From My Favorite Twittering Blogger, Top of the Ticket at LA Times

Loyal Ticket reader Lydia, one of thousands of newcomers now receiving Ticket alerts via Twitter, sends this brilliant Direct Message suggestion about the nation's looming financial obligations:

"Can we leave the federal deficit just to the generation that wears their pants so low in the mall?"

Additionally, there's a new bumper sticker being sold by the Tennessee Republican Party "to protest the bailout-mad Congress's rush into fiscal madness." We'll add it on the jump (scroll down or click on the "Read more" line below).

And thank you, Lydia. You made our weekend. Anyone else have any recession/depression humor to share?

-- Andrew Malcolm

Bring It On

I've just evicted a male renter for claiming having a penis exempted him from certain chores entailed in sharing a house with a female. He claimed there were male chores and female chores and even the chores he claimed he was good at, he was too lazy or too busy watching sports to do. My notice of this fact and the irate letter I left him really pissed him off and thus, the unfortunate reference to his royal penis. I've been married to guys like him. I have no patience for the "I've got a penis" defense.

Ms. M is now in need of someone to share the house with since I evicted her roommate. She does the usual things in this sort of situation and posts ads on the usual sites. One of the people who responded was a U of Utah med student getting ready to go on rotations. Ms. M works at a hospital. She is also a student. She knows what this means and thinks it's a good sign--this person will be too busy to be a problem. He sounds like someone with ambition and drive. So she agrees to meet him. He seems nice enough and she brings him over to look at the house and to meet me. He likes the house, but in the walk from a local coffee house, he says things that contradict his ad. He was 34 in the ad. He's 32 in person. This doesn't alarm her terribly. She asks for references. He says he'll get them together. She asks him if he wants to leave a deposit. He does. He pays it in cash.

She comes to me and gets the receipt book. I go out to meet him and within three questions, I get three terrible answers. I ask him if I can contact his last landlord. He says, she won't give him a good reference since his roommate's cousin was smoking weed in the basement, got so stoned he set the house on fire, plus he still owes her back rent. Not his fault? My inner umpire calls out "Strike One."

I ask him where he works, and he goes into a long explanation of how he's not sure if he has his jobs right now because he's living with his sister and her family and there are seven of them in a small one bathroom house and how he can't get bathroom time to get ready for work. (The address he gives on the reciept say Apt. C--not a house at all). I asked him where he worked and he said, McDonalds and so and so's nursery school. He'll have to call and find out if he still has his jobs. But he has plenty of money since he's got five grand on his tax refund. Five grand! I owned a nursery school for a year and the very best of them pay help crap. And I know he isn't making much at McDonalds. So how does he have a five grand tax refund? These thoughts run through my mind but I don't say them aloud. I think, "Strike Two!"

I say, "So are you a full time med student?" He's not sure at the moment because of the problems where he's living. "Strike Three!" But here is really where my shallow self comes in to play and fucks me up one more time. This guy is a very nice looking well built young man. Instead of saying "Here's your deposit back," I say, "Get back to me with the references and I'll think about it."

Big mistake! I should have said right then, "Here is your deposit back. I'm sure you're very nice, but this won't work for me. And there are other people interested." But I didn't.

When Ms. M gets home Sunday evening from her long day at the E R, the first thing I say to her is "NO on the renter. He just won't work. Too many red flags." Then she tells me about the six text messages he sent during her work day. So she calls him and he hangs up on her. Then he proceeds to call her five times to tell her how angry he is and then hangs up on her each time. Charming. There is no doubt that this guy is not roommate material. Now she's in tears and the hairs are standing up on the back of my neck. This guy is not only not roommate material but he may also be a little bit crazy. She just wants to give him his money back and he's threatening court action. I try to call him and he picks up, then hangs up. This is a technique that does not endear him to me. He calls her back and tells her she talked me into turning against him. Quite the contrary, he has done this very nicely all by himself.

On Monday, two days after his visit with us, and after all the harassing text messages and phone calls Sunday that end up in his hanging up on her, he calls me. I tell him the decision not to rent to him was mine, not hers and that nothing she said to me influenced my decision. It was his answers to my questions that made me decide not to rent to him. But his harassing her with calls that end in hang ups has only made me more sure that my decision not to rent to him was a good decision. I ask him how he'd like to get his deposit back? He tells me he's going to sue me and hangs up on me.

