Cogitamus

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

It's been a wild few days in Canada as our current Conservative government looks like it might be replaced, only 6 weeks after the election, with a center-left coalition made up of the once-governing Liberals and the New Democrats (left-labour.) Canadian politics went in to meltdown Thursday after the Finance Minister announced that, among several budget cuts he was making, public funding for political parties would be slashed. Had it occurred, this would have devastated every party except for the Conservatives, and the reaction was so fierce and so quick that the government has not only retracted the funding cuts, but a bunch of other offensive stuff too.

It might be too late for any retractions though, as it looks like the details of a Liberal-NDP coalition have been hammered out and everyone involved is just waiting for a possible confidence vote that should come some time next Monday. The big question remaining is whether Stephane Dion. the current Liberal leader who led the party to defeat in the last election, will become Prime Minister or be supplanted by either an elder statesman or one of the contenders to be his replacement. If the latter, the smart money is on Michael Ignatieff being Canada's next PM.

If all of this shakes down as expected, it would mean among other things one of the last governments to truly be an obstacle to sane climate policies would be neutralized, meaning a clear road forward for climate policies on both the continental and global level.

FridaySunday Frank: The Teheran Symphony Orchestra Rehearsing Dog Breath Variations + More Frank Love In Honor of Zappadan

Maestro Zappa's music may not yet be widely-known in these parts--certainly the vast majority of it never hit America's commercial airwaves, save a handful of humor songs--but in Europe, Scandinavia, South America, and even the Middle East, fans and musicians alike listen to, and are inspired by, Zappa's rock, blues, jazz, fusion, and neoclassical compositions.

Tribute bands abound in Finland and the Czech Republic, and some of the world's most talented musicians continue to study and perform challenging classical pieces like Dog Breath Variations (as above, in which video members of the Teheran Symphony Orchestra tackle the complex piece) and Outrage at Valdez.

I'll be posting a goodly amount of Frank Zappa material this month, in honor of Zappadan--December 4-21--when "all our blogs belong to Zappa". (As if I needed an excuse!) Info after the jump:

A Little Nostalgia

"I Still Remember" - Bloc Party

I actually had a good time at my 30th high school reunion on Saturday night.  Of course it's always a time to see what the ravages of age have done to one's peers (and how you stack up in that category).  I was a bit stunned that one of my close friends from basketball days -- a guy who could dunk despite being 5'10" -- had undergone two hip replacement surgeries and was probably about 100 pounds heavier.  I had a funny moment at the bar with a girl I had a mad crush on in those days -- I mentioned that I really liked her back then and she replied "did you ever speak to me?"  Well, I had once or twice, with great effort, but obviously didn't make a big impression.  (This song popped in my head while having this conversation.)

Overall, I was struck by the warmth with which most people greeted each other and the fact that 30 years breaks down a lot of social barriers.  I was glad I went.    

Corner Bait

I've been only barely entertaining myself over the weekend, and I kind of randomly decided to rent The Golden Compass to keep me amused while I wait around for Andy to finish up some schoolwork. 

I would love to be in the room with a time-traveling Republican from 2005 who turned this disc on.  Not only is this a children's movie at the beginning of a book series where the progtagonists kill God, but nestled amongst the previews was an advertisement for the World Wildlife Fund's advocacy for the polar bear in the face of global warming. 

I have a hard time believing that this double-affront on Republican orthodoxies was an accident. 

Even if the WWF wasn't consciously trying to get the goat of Republicans (hopefully) past, they couldn't pass up the PR opportunity that a neat-looking armored polar bear in a hugely-hyped and expensive children's movie presented.

Simplisitc Drug Testing Kits Yield False Results and Wrongful Arrests

Quod me nutrit me destruit*, indeed.

