| Items 636-689 , 8/1/04 - 8/31/04
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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. "#667" -- to the end of the URL above. 8/31/04 3:06 p.m. (Link here.) Many thanks to carla and Tsuredzuregusa for their kind welcome into the new Progressive Women's Blog Ring. This space reserves the right to promote its own goofy version of "progressive," which I'm afraid, yes, does include snickering at the prospect of tag-team wrestling among presidential daughters -- but is nevertheless honored to be included. I haven't explored all the sites on the ring but it looks like Demisemiblog has some smart and interesting new neighbors. The Blog Ring links are in the column at left. By all means take a look around. 8/31/04 2:34 p.m. (Link here.) Hard to say if the Republicans incited a riot against Michael Moore, or if Moore pulled a Hunter Thompson on the Republican Convention. Sounds like maybe both descriptions apply. But I'm leaning toward the former because, in addition to the Nixonian "Four More Years" chant, several Republicans reportedly said threatening things to and about Moore that he did not answer -- could not have answered -- in kind. There's a hyperreal Jerry Springer/World Wide Wrestling flavor to this whole episode that makes me wonder who planned what in advance. As in Moore clearly didn't mind the attention even if it did happen to be negative. But there's something bizarre about the existence of such intense conflict -- a scapegoat pointed out to a howling mob -- in the midst of such an obsessively secured and scripted event. It reminds me of that story about the fight that broke out inside of a Humvee limo. In both cases the outside world was very effectively protected against, but then the invited guests turned out to be hooligans. 8/30/04 11:06 p.m. (Link here.) Wouldn'tcha know the Republican New York mayor preparing for the Republican Convention would kick out the pushcarts? And of course, this is the night of the "Light Up the Sky" protest -- the silent protest conveying disagreement with the Republican Party by displaying lights in windows. I'm hoping the idea will have caught on. Here's a discussion linked from the organizers' page. Some inspiring words there anyway. [UPDATE 8/31 -- not much news of this protest in the folowing day's coverage, either mainstream or alternative. Maybe it will take a while to see how much the idea filtered through to the general public, if at all. But as someone noted on the LightUpTheSky discussion page, today is the day for the Unemployment Line protest, which has been planned as a similar exercise in silent reproach. Hope this one gets noticed.] 8/30/04 10:25 p.m. (Link here.) Just a quick comment in a hurry, but had to note J's suggestion for tag-team wrestling between the presidential candidates' daughters. It'd be no weirder than many other aspects of this campaign season. 8/28/04 10:09 a.m. (Link here.) Surreal Estate: I've been making house calls lately for an eviction case in a big old Tenderloin residential hotel. It's a fascinating place that has found its way into my dreams -- not dreams about the client or the legal situation or the neighborhood, but about the building itself. The strange mezzanine balcony over the lobby, for example, and a clutch of homelike little offices entered from a door halfway up a landing, and two staircases that start in the lobby but end in different places. They could have filmed "Barton Fink" in this hotel -- or, as J. said, it could easily have a Floor 7-1/2 like the one in "Being John Malkovich." One of this hotel's treasures is its freight elevator. The elevator is the old kind, with a lift cage made of elegant iron grillwork complete with laurel-wreath ornaments -- now covered with dust and with three or four colors of paint showing in the many chipped places. Yesterday someone had posted a sign in the cage: "Out To Order." J's further suggestion was that, if one sign said "Out To Order," there must have been another someplace saying "Out Of Lunch." It's possible in fact. Persons in that building frequently find themselves Out Of Lunch, especially near the end of the month. Lots of these hotels were built right after the 1906 earthquake, so that elevator cage is likely most of a hundred years old. And it's just one example of the many architectural treasures surviving under protective coatings of neglect in Tenderloin hotels that have never wasted money on the cosmetic kinds of modernization. Unfortunately, this makes me worry about the reflux of money back to the inner cities. What will for-profit developers see in big solid old buildings, within walking distance of financial and tourist districts, that haven't had full makeovers since the Taft Administration? I mean, I'm not a developer, but when I look at these once-elegant freight elevators, stamped-tin ceilings, and embossed ornaments on stairwell walls, unfortunately a little Martha Stewart in my brain starts stripping paint and polishing and spiffing up ... and raising rents. I could really see big acquisition-rehabs of formerly-and-prospectively-elegant downtown buildings becoming an urban real estate trend. And I worry. When that happens, where will the Out Of Lunch tenants go? Scariest is the thought that poor people are starting to be pushed from the inner city to the inner-ring suburbs -- a process completed years ago in Paris. This Out of Lunch building I've been visiting is within three blocks of the Tenderloin's two mainstay free dining rooms -- Glide Memorial Church and St. Anthony's. A tenant who is Out of Lunch -- and hungry enough to eat mass-produced vegetarian spaghetti -- can just walk on over there. But if/when poor people have to live in the suburbs, they'll have to cope with distances from home to services to work that were designed for prosperous car drivers. Poor people without cars are going to get stuck Out Of Lunch a long way from the nearest free lunchroom. And that's an awful thought. 