Slightly Evil Larry™ is not unaccustomed
to finding himself on a pedestal.
Friday, May 9
These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)
ON my last raid on Half-Price Books I picked up John Keegan's one-volume The First World War which I successfully dug down to a couple days ago and began reading. (Keegan is easy to distinguish from the American Kagan tribe; he's the one who writes non-fiction.)
On 4 October an advance guard of the Royal Naval Division, which had landed at Dunkirk on 19 September and had meanwhile roamed western Belgium, arrived in Antwerp by train. In its wake appeared the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, thirsting for action and glory.
Which is what makes the real Churchill easy to distinguish from the one the Right used to pretend (ah, nostalgia!) was inhabiting the White House: the object of their respective thirsts.*
________
* The Churchill of the American Right is himself a pretend Churchill in many respects, but that's a post for a day when my gutters aren't clogged with maple droppings.
Thursday, May 8
Sure, Everybody Wants To Party, But When It Comes Time To Help Clean Up They're Too Hungover.
I can't tell you how heartwarming it's been for a withered misanthrope to watch as millennial waves of fresh young Democrats adopted "old white woman" as a favored pejorative.--Doghouse Riley
LEG pain: intermittent. Still bad at night, but mostly manageable with Alleve; kneeling in the garden possible, though I look like a crippled bug trying to get down there, and the pain upon attempting to rise again may be described as "blinding". I actually had this conversation with the orthopedist:
RILEY: The thing I can't do is kneel down.
DOC: Try not to do that.
There goes my conversion to Catholicism, especially under the current regime.
They switched me from Vicodin to Tramadol, which is the methadone of low-rent opioids. Listen, you fucks, I was abusing stuff ten times this strong when you were still cramming for your SATs! I tried to explain. And I got a script for Celebrex®, a medication which, to judge from the packaging of the samples I was given, can only be described as enthusiastic, as you would be too, if you were a Pfizer rep. Celebrex® restricts the user to Tylenol™ for other pain-relief needs, which is like telling me that in case of a splitting headache I can take two pieces of candy corn every four hours.
So Spring is here in extremis, and there are crows nesting in the big pine out back, and flickers and downy woodpeckers in front, and the garden looks as good as it ever will, especially considering that the gardener moves like The Human Torso in Freaks. And my Poor Wife is counting the two weeks to school's end, and her students are already gone, spiritually. There are many things to be said about the anti-unionist forces allied against the teaching profession, but among the most incisive is that anyone who bitches about how much vacation time teachers get has never taught the last two weeks of a school year.
And the carnival left town, which caused me to reflect on the fact that after a full month of unexpected (and somewhat undeserved) national campaigning Hoosiers seem to have come out the other side no more intelligent than before.
How much money do we spend on these things, again?
There was one, surprising exception--Governor Mitch "The Mighty Atom" Daniels, who ran unopposed, is still running campaign ads! And they're new, or else I would have suspected a) a scheduling glitch or b) typical power-structure collusion. And the goddam thing looks like a cross between a super-hero flick trailer and a sports aid drink campaign:
Lord, their internal polling must be even worse than what the Racist Star reported.
This may, or may not, have been why I got up this morning, but then catching up with yesterday's news has become something of a habit at this point, and I was shocked, shocked! to discover certain Obama supporters beginning to ask Democrats to move past Hillary, beginning, not surprisingly, with Hillary supporters, a concern which roughly doubled the usual number of comments to which "lying old bag" was appended, and which engendered my reply above. Soar high, Young Democrat! I think this idea of talking like a Republican, except about your own party, shows enormous potential in managing to lose a gimme national election in new and exciting ways.
That's not what I predict, and, Lord knows, however much I dislike both Democratic candidates, John McCain doesn't even register on the same scale. But the simple fact that this stuff can't be turned off owes, not to an anonymous rabble, but to a partisan campaign driven, Kos-like, by the desire to Just Win.
If that has a point I'll climb on board, but if it does someone has to explain it to me. Common sense and conventional wisdom both say it's a Democratic year; standard functional intelligence says you don't take anything for granted, especially once an election becomes binary. It's perhaps a shocking revelation, but middle-class or working-class Middle Americans don't really give a shit what bloggers think, and, as such, if the New Breed imagines it can win elections without them I say go for it. You can always blame your loss on their bigoted ignorance.
I used to discount this "divided Democrat" business, but I've been forced to give it another look. The sad thing to me is that none of it needed to happen; the Big Whoop of the campaign is that Obama did not receive his coronet in New Hampshire. The race ran absolutely true to form thereafter. But his supporters--let's be fair, huh?--went apeshit. Clinton slagging, in the long run, hurt the Obama campaign by drawing the line even more starkly. Before New Hampshire Senator Obama had a minor problem with genuine racists, one that it would have been hard for them to create much trouble about in an open forum. Afterwards he had a problem with his supporters calling all non-supporters racists. It's this fissure through which Jeremiah Wright pokes his head. In March, Senator Obama responds with a "masterful speech on race"; by late April he's being battered on the same issue by people like Brooks and Noonan who'd had no opening before. You may try if you wish to convince me that the portrayal of Clinton supporters as backwards, toothless, cousin-marryin' racists did not turn this into a major fault.