So, what's in your wallet (or handbag or toiletry kit)? If you're traveling out of the country any time soon--hell, if you're simply driving around in this one--you'd be wise to rid your bags and carryalls of any organic chocolate bars, natural soaps, and health-food-store deodorants. Read this, be horrified, and for goodness' sake, be careful:

For Nadine Artemis and Ron Obadia, August began with plans for a family vacation in Minnesota. The vacation ended with the two Canadian citizens being led through Toronto's airport in handcuffs, locked up and separated from their baby.

"We were dumbfounded," Artemis says. Police told them they could be facing years in prison for exporting narcotics, because 2.5 pounds of material found in their carry-on bag tested positive for hashish. "All we knew was that we didn't have drugs."

They were telling the truth. They didn't have drugs. They had chocolate.

The couple were caught up in what civil libertarians, public defenders and some narcotics experts say is a growing problem: the use of unreliable field drug-test kits as the basis to arrest innocent people on illegal drug charges.

The inexpensive test kits are used by virtually every police department in the country and by federal agents, including Customs officers at the nation's borders. The kits test suspicious materials, and a positive result generally leads to an arrest and court date, pending more sophisticated tests done after the sample is sent to a lab.

The kits use powerful acids that react with the substance in a plastic pouch. If the liquid turns a certain color, it is a considered a positive result. But a number of legal products and plants test positive: chocolate for hashish; rosemary for marijuana; and natural soaps for the "date-rape drug" GHB.

"The tests have no validity," says former FBI narcotics investigator Frederick Whitehurst. And as more organic products come on the market, "the potential for civil rights violations when these presumptive tests are out there is phenomenal."

Although police have been using the field test kits for decades, "there's no regulation, no oversight that these drug tests perform in any way," says Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps President David Bronner, whose products have tested positive for GHB.

With the growth of organic and natural foods and products, experts say arrests may increase.

"We are alarmed by the growing number of people who have been taken to jail for simply possessing organic products," says Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association.

On Aug. 29, Artemis and Obadia, founders of Living Libations, a company that makes organic and natural food and beauty products in Haliburton, Ontario, were cleared of the charges when lab tests showed they were simply transporting chocolate. [...]

So far, the couple's legal bills have topped $20,000, covered in part by Bronner's company.

As you can see, I'm not joking about the need to be careful. As someone who routinely carries (at least) a bar or two of organic dark chocolate in her handbag--more if I'm flying, in case I need to share it with cranky people during inevitable delayed-on-the-runway scenarios--and furthermore, who has Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap in her shower and her travel toiletry kit, let me tell you, this story sent chills down my spine.

No, we shouldn't have to modify our own normal and perfectly legal behavior in order to avoid being falsely accused and expensively imprisoned--this is America, yes? The fault for these outrageous miscarriages of justice lies clearly in the laps of the test-kits' manufacturer(s), as well as those law enforcement and customs personnel who awarded them the lucrative government contracts to make the kits. Kits that don't test for a specific substance, by the way, but rather, just identify a general classification to which a substance belongs.

Poppy-seeds fallen from your morning bagel, or evidence of something more sinister? The test kit will err on the side of un-Constitutional.

On the other hand, I'm certainly not willing to risk being thrown in jail and separated from my sons--and then forced to spend a fortune on legal help to prove my innocence--simply because I love chocolate (which I do, very much) or because I like the wake-me-up scent of mint in my bath products.

Allen Miller of Forensic Source, which makes kits, says they find "families of chemical compounds" and are not meant to be definitive. Any arrest should be the result of good investigative police work, Miller says.

But Adam Wolf of the ACLU says "police officers and drug-test companies should not subject our constitutional rights to a game of chance."

*What nourishes me kills me.

Symbols

Just two days after Barack Obama won the election, a man in Midland, MI dressed in his KKK robes and stood at a busy intersection to protest Obama's election - well, to be fair, he claimed that the problems he was protesting go much deeper than Obama.

Now via Digby I see that on election night the owners of the Faubus Hotel in Huntsville, Alabama decided to take the American flag down and raise instead the Confederate battle flag.  But it's not a protest about Obama being black; that's preposterous.

