radical Shi'ites clashed with our troops in Baghdad, geostrategist Anthony Cordesman was warning that defense officials were telling him, New combatants are emerging as fast as we kill or capture the old ones.''

But if the Iraqi resistance is recruiting fighters faster than we kill or capture them, and Shi'ites are joining the resistance, and we are supposed to be drawing down our troop levels and handing over power to Iraqis, how do we win?

We cannot. Either we accept the possibility of defeat, or adopt the McCain option: more boots on the ground, more divisions in Iraq. In Gen. Douglas MacArthur's words, as he suddenly encountered Chinese troops as he marched to the Yalu, it is "an entirely new war.'' [Miami Herald.]

Editor's Note: The Miami Herald now requires "free" registration to gain access beyond their front page. This is a growing trend among the big dailies, and I'm loath to sign up for spam. But it's better than having to pay for it like at The Albuquerque Journal or Der Volkischer Beobachter (The Wall Street Journal). I'll continue to provide a link to the articles I glean from those papers that require registration and leave it up to you to decide if you want to register.

George W. Bush is a man of deep religious faith. Fine. As John Lennon noted, "whatever gets you through the night." But it takes on another level when your decisions and views as president are seen through the lens colored with religious overtones. And it's dangerous.

According to a new book The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty by Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer, it is faith that drives Mr. Bush to do what he does. In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times (thanks, Scout)

"George sees this as a religious war," one family member told us. "He doesn't have a PC view of this war. His view is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know."

Family friend Franklin Graham told us: "The president is not stupid. The people who attacked this country did it in the name of their religion. He's made it clear that we are not at war with Islam. But he understands the implications of what is going on and the spiritual dimensions."

Just a little reminder to Mr. Bush and Mr. Graham: take a look at most of the conflicts in the world today. What is at the root of them? Bingo. In fact, go back through history and make a little list of all the wars in the world that were not based on religion. It's pretty short.

The Schweizers note that religion has been a part of the presidential millieu since the beginning of the country:

American presidents have often turned to their faith and God during a time of crisis. Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln sought guidance through prayer and scripture reading. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Reagan frequently spoke about God when trying to understand world events around them. President Bush, far from representing a radical break from this tradition, fits comfortably into it.

Even those who don't share Bush's religious convictions should see them as a good thing. His faith compels him to wrestle with ethical questions that less religious men might simply ignore. And his strong faith offers us visible guideposts by which we can evaluate his performance as president. Find me a commander in chief who lacks core convictions rooted in something greater than himself, and you'll have a leader who lacks an identifiable moral compass and will, accordingly, be prone to drift off course.

When Bill Clinton was going through the throes of impeachment, we heard a lot of oration from the Right about his lack of "moral leadership" and how he was "letting us down" through his human failings. I have looked pretty carefully through the Constitution regarding the duties of the President. There's a lot about commander in chief of the armed forces and so on, but that part about moral leadership isn't there. Perhaps it goes without saying that the person we elect to be the chief executive of our government would be a person of intelligence and magnimity, but to put the mantle of moral leadership on top is to go beyond the role of government. After all, FDR had his moral failings, too - he died in the presence of his mistress - yet led our country through the darkest times we have ever faced. And we have had presidents of deep religious conviction who have been terrible leaders. In the end, it is not enough to have core convictions and blindly follow them. Reality has a way of opening your eyes, and it requires a leap beyond faith to accept it.

I took the grammar quiz (thanks, Musing's Musings) and came up with:

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, I should hope so, especially after teaching high school English for four years, producing a bunch of plays, writing a bunch of articles, publishing one book, and completing a doctoral thesis. Not to mention that I am the go-to guy in my office for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Still, it's nice to have it confirmed. (I still keep a copy of Warriner's Complete Guide to English Grammar on my desk at the office; vis the answer to #1 here.)

George W. Bush likes his job. He likes the cool stuff that comes with it, too; the big 747 with all the neat things like missile defense, the armored cars, the phones you don't have to dial ("Get me Rummy on the line"), the big muscular guys packin' heat that surround him all the time, and all those adoring people that show up at parties and give him money. And he's learned the lines, too, about protecting and defending, and I think at some level he really believes that he cares about the charge that he's been given - just as long as the boring stuff like economic forecasts and troop depletion reports and all those charts and graphs don't get in the way. He likes all the fun stuff, but hates the nerdy details, even though they have to be done. His solution? Well, just like in prep school or college, he'll find some geek to do the work for him and turn it in as his own. This job is a frat boy's dream come true.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bush - and the rest of us - the reality of the job hasn't sunk in. The stories in the papers today about the details of the August 6, 2001 PDB give the impression that while the threat by Al-Qaeda was not specific to saying that they were going to hijack four airliners and fly them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Capitol on a specific date, there was enough information to raise the alert levels at airports just as they had done back during Gulf War I or in December 1999. But apparently this did not set off any alarm bells with Mr. Bush, and since he didn't seem to think it was a big deal, none of his posse did either; besides, those guys at the FBI and CIA are all a bunch of cliquey dweebs - who cares if they don't play well together? Who's up for another round of brush-clearing?

Even after the attacks and after doing the least that is required of the President of the United States, he got bored with all the details and let the geeks do the work. He was having more fun taking care of his buds. Sure, he can talk the talk, but leave the grunt work to underlings. He doesn't want to know what's going on. He doesn't really give a shit.

As we have learned, this is who the man is. He has never shown more than a passing interest in doing anything that requires sacrifice of self or fortune; there have always been people who have bailed him out, literally and figuratively, and paid the fines for him. We should have known. But once again America has proven herself to be too easily enamored of the surface elements of our presidential candidates - vis the success of Average Joe - Hunks vs. Nerds. What we need is to elect someone who will do the job and the homework that comes with it.

From the Globe and Mail

A number of religions will observe holy days this week, which prompts us to ask: Do you believe in God?

Yes: 11,202 votes (41 %)

No: 13,194 votes (48 %)

Not sure: 3,020 votes (11 %)

Total Votes: 27,416

The Faithful Correspondent participated in the poll and was "floored" by the results. I'm surprised, too.

I am almost done with my portion of the move. The books are all gone, thanks to taking two boxes over every morning on the way to the office this week, unloading them, and doing it again the next day. This morning I had four book boxes and was able to get the rest of the library, including every theatre text and every copy of The Dramatists Guild Quarterly since 1984 over to the house. It took two trips for the books alone; drive the fifteen miles there, empty the boxes, drive back, and do it again. I was also able to get in a lamp, the table the lamp sat on, the plants (including a philodendron that is old enough to drink), and the last box of clothes and boots that I don't need for work or my trip to the William Inge Festival on April 22. Still to go before the movers get here: files and financial records, this computer, telephones, perishable food, essential kitchen things like the microwave, toaster, and coffee maker, and one TV and VCR/DVD player and the cart they sit on. Oh, and Sam's urn. It's still on the piano. That will go last, I think.

I still have three weeks before I actually vacate this place, but like Sisyphus and his rock, it's never really done. I'm sure I'll forget something...

From the Sun-Sentinel:

A Coral Gables lawyer who describes himself as "an all-purpose crusader" against adult entertainment affecting children said Friday it was his complaint to the Federal Communications Commission that led the agency to fine Clear Channel Communications Inc. almost a half million dollars for airing indecent material from a Howard Stern radio program.

"It's not personal as related to Stern," said John B. Thompson, who sent a letter to the FCC on April 24, 2003, complaining about the content of a Stern program carried by WBGG (FM 105.9) in Fort Lauderdale earlier that same month and five other Clear Channel stations. "He's just part of a larger problem."

[edit]

Thompson, 52, who said he has campaigned against what he considers indecent radio and TV programming and violent video games for children since the late 1980s, maintains he is not trying to prohibit entertainment for adults or impose his own view on what children can watch.

