By Beauty Damned

Before I Go-Go

I took this quiz over at Darcie's and then I got really mad at my first result. Not just mad. Infuriated. Then I took it again and paid more attention. This makes a lot more sense:

You are a very bizarre person, to say the least. You don't think the way most other people do. And you probably don't really care.

You defy convention, and probably really like burritos. And you're very content with your life. You're a ray of sunshine. Piercing, bizarre end-of-the-world sunshine, but sunshine nonetheless. While most people are going to college to be lawyers or accountants or something, you'd be just as happy working at Tippy's Taco Stand in San Dimas, CA.

You probably have a really interesting car. You definitely do not drive a Honda Civic. There's a good chance that you smoke weed. There's a good chance you sell it.

Everybody worth anything likes you a lot.

Take the Which Led Zeppelin Song Are You? Quiz

Did I mention that I love burritos?

Adios Amigos

I'm home early. We are taking a trip down to D.C. this weekend for Rob's work, but it's more of a mini-break for me. I am really excited to stay in a nice hotel and spend some time by the pool when I'm not helping Rob out with demos.

Have a great weekend everybody! You'll be hearing from me when it's all over.

A Glimpse Into My Future

Happy Friday!

Why is it so funny when old people flip the bird?

It Seems To Me...

I'm finally getting around to commenting on last night's speeches. I really only watched Sharpton, Edwards and Mrs. Edwards.

Reverand Al Sharpton's speech was true to his form. He deviated from his script pretty heavily and hit on a lot of things that other speakers were apparently too reserved or cautious to approach with the same abandon and righteousness as Sharpton. I would expect nothing less from him. I've always liked Sharpton. Despite the many wisecracks and deprecating comments that have been made about him over the years, he is a great man and a great speaker and I have the utmost respect for him, his cause and the values that he preaches. His scripted speech was wonderful, but his improvised additions were evidence of his deep and genuine convictions. (Hat Tip to Cul for that). It's hard to choose my favorite part of the speech, but I really liked this:

Look at the current view of our nation worldwide and the results of our unilateral foreign policy. We went from unprecedented international support and solidarity on September 12, 2001, to hostility and hatred as we stand here tonight. How did we squander the opportunity to unite the world for democracy and to commit to a global fight against hunger and disease? We did it with a go-it-alone foreign policy based on flawed intelligence. We were told that we were going into Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction. We’ve lost hundreds of soldiers. We’ve expended over 200 billion dollars at a time when we face record state deficits. And when it became clear, that the weapons were not there, the president sought to shift the purpose of the war and to challenge our patriotism.

We are also faced with the prospect, in the next four years, that two or more of the Supreme Court Justice seats will become available. This year, as we celebrated the anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education, this court voted 5 to 4 on critical issues of women’s rights and civil rights. It is frightening to think that the gains of the civil and women’s rights movements of the last century could be reversed if this administration sits in the White House for four more years.

This is not about a party. It is about living up to the promise of America.

John Edwards was magnificent. Despite the fact that I would prefer not to have either a President OR a Vice President who voted in favor of giving Bush the authority to go to war, we don't have much of a choice now. But relatively speaking, we've done the best with what we had as far as I can see (though I wouldn't cry if the ticket were reversed). I really respect John Edwards' experience as a plaintiffs' trial lawyer and I believe him when he says he really cares about balancing out the social and economic spectrum and minimizing the inequalities in this country. I like him fine. A hell of a lot more than I like Dick. And though John Kerry would never have been my first pick as President, he'll do.

Elizabeth Edwards created a healthy contrast from Teresa Heinz Kerry in that she is more of an average American woman. She speaks with clarity and gets right to the point. I liked that. I also liked Teresa Heinz Kerry a great deal for her eloquent language and wisdom and a whole host of other traits that shown through during her speech the other night. Mrs. Edwards brought balance to the whole picture. She seemed to exhibit her own very down-to-earth personality.

As usual, the mood and spirit of empowerment was ruined for the folks at home by the irritating news correspondents who are covering the convention. It doesn't matter what channel you're watching, these idiots are the scourge of the earth as far as I'm concerned. A bane on the entire political process. Countless jaded, useless talking heads with nothing of value to contribute most of the time. Just their vapid commentary like the idiot who said "I don't know...I think John Edwards might have come off as too perfect." Oh shutup. I mean, have an opinion, by all means, but does every remark have to be cynical or aimed to distract from the reality of what is happening?

Aaron Brown is another dumbass when he asks ridiculous questions of Al Franken like, "is the party on the floor the same party that is at the podium?" How do you answer such a completely useless question? "Yes, we're all democrats here" or "No. It's weird. I have no idea why all those people were cheering like maniacs every time one of the speakers opened their mouth!" or how bout, "I have no idea! I don't even know what the hell that means! What am I doing here?! Where am I???" Wait, who's the president? Oh yes. That's why I'm here. To change all that.

Anyway, that is my biggest bitch about this convention. The media that already sucks so profoundly on a regular basis is out in full force, probably pounding caffeine all day and getting (as well as dishing out) their daily dose of all the inanity, twice the self importance and three times the nauseating cynicism while living up to nearly nil when it comes to their general responsibility to the public. But I guess we should be pretty used to that by now.

Maria Rules

I'm thinking of laying down a couple of ground rules here at BBD.

#1) No forgeries. It's pretty easy to tell if someone is posting as themselves or as someone else. From now on, all forgeries will be deleted.

#2) If you're going to insult someone, please do not repeat the same exact insult over and over again. It is the most tedious thing imaginable for everyone involved. Nobody likes a broken record.

Everyone knows that I see insults as somewhat of an art. I enjoy having insult wars. However, I enjoy them because you can be creative. Please people, try to reach beyond the narrow boundaries of your imagination. Otherwise, leave the insults to people who have a sense of humor. If you are insulting someone because you genuinely hate them and you are angry, this isn't the place. At some point, when there is nothing new to say, you either move on from the discussion or remain like a hamster stuck on a noisy hamster wheel. The latter is comparable to some sort of bardo or hell realm as far as I'm concerned. Have mercy on your fellow readers, not to mention me, your gracious host.

This site is not a forum for playground antics. I post here so that people can comment, share their thoughts or debate on specific subject matter. The caliber of communication is degraded by those who are unable to conduct themselves in a civilized fashion or at least make up for their inability to debate with a clever wit or razor's edge. I am sick and tired of seeing the same stupid, banal back and forth. I am going to start deleting these repetative and pointless comment wars. They are boring, irritating and childish. If you can't think of a new insult and one that doesn't involve homophobia, beastiality and pedophilia (with possible exceptions depending on the context of the thread), then don't say anything at all.

I may add to this if it becomes necessary, but for the most part, I hate the very word "Rules" and try my hardest to keep the damn things to a minimum.

Thank you all.

Maria Luz De Luna

Crazy Ladies

If you didn't already think that Leona Helmsley was an asshole, here's a new reason to think so.

US property billionaire Leona Helmsley is suing the New York cemetery where her husband is buried for $150m.

Mrs Helmsley, famous for pronouncing that "only the little people pay taxes", says the vaults in the Woodlawn Cemetery obscure the mausoleum's view.

The article goes into detail about her demand for a hundred million bucks for her "pain and suffering" and fifty million for the costs of moving the mausoleum to a different cemetary. I don't know how that could possibly cost fifty million. That woman is really scary to me.

Speaking of crazy ladies, I was tickled by this story:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman became so furious after a fight with her husband she stormed out of the house armed with a hammer and smashed up his car -- before realizing she had vandalized the wrong vehicle, police said Wednesday. The 43-year-old from Essen, western Germany, told police she shattered the windshield, broke the headlights and wrenched off the wing mirrors, causing more than $1,200 in damage, because she was filled with rage after a telephone quarrel.

After going back indoors she realized she had battered the wrong car. Only noticing the color, she had attacked her neighbor's blue Opel Corsa and not the blue Ford Fiesta belonging to her spouse.

I guess that will probably go down in history as her most embarassing moment. Didn't that happen in the first "Barber Shop" movie? Hilarious. And did they say a blue Ford Fiesta? That in itself is a crime.

Roundup

I watched Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Ron Reagan, Teresa Heinz Kerry and Barack Obama deliver their speeches at the Democratic Convention last night. Kennedy had the impact and conviction that we've come to expect from him. I love it that he is passionate and fearless and when I listen to him with my eyes closed, all of his words settle in to me and there is something familiar and grounding about his voice. He has a great edge to him coupled with a genuine concern about the character and integrity of our government system. I loved his closing:

For centuries, kings ruled by what they claimed was divine right. They could not be questioned. They could not be challenged. The people’s fate was not their own. But today, because of the surpassing wisdom of our founders, the constant courage of the patriots of the past, and the shared sacrifice of generations of Americans who kept the faith, the power of America still rests securely in citizens’ hands. In our hands.

