Sorry for the low-tech rerouting, but: 

If you reached this page because of a link to a numbered item that is no longer on my main page, you can get to it by adding "#" and the number -- e.g. "#979" -- to the end of the URL above.

We stopped this morning at the Memorial Day veterans' ceremony in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Much expected ritual homage, a few affecting moments, and a speech by the distinguished local veteran who served as master of ceremonies. He read "In Flanders Field" conventionally enough, and then he read all the many stanzas of "Just a Common Soldier", which makes an emphatic contrast between the respect shown politicians and the indifference shown to vets. Then he said a few words of his own, some of which were ordinary honorable respectful homage; some of which inflated the virtues of our recent wars; and some of which were quite politically interesting. To wit: he reproached certain unnamed politicians who thought "the military" was too well paid and who wished to take away veterans' benefits. He suggested that if there was respect for the dead, there should be equal respect, and care, and rehabilitation, for the living.

Klamath Falls is not an entirely conservative area but it is strongly so, and it probably maintains a greater than average culture of respect for soldiers, veterans, and the armed forces. If someone there is willing implicitly to reproach the Republican leadership on behalf of serving soldiers, that's a development worth the Democrats' attention.

5/27/05, 7:48 p.m. (Link here)

Almost forgot the Friday catblog.

5/27/05, 6:57 p.m. (Link here)

Can't understand the thinking behind a TV ad I just saw. It shows a group of children disappointed to learn that a company called Tire Factory sells but doesn't make tires. The salesman offers lamely, "Well, we do make customers happy..." The children aren't satisfied. A litle boy asks wistfully, "So nothing goes 'ka-boom, ka-chunk'?" No, nothing does. Not here anyway. The effect is to suggest that we've lost something by becoming people who import and sell things instead of being people who make things. Y'know what else? I think this is a kind of sadness that we can share across all political labels.

5/26/05, 8:21 p.m. (Link here)

By way of boilerplate preliminary: yes Gregory Johnson died for a despicable crime, but, no, not everyone who commits a despicable crime is put to death for it, and, yes, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world putting salt in its coffee by mistake.

What I wanted to say, though, was that Mr. Johnson's last words were especially sad. He said: "Everyone has been professional." Somehow I do not believe I would feel much consoled by the knowledge that I would be meeting my end at the hands of professionals.

5/24/05, 10:12 a.m. (Link here)

Early this morning I went to stand in line at a housing program on behalf of a client who wouldn't have made it. Shared a newspaper with the guy next to me. He looked at the front page and said, "What in the hell is a filibuster?" Depressing.

5/24/05, 9:23 a.m. (Link here)

Rep. Spencer Bachus III, R-Alabama, who is the biggest single donor to Tom DeLay's defense fund and whose 1969-1971 military service was in the Alabama National Guard, recently accused Bill Maher of conduct that "borders on treason" because Maher criticized the quality of recruits available to the armed forces in the absence of a formal draft. (If Maher had continued his remarks by calling for a draft to remedy the situation, would Rep. Bachus have said the same?)

The honorable gentleman from the curiously shaped district in the heart of Alabama with the exceptionally high infant mortality rate (see page 8) explained, "In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country." The honorable gentleman, despite his long experience as an attorney, appears to be stretching the text of our Constitution even beyond currently customary distortions of the phrase "aid and comfort." Go read the text if you forget how it goes. Article III, Section 3.

OK, everybody back with us? I think it's already clear nobody's talking about genuine treason treason; the gentleman's use of the word is just an overheated manner of speaking.

But about "undermining the effort or national security of our country" -- well, actually, I dug into Rep. Bachus' voting record when I got to this point in my rant, and I naturally found some votes that I personally think are bad for our country -- for example, his vote in favor of the Medicare prescription drugs bill, which actively failed to protect his poor and ailing fellow citizens from facing ghastly choices between medicine and food... but then again the people who have repeatedly re-elected Rep. Bachus likely find his votes to be fine contributions to the national "effort" and security. And, yes, I can find things to like about his record too, including on some health issues, and especially on his really gutsy willingness to back a Third World debt relief bill alongside Maxine Waters.