8/27/04 8:25 p.m. (Link here.) This week the San Francisco Chronicle fell below its usual standards and started treating reality as a matter of opinion. Y'see, a few days ago the Chron ran an exceptionally unfair column by the anonymous "Night Cabbie," part of which implied, mainly by omission, that the economist and political columnist Paul Krugman somehow didn't have mainstream economics credentials. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wrote in to complain, citing sources on Professor Krugman's significant training, publications, and prestige in the economics profession here and here and here and here. Surprisingly, though, the Chron has responded only by running a letter to the editor pointing out the rather easily verifiable facts that Paul Krugman is a trained economist, that he is a professor of economics with many academic publications to his credit, etc., etc. By publishing a letter to the editor as its way to acknowledge the complaints, the Chronicle implies an editorial stance something like: "Yes, our columnist had a strong opinion, and to show that we know reasonable minds may differ, we're granting space for the expression of a contrary opinion." That's completely inappropriate here, because actually the columnist was wrongly insinuating that Krugman somehow wasn't a real economist -- whereas the letter to the editor, apart from a political comment in the opening sentence, was simply setting the facts straight. False insinuation and truth are not just two equivalent opinions. The Chronicle is usually better than this when it comes to accuracy. Now I get to wondering how many other papers are worse. 8/26/04 9:28 p.m. (Link here.) This MoveOn letter about Republican attempts to intimidate black voters is, yes, propaganda, but it's shocking and important propaganda. Read it. And the links from the page. 8/26/04 4:32 p.m. (Link here.) For good or bad I've done most of my blithering over on Horizon today. Among other things, this is Christopher Isherwood's 100th birthday. 8/26/04 11:24 a.m. (Link here.) Thank you, Todd Gitlin, for getting the full text of John Kerry's 1971 testimony onto the front page of Google News today. (It's the "OpenDemocracy" link.) 8/26/04 12:30 a.m. (Link here.) In case you needed something else to worry about, the Bush Admin. seems to be allowing a private contractor to make it more difficult to obtain public information on public contracts. This is a subject to watch: we can't afford to privatize the public function of providing impartial access to public records. 8/25/04 11:41 p.m. (Link here.) Talk about flip-flopping: The Republicans are about to nominate a vice-presidential candidate who doesn't agree with his own party's platform. 8/25/04 4:31 p.m. (Link here.) If You're Unhappy And You Know It... First there was www.lightupthesky.org. Now there's the Great American Shout Out (via Atrios). Let's keep this stuff coming. Lots of peaceful, widespread, amusing displays of dissatisfaction. In lots of places, to prove there's demand for a change all over America, never mind what color certain states are supposed to be. 8/25/04 1:37 p.m. (Link here.) While I'm on the subject of following the money, I just wanted to post a fiendishly useful link: the Investigative Reporters and Editors Campaign Finance Information Center showing online political donation database sources for every one of the U.S. states. Since for some reason it doesn't add federal lookup links, here's the Federal Election Commission donation query site too. 8/25/04 1:22 p.m. (Link here.) The Blogging of the President notes that while the current public focus is on Section 527 political campaign groups, actually nonprofits organized under Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code are in some ways less accountable and could use more public attention to their roles as political campaigning entities. I have mixed feelings about this issue. As a longtime member of a nonprofit board of directors, I know nonprofits would feel seriously stifled if, for example, members couldn't go to City Hall and speak in public comment periods on issues affecting the people they serve. On the other hand, as I've noted in comments over on BOP's site, I've been concerned for some time about the political activities of a San Francisco 501(c)(4) nonprofit, the "California Urban Issues Project," which as an "expenditure lobbyist" has done a hell of a lot of political spending that has not very indirectly helped Mayor