The Vandivers said they didn’t raise the Rebel flag to protest a black man moving into the White House, as many of their neighbors assume. Instead, they did it because they believe the country has abandoned the principles of its founders by electing Obama. Linda Vandiver said the Democrat is a Marxist who wants to turn America into a socialist country.

I suspect that the Vandivers have much more support for their claim that replacing the American flag with the Confederate abomination than Randy Gray ever will for donning KKK robes.  That's an unfortunate result of a fairly good PR campaign on the part of those who want to retain, display and honor the main symbol of not only the very great evil that was the Confederate treason against the USA, but also the even greater evil which was the enslavement of millions of men, women and children for hundreds of years.

Even if the "heritage" argument is ever offered in good faith instead of its more obvious use as a public denial of private beliefs, Americans need to learn to let go.  The swastika, for example, is illegal to display in Germany, in spite of having a history going back several thousand years and appearing in societies all over the world.  It is still a common symbol in Buddhism and Hinduism.  But even though the Nazis appropriated it for less than 20 years, when a folk-dancing troupe from Japan visited Germany a few years back, they created special uniforms without that symbol simply because they didn't want to have any potential for problems.  

Under American southerners' logic, the Germans have a far greater case to make for continuing to use the swastika as a way of honoring their heritage.  Most German soldiers weren't involved in any atrocities against anyone; they were drafted and went to fight because that's what they were supposed to do.  They were the fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers of those Germans living today, and surely Germany's citizens have struggled with having such a great evil in their recent past.  But they realize that anyone who seeks to display the Nazi swastika isn't attempting to make a comment about national pride, patriotism or honoring dear old Granddad in the nursing home.  They're publicly affiliating themselves with all the evil the Nazis did and for which they stood.  And it's no surprise that the Japanese, who have also struggled with national symbols that predate their involvement in WWII, would understand.

But here in America we're supposed to respect the Confederate flag, that odious symbol of treason.  We're supposed to believe the ridiculous claims of those who always find cause to fly the Confederate flag whenever an African-American gains prominence.  We're supposed to believe nonsense about "states' rights" and the idea that the majority of southerners took up weapons against their fellow citizens over differing interpretations of the US Constitution.  If the Confederate Army's battle cry consisted of "The Federal government is not supposed to exercise any power or authority not explicitly given to it by the US Constitution, and any area of governance not so given is reserved solely for the states!" I've certainly never heard about it.

The legacy of US slavery is at least as evil as that of Naziism.  At least.  Millions enslaved.  Countless numbers killed before even being loaded into ships on Africa's coasts.  Countless more dead on the voyage to the United States.  Families ripped apart, men and women literally worked to death and then tossed aside.  Rape, assault, untold abuse, all of this happening for generations.  And all this sordid, evil history is summed up in the despicable Stars and Bars.  The particulars of its history are irrelevant, because this is what it means now.  This is what it stands for now.  When people like the Vandivers raise it outside their hotel, when so-called "Democrats" like Mudcat Saunders sleep under it, when that creepy guy down the street puts it up in his garage, it is calling up every atrocity committed against African-Americans no matter the location, no matter the era.  It's the symbol for all of America's racists, and it's far past time that anyone who dares show it loses all respectability and place in our society.

Random Thoughts on a Lazy Friday

- There seems to be little doubt among most economists that the current crisis will require some sort of massive stimulus, which will add to the enormous deficits that the Bush Administration piled on unnecessarily throughout its time in office.  The question is whether this will eventually lead to a spike in interest rates as the U.S. chases sufficient bond purchasers to hold its debt.  Right now, flight to quality and deep uncertainty in the markets is allowing the U.S. to finance its debt on the cheap.  However, once a recovery begins it may become necessary to offer much higher interest rates on U.S. bonds to attract foreign investment.  This, in turn, could increase the cost of corporate borrowing and inhibit investment in the equity market.   Hopefully this will not inhibit long term economic growth.

