Quote of the Day: George Burns

"Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair."

Heros: Judge White and Jose PadillaMaybe Hall of Shame: Obama Administration

A judge appointed by W himself seems disinclined to dismiss charges against Bush's White House counsel John C. Woo, for his determination that the rights guaranteed by our Constitution can be overriden by the executive branch.

In yesterday's New York Times:

Lawyers for the Obama administration struggled on Friday to persuade a federal judge here to throw out an unusual civil lawsuit against John C. Yoo, the former government lawyer whose memorandums on torture were used by the Bush administration to justify sweeping policies on detention and interrogation.

Despite their efforts, the judge did not seem inclined to dismiss the lawsuit, which was brought by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in isolation in a military brig as an enemy combatant.

The judge, Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court, explored the arguments of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers thoroughly, but he appeared to be skeptical of elements of the government’s argument.

In fact, Judge White, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, even told the government’s lawyers that Mr. Yoo’s 2001 memorandum stating that the constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures can be overridden was “a pretty scary position.”

Jose Padilla spent three years of his life locked up. Why is he a hero? This:

Mr. Padilla seeks monetary damages of just $1. His real goal, in this case and a number of others against other current and former United States officials, is a declaration from the government that his incarceration and harsh treatment were wrong.

“Plaintiffs seek to vindicate their constitutional rights,” the complaint stated, “and ensure that neither Mr. Padilla nor any other person is treated this way in the future.”

And a tentative Hall of Shame position for the Obama administration for trying to have this suit dismissed. "Tentative" only because the Times makes no note of any effort to get an explanation either from papers filed requesting dismissal, nor to contact White House spokespeople directly. All the article gives us on this point is:

President Obama has shown little interest in prosecuting officials of the previous administration, and it is not clear whether there will be a government-sponsored investigation of Bush administration polices.

Haiku to Claire

Gaelic girl, Scythian sword.
Born and bred to o'ercome all,
Fu dog at her heels.

There is no room for self-righteousness, O Ye Comfortable Ones

There are those in our country who are expressing denial, disbelief or, worst of all, self-righteousness regarding the awful plight of so many Americans. I have seen sentiments ranging from "You made your bed, you sleep in it" to "the reason jobs are being lost is because people believe Democratic scare tactics and are not spending money -- spend your money folks!" This is in utter blindness to the cold hard fact that so many of us have none to spend and cannot even pay the bills.

Today in my World Wide Meanderings I came across the full "Meditation XVII" by John Donne. This piece contains a very famous phrase, but is so beautiful it deserves a full read and then a mulling-over.

It gets to the crux of my own innate sense that what happens to one of us happens to all of us; that the mistakes made by one of us have been made by all of us; that where each one of us remains open to growth of understanding we each can bring all of us along; that where one of us remains willfully blind we none of us can see. Donne's quaint and beautiful Jacobean prose still resonates so powerfully, these 386 years after he quilled them:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.

I and I

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) "

-- Walt Whitman

What He Said

Frank Rich in Sunday's New York Times:

PRESIDENT Obama did not offer his patented poetry in his Inaugural Address. He did not add to his cache of quotations in Bartlett’s. He did not recreate J.F.K.’s inaugural, or Lincoln’s second, or F.D.R.’s first. The great orator was mainly at his best when taking shots at Bush and Cheney, who, in black hat and wheelchair, looked like the misbegotten spawn of the evil Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Such was the judgment of many Washington drama critics. But there’s a reason that this speech was austere, not pretty. Form followed content. Obama wasn’t just rebuking the outgoing administration. He was delicately but unmistakably calling out the rest of us who went along for the ride as America swerved into the dangerous place we find ourselves now.

Worth reading the rest!

Obama Restores Worldwide Women's Health Services

Just days after President Obama took the oath of office, he reversed the "global gag rule." His executive order reversed the awful policy -- issued by Reagan, continued by Bush 1, overturned by Clinton, reinstated by Bush 2 on his first day in office in '01 -- that canceled US funding to women's health clinics worldwide if they so much as mentioned family planning methods as an option.

The global gag rule forced health clinics in developing countries - which often serve as the only source of birth control for the world's poorest women - to cut their staff, limit services, and sometimes close their doors entirely.


When Obama first launched his campaign, he surveyed his supporters asking what we would like to see him do as his first act as President. My answer was: Overturn the global gag rule that Bush reinstated on *his* first day in office. I feel like my wish came true and am SO grateful that my sisters around the world will be supported by our country in having control over their lives and their health, instead of having their biology rule their destiny and suffering from women's health issues with no local clinics to turn to. And we have rejoined the modern age, in recognition of the need for population control on our overtaxed Mother Earth.


