Post-Modern Disassembly
At a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush, speaking about detainees who had complained of being abused, said they were "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble – that means not tell the truth." Mr. Bush meant, of course, to say dissemble, which really means to deliberately mislead or conceal. Nevertheless, he knew what he was talking about. The president may have stumbled over the pronunciation, but he's proved time and again that he's a skillful practitioner of the art.
[Bob Herbert, "Truth and Deceit", New York Times, 2 June 2005.]
Give Me a Sign….
Not that long ago, Isaac came home with word that the letters on the illuminated sign outside a church he passes on the way to his commuter-train stop had been rearranged to read "My Clits Wet Is Yours?". Loads of good, clean fun, although we notice that recent advances in church-sign technology have given us programmable displays that make tampering much more difficult. Ultimately, being an atheist, I'm convinced that God has a well-developed sense of humor, even if church fathers don't.
So, what's a person to do? Herewith a reference to a website, the "Church Sign Generator" (thanks to the ever curious Tottyland), with which I suspect my friends will have entirely too much fun.
Also, as shown, what may be my all-time favorite bit of old-timey religious wisdom. I will refrain from making further remarks using the words "kneel", "devotion", or "praise".
In: All, Curious Stuff, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Sacrifice Only When Necessary (BBA III)
In a Memorial-Day editorial, "Memorial Day/Praise bravery, seek forgiveness" (Minneapolis StarTribune, 30 May 2005), the editors of that paper share their thoughts about the implications of the "Downing Street Memo":
Nothing young Americans can do in life is more honorable than offering themselves for the defense of their nation. It requires great selflessness and sacrifice, and quite possibly the forfeiture of life itself. On Memorial Day 2005, we gather to remember all those who gave us that ultimate gift. Because they are so fresh in our minds, those who have died in Iraq make a special claim on our thoughts and our prayers.
In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.
[This continues my series of posts concerning the pre-Iraq-war actions of the US administration, and increasing awareness of those activities, as part of the The Big Brass Alliance and it's support of AfterDowningStreet.org. For more information from me, see my first posting on The Downing Street Memo: "Worth Remembering"]
Drive that F-Rod!
Thank GOD that the American Family Association has finally boycotted Ford for being "the company which has done the most to affirm and promote the homosexual lifestyle"! I KNEW that Taurus I bought always seemed a little swishy going over potholes. Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in Ford, they spell "F-Rod"? You think that's a coincidence? Not on your wholesome heterosexual life, my friend. It's the Gay Agenda Ahoy! And I for one am not stowing away on that ship.
I fully support the Christian right in going after gay people, especially gay couples, and especially those who would dare to fall in love and try to get married. Don't they know what an assault that is on traditional marriage? Why, there's a couple of gay men living a few blocks away from my wife and I, and I blame them directly for a fight that the Mrs. and I had the other day about the fact that I had lost my last paycheck at the race track. I don't know what it was but there was some sort of gay tractor beam aimed at my kitchen that I'm absolutely sure made my wife become irrational at the fact that I couldn't pay our gas bill. Reverend Wildmon, I salute you for trying to protect my marriage. We need all the help we can get.
[Paul Feig, "FINALLY!!", The Huffington Post, 1 June 2005.]
(I just love that bit about the "F-Rod"!)
Provoking Iraq (BBA II)
Allegations and indications of a pre-Iraq-war conspiracy to manufacture provocations for war continue to appear. This weekend, the London Times ("RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war", by Michael Smith, 29 May 2005) reported that
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.
US Representative John Conyers, who is already leading an effort to get the White House to answer allegations previously reported in the London Times and revealed by the "Downing Street Memo", reacted swiftly to this new report with a letter to Donald Rumsfeld seeking clarification. Read the report about the letter, and the letter itself, at The Brad Blog: "Letter Queries Rumsfeld About U.S. Military Attacks Prior to Approval of War on Iraq". John Conyers' own blog will likely also have news as it develops (and it's fun to read anyway).