Oh, really? Sure sounds like it to me. But behind every act of oppression there's always someone (with a lawyer in tow) who claims they're doing it for the Greater Good.

Bullshit. If anything, they're doing more damage to our society by sticking their bluenoses into the listening habits of the public than by any of the childish antics of Howard Stern. That's the real obscenity.

On this day in 1925, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published. It ends with one of the best lines in literature:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

How true.

From the New York Times:

President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.

The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.

The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.

Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks have asked the White House to make the Aug. 6 briefing memorandum public. The A.P. account of it was attributed to "several people who have seen the memo." The White House has said that nothing in it pointed specifically to the kind of attacks that actually took place a month later.

Thanks to some efficient leaking, the White House is beginning to set up their siege bunker and shoot the wounded:

Also on Friday, the White House offered evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation received instructions more than two months before the Sept. 11 attacks to increase its scrutiny of terrorist suspects inside the United States. But it is unclear what action, if any, the bureau took in response.

The disclosure appeared to signal an effort by the White House to distance itself from the F.B.I. in the debate over whether the Bush administration did enough in the summer of 2001 to deter a possible terrorist attack in the United States in the face of increased warnings.

A classified memorandum, sent around July 4, 2001, to Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, from the counterterrorism group run by Richard A. Clarke, described a series of steps it said the White House had taken to put the nation on heightened terrorist alert. Among the steps, the memorandum said, "all 56 F.B.I. field offices were also tasked in late June to go to increased surveillance and contact with informants related to known or suspected terrorists in the United States."

Parts of the White House memorandum were provided to The New York Times on Friday by a White House official seeking to bolster the public account provided a day before by Ms. Rice, who portrayed an administration aggressively working to deter a domestic terror attack.

But law enforcement officials said Friday that they believed that Ms. Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks — including her account of scores of F.B.I. investigations under way that summer into suspected Qaeda cells operating in the United States — overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of activities by the F.B.I. within American borders.

Meanwhile, Bush's minions on Capitol Hill are laying the groundwork to discredit the 9/11 commission by accusing them of having a political agenda:

The finger-pointing will probably increase next week when numerous current and former senior law enforcement officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, testify before the Sept. 11 commission. In an unusual pre-emptive strike, Mr. Ashcroft's chief spokesman on Friday accused some Democrats on the commission of having "political axes to grind" in attacking the attorney general, who oversees the F.B.I., and unfairly blaming him for law enforcement failures.

A similar accusation against the commission was also leveled by Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican with ties to the White House, in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday.

"Sadly, the commission's public hearings have allowed those with political axes to grind, like Richard Clarke, to play shamelessly to the partisan gallery of liberal special interests seeking to bring down the president," Mr. McConnell said.

Note to Senator McConnell: Re-read The Final Days by Bob Woodward. It details the last months of the Nixon Administration in 1974. You might save yourself some embarrassing moments later on.

As for immediately declassifying the August 6 PDB, well...hang on a second.

The White House on Friday put off a decision on declassifying the document at the center of the debate — the Aug. 6 briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." But the administration appeared ready to release at least portions of the document publicly in the coming days.

Want to bet that the portions they release will look favorably on Rice?

The mysterious papertrail of memos from Clarke and the FBI to their field offices gets more confusing. Nobody seems to know who told what to who:

In April 2001, the F.B.I. did send out a classified memo to its field offices directing agents to "check with their sources on any information they had relative to terrorism," said a senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. But with the level of threat warnings increasing markedly over the next several months, there is no indication that any directive went out in the late June period that was described in the memo from Mr. Clarke's office.

[edit]

At this week's appearance by Ms. Rice, several commissioners sharply questioned whether the F.B.I. and the Justice Department had done enough to act on intelligence warnings about an attack.

"We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 commission," said Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic member of the panel. "We have gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody — nobody at the F.B.I. who knows anything about a tasking of field offices" to identify the domestic threat.

The apparent miscommunication will probably be a central focus of the commission's hearing next week. Scrutiny is expected to focus in part on communication breakdowns between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. that allowed two of the 19 hijackers to live openly in San Diego despite intelligence about their terrorist ties.

When Ashcroft appears before the panel next week, you can be sure who he will blame for this screw-up: The Democrats.

Another Democratic panel member, Jamie S. Gorelick, said at Thursday's hearing that Mr. Ashcroft was briefed in the summer of 2001 about terrorist threats "but there is no evidence of any activity by him."

Such criticism led Mark Corallo, Mr. Ashcroft's chief spokesman at the Justice Department, to say Friday that "some people on the commission are seeking to score political points" by unfairly attacking Mr. Ashcroft's actions before Sept. 11.

"Some have political axes to grind" against Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Corallo said in an interview, naming Ms. Gorelick, who was the deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration; Mr. Roemer, a former congressman from Indiana, and Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor.

[edit]

Ms. Gorelick said she was surprised by Mr. Corallo's comments and puzzled by assertions that the attorney general had no knowledge of a domestic terrorist threat in 2001.

"This appears to be a debate within the administration," she said. "On the one hand, you have Dr. Rice saying that the domestic threat was being handled by the Justice Department and F.B.I., and on the other hand, you have the Justice Department saying that there did not appear to be a domestic threat to address. And that is a difference in view that we have to continue to explore."

You would think, wouldn't you, that with so much at stake in terms of protecting the country against outside attacks that everyone would be interested in getting to the truth without regard to infantile fingerpointing and such. Well, you would be wrong. More's the pity.

It's a quiet Friday afternoon, so I thought I'd try this little survey that Jeff at Speedkill found.

1: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says:

"which each preposition introduces and draw a circle around"

2: Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?

Paperclip holder

3: What is the last thing you watched on TV?

A snippet of Star Trek Deep Space Nine last night.

4: WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is:

3:45

5: Now look at the clock; what is the actual time?

3:46 (I have a calendar reminder on my Outlook to tell me to move my plants to the window ledge for the weekend.)

6: With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

CBC Radio 2 playing the first movement of Sheherezade.

7: When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

12:35 to walk to lunch at the Miami Arts Cafe with two friends.

8: Before you came to this website, what did you look at?

The website that had this survey.

9: What are you wearing?

Grey "Buzzard Central" polo shirt and black Levi's (it's casual Friday.)

10: Did you dream last night?

Yes.

11: When did you last laugh?

Just now when a colleague came in and told me something funny.

12: What is on the walls of the room you are in?

Some prints, including one of my Georgia O'Keeffe posters and a "Meet Me In Montserrat" poster.

13: Seen anything weird lately?

In Miami? Are you kidding?

14: What do you think of this quiz?

It's different.

15: What is the last film you saw?

In a theatre, Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King.

16: If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?

A 1967 Ford Country Squire.

17: Tell me something about you that I don't know.

If I told you, you'd know.

18: If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

Get rid of organized religion.

19: Do you like to dance?

Old-style ballroom foxtrot is okay. Other than that, not really.

20: George Bush: is he a power-crazy nutcase or some one who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?

Neither. He's too dumb to play dead in a cowboy movie.

21: Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

That takes a lot of imagination since I'm gay, but I'd go with Nancy.

22: Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

Bobby.

23: Would you ever consider living abroad?

Yes.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

NEW PORT RICHEY -- A 9-year-old girl was arrested and handcuffed after she was accused of stealing a rabbit and $10 from a neighbor's home, a move that some thought was too harsh.

A Pasco County sheriff's deputy read the girl her rights and took her away in the back of his patrol car.

The girl, whose name was not released, began to cry during questioning at the police station Tuesday and admitted taking Oreo the rabbit but denied taking two $5 bills and some change, according to a Pasco County Sheriff's Office report.

A deputy found the black-and-white rabbit hopping around in the girl's living room, according to the arrest report.