Please consider joining me today in thanking President Obama for his swift action on behalf of women everywhere.

Inaugural B&W crepes

Creamy pale bananas and rich chocolate make this a perfect breakfast or snack this week, LOL.

Serves 2 banana & chocolate freaks. If you make this into 2 crepes like I did, they are humongous. But you'll still wish you had more.

-- a bar of Green & Black's Organic 70% cocoa.
-- 1 c organic unbleached white flour
-- 1 c + about 2T organic 2% milk (untested: substitute unflavored soy milk)
-- 1 egg from a happy, veggie hen (in my book, if the egg has the telltale "fertilized" bloodspot, that was a happy hen)
-- 3 organic bananas
-- decent cooking oil (do yourself a favor & avoid saturated fat, k?)

2. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg and add to it one cup of milk. Slowly add the cup of flour, whisking constantly, until the mixture is very smooth

3. Put half a bar of the chocolate into the top of a double-boiler. Add 2 T of milk. Over a gentle heat, don't forget while doing the below steps to keep checking it. It should just melt slowly, it should NOT simmer. Whisk occasionally.

4. Peel and slice the bananas. Heat up some oil in a frying pan to a nice high temp.

5. Toss the bananas around in the pan long enough to sear the outsides (to a toasty brown color, not charred!). Remove the bananas from the pan.

6. Heat up a 10-12 inch frying pan (or crepe pan if you have one) with a light coating of oil, medium heat. Pour half the batter in a spiral; tilt the pan to nearly cover the bottom. Let it sit over the heat until the top is dry and the edges are very slightly golden-brown. Flip with a spatula and let the other side heat for a minute or so. Slip it out of the pan onto a plate.

7. Spoon half of the bananas in a stripe near one side of the crepe. Roll it up. Generously drizzle the chocolate on it.

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for the second crepe.


If you have extra chocolate in the double-boiler, pour it over a peeled banana or some strawberries. Put them in the freezer for a bit, then move to the fridge.


Clean-up tip for the fried-banana pan (and for any kind of mess in a pan or on the stovetop): Put in about 1" of water, bring to a simmer, sprinkle baking soda over the entire surface of the water, simmer a bit more, sprinkle more baking soda and shut the heat off. It will clean up easily after it cools.

Tupac, do ya feel us today? Please pay us a visit

Come on come on
I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I ask myself,
"Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?"
I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.
My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.
Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare.
First ship 'em dope & let 'em deal the brothers.
Give 'em guns, step back, and watch 'em kill each other.
"It's time to fight back", that's what Huey said.
2 shots in the dark now Huey's dead.
I got love for my brother, but we can never go nowhere
unless we share with each other. We gotta start makin' changes.
Learn to see me as a brother 'stead of 2 distant strangers.
And that's how it's supposed to be.
How can the Devil take a brother if he's close to me?
I'd love to go back to when we played as kids,
but things change, and that's the way it is.

(Come on, come on) That's just the way it is. Things'll never be the same.
That's just the way it is. aww yeah...


I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
Misplaced hate makes disgrace for races we under.
I wonder what it takes to make this one better place...
let's erase the wasted.
Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right.
'Cause mo' black than white is smokin' crack tonight.
And only time we chill is when we kill each other.
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other.
And although it seems heaven sent,
we ain't ready to see a black President, uhh.
It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact...
the penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks.
But some things will never change.
Try to show another way, but they stayin' in the dope game.
Now tell me what's a mother to do?
Bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you.
You gotta operate the easy way.
"I made a G today" But you made it in a sleazy way.
Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid,"
Well hey, well that's the way it is.

We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.

And still I see no changes. Can't a brother get a little peace?
There's war on the streets & the war in the Middle East.
Instead of war on poverty,
they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.
And I ain't never did a crime I ain't have to do.
But now I'm back with the facts givin' 'em back to you.
Don't let 'em jack you up, back you up, crack you up and pimp smack you up.
You gotta learn to hold ya own.
They get jealous when they see ya with ya mobile phone.
But tell the cops they can't touch this.
I don't trust this, when they try to rush I bust this.
That's the sound of my tune. You say it ain't cool, but mama didn't raise no fool.
And as long as I stay black, I gotta stay strapped & I never get to lay back.
'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the pay backs.
Some buck that I roughed up way back... comin' back after all these years.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. That's the way it is. uhh

The At Long Last Death of William Zantziger

So now I find myself wishing that the Christian idea of some sort of final judgment is true. And hoping that Hattie Carrol's family breathes more freely and walks a bit lighter now.

