On Compromise, the Gang of 14 and the Prisoner's Dilemma
I've been reading everyone, from the CNN-breaking news alert through all the breathless insta-analysis of the Gang of 14 and their notorious compromise. Two things struck me immediately. Senator...
View ArticleYellow is not our color.
I do not have a magnetic yellow ribbon on the bumper of my sliver blue 1987 Honda Prelude. I do, however, have two bumper stickers in the back window. One supporting Brad Carson for Senate and the...
View ArticleWhat's It Worth To 'Ya?
Dr. Omed asks "What's it worth to 'ya." Everyone, whether they realize it or not, has a set of core beliefs--Core beliefs about Life, the Universe, and Everything: How we came to be (since this is all...
View ArticleDiary Glut -- The Call and Response (With Poll)
I think I qualify as a Back- in-the-Day Geezer. With a UID of 14, I've pretty much seen it all. Including the stuff before we had UIDs. I am frantic for news, desperate for input, despairing when...
View ArticleWhen a victim is just a Dead Guy
This guy paid to bulldoze New Orleans trash has a point. He found a Dead Guy when he was moving debris around with his heavy equipment over by the river. It was just a few blocks from all the action...
View ArticleWhat Kinda Hero are You?
Me, myself, I'm hardly any kind of hero at all. I thought I was. I told myself a lot of stories about how brave I was. After all, I once collected all the evidence to turn a sour-bad boss in for...
View ArticleNot that Markos isn't a nice boy, but...Lessons on politics from my Grandmother
Markos savaged the Human Rights Campaign today. I'm not sure why he picked today specifically; piling on HRC for bipartisanship is almost a professional sport. I'd be looking for my paddles with the...
View ArticleThe Calculus of Politics
Did I ever tell you that I find doing calculus problems restful? Probably not. Most people have to stifle a giggle. I don't do it very much now, only when the kids clamor for help with their...
View ArticleChinese Footbinding: Conservatism as Fetish
If I were to write a scholarly article, I would like to write one with a title like that. All the promise of titillation wrapped up with neat, perfectly formatted footnotes. I can almost hear the...
View ArticleMeet Norris Alderson...or Not
It occurred to me this morning as I drove the snake to the vet, that I was very glad I had carefully checked my appointments for the day. Even before my first cup of coffee on Monday morning, I...
View ArticleDoing What's Right...or Left, well Correct Anyway.
I'm used to people not doing what I say. My kids' eyes glaze over at odd moments, generally when there are dishes to be washed. They have homework. They're busy. They're sleepy. They're tired....
View ArticleSay there is this storm. Make it a hurricane.
Say there is this storm, make it a hurricane, and say it comes hard on the heels of the last big storm. Make that a hurricane, too. And say last time that you pretty much won the image war. Your art...
View ArticleA Confederacy of Clowns, Coyotes and Don Quixotes
You don't get to pick the clowns that represent you. They choose themselves. Neither can you always identify the coyotes -- who are always and forever playing tricks and pranks trying to fix the...
View ArticleThis is what I want from you...
I want an answer. It should be neatly written and double spaced. The margins should be 1" all the way around the page. Please use Courier font. On a standard 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper this will...
View ArticleOne Hard Thing
This is not for the Posters. You may go on about your day, knowing things the rest of us do not. Being certain. Railing for justice. Taking action or just spouting off. Organizing Stuff and...
View ArticleFund says Fundies told Miers will Nuke Roe
Is this the smoking gun? A conservative who takes good notes? In his column today, John Fund says the following: On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious...
View ArticleOn Ratings and Epiphanies with a Brief Stop at a Construction Site
Every morning I go to work by the same route. A mile or so from home each day I regret my financial condition as I pass QuikTrip and the regional convenience store chain's perfect coffee bar. I...
View ArticleHearts like Knives
Lashaun Ternice Harris took her children for a walk. Small children, smooth faced and open. A blue stroller. I imagine them as trusting as children living in a homeless shelter can be. Lashaun took...
View ArticleBurning Man
Valerie Plame wasn't outed. She was burned when the body politic decided to play with matches. Rove called her "fair game" and Novak, like a threadbare circuit in an old house sparked the fire that...
View ArticleThe Topography of Truth
Dr. Omed is a good tipper. He carefully reviews the bill and then slides it to me. I perform simple mathematical equations in my head and give him 15%. He nods astutely and, often as not, completely...
View ArticleResolving to give up the Bad Boss (With Poll)
In honor of New Years and resolutions in general, and in time to aid you in your quest for a better answer to the worst question of that week, I offer up a small suggestion for the perfect thing to...
View ArticleGet your YearlyKos On! Buy my Booth!
Okay, you've all been looking at the YearlyKos ad on the front page, wanting to click and yet not sure if it was time to pull the trigger... Bad Cheney reference. Down girl. This is not that kind...
View ArticlePoem for the Day: Buying Armageddon
We're buying Armageddon because it's on sale at WAL-MART. We're buying Armageddon because it only takes a couple of minutes in the microwave. We're buying Armageddon because it has a three car garage...
View ArticleA Tale in Seven Uteri...and one fallopian tube
All I know about abortion, I learned from the women around me. My education had little to do with scorched earth arguments. Rhetorical skill never entered into it. Everything I know, everything I...
View ArticleThe Breath of Freedom is Blowing -- And it Don't Smell so Good.
Toothpaste is not the new lighter. Neither is lens solution. Or that tube of anusol you would rather they didn't hold up in front of all the other passengers while someone fondles your wife because...