Gavin Newsom, without disclosing the sources of its money at all. BOP links to a May '04 Washington Monthly article, "Bush's Secret Stash: Why the GOP war chest is even bigger than you think,", by Nicholas Confessore. It's worth reading and raises some good questions but to me it seems a little alarmist, or anyway one-sided. After all, free speech is an important right for people who work with charities of all political leanings. For the general edification, anyway, here are a few important things to know about 501(c) groups and lobbying: -501(c)(3) groups -- the kind of charities that qualify for tax-exempt donations, including churches -- are allowed to do some very limited legislative lobbying so long as they don't support actual candidates for public office. Even when it comes to legislative measures or ballot questions, they're not allowed to put any "substantial part" of their money or activity into lobbying, and the phrase "substantial part" is scarily vague enough to keep most 501(c)(3) people stepping very carefully. There's a "safe harbor" rule, however, under Sec. 501(h), which allows 501(c)(3)'s to declare openly that they want to do some lobbying -- at which point they can spend up to 20% of their budgets on this limited, legislative, no-candidates lobbying. - 501(c)(4) groups, which don't have the tax-deduction advantage, are allowed to lobby with their whole budgets but they're still not allowed to support actual candidates for office. - The IRS has made several announcements and an informative Revenue Ruling this year on the subject. - The Revenue Ruling talks a lot about what 501(c)(4) groups can't do. Last winter it provoked loud free-speech concerns from a conservative group my cousin-in-law belongs to and hence, I imagine, from other groups as well. But as I told him at the time, the Ruling seems to do more clarifying than restricting, so I don't know what the fuss is really about. -Really the greater nonprofit free speech worry this past winter had to do with threatened FEC action that could have subjected some nonprofits to "political committee" donation limits. That proposal was apparently dropped in May. - As I explained a few weeks ago, it's relatively easy to get the basic facts about any 501(c) nonprofit from its Form 990 IRS filing, which AFAIK is always public record. The IRS offers a little basic good advice on this subject, the most important elements being that you can get older 990s with free registration at the Guidestar site, and you can order newer 990s from the IRS like this, and besides that any nonprofit is legally required to give you a copy of its 990 if you ask. The problem is, the 990s don't necessarily show the source of the organization's money either. After reading that Washington Monthly article you might find yourself yelling for greater regulation of political speech by nonprofit and for-profit groups alike -- but really there is a First Amendment issue here. It's just not a great idea to be restricting people's political speech rights overmuch in the name of controlling financing. Remember that hoo-ha accusing Michael Moore's movie of being legally a political campaign commercial? Take a look at this FEC advisory opinion (there's a related link here) and you'll see how real that threat to Moore's free speech rights could be. Consider the old A Man For All Seasons lesson here: don't "cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil" or you'll have no benefit of law yourself when you need it. So basically I'd say nonprofits shouldn't be the subject of some blanket crackdown, and using a nonprofit to lobby is not necessarily sleazy, but then again it certainly is sleazy for any group, regardless of formal structure, to make a big political splash without telling the public who's behind it or where its money is coming from. 8/24/04 8:12 p.m. (Link here.) Also good: results are improving, though not much, on those Google searches I was discussing last week for materials linking to the www.lightupthesky.org site. Not sure whom or what to thank, but every little bit helps. 8/24/04 3:54 p.m. (Link here.) One of the good kind of protest ideas for New York: this PFAW "Unemployment Line" protest. Good things about it: it's original, a lot of passers-by will see it in person, it's not at the convention center, it won't create a claustrophobic crowd, and it can't easily be labeled as "disorder." That, and it has a specific time set for dispersing and an easy way of doing so. Good, good. It's the aimless milling around at the end of an event that often makes for problems. 8/23/04 10:31 a.m. (Link here.) I've put my blogging time this morning into a post over on Horizon about a new book on Orwell and Burma. 8/22/04 9:38 p.m. (Link here.) Strange de Joel opines: "It's the '60s all over again: the Mahdis versus the Iraqers." 8/22/04 5:16 p.m. (Link here.) Serious hard times in LA: when 3,000 temporary longshore jobs became available, 300,000 people applied. Yes, you read that right. [UPDATE: Gene Zitver, to whom thanks for the link, goes back to the LA Times and finds the number of applicants was actually half a million.] 8/22/04 12:25 p.m. (Link here.) Well, well. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who walloped mainstream Democrat Cruz Bustamante last October with accusations of closeness to Indian gambling interests, has been taking casino money himself. ...and speaking of "Shocked, shocked...," here's a classic of the genre: The Bush campaign said late Saturday that it dismissed an adviser on veterans issues after learning that he is part of an independent group that has been running anti-Kerry ads.He was? Good heavens, we had no idea. Whatsoever. Wink. Wink. (These items courtesy of J. His brain is functioning today. Mine has a bad cold.) 8/21/04 8:20 p.m. (Link here.) Went out to mail some letters just now & passed the outdoor tables at our local cafe. Overheard this: "...So she said, 'I'm gonna do this naked violin-playing thing, da-da-da-ladaladalada. And I'm like, 'I don't care'..." 8/21/04 1:11 p.m. (Link here.) I'm proud of the SF Chronicle for assigning the intrepid Anna Badkhen to its convention protest coverage. As the archive of her 2004 stories shows, she's recently arrived in the U.S. from brave reporting work in Russia and Afghanistan. Someone like that knows what democracy looks like, by way of knowing what it doesn't look like. 8/20/04 6:06 p.m. (Link here.) Been trying to figure out this Secretary of State thing -- what if Shelley resigned or was otherwise removed due to this Julie Lee mess (see immediately below)? Well, apologies for the extent to which I've suggested this could depend on the Governator alone. It looks like the Governor might have nominating power, which is bad enough, but the Legislature would play an important part. If Shelley were recalled, it appears from Article 2, Section 15 of the California Constitution that, as with the election that brought in Schwarzenegger, the rival candidate receiving a plurality would be the successor. Per Article 4, Section 18, impeachment is by the Assembly, with trial by the Senate, and conviction must be by a rollcall vote of two-thirds of the Senate. Possibly most important, Article 5, Section 5(b) of the California Constitution states that where the office of Secretary of State is vacant, the Governor is to nominate a replacement who then must be confirmed by majorities of both the State Senate and the State Assembly, unless the Legislature refuses to vote the nominee either up or down, in which case the nominee takes office by default after 90 days. I feel a little better now. Anyway this is thinking many moves ahead in a drama that could still break any number of directions. 8/20/04 10:56 a.m. (Link here.) Here it comes: the focus of the Julie Lee scandal is turning, with Republican help, to the recipient of the allegedly improper donations, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. Alongside the Lee stuff, Shelley is now being accused of "channeling" federal voter turnout funds to Democratic Party associates. This is a story with serious national implications that I don't think is getting national attention as yet. I'll spell it out again: as Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley is in charge of California elections. As such he has, for example, taken a strong position against paperless touch-screen voting. If Shelley were to be removed due to scandal before November, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (shudder) could presumably hand-pick his own man to count and deliver California's rather important presidential ballots. I've got no special affection for Mr. Shelley himself, but under the circumstances I don't want to see him supplanted any time soon. [P.S. Through the pure luck of consecutive numbering, this item happens to be #666. I'm of course hoping it isn't an omen. Thought of numbering it "665A" but that'd be silly.] 8/20/04 10:23 a.m. (Link here.) Worst SF Chron headline of the week: "Food Lovers Not Fazed By Paying Top Dollar." Whereas, apparently, those who feel a mere biological need for food are being unsporting if they complain about its price or scarcity. 8/19/04 2:35 p.m. (Link here.) I don't know what he means by "the ghetto," but Peter Plate has Warm Water Cove in San Francisco almost right. (Memo to self: it really is possible to stand up for poor people in the San Francisco Chronicle -- you just have to be sufficiently picturesque about it.) 8/19/04 1:21 p.m. (Link here.) As of this morning the IRS has announced a plan for special scrutiny of Section 527 political groups. 8/19/04 1:14 p.m. (Link here.) I'm mildly concerned about the Google meta-search results for www.lightupthesky.org, which is Milton Glaser's website, recommended by The Nation, calling on New Yorkers to protest the Republican Convention peacefully with a display of lights. The Google search for the phrase "Milton Glaser" plus the word "convention" gets 426 results as of now, and Google search for the plain word "lightupthesky" gets 720 results (including results for groups and events not related to Mr. Glaser or his protest idea). But when you try to run the searches that would normally help you find out who's linking to the page itself (i.e. linking to it rather than spelling out its title), Google gets disappointing. Ordinarily when you run a Google search for a website's URL, Google
gives you either search results or several choices of where to go next.