"Somebody entered a residence without permission and stole money and a pet rabbit. That's burglary,'' sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said. "I don't know what other explanation you need. Nine years old is enough to know right from wrong.''

The mother of the child who owns the rabbit is pressing authorities to prosecute the 9-year-old.

"This little girl needs help, and she needs to be in the system to get help for a long time,'' Ventura said.

A more common approach, said Pasco-Pinellas Public Defender Bob Dillinger, would be for the deputy to have taken a report and referred the charges to the state attorney.

"There's just a lot of other things you can do with a third-grader,'' he said. "There are alternatives other than a simple arrest.''

The girl was released to her mother from a juvenile assessment center about an hour after her arrest.

Oh, I know I'm going to sleep better knowing this hardened felon is off the streets.

Who's writing about what:

Wanda gets published in her local paper.

blogAmy is having fun with dress-up time.

Echidne of the Snakes offers advice on painting eggs.

Trish does a number on Bush's job numbers.

Respectful of Otters has a disturbing report on how the message of safe sex is not getting through.

iddybud on Clear Channel's politically motivated dismissal of Howard Stern.

Collective Sigh explains it all for you.

Pen-Elayne delays the Pizza and Packing Party until the 24th - darn, I'll be in Kansas that weekend. Then she had to wait all day for the phone guy to show up - and he never did. (I hope this is not a foreboding of what's in store for me in three weeks.)

NTodd has a new camera and has been taking some pictures of the Vermont countryside. It's a nice diversion from the horrors of the news.

Speaking of diversions, check out this portrait of W at corrente. Look very closely...

And Then...reveals more perfidy - and unmitigated gall - from the Bush administration in their dealings with veterans.

The Fulcrum has details on the "device" found in the Atlanta airport.

Jeff at Speedkill takes a rather lackadaisical survey.

Catch up with the rest of The Liberal Coalition here thanks to the live feed.

Here's a quick look at some of my other blogs that I've been checking recently:

blunted on reality reports on Operation Desert Badger.

Clareified with the Ironic Post of the Week.

So, which Famous Homosexual are you? Houston at Dancing with Myself can show you how to find out. (I was disappointed with my result.)

Folkbum reports on a recent election in Milwaukee.

Green Voicemail has a primer on avoiding military service, which takes me back to September 1970.

Gen. JC Christian wants to hear some good news from Iraq (and I hope he feels better soon).

Lisa at Kamikaze Kumquat has more on a story that breaks my heart.

Madeleine Begun Kane leads us in song.

Mary at Naked Furniture gets terse with a Pandagon commentor.

Old Fashioned Patriot parses Condi (and thanks, OFP, for linking Bark Bark Woof Woof).

South Knox Bubba acknowledges an anniversary in the computer world.

Again, I just scratched the surface here (Old English furniture polish will take care of that, by the way), but it's almost time to get to work. Happy Friday!

While everybody was focused on Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission, there was another witness who testified in private yesterday after Dr. Rice:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former President Clinton defended his counterterrorism policies in a private meeting with the Sept. 11 commission and said intelligence wasn't strong enough to justify a retaliation against al-Qaida for the 2000 bombing of a Navy ship.

Clinton met for nearly four hours with the 10-member bipartisan panel in a closed-door session shortly after the conclusion of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's public testimony, broadcast live on national television.

Commissioners described Clinton's testimony as frank and informative.[AP]

Republicans accused the former president of using the private session to launch the "stealth" candidacy of his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. William Safire was seen pacing the hall in full freak-out mode, determined to get that story.

The Faithful Correspondent sent on this point-by-point dissection from AlterNet.org of Dr. Condoleezza Rice's testimony today before the 9/11 commission. This is an excellent piece of research, taking on many of Dr. Rice's assertions, either in the past or today, and comparing them to previous testimony from her or other members of the Bush administration and showing them to be either false, misleading, or just plain wrong. One small example:

CLAIM: "One of the problems was there was really nothing that look like was going to happen inside the United States...Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaeda activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle East and North Africa...We did not have...threat information that was in any way specific enough to suggest something was coming in the United States." [responding to Gorelick]

FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon "acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States." [Sources: Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]

We had the hearings on in the office but we had so many other things going on with people trying to get things done (tomorrow's some kind of holiday...) that we didn't get to pay as much attention to it as we would have liked. The wrap-up on NPR was pretty concise. The New York Times suggests that "partisanship seeped through" in the questions of Richard Ben-Veniste and former Senator Bob Kerrey. Well, I suppose if you're trying to get straight answers from someone who had to be dragged in to testify, things are bound to get snippy, especially compared to the easy ptiches Dr. Rice got from some of the Republicans.

What was most interesting was that while there were no glaring contradictions between what Richard Clarke said two weeks ago and what Dr. Rice said today, both of them came away from there with two widely differing perceptions of just about every event before and after 9/11. The facts may prove one thing, but perception is everything, especially when you have an agenda such as get the most political mileage you can out of it. Clearly that was weighing on Dr. Rice more than Mr. Clarke. And that, unfortunately, will make the difference in the way we all perceive it and where we go from here.

Update: Howard Fineman of Newsweek comes down surprisingly hard on Dr. Rice and her boss:

Rice, in the end, is just a cog in a machine. The real political question is: how did her testimony enrich in the narrative of what the president did—or didn’t—know and do about terrorism before September 11? In an interview with Bob Woodward, Bush admitted two years ago that he didn’t have a sense of “urgency” about Al Qaeda. He said he wasn’t “on point”—wasn’t locked on a target in hunting-dog fashion.

[edit]

Already on the defensive for his leadership in the post-9/11 world—the war in Iraq grows less popular by the day—Bush now finds himself with questions to answer about his pre-9/11 leadership. He says he’s running for re-election as a “war president.” But by Rice’s own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a “war president” the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one? The election may hinge on the answer.

Gee, if Fineman is turning the torch on them, who's next?

From archy comes a link to a truly creepy column by someone named Kaye Grogan (her picture reminds me of a drag queen I once saw who was doing a really bad Dixie Carter) who suggests that

There needs to be a law passed where any person who disrespects the "Office of the Presidency" by making false accusations and spreading deliberate rumors about the president, should be charged with a felony or at the very least a high misdemeanor. President Bush has been falsely accused (with nothing concrete to back the accusations up), from being negligent in stopping the 9/11 attacks, to making up fraudulent reasons to go to war in Iraq.

She goes on and on ad nauseum, conveniently forgetting that had such a law been in place ten years ago, she and her minions would be serving time for the job I'm sure she did to the Clintons. (Not to mention the language violation of using the non-word "disrespects.")

I love it when "real Americans" are so afraid of the written and spoken word that they advocate draconian laws to bend us to their will. It emboldens us to take arms against these fascists and truly prove that what this country stands for is the inalienable right to piss people off.

Colin Powell thinks Teddy Kennedy should keep his mouth shut:

Secretary of State Colin Powell cautioned Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to be more careful in criticizing the war in Iraq after the Massachusetts Democrat called the conflict "George Bush's Vietnam.''

Kennedy "should be a little more restrained and careful in his comments because we are at war,'' Powell said Tuesday on Fox News Radio's "Tony Snow Show.''

Powell said debating the Iraq war was appropriate and an important part of American democracy. But, he said, "this is the also the time that we rally the nation behind the challenge that we face in Iraq and Afghanistan.''

Powell acknowledged that he did not see Kennedy's speech because he was in Haiti, where he met with the country's interim government. [Salon.com]

Watch out, Sen. Kennedy, or you might get a call from the FCC - I hear Sec. Powell knows someone there.

It's going to be interesting to see Condoleezza Rice on TV today in front of the 9/11 commission - and see how the right wing spins this 180-degree turn by the Bush administration. It must be galling to this most-secretive gang to have Dr. Rice not only tesitfy under oath in public, but on live network and cable TV, plus radio and internet streaming.