View ArticlePTSD: Doing Right by the Army and Wrong by the Boys
Daniel Zwerdling didn't know it when he broadcast his story on returning soldiers suffering from PTSD, Soldiers Say Army Ignores, Punishes Mental Anguish, but he hit my trigger. Hard.You should listen...
View ArticleWallis: Faith is an Optional Module
The spouse is a poet. I am not. But you can't live with a poet with out some of the metaphor they live in rubbing off on you. Like cobwebs they fall apart in your hands, but metaphor seems the only...
View ArticleYou don't get to choose how you die
I would like to say some things that won't be very popular. But first, I would like to tell you about Pony Tail Man. Pony Tail Man is a security guard at the building where I work. He doesn't make...
View ArticleKeen: Opinion and Chaos, a Cachophany of Amateurs
In Tulsa, we have a chain of convenience stores called QuikTrip. In my opinion as a habitue of convenience stores, QuikTrip is indeed the ne plus ultra of the genre. I admit that Lacey, a diminutive...
View ArticleThe Silent Pogram: Illegal Go Home?
Say someone worked in a call center. Not a large one, but large enough. Say they employeed bilinguals...which in call center speak means folks who speak both Spanish and English. Say there was a...
View ArticleThe Unsettling Role of Zeitgeist
I have two daughters, the Big One and the Little One. This is a story about the Little One. It's a story about the stories we tell each other and how they matter more than the facts or the truth....
View ArticleLet Me Introduce You to the Enemy
The enemy is named Cathy, and John and Adam. The enemy is James and Kay and Alfreda. The enemy are the disaffected, the distainful and the disenfrancised. They are the reductionist, the good...
View ArticleThree Plays Ahead... Hoping Axelrod is Hella Smart
Me, I don't know much about politics. I worked on a Mayoral campaign or two. I stumbled into a PR job at an agency handling four campaigns one fall a long time ago and sat in on at least one war...
View ArticleTheatre of the Absurd
Edward Albee came to town one day, on the dime of a local university. A friend of mine was his general dogsbody for the duration. We did Albee in high school in competitions. We loved it. He...
View ArticleWhat the Bankers Think
They have rocket scientists working on Wall Street slicing and dicing derivatives. I am not a rocket scientist. I have words, not numbers at my beck and call. I have metaphors and imperfect...
View ArticleAbout Guys and Ground Game
I'd like to talk to you about guys. You know, the guys that come in little plastic buckets, molded green plastic. The guys of Toy Story and Toy Story II. That's just about all there were for boys in...
View ArticleI have three facts
On any given day, I'm not sure of anything. I read the blogs to see who can put the day's news in context, who can pull the narrative thread through it elegantly, but without going all...
View ArticleA Mild Cardio Infarction
Way in the back when I worked in a Retirement Center. It was the ambulatory wing of a nursing home where there was still carpet in the common room and people had their furniture and personal...
View ArticleThis is the thing about Rand Paul
I adore Rachel Maddow. Her quirky sense of humor and love of wonkery is at turns awe inspiring and bug cute. However, I think she did a lot of folks a disservice in the Rand Paul interview. She...
View ArticleOn the Sanity Train
I was interviewed by a CNN crew at the Rally to Restore Sanity yesterday. He wanted to find a theme. Why did I come? What were people trying to say with their attendance? What did it mean? Was it...
View ArticleAbout that Pat Down
I actually hate the liquids foolishness more than I hate backscatter x rays. I need product in my hair in order not to resemble Einstein. Every time I try to squirt the leave in conditioner into a...
View ArticleGrace under Pressure
We think we know ourselves. All of us. We tell ourselves and our friends how we would react if this or that happened. "I would have punched him," we say. "I would never have lost my temper," we say....
View ArticleOn my high horse
My mother was apparently very concerned about my riding skills when I was a child. "Get off your high horse," she would say. I assume she was seeing in me what I heard in my own children from time to...
View Article"Bodies Don't Have Handles on Them"
There's this guy, a cop guy, who looked at the video of the UC Davis Pepper spray incident. This guy, whose name is Charles J. Kelly, and is apparently a former Baltimore Police Lieutenant. didn't get...
View ArticleDeath and Secrets
I lost a sister to lung cancer in September. She would have been 59 or 60. I found out yesterday from my daughter. A cousin on Facebook told her.I found myself befuddled, confused, sad, anxious,...
View ArticleHe didn't know you had Cancer
I didn’t want to know.She didn’t want to talk about it. But it was there with us. My friend of 20 odd years was tiny and wizened, her hands trembling slightly, and I noticed how the skin on them had...
View ArticleThe Republican Distopia: An SF Perspective
In the world of Science Fiction there are two main traditions of storytelling: "What if?", and "If this goes on..."The new TV Show "Revolution," asks what if the lights go out? And in the oft alluded...
View ArticleThank you, Fred Phelps
I don't know that I believe many things. But I do believe in what is called Visionary or Outsider Art. My personal temple is AVAM, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. They keep the work...
View ArticleThe Suicide's Daughter
So, I had been away at college about two, maybe three hours. There was this girl in the room next door. I was trying on myself, inventing myself anew the same way I tried at the start of every new...
View ArticleThe World's First Atheist Orphanage
Okay, so there is this orphanage in Uganda that has captured my imagination. And in my imagination I hope it will capture yours. Billed as the world's first atheist orphanage, BiZoHa has as its...
View Article