- It is not yet clear who is behind the horrifying events in Mumbai and what motivated the attacks.  I am wondering if it may have stemmed from the Indian control over Kashmir, which may in time be seen as on a par with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of its destabilizing quality and its spillover effect on the rest of the world.

- I was just starting to get over my bad feelings about the Lieberman reprieve when I read about Holy Joe contributing money to Republican candidates for the Senate.  Now I'm really pissed off again.

- One of the true joys of being a right winger must be the fact that you never have to admit an error, either as a supporter of the Iraq War or an economic Pollyannna.  Evidently there is nothing these people can do to permanently discredit themselves.

- Happy birthday to Nick Beaudrot who turns 29 tomorrow.  I, on the other hand, am off to my 30th high school reunion this evening.  I can't quite believe that I graduated from high school before Nick was born.       

  

If We Took All the Bones Out, It Wouldn't Be Crunchy!

Ah, the Whizzo Chocolate Assortment sketch--one of my favorite food-related Python bits. I almost posted the vomiting-and-exploding gourmand scene from The Meaning of Life, but thought better of it when Sons Two and Three ran from the room shrieking Ewwwwwww. Hey, we're a pretty tough-tummied crowd around here, but even so, that sketch hit a little too close to home, shall we say, on a feasting day like today. And I wouldn't want to be responsible for dampening anyone's appetite.

Crunchy frog it is, then.

And as for me, I'm thankful for the mushroom shepherd's pie--with no lark's vomit and no anthrax--that I'll be making this afternoon; for the crisp, holiday-appropriate temperatures despite the brilliant sun pouring down on the garden where the boys are shooting hoops right now; and for family and friends far and near, there and here. I hope you all enjoy a peaceful, warm, and delicious day, too.

Happy Thanksgiving from my family to you and yours,

Deborah

Turkey Day

What are you doing reading a blog? Watch the Macy's Parade or something ...

Happy Thanksgiving

"Now be Thankful" - Fairport Convention

Featuring a very young Richard Thompson on guitar and Dave Swarbick on vocals.

Have a lovely holiday.  Include President Obama in your Thanksgiving wishes.  He is going to need all of the support we can muster.

A Tale of Two White Votes (at least) and Two Gender Gaps

I was letting my inner Nate Silver call the shots over the past weekend and spent a deeply nerdy several hours poring over the exit polls and election statistics on CNN's web site.  [One thought kept going through my head -- I so wish the web had existed when I was in college.  When I wrote my senior thesis I literally spent weeks in the library copying county by county election statistics from hard bound volumes.  I could have had a lot more drinking time.]  

Several things caught my eye, including, of course, the eye-popping victory by Obama in the under-30 electorate, about which more in a minute.  Some people have expressed dismay about Obama losing the white vote by 12%, 55-43.  This, however, was a deeply regional phenomenon, with Obama prevailing among white voters in 18 states plus the District of Columbia.  Here are those jurisdiction listed in order of margin among white voters:

1. DC    86-12
2. HI      70-27
3. VT     68-31
4. MA    59-39
5. RI      58-39
6. ME    58-40
7. OR    57-40
8. WA    55-42
9. NH     54-44
10. WI      54-45
11. DE     53-45
12. MN     53-46
13. CA     52-46
14. NY     52-46
15. CT      51-46
16. MI      51-47
17. IA       51-47
18. IL       51-48
19. CO     50-48

Cruelty and Liberal-bashing, Each and Every Day of the Year!

Oh dear. Thirtysomething pom-pom girl and granite-countertop-detector Michelle Malkin, along with several other *OXYMORON ALERT* beautiful conservative women (I left out the word narcissistic so as to avoid piling a redundancy on top of the oxymoron) have troweled on a few pounds of pancake and lipstick and draped themselves in tens of thousands of dollars worth of dead rodent mustelid skins in order to pose for a calendar called Pretty in Mink.