True to our highest and noblest ideals, we intend to use that power. We will use it wisely and well. We will use it, in the poet’s words my brothers loved, "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." We will use it to heal, to build, to hope, and to dream again. And in doing so, we will truly make our country once more America the Beautiful.

On to Howard Dean. Pretty mediocre speech. I hate to say it, but it's true. That man is not a speaker. I felt like anything he had to say was redundant and inconsequential. Every moment he spoke, I paced from the kitchen to the living room as if I had some task to accomplish, but I already had a drink in my hand and dinner in progress, so there was nothing for me to do. I just couldn't sit through him. Then, when it was over, people in the press acted like he'd been so amazing. Huh? He lost me with the stories about kids who sold their bicycles and old ladies who spent their pensions on democratic contributions. For some reason that bothered me far more than it pleased me. His whole manner completely rubs me the wrong way though. So that was a disappointment.

Ron Reagan was good. I am glad he was given the opportunity to raise awareness about stem cell research and the Bush administration's plans to hinder this incredible scientific progress. The talking heads on CNN at the end of that speech made me want to throw a brick at the TV. All I heard was "that was kind of creepy, talking about stem cell research...I dunno...blah...blah...I mean, how do we know it will cure Parkinsons or Diabetes in ten years? We don't know...blah, blah, blah...someone help me get my head out of my ass." Christ almighty. Where do they find these people? The Bush administration is compromising the health of millions and halting an incredibly important advancement in medical science. I am greatful that people like Ron Reagan can use their influence to convey a message on the subject.

Teresa Heinz Kerry was gracious and genuine. I loved her demeanor and her mischievous eyes and her savoir faire. She told a bit of her story and background and generally introduced herself to those who have only seen her face but never heard her speak. She was deeply thoughtful and her intelligence was evident. She brought a strong warmth to the podium. I enjoyed her presence and her words.

Barack Obama was another one who really hit home with an amazingly eloquent speech that held the audience captive and hanging on every word. Looks like this was his coming out party. Very impressive.

All in all, I liked watching all of the speeches, with maybe the exception of HD. Too bad for that. I look forward to tonight!

Like It Is

An entertaining and slightly cutting article in the Washington Post highlights the inspirational Clinton speech, shitty media coverage of the convention and the hypocricy and/or stupidity of certain critics.

Bill Clinton, Getting the Gang Ready to Rock and Roll

By Tom Shales
Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Searching for a way to describe Hillary Clinton's popularity with Democrats, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said last night, as the crowd at the FleetCenter in Boston cheered her, "Senator Clinton is a rock star."

Maybe so, but guess who was about to come out there and set the Democratic National Convention on its ear: a veritable combination of Elvis, the Beatles, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen put together. There he was, huger than life: Bill Clinton, who after his introduction by his wife raced breathlessly through what seemed a 40-minute speech crammed into about 25 and got the 2004 presidential race roaringly underway. He was just plain magnificent.

Lots of us complained about the length of his speeches during his eight years as president, but confined by the arrogant networks to a small space last night -- the mandate reportedly was to finish by 11 p.m. Eastern time or be pulled off the air -- Clinton was Speed Racer and Capt. Commando and maybe even Spider-Man. He was, even Brit Hume had to admit on the Republican-loving Fox News Channel, "as full of his skills as ever."

Mara Liasson, part of the panel Fox had put together to comment, said the former president had made the case for presumed presidential candidate John Kerry better than Kerry had ever made it for himself. Bill Clinton was back in town, bygones were bygones (the bad ones, that is, of which there are many) and the nation could thrill to the still-real excitement of a speech delivered with passion and skill and brilliance.

In terms of content, the speech given earlier by former president Jimmy Carter was more volatile but, of course, Carter could yell "fire" in a crowded theater and make it sound like a folksy howdy-do. The networks decided not to carry Carter's speech, Nobel Prize winner or not, and to limit opening-night convention coverage to one hour. One hour. The cable networks supposedly take up the slack but it's a system that still bespeaks irresponsibility and shirking of civic duty by the broadcast networks.

They're busy, of course, with their trifling, noisy, violent, demeaning, crass, corny and meaningless summer reruns. The networks complain that the conventions have become repetitious and predictable; and their own programming isn't? The summer fight every four years has really become one not between two political parties -- they aren't really fighting in earnest until Labor Day -- but between the parties and the networks, with the networks -- owned by bigger and bigger corporations each time the parties meet in convention -- arrogantly flaunting their power.

Dan Rather, the most distinguished of the big three anchors, looked peeved about the whole situation and was surprisingly terse during CBS's coverage. But then he had his doubts about the built-in drama of the story: "About the last thing you will find here . . . is suspense," he told viewers. On NBC, Tom Brokaw abdicated as he often does to political expert and "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert.

The cable networks' coverage tended to be feistier and most entertaining, if not more enlightening, than the grudging stuff on the broadcast networks. Chris Matthews convened a special edition of his "Hardball" show from the convention with Andrea Mitchell, Joe Scarborough, Willie Brown ("Bill Clinton genuinely loves people," he said) and others who would drop by and be shouted at. But MSNBC producers had the good sense to cut away from cacophony for a moving speech from the vast convention stage by Haleema Salie, who lost a pregnant daughter and son-in-law in the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Fox missed some of that, though, because it was belatedly rerunning Jimmy Carter, perhaps having decided he was newsworthy after all. Anchor Hume was joined by the scratchily crotchety Susan Estrich, who in her advancing years is beginning to sound exactly like Carol Channing. Back down on the stage, another moving moment of peaceful contemplation: 16-year-old violinist Gabe Lefkowitz playing "Amazing Grace" in memoriam.

People in the crowded hall held up lights or candles or matches. This all made a mockery of Fox anchor Neal Cavuto's imbecilic statement earlier in the day, as he sat in the foreground of the hall, that "there's a lot of hatred in this room behind me." He said the convention would be "predictably partisan." Gosh! Does that mean the Democrats wouldn't give equal time to Republicans? Heaven help us if the November elections are partisan, too.

"Some of the prime-time lineup appears to be very partisan," CNN pretty-boy Bill Hemmer told commentator Jeff Greenfield on the network's morning show. Insights like these are so dazzling you really have to step back from the set to avoid having your eyebrows singed.

During the day, the cable networks reported predictably how predictable the convention was sure to be. Everybody likened it to an "infomercial," a comparison that people have been making for years now and is meaningless. Yes, the role of the political convention has changed, and television changed it years and years ago, and no, it's not likely major decisions will be made on live TV in front of the American people. But we've got enough "reality TV" now. How about letting the parties put on their shows and sitting back to see which one does the better job? Like there's some insidious harm or danger in that or something.

In addition to all the stories about how conventions aren't like they were in 1860, everybody had to do a story on the popularity of doughnuts in Boston, proving how investigative and enterprising those crafty networks can be. Wait, wait, this just in: TV conventions aren't really conventions any more. They're more like -- hang onto your sweat bands now -- infomercials! You heard it here for the 400th time.

In The Spirit

Three words: Bring Back Bill!!!

That was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Now that's what you call a Uniter. NOT a Divider.

Text of Bill Clinton's speech

Posted July 27, 2004, 12:06 AM EDT

The following is a transcript of a speech by William J. Clinton at the Democratic National Convention:

Thank you. I am honored to share the podium with my Senator, though I think I should be introducing her. I'm proud of her and so grateful to the people of New York that the best public servant in our family is still on the job and grateful to all of you, especially my friends from Arkansas, for the chance you gave us to serve our country in the White House.

I am also honored to share this night with President Carter, who has inspired the world with his work for peace, democracy, and human rights. And with Al Gore, my friend and partner for eight years, who played such a large role in building the prosperity and progress that brought America into the 21st century, who showed incredible grace and patriotism under pressure, and who is the living embodiment that every vote counts -- and must be counted in every state in America.

Tonight I speak as a citizen, returning to the role I have played for most of my life as a foot soldier in the fight for our future, as we nominate a true New England patriot for president. The state that gave us John Adams and John Kennedy has now given us John Kerry, a good man, a great senator, a visionary leader. We are constantly told America is deeply divided. But all Americans value freedom, faith, and family. We all honor the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.

We all want good jobs, good schools, health care, safe streets, a clean environment. We all want our children to grow up in a secure America leading the world toward a peaceful future. Our differences are in how we can best achieve these things, in a time of unprecedented change. Therefore, we Democrats will bring the American people a positive campaign, arguing not who's good and who's bad, but what is the best way to build the safe, prosperous world our children deserve.

The 21st century is marked by serious security threats, serious economic challenges, and serious problems like global warming and the AIDS epidemic. But it is also full of enormous opportunities-to create millions of high paying jobs in clean energy, and biotechnology; to restore the manufacturing base and reap the benefits of the global economy through our diversity and our commitment to decent labor and environmental standards everywhere; and to create a world where we can celebrate our religious and racial differences, because our common humanity matters more.

To build that kind of world we must make the right choices; and we must have a president who will lead the way. Democrats and Republicans have very different and honestly held ideas on that choices we should make, rooted in fundamentally different views of how we should meet our common challenges at home and how we should play our role in the world. Democrats want to build an America of shared responsibilities and shared opportunities and more global cooperation, acting alone only when we must.