For example, the Google search for the URL of this website you're on now
gives nine
search results for some reason if you tack "http:" on the front of
the link, and if
you don't, it offers the following:
Demisemiblog
Google can show you the following information for this
* Show Google's cache of
But the Google search for "http://www.lightupthesky.org" gives only these results:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL
* If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking
In other words, it is less than ordinarily helpful in finding pages that have linked to Glaser's page. Further, when you click on "Find web pages that contain the term "www.lightupthesky.org" you get 27 results, which doesn't seem like very much. You get the very same thing if you search only for "www.lightupthesky.org." If you use the Google advanced command "link:http://www.lightupthesky.org", which I think ought to list all the pages that link to Glaser's page, you get 23 results. These 23 do not include, for example, this page right here, which linked to it on July 13 here, and on July 1 here. Is six weeks not long enough for a link to show up on Google? I usually find Google reliable. Am I using the search tools wrong in some way? Or what's going on here? (Note for future readers: as I'm writing this today, I'm posting to my front weblog page, which has not had its older posts transferred to an archive file in some time. As of now, all my posts back through July 1 have been displayed at exactly the same URL since they were first put up, i.e. Google has had plenty of time to find them in the same place. Because I don't have proper blogging software, some time in the days ahead I'll have to hand-transfer the July and later the August posts to their own archive files, at which point this post and the July 1 and 13 posts will appear separately at the addresses for their respective posting months. At that point I'll probably change the links to the July 1 and 13 posts to reflect the new locations. Sorry about this. I really have to get software with permalinks.) [UPDATE 8/24/04: I've moved the July material to archive. The July 1 post is now here and the July 13 one here. (In case it matters, which I'm not sure it does.)] 8/19/04 12:42 a.m. (Link here.) The San Francisco Ethics Commission reports $63,008 in second-quarter 2004 spending by the still fairly mysterious "California Urban Issues Project." As I've discussed in past entries (most recently here), this 501(c)(4) "expenditure lobbyist" organization has put a lot of money into advertising that addresses legislative issues in ways that benefit San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Because its legal status is that of a lobbying organization rather than an electoral campaign committee, it has as far as I know not disclosed precisely who its donors are. But when I have a minute I'll bop over to the Ethics Commission and see if this quarter's report is any more forthcoming than the previous ones. 8/18/04 5:22 p.m. (Link here.) There's a Craigslist ad today for a writing job on a project called "e-Canvas." Someone should tell these folks that "canvass" is the preferred spelling, but it's an interesting ad. I don't want the job myself, just mentioning it as a sign of the times. 8/18/04 10:15 a.m. (Link here.) Hate is never pretty: anti-homeless T-shirts and worse in Tulsa following a fatal fight between two individuals that local (housed) campaigners are collectively blaming on every homeless person in the city. It happens that yesterday a client here in San Francisco introduced me to two of her current neighbors: the mother of a family and her well-mannered daughter, who is about four years old. The neighbors -- if I have this right, the family consists of mother, father, two kids, and two dogs -- live in a mid-sized sedan. Father is employed, but this is San Francisco, the asking rent for a three-bedroom across the street from our place is $3,000 a month, and there is no apartment for this family. Yet they may be lucky they don't live in Tulsa. What a world. 8/17/04 11:01 p.m. (Link here.) The activist community made it through the Democratic Convention without major disasters. Now comes the hard test. As TalkLeft notes (alongside other helpful links), Eric Alterman has reproduced the well-worded Nation editorial by '60s scholar Todd Gitlin and John Passacantando of Greenpeace on the imperative of nonviolence in New York. The Nation should have released this editorial to the general public, not just to subscribers like me. Everyone needs to read it. And again, again, again, I want to recommend this idea for a silent protest of lights displayed in windows. I've explained already why I would actually urge people to protest at home, away from the convention. Bottom line: images of disorder only serve the interests of the Republican Party. Protest messages must be conveyed with exaggerated sobriety and dignity if they are to be understood at all. [UPDATE: Salon, eloquently and in detail, on all of the above.]
8/17/04 10:08 a.m. (Link here.)
Hair-raising SF Chron column today on overcrowding and short money in California emergency rooms. Mostly from the perspective of one doctor: There is, however, one ray of hope in this morning's news: Costco is getting into the discount casket business. 8/16/04 10:57 p.m. (Link here.)