I call a male friend of mine who used to be the Director of Legal Services. I tell him the little saga and he says, "Call the police a let them know this guy is harassing you. He's trying to bully and scare you. Don't let him get away with it. This is all bullshit! Call the police now."

So I do. The female police person I talk to says, "So far he isn't really harassing you. You're tenant has a better case than you, but I'll give him a call and tell him to stop calling you." She gives me a case number.

And throughout the early part of the week he continues to text and call Ms M. His phone calls consist of his telling her how angry he is and that he won't talk to her when he's angry and then he hangs up on her. Finally he agrees to meet her to get his deposit back. She gets a male friend to go with her as a witness and as protection. Mr. Scary calls her the morning of the meeting and says he can't make it. She changes her phone number. So he calls me.

He starts by saying, "You're a really nice, angelic lady." Now for starters this really pisses me off. I'm not that nice and though I might be angelic, I'm definitely no lady. In fact I find the word "lady" particularly offensive. We live in a democracy with no monarchy and thus no lords and ladies. But I say nothing about how offensive this reference to royalty is to me. Then he launches into a rant about Ms M and how unfair she's been to him. I say, "When you call her over and over to tell her how angry you are with her and then hang up, she finds this frightening and not only does not want you to share a living space with her she wants to stop your calls." I don't mention that his calling me is grounds for me to call the cops and report him based on the police case number I have. I do tell him we want to get his deposit back to him. I say we will send his money to him via Western Union. He hangs up on me. When the women at Western Union calls him to tell him his money is there he hangs up on her. She thinks this is funny since in all her years at Western Union no one has ever been irate that their money is waiting for them. Usually people are either relieved or thrilled that money is waiting for them.

The last call I got from him was to tell me he's found another place to rent in the neighborhood and will be walking by my place every day and he drove by the house last night to get the address for his law suite against me.

Ms. M has every call and text message saved on her phone. And every call that comes into my house is logged onto my computer. So we're pretty well set with evidence that he has been harassing us. The Western Union woman isn't likely to forget his reaction to her call. I'm thinking, "Bring it on, asshole." But since we know he's driven by at night, we're leaving the house lit up like a Christmas tree--front motion sensor lights are on as well as the front porch light. The lights at the back of the house are left on all night. My outside lights are aimed at the back gate and front porch and I'm leaving them on all night. The gates are locked and if the prick calls me one more time, I'm calling the cops again.

I now have a whole new process for screening prospective tenants. And I've taken it out of Ms. Ms hands. I'll be the dragon bitch from now on.

In the meantime I'm thinking about getting surveillance cameras for the front and back of the property.

Synecdoche, New York

I've finally seen Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, and jeezus. I thought his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was trippy. How this film didn't sweep the Oscars I don't understand. Wait, yes I do. It's relentlessly bleak—in that Woody Allen 'obsessed-with-death' way—but it's also belly crunch hilarious. I had to stop and rewind a dozen times because I missed things, overcome by a wheezing laughter. There is not a feel good moment in the film and yet it left me strangely uplifted.

Charlie Kaufman is a contortionist of the mind. Again, like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he stretches and reshapes time (and space, to a degree) until you just have to let go, and yet, a firm narrative structure is always present, never abandoned. It's an amazing feat of screenplay-ism.

The film is remarkably cast. Philip Seymour Hoffman is, well, he's one of the best actors working today and he is perfect for the role of representing, on film, the introverted, insecure because he's seen the abyss genius of Charlie Kaufman. His performance is better, ten times better, and funnier, than anything he's done before. Imagine that! Catherine Keener? Has any one ever had a bad word to say about her? The pièce de résistance, however, in a creepy as if it were meant to be but will never happen again but seems like it may have, or should have, been done before kind of way is, Emily Watson playing Samantha Morton. You'll have to see it to understand. If a fifth wall existed, this film would shatter it.

Casual movie-goers will find Synecdoche, New York difficult, dark, pretentious and hopeless, but if you like film, if you like writing, if you like artistic commitment, if you like mind-fuck hilarity, don't miss it.

A Night Out With My Friend Samantha

Samantha (not her real name) and I have been having excellent adventures for decades. If I told you how many decades, Sam would have to kill me. She's still working in the fashion/entertainment industry where how you look really really matters. I don't, thank god.