We think the role of government is to give people the tools and conditions to make the most of their lives. Republicans believe in an America run by the right people, their people, in a world in which we act unilaterally when we can, and cooperate when we have to.

They think the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their political, economic, and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on matters like health care and retirement security. Since most Americans are not that far to the right, they have to portray us Democrats as unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America. But Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all wanted to be one nation, strong in the fight against terror. The president had a great opportunity to bring us together under his slogan of compassionate conservatism and to unite the world in common cause against terror.

Instead, he and his congressional allies made a very different choice: to use the moment of unity to push America too far to the right and to walk away from our allies, not only in attacking Iraq before the weapons inspectors finished their jobs, but in withdrawing American support for the Climate Change Treaty, the International Court for war criminals, the ABM treaty, and even the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Now they are working to develop two new nuclear weapons which they say we might use first. At home, the President and the Republican Congress have made equally fateful choices indeed. For the first time ever when America was on a war footing, there were two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top one percent. I'm in that group now for the first time in my life.

When I was in office, the Republicans were pretty mean to me. When I left and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. At first I thought I should send them a thank you note -- until I realized they were sending you the bill.

They protected my tax cuts while:

-- Withholding promised funding for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving over 2 million children behind

-- Cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of job training

-- 100,000 working families out of child care assistance

-- 300,000 poor children out of after school programs

-- Raising out of pocket healthcare costs to veterans

-- Weakening or reversing important environmental advances for clean air and the preservation of our forests.

Everyone had to sacrifice except the wealthiest Americans, who wanted to do their part but were asked only to expend the energy necessary to open the envelopes containing our tax cuts. If you agree with these choices, you should vote to return them to the White House and Congress. If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats.

In this year's budget, the White House wants to cut off federal funding for 88,000 uniformed police, including more than 700 on the New York City police force who put their lives on the line on 9/11. As gang violence is rising and we look for terrorists in our midst, Congress and the President are also about to allow the ten-year-old ban on assault weapons to expire. Our crime policy was to put more police on the streets and take assault weapons off the streets. It brought eight years of declining crime and violence. Their policy is the reverse, they're taking police off the streets and putting assault weapons back on the streets. If you agree with their choices, vote to continue them. If not, join John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats in making America safer, smarter, and stronger.

On Homeland Security, Democrats tried to double the number of containers at ports and airports checked for Weapons of Mass Destruction. The one billion dollar cost would have been paid for by reducing the tax cut of 200,000 millionaires by five thousand dollars each. Almost all 200,000 of us would have been glad to pay 5,000 dollars to make the nearly 300 million Americans safer-but the measure failed because the White House and the Republican leadership in the House decided my tax cut was more important -- If you agree with that choice, re-elect them. If not, give John Kerry and John Edwards a chance.

These policies have turned the projected 5.8 trillion dollar surplus we left-enough to pay for the baby boomers retirement-into a projected debt of nearly 5 trillion dollars, with a 400 plus billion dollar deficit this year and for years to come. How do they pay for it? First by taking the monthly surplus in Social Security payments and endorsing the checks of working people over to me to cover my tax cut. But it's not enough. They are borrowing the rest from foreign governments, mostly Japan and China. Sure, they're competing with us for good jobs but how can we enforce our trade laws against our bankers? If you think it's good policy to pay for my tax cut with the Social Security checks of working men and women, and borrowed money from China, vote for them. If not, John Kerry's your man.

We Americans must choose for President one of two strong men who both love our country, but who have very different worldviews: Democrats favor shared responsibility, shared opportunity, and more global cooperation. Republicans favor concentrated wealth and power, leaving people to fend for themselves and more unilateral action. I think we're right for two reasons: First, America works better when all people have a chance to live their dreams. Second, we live in an interdependent world in which we can't kill, jail, or occupy all our potential adversaries, so we have to both fight terror and build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists. We tried it their way for twelve years, our way for eight, and then their way for four more.

By the only test that matters, whether people were better off when we finished than when we started, our way works better-it produced over 22 million good jobs, rising incomes, and 100 times as many people moving out of poverty into the middle class. It produced more health care, the largest increase in college aid in 50 years, record home ownership, a cleaner environment, three surpluses in a row, a modernized defense force, strong efforts against terror, and an America respected as a world leader for peace, security and prosperity.

More importantly, we have great new champions in John Kerry and John Edwards. Two good men with wonderful wives-Teresa a generous and wise woman who understands the world we are trying to shape. And Elizabeth, a lawyer and mother who understands the lives we are all trying to lift. Here is what I know about John Kerry. During the Vietnam War, many young men -- including the current president, the vice president and me-could have gone to Vietnam but didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, send me.

When they sent those swift-boats up the river in Vietnam, and told them their job was to draw hostile fire-to show the American flag and bait the enemy to come out and fight-John Kerry said, send me. When it was time to heal the wounds of war and normalize relations with Vietnam-and to demand an accounting of the POWs and MIAs we lost there-John Kerry said, send me.

When we needed someone to push the cause of inner-city kids struggling to avoid a life of crime, or to bring the benefits of high technology to ordinary Americans, or to clean the environment in a way that creates jobs, or to give small businesses a better chance to make it, John Kerry said send me.

Tonight my friends, I ask you to join me for the next 100 days in telling John Kerry's story and promoting his plans. Let every person in this hall and all across America say to him what he has always said to America: Send Me. The bravery that the men who fought by his side saw in battle I've seen in the political arena. When I was President, John Kerry showed courage and conviction on crime, on welfare reform, on balancing the budget at a time when those priorities were not exactly a way to win a popularity contest in our party.

He took tough positions on tough problems. John Kerry knows who he is and where he's going. He has the experience, the character, the ideas and the values to be a great President. In a time of change he has two other important qualities: his insatiable curiosity to understand the forces shaping our lives, and a willingness to hear the views even of those who disagree with him. Therefore his choices will be full of both conviction and common sense.

He proved that when he picked a tremendous partner in John Edwards. Everybody talks about John Edwards' energy, intellect, and charisma. The important thing is how he has used his talents to improve the lives of people who -- like John himself -- had to work hard for all they've got. He has always championed the cause of people too often left out or left behind. And that's what he'll do as our Vice President.

Their opponents will tell you to be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists -- don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not conflicting values -- they go hand in hand. John Kerry has both. His first priority will be keeping America safe. Remember the scripture: Be Not Afraid.

John Kerry and John Edwards, have good ideas:

-- To make this economy work again for middle-class Americans

-- To restore fiscal responsibility

-- To save Social Security; to make healthcare more affordable and college more available

-- To free us from dependence on foreign oil and create new jobs in clean energy

-- To rally the world to win the war on terror and to make more friends and fewer terrorists.

At every turning point in our history we the people have chosen unity over division, heeding our founders' call to America's eternal mission: to form a more perfect union, to widen the circle of opportunity, deepen the reach of freedom, and strengthen the bonds of community.

It happened because we made the right choices. In the early days of the republic, America was at a crossroads much like it is today, deeply divided over whether or not to build a real nation with a national economy, and a national legal system. We chose a more perfect union.

In the Civil War, America was at a crossroads, divided over whether to save the union and end slavery -- we chose a more perfect union. In the 1960s, America was at a crossroads, divided again over civil rights and women's rights. Again, we chose a more perfect union. As I said in 1992, we're all in this together; we have an obligation both to work hard and to help our fellow citizens, both to fight terror and to build a world with more cooperation and less terror. Now again, it is time to choose.

Since we're all in the same boat, let us chose as the captain of our ship a brave good man who knows how to steer a vessel though troubled waters to the calm seas and clear skies of our more perfect union. We know our mission. Let us join as one and say in a loud, clear voice: Send John Kerry.

© Newsday

Up to the Minute

Is the weekend over already? I got a ton of cleaning done this weekend. And a ton of partying too. Friday night I made dinner for Rob and I before he had to drive to Maryland. Took a walk with Kathleen later to this place "Twist" that opened up not too long ago. It was alright. Kind of the same old shit that my neighborhood has to offer. I like this area for the fact that there is a lot of access to basically anything a person could need. It's a great location for shopping and eating, getting your hair or nails done, enjoying dessert at any hour...and bars/nightlife, if you're interested in guidos, firemen, jocks and their respective female counterparts. I don't know...it's just not my crowd so much. It seems like there is a really large male population here. Kathleen mentioned it too, that you walk down the street and see a lot of guys hanging outside of the bars and shops at all time of day or night. It's a tiny bit much sometimes. The concentration of testosterone, libido and general machismo. Walking around in my neighborhood you'll see a lot of guys driving fancy cars, flexing their assets. Like peacocks, doing their dance, shaking their feathers. And if you're a woman, they're usually not shy about approaching you and trying to persuade you to spend time with them or blurting out all kinds of "compliments." Don't get me wrong, I like receiving flattering compliments as much as the next girl, when it's done with taste.