No matter how she does - whether its fireworks or dry as dust - I'm willing to bet that this is the point that will determine the future of this administration.

And not to sound like I'm gloating, but it's nice to see that even the smug and arrogant Bush crowd has to suck it up and play by the rules.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

A woman in Mexico gave birth to a healthy baby boy after performing a Caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife, doctors said Tuesday.

The unidentified woman, 40, who lives in a rural area without electricity, running water or sanitation and is an eight-hour drive from the nearest hospital, performed the operation when she could not deliver the baby naturally.

"She took three small glasses of hard liquor and, using a kitchen knife, sliced her abdomen in three attempts ... and delivered a male infant that breathed immediately and cried," said Dr R.F. Valle, of the Dr. Manuel Velasco Suarez Hospital in San Pablo, Mexico.

Valle reported the incident in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

Before losing consciousness, the woman told one of her children to call a local nurse for help. After the nurse stitched the wound, the mother and baby were transferred and treated by Valle and his colleagues at the nearest hospital.

Ouch.

Arianna Huffington is a blog groupie.

April 7, 2004 | I've got a confession to make. I've got a big-time crush. I'm talking weak-in-the-knees infatuation. But it's not Brad or Orlando or Colin or any of the cinematic hunks du jour who have set my heart aflutter. No, it's Atrios and Kos and Josh Micah Marshall and Kausfiles and Kevin Drum and Wonkette. Bloggers all. Yes, when it comes to the blogosphere, I'm a regular cyberslut. And I don't care who knows it. Bring on the fines, Michael Powell!

Although I've only recently stuck my toe in the fast-moving blogstream, I've been a fan -- and an advocate -- ever since bloggers took the Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond story, ran with it, and helped turn the smug Senate majority leaderinto the penitent former Senate majority leader, a bit of bloody political chum floating in a tank of hungry sharks. Simply put, blogs are the greatest breakthrough in popular journalism since Tom Paine broke onto the scene.

I remember, around the time of the Lott affair, being on a panel organized by the Hollywood Radio and Television Society. It was filled with a number of familiar talking heads, including Larry King and Sam Donaldson. We were discussing the good, the bad and the ugly of mainstream journalism. At one point I launched into a rant about all the stories that I felt were important but were not getting covered by the big media outlets.

My fellow panelists, on cue, leapt to the defense of their mainstream brethren, pointing out that many of the stories I mentioned had, in fact, been covered on TV or by the big daily papers.

And indeed they had. Sometimes in 90-second news packages and sometimes even on the front page of the New York Times -- above the fold.

But that, until the rise of the bloggers, was that. Issue noted. Let's all move on. Reporters for the big media outlets are obsessed with novelty, always moving all-too-quickly on to the next big score or the next hot get.

That's when it dawned on me: The problem isn't that the stories I care about aren't being covered; it's that they aren't being covered in the obsessive way that breaks through the din of our 500-channel universe. Because those 500 channels don't mean we get 500 times the examination and investigation of worthy news stories. It means we get the same narrow conventional-wisdom wrap-ups repeated 500 times. As in "Dean is angry."

Paradoxically, in these days of instant communication and 24-hour news channels, it's actually easier to miss information we might otherwise pay attention to. That's why we need stories to be covered and recovered and re-recovered and covered again -- until they filter up enough to become part of the cultural bloodstream.

The vast majority of mainstream journalists head in the direction the assignment desk points them. This often means just following a candidate around, or sitting in the White House press room, and then rehashing the day's schedule for their readers or viewers. Bloggers are armed with a far more effective piece of access than a White House press credential: passion.

When bloggers decide that something matters, they chomp down hard and refuse to let go. They're the true pit bulls of reporting. The only way to get them off a story is to cut off their heads (and even then you'll need to pry their jaws open). They almost all work alone, but, ironically, it's their collective effort that makes them so effective. They share their work freely, feed off one another's work, argue with each other, and add to the story dialectically.

And because blogs are ongoing and daily, indeed sometimes hourly, bloggers will often start with a small story, or a piece of one -- a contradictory quote, an unearthed document, a detail that doesn't add up -- that the big outlets would deem too minor. But it's only minor until, well, it's not. Big media can't see the forest for the trees. Until it's assembled for them by the bloggers.

I also love the open nature of the form -- the links, the research made visible, the democratic back and forth, the open archives, the big professorial messiness of it all. It reminds me of my schoolgirl days when providing the right answer wasn't enough for our teachers -- they demanded that we "show our work." Bloggers definitely show their work. It's why you don't just read blogs -- you experience them.

All of which has made the blogosphere such a vital news source in our country -- and has made me besotted with blogs. It's a crush that I'm betting will quickly progress to going steady.

I only have one question: Does the blogosphere have an ID bracelet? I sure hope so. [Salon.com]

Welcome aboard, Arianna. Stop by any time.

An article in the March 1 edition of The American Prospect by Elizabeth Benedict got me to thinking about writers and writing. It also got me thinking about the foundation of where I come from as a writer and what forms my expression in words.

Seventh in a Series
(Part One)
(Part Two)
(Part Three)
(Part Four)
(Part Five)
(Part Six)

The difference between playwriting and most other forms of creative writing is that it isn't a solo effort. For a novel or a short story, all you need is a reader. Sure, you can read the script and understand the plot and the characters, but the script is like a blueprint with all the internal workings - stage directions, costume and prop lists - included. In order for the play to be completed, you need a director, a cast, a stage, sets, lights, costumes, and an audience. And in order for the message to get across, the playwright needs to know the language of the stage.

It's a cumbersome medium. Putting on a play is hard work, and there are all those other people who have to put in their two cents; the director, the designer, the producer, and worst of all, the actors. (I once heard a designer refer to actors as "props with feet.") And they're all there with their egos and "concepts" to interpret the story the playwright has crafted. The results are sometimes surprising.

When The Hunter was written, it was my first foray into letting a work of mine go off on its own. The director was a man with very strong ideas of his own - including not allowing me to attend many of the rehearsals. I was stunned, and it led to a tense relationship between us for a while; both of us had to learn about the playwright/director relationship. (Rule Number 1: both playwright and director need to learn how to trust each other.) But when the play was finally ready for staging, I was both surprised and amazed that what I had written six months before was suddenly on the stage. Those actors were speaking my lines. The audience was listening to my words. And when it was all over, everybody clapped. I went to the director and cast afterwards and paid them the highest compliment I could think of: "It's what I meant to say."

The reviews were pretty good. Not great, but what could I expect for my first effort? One thing I found intriguing was reading reviews written by Intro To Drama students who had no idea that the playwright was a fellow student at the University of Minnesota. I learned a lot about my characters and what the play said to them - things I had no idea were in the play. I was invited to speak to a class about my play and one student asked me a very complex question about the psychological background of the main character. For a moment I tried to come up with something that sounded intelligent, but in the end I just said, "Well, I really don't know - I just wrote the play, that's all."

One of the questions most often asked of playwrights is "Why do you write plays?" (The smartass answer is that there's no heavy lifting required.) It's usually asked in terms of other forms of writing - why plays instead of novels or poetry? I can't speak for other playwrights, but it has to do with the characters. When I become acquainted with a character that I want to write about, I see them in their world and I know how I want to tell their story. Sometimes it's a play, sometimes it's not, and sometimes, like The Hunter, I can make them work in both. The format of playwriting isn't that hard, but it does require thinking in terms of the stage. What you can tell in five pages in a novel has to be distilled to an action, a line, or a monologue in a play. The audience fills in the rest, and you have to trust them - and yourself - to make it work. And sometimes you see the characters in a way that only a novel is the way to tell the story. That's the case with my current piece in progress.