...Someone who orders the beatin, torture, and submergin of a Pepsi machine in water is likely to be heavily fined, disciplined or ordered to replace the Pepsi machine....Inspired dementia from Fafblog on fizzy refreshing drinks and the drubbing of habeas corpus. (I wonder if he's been reading Douglas Adams' The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul.) 8/16/04 10:08 p.m. (Link here.) Miss Manners' dainty exegesis of courtesy titles for same-sex married couples made a belated appearance in s'morning's SF Chron. It looks like this column was published elsewhere back in July, but I'm offering the link anyway in case you missed it then. 8/15/04 7:03 p.m. (Link here.) I'm glad Orcinus continues doing the hard nasty work of marshaling rebuttals to the Michelle Malkin defense of concentration camps. It's depressing to even learn this woman has made such an argument in the twenty-first century, let alone to realize that some sensible opponent has to answer her publicly point by point or a television-besotted public may just conclude that locking people up by ethnic origin is a jim-dandy idea. 8/15/04 6:21 p.m. (Link here.) Hell On Horses And Women, or, From My Cold Dead Hands, Part III (Part I here; Part II here): Regarding this matter of prohibiting marital aids in Johnson County, Texas, I have some thoughts on what the "Talibaptists" might want to be banning next. For starters, they'd better change the name of the county. And excise certain notorious parts of the Good Book itself. That, or translate it back into Latin. That, or don't teach people to read. Folks like this are the reason for the old joke about banning sex for fear it might lead to dancing. They could yet ban reading for fear it might lead to thinking. Then there's the importation of dual-purpose goods such as shower massage attachments, physical therapy equipment, battery-powered electric toothbrushes, certain garden produce, and... well, you can extend the list ad absurdum not to mention nauseam. Every item a potential source of ungodly cheerfulness. You can tell them that "vibrators don't titillate people -- people titillate people," but will they listen? Not likely. So I picture the Talibaptists, in their distinctive local headgear of Stetson hats and sunglasses, manning checkpoints along the county line, interdicting prohibited means of amusement. Possibly even stringing impolite videos through the trees along the Brazos. (Yes, that Brazos. Turns out part of the Johnson County line is the Brazos. Now I'm imagining vigilant Baptists in bass boats.) I have no idea how they'll deal with the fact that some San Franciscans dress up as Texas State Troopers for indecent purposes. Maybe they'll have to ban Texas State Troopers too. And bullwhips, which are obscene anyway. Incidentally, the city of Cleburne, Texas, which happens to be the county seat of Johnson County, is chiefly known to civil rights lawyers by the 1985 case of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. In which the Supreme Court found no "rational basis" for the Cleburne City Council's attempt to banish a planned group home for mentally disabled adults. Sounds like a real open-minded place. Possibly a nice place in many ways. Cleburne State Park, for example, looks lovely. But as the saying goes, I wouldn't want to live there. [UPDATE: Hey, lookit: they've got Talibaptists in Lubbock, too!] [FURTHER UPDATE: haven't fully expored this site but it looks like an introduction to some nicer things about Lubbock. I've never been to the place, but a town that worships Buddy Holly as a civic hero can't be all bad, now, can it?] [AND YET FURTHER UPDATE: J. expresses mild surprise that Lubbockites (Lubbockians?) tolerate graven images of Buddy Holly. It looks like Guitar Gods are OK, but Wind Gods aren't. Go figure.] 8/15/04 12:18 a.m. (Link here.) There's a new scandal cooking in San Francisco, with implications that voters elsewhere may yet have to care about. Y'see, it involves the California Secretary of State. The California Secretary of State is in charge of California elections, in the same manner as, um, his counterpart in Florida. Or rather, one hopes, not quite the same manner. Right now the FBI is investigating some campaign contributions to the said Secretary of State, who is Kevin Shelley, former San Francisco city pol and Democratic state rep. Recent SF Chron stories are saying Shelley helped arrange a $500,000 public grant to the nonprofit San Francisco Neighbors Resource Center, and then the nonprofit paid money to some third parties who then gave big to the Shelley campaign. There's also something about a home sale deal and another big contribution. If this scandal were to force Shelley out of office, I presume (though haven't checked) that Arnold Schwarzenegger could then appoint a replacement Secretary. If that were to happen before November, and anything were to go kerflooey on Election Day... well, construct your own nightmare. Of extra interest (if you follow SF politics -- non-mavens can stop reading here if they haven't already) is the scandal's focus on a real estate lady named Julie Lee. It seems Lee is a co-founder of the nonprofit, and also a big fundraiser for ex-mayor Willie Brown, and also the mother of Andrew Lee, who would be on the city Public Utilities Commission now if not for a sneaky maneuver last fall by Brown opponent Chris Daly. Oh, and she was on current Mayor Gavin Newsom's very own transition team... And Willie Brown, meanwhile, has made a point of keeping on good terms with Schwarzenegger since last fall's bizarre election... Anything at all could happen next. Stay tuned. [UPDATE: The Sunday (8/15/04) Chron had a ferocious profile feature on Julie Lee and her son Andrew, AKA "Drew Nasty" -- a would-be rapper and reluctant public servant for whom I'm beginning to feel a little sorry.] 