Sometimes it's a little intimidating or embarassing though if someone is really persistent or approaches in an aggressive manner. A couple days ago I was waiting for the light to change to cross the street and a big black SUV drove up and stopped in the crosswalk directly in front of me. There were four guys in the car. I stepped back to the sidewalk because they startled me. The guy in the passengers seat inquired about where I was going and how I was doing. I said "home" and "fine" and gave a terse smile. He told me I was doin' good and lookin' good. I walked around the vehicle to cross the street. Why do men do this? Why do they approach women in this way? In this aggressive, macho way? I've noticed it all my life and I just don't get it.

Anyway, so Saturday night we went out to Williamsburg. That's the seventh ring of hipster hell, but still more my speed than my own area of Brooklyn. We went to this big dual birthday bash for some friends of our friends. It was a great time. Keg, cakes and a really good crowd. The party evolved continuously throughout the night. One of my favorite moments was when these two girls all dressed up in the most egregious 80s outfits imaginable came in and DJd with some Rick James, Salt & Pepper, Prince and the likes. These two tastelessly clad girls rocked the party with their fabulous dance moves. Everyone joined in and it was a total blast. I hated their outfits, but they were a really good time so I found it in my heart to forgive. After the dancing we went up to the roof which provided an amazing view. We all let out a big sigh of contentment and enjoyed the cool air and the sight of a train passing over the bridge and the sparkling skyline.

We stayed there until nearly two, got up and walked about twenty blocks to The Royal Oak and stayed there until just after four, before grabbing a cab home.

I finished up all my cleaning/house maintenance yesterday and then sat down to over indulge in television for most of the remainder of the evening. First I watched the countdown 100 Greatest Comedians on Comedy Central and then the "Chippendales" True Hollywood Story on E!. That was weird. I dated and lived with a Chippendale dancer for several months a few years ago. The mini-documentary was a reminder of the world that I witnessed during that time. All the shaving and oiling and tanning and exercising...not to mention all the other shit like steroid use and macho rivalry and alcoholism and female troubles that they didn't spotlight on the "True Hollywood Story." Actually, there were quite a few bits of pertinent information and scandalous stories that were overlooked, perhaps deliberately. I'd met a couple of the guys being interviewed, so that was funny. The guy that I dated is no longer with Chippendales, due to a major scandal of his very own creation (he was good at making trouble), so I almost wanted to email him, knowing that he would be terribly jealous and angry that they're getting attention and that his old "teammates" and boss were being interviewed and glorified on E! while he likely continues to fester in what he perceives as one of the greatest failures of his adult life. But I figured it probably wouldn't do much good to rub salt on that wound, even though he completely deserves it. Hahaa.

So that's all for the weekend recap. I'm sorry that it's over. The weekend I mean. ;o)

Update: Well guess who instant messaged me? That's right! My ex the chipper! He needed someone to vent to. Life is weird. Really really weird.

Oh Great God Of The Sun...

Shine your majestic light upon me. It was supposed to be a beach day, but the weather isn't cooperating, so it looks like it's going to be a blogging, music-blasting, house cleaning day. Oh well, that's not so bad...

I became genuinely distraught yesterday as the day progressed into ever deeper blackness and torential downpours. My coworkers and I lamented this fucked up NY weather to the point of mutual exhaustion. Today I have resigned myself to it. Life must go on, even if your meticulously planned beach day is ripped from you by a merciless weather god, or perhaps I could even just blame it on the useless weather anchors who get paid despite the fact that they change their story every hour and they're still wrong. All week they claimed Sat. would be partly sunny in the 80s. Yay. Yesterday all of a sudden that changed to thunder showers all day. Even that they were wrong about. It is just cold and grey.

Oh well. I'm over it. On to enjoying the day anyway...

Plastic Soldiers

I don't want anyone practicing on me! So now, not only are soldiers guinea pigs for experimental drugs, but they're also guinea pigs for plastic surgeons?

Here's the part I really don't get. If they're practicing, why do taxpayers have to pick up the tab? Shouldn't the surgeons be offering "practice" plastic surgery services for free? And if you are already a certified plastic surgeon, why would you need "practice?" Not performing enough boob jobs on regular civilians to know what you're doing? I don't know...this just seems really twisted and left me with too many unanswered questions. Are these "surgeons" really students who need practice? If they are, why are taxpayers forced to pay for their services to the military? If they're not students, then why do they need practice? Anyone know?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has long lured recruits with the slogan "Be All You Can Be," but now soldiers and their families can receive plastic surgery, including breast enlargements, on the taxpayers' dime. The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free -- something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills.

"Anyone wearing a uniform is eligible," Dr. Bob Lyons, chief of plastic surgery at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio told the magazine, which said soldiers needed the approval of their commanding officers to get the time off.

Between 2000 and 2003, military doctors performed 496 breast enlargements and 1,361 liposuction surgeries on soldiers and their dependents, the magazine said.

The magazine quoted an Army spokeswoman as saying, "the surgeons have to have someone to practice on."

Why does that last line sound like such a flimsy justification?

Recognize

Came across this speech at Truthout.org where Bill Moyers really hits the nail on the head. Beautifully written and on the money (NPI). This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel angry and motivated to act at the same time that it makes me feel a little helpless and depressed about the world that we live in. It's long, but a worthy read.

This is the Fight of Our Lives

By Bill Moyers
Keynote Speech
Inequality Matters Forum
New York University

Thursday 3 June 2004

It is important from time to time to remember that some things are worth getting mad about.

Here's one: On March 10 of this year, on page B8, with a headline that stretched across all six columns, The New York Times reported that tuition in the city's elite private schools would hit $26,000 for the coming school year - for kindergarten as well as high school. On the same page, under a two-column headline, Michael Wineraub wrote about a school in nearby Mount Vernon, the first stop out of the Bronx, with a student body that is 97 percent black. It is the poorest school in the town: nine out of ten children qualify for free lunches; one out of 10 lives in a homeless shelter. During black history month this past February, a sixth grader wanted to write a report on Langston Hughes. There were no books on Langston Hughes in the library - no books about the great poet, nor any of his poems. There is only one book in the library on Frederick Douglass. None on Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, Leontyne Price, or other giants like them in the modern era. In fact, except for a few Newberry Award books the librarian bought with her own money, the library is mostly old books - largely from the 1950s and 60s when the school was all white. A 1960 child's primer on work begins with a youngster learning how to be a telegraph delivery boy. All the workers in the book - the dry cleaner, the deliveryman, the cleaning lady - are white. There's a 1967 book about telephones which says: "when you phone you usually dial the number. But on some new phones you can push buttons." The newest encyclopedia dates from l991, with two volumes - "b" and "r" - missing. There is no card catalog in the library - no index cards or computer.

Something to get mad about.

Here's something else: Caroline Payne's face and gums are distorted because her Medicaid-financed dentures don't fit. Because they don't fit, she is continuously turned down for jobs on account of her appearance. Caroline Payne is one of the people in David Shipler's new book, 'The Working Poor: Invisible in America'. She was born poor, and in spite of having once owned her own home and having earned a two-year college degree, Caroline Payne has bounced from one poverty-wage job to another all her life, equipped with the will to move up, but not the resources to deal with unexpected and overlapping problems like a mentally handicapped daughter, a broken marriage, a sudden layoff crisis that forced her to sell her few assets, pull up roots and move on. "In the house of the poor," Shipler writes "...the walls are thin and fragile and troubles seep into one another."

Here's something else to get mad about. Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives, the body of Congress owned and operated by the corporate, political, and religious right, approved new tax credits for children. Not for poor children, mind you. But for families earning as much as $309,000 a year - families that already enjoy significant benefits from earlier tax cuts. The editorial page of The Washington Post called this "bad social policy, bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You'd think they'd be embarrassed," said the Post, "but they're not."

And this, too, is something to get mad about. Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did twenty years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours and still falling behind; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans - eight out of ten of them in working families - are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need.

Astonishing as it seems, no one in official Washington seems embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor is greater than it's been in 50 years - the worst inequality among all western nations. Or that we are experiencing a shift in poverty. For years it was said those people down there at the bottom were single, jobless mothers. For years they were told work, education, and marriage is how they move up the economic ladder. But poverty is showing up where we didn't expect it - among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. Our political, financial and business class expects them to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.

Let me tell you about the Stanleys and the Neumanns. During the last decade, I produced a series of documentaries for PBS called "Surviving the Good Times." The title refers to the boom time of the '90s when the country achieved the longest period of economic growth in its entire history. Some good things happened then, but not everyone shared equally in the benefits. To the contrary. The decade began with a sustained period of downsizing by corporations moving jobs out of America and many of those people never recovered what was taken from them. We decided early on to tell the stories of two families in Milwaukee - one black, one white - whose breadwinners were laid off in the first wave of layoffs in 1991. We reported on how they were coping with the wrenching changes in their lives, and we stayed with them over the next ten years as they tried to find a place in the new global economy. They're the kind of Americans my mother would have called "the salt of the earth." They love their kids, care about their communities, go to church every Sunday, and work hard all week - both mothers have had to take full-time jobs.