So, no, I don't see any reason to accuse Rep. Bachus of "bordering on treason" or even of undermining the national "effort," whatever that may mean. I don't think anyone else should make those accusations either. But the gentleman is quite a long way far from perfect himself and he shouldn't be calling people names just for having opinions, let alone trying to bully them into silence.

5/23/05, 5:19 p.m. (Link here)

Chip Johnson has a well-argued and rather brave column in today's SF Chron about the recent yet-again mistrial that let off the notorious Oakland "Riders" -- a clique of night-shift police officers who were accused of bending the law way past the breaking point in a personal crusade against "bad guys."

Johnson says two things worth saying. First, he says that probably the news of the Riders going free didn't make a ripple because the stuff they did wasn't far beyond the usual. Second, and maybe more important, he notes that the people who get mistreated by the police are themselves frequently not saints, and yet that two wrongs do not make a right.

Writers critical of police conduct often make the mistake of implying that the people the police go after are just law-abiding upright citizens minding their own business. Instead, Johnson is willing to raise the narrower and more challenging suggestion that people who have had genuine, repeated trouble with the law are also entitled to be treated with the respect due to fellow citizens.

Anyway, the article is worth a read.

5/23/05, 3:20 p.m. (Link here)

This looks like Newsweek will be more reluctant to quote unnamed sources, including U.S. govt. sources, in the future. It's probably too much to hope of course, but the Pollyanna in me is willing to greet this news as a sign that the Washington press corps could yet begin refusing anonymity to our high officials and their tricky trial balloons.

5/22/05, 4:39 p.m. (Link here)

Credit where credit is due: I suggest here from time to time that Laura Bush could speak up more steadily for women's rights in the way she did during the leadup to our Afghan invasion. Well, this week she's doing so, in the actual Middle East, and risking a certain amount of trouble to do so. Not bad. It would of course be nice for her to say more on behalf of the rights of women within her own country. But still, not so bad.

5/22/05, 4:21 p.m. (Link here)

Scroll way down in this SF Chron column for a Schwarzenegger shill contrasting "real voters" with "wine-and-cheese" voters. This man appears to be suggesting that people who support the human rights of Mexican immigrants are not "real." Also that they are too rich to be "real." But is Schwarzenegger not also too rich to be real? Are Mexican-American U.S. citizens as a category, for example, too rich to be real? Do bigots not consume wine or cheese? Within the general very large category of California registered voters, how many of us are "real" according to the Governor? What are the rest of us? Hallucinations? Special effects? So, Mr. Governor, when I got dogbit a few weeks ago, what was that red stuff running out of my leg? Ketchup? Pixels?

5/21/05, 3:39 p.m. (Link here)

And speaking of faith-based activity... (Warning: contains language. And illustrations. And theological humor, which if you can't take please just read something else.)

5/20/05, 5:24 p.m. (Link here)

Today's recommended faith-based activity is praying that the Republicans will not find 51 votes to end the filibuster. Today's reality-based activity is to call your Senators and encourage them not to compromise. I think the two approaches are compatible.

[P.S. Oops, have to admit I assumed most of my readers would have Senators willing to support the filibuster. Otherwise the above doesn't make sense.]

5/19/05, 4:28 p.m. (Link here)

You've probably already seen MoveOn's Revenge of the Frist ad and flyer, but I had to post a link. It's very cute. Dunno if I'm gonna go preach to the choir with these flyers at a San Francisco multiplex but it's a tremendous idea to get people thinking about real politics in this weekend's nerd lines.

[UPDATE: In case people haven't gotten the point yet, both the fictional and the real story are about the destruction of the independence of a Senate at the expense of a Republic.]

5/19/05, 10:53 a.m. (Link here)

Calling Charles Dickens...

San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Greg Suhr is not a liberal. Not even as deputy police chiefs go. Yet look what he told this morning's San Francisco Chronicle about higher rates of pickpocketing on city buses:

Suhr suggested the increase in pickpocketing is related to desperation on the streets because of the economic downturn and Care Not Cash, the city policy that reduced the cash grants to homeless people and other very poor single adults.