[This continues my series of posts concerning the pre-Iraq-war actions of the US administration, and increasing awareness of those activities, as part of the The Big Brass Alliance and it's support of AfterDowningStreet.org. For more information from me, see my first posting on The Downing Street Memo: "Worth Remembering"]
Our Evaporating Army
Most reporting has focused on the problems of recruiting, which has fallen far short of goals over the past few months. Serious as it is, however, the recruiting shortfall could be only a temporary problem. If and when we get out of Iraq – I know, a big if and a big when – it shouldn't be too hard to find enough volunteers to maintain the Army's manpower.
Much more serious, because it would be irreversible, would be a mass exodus of mid-career military professionals. "That's essentially how we broke the professional Army we took into Vietnam," one officer told the National Journal. "At some point, people decided they could no longer weather the back-to-back deployments."
[Paul Krugman, "Too Few, Yet Too Many", The New York Times, 30 May 2005.]
Whither the Indictments?
Fed up with statements by reactionary partisans who keep managing to, um, transcend obvious truth, David Brin offered up a short list of issues, of which this was one:
Rush [Limbaugh] promised us indictments. Hunneds. Tousens. Milliuns of indictments, as soon as "honest men take over the filing cabinets" in DC. It would be an entertaining housecleaning as the "most corrupt administration in human history" (the Clintons) met justice in greater numbers than French aristos in tumbrels.
Only… a funny thing has happened on our way to the guillotines… The number of former Clinton officials indicted for actual malfeasance in office has been – after 5 years – ZERO!
It is the 1st time an 8 year administration has ever had ZERO indictable corruption revealed in its aftermath. This "black-is-white" reversal of expectation is not only deeply disappointing for those who want a good scandal-show… but is typical of Limbaughism. The railing incantations fill true believers with indignant wroth, so much so that they can evade any glimpse at actual facts. So much that they can convince themselves that a bunch of aristocrats who hold tightly to EVERY rein of government for their own enrichment, controlling nearly all media, are STILL UNDERDOGS. And honest ones, at that.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
Worth Remembering (BBA I)
I didn't write a serious memorial-day memorial piece yesterday. I welcome the day set aside for remembering the deeds of those who have fought for liberty and freedom. The challenge would have been honoring our troops' bravery and loyalty in Iraq while making it clear that the war in Iraq is neither honorable nor noble.
I remember a few decades back, during earlier struggles for civil-rights equality by blacks and by women, but continuing right on through the early days of "gay liberation", when the reactionary polemic was "[I/we/my father/uncle/grandfather] didn't fight the _____ war just so a bunch of [niggers/feminists/faggots/homos] could [whatever]!" Apparently, back then, people really believe that they fought for freedom and liberty for an America that didn't rightfully include certain groups of people.
I haven't head that approach in some time; I don't think I've head anything like it even once during the current administration's elective incursion into Iraq. I don't think it's because more people have become more inclusive, either. (Remember that the president recently felt compelled to admit, somewhat grudgingly, that atheists could indeed be "good Americans".)
Perhaps the taunt is just passé, which is fine with me. But is it possible that even the hard-core, flag-on-the-sleeve reactionaries also realize that the current debacle in Iraq is not honorable, that we are not fighting for worthwhile ideals like liberty and justice and freedom? Although they support their president with all the loyalty that they can muster, do they now realize that the President's claims of undeniable reasons for war were simply manufactured by their courageous leader, that there were no WMDs, no secret chemical plants, no link to 9/11, no imminent threat? That instead, this war satisfies some neo-conservative sense of manifest destiny and gives the administration the self-important and invincible feeling of being a "wartime administration" that is above the law?
They are not above the law, nor beyond reproach, nor absolved from judgement. If we let them pretend that they are then they will become so, and all those people who did fight the noble battles for freedom and liberty and democracy sould be really pissed off.