During our time with them, the fathers in both families became seriously ill. One had to stay in the hospital two months, putting his family $30,000 in debt because they didn't have adequate health insurance. We were there with our camera when the bank started to foreclose on the modest home of the other family because they couldn't meet the mortgage payments after dad lost his good-paying manufacturing job. Like millions of Americans, the Stanleys and the Neumanns were playing by the rules and still getting stiffed. By the end of the decade they were running harder but slipping behind, and the gap between them and prosperous America was widening.

What turns their personal tragedy into a political travesty is that they are patriotic. They love this country. But they no longer believe they matter to the people who run the country. When our film opens, both families are watching the inauguration of Bill Clinton on television in 1992. By the end of the decade they were no longer paying attention to politics. They don't see it connecting to their lives. They don't think their concerns will ever be addressed by the political, corporate, and media elites who make up our dominant class. They are not cynical, because they are deeply religious people with no capacity for cynicism, but they know the system is rigged against them. They know this, and we know this. For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life. In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30 fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold.

Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefiting proportionately. But that's not the case. As the economist Jeff Madrick reminds us, the pressures of inequality on middle and working class Americans are now quite severe. "The strain on working people and on family life, as spouses have gone to work in dramatic numbers, has become significant. VCRs and television sets are cheap, but higher education, health care, public transportation, drugs, housing and cars have risen faster in price than typical family incomes. And life has grown neither calm nor secure for most Americans, by any means." You can find many sources to support this conclusion. I like the language of a small outfit here in New York called the Commonwealth Foundation/Center for the Renewal of American Democracy. They conclude that working families and the poor "are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life."

Household economics is not the only area where inequality is growing in America. Equality doesn't mean equal incomes, but a fair and decent society where money is not the sole arbiter of status or comfort. In a fair and just society, the commonwealth will be valued even as individual wealth is encouraged.

Let me make something clear here. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm old enough to know that the tension between haves and have-nots are built into human psychology, it is a constant in human history, and it has been a factor in every society. But I also know America was going to be different. I know that because I read Mr. Jefferson's writings, Mr. Lincoln's speeches and other documents in the growing American creed. I presumptuously disagreed with Thomas Jefferson about human equality being self-evident. Where I lived, neither talent, nor opportunity, nor outcomes were equal. Life is rarely fair and never equal. So what could he possibly have meant by that ringing but ambiguous declaration: "All men are created equal"? Two things, possibly. One, although none of us are good, all of us are sacred (Glenn Tinder), that's the basis for thinking we are by nature kin.

Second, he may have come to see the meaning of those words through the experience of the slave who was his mistress. As is now widely acknowledged, the hands that wrote "all men are created equal" also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a black woman named Sally Hennings. She bore him six children whom he never acknowledged as his own, but who were the only slaves freed by his will when he died - the one request we think Sally Hennings made of her master. Thomas Jefferson could not have been insensitive to the flesh-and-blood woman in his arms. He had to know she was his equal in her desire for life, her longing for liberty, her passion for happiness.

In his book on the Declaration, my late friend Mortimer Adler said Jefferson realized that whatever things are really good for any human being are really good for all other human beings. The happy or good life is essentially the same for all: a satisfaction of the same needs inherent in human nature. A just society is grounded in that recognition. So Jefferson kept as a slave a woman whose nature he knew was equal to his. All Sally Hennings got from her long sufferance - perhaps it was all she sought from what may have grown into a secret and unacknowledged love - was that he let her children go. "Let my children go" - one of the oldest of all petitions. It has long been the promise of America - a broken promise, to be sure. But the idea took hold that we could fix what was broken so that our children would live a bountiful life. We could prevent the polarization between the very rich and the very poor that poisoned other societies. We could provide that each and every citizen would enjoy the basic necessities of life, a voice in the system of self-government, and a better chance for their children. We could preclude the vast divides that produced the turmoil and tyranny of the very countries from which so many of our families had fled.

We were going to do these things because we understood our dark side - none of us is good - but we also understood the other side - all of us are sacred. From Jefferson forward we have grappled with these two notions in our collective head - that we are worthy of the creator but that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Believing the one and knowing the other, we created a country where the winners didn't take all. Through a system of checks and balances we were going to maintain a safe, if shifting, equilibrium between wealth and commonwealth. We believed equitable access to public resources is the lifeblood of any democracy. So early on [in Jeff Madrick's description,] primary schooling was made free to all. States changed laws to protect debtors, often the relatively poor, against their rich creditors. Charters to establish corporations were open to most, if not all, white comers, rather than held for the elite. The government encouraged Americans to own their own piece of land, and even supported squatters' rights. The court challenged monopoly - all in the name of we the people.

In my time we went to public schools. My brother made it to college on the GI bill. When I bought my first car for $450 I drove to a subsidized university on free public highways and stopped to rest in state-maintained public parks. This is what I mean by the commonwealth. Rudely recognized in its formative years, always subject to struggle, constantly vulnerable to reactionary counterattacks, the notion of America as a shared project has been the central engine of our national experience.

Until now. I don't have to tell you that a profound transformation is occurring in America: the balance between wealth and the commonwealth is being upended. By design. Deliberately. We have been subjected to what the Commonwealth Foundation calls "a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power." From land, water and other natural resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and to politics itself, a broad range of the American commons is undergoing a powerful shift toward private and corporate control. And with little public debate. Indeed, what passes for 'political debate' in this country has become a cynical charade behind which the real business goes on - the not-so-scrupulous business of getting and keeping power in order to divide up the spoils.

We could have seen this coming if we had followed the money. The veteran Washington reporter, Elizabeth Drew, says "the greatest change in Washington over the past 25 years - in its culture, in the way it does business and the ever-burgeoning amount of business transactions that go on here - has been in the preoccupation with money." Jeffrey Birnbaum, who covered Washington for nearly twenty years for the Wall Street Journal, put it more strongly: "[campaign cash] has flooded over the gunwales of the ship of state and threatens to sink the entire vessel. Political donations determine the course and speed of many government actions that deeply affect our daily lives." Politics is suffocating from the stranglehold of money. During his brief campaign in 2000, before he was ambushed by the dirty tricks of the religious right in South Carolina and big money from George W. Bush's wealthy elites, John McCain said elections today are nothing less than an "influence peddling scheme in which both parties compete to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder."

Small wonder that with the exception of people like John McCain and Russ Feingold, official Washington no longer finds anything wrong with a democracy dominated by the people with money. Hit the pause button here, and recall Roger Tamraz. He's the wealthy oilman who paid $300,000 to get a private meeting in the White House with President Clinton; he wanted help in securing a big pipeline in central Asia. This got him called before congressional hearings on the financial excesses of the 1996 campaign. If you watched the hearings on C-Span you heard him say he didn't think he had done anything out of the ordinary. When they pressed him he told the senators: "Look, when it comes to money and politics, you make the rules. I'm just playing by your rules." One senator then asked if Tamraz had registered and voted. And he was blunt in his reply: "No, senator, I think money's a bit more (important) than the vote."

So what does this come down to, practically?

Here is one accounting:

"When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it's ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price and most of them never see it coming. This is what happens if you don't contribute to their campaigns or spend generously on lobbying. You pick up a disproportionate share of America's tax bill. You pay higher prices for a broad range of products from peanuts to prescriptions. You pay taxes that others in a similar situation have been excused from paying. You're compelled to abide by laws while others are granted immunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do not. You're barred from writing off on your tax returns some of the money spent on necessities while others deduct the cost of their entertainment. You must run your business by one set of rules, while the government creates another set for your competitors. In contrast, the fortunate few who contribute to the right politicians and hire the right lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of their special status. Make a bad business deal; the government bails them out. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government provides the means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the government gives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, the government gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must comply with, the government gives its approval. If they want to kill legislation that is intended for the public, it gets killed."

I'm not quoting from Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book. I'm quoting Time magazine. Time's premier investigative journalists - Donald Bartlett and James Steele - concluded in a series last year that America now has "government for the few at the expense of the many." Economic inequality begets political inequality, and vice versa.

That's why the Stanleys and the Neumanns were turned off by politics. It's why we're losing the balance between wealth and the commonwealth. It's why we can't put things right. And it is the single most destructive force tearing at the soul of democracy. Hear the great justice Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: 'Thou shalt not ration justice.' " Learned Hand was a prophet of democracy. The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else.

I know, I know: this sounds very much like a call for class war. But the class war was declared a generation ago, in a powerful paperback polemic by William Simon, who was soon to be Secretary of the Treasury. He called on the financial and business class, in effect, to take back the power and privileges they had lost in the depression and new deal. They got the message, and soon they began a stealthy class war against the rest of society and the principles of our democracy. They set out to trash the social contract, to cut their workforces and wages, to scour the globe in search of cheap labor, and to shred the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control. Business Week put it bluntly at the time: "Some people will obviously have to do with less....it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more."