Of course, the majority of Madame's commenters are taking this as their cue to spout off (so to speak) about the unparalleled hotness of the Mses. Malkin, Coulter, and Carpenter etc., and--amusingly--to drone on and on about how "horribly ugly", "unfeminine", and "hairy" we liberal women are.

At the risk of stating the obvious, methinks these basement-dwellers really need to get out more.

Sigh. This sort of stuff almost makes me want to put together a calendar of our own, considering how many beautiful liberal women I know personally, as well as how many famous beautiful liberal women there are out there--I mean, Scarlett, Angelina, etc. etc....whom are these people kidding? (Yeah, I know.)

Being a lefty, though, I can't help but remind myself that so doing would be terribly unfair. Because even without the assistance of a Vaselined lens and heavy-duty beauty lighting, women--and for that matter, men--who care about things like housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, promoting social justice, protecting the environment, ensuring equal rights and freedoms for all--for starters--are possessed of a certain incandescent beauty *SENTIMENTALITY ALERT* that shines from within. This is something that can't be artificially recreated in an individual whose identity is so deeply invested in things like championing pre-emptive war; fanning the flames of (and forever reigniting) anti-immigration sentiment; approving of and even joking about government-sanctioned torture; ignoring (tacitly approving?) the erosion of the middle class via Bushian deregulation, disproportionate taxation, and state-approved polarization of wealth; and calling for the curtailment of rights of whichever class of people he or she deems unworthy of said rights--up to and including the internment of innocent American citizens not charged with any crime.

Ugly is as ugly does. And insofar as I'm aware, no-one has invented a lens, filter, or Photoshop trick that works on the soul.

Economist Know-It-Alls Scoff at Peter Schiff's Accurate 2006-2007 Predictions

An apparently irony-free relative of mine, who has for 30 years been preaching the gospel of The Market Is Always Right, Let The Market Decide, Regulation Is Evil, CEOs Should Make As Much As They Want, Unions Be Damned, Capitalism Is The Best Thing In The World, Fox News Is Actually News, has sent me this video.  With, in another irony-free wrinkle, the header "Unbelievable."  Yes, it's unbelievable, all right, though perhaps not in quite the way he intended.

       

Oh, and credit goes to  boingboing.

Plus Ca Change (Or I wouldn't belong to any club . . .)

that would have you for a member.

Or, Republicans are so fucking funny -- by which I mean transparently racist assholes.

Yes, Geg Sargent of TPM reports that a leading candidate to be the new Republican National Committee Chairman, Kanton Dawson, belonged to a whites only country club in South Carolina.  He resigned after only twelve years of membership in the club when his conscience began to trouble him.  Oh, yeah, that and a newspaper was about to print a story about his membership.      

It's a big tent party though -- every shade of white possible.  (And Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Michael Steele and Alan Keyes, otherwise known as the "Four Tops of the Apocalypse.")

More Susan Rice Blogging

Because really, folks, we know you're here for the Susan Rice Blogging. Looks like she may end up as Ambassador to the United Nations. Democrats treat this as a real post; Madeline Albright was U.N. Ambassador prior to becoming Secretary of State; Bill Richardson was the U.N. Ambassador prior to becoming Energy Secretary. With the posts of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor filled, this is probably the best available job she could get. So, score this one for the good guys.

In yet another reason for optimism, Mark Kleiman observes that if Clinton will need to put a few Obama loyalists in the State Department or risk losing a higher share of turf battles with the White House.

Java Wackiness Bleg

Apparently not all readers are able to view my fancy county-level realignment map. If you could take a second to try and load the page, and then leave in the comments:

• Whether or not you could see a map
• The operating system you're running
• The web browser you used
• What the make and model of your Java installation is (e.g. "Microsoft 1.5.0", "IBM 1.6.0", "Sun 1.6.0", etc).

Thanks!

You failed as totally as it is possible to fail. Now you get to live with it.