In the months prior to our unprovoked invasion of Iraq, we were forced to watch the spectacle as the Administration inflated the influence of a puffed-up dictator and invented rationale after rationale to justify military action. The electorate, congress, even the administration itself were bedazzled just long enough that the invasion forces rushed ahead in the expectation that their "shock and awe" campaign would be quickly greeted by cheering crowds brandishing flowers and chocolates rather than car bombs and automatic weapons. Unfortunately, our "mission accomplished" suffered a "catastrophic success", with catastrophic consequences that the administration would like to blame on Newsweek's editorial content rather than on their own naive and ill-conceived policies. We collectively saw, we collectively understood, and yet we collectively chose not to stop it — for a variety of reasons, no doubt, and with myriad consequences.
The President would like to believe that the "accountability moment" for the Iraq war passed with the 2004 election; he may if he wishes, but the rest of us needn't exhibit such ready faith.
Now comes the Downing Street Memo. Not quite the smoking gun, perhaps, but neverthelss it contains undeniably real allegations about undeniably real events and undeniably real actions. It makes a tangible assertion that the US President may have commited impeachable offences by manipulating the public disclosure of intelligence:
Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
Events surrounding the memo are summarized in a memo written by attorney John C. Bonifaz to US Representative John Conyers, Jr. A key event noted in that memo:
On May 5, 2005, you and 88 other Members of Congress submitted a letter to President Bush, asking the President to answer several questions arising from the Downing Street Memo. On May 17, 2005, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that the White House saw “no need” to respond to the letter.
The matter is serious enough, the letter maintains, that a Resolution of Inquiry into the matter is called for. Rep. Conyers is gathering signatures on a letter that is the first step towards a more formal enquiry:
Along with 88 of my colleagues, I wrote to the President requesting answers about this grave matter. Thus far, our search for the truth has been stonewalled and I need your help. I believe the American people deserve answers about this matter and should demand directly that the President tell the truth about the memo. To that end, I am asking you to sign on to a letter to the President requesting he answer the questions posed to him by 89 Members of Congress.
In support of Rep. Conyers' actions, an activist coalition quickly developed called "AfterDowningStreet.org" with the stated mission of running
a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.
This weekend, Shakespeare's Sister made her own proposal for those who support the efforts of Rep. Conyers and AfterDowningStreet.org to form a coalition of progressive (even "liberal"!) blogs to lend its weight.
Thus: The Big Brass Alliance (with additional information here).
What comes next, none of us knows, but we know what comes now: being visible and vocal. This posting is my first charge, to pass on what I know and what I think about it — my effort to presuade others to be visible and vocal.
I'd like to see Memorial Day remain a day for remembering things worth remembering.
I'm a Serial Sperm Killer
I ask you, how could I not at least notice the headline of this little Paul Waldman piece from The Gadflyer?
Stop the Sperm Massacre!
President Bush has opened my eyes to what may be the greatest tragedy currently taking place in our nation. Embryos, he has told us, are "life" that must not be destroyed. Well, actually he says they're life that must not be destroyed, unless they're already being destroyed for the purpose of giving couples kids, which is OK, but not for the purpose of curing Parkinson's, which is not OK. But you get the idea. [etc.]
Just today we were talking among ourselve about how far we've gone in returning to Medieval notions about where children come from, fast approaching the old, old notion that the wiggly little guys are actually little guys, just waiting to crawl up into a nice, cozy womb and become a somewhat bigger guy.*
So anyway, since we in the US at least seem to be regressing scientifically — no doubt in the interests of national security somehow — it comes as no surprise that zygotes are now sacred, nor will it come as a surprise when we realize that the little wiggly guys are therefore sacred, because they may contain half a human soul, at the least.
The implication, of course, is that the sin of onanism will almost certainly become a federal offense, and all us jerk offs will have to stop jerking off. I know that in my own lifetime I've killed lots of spermatozoa, enough for probably milllions of consecutive life sentences.
I can't stop, either. I know, deep in my heart, that I'm likely to continue the massacre unless someone stops me.
———-
* I'm a little loose with the historical details, but I'm only a scientist. According to Clara Pinto-Correia, author of this essay that I'm looking at right now ("Homunculus: Historiographic Misunderstandings of Preformationist Terminology"), the picture I'm describing emerged in the early seventeenth century with the "preformationist" theory, the idea that all humans had been formed at the time of creation and were hidden as tiny individuals inside the reproductive organs of one or the other gender, hence the tension between the "ovists" and "spermists". Her essay, by the way, is directed more towards discovering when the word "homunculus" was mistakenly applied to the object of the Preformationist's ideas. Fascinating stuff.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Such Language!