The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us.

To create the intellectual framework for this takeover of public policy they funded conservative think tanks - The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute - that churned out study after study advocating their agenda.

To put political muscle behind these ideas they created a formidable political machine. One of the few journalists to cover the issues of class - Thomas Edsall of The Washington Post - wrote: "During the 1970s, business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperate action in the legislative area." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. And they built alliances with the religious right - Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition - who mounted a cultural war providing a smokescreen for the class war, hiding the economic plunder of the very people who were enlisted as foot soldiers in the cause of privilege.

In a book to be published this summer, Daniel Altman describes what he calls the "neo-economy - a place without taxes, without a social safety net, where rich and poor live in different financial worlds - and [said Altman] it's coming to America." He's a little late. It's here. Says Warren Buffett, the savviest investor of them all: "My class won."

Look at the spoils of victory:

Over the past three years, they've pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax cuts - almost all tilted towards the wealthiest people in the country.

Cuts in taxes on the largest incomes.

Cuts in taxes on investment income.

And cuts in taxes on huge inheritances.

More than half of the benefits are going to the wealthiest one percent. You could call it trickle-down economics, except that the only thing that trickled down was a sea of red ink in our state and local governments, forcing them to cut services for and raise taxes on middle class working America.

Now the Congressional Budget Office forecasts deficits totaling $2.75 trillion over the next ten years.

These deficits have been part of their strategy. Some of you will remember that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to warn us 20 years ago, when he predicted that President Ronald Reagan's real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, admitted as such. Now the leading rightwing political strategist, Grover Norquist, says the goal is to "starve the beast" - with trillions of dollars in deficits resulting from trillions of dollars in tax cuts, until the United States Government is so anemic and anorexic it can be drowned in the bathtub.

There's no question about it: The corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children's children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war.

And they are proud of what they have done to our economy and our society. If instead of practicing journalism I was writing for Saturday Night Live, I couldn't have made up the things that this crew have been saying. The president's chief economic adviser says shipping technical and professional jobs overseas is good for the economy. The president's Council of Economic Advisers report that hamburger chefs in fast food restaurants can be considered manufacturing workers. The president's Federal Reserve Chairman says that the tax cuts may force cutbacks in social security - but hey, we should make the tax cuts permanent anyway. The president's Labor Secretary says it doesn't matter if job growth has stalled because "the stock market is the ultimate arbiter."

You just can't make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing.

But what they are doing to middle class and working Americans - and to the workings of American democracy - is no laughing matter. Go online and read the transcripts of Enron traders in the energy crisis four years ago, discussing how they were manipulating the California power market in telephone calls in which they gloat about ripping off "those poor grandmothers." Read how they talk about political contributions to politicians like "Kenny Boy" Lay's best friend George W. Bush. Go on line and read how Citigroup has been fined $70 Million for abuses in loans to low-income, high risk borrowers - the largest penalty ever imposed by the Federal Reserve. A few clicks later, you can find the story of how a subsidiary of the corporate computer giant NEC has been fined over $20 million after pleading guilty to corruption in a federal plan to bring Internet access to poor schools and libraries. And this, the story says, is just one piece of a nationwide scheme to rip off the government and the poor.

Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs - if this isn't class war, what is?

It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it's wrong.

But I don't need to tell you this. You wouldn't be here if you didn't know it. Your presence at this gathering confirms that while an America with liberty and justice for all is a broken promise, it is not a lost cause. Once upon a time I thought the mass media - my industry - would help mend this broken promise and save this cause. After all, the sight of police dogs attacking peaceful demonstrators forced America to recognize the reality of racial injustice. The sight of carnage in Vietnam forced us to recognize the war was unwinnable. The sight of terrorists striking the World Trade Center woke us from a long slumber of denial and distraction. I thought the mass media might awaken Americans to the reality that this ideology of winner-take-all is working against them and not for them. I was wrong. With honorable exceptions, we can't count on the mass media.

What we need is a mass movement of people like you. Get mad, yes - there's plenty to be mad about. Then get organized and get busy. This is the fight of our lives.

Whoa PoPo!!!

Talk about taking extreme measures! Proof positive that people are fucking crazy everywhere you go.

One Way of Promoting Traffic Safety...

PRAGUE (Reuters) - A Czech police officer took a police campaign to cut traffic accidents a little too far when he shot at a pedestrian who crossed a road on a red light.
The policeman in the western city of Pilsen first fired a warning shot in the air. But when the man refused to return to the pavement, the officer shot at him twice but missed, the online edition of the Czech daily Pravo said.

No one was injured. The police officer faces a criminal investigation.

Lucky for the jaywalker this officer was a cruddy shot.

Poor Alligator

Crazy ass crackers.

Florida Alligator Attack

Cops: Man battered girlfriend with three-foot reptile

JULY 19--A Florida man assaulted his girlfriend with a three-foot alligator during a domestic dispute Friday morning, according to cops. David Havennar, 41, was charged with battery for smacking girlfriend Nancy Monico in the ribs with the gator, who lived in a bathtub in Havennar's Port Orange home, according to the below Volusia County Sheriff's Office report. Monico told deputies that she did not know why Havennar (pictured at right) had an alligator in his bathtub, but claimed her beau was "torturing" the reptile. However, an examination of the reptile--which was seized by state wildlife officials--showed no signs of abuse. Monico, on the other hand, suffered minor injuries to her lip, legs, and back area, according to investigators. For his part, Havennar claimed that Monico started the 9 AM dustup when she "bit him on the hand because she was mad about being out of alcohol."

Sounds like these two were made for eachother. She wakes up in the morning and demands liquor and he retaliates by hitting her with an alligator? But I guess assault with a deadly animal is not as uncommon as you'd think.

As if that wasn't enough to laugh about, I paid a visit to the Onion, and got a good laugh out of this. And then felt really bad. hmmmmm.

Prude World

I'm surprised I never read about this before!

This woman was arrested because when selling sex toys at a private party, she described how they are used? Let me tell you, from the perspective of someone who has been to a "passion party" thrown by one of my friends, the manner in which the functions of each particular toy are described are far from obscene. If anything, they are quite technical. Not to mention, if you are buying these toys, you are an adult who is already sexually active. What are you going to tell a sexually active adult about a vibrator that is really going to shock and appall them? Especially if they are seeking to buy one.

What amazes me is that police officers are getting paid to perform these kinds of ludicrous sting operations against full grown adults who are buying and selling an item that is completely legal. It's a fucking setup!

What is the world coming to? Would someone please tell me? At least the judge had the smarts to throw out the charges.

OZZ!

My apologies for the lulls. (Though it looks like my comments section has been making up for it). I haven't had a day off. Things have been hectic at work. Friday night Rob and I went to Ozzfest in Holmdel, NJ. Let me tell you, if you don't already know, what a metal-fest in New Jersey looks like. First and foremost, super grimey. Grimey characters. Lots of them. Unfortunately, hair farming has still not completely gone out of style among butt rockers and metal heads. At least 98% of the attendees were white, Rob and Rahua being the darkest people that I laid eyes on while there. There was no shortage of white supremecists on the premises. Probably a lot of Bush voters. I got that vibe. A white power, American dominance vibe.

But regardless of all that, I had a really, really fun time. First, because Emily and Jed, really close friends from highschool in Oregon, were there running their booth, so we got to hang out with them. And second, because I love Black Sabbath and Ozzy, and they played a really great show. Guitar solos that had me hanging halfway into another universe. Vocals that conjured up the most angst ridden days of my teenhood. At one point Ozzy asked everyone for a light and every lighter in the amphitheatre went up. I looked around at the crowd. Lighters in one hand, sign of the devil in the other, and I honestly had a "Dawn of the Dead" flashback. Is that weird? I surveyed the vast crowd to my left and to my right (this show was sold out) and felt like if you tipped the balance a tad, these people would start eating eachother. Hahaaa. Okay. So I have a bit of an overactive imagination.

Anyway, the final word is that it was a great time.

Weekend was busy. Working, shopping, attending goddaughter's baptism celebration. Back to work. That's life. If you're lucky, you get to see Black Sabbath before it's all over. ;o)

Good Question

Yesterday I was riding along in the passenger's seat of my boyfriend's car, listening to the radio, when that new song "Why?" by Jadakiss came on. I've never been a very big Jadakiss fan so I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention until Rob said "have you seen this video? It's really great." I said I hadn't but I started listening to the song just in time to take note of the controversial lyric about Bush. First of all, I'm sure I don't need to go into the First Amendment implications and all that shit. I am disgusted at the direction this country is going in terms of censorship, surveillance and incarceration. Censorship is where it all begins and the fact that this line would be edited out despite the lack of any basis other than that people are ignorant, really irritates me.