Andrew Sullivan titles a post "Did we save lives after all?" Dear God in heaven, we're still talking about this?

Okay, Posner's argument goes like this: the sanctions regime pre-war had killed, and was killing, lots of children and adults in Iraq, and if you take a ridiculously low estimate of the war casualties (the IBC is not credible, in any way whatsoever) the sanctions would have killed more people, left in place status quo, than the war has. And don't think about lifting the sanctions -- that just means that Saddam will invade Kuwait again!

Get it? The only two options were for us to maintain a horrible, bloody and bloody-minded policy that was killing tens of thousands of innocent people, or invade and kill tens of thousands of innocent people in much more destructive ways.

It's 2003 all over again: the same bad-faith stupidity on the part of war advocates. I would have loved to believe that they weren't dumb enough to fall for the same tricks twice, but apparently Andy is still that gullible. Fuck.

Ugh

Spackerman:

Some progressive Obama supporters think the arrival of Clinton at the State Dept. will mean they’ll be frozen out. That would have implications for their advancement in subsequent Democratic administrations.

“Basically, you have all of these young, next-generation and mid-career people who took a chance on Obama” during the primaries, said one Democratic foreign-policy expert included in that cohort. “They were many times the ones who were courageous enough to stand up early against Iraq, which is why many of them supported Obama in the first place. And many of them would likely get shut out of the mid-career and assistant-secretary type jobs that you need, so that they can one day be the top people running a future Democratic administration.”

In the foreign-policy bureaucracy, these middle-tier jobs — assistant secretary and principal-deputy-assistant and deputy-assistant — are stepping stones to bigger, more important jobs, because they’re where much of the actual policy-making is hashed out. Those positions flesh out strategic decisions made by the president and cabinet secretaries; implement those policies; and use their expertise to both inform decisions and propose targeted or specific solutions to particular crises.

NYT:

By this past Thursday, when Mr. Obama reassured Mrs. Clinton that as secretary of state she would have direct access to him and could select her own staff, the wooing was complete.

This is not change I can believe in. Having Clinton at State is a fine idea (it would be ironic, don't you think, for her to end up sitting down with the Iranian Foreign Minister without preconditions), but this bit is frustrating. The foreign policy folks who backed Barack Obama in the primaries were putting their careers on the line, for which it appears they will get very little in return. Half the premise of the Obama campaign was that Hillary Clinton's instincts on foreign policy were part of the preen-your-hawk-feathers attitude that helped pave the road to Baghdad, and that Obama wasn't just running to end the war, but "end the mindset that got us into war". But now there's a good chance that Dick Holbrooke will end up as a major player, while Susan Rice ends up, at best, Deputy National Security Adviser or Ambassador to the United Nations. Samantha Power probably won't have a job at all.

Throughout all of these announcements I have been steeling myself by saying that Obama is hiring a team to execute his policy. But that's becoming less effective with every announcement.

The GOP has finally convinced us of its uselessness

"Raising taxes is about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse." - Sarah Palin

Via DailyKos, Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute is arguing that if Obama proves the conservative idea that government doesn't do anything of value wrong, then people are going to quit paying Republicans to go to congress and complain about congress' existence. Sucks to be on the wrong side of reality, but that's how it goes when you're a Republican in 2008.

Cannon gets all of this right, except he tries to hide this argument about principle in one about optics, by calling Obama's approach to health care "socialized," and insisting that the word magically means we need to avoid it.

This doesn't make sense after he admits that a good health program would drive current Republicans away from the right by actually helping them access medical care. It gets weird when Cannon worries that a single-payer system would trap people into liberalism by "making citizens dependent on the government for their medical care."