Doesn't It Look Like A…?
I didn't even know these were the results we'd been waiting for (until someone — who it was escapes me now — pointed it out), but now that they're here we can all be happy. It reminds me a bit of my college art teacher to whom everything with curvey lines was "vaginal", everything with straight lines was "phallic"; on alternate days he either seemed obsessive or correct.*
I think it likely that you won't want to miss the "b3ta Phallic Logo Awards" which, oddly enough, are about just what they say they are about. Fascinating.
———-
* So, for some reason, I'm put in mind of three notorious quotations of Max Vasilatos, a fellow denizen of the usenet newsgroup "soc.motss"**, well over a decade ago:
- So the bartender sez, "whaddaya have, young man?"
So I sez, "A vagina. I have a vagina." - It's not that I don't like penises. It's just that I don't like them on men.
- Dress for success: wear a white penis.
Oh! Oh! And while we're on the subject, here was the magic phrase that the women claimed was guaranteed to, um, unstiffen the resolve of over-aggressive men; simply point and exclaim: "Oh, isn't that cute! It looks exactly like a penis, only smaller!"
———-
** Okay, and while we're on the subject (briefly) of "soc.motss", my favorite from the "Best Pick-Up Lines" contest:
Shall I call you for breakfast, or just nudge you?
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation
Snowflake Collectibles
Republicans have invented a new strategy for discounting science: snowflake babies. First, Republicans opposed to the bipartisan stem-cell research bill, which passed the House on Thursday, arranged a press conference with families that have adopted frozen excess embryos, featuring 21 of the 81 snowflake babies. Then, in the afternoon, President Bush appeared at the Rose Garden for a photo op with the snowflake babies as part of a press conference on bioethics.
[Ari Berman, "Outrageous Outtakes", The Nation, 27 May 2005.]
"Snowflake Babies"! Excuse me while I gag.
I keep thinking about those tiresomely twee little Snow Babies collectibles that one can't avoid seeing in gift shops. Then I start wondering whether each little Snowflake comes with its own little Anne Geddies photograph, taken with baby's head in the middle of a giant foam snowflake.
Just too, too precious for words.
Bon Voyage Voyager
Bob Park, who writes What's New for the American Physical Society (my professional organization), isn't too happy with the new priorities for NASA's budget. Neither am I for that matter, although my reasons are somewhat different. Nevertheless, I agree with him:
SPACE: VOYAGER 1 REACHES THE LIMIT OF BUSH’S ATTENTION SPAN.
It’s been traveling for 28 years and is now 8.7 billion miles from Earth. It just reported that it has entered the region of the heliosheath, where the solar wind begins to dissipate. It may be in this region another 10 years. Its Pt-238 radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) should keep operating until about 2020. When Voyager 1 crosses that final boundary, becoming the first human artifact to enter interstellar space, Earth won’t know. Communications with Voyager will be cut off to save $4.5M of NASA’s $16.5B budget (0.025%), for Bush’s Moon/Mars "vision."
[Bob Park, What's New, 27 May 2005.]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Speaking of Science, Splenetics
Diabetes for Beginners
Tufts researchers recently reported that while the leading source of calories in the average American diet used to be from white bread, that may have changed.*
What it has changed to is sweet drinks, presumably including soft drinks sweetened with sugar and various fruit juices and drinks (even "All Natural" ones!). It's an interesting observation, and a subject that impinges on my own awareness.
Ever since I became diabetic, I try not to get most of my calories from either white bread or sweet drinks. Whereas white bread has manageable amounts of carbohydrates that I can deal with if I need to, I try to avoid them because I'd rather have them elsewhere. Don't get me wrong: I love soft, white bread. As for non-diet soft drinks — well, I might as well take sugar syrup intravenously.