When I heard it, I said "good for him." I happen to agree with Jadakiss that Bush not only knew that the twin towers were going to be hit, but that our government had more than a little something to do with it. Oh yes. I know even my most liberal readers are already shaking their heads, thinking "Oh Maria. Come on. They couldn't have... It was the 19 hijackers!" Well that is exactly what I said the first time that I was confronted with a conspiracy theory regarding government involvement in the 9/11 attacks. I laughed. Then I shook my head. Then I almost got angry. And then I stopped. And opened my mind. And was amazed to realize what I now believe is the most logical explanation for what occurred on 9/11, despite the initial appearance of it being the most far-fetched.

See, something I've realized during the past four years is how far some people are willing to go to assert their power, attain their desired wealth and generally achieve whatever nefarious goals they might cultivate. I am like most people. I want to believe that everyone is inherently good. A common misconception in this country is that if you wear a suit and tie and you have pale skin, you can't be all that bad. Yeah, you might embezzle a little money every now and then, cheat on your wife, snort a little coke... But It's those street crawlers and dark skins you really have to watch out for. I think common criminals and innocent minorities who are treated like common criminals are far less of a threat to mankind than white men in suits and ties who play it off legit while they slither their way to the top.

(I always loved it when Chris Rock said: "there's not a white man in this room who would trade places with me. And I'm rich! But they'd say 'nah, I'm gonna ride this white thing out for awhile. See where it takes me...'")

And no one can lie and get away with it like a white guy in a suit and tie. White men have a long history in this country of committing crimes and atrocities and then pointing the finger at the nearest brown guy. Why should 9/11 be any different? It's not.

I was pleased to find that my mother and I are not the only people on the internet who hold this view. Thank god there are people like John Kaminski to point out the lies and inconsistencies that have surfaced in the wake of 9/11.

Why hasn't either the Bush administration or some element of law enforcement in the United States issued a single solid piece of evidence connecting the hijackers to the hijacked airplanes?

Why don't the alleged hijackers appear on the airport security videos?

Why aren't there credit card records of their ticket purchases?

Why did FBI director Robert Mueller say very publicly to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that nothing on paper connected Arab terrorists to 9/11?

I mean, two and half years have passed. And the feds produced 19 names within 72 hours of the disaster.

Notice a mathematical inconsistency here? All that has happened since is mere vigilante hysteria, hypothetical scenarios trumpeted ad nauseum by America's notoriously brainwashed Zionist press.

Seven or eight of the names on that original list have been found living comfortably in other countries.

And my own (albeit simpleminded) burning question: How did the passengers who supposedly contacted their loved ones from cell phones USE their cell phones from the airplanes?

These are definitely some things to ponder. I was quick, like everyone else, to believe the administration's story about the 9/11 hijackers. Despite my better judgment and my feeling of unease at the time about the swiftness with which the names and photos of the hijackers were produced, and the subsequent sluggishness of the investigation and lackadasical pursuit of Osama, I embraced the notion of hijackers. But a lightbulb is going off. (Thanks mom and sorry for not listening to you when you told me all this a long time ago). I no longer believe the story that has been fed to the public by the government and the media. Why should I? The government has always been the least trustworthy source for real information! It has always been those who question the government who unearth the truth. I feel as if I've had my head under a blanket since September 2001.

Of course, the biggest question -- and that which Jadakiss boldly asks in his song -- is: "why?" Why would our government do this? Once again, I commend John Kaminski for articulating:

And why, after much hullabaloo about Colin Powell using phony information in his remarks to the United Nations about the reasons for war, hasn't the U.S. government produced a single conclusive piece of evidence to back up its claim that 9/11 was the work Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists? Not a single piece!

If you disagree, tell me what it is!

There's a simple answer to this, you know. It's because there isn't any evidence. And why is that? Because those pseudo-Muslims revealed to be so publicly incompetent at piloting jerkwater training planes had absolutely zero chance of flying sophisticated jetliners into anything narrower than the Grand Canyon, never mind executing tricky maneuvers with extraordinarily complicated machinery.

The unknown men who played the roles of the so-called Arab terrorist hijackers were really recruited by either American and/or Israeli intelligence services in a scheme set up as a diversion to inflame dumb Westerners against the Islamic world.

The purpose was to divert the world's attention from the Israeli genocide and dispossession of the Palestinians by blaming the attacks on Muslims.

But that was only half the objective. The other half was to enable our despicable cabal of neocon gangbangers to fleece the American public with an endless array of no-bid contracts to enrich the conscienceless billionaires who are really driving the war machine.

You know how the Bushista American government uses anything for PR to supposedly authenticate its own evil agenda. If they had any concrete evidence against the hijackers - if they even possessed all their correct names - we would have heard about it by now. There would be an avalanche of TV shows about them, unlike that Jewish claptrap hate crime against Muslims that appeared on NBC the other night.

After two and half years, with the whole world knowing that eight of the 19 names on the hijacker list are fraudulent, the FBI has made no attempt to substitute new names. And why is that? Because the identities of the hijackers were constructed with mostly stolen papers, for some of the patsies designed to take the heat. In any case, and whoever they were, there is no evidence they ever got on the planes.

But nothing. Instead we have one minor player convicted in Germany, then the conviction was overturned, partly because Americans refused to help with the prosecution.

We have the so-called 20th hijacker and assorted other preposterous character actors languishing in jails on trumped up charges. We have security camera film at the Pentagon, which surely reveal that no jetliner hit that building, locked away in Ashcroft's vault under the phony aegis of national security. We have all the rubble of the World Trade Center, which surely would have revealed the use of nuclear explosives creating shattered beams in odd places, instantly carted away with no forensic investigation. We have transcripts - but no recordings - of these phony cellphone calls, some from people who may not have even existed.

And we have the famous standdown, in which America's air defenses suddenly evaporated - the only time in our history this has happened.

We have Marvin Bush sitting suspiciously on the board of directors of the security company that had the contract for the Twin Towers.

We have Larry Silverstein, who conveniently leased and insured the towers shortly before the big hits, telling officials to "pull" a relatively intact tower, which then fell identically to the two structures that were struck by airplanes, creating the impression that that's the way all three came down.

We have billions of dollars of windfall profits made by savvy investors in the days before 9/11, and an FBI investigation that insists nothing was amiss with these spectacular deals. Of course, we don't get the details. Only "assurances" that the trades were not suspicious, despite patterns and results that were unprecedented in the entire history of financial trading.

We have reports from firemen of explosions at the base of the Twin Towers BEFORE they fell, and the seismographic evidence to back up these assertions.

We have leader after leader saying they didn't know such a thing could happen when the government had been studying the problem for ten years. It had held at least two major drills simulating such a possibility.

And we have a president sitting in a ghetto classroom in Florida, at possibily the most pivotal moment in American history, pretending to read a book that he was holding upside down.

Perhaps most tellingly of all, we have the tragic tale of John O'Neill, rabidly honest FBI investigator, prevented from following his leads about Osama bin Laden because of the danger he would have discovered the links from Afghanistan back to CIA headquarters. Just review the way he was prevented from conducting his probe of the Cole bombing, and prevented by digging into other leads by the same guys - namely insiders Louis Freeh and Thomas Picard - who prevented significant reports from other FBI agents from seeing the light of day.

So, how does all that make you regard the supposedly impartial government panel investigating these matters? When they talk about Presidential Daily Briefings months before the event, or chitchat with presidential flunkies who leak out these pseudorevelations about this and that tidbit of essentially trivial information. And especially when they talk about the dastardly hijackers (without being able to name them) as if there is no question of their guilt. Talk about your misleading urban legends! This one is the champ.

Well, no sense feigning surprise. We knew this commission was a set-up from the get-go. Recycled Watergate investigators, even. Part of the same bunch that has run the country and covered up everything for the past 30 years or more.

Surely you didn't expect a real investigation. Thomas Kean declared at the outset of his hearings that Osama bin Laden was guilty. End of discussion. As soon as he made that statement, there was no way the hearings could be legitimate.

Asserting that genuine Arab hijackers did not carry out the attacks of 9/11 requires analysis of two concomitant categories: the history of American (and Israeli) involvement (and subterfuge) with Arab terrorists, and methods of remote control of aircraft, or other means of piloting the aircraft.

The remote control aspect continues to be a bone of contention among legitimate pilots, with some asserting only real pilots could have made such extemporaneous maneuvers and others insisting only remote control could have accomplished such a feat. An interesting new perspective on this debate can be found here: http://joevialls.altermedia.info/wtc/radiocontrol.html

A third natural area of study in this regard would be the intimate histories of those whom officials claim to be the hijackers, including putting the microscope on their behavior in the days and weeks before the tragedy.

Many researchers claim the name al-Qaeda was made up in middle '90s by a variety of American functionaries (one of them being none other than Richard Clarke) as an all-purpose villain the U.S. could blame as a convenient reason for its military adventurism.

And a group of Israeli provocateurs was recently discovered trying to create their own faux version of al-Qaeda.

How many more hints do you need? The absence of any relevant arrests or discovery of any clues to the hierarchy of this supposedly worldwide terror group should tell you a lot.