Late yesterday afternoon, Sam called and asked me if she could drop by around 7:30 for a glass of wine. A friend of hers, Missy Goldberg, had produced a documentary that was premiering last night at the Tower Theater the old art house theater that figures prominently in my strange adolescence.

Hell yes, I said. I seldom get to see Sam because she is now working harder than ever juggling as many production jobs at a time as possible. This keeps her buried in work and traveling a lot. She worked four jobs during the Sundance Film Festival. And that's where she heard about the documentary film, A Snowmobile for George.


Sam knows I don't like to go out, so it's unusual for her to invite me anywhere. But the Tower is three blocks from my house. So we spent an hour and a half catching up and laughing our asses off, losing track of time. We ended up sprinting to the Tower. The film had just begun when we got there so we entered a darkened theater. But it soon became clear that there were only two other people in the theater and they were two men in the row in front of us.

The film is every bit as good as Michael Moore's best documentaries. It's written and directed by Todd Darling and takes the deregulation of the BushCo years from the monumental fuck-ups of deregulating everything, especially everything in the Environmental Protection Agency to the dismantling and neutering of the EPA by filling it with Bush toadies. And Todd's symbol of this is the snowmobile. It's a very effective symbol. It's a very smart way to show us just how awful an idea it is to put lobbyists from the industries the EPA is supposed to regulate and oversee, in charge of the agency.

Todd begins the film with the purchase of a snowmobile and then takes us from California to New York. From the snowmobile and it's enthusiasts and dealers and industry advocates to New York and the environmental catastrophe of 9/11 where the EPA's Big Lie that the air and dust was safe for first responders and office workers to breathe. Thanks Christie Todd Whitman! The film starts light heartedly and builds effectively toward the absolute horror of what the Bush years have done to us in the name of corporate profit at the expense of the public health and welfare.

The two guys in the theater with us were Todd Darling, the writer/director of A Snowmobile for George, and Tim DeChristopher, the man known as bidder #70 who single handedly stopped the Bush administrations plan to quietly sell off cheap drilling rights on public lands set aside as part of the Canyon Lands, Arches, and other national parks lands in southern Utah for oil exploration. Bidder # 70 outbid every single bidder on those drilling leases. He's now being sued by some very heavy hitters who are feeling like chumps. Bidder # 70 was not a well financed or wealthy environmentalist. He was an outraged citizen betting on President Obama to stop the last minute national parks lands for huge profits for the oil industry at the expense of the rest of us. It was a good bet. And he's got great lawyers representing him and willing to hang in there no matter where it goes. It was wonderful getting to talk to these two talented, passionate, interesting men

If you get a chance to see A Snowmobile for George, see it. You will discover another layer to the dark underbelly of the BushCo years that you never saw or even imagined.

A Snowmobile for George

Two Women Who Say It Best For Me

Barbara Boxer, when asked by Keith Oblermann what she thought about President Obama's Address tongiht, said, "It was a home run, a touchdown and a three pointer."

Rachel Maddow's comment on her own reaction to Bobby Jindal's rebuttal, was to say that it left her, "slack jawed and babbling like a Benadrilled infant."

The Credit Crisis Made Visual

Thanks to Tengrain for posting this at Mock Paper Scissors.

It's Awards Season

I have been given the Love Ya award from the oh so chic and talented La Belette Rouge. I'm grateful and honored, and hope I can live up to the paragraph below. So these are the type of bloggers who haven't already received this award I need find, quick, before Lisa gets there first.

"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

I choose:
Comrade Kevin
StarSpangledHaggis
Steve Emery
Liberality
FranIAm
Naj
TheMom
PENolan
SaoirseDaily2

Now it's your turn to pass this love award to eight other bloggers. Enjoy!

I Was Once A Small Time Voice Talent

Small time, it's true, but a voice talent none the less. I had, maybe still have, a very good agent and though I was lazy talent, I was talent none the less. I modeled. I acted. I did production work. And the occasional voice job. The thing I had going for me as a voice talent in this market is a deep female voice, a little bit smoky. It's a strong voice, trained early in theatre classes and parts in plays to carry even in a whisper. The challenge for me was been to bring it down, soften it, sweeten it, warm it up. And oddly, smiling as you speak, does much to warm it up.