In view of which, a word to those folks who claimed the Giuliani-esque Care Not Cash program was a humane way to assist the truly needy while discouraging non-needy out-of-towners and scammers: I would like to see you start eating your words. Now.

And to the downtown business mucky-mucks who thought it would help the tourism climate to mistreat poor people: do you think an increase in pickpocketing is good for tourism?

And to all the comfortable folk who reassured themselves in voting for Mayor Newsom that Care Not Cash was "tough love" and not plain tight-fistedness: are you ready yet to admit you are Victorians, and that Victorian policies create a Dickensian society?

Incidentally, the city Department of Human Services is currently seeking a contractor to study the drop in the number of homeless county benefit recipients since the start of Care Not Cash. It would be interesting -- perhaps even instructive -- if an honest contractor were to get that job and pay genuine attention to the tribulations of people who have been kicked off the rolls. Any takers?

5/18/05, 7:48 p.m. (Link here)

Yesterday on Golden Gate Avenue there was a young man yelling at an older man for panhandling. The older man was low-key as panhandlers go. I am not sure if the young man made any unlawful physical threats but he was using the tone of voice in which such threats tend to be made. He was definitely behaving as though he had the right to order people off "his" block -- as though he, as a private individual, owned the public space. So of course I got into it. The young man and I yelled at each other and in fact conducted a bracing exchange of insults such as I have not stooped to for quite some time, and no, I'm not exactly proud of it. But this guy bothered me. He was a symptom of something. He was behaving as though he, simply by virtue of belonging to a certain social category, had the right to order lesser citizens around. I didn't like it.

5/18/05, 6:50 p.m. (Link here)

About the border vigilantes, I've been too vague about the shockingness of the precedent they're trying to set. Really, it has to do with police power. In a civilized country, an elected government controls the police. Otherwise... well, write your own Yakov Smirnoff joke.

5/18/05, 5:26 p.m. (Link here)

Man oh man, how does this Minutemen border vigilante stuff keep gathering supporters when it's so obviously contrary to the principle of the rule of law? Even more deeply, don't people realize that if we let these private paramilitary goons run around with impunity, we'll be separating the use of force from democratic control? Do we want to live with the results? So it's immigrants they're after now. So maybe you're not an immigrant. Well, what about that fellow with the ha-ha-funny "Liberal Hunting Permit"?

5/18/05, 3:06 p.m. (Link here)

Happy cats? It's the cheese.

(This one's for Grandma.)

5/18/05, 1:51 p.m. (Link here)

Bulletin: Bobby has started a blog.

5/18/05, 12:59 p.m. (Link here)

Bobby at Horizon notes quite an echo in a comment by Secretary Rumsfeld about the famous Newsweek story: "People lost their lives. People are dead. People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do." The comment is in the AP story and hence presumably widely distributed, but I don't know if there's been much discussion of the similarity to that other "watch what they say" line from the early days of the WOT.

5/17/05, 4:22 p.m. (Link here)

Read this speech by Bill Moyers. It's a heluva speech. That is all.

5/15/05, 8:28 p.m. (Link here)

The Simpsons...in which Ned Flanders moves to a Pennsylanian picture-perfect censorious pseudo-Bavaria, refuses an instruction to shave his mustache, and is heard to say, "It's my body and my choice."

...Amazing second Simpsons episode, stomping every sacred corn on the theme of religious schism. Almost like it was compensation for Fox's attempt to push some new show full of Clinton jokes into the Sunday night rotation...

Oh, and the Family Guy just got in a fight with a giant chicken and J. asked, "Are they jumping the shark?"

5/15/05, 6:22 p.m. (Link here)

"...that takes religion," part umpteen.

5/15/05, 10:47 a.m. (Link here)

Further to the previous item, the Guardian has a nerve referring to orange chain-gang suits as "U.S.-style uniforms."