This is what happened in 1963, a short stark write-up from the New York Times.


This is perhaps the best commentary on this "incident" among thousands upon thousands of similar "incidents" in the history of America (and of "civilization" in general):

Roasted Eggplant Soup

1. Start with The Stock.

2. Cut 1 or 2 eggplants (~1.5 lbs) in half, brush with oil, 450 deg. oven 20 minutes w/cut side up. 1 large red pepper (halved & seeded), 1 spanish or vidalia onion (halved, not peeled), brush with oil, add to oven at that 20 minute mark. Continue to roast all for another 20 minutes. Peel the onion, chop all veggies coarsely & throw into the stock. (Leave the skin on the eggplant.)

3. Cook it all for an hour, partially covered, low simmer, with a fresh sprig of thyme. Process in batches in blender or processor, until you see fine speckles (not completely smooth)

4. serve with fresh croutons & a dollop of homemade garlic mayo (standard or vegan).

YUM. Eat it and be transported.

Adapted from The Greens veggie cookbook.

Soup Stock

onion, black beans, garlic, chard stems & leaves, carrots, 8 c water, sauteed & then simmered to reduce to 6 c water, then smooshed in a sieve, stock retained & veggies headed for Staten Island Landfill (if no composting garden nearby).

Bush v. Cheney

Sherlyn Gay Stolberg has drawn an interesting juxtaposition of the differences between Bush's brand-new reflective, candid mood and Cheney's unflagging bombast.

The difference in tone, friends and advisers say, reflects a split over Mr. Bush’s second-term foreign policy, which Mr. Cheney resisted as too dovish. It also reveals their divergent approaches to post-White House life. Mr. Bush, who is planning a public policy center in Dallas, is trying to shape his legacy by offering historians a glimpse of his thinking, while Mr. Cheney, primarily concerned about the terrorist threat, is setting the stage for a role as a standard-bearer for conservatives on national security.

I wonder whether Cheney will find many adherents in the post-Bush/Cheney era. From what I've gleaned in my readings of Conservative analysis, well, "I don't really think many Conservatives are hitching their wagon to your star, Dick."

Let's see: Spend a trillion dollars fighting a war for the past six years (a war whose very premise collapsed within the first few months), engender a heretofore unknown depth of hatred towards our country making it difficult to negotiate any issue to our advantage, give no-bid contracts in the most astounding act of cronyism and insider illegality ever to companies to which you have strong ties only to have it uncovered that they are defrauding our country and wasting our money and doing a really bad job in many cases, and spread our troops so thin and abuse their willingness to serve to such a degree that our military power is teetering. And, a full seven years after 9/11, only a miniscule percentage of incoming shipping containers are inspected, the Federal budget is so shot they're gonna have to take police back off the streets and defund Homeland Security programs, and that immensely sad gaping hole in my beloved downtown Manhattan, a site that was an engine of American competitiveness, profitability, and power -- well, today, seven years later, it is .... a sad gaping hole!

Pardon me for shouting, but WHAT DID ANY ACTION CHENEY TRUMPETED AND INFLUENCED HAVE TO DO WITH (1) CONSERVATIVISM, OR (2) NATIONAL SECURITY?

Most Chilling Quote of 2008 Award: Dick Cheney

In an exit interview, when asked to reflect back on the decisions of the Bush/Cheney administration (starting the war in Iraq, using waterboarding on detainees, holding persons not charged with any crime in Guantánamo, and I'd use up all the space on the World Wide Web if I attempted to complete my list), our soon to be Ex Veep said:

“I feel very good about what we did,” the vice president told The Washington Times, adding, “If I was faced with those circumstances again, I’d do exactly the same thing.”

Man on Wire!!

If you don't know who Philippe Petit is, you should. If you know who he is and why he became quite well known 24 years ago, but you have never seen the story of how the hell he accomplished his brilliant "art crime", and/or have never seen the footage of that remarkable morning, see Man On Wire.

Preferably see it on the big screen while you can if you live within feasible distance of the two (yes, only two) theaters in the country where it is now playing. In downtown Manhattan, it's playing thru Thurs 12/25 several times a day at the Sunshine Cinema, and then through the 1st there will be two showings per day around lunchtime. It's also playing at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco.