I liked voice work the most of all the work I did. Voice auditions were always well scheduled--no waiting like cattle. My agent has a small sound room fully equipped for auditions, so there was no complicated direction to find the location nor miles of freeway travel to be one of a hundred to read for one spot. You don't need to dress up for either an audition or a job. And usually for me it was three read-throughs and the job was done. The pay for voice work is terrific compared to the pay for the rest of my many talents.


Yes, modeling pays well, but there is so much more time invested and it's more work than you'd think. Remember all the famous clips you've seen of models toppling off their platform shoes, slipping on runways and falling down? I have been in shows where the lights hit you directly in the eye and you can't see your feet or the end of the runway, which, if you miss, will land you six feet down to either concrete or the laps of the unfortunates in front row. Three times I have seen models step off like a well dressed Willy Coyote and plunge down to suffer a broken ankle and abject humiliation. And the show does not stop for a second. On we stride toward an uncertain pause and turn, just short of catastrophe. These big shows require fittings, rehearsals and ungodly call times. They require hours in hair and make-up and a lot of standing around and waiting. Then the rush that makes your heart thud with adrenaline.

Acting is much the same in a small market. Auditions are cattle calls even if they've asked for you specifically. Every other actor your age and type will be there. And with acting there are call backs. You get paid for none of this. This is the audition. You can get two or three call backs and still not get the part, so no paycheck.

But with voice work it's one audition and you either get the job or you don't. If you get the job, you have a call time and location. As I said before, the way you look matters not. You show up. You go into the studio. You sit and put the headphones on. Someone checks sound levels. You read your portion of the script. Once this way, once that way, and one for good measure. Thank you. And then you get a big fat check.

All this to say, my voice is still a croak, and I got an email this morning from a man (big time voice talent who now teaches) who might have been a good man for me had he not been a Republican, a chauvinist, and a man who once said his role model was John Wayne. I wrote a chapter about him in the novel. Then it ended up on the cutting room floor. But now it could be a short story.

Sick and Tried

I've been sick for a couple of months or more. Not sick enough to go to the hospital, but sick enough to go to the doctor five times and still I'm sick. For a few moments I forgot how sick I was and spent my time cleaning and shopping and preparing to cook for Cal. I spent one entire day sprucing myself up for the imagined romantic seduction. Now I think part of this illness might be mere mortification at my own foolishness. And yet, I'm sick, there is no getting around it, I'm sick. My symptoms include fatigue, a terrible cough, wheezing on every breath, in and out, and the loss of my voice. Without my voice I have nothing to say. Really. Maybe without my voice I can't think.

Yes, I know there has been a lot of interesting news. Yes, I could write about any of it and have a post ready for you to read and comment on as if I really did have an original thought. Yes, I could pretend to be cruising along happy as a clam, but I'm sick. And once I bang out something on this keyboard, I won't have enough energy to visit you, to comment on your smart, witty, thoughtful, brilliant posts. I'm too sick.

I'm on my second round of antibiotics. Along with the first round (a Zpack) I was on a weeks worth of prednisone which made me feel great. No wonder athletes like the steroids. I felt invincible. So I wheezed. I felt great. Then, when the steroids ran out, I didn't feel better at all. But romance was just around the corner, so I plowed on through the cleaning, and hair coloring, the shopping and laundry. Endorphins and hope kept me going.

Then after the debacle that was my imaginary romance, I realized just how sick I felt. There is no real depression in this illness. Just wheezing, coughing, and no voice. I have had four "breathing treatments" two rounds of steroids and bed rest. I'm now on a different antibiotic, two types of inhalers, my second round of antibiotics, plus Mucinex, and Delsym cough medicine. And still I croak and wheeze.

It is the ugly season here--that time between real winter and the promise of spring. I know it will be Spring again and then I will be full of energy and enthusiasm for one project or another that will keep me outside. I'm hoping by then I'll feel well and full of energy. But for now, I'm sick and oddly tired.

AC/DC's Big Balls

I Am Not A Movie Reviewer

The Reader

This is not a film full of fabulous shots of Kate Winslet's glorious backside. We never see her completely naked, or if we do, it is so unimportant that I can't remember it. It is not an erotic film. It is not a film about the Holocaust. But is it one of the most interestingly complex films about the things we will do rather than expose that one small thing we are most ashamed of. It feels like a dream.