This finding, as it turns out, also incapsulates my top-two rules of thumb about a diabetic diet. People who have just been diagnosed as diabetic often feel alarmed at discovering they have a chronic, life-threatening disease, and bewildered by all the advice that comes flying at them right at first. In the midst of all that confusion, what's a person to do? Where to start? What's most important?
Diabetes, simply put, is the condition some of us have whereby we don't metabolize carbohydrates very well. The problem involves insulin, a hormone that's vital to the metabolic cycle. Diabetes can come about for two, broad reasons: 1) our bodies have developed insulin resistance, so that the insulin we produce naturally isn't used efficiently; or 2) our bodies have stopped producing enough insulin, or any insulin at all, or never did produce insulin.
Since we diabetics don't metabolize carboydrates well, the single biggest move a new diabetic can make is to reduce her consumption of carbohydrates. (Not just refined sugar, mind you, but any carbohydrate.) My top-two simple steps:
- Eat less bread.
- Stop drinking sweet drinks.
Take those two steps and one has already significantly improved one's diabetic diet. (I feel so vindicated now that my 2-step program has been supported by research!) Given their prevalence in our diet, as indicated by the Tufts study, doing these two things can take some will power, but at least the rules are simple and easy to remember.
Oh, the fussing that I hear sometimes. I have more than one diabetic friend who simply "can't tolerate" the taste of diet sodas. It's infuriating, balancing a taste for sugar water against the many severe complications that can arise from uncontrolled blood sugar levels. It seems like a big step, but I discovered for myself that my perception of the taste of artificially sweetened drinks changed after a couple of weeks and I didn't mind them anymore. Giving up cigarettes was much, much harder.
All this business about sweet drinks brings to mind my own personal crusade. A few years ago it seemed a common occurence that I would go for lunch to one of my favorite fast-food establishments (it's happened at more than one), only to discover that the Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi syrup had been inadvertantly replaced with Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper. And guess what: I couldn't always tell the difference, so before I knew it I could easily have consumed a week's worth of carbohydrates in one go. I was never happy to discover this, and was likely to make quite a scene when confronted (as it were) with the uniformly stupid people behind the serving counters who said "I know" with a tone of voice that said "You're not fat, will it hurt you to drink regular for once?" The answer is "YES!" It is not an issue of vanity with me that the diet soft drinks be labelled correctly — it is a serious health issue! My most innermost Bitch Queen comes out at moments like that, as you've probably guessed.
Anyway, one of the many symptoms of having chronically high blood sugar is that the body tries to eliminate the excess sugar, therefore many diabetics pee a lot, therefore many diabetics drink a lot. (NB: we drink because we pee a lot, we don't pee a lot because we drink a lot. Truly.)
So, for those people who sometimes wonder whether they've developed diabetes, here's my simple test:
If you plan a day's outing by choosing your route based on the locations of public restrooms, see your doctor.
Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it. A person with diabetes quickly learns how cruel shop owners can be about letting "just anybody" use their restrooms.
———-
*"Preliminary Data Suggest That Soda And Sweet Drinks Are The Main Source Of Calories In American Diet", Science Daily, 27 May 2005, via Boing Boing.
Corruption Overload
The rich aren't like us — they pay less taxes.
— Peter De Vries, American author, 1910–1993
Here I always tought it was H.L. Menken — sure sounded like something he'd write — or maybe Will Rogers or Gracie Allen*, but De Vries is fine with me. I mostly liked his books, his satire was brilliant (I fondly remember Slouching Towards Kalamazoo), although he could seem awfully straight sometimes and obsessive about sex. But anyway….
When I was growing up, it was received wisdom that the rich, in addition to paying "less taxes", could easily get away with screwing people out of money as desired. The secret was this: if you were going to lose, you had to lose really big. No dinky-shit debts for which we little people would surely wind up in jail, even in the days before credit "reform".