The second most often-asked question of playwrights - or any author - is "Where do you get your ideas?" The answer is simple: from me. It sounds trite, but writers do write about what they know best, and that's themselves. They find something in their lives that they feel they must express and out it comes. The plays that I have written have all been about characters that are me or like me and what is important to them. And I'm not alone. Contemporary playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Neil Simon, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, and Lanford Wilson, just to name a few, have turned the stage into the psyschiatrist's couch where all the slights and turmoils of their lives are analyzed and dissected for all to see. (Not that I would compare my work for an instant to any of those writers - they are lightyears beyond my feeble efforts.) It's not unique to playwriting. Contemporary fiction and film has become character-driven, sometimes taking a plot along just to keep the action moving. I've written, at last count, four full-length plays since The Hunter, and I revised it heavily when I directed a production of it in 1984. (Don't ask - a playwright shouldn't direct his own stuff.) All of the works since then have been about characters who are trying to find themselves a place in the world and what they're supposed to do in it. That sounds like me.

Oh, one question I get asked a lot is "Why is it spelled 'playwright'?" To wright means to craft, as in "to build." Playwrights, like sculptors or blacksmiths, form something out of words and assemble them for presentation. It's merely a trick of the language that "playwright" and "playwriting" sound alike. But it's a happy coincidence.

Next time: Hearing voices.

I spent last evening at a seder hosted by some friends. I had been to seder many years ago when I was in college and I remembered some of the traditions, but it was really nice to join a family and friends in sharing this festive occasion and learning more about the ceremony.

And the food: Wow! (Or should I say "oy" in a good way?) Brisket, kugel, peppers, gefilte fish, matzo soup, horseradish...I ate way too much - which seemed to be the idea. And we had fun singing the songs. I won't pretend that I know any more Hebrew than "Mazel Tov," but I remembered the tune to "Had Gadya."

Thanks, Mel and Adele and Jonathan and Jamie. Good Pesach!

Michael Tomasky writes in The American Prospect that the White House knew far more about the possibility of a terrorist attack with airplanes than they're letting on.

When the Bush administration started hearing more intelligence noises in June and July of 2001, why didn't it -- and Rice specifically, since this was her bailiwick -- convene the same kind of daily meetings the Clinton administration had when it heard similar noise? The obvious answer, whatever she chooses to say Thursday, is that it wasn't a high priority and that facts could not make it so. And a model existed, then not even two years old, for how to avert catastrophe.

[edit]

Then there are Rice's own inconsistencies in her public statements, the transcripts of which are a gold mine of contradiction and pettifoggery. Did Clarke give the administration a counter-terrorism plan in January or not? One Condi says yes, the other says no. Did that plan include military options? Again, yes and no. Was the plan the administration finally drafted substantially different from what Clarke recommended, or about the same? On all these questions, Rice has contradicted either herself or explanations given by other administration officials. Whether Rice is asked to explain these inconsistencies, and to account for why the administration didn't kick into gear as their Clinton predecessors had done, will depend largely on 9-11 commission members Tim Roemer and Richard Ben-Veniste, who thus far have been the toughest Democratic questioners. Rice is usually a cool cucumber, and such are the ways of Washington that she'll probably receive more deference than she deserves.

[edit]

Meanwhile, remember two words: Sibel Edmonds. On March 30, Salon's excellent Eric Boehlert interviewed this former FBI translator, who told him that she had told the 9-11 commission in closed testimony that clear warnings were received throughout the spring and summer of 2001 (Bush's watch, not Clinton's) that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted. Her name has not yet crept its way into the major American newspapers (with the interesting exception of The Washington Times). But there are many mentions in the international press, so the Washington bureaus should wake up eventually.

If Edmonds's testimony is credible -- and Republican Senator Charles Grassley has described her with exactly that word -- it's one more piece of a puzzle that Richard Clarke began to solve for us two weeks ago. Somehow, his story just keeps being corroborated. Funny thing.

Or, to quote the immortal Colonel Flagg from M*A*S*H (the TV series), "Don't play dumb with me. I've been doing it a lot longer and you're not as good at it as I am."

From the Miami Herald:

TALLAHASSEE - Saying rigorous screening standards would ensure recipients ''won't be terrorists,'' Gov. Jeb Bush on Monday strongly endorsed issuing state driver's licenses to both illegal immigrants and foreign nationals who make Florida home for part of the year.

Hundreds of thousands of people could be affected by the proposal, which is currently making its way through the Florida Legislature. Sen. Rudy Garcia, a Hialeah Republican pushing the measure in the Senate, says it would enable those stuck in immigration limbo to drive with valid licenses and get insurance while they work to become citizens.

''Our roads and streets will be safer because of this,'' Garcia said, adding that the sprawling nature of most Florida cities makes owning a car a necessity, and that the state, by not giving illegal immigrants licenses, "almost tells these folks to break the law, because that's the only way they're going to be doing anything.''

Illegal immigrants wishing to obtain the licenses would have to submit to be cleared by background checks both in Florida and in their home countries. The state would rely on consular officials to sign off on background checks from abroad.

Foreign nationals who visit the state frequently to check up on homes or businesses would have to provide proof of ownership.

The driver's license question presents lawmakers with a potentially volatile election-year issue, one that could woo Hispanic voters but is also credited with helping defeat former California Gov. Gray Davis during last year's recall election.

Perhaps if they applied the same "rigorous screening standards" to every driver's license applicant in Florida, we wouldn't be rated the second-worst state behind Massachusetts for aggressive and just plain lousy driving in the country. (Massachusetts has an excuse - it's a very small state and it's crowded up there.)

Paul Krugman on the latest Bush administration's attempt to re-write science and suck up to their corporate cronies.

During the 1990's, government regulation greatly reduced mercury emissions from medical and municipal waste incineration, leaving power plants as the main problem. In 2000, the E.P.A. determined that mercury is a hazardous substance as defined by the Clean Air Act, which requires that such substances be strictly controlled. E.P.A. staff estimated that enforcing this requirement would lead to a 90 percent reduction in power-plant mercury emissions by 2008.

A few months ago, however, the Bush administration reversed this determination and proposed a "cap and trade" system for mercury that it claimed would lead to a 70 percent reduction by 2018. Other estimates suggest that the reduction would be smaller, and take longer.

For some pollutants, setting a cap on total emissions, while letting polluters buy and sell emission rights, is a cost-efficient way to reduce pollution. The cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, has been a big success. But the science clearly shows that cap-and-trade is inappropriate for mercury.

[edit]

So how did the original plan get replaced with a plan so obviously wrong on the science?

The answer is that the foxes have been put in charge of the henhouse. The head of the E.P.A.'s Office of Air and Radiation, like most key environmental appointees in the Bush administration, previously made his living representing polluting industries (which, in case you haven't guessed, are huge Republican donors). On mercury, the administration didn't just take industry views into account, it literally let the polluters write the regulations: much of the language of the administration's proposal came directly from lobbyists' memos.

Next week, they're going to hire the lead industry re-write the lead control levels; after all, they know how to turn that stuff into gold.

Please welcome some new additions to my ever-increasing blogroll;

Coprolalia, which is refreshingly bright and succinct. And if you don't know what "coprolalia" means, look it up.

Naked Furniture has been a blog I've seen in other blogrolls and I'm happy to find it as funny and clever as any blog out there. Gives me great hope that blogging is the outlet for humor and good writing that it promises to be.

The O'Franken Factor is the blog from the same-named radio program on Air America. Since the show isn't broadcast in South Florida, this is my way of supporting it and keeping up with it.

The Politburo Diktat is another clever site that NTodd told me about. The Commissar may be slightly to the right - okay, more than slightly - but a good sense of humor and good writing counts for a great deal in my blog-choices.

I've also added a feature called Calling Cards which lists visitors and references to Bark Bark Woof Woof. It's a nice way to see who's stopping by and return the visit.