Like when conservatives panic about care being rationed under a socialized system, he forgets that this is already the status quo: healthcare is rationed according to income rather than need. Access to health care doesn't create the need for it. Millions of Americans already do not get the care they need, and they won't be any more needy when they've had a taste of access to care through the government. Those without insurance don't have anything to depend on currently. Need for health care is a constant, regardless of ease of access. Many Americans are currently dependent on luck to stay alive and healthy, but augmenting it with real health care doesn't mean that people will not have needed the luck in the beginning. It's not like people haven't figured out that their needs are not being met and that they'll only realize they need to treat their diabetes once they realize how much better they feel when their condition is treated.

Screw Citigroup, Bail Out GM

Citigroup is about to go under.  General Motors is about to go under.  Citigroup will be bailed out by the federal government with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, while General Motors may not get even their $8.3 billion share of the $25 billion the Big Three are seeking.

Robert Reich has a great post up at TPMCafe explaining why this is.  It's well worth a read, but his central point is very simple and clear:  Wall Street suffers from an especially virulent form of narcissism which is reflected and shared by the people who run both the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury.  Wall Street workers believe that what they do is the most important thing in the world, that without their antics on the floor of the NYSE or their intricate games of finessing stock prices, no one would be able to purchase bread or buy clothes. 

To Wall Street - and those Wall Streeters continually picked to run the Fed and Treasury - those shmucks at GM and Ford and Chrysler, and their dealers, and their suppliers, and auto shops and oil change shops and detailers, just don't do very much, at least not much that's important. 

If we bail out both Citigroup and the Big Three, whatever benefits to the economy will be ascribed entirely to the Citigroup bailout by the egocentric Wall Streeters and our uncritical press.  But if we bail out only Citigroup and subsequently watch millions of Americans lose their jobs, with the economic fallout of people all over the country suddenly finding themselves unable to make those small purchases that are the real engine of every economy, Wall Street - and the Fed and Treasury - will scratch their highly-paid heads and wonder how it could have happened even though their own firms were saved.  They might even go on a trip to a spa to try and figure it out.

The Big Three need to be bailed out.  Congress has set forth some preconditions for any bailout, and that's fine.  But it needs to be done, not only because of the direct help it will give to the Big Three's workforce, but also because of the ripple effects throughout the economy.

FridaySaturday Frank: Penguin in Bondage; Italian TV, 1972

As I've said before, I think this particular FZ lineup is my all-time-favorite, mainly due to my fondness for Ponty's violin riffs.

Yikes, what a week. First, I was treated to a cable news loop of the governor of Alaska "pardoning" a turkey and then holding soundbite court in front of an active turkey guillotine manned by a rubber-gloved executioner, the whole scene made surreal and cringe-inducingly funny by what are surely the best breaking news subtitles ever; mad props to whichever dry-witted, animal-loving MSNBC geek(s) put those together.

Next, to my (guilty) dismay, I learned the boys are going to be In The House--while Mama goes Out The Mind--for the next ten days. Hey, whatever happened to the old four-day Thanksgiving thing? When I was your age...

And then, it got really, really cold in Florida. No seriously--low-forties-Fahrenheit-cold. And while I'd normally be all excited about the rare opportunity to dive into the vintage sweater stockpile that's been thirty years in the making--and maybe even debuting the awesome boots I bought two years ago while having one of my fits of tropics-denying (note to self: talk R into taking me out tonight, preferably someplace where said boots will be appreciated)--this year, I'm feeling the chill as never before. Especially in my poor hands and feet. Brrr.

AND as long as I'm whining: here we are in 2008, with change heading to Washington and stores putting tracking devices on my chocolate bars, and still (still!) no winter-wear company is making modern-cut long underwear for low-slung jeans--no, all you can find, online and off, is pair after billowing pair of elasticated, high-waisted "Mom jeans"-style long johns (When you've given up giving it up...Mom Jeans!) in which--and honestly, I cannot repeat this often enough--I would not be caught dead. Hey, clothing makers: there's a huge number of blue-toed, shivering and skinny post-Boomer women out here having cold flashes as we hit our forties. Fancy making quick sales and long-term customers? Then design some low-waisted, close-fitting long johns that I can wear under jeans on days like today without looking like, well, like a penguin in bondage.