Nope, if you were going to default on a loan, make it a really big one, then they won't throw you in jail. (Remember Neil Bush — same Bush family, yep** — and the Savings & Loan "scandal" during the Reagan/Bush years? $1.4 trillion tax-payer dollars? That scandal?) Of course, there are more modern incarnations of the same sort of thing, until recently pronounced "Enron" but which, in consideration of their recent pension shenanigans, may be pronounced "United Airlines" for awhile.
Anyway, there may be a bigger picture here. I oinly talk about big debts of rich people as an analogy, and not a terribly good one. I'm really thinking of political corruption. A lot of people seem to have learned how to do it a lot better recently than they used to.
I mean, once we had Nixon and the Watergate Plumbers and their ilk, but that was so dinky, so trivial and petty, so amateurish, and look what happened: Scandal! Impeachment! Crisis! Obviously, Nixon didn't think big enough, like a really rich person.
The latest rhetorical device these days, the formulation most used to demonstrate that one is talking about something important, is to talk about how little play it gets with the Mainstream Media. It's tiresome, really. Hear me people: tell your own stories and quite whining that the MSM isn't doing it for you.
Because they may simply be overloaded, like I am, on the corruption of this administration. That's my new theory: that this administration is really, really rich, except that they're applying the methods not to money but to power, which they grab and abuse without apparent limitation. And so, like rich people who are so rich that they are never called upon to pay their debts, the abuse of power is so great, so relentless, so manifest in myriad ways that it simply becomes overwhelming. It's like a guerilla war with continual battles breaking out everywhere, too many to fight, too many even to report on.
Who doesn't get tired of hearing each different voice trying to get out its story about some new evidence of administration corruption? There's just too much of it, too many little fires to stamp out. Maybe we need bigger fire-fighting equipment than our feet.
So here I am at the part where I offer, with stunning, ironic wit, a brilliant solution to the problem: how to denounce political corruption with a voice big enough to be heard, how to reform the systems so that it's of the people, by the people, and for the people.
But, once again, I've painted myself into a rhetorical corner and don't have a way out. Not yet, at least, but I'm working on it.
[Addendum]
AmericaBLOG quotes the NYTimes,
Democrats [in Ohio] have tried to turn the missing coins into a morality tale about the dangers of one-party government. Indeed, in Ohio it is hard to find anyone responsible for government problems who is not a Republican, since Republicans control not only the governor's office, but also the Legislature, the attorney general's office, the Supreme Court and the state auditor's office.
"One-party rule has made the Republicans much more sloppy in their corruption," said State Senator Marc Dann, a Democrat.
Shouldn't the apparently inevitable corruption one finds in "one-party government" be the biggest issue right now for the Democrats? Maybe it's the answer, the meta-issue that can sweep up all the little corruption issues into one big issue. Wouldn't it be interesting if no party could have a majority? It almost makes one long for a viable multi-party system.
———-
*A lot of people, of course, have had a lot of things to say about taxes:
- Benjamin Franklin: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
- G.H.W. Bush: "Read my lips: no new taxes."
- H.L. Menken: "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
- Leona Helmsley: "Only little people pay taxes."
- Will Rogers: "The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
**To be fair, all of the Bushes were implicated in one way or another. For instance:
Jeb Bush defaulted on a $4.56 million loan from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise, Florida. After federal regulators closed the S&L, the office building that Jeb used the $4.56 million to finance was reappraised by the regulators at $500,000, which Bush and his partners paid. The taxpayers had to pay back the remaining 4 million plus dollars.
["The Bush family and the S&L Scandal".]
Microsoft Dumps Reed
I suppose this means I'll have to dislike Microsoft a little less than before (but because of transfinite arithmatic, it doesn't mean a substantive change). I'd also like to point out to Microsoft that I'm available as a consultant, and could probably save them a little money, as if that is important to them.
When it was recently revealed that Microsoft had employed religious conservative Ralph Reed as a political consultant, it was logical to wonder if his $20,000 monthly retainer was somehow related to the company's temporary refusal to support a gay-rights bill in Olympia, which failed. Maybe the fiercely antigay crusader with the choirboy looks would be there to guide Bill Gates through a nationwide boycott of software products, as threatened by Eastside minister Ken Hutcherson.