I can't remember the character's names, but I will never forget the truth told in this film. And of course I can't tell you the secret at the heart of this film since that would ruin it for you. I've seen movies this year that left me sobbing. Revolutionary Road (another Winslet masterpiece) was one of those films, and another Winslet performance worthy of a Best Actress award. I staggered out of Revolutionary Road sobbing. But I came home from The Reader mulling it over, knowing the interior truth of this film in a way that feels buried in the bone.

There is no glamour in this film. There are so many small moments of perfection that I think I would need to see it over and over to catch them all. There is not one false detail. But there are many small mysteries and one overarching truth--that we each might have a secret shame to keep no matter what the cost.

Thrusday Matinee Movie

Blogger Appreciation Day One Blog At A Time

I'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite bloggers. If you are lucky she might pay you a visit. She is smart and funny and personal and political. She is married and raising a young daughter, while she's dealing with the aftermath of an illness that was life threatening. She's never ever maudlin or self pitying. She is fierce and ferocious about the well being of her daughter, and she is politically astute. Vigilante is one of her fans. Visit her. You'll be richly rewarded. She calls herself StarSpangledHaggis. If she visits you, she calls herself e--see the witty juxtaposition of that big fireworks and peat bog blog name and that tiny e? Her personality is anything but tiny. And wit is her great strength.

Bob's Meme Ends Up All About Balls. Who'd Have Ever Guessed It?

I'm not doing well. I have no inspiration. I'm a total blank. So what do I do? I go to visit Lisa. And what do I find? I find a meme from Bob. And even though I haven't been tagged, by god I'm playing, because what else do I have to do besides laundry and vacuuming and grocery shopping. So instead of doing all those hideous chores I'm going to play this game.

So the book I'm working on is on my bedside table. I grab it. It's Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. Just a little light reading before going to sleep. Only it scares the bejezzus out of me every time I pick it up since it is detailing exactly what is happening to our economy right now (thank you, you neocon bastards) and hints at what the possibilities are for us if we don't get a grip and fast.

Anyway, I go to the 25th page, to the 10th word and of all the possible words in this terrifying book what do I find? "Purity." Purity? Holy hell! Then I go to google search and find these images of purity.

Research and Musings

Research and learning on a variety of topics, from health to computers, parenting to cooking, brewing to politics.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

"Purity Balls", AKA "Chasity Balls"

Abstinence only Sex Education increases teen pregnancy rates. This is according to the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP). Providing contraception information results in reduced teen pregnancy rates. Despite the research proving this, many Conservatives insist in believing the opposite, and insisting upon fear mongering abstinence only sex education.

Now, conservatives have created "Chastity Balls" also known as "Purity Balls." The general idea is to have the father vow to protect his daughter's chastity in a wedding like ceremony, where the daughter similarly vows to remain a virgin until her marriage. They dress up, he wears a tux, there's a ring exchange, he feeds her wedding cake and the ceremony goes on to make the whole event resemble "Marrying your father" as much as possible.

Even nine year olds are participating.

There's even an Oedipal version for sons and mothers called an "Integrity Ball" that involves "telling boys to abstain from sex is so they won't defile someone's "future wife.""

The pledge read by the fathers:

I, [daughter's name]'s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

I guess seeing women as property is perfectly natural to many even in this day and age.

Glamor Magazine has an exhaustive article on Purity Balls.

Bill Maher on the practice:



As pointed out in the Glamor Magazine article, kids who take "purity pledges" are more likely to have unprotected sex and get pregnant out of wedlock. Sadly, Conservatives choose to pretend this can't be the case.

Below is a promotional video advertising one of the firms who put on Purity Balls. Watch it, and decide for yourself.

DiggIt! Del.icio.us

Too bad Bristol didn't have a chance to go to a Purity Ball with her dad and Levi. It might have made all the difference.

I'm supposed to tag some of you, but you may be actually living a real important life with better things to do than play games. Not me. I got nothing to do now that I've put off cleaning for another day. I might read a little Naomi Klein and have nightmares in the middle of the day. But that's something, right?

Oh Yeah??!!!

Here's my latest test from Quizzy. This one is about romance. I thought the time was right since I have just suffered a mysterious romantic meltdown. I'm still trying to process my mistakes: the missed clues, the outright self-deception, the over the top hope and fantasy of a future with someone who would understand me and leave me alone when I need to be alone and be there to support my needs when I have needs for company. Pretty selfish and egocentric, no?