8/14/04 2:24 p.m. (Link here.) A small mischievous idea: supposing rich Republicans who don't intend to vote for George Bush actually attend the public campaign events they're invited to -- the ones that don't involve giving money of course -- but supposing they attend in evening dress? I don't mean "Billionaires for Bush" comic top-hat drag. I mean real white tie. Real couture gowns. Grandma's pearls. Full genuine-article Opera Night getup. And explain if asked, "Well, we may as well admit he represents people of our class." And see if they get thrown out. (Bouncer to grande dame: "I'm sorry, madam, but you seem to be sarcastically overdressed.") What, you don't think any actual owners of evening dress would do such a thing? Sure they would. Grubby populists aren't the only people upset with that man in the White House. He's also an affront to every privileged person raised with any sense whatever of noblesse oblige. 8/12/04 8:28 p.m. (Link here.) About today's anti-gay-marriage ruling from the Cal Supremes: - It stinks. Of course it stinks. - That doesn't make Gavin Newsom the ipso facto best thing since sliced Velveeta. - It still doesn't matter for November. Voters in (non-swinging) swing states who disapprove of homosexuality -- or who perhaps just think homosexuality is nobody else's business -- also don't find homosexuality a fit subject for polite conversation. Seeing the subject discussed at all is going to make them equally uncomfortable, whether the speaker is for or against. BTW it doesn't help the cause of prudery that passionate anti-gay speakers tend to be, shall we say, not especially comfortable in their own skins. And the whole subject of trying to separate people in love just isn't a winner. I mean, they can talk "values" all they want, it still sounds like "Whatever It Is, We're Against It!" 8/11/04 7:13 p.m. (Link here.) Sorry, still tied up in various knots in non-blog world, so not much here yet. But Asmussen has a howler of a cartoon in today's Chron about those dreadful chese-'n'-beefcake Harper's Bazaar photos of the San Francisco First Couple. (See below for dreadful details.) Go take a look. I'll try and be back soon. And if you came in here to have an argument or to find subtler cultural musings than the above, you can, as always, try Horizon, where my four co-posters and assorted friends of the house are keeping up the thought & chat not so badly. 8/10/04 4:46 p.m. (Link here.) This Malkin assault on human rights seems to be getting dignified with serious attention on Fox, which is another notch to the right even for them. Atrios has an update. 8/9/04 11:21 a.m. (Link here.) For a change of pace, here are two accounts from pilgrims to the scene of Walter Benjamin's last walk and tragic death, so close to escape, in the Pyrenees in 1940. Rebecca Solnit's account in the LA Times (found via A&L Daily) is worth the free registration. An earlier one is at the Walter Benjamin tribute website. 8/8/04 4:18 p.m. (Link here.) "And each shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid." Well, not quite. But the SF Chronicle's superlatively brave correspondent Anna Badkhen reports on an effort to restore the vineyards of Afghanistan, one trowel of earth at a time. 8/8/04 11:38 a.m. (Link here.) A right-wing columnist named Malkin has written an apologia for putting "enemy aliens" in concentration camps. (No, not killing, just putting behind barbed wire under guard. That's bad enough, isn't it?) I don't really want to dignify this woman's disgusto by linking even to analyses of her stuff, but if I must, the most thorough seems to be Orcinus. I know a little about inland Northwest crankery on the subject of the Japanese American Internment because of research for the book I'll finish one day on the Tule Lake area, and it seems that this new apologia she's written is an attempt to bring a long-existing kind of revisionism (or maybe it's plain unchanged '30s-style bigotry) into the mainstream. This is what these fringe right-wingers do: they constantly try to widen the spectrum of civilized discussion rightward by saying shocking things -- defending collective ascriptions of guilt especially -- as though these were ordinary policy proposals to make in a free democracy. When this kind of soft fascism gets put forward in a soft "reasonable" tone of voice, we can't afford to treat it as normal. 