I think San Francisco has as much right as Alabama to be taken as typical of the United States. Accordingly, based on observations at this morning's Bay to Breakers footrace, the following are "U.S.-style uniforms":

• Togas
• Viking helmets
• Beer-funnel helmets
• Fairy wings
• Gene Simmons/KISS drag (Occupant blowing kisses from the port-a-potty line.)
• Darth Vader mask, cape, fishnets, beer can
• Much inadvisable nudity
• Some advisable semi-nudity
• Salmon costumes ("Swimming upstream" from finish line to start.)
• Blues Brothers suits
• Elvis costumes
• Beer kegs in shopping carts
• Tiki bars on wheels
• Pope costumes
• Popemobile, occupied by pseudo-Pope, labeled:

  John 3:16
  Lakers 96
  Kings 72
  

5/14/05, 6:45 p.m. (Link here)

"Youths forced to make floral hanging baskets..."

This is a pervasively weird article in the UK Guardian. It's just a jolt to see the assumption that atrocities like chain gangs are characteristic of "the U.S." As a whole.

I don't know what to say next except that the whole subject of the collective ascription of guilt is queasy-making.

5/14/05, 11:20 a.m. (Link here)

So Archbishop Levada of San Francisco is the first American to run the Vatican office they used to call the Inquisition. Apparently a good and decent man, an intellectual, an able administrator. But he led the march against gay marriage last year.

Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious here, but it's strange that someone can be a genuinely good person according to most measures and yet, in the name of doctrine, can act in flat defiance of the Golden Rule.

[UPDATE: My mother adds this from Steven Weinberg: "...for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."]

5/13/05, 9:15 p.m. (Link here)

Robert at LeftinSF has a lovely Eisenhower quote about Social Security.

5/13/05, 12:31 p.m. (Link here)

Lobbying works. The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service says the Real ID Act ended up not as bad for immigrants as it might have been. Not wonderful either, but not the worst, or so they say.

5/12/05, 1:01 p.m. (Link here)

Alan A. at Horizon notes here that the pastor of that intolerant Baptist church has been forced to resign. Further discussion on the site over there.

5/12/05, 10:15 a.m. (Link here)

Our local Fox broadcast affiliate normally isn't bad but the other night they ran an awful teaser at the end of "Seinfeld." I can't remember the exact words but it was something like this: "How would you like to work just five years at a job and then get health benefits for life? We'll tell you who's getting that deal and how much you're paying for it..." Then they started flashing the words "Cushy Deal" on the screen and I was off my posterior heading for the telephone. The guy who answered at the newsroom patiently heard my yak about how normal civilized countries give people health benefits for life regardless of work history and how getting medical care is hardly the same as freeloading. He patiently agreed with me. I wouldn't want his job.

5/12/05, 10:00 a.m. (Link here)

Hm, this is odd. Probably doesn't mean anything but still:

...The White House on Wednesday repeated its warning that President Bush would be advised to veto any highway bill that exceeded the $284 billion amount he had agreed to. The president "urges the Senate to prevent any further delay and send him a bill he can sign," said Scott Milburn, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget....

So maybe AP misread the statement in some way, who knows. And of course what with delegation and time constraints and so on certain fictions are maintained in every office. But is it really ordinary for a communication from the White House to suggest that a veto decision would be anything other than the President's own idea?

5/11/05, 10:52 p.m. (Link here)

This is Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco on the state of California prison health care, offered in case anyone fails to remember why we need energetic and independent federal judges. Without such judges, prisoners are flatly at the mercy of their jailers. I hope our polity isn't so far gone that I have to explain why imprisonment without recourse to the rule of law is a bad thing, and why judicial review is conversely a quite useful prop to our claim of membership in civilized society.

5/11/05, 12:34 p.m. (Link here)

Oh, cripe. Here's an even scarier thing about the REAL ID Act.

5/10/05, 11:07 p.m. (Link here)

One for Mr. Smith --

The Princeton folks are taking their Frist Filibuster to Washington.

(Item via the Atrios overnight comment thread.)

5/10/05, 1:08 p.m. (Link here)

...and how surprised are we that the Arizona border vigilante group includes overt white supremacists?

Either Mr. Schwarzenegger should be backpedaling away from these dangerous goofballs at warp speed to save what's left of his political future, or he knows something I don't want to know about the nature of California. Sure hope it's the former.