I'm a gemini born in the year of the monkey and bipolar. That pretty much makes me six people residing in this one falling apart body. I can barely manage them all. And they are all air signs. I'm a woman who has always lived in her head. My feet do not touch the ground. It's easy to say, pull your head out of the clouds, but my head is unable to heed that advise. I'm an Air sign. There is nothing in my astrological chart that touches the earth. All air all the time. I can hear a bit of water far down below, but my feet are never firmly planted on the ground. And yet, Quizzy says:

Your result for The Elemental Beauty Test...

Etheral Beauty

42% Water, 17% Earth, 25% Air, and 17% Fire!

You scored 42% Water! Superb!

You have the etheral beauty of a god or goddess. You love things that shine and shimmer, are soft and flowy, and have a dreamy quality about them. You gravitate toward natural fabrics such as cotton, linen, silk, or hemp. You love the colors of the sea like the deep blues and sea-greens. You love the see-through sheer fabrics that you can layer, or perhaps loose shirts and pants when you seek the comfy side.

You inner beauty shows a sentimental side. You have keepsakes and heirlooms and love things that have emotional attachments or a history.

With water emotions run deep. It is a feeling sign. (Astrologically signs for this include Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.) Your emotions can be like a hidden treasure hidden below the surface in the subconcious. This may cause you to have some mood swings. But the beauty of what you are is that you will, in spite of fears, look inside yourself.

You also scored:

17% Earth: Earth is the natural beauty. They tend to stick to classic styles and colors. They tend to be more grounded. 0% Earth may indicate that plain old common sense is not your strong suit. Even percentages between Earth and Water indicate someone that is a hard worker that requires security and an attachment to possessions.

25% Air: Air is the fearless beauty. They are offbeat and funny. The mix old fashions with new and love to make new trends. They aren't afraid to be new or crazy. 0% Air could indicate that you have trouble looking at things objectively. Even percentages between Water and Air usually indicate a dreamer-typer person who tend to be fantasy prone.

17% Fire: Fire is the alluring beauty. They like to wear bright colors and show some skin. They are sexually minded and spicy. They use a lot of charm to get what they want. 0% Fire can often be seen in someone that pushes and tries to force self-expression. Equal percentages of Water and Fire show a person that is rather impulsive and shows a great deal of emotion.

Take The Elemental Beauty Test at HelloQuizzy

I'll take this test again later so see if this was just some morning aberration--not enough coffee on board or something like that.

From the Pen, Please Take Action

If you'd like to take this viral be my guest. But I keep signing and writing letters and it's mainly because I get email alerts from so many good sources.

Real Prosecutors Don't Let War Criminals Walk For The Price Of A
Confession

One of the most sappy ideas we've heard in a long time was the
suggestion of a certain Democratic Senate leader last week that the
worst criminals at the top of the Bush administration should be
effectively granted blanket immunity in exchange for "fessing up". We
can only hope Leahy's actual strategic intent was to have the
proposal get shot down, as it quickly was by others, for being pretty
much totally toothless. We need to make sure that message was not
missed. Indeed, we need to put an exclamation point on it.

The fact is that without prosecution, the top war criminals in
American political office of the future will presume that they can
always get off the hook by the so-called "truth" commission route.
And yet the people who are in the media calling for non-enforcement
of the laws against torture and illegal wiretapping are the SAME ones
who are "zero tolerance" fanatics when little people get in trouble.

Prosecution Commission Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum936.php

One of Leahy's non-arguments was that prosecuting all the criminals
in the Bush administration would take 10-15 years. Oh, really? Did
they commit THAT many hideous crimes? That's all the more reason to
get moving on it as soon as possible. As a former prosecutor himself
he should know that immunity is granted to GET testimony against the
criminal kingpins, not to let them skate themselves entirely.

Thankfully at least John Conyers on the House side, and other
senators like Whitehouse and Reed, have come forward to stand up for
the principle that ONLY prosecution is any deterrent in cases like
these. Did the pardon of Nixon send a message for the future? Of
course it did? It led Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were IN that
administration, to believe that they would have their own chance to
get away with mass murder.

Need YOUR Submission For New T-Shirt Design

To go along with "Convict Dick & W" caps we are already mass
shipping, we had the idea of doing a t-shirt as well. The idea would
be a graphic of the faces of Bush and Cheney wearing unhappy
expressions, either behind bars or perhaps in striped prison outfits,
as a way of visualizing that reality.