TV stations have to make a tough choice when there's breaking local news, and sometimes they piss people off when they break into network programming to cover the story. This happened last Sunday night.

Some viewers irate over TV's breaking to cover wildfires

There are numerous unanswered questions about Sunday's wildfires in Miami-Dade County -- and many of them are about interrupted TV shows.

BY GLENN GARVIN

TV switchboards all over South Florida lit up Sunday night as news bulletins about wildfires in West Kendall interrupted network programming on local stations.

WPLG-ABC 10, WTVJ-NBC 6 and WFOR-CBS 4 all broke into their regular programming to show news footage of the fires sweeping toward residential areas -- and left frustrated viewers wondering what happened during the time they were away from The Ten Commandments, American Dreams and Cold Case.

WOE UNTO THE VIEWERS

The interruptions wreaked varying degrees of havoc, ranging from minor distractions during the familiar Ten Commandments (being screened on ABC for the 24th time in 25 years) to the complete obliteration of the climax of the murder-mystery Cold Case on CBS.

WSVN-Fox 7 also showed the fires -- but with three regularly scheduled news breaks per hour, it didn't have to cut into its entertainment shows.

The interruptions triggered a deluge of calls to the stations as well as The Herald, where irate viewers referred to local TV programmers as ''nasty,'' ''idiots and liars'' and ''clearly not television fans,'' among the more printable epithets.

Station executives were resigned to their fate. ''It's always a tough call when you have breaking news,'' said Lee Zimmerman, a spokesman for WFOR. "You know you're going to make some people mad. We tried to break during a local public-service-announcement spot, but there was some miscommunication. We're really sorry about it.''

BUT ALL IS NOT LOST . . .

Here's a summary of what you might have missed:

• Cold Case: Valens still has doubts about Prosser's murder and confronts Congressman Lake. He breaks down and admits that he accidentally killed Prosser during a confrontation in an emergency stairwell that night back in 1992. Prosser told him she had found out about his incestuous relationship with his sister, but she still wanted to get married. When she tried to hug him, the agitated Lake pushed her away, and she fell down the stairs, striking her head on a pipe. But the congressman hasn't been given a Miranda warning, so his confession is inadmissible in court, and he gets into his car and drives off.

• American Dreams: Jack, who's running for city council, is visited by his priest. The priest confronts Jack about the fact that his son J.J. has impregnated his fiancée without marrying her. The parishioners won't like it, the priest says.

• The Ten Commandments: Moses parts the Red Sea and leads the Jews out of Egypt.

Good thing they brought me up to speed on The Ten Commandments...I was wondering what happened.

Congratulations to Michael D. Sallah and Mitch Weiss of The Blade for winning the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism for their series Buried Secrets, Brutal Truth about the Tiger Force massacres in Viet Nam in 1967. (Bark Bark Woof Woof blogged about it back in November 12, 2003.)

And congratulations to Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Miami Herald for his Pulitzer Prize in commentary writing. Mr. Pitts, often linked here, is one of the best writers in the business.

[Update: Proofread, Bobby, proofread.]

From Pen-Elayne comes a link to this story in the Washington Post about a school district that has removed the film 1776 from the curriculum because "of sexual innuendo in a conversation between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson." No, not becuase they're cruising each other (thanks for that image...).

Jefferson is balking at staying in Philadelphia to write the declaration and protests to Adams: "I've not seen my wife in six months."

Adams responds, "You write 10 times better than any man in Congress, including me. For a man of only 33 years, you possess a happy talent for composition and a remarkable felicity of expression. Now, will you be a patriot . . . or a lover?"

Jefferson, clearly preferring the latter, says he "burns" for his wife, at home in Virginia.

As everyone knows, Jefferson gave in and penned the nation's divorce decree from the British. But some Fairfax students won't see the fictional account of that history, now that the county's social studies coordinator has reviewed the film at the request of a middle school principal and deemed it inappropriate.

"I watched the video," coordinator Sara Shoob said. "There's some sexual innuendo and language, and when you're talking about the Declaration of Independence, that does not have to be part of your discussion."

Oh, yeah? Where do you think that bit about "pursuit of happiness" came from?

From CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S.-led coalition plans to execute a months-old arrest warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite cleric who in recent weeks has incited violence against the United States and called the September 11, 2001, attacks a gift from God, coalition spokesman Dan Senor said Monday.

Yeah, that should really calm things down.

From the Miami Herald:

John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, holds a wide but not necessarily comfortable lead over President Bush among Hispanic voters nationwide, giving both sides room to maneuver within that critical constituency, according to a new poll.

Results of The Herald/Zogby International Hispanic Poll foreshadow an aggressive outreach effort by both campaigns as they seek to woo a coveted voting bloc that has the potential to tip key battleground states such as Florida, New Mexico and Arizona.

The results also reflect national surveys that have found that, with eight months to go before the election, voters of all backgrounds remain polarized.

"The Hispanic vote is borderline for Kerry and it's borderline for the president," said pollster John Zogby, who conducted the survey of 1,000 likely voters. "Nothing is going to make this one easy to predict."

Kerry, who secured the nomination just last month, holds an apparently cushy 58 percent to 33 percent lead over Bush among voters who identify themselves as Hispanic. But the survey reveals potential hurdles for the senator from Massachusetts. Strategists say he must keep Bush's support among Hispanic Americans to less than 35 percent if he is to have a shot at defeating the president.

Bush narrowly secured the White House in 2000 in part by chewing into the traditionally Democratic Hispanic base and drawing 35 percent of its vote. Although Cuban Americans in South Florida are overwhelmingly Republican, Hispanics with roots in other Latin American countries tend to vote Democratic.

Encouraged by the 2000 numbers - and the presence in Florida of Bush's popular younger brother in the governor's mansion - Republicans are seeking to boost Bush's standing among Hispanic Americans to 40 percent this year, with Bush hitting hard on conservative issues that play well with Hispanics, such as family values and religion.

It's no surprise that Bush leads with the Cuban American community here in South Florida. The Republicans could run a complete moron for president and he'd still win that vote. (Oh, wait...)

On another level, does this mean that New Mexico governor Bill Richardson is still in the running for the veep slot?

From the Detroit Free Press/AP:

Bush loyalists pack Iraq press office

April 4, 2004 | BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq.

Dan Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican who's now Energy Secretary, heads the office packed with former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staffers.

One-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq a top concern. Senor and others inside the coalition say they follow strict guidelines that steer clear of politics.

One of the main goals of the Office of Strategic Communications -- known as stratcom -- is to ensure Americans see the positive side of the Bush administration's invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where 600 U.S. soldiers have died and a deadly insurgency thrives.

[edit]

Known as the Green Room, the press office is inside coalition headquarters in the Republican Palace that used to belong to Saddam Hussein. The palace is in central Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

The office counts 21 Republicans -- 11 of whom have worked inside the Bush administration before their Iraq posting -- among its 58 U.S. civilian staffers, according to figures Senor provided.

More than half a dozen CPA officials in the press office worked on Bush's 2000 presidential campaign or are related to Bush campaign workers, according to payroll records filed with the Federal Elections Commission.

Republican figures also permeate the wider CPA staff, including top advisers to U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and the Iraqi ministries.

[edit]

Rich Galen, 57, a well-known Republican strategist, oversees the daily news releases sent directly to media outlets in the United States. Before joining the CPA press operation late last year, Galen wrote a GOP insider column and appeared on Fox News to harpoon liberal critics of Bush.

Now, he's still writing an Internet column, but he's turned it into what he calls a travelogue about Iraq. And he still appears on Fox -- but long-distance via satellite and as a CPA spokesman.

Galen has been press secretary for both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Vice President Dan Quayle during their careers. Galen's 27-year-old son, Reed, is involved in the Bush re-election effort.

Is anyone surprised by this? Didn't think so. As Josh Marshall notes, they don't call it the Republican Palace for nothin'.