Philippe Petit is my hero and that is not a facile declaration. When it comes to naming heros, I heed the Grail Knight telling me, "Choose wisely." Petit is a special soul on earth at this time. I speak not only of the dazzling beauty of his artform and his sheer guts and willingness to live life instead of simply attempting to avoid death for a bunch of decades. I am in awe of the sheer poetry of his beauty, his speech, his bearing, his being.

Quote of the day: What's Hard

From an interview in May 2008, "Tom Waits True Confessions":

Q: What’s hard for you?

A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.

Historical Figures: Edward Cave

An early bootstrapping publisher who, it seems, invented the periodical magazine format for distributing information. . From Wikipedia ...

The son of a cobbler, Cave was born in Newton near Rugby, Warwickshire and attended the grammar school there, but was expelled after being accused of stealing from the headmaster. He worked at a variety of jobs, including timber merchant, reporter and printer. He conceived the idea of a periodical that would cover every topic the educated public was interested in, from commerce to poetry, and tried to convince several London printers and booksellers to take up the idea. When no one showed any interest, Cave took on the task by himself. The Gentleman's Magazine was launched in 1731 and soon became the most influential and most imitated periodical of its time. It also made Cave wealthy.

Some info on The Gentleman's Magazine:

The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January, 1731. The original complete title was The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer. Cave's innovation was to create a monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry. It carried original content from a stable of regular contributors, as well as extensive quotes and extracts from other periodicals and books. Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazine under the pen name "Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term "magazine" (meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. The iconic illustration of St John's Gate on the front of each issue (occasionally updated over the years) depicted Cave's home, in effect, the magazine's 'office'.

Cave also had an eye for talent: he hired the young Samuel Johnson as a writer after Johnson had to drop out of Oxford (for lack of money).

Arabama

The NY Times today published a collection of blog entries from Arab countries:

The Skeptic, Egypt (elijahzarwan.net/blog)

A new day dawned in Cairo today. As it does every day.

And it started as it always does: with birds, schoolchildren and car horns. No national holiday here.

I’m looking forward to going out in the streets to hear the reaction. The best reaction I’ve heard so far: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”

Bah humbug. I confess I’m moved.

Journalist of the Week Award:Pat Buchanan

Yup, you heard me right. Pat Buchanan . Here are some snips from "Where Did Bush Go Wrong?:

After losing control of the Senate and 30 House seats in 2006, the GOP is bracing for losses of six to nine in the Senate, and two dozen to three dozen additional seats in the House.

If the party “were a dog food,” says Rep. Tom Davis, “they would take us off the shelf.”

... Two-thirds of Americans now believe the Iraq war a mistake. Yet, all but a few Republicans backed the war. At the time of “Mission Accomplished!” in May 2003, the nation gave Bush a 90 percent approval rating, as his father had after Desert Storm.

... How many Republicans have repudiated the Bush Doctrine that got us into Iraq—the belief that only by making the world democratic can we keep America secure and free?

... In Afghanistan, we are entering the eighth year of war with victory further away than ever.

... These two wars helped to cripple the Bush presidency and end the GOP ascendancy. Yet, at the highest levels of the party, one hears no serious questioning of the ideology that produced these wars. McCain has pledged to stay in Iraq until “victory” and send 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Nor have Republicans objected to the U.S. air strikes that have killed hundreds of Afghans, or the Predator strikes that have inflamed Pakistan or the helicopter raid into Syria that humiliated Damascus and enraged the population. If Republicans disagree with these policies and actions, their voices are muted.

... The GOP needs to confront the truth: The failure of the Bush presidency lies not in a failed execution of policy but in the policies themselves and the neoconservative ideology that informed them.

Yet, still, the party remains in denial, refusing to come to terms with the causes of its misfortune. One expects they will be given the time and opportunity for reflection soon.

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.”

Battling our U.S.olipsism

Let us not forget: there is a rest-of-the-world, including places our country has made a mess of.... meanwhile the news today and tomorrow and next week will be only a slicing and dicing our own election results. Evening news anchors had nothing to say about any other part of the world the past few days... meanwhile a young Somalian girl was stoned to death for being raped!!!!, and children live like this in Sadr City (pic above is taken from this LA Times slideshow).

My Fellow Americans --
Everything Obama said on election night about unity, about the health of the whole depending on the health of its parts, applies to our entire human race. A quick check of an image of our Earth as seen from space will verify that, yup, still no lines are actually drawn on it dividing us from any other humans except in our own convenient way of thinking about things.

Let's work to stay informed about the condition of beings on the whole planet. And let's care about it. And do something about it. And talk about it. And insist it is taught in our schools, and sees some exposure in our television programming.