But as Jon Stewart put it on The Daily Show: Microsoft? "Afraid of a boycott? And you call yourself a heartless monopoly!" Indeed, the company has since thumbed its nose at Hutcherson and promises to support future gay-rights legislation. It also still heartlessly rules the computer desktop.
And as for Reed, if he ever had anything to do with Microsoft's role, or lack thereof, in this state's gay-rights debate, he won't next time. He's being deleted from the Redmond software giant's payroll, two company sources say, and he likely gets his last $20,000 check this month.
[Rick Anderson, "Microsoft Deletes Ralph Reed", Seattle Weekly, 1–7 June 2005.]
Beyond that tidbit, the story does have fascinating details on offer. For example:
Microsoft sees no ethical conflicts in paying for the services, current and past, of Norquist and Reed and the earlier efforts of Abramoff, who, in e-mails obtained by probers, referred to some of his Preston Gates Ellis clients as morons, monkeys, and idiots. Once a political neophyte, Microsoft is now a D.C. power player, having spent almost $60 million since 1998 to legally purchase access and influence. Though the younger Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer last year each gave the Bush campaign $2,000 (and John Kerry nothing), and the company's political action committee gave 54 percent of its donations to Republicans ($5,000 to Bush, nothing to Kerry), the company says it backs candidates regardless of party. "Our philosophy," says spokesperson Terzano, "is that we support organizations that benefit the company and the tech industry overall."
With all the burnable dollars of Microsoft and Gates, money is bound to show up when and where it might be beneficial. In 2003–04, Microsoft's PAC gave Tom DeLay a $10,000 campaign donation, and Ballmer added $2,000, while, IRS records show, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave DeLay's Foundation for Kids $100,000. Just coincidence, say the company and the foundation.
[…]
In 2000, with Abramoff, Reed, Norquist, and lobbyists such as former Republican Party chief Haley Barbour helping out, Microsoft spent $10.5 million on federal lobbying and campaign donations. In 2004, it was almost $19 million. Then-candidate Bush might have noticed. Eleven months after he took office, Microsoft's five-year-old antitrust case was effectively settled. Life got only better for Microsoft afterward. In 2003, it issued its first-ever dividend to shareholders—Bill Gates got $99.5 million—just a week after Bush proposed the repeal of a tax on dividends. The repeal was later approved, cutting the 35 percent tax rate to 15 percent. Microsoft chief financial officer John Connors—who, along with Microsoft head lobbyist John Kelly, are top Bush fund-raisers—said the repeal was just coincidence. The following year, Microsoft issued a boggling dividend of $32 billion to shareholders. Gates got $3.5 billion. Thanks to the Bush tax cut, he pocketed an extra $700 million.
I'm a firm believer in coincidence. Once again, I'm available for coincidental donations. Give to Ars Hermeneutica and your donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law!
A Private Mandate
Now pro-pre life flaks roam the land; insisting that “taxpayer dollars" not be spent on “false hope”, but on missile shields and drug wars. While the President interprets back to back electoral majorities from the Supreme Court and Diebold as a mandate to define science and reason.[*]
[Jerry and Joe Long, "Caesar and Stem Cells", The Huffington Post, 26 May 2005.]
———-
* All grammatical errors are original. Once again, I beg someone at The Huffington Post to look into retaining the services of a copy editor.
The Blessed Blastocyst
It makes one wonder when miscarriage and menstruation will become manslaughter, too (although it does bolster my argument that married straight couples who fail to produce at least one child every 9 months sin much more, and far more frequently, than any male-male couple ever could):
Nature is full of waste. Of all the fertilized blastocysts created for in vitro fertilization only a few actually implant. One female proponent of (Christian) blastocyst adoption, Kate Johnson, had eleven blastocysts implanted before one lived. Do the other ten (which failed to thrive) represent human lives? What about all the eggs flushed away by menstruation in a woman's life? We ovulate many more times than we get pregnant. Any woman who is sensitive to her own cycles knows that each twinge in her lower belly (mittleschermz, the OB-GYNs call it), represents an incipient human life. But that egg may be damaged and never implant or it may never be fertilized, or if fertilized it may die for reasons unknown.