Spring Break is over so it's back to a normal work schedule for me.

John Kerry's getting back on the campaign trail and not a moment too soon. Listening to Karen Hughes this morning on MTP almost made me rear-end the Corolla in front of me (NBC Channel 6 in Miami comes in at 87.7 on the FM dial here), and you can't concede Karl Rove an inch, much less two weeks.

But it looks like he's coming out swinging. Check out the full-page ad in The Week In Review section of today's (4/4/04) New York Times. It sounds like it was written by one of us, especially the line about donating $167...the price of a one-way bus ticket from Washington, D.C. to Crawford, TX.

My car club has a small group of guys that gets together on an occasional Sunday morning and takes a drive, usually out to Key Biscayne, for cafe con leche and tostado. We meet up at a local Denny's parking lot around 7:00 a.m. and go from there. It's about a fifteen mile drive up US 1 and then out the Rickenbacker Causeway and over the waters of Biscayne Bay.

The best car to take on that drive is, of course, a convertible, and even with the late-season cool front that has some of the locals shivering in jackets, I had the top down on the Mustang as I followed my Good Friend Bob in his '67 Austin Healey and Ira in his TR-6.

What made it even better was because of the change to Daylight Saving Time, the sun was just coming up as we crossed the bay. Ships were leaving the Port of Miami to the north, their silhouettes cut against the pinkish-grey horizon (was that the Queen Mary 2 off in the distance?) and the pelicans skimmed across the light chop. The drive home through Coconut Grove's Main Highway and down Old Cutler Road beneath the tunnel of banyan trees put the cap on it. It was the best Occasional Sunday Morning Drive we've had in a long time.

David Corn thinks Richard Clarke's testimony to the 9/11 commission and the tales he tells in his book Against All Enemies are devastating to the White House. But he also thinks that in doing so, Clarke becomes the target, not the messenger.

Richard Clarke did George W. Bush a big favor. That may not be how it looks to most people. But with his bestselling book, Against All Enemies, his high-profile media appearances and his bravura performance before the 9/11 commission, Clarke not only made a strong case against Bush (claiming Bush had neglected Al Qaeda before 9/11 and then undermined the effort against Osama bin Laden by invading Iraq); he provided the Bush clan a much-needed distraction: himself. Clarke, a larger-than-life career bureaucrat, presented such a sharp-edged critique of the Bush administration that he, as much as his message, became the issue. The message was difficult for the Bush administration to refute, but Bush officials and their comrades found it easy to attack the fellow carrying it. And the mudfight that ensued—whether it succeeded in discrediting Clarke or not —had a benefit for the White House: it made Clarke’s charges seem like just another round in the never-ending partisan tussles of Washington. And that helps Bush.

[edit]

For all the trouble Clarke caused Team Bush, the Bush crew might be happy to have a messenger to shoot. It’s easier than answering the 9/11 questions that remain. And if this ugly brawl over Clarke ends up causing people to view 9/11—and the work of the 9/11 commission, which supposedly is examining those summer 2001 warnings and Bush’s response to them—as just another Washington slugfest, Bush, Rice, Karl Rove and their pals will be able to smile and say (among themselves), mission accomplished. [TomPaine.com]

The basis of Mr. Corn's theory is that the public is more interested in the characters than the plot. And while that may work well in a play, it is not the issue here. And while I agree with Mr. Corn that the White House Hit Squad - something that comes with every administration (vis the trash job the Clinton pros did on Monica) - is doing unprecedent dissing on Mr. Clarke, knowing full well that Primetime Live, Dateline, Larry King, and every B-list pundit (and I'm including Wolf Blitzer) will focus on the personalities ("Just what does Condi Rice think of Dick Clarke? Dr. Phil is up next to discuss that, and later, Miss Cleo will be by to cleanse their auras"), the core issue is how badly did our government fuck up and who did it? The assumption is that the electorate has too short an attention span or is too shallow to grasp that. God help us if we really are.

I must confess that I don't read Daily Kos every day. I know he is a premiere blogger - one of the best - but I read so many blogs that he sometimes gets by me. So I missed the original post where he wrote about the four dead civilians who were attacked and mutilated in Iraq, "I felt nothing. Screw them."

He started a big debate among blogs, bloggers, and commenters in many, many places. He has now put up a post that is his way of explaining his feelings. I won't attempt to encapsulate it here - he does a fine job for himself - and it does get me thinking about how we have become a nation, with some exceptions, that is indifferent to killing.

We have sanitized it so that it is presentable. We have made it a religious experience so that we don't have to accept it as The End. We make it a part of our legal system so that it is allowable in order to get rid of the more heinous or intractable criminals among us.

Every so often, however, a killing gets our attention - Laci Peterson, Jon Benet Ramsey - and the publicity over whodunit completely overwhelms the life that was lost. It becomes the subject of the tabloids, the talk shows, a Lifetime Movie of the Week with Markie Post. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of stories like Laci Peterson that get barely a paragraph on A-16. Why? I have no earthly idea. But it bothers me. And I can see why Kos, after seeing so much death in his life, felt that the death of four men in Fallujah during a war that has taken over 600 American lives and countless (and uncounted) Iraqi lives, wonders why we are rightly horrified by that brutality and indifferent to the rest. So do I.

There's a story in the New York Times today about TV shows such as Law & Order, Whoopi, and Curb Your Enthusiasm taking sides in the political debate in this election year. Of course the conservatives are all worked up because they see this as yet another example of Hollywood's "liberal bias." They are probably going to try to get a Congressional committee to look into it.

Feh.

First, the right wing has always viewed entertainers with suspicion. In Shakespeare's day actors were seen as villains, thieves and scoundrels; the first thing Oliver Cromwell did when he overthrew Charles I in 1642 was to ban all forms of entertainment under the rubric that it was evil and anti-Christian. This of course led to theatre going underground, moving from large outdoor theatres like the Globe to small indoor spaces, which led to the imporation of such ideas as scene design and lighting. In other words, we have Cromwell to thank for the modern form of indoor "black box" theatre. When Charles II regained the throne in 1660, one of the first things he did was re-open the theatres, which led to a flourishing of popular theatre and heralded the beginning of modern topical drama. No longer were plays about gods and monsters or mythical characters in far-off lands - they were the comedies of manners like The Country Wife by William Wycherly which made fun of the people and modes of the present day. Today we'd call them sit-coms.

The fact that television today is taking on the Bush administration is interesting, but it isn't new. Every president has been red meat for the medium. It got its real jump-start with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967, and their anti-Viet Nam War and anti-LBJ views were in large part why CBS cancelled the series. Johnson, you may recall, was a Democrat, and I don't remember the Republicans objecting to the axing of the show. Of course Watergate led to all sorts of topical humor on TV, including skits on The Tonight Show and references in nearly every other show on the air. And it didn't stop there. Each president since then has been targeted. It goes without saying that Clinton got his fair share of slings and arrows during l'affaire Lewinsky. I don't recall the Republicans being too upset about that either. The president and White House - no matter who's in office - provide material that is irresistible to any writer. It would be negligent under any writer's code of conduct to ignore the soft pitches that are sent out at nearly every press conference or speech. Dan Quayle and his "potatoe" or his battle with Murphy Brown, Bill Clinton and his penis, and George W. Bush vs. the English language have all been adapted for the screen and all have entered our consciousness because of having those issues on TV in the news and in entertainment programming. Even with such serious topics as war, the economy, or social issues such as gay marriage, and abortion, it would be very hard to write any form of drama for the stage, screen, or summer camp skit without considering the real elements of political discourse as they affect us collectively and as individuals. It is the one common bond we all share, regardless of our political views. It connects with us and delivers a message.