Al-Qaeda doesn't exist except for when they want it to, to blame for any sort of strategic terror they have created themselves for some political reason, like influencing the elections in Spain. Hah, that one really backfired.

Why haven't American intelligence operatives gone to these foreign countries to interview these named hijackers who turned out to be alive? Simple. Because they knew the list was fiction in the first place, and the Arab-types who have been named as terror gurus are mostly their own employees, or people who have been set up by them.

It is a celebrated fact that Mohammed Atta and some of his friends were seen in nightclubs in the hours before 9/11, certainly a fact that argues against them being able to carry out their supposed missions because they were motivated by Islamic religious zeal. So their appearance in strip clubs blows the whole story that they were devout Muslims giving their lives to Allah. Devout Muslims don't drink, never mind cavort with strippers.

If we knew who the hijackers were, we'd know their names, wouldn't we? Or is it now worth bombing other nations and murdering thousands of innocent people because we say we know who the hijackers were, even though we don't know their names? It is the great shame of the American people that they have approved of the murders of thousands of people because of that blatant lie.

Many of the men who were fingered as 9/11 hijackers received preferential treatment from American immigration officials when it came to entering and leaving the U.S. on numerous occasions. Many of these same names reportedly trained at various U.S. military installations.

What has resulted after two and a half years of work by America's crack intelligence agencies, besides the persecution of Muslims throughout the world?

Well, hundreds of innocent people have been unjustly imprisoned and tortured at Guantanamo. All of them innocent, hapless dupes rounded up in a Rumsfeld-ordered dragnet in Pakistan after U.S. planes had (inadvertently or otherwise) allowed the Taliban fighters to escape with the Pakistani army from Afghanistan.

Two pathetic flunkies have been arrested and held without due process. One of them, the notoriously pathetic shoe bomber who was obviously a deranged personality and not a member of any terror network, was ceremoniously sentenced to life in prison.

Other than that, no al-Qaeda kingpins have been even named, never mind apprehended. No clue about how the 9/11 attacks were engineered has ever emerged. This is simply not consistent with being able to name all 19 hijackers the day after the attacks. It is a case of pretending you have all of the information instantly, and then pretending you no information for the next two years. What a smell!

This means two things: that the list of 19 names was a total fabrication, and that the worldwide terror network called al-Qaeda is also a total fabrication, the wet dream brainchild of the CIA and the Mossad to be trotted out as an excuse for a whole string of terror attacks - Madrid, Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, etc. - that were really carried out by the CIA and the Mossad themselves, cleverly involving designated patsies to give the operations a suitably foreign flavor.

Al-Qaeda does not exist except as a bogeyman invented by Western powers to justify their evil agenda. There were no hijackers flying those planes on 9/11. And honest FBI agents have been prevented from publicizing that fact.

If you disagree, prove it! The world knows you can't, though the high-tech mass murder by the United States and Israel spreads around the world because of this falsified version of events.

History will show - and the public will soon realize - that those who are telling these lies not only allowed 9/11 to happen, but planned it for their own personal advantage.

The only question that remains is will the American public awaken to this murderous, treasonous scam before the perpetrators achieve their objective and bury the whole planet in the flames of their insane perfidy.

Just remember. If they're talking about the hijackers, they're part of the coverup, whether they know it or not.

Much more productive would be analyzing the tiny hole in the Pentagon, how the ejected material in the WTC photos prove there were unexplained explosions, or how those emotional cellphone calls could not possibly have been made as government flunkies have presented them.

But you won't hear the official 9/11 commissioners talking about any of that, because they are definitely part of the coverup. You can obviously tell, because they keep talking about the hijackers.

* * *

Other than a general alert to citizens of the world about the basic lies that continue to underlie all political debate in the United States at this time, there is another, more pressing reason to discuss and contemplate all these matters at this time.

On Tuesday, April 20, and Wednesday, April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on the power claimed by the President to designate people as "enemy combatants" and have them incarcerated by the military - indefinitely, without charges, and without access to the court system--solely on his say-so.

As my friend Alvin notes, "This is a critical moment in United States history."

"How the court rules on these cases will determine the type of country we will be living in. We urge those of you who can to be present outside the Supreme Court on these dates," said Alvin. For more information please see http://www.nlg.org/eccases/

It is one thing to realize all law enforcement and defense strategies in America in 2004 have become lies.

It is quite another to incorporate those lies into the law itself...

Monotone

Back in NY. Back at the office. Back to the dominant reality of citylife. I came home to rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Not the homecoming I was hoping for. I was thinking more along the lines of meals outdoors and weekend at the beach. But no. I have returned to rain. And there's lots more to come in the week ahead.

For some reason, rain seems to be impairing my ability to feel pleased to have returned from my hometown vacation. At least if the sun were shining I might say to myself, "See? New York is great. This is the place for you." But instead I can only think back to a week ago when I was laying on the sands of the Illinois River gazing around at the canyon and the deep, calm, sparkling pools, letting the sun unleash its rays upon me. I can only think about my family and how I'm 3,000 miles away and I wonder when I will see them again.

What a sad entry. I was hoping that upon my return, I would feel revitalized and full of energy and things to say. I've read through the news of the past couple weeks. Nothing's changed. It's funny how when you're out of touch you feel like you're missing something, but when you see what you've been missing you realize that it's nothing at all. Just the same old crap.

Kerry chose Edwards. Hurrah. Bush is still a megalomaniacal psychopath bent on turning every last thing he touches into shit. Boo. Geoffrey and Nunya are still engaged in a futile pissing war. I feel their pain.

Death Machines

Too much has been happening to find time to write. My baut with crappy luck continued when I was driving down the street the other day and came through an intersection where I had the right of way to continue going straight without stopping and some stupid old bat in a huge grey volvo ran her stop sign and smashed into the lefthand side of my car, sending me careening into a median with a stop sign. Ironically, I was physically halted by the stopsign which lay underneath my totaled car after all was done.

It was the most chaotic, terrifying event of my life. I thought I was going to die. Thank god I was wearing a seat belt and my airbags deployed. I was hysterical when I got out of the car. Shocked and irate at this person for hitting me. The police came and determined that it was completely the old lady's fault since I had no stop and she did.

Anyway, I have mostly recovered from the shock but am still left with a lot of anger and physical discomfort in the neck and back. Bruises all over. But at least I'm still here and not paraplegic or brain damaged. Terrified to be in a car at all though after that.

This has been a weird vacation. I have had a lot of fun and a lot of relaxation, mingled with a great deal of stress and anxiety and physical misfortune.

Yesterday we went to the Illinois River for the day. It was heavenly. Deep, crystal clear, jade water. Sandy beach. Trees and canyon all around. My dad took lots of pictures. I'll post them when I have a chance.

I haven't read the news in a week and a half, so current events have slipped off the blogging agenda, but I'll get back to this universe soon enough. If nothing else, once I get back to the normalcy of my fast moving, information saturated, New York world. For now, I am going to enjoy the rest of my vacation, hopefully without any further karmic backlash.

Blood Suckers & Tribulations

Rob and I are up in Portland staying at Darcie's for a couple days. Yesterday I was viciously attacked by mosquitos. I'm using up D's hippie salve that has Calendula, St. John's Wort and Comfrey in it. Good stuff. Makes the itching stop. Evil mosquitos. I hate those bastards. I hope this doesn't become a trend during my vacation. No one else got bitten. Just me. And boy did they get me. On the meatiest parts of my body, if you know what I mean. I must have used some lotion or something that attracted them demon spawn. So that's the situation and it sure ain't pretty.

I've been hit by a stroke of bad luck lately. This is unusual for me. Usually things have a tendency to work out in my favor. But there have been a few bumps in the road recently. My house flooded the day before I left NY to come on vacation. Got home after work Friday and found the kitchen and half the living room soaked. Landlord and handyman came immediately. Plumber and guy with water vac showed up quickly thereafter, but not before I watched as gallons of water poured out of the main line under the kitchen floor and drowned my carpet in about three inches of water. Had to make a dam in the doorways of the bedrooms to prevent destruction of numerous valuable items and carpet. This was the night I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11. When I left the house I had to tiptoe through lots of yucky water and around the plumber who was shoulder deep in the same filth. Poor guy. Wouldn't want his job.

When we returned home from the movie later, the floor had been cleaned to the best of my saviors' ability, and my landlord promised to have the carpet torn out and replaced immediately. I talked to Kat yesterday and she said the new carpet is installed and said it's much prettier than the old carpet. Which is just in time since that old carpet was going to start sprouting flies and maggots at an alarming rate after being deluged by all that filthy water. Groooss. So that happened.

Another weird thing that happened to me was that when I switched planes in Vegas on my way to Oregon, my flight getting in was late and by the time I made it to the next gate, the sign said "Medford: Boarding Closed." The guy informed me that I'd missed the plane and he was very sorry, but I had to see the customer service desk and they would get me on a later flight. I took this in stride because I wasn't about to get all stressed out and cry like this other girl who received the same news a