Off with me to the grocery store, then. I have a feeling they won't have run out of Tofurkey just yet; Thermacare handwarmers are another story.

Bon Weekend, everyone!

This is Going to be Fun

Like many of you, I have been keenly interested in the demographic wave that threatens to consign the Republicans to minority status for a good long while assuming a half way competent administration (which I'm also pretty confident about).  I had a conversation with an establishment DC type the other night, someone who has been deeply ensconced in the Hill, as well as journalistic and lobbying circles for a long time.  He's a bright guy but a quintessential villager and swallower of the received wisdom, a Democrat who has always had a very limited view of what can be accomplished by progressives.  He seemed unmoved by Obama's seven point win (given the circumstances) and asked if I thought it wasn't all that impressive given the mess the country is in and whether I was concerned about the transition.  I replied that I wasn't in the least bit worried about the transition, that only the worst kind of nattering fools were, and that I thought this election was just the beginning of the wave that was going to engulf conservatism. I described it to him as a "pig in a python" -- the wave of voters under 30 and their younger siblings, today's teenagers, who are turned off by all things Republican -- that is going to begin passing through the body politic while the older, whiter demographic goes to the great Fox News Network in the sky.

My optimism has been further bouyed by stories like this describing the recent Gallup poll about the Republican Party.  Two things jump out -- first the GOP is really unpopular with only 34% approving and 61% disapproving.  I can't recall ever seeing anything quite like that in my lifetime.  The second, and more significant point though, is that of the Republicans surveyed, 59% believe that the party needs to become more conservative (absent the mass donning of brown shirts, I am not sure how this is even possible) and only 12% believe that the Party needs to become more moderate.  

This reflects the inability of the right wing echo chamber to engage in anything like meaningful self-criticism.  It shows that the die hards are determined to provide more of the same, only more so -- without regard to what can be readily discerned about public opinion.  In other words, these people have bought their own bullshit about "center-right" nation.  The reality, of course, is that few hard right positions are popular with the public writ large, whether it be privatizing Social Security, criminalizing abortion, or abolishing the income tax.  Their own guru, Karl Rove, understood this pretty well, hence his strategic moves with respect to immigration reform, Medicare Part D, and No Child Left Behind, all of which were designed to bring in additional votes to add to the base.  A Republican Party that opts for a path of conservative purity is going to be increasingly ghettoized into the essentially non-dynamic parts of the country -- the deep South and Appalachia, along with the interior Plains  and rural Mountain States.  

So I urge our Republican brethren to go for it -- be pure and principled.  Invent your own reality.  On Palin, on Huckabee, on Mittens and Tancredo.  Play to your base 24/7.  In the meantime, President Obama is going to be cleaning up the mess you all have made and winning elections. 

It's going to be a great time to be a liberal.  .   .       

Friday Kitsch Cover

There have been some complaints that the kitsch covers have gotten less, well, kitschy, so I hope this does the trick. The Dollyrots performing the Ronette's "Be My Baby".

Leave your nominations for next week's kitsch cover in the comments.

Spinning The Cocoon Tighter

I'm watching an election retrospective with what appear to be some midlevel McCain campaign staffers, and none of them are willing to say on the record that Sarah Palin was a bad pick. They will say they failed to define her as enough of a moderate, they will say firing up the base was important, they will say it was effective initially but its effect seemed to subside over time, but they will not say it was a mistake. Do their careers really depend on believing this? Or is the continuing effort of to create their own reality?

Bye-Bye AT&T

Here's a tip for telecommunications companies:  If one of your customers that's been with you for six years isn't under a contract anymore and won't owe the ransom early termination fee you normally charge, it might be a good idea to not make him wait 20 months to upgrade his phones at a discount.  Especially if he's willing to sign another contract, and has three lines.

I wonder if any libertarians might want to explain how this is the UAW's fault.  Feel free to get all Randian in comments.

Stupid telcos.