We want to throw this out to our most creative participants. In our
mind's eye we are looking for something with an imaginative design,
perhaps in the realm of caricature. If you would like to submit a
design, please email back a reply.

By the way, all the cap requests from the last week are being shipped
tomorrow, but if you have not requested your "Convict Dick & W" cap
yet, here is the page for that.

Convict Dick & W Caps: http://www.peaceteam.net/convict_cap.php

And of course on that same page you can also find the new local
county prosecutor lookup, which we are using to call, write and email
local district attorneys, asking them to bring murder charges against
George Bush and Dick Cheney as urged by Vince Bugliosi. At the top of
all these pages, there is a link to a terrific YouTube video you can
watch on this of Bugliosi's House testimony. After watching that
video, the words will come to you that you will need to say.

The local prosecutor initiative is an important long term back up
action, intended to keep the heat on at the same time for a special
prosecutor at the federal level.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are not asking anyone to file a "formal" criminal
complaint yourself. Common sense tells us that a state prosecutor
will only act, in the exercise of their OWN discretion, if they
believe there is a non-frivolous case to bring. But by speaking out,
we can let them know there is community support for them to do so.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

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Borrowed From Eugene Robinson and The Washington Post

This is a presidency on steroids. Barack Obama's executive actions alone would be enough for any new administration's first month: decreeing an end to torture and the Guantanamo prison, extending health insurance to more children, reversing Bush-era policies on family planning. That the White House also managed to push through Congress a spending bill of unprecedented size and scope -- designed both to provide an economic stimulus and reorder the nation's priorities -- is little short of astonishing.

And yet I read liberal bloggers criticizing him for not doing it a certain way. His been mocked in the blogosphere here for making nice with the Republicans only to have them stab him in the back and vote unanimously against the Stimulus package.

This week, executives from General Motors and Chrysler are reporting on their progress in transforming themselves into lean, mean carmaking machines, capable of leading American industry into a new golden age. They will also explain that they need some more money, and fast, if they are not to crash and burn. GM, which got a $9.4 billion cash infusion from the government just two months ago, wants the remaining $4 billion that the Bush administration approved; Chrysler, which got $4 billion in December, urgently needs $3billion more.

I have mixed feelings about the American auto industry. Why have they been so slow to adjust to changes in the market for smaller, more efficient, better made cars and trucks? It is not the problem created by union workers making too much money for working on the assembly line. It's the fault of the executives who have been unwilling to lead the industry with hybrids and other alternatives to the big bloated gas guzzlers of the past. It's the salaries of the men at the top and the poor decisions they've made that have made the U.S. auto industry a failure. Off with their heads. Keep the workers, fire the CEO's and designers. Start over.

Thanks to an amendment that Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) inserted into the stimulus bill, Washington now has control over bonuses and severance packages at financial companies that have taken funds from the Bush administration's $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP): No more eight-figure bonuses for Wall Street "geniuses" whose cleverness helped drive their companies, and a good deal of the economy, into the ground.

Dodd added a measure that makes it easier for firms that chafe at Washington-imposed restrictions -- on executive compensation, for example -- to pull out of TARP. The details are complicated, but what's important is that banks and other financial institutions that are relatively healthy may well begin to leave the program. The impression would be that the firms remaining in the program are relatively sick -- and people tend to be uncomfortable keeping their money in banks that can be described as relatively sick.

I'm in favor of nationalizing failing banks. I want no more gobbling up of smaller banks by the likes of Citibank. The only healthy banks I know about are the small local banks. I've heard of no problems with the credit unions, like the one I am a member of. It's the big bloated financial institutions that are causing the problems. So nationalize them or let them fail.

Then there's the housing problem, which may be the most difficult of all. Foreclosures and plummeting home values are at the heart of the economic crisis. Either millions of Americans are going to lose their homes or millions of mortgage contracts are somehow going to be modified. That's not an attractive choice.

All Barack Obama wanted was to be president. He may have to become an auto executive, a banker, a mortgage broker and who knows what else before this crisis is done.