5/9/05, 10:54 p.m. (Link here)

Gotta show you this just for its willful opacity:

The list below shows whether or not you have elected to receive Apple news, software updates, special offers, and information about related products. If you would rather not be contacted through any of the following methods, please uncheck the appropriate box below.

[OK,okokok... Apple is a Good Thing. It is a minor miracle that following the outlay of one measly dollar I can now listen to the Hitchhiker's Guide theme music any time I like. It being "The Journey of the Sorcerer," from an Eagles album called "One Of These Nights" that we never would have bought. In hearing the song at full length it's easier to tell that the swingy rhythm in that descending minor scale is really a neat little shift out of square meter into waltz time. Or as Douglas Adams says someplace, more like "pi-eyed three-quarter time." They chose that theme so well. It makes one feel able to think all kinds of creative and adventurous thoughts for a moment.]

5/9/05, 9:41 p.m. (Link here)

Important wisdom here on why the "Filibuster Frist" event at Princeton is a good model for future political protest.

5/9/05, 11:32 a.m. (Link here)

Look, whatever you think about national ID cards -- and I had tended to think all Americans were against those -- the Real ID Act has some extremely nasty sections to it that aren't even being debated in public much. The asylum provisions notably: these could send political refugees back to some quite horrible places to resume indescribable sufferings based on callous procedural denials of asylum.

It's going to a vote soon. Probably tomorrow. Call your Senator and oppose this thing. If your Senators take a genuine interest in the sanctity of human life they will oppose this bill.

5/8/05, 10:54 a.m. (Link here)

Had seen the "Terrorist Hunting Permit" stickers, which are creepy enough, but as with too many other things, the notion has taken a step farther in public now. Here's one of these Arizona border goons with a "Liberal Hunting Permit." Insert the name of any religious or ethnic group in place of "Liberal" and see if it sounds either fun-loving or American.

Americans didn't die in that famous war in Europe so idiots could run around spewing intolerance at home.

5/6/05, 12:21 p.m. (Link here)

Friday catblogging:

5/6/05, 11:43 a.m. (Link here)

Is the Baptist church that excommunicated its Democrats still enjoying tax-exempt status? I hope the IRS isn't too busy examining the NAACP to go take a look?

5/5/05, 2:41 p.m. (Link here)

"Having an experience, are we?"

Someone I know who was until recently homeless recommended this article in San Francisco magazine. She finds many parts of it ring true -- especially about the behavior of passers-by -- though the man in the article tells of a life history that would be exceptional anywhere, and she finds it strange that he would expose himself to the utter vulnerability of sleeping on the sidewalk when it's easy enough to find an old car to live in. Difference of philosophy maybe, since every way of living poor has its drawbacks.

Interesting article anyhow. I recommend it too.

5/4/05, 3:01 p.m. (Link here)

Buck from the BadAttitudes community spotted a gobsmackingly Dickensian item in the New York Times: it's not just that the NYPD are arresting bus fare evaders on the bus that goes to the city's biggest shelter for homeless men. No, it's that they're making a special point of enforcing the fare laws on that particular bus line. On, presumably, grounds entailing the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor etcetera etcetera. A little mercy, anyone?

5/4/05, 12:36 p.m. (Link here)

GAO here is rather sensibly pointing out that if you're going to design a jobs program for homeless veterans, you might want to measure not only how many veterans start jobs, but how many manage to keep them.

The report is worth a glance if only as a reminder of what many veterans are still going through at home.

5/3/05, 10:49 a.m. (Link here)

How long have writers on the political right been capitalizing the word "liberal," as in "those dreadful Liberals believe X..."? Is it an attempt to portray holders of liberal opinions as members of a codified political or religious orthodoxy? Are they trying to draw a parallel with capital-c Communism? On the whole it's a strange use of language, and either I just started noticing or it has increased in the last few months.

5/2/05, 3:07 p.m. (Link here)

Bobby on Horizon, at his sorrowful whimsical best: "You know you're old when you have to take Daddy's T-Bird away."

5/1/05, 11:51 a.m. (Link here)

Strange But Weird Dep't. --

Says here Ron Ziegler, the unhappily remembered Nixon press secretary, once worked as a skipper on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. I can just imagine. "There's a light at the end of the tunnel...."

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