[Erica Jong, "President Bush and the Blastocyst", The Huffington Post, 26 May 2005.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
Michael Innes (TTMA05)
Michael Innes, an academic (English Professor) whose "real" name was J.I.M. Stewart, died in 1994; as I write this, he's one of only two authors on my TTMA05 list not still living and producing. He's also the author on this list I'm least likely to recommend without reservation, because I can't bring myself to say that his mystery novels are the pinnacle of the genre, although I find them vastly entertaining and very much to my taste and sense of humor. Sense of humor, however, is far from universal.
The first book of his that I read, probably twenty years ago, was From London Far (published in 1946). It chronicles the adventures of an English don, prone to muttering fragments of poetry, who happens to mutter a fragment in a tobacconist's shop that causes him to be mistaken for the leader of an international art-smuggling ring (and that's just the beginning of an entire string of ridiculous improbabilities). Not long thereafter the don finds himself momentarily alone in a secret room beneath the tobacconist's shop, wondering whether he is about to be rubbed out, then stops to ponder at some length whether "to rub out" is still current vernacular. I laughed out loud repeatedly, and I rarely laugh out loud from reading a book.
There are two things about Innes that stand out for me: 1) his series featuring the very sophisticated Inspector John Appleby (later Sir John), perhaps the last in the long line of credible characters descended from Lord Peter Wimsey; and 2) his (non-series) books with the utterly ridiculous plots, like From London Far: arch, ironically erudite, and silly in precisely the form that I prefer my silliness.
[This post is part of my Top Twenty Mystery Authors 2005 series.]
What Members?
The Chicago Sun-Times report includes the comment from DeLay that made me choke on my coffee this morning when I heard it on NPR:
Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said the embryonic research bill would force taxpayers to finance "the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings."
"Dismemberment"? In order to dismember something, doesn't it have to have, you know, members?
[Fred Clark, "Dismember of Congress", The Slactivist, 25 May 2005.]
He then goes on to point out weird contradictions and inconsistencies that the No-Life-Left-Behind brigade exhibit over the zygotes (undifferentiated masses of cells arising from a fertilized egg,, long before it becomes an embryo or even a fetus) that are created by fertility clinics, kept frozen in liquid nitrogen, and then thawed and flushed when they're not needed. These are sometimes claimed to be little humans (evidently with little "members") with souls and all, but appear to have no advocates as they slip down the drains.
If every zygote is precious (sometimes) and every sperm is sacred (Isaac's favorite Monty Python bit), and knowing that the president worries about a world in which "cloning becomes acceptable", it makes me wonder whether clipping one's toe-nails and throwing away the clippings will soon become manslaughter.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Jo Bannister (TTMA05)
A prolific British author, Jo Bannister has written a number of novels, including three mystery series. It is her series set in the East Anglian town of Castlemere, featuring a trio of CID officers (Sergeant Donovan, Inspector Liz Graham, Superintendent Frank Shapiro) that I'm most familiar with, but I have read one of the "Brodie Farrell" series (True Witness) and liked it too.
The Castlemere set is, on the surface, a police procedural, but they read more like the best psychological thrillers. This CID trio, on the face of it, sounds like an assemblage of neuroses stapled to cardboard cutouts, but in Bannister's writing they become very realistic and very believably woven into the tense, detailed plots. As in all thrillers, each takes his or her turn being in mortal danger or severely injured, but in this case there are consequences when bad things happen: they don't just pop up and keep on fighting, but may spend the next book recuperating from serious physical damage.
Ms. Bannister is one of a couple authors on my list who seem hard to find for some reason, at least in the US. I suppose one can buy their books now easily enough online, but I rarely run across them in my library or my local brick-and-mortar bookstores. I wouldn't have read the ones I did read if it weren't for Isaac's sister's giving me some used UK editions she'd somehow come across. But difficult to find or not, her books are worth looking for.
[This post is part of my Top Twenty Mystery Authors 2005 series.]