What we as an audience do with that message is another thing entirely. It is arrogant for a writer to think he can change the world with his words alone. Many have tried and most have failed. The so-called "revolutionary theatre" movement of the 1930's died a quick death when playwrights who thought they were stirring up the masses merely got the audience worked up until the curtain fell, the lights came up, and the magic vanished. The audience didn't run out into the street screaming for revolution; they went out into the street to hail a cab and go back to their lives.

The very most a writer can hope for is planting the seed of thought in the mind. To assume more than that is folly, and for the critics to fret that today's television shows are sowing the seeds for the defeat of George W. Bush because Det. Lenny Briscoe makes a snide comment about WMD's is insulting the intelligence of the audience. What they seem to be afraid of is not Hollywood liberal bias but the dangerous chance that the audience will, after seeing their favorite character express a political viewpoint, begin to think. And thinking, as we all know in this day and age, is a revolutionary act.

I was mid-schlep with pictures and clothes this morning when the phone rang. It was my Good Friend Bob, and he volunteered to assist. So we were able to get all of the hurricane stock (by that I mean the canned goods and bottled water that all South Floridians stock up on just in case - Kop, take note), the big TV and cart, the hardware, the rest of my "art" collection, several odd pieces of furniture, and my albums (remember those?). We also went around the yard and discussed at length the landscaping possibilites, which are many and varied. The nice thing about South Florida is that just about anything will grow. That's also the problem - anything, including obnoxious plants like Brazilian pepper (aka Florida holly) and dollar weed - will grow and choke out some of the plants that should really be there. My new landlord has told me to do whatever I want to with the yard, so tomorrow I'm going to check out Home Depot and see what mischief I can get into. Bob rattled off a list of possibilities, and I hope that by Christmas I can have a yard that looks like it should - neat, well-built, and tasteful. Now if I just had a boyfriend like that...

I go back to being a schleptomaniac today - the office stuff, hurricane stock, the rest of the pictures, and whatever else I can do before I get fed up with it.

As for the Friday Blogaround, bear with me. It's going to be a little abbreviated today. But do not despair. The inestimable farmer of corrente has provided us with a wonderful device that allows you to check out all The Liberal Coalition sites that have syndication feed (and that's nearly all of them). Go to correnteWire and peruse the latest news from the gang. That allows me to give you insights to other blogs that have come to my attention recently, including:

Fellow Floridian and wry commentator blunted on reality views the news from The Land of the Mouse.

Houston at Dancing with Myself, who always has a thoughtful point.

Folkbum's Rants and Rambles is revolutionary and a comely New York Times columnist all at once.

Doug at GWBWYPGN?! is back from Boston.

Kamikaze Kumquat gives me and Sam a welcome - thank you!

Lean Left is a new one for me, but I really like their focus on peace and social concerns, which reminds me of one thing the Left has always been better at than anyone on the Right - giving a damn.

Kop and I are already planning to have lunch once he makes his move to South Florida. There's one more vote for the Democrats in Broward County.

And a note of passing; Commenter Penny gave me a link to an item from Roger Ailes that confirms that Media Whores Online has apparently closed shop. As Roger notes, it was MWO that got a lot of us into blogging in the first place. Thanks, Horse, whoever you were; your work and legacy will live on.

Okay, time to get going...See you at lunch, maybe?

I am sure that this e-mail has been bouncing around for a while, but I thought what the heck, it's April Fool's Day (italicized comments in the original):

In Honor of Stupid People

In case you needed further proof that the human race is doomed through stupidity, here are some actual label instructions on consumer goods.

On a Sears hairdryer: "Do not use while sleeping." (Damn, and that's the only time I have to do my hair.)

On a bag of Fritos: "You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside." (The shoplifter special?)

On a bar of Dial soap: "Directions: Use like regular soap." (And that would be how???....)

On some Swanson frozen dinners: "Serving suggestion: Defrost." (But, it's just a suggestion.)

On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert (printed on bottom): "Do not turn upside down." (Well...duh, a bit late, eh?)

On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: "Product will be hot after heating." (...and you thought...?)

On packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do not iron clothes on body." (But wouldn't that save me more time?)

On Boot's Childrens Cough Medicine: "Do not drive a car or operate machinery after taking this medication." (We could do a lot to reduce the rate of construction accidents if we could just get those 5-year-olds with headcolds off those forklifts.)

On Nytol Sleep Aid: "Warning: May cause drowsiness." (and...I'm taking this because...?)

On most brands of Christmas lights: "For indoor or outdoor use only." (As opposed to where?)

On a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use." (Now, somebody out there, help me on this.)

On Sainsbury's peanuts: "Warning: contains nuts." (Talk about a news flash.)

On an American Airlines packet of nuts: "Instructions: Open packet, eat nuts." (Step 3: maybe, uh...fly Delta?)

On a child's Superman costume: "Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly." (I don't blame the company. I blame the parents for this one.)

On a Swedish chainsaw: "Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals." (Oh my God! Was there a lot of this happening somewhere?)

And these are directed at the people in whom we trust the election of the next president. Holy Ned.

These are real:

Schwarzenegger takes sexual harassment course - CNN. I thought he'd already taken this class - he sure seemed to pass the lab segment...

RNC opens assault on anti-Bush groups - Complaint filed with FEC alleges collusion with Kerry campaign - CNN. And Tony Soprano is filing suit against the NRA for their pro-gun ads.

White House: Bush 'disappointed' in OPEC - CNN. "Condi, you still got some pull with those folks over at Chevron?"

Georgia Voters to Make Decision on Gay-Marriage Issue in Fall - New York Times. Now gay cousins marrying, why, that's a whole other matter...

Media Whores Online is "out to pasture."

Anyone know for how long?

From the Santa Fe New Mexican:

SPUR, Texas - "Red" Rountree shuffled into the bank and surveyed the teller windows.

He had done this twice before and knew the best way was to pick a bank within a full gas tank's drive of home, hit it early before there were too many customers and then never, ever return to that city.

He handed two manila envelopes to the teller. On the first, in red marker, was written "ROBBERY." The second envelope, he told her, was for the money.

"Are you kidding?" the teller asked the bespectacled man with nearly translucent skin and wrinkled, knotted hands.

"Hurry up and put the money in the envelope or you'll get hurt," Rountree told her.

As the teller complied, Rountree became the oldest known bank robber in U.S. history. He was 91.

Sitting in a wheelchair now at the Dickens County Correctional Center, at the edge of the Texas Plains, Rountree puts his hand to his forehead, coaxing memories from a brain fogged by age. He's 92 and is serving a 12-year sentence, the equivalent of life for someone his age.

He can't remember when he decided to rob the First American Bank in Abilene. Or even what he planned to do with the loot - $1,999. But he does have one answer.

"You want to know why I rob banks?" Rountree said. "It's fun. I feel good, awful good. I feel good for sometimes days, for sometimes hours."

From the Sun-Sentinel:

TALLAHASSEE · South Floridians pushing for a touch-screen voting paper trail are steamed about a state Senate proposal that they say runs counter to their cause.

Tucked into the 90-page proposal (SB 3004) is a decree that "a manual recount may not be conducted of undervotes on touch-screen machines," which are used in South Florida's three big counties.

There's really nothing to hand-count, since the machines don't use or produce paper ballots, explained sponsor Anna Cowin, R-Leesburg.

That's exactly the problem, say Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade county leaders and activists who want to require touch-screen machines to spit out and secure paper versions of each vote as it is cast. They say the printouts would make manual recounts meaningful and reassure voters leery of the machines.

"It is actually more than outrageous that after what happened in the 2000 presidential race, anyone in Florida would suggest that the ability of voters to have a recount in the closest elections should be eliminated," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, who is pressing for ballot printouts in federal court.

"The more appropriate response would be, 'What do we need to do to provide voters with certainty that their votes are being counted?'"

Leave it to the gang in Tallahassee to figure out yet another way to screw the voters.