8/7/04 4:42 p.m. (Link here.) Smile and grin at the change all around... Atrios' understudies have a new blog. They're reporting sad stuff from Iraq. Goddammit. Didn't we learn a single goddamned thing from the Vietnam War? 8/6/04 11:18 a.m. (Link here.) I had an errand at the court clerks' office in the Hall of Justice yesterday, which was an excuse to buy a three-pack of Ho-Hos at the in-house store there. The store caters to nervous defendants, overworked lawyers, and cops, so the junk food selection is luxurious. My vice is Ho-Hos. Sinful chocolate-and-ersatz-cream goodness from Hostess. I came out unwrapping my first Ho-Ho and there was the character known as Spaceman O.T. Spaceman won't tell anyone what the O.T. stands for. He always rides a bicycle. His helmet is decorated with a million pieces of interesting junk including artfully broken compact disks. He always wears hockey pads on his shins. The rest is subject to change and impossible to descibe anyway. He says he hangs around the Hall because he feels safer there since he quit drugs and can't hang with his old friends. He's always around the Hall. Knows everyone, proposes marriage to all the women, makes an amusing nuisance of himself. Once tagged along with me for a mile when I was walking home from downtown and I thought I'd never get rid of the guy. Harmless, and funny, but very mildly creepy. So I offered one of my Ho-Hos to Spaceman. Instead of, you know, accepting it or turning it down, he threw up his hands and yelled, "Worldwide terrorism!" "So, come on, ya gonna save me from this Ho-Ho?" "Worldwide terrorism, that's what they say!" "So you don't want one?" "No! Worldwide terrorism!" "My friend, you are farther out there than usual." So I ate all the Ho-Hos myself, for which the cholesterol and preservative gods will one day punish me if my own arteries don't get me first. But the stupid point of this story is that, on arriving home, I did do a quick craven check of current headlines to see if Spaceman had heard some bulletin I hadn't. These are stupid, awful days for our nerves, and it's possible Spaceman is bouncing better than the rest of us. 8/5/04 8:56 p.m. (Link here.) Could someone please tell me what if any existing image or images resemble this intensely annoying glamour photo of the San Francisco mayoral couple? I thought it was maybe a Dylan album cover but the closest resemblance is to "Bringing It All Back Home" and that's not close at all. So why am I finding this image so terribly familiar? Something especially about Kimberley's arm stretched out on the carpet and the gilt armrests on the chairs I think. Maybe some other album cover? Any advisements much appreciated. This has been nagging at me all day. 8/5/04 4:47 p.m. (Link here.) My uncle spotted this thoughtful meditation on Bush, Reagan, "Being There," and that fascinating, disturbing place in politics where spectacle overlaps with reality. (Caveat: I haven't read it clean through. But it looks interesting.) 8/5/04 4:26 p.m. (Link here.) We who lived through the San Francisco NASDAQ days know that what goes up must come down. When the rising home sales market finishes running out of high-priced homes for sale and high-earning buyers to sell them to, a story in the SF Chron today points out one more group that'll suffer. Real estate agents. Already, it seems, the San Francisco Bay Area has lots of newly minted real estate agents who escaped poor job markets in other professions for self-employed second careers that aren't all turning out like they hoped. Don't know if this is happening in other parts of the country but it seems like a worry worth watching. 8/4/04 10:21 p.m. (Link here.) For this blog's audience I think all I need to say is that HUD's final notice of data and technical standards is out for Homeless Management Information Systems. Supply your own commentary. Or just wonder what Johnny Appleseed would make of it all. Sorry so little blog again. This damn eviction case was again dragging me by the scruff from computer to printer to client's building to opposing counsel's office to the long long line in the clerks' office... The line is worst of all on Wednesday afternoons because some genius in the court administrative offices decided to save money by short-staffing the filing desks so that all the messengers hired by big law firms -- who I think get paid by the hour for waiting time -- have to stand in a line that advances down this huge gallery of closed filing windows at the pace of molasses in a clammy San Francisco August. I'd like to know what costs more money: the pay for all the messengers to wait extra time in line, or the pay of one more skilled clerk accepting subsequent filings at just one additional window on a Wednesday afternoon. So why don't the firms that hire the messengers raise a little hell about this extra cost of filing documents which might as well be paid to the city as a filing fee & not to messengers as a wage for their waiting time? It's not like the messengers have nothing else to do. I've been in the Subsequent Filings line a lot these last couple weeks, and I've overheard them phoning colleagues to reassign other deliveries that they don't have time to complete because of the holdup at court. !@#$%^&* bureaucracy, grrr... 8/3/04 9:23 p.m. (Link here.) Spent today getting dragged all over town by the clockwork of a Motion To Set Aside Default And Vacate Default Judgment, hence no blog 'til now. My feet hurt. But it feels good to walk into the sheriff's office (J: "I think the technical term is 'waltz'") with an order recalling and quashing a writ of execution, which may sound like medieval gibberish but it means that tomorrow morning the deputies will not be pounding on a certain door. Coolest thing seen today: concrete sidewalk with scratched graffiti saying "Mozart Forever." We get a nice class of vandals around here. 8/2/04 3:16 p.m. (Link here.) I just want to say that Cardinal Ratzinger deserves his name. 8/1/04 2:33 p.m. (Link here.) Last night was noisy with sirens and engines. This morning there were footprints on the roof and front hood of the car. Not cat-foot footprints. Big people-foot footprints. I'm glad we stayed in.
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