So what do we expect of our new President who has yet to be in office one month? Miracles it seems to me. I'm happy with his work so far. My complaint is with the Congressional Leadership. I say if the Republicans do not want to be part of the solution, do not offer them plums to sweeten the deal for them. They will take credit for the weakening of your legislation and then stab you in the back. Let the bastards filibuster. I don't really believe that's a spectacle even their deep south and Utah constituents will find helpful in keeping a job or keeping a home or a car in a rapidly shrinking economy. The South is relatively poor compared to other parts of the country. I doubt the filibuster will play well no matter how conservative you think you are when faced with the possibility of moving your family into you mothers home or living in a shelter.

In Utah we have the second richest church in America to run our government. Too bad they won't pony up--they could bail us all out if they wanted to. $500 million to pour into passing Prop 8 in California was just one tiny drop in the bucket for them.

I'm Through With Love

Fiction or Fact, Fantasy or Truth

Steve, hang in there with self-discovery. It's good for you. Keeps us from getting stale, ossified. You are one of the best commenters around. If I can entice you to read and comment I am richly rewarded and learn something about my own writing. I think I often believe people are more complex than they might in fact be. So in my imagination as I work my way into an experience I let my mind embellish the words of another. I make them into the character I want them to be. To serve whatever need is unmet in me. I overlook the signals I should be paying attention to. When a man says he's cheap, listen. I heard it twice and twice chose to ignore it. That was a mistake on my part as narrator of my own interior fiction. We all star in our own fictions. We hear what we want. We omit details that might embarrass. We lie in the name of kindness. And so we are inauthentic. We minimize our own flaws to make us feel better or to spare another. Fact or fiction? I suppose to some extent we are all living our own fictions to one degree or another. I'm just living mine more publicly than others. Lisa is a blogger who lives her life out here in the open. Freida too. She has now gone rather private so I feel a bit more like a freak of my own making with one less freakingly real blogger with a life laid open like a patient etherized upon a table to keep me company.

Crow, thank you for the comment. I do write fiction from my real life. I think all our material from our real lives is material that can't quite be called "the truth" since it is only our take on an interaction or observation. We cannot know what is in someone else's mind so we make assumptions about their motives and intentions and even if we ask them, they might tell us what they think we want to hear rather than the uncomfortable truth they really feel. So is Cal real or not? Yes, Cal is real. But my fantasy about Cal was not. Cal is not the man I imagined him to be. So my story is a fiction in that sense. But what I wrote about my feelings is real. Confusing isn't it? I'll tell you my truth, but is it an objective truth? Probably not. It is a bit fiction and bit wishful thinking and a story of my ancient past come back to haunt me.

I base all fiction on my life experiences or close observation of others. I don't have a crack team of researchers to tell me what it's like for a female climbing her way up the corporate ladder in a Fortune 500 Co that's caught in the sleaze that brings her company down. This is a world I'll have to let other's tell. I tell my own stories, but even writing about my real life is only my fiction of my real life. I cannot be objective. So it's the view from my eyes. It's the longings of my heart and other bits that lead me to suspend my own good instincts and allow myself to miss all the clues that this man is not the right man for me and that rather than be angry with the man, I am angry with myself for missing what was so clearly there in the small comments we hear and don't absorb because we don't want to.

These are my responses to some of your comments about the post I wrote yesterday. Your comments were extraordinary. I didn't include your comments because the words you write are your own and without your permission I will not publish them on my blog. But when I'm speaking to you, these are my words and can be used.

It fascinates me that when you believe I'm writing a "real" experience rather than a "fiction" you react differently. When you believed Cal's words were Cal's words you did not question whether Cal was a "real" man or a man of my imagining. As a "real" man you spoke to him. As a "character" you dismissed his words as unconvincingly male.

I have explored some of my own prejudices and my visceral reactions to superficialities of appearance. There are all kinds of silly details I left out of this "story." I gave you a woman who was unkind, but not as unkind as she would have been had she not been concerned about cruelty. She knows that her reaction to this man, Cal, is cruel enough without the revelation of her uncensored interior dialogue. I would like to know Cal's true, deep, interior dialogue, but I wonder if he is capable of it. I don't think Cal thinks very deeply about his feelings, and his reactions, and his expectations. Cal is openly guarded. Cal seems to be an uncomplicated character rather than a real man. If Cal were a real man, this would sound like cruelty. When you think Cal is a real man, you give him a pass. When you think I have invented Cal and put his fictional words in his fictional mouth, you find him inauthentic. This is food for thought.