History walks backwards, like a crab; each generation learns that backwards, too. The practice of noticing things right after they fall on your head is time-honored, and none too smart.
Wednesday, May 7
If You Make A Dog Politically Relevant For A Month He Won't Turn Around And Bite You.
Headline, Indianapolis Racist Star online:
Clinton's Chances Dwindling
AFTER a month of being told how exciting it was to finally be involved in the political process, Hoosiers wake up the next morning and are told their votes didn't actually mean squat, but it sure was fun pretendin', wasn't it?
Best moment: when some wise-ass local reporter--I came in in the middle, or else I'd buy him lunch--asked some of these newly-politically-energized Hoosier voters to name the two Democratic candidates for governor. Guiltiest pleasure: Dan Burton renominated; nothing but being caught with two live boys or dead hookers, or the most fiendish redistricting in US history come 2010, can now prevent the day when Burton is found dead in his office, with his pants on backwards, an indelible, full-denture smile on his face, and a fire blazing in the fireplace being fed documents by a half-dozen aides.
There's added joy in Burton's victory in that Republicans throughout the state are done with him, all except for his constituency. A few weeks agoProfessional Republican shill Racist Star political columnist Matt Tully wrote a piece critical of Burton, then wrote one about the "response" to his column by printing nothing but favorable comments. Enjoy the millstone, Indiana Republicans! It's a bit showy for daytime, but it sure does fit you well.
Biggest disappointment: Republicans in my own district nominate smarmy proven loser and legislative timecard cheat Jon Elrod over Cat Ping. Cat Ping! is defeated. I'll never understand Republicans.
Clinton's Chances Dwindling
AFTER a month of being told how exciting it was to finally be involved in the political process, Hoosiers wake up the next morning and are told their votes didn't actually mean squat, but it sure was fun pretendin', wasn't it?
Best moment: when some wise-ass local reporter--I came in in the middle, or else I'd buy him lunch--asked some of these newly-politically-energized Hoosier voters to name the two Democratic candidates for governor. Guiltiest pleasure: Dan Burton renominated; nothing but being caught with two live boys or dead hookers, or the most fiendish redistricting in US history come 2010, can now prevent the day when Burton is found dead in his office, with his pants on backwards, an indelible, full-denture smile on his face, and a fire blazing in the fireplace being fed documents by a half-dozen aides.
There's added joy in Burton's victory in that Republicans throughout the state are done with him, all except for his constituency. A few weeks ago
Biggest disappointment: Republicans in my own district nominate smarmy proven loser and legislative timecard cheat Jon Elrod over Cat Ping. Cat Ping! is defeated. I'll never understand Republicans.
It's Because You Don't Know.
I EAT out maybe four times a year, generally family occasions where someone else has simultaneously made the reservation and assured that I'll have a miserable meal in unspeakable surroundings. Still this is about four times as often as I read the Cool Kids--I don't even follow links there anymore--and roughly twice the pleasure. The last time I found myself anywhere near them--can't for the life of me think why--Ezra was excoriating Parker Brothers for their harassment of the Scrabble™ pirates at Scrabulous, seeming for all the world to be completely and blissfully unaware of the requirements of holding a trademark I imagined everyone learned by grade 6 (Kleenex™, cellophane, Coke™, trampoline), not to mention the peculiar notions about economic ethics and the behavior of behemoth corporations. I've stopped reading more than one blog because someone said "as Matt points out..." more than twice.
But hey, live and let live. Yglesias and Klein are at least readable, if one foregoes one's devotion to English, and as for McArdle, there's always Roy to read her.
I got there late. Seems the Cool Kids got all hot and bothered by the condescending tone of this Times piece on chain restaurants, though where it is they found the condescension I'm still not clear. It's all handled well by Roy's commenters, who point out, among other things, that the article in question didn't sneer, and wasn't even as critical as it might be, that both the reverse snobbery and the reverse classism [ 1) all snooty New Yorkers are from Peoria 2) chain restaurants are therefore their national cuisine 3) therefore their dislike of chains is simple pretension] is bogus, and, somewhat surprisingly to me, that the delicacies at Olive Garden are one variety of corporately-distributed frozen Boil-In-Bag grub or another.
(Let me explain: maybe I shouldn't find that all that surprising; it's just that it flies in the face of common sense as well as culinary wisdom. Pasta is ages-old fast food. You could cook all the pasta you needed for the weekend Thursday afternoon--excepting the really tiny stuff like capellini, which takes one minute to cook from dry--and drop it in boiling water to reheat when needed. No compromise in quality. Why freeze? The people who run these Concepts will tell you it's quality control and chain-wide uniformity of product, which is bullshit; it's the ability to short labor costs and rampant employee turnover.)
Before we move on to Ezra, honorable mention to Susan of Texas, for this response to "Why would anybody read the Atlantic's columnists?"
So, as to Ezra (because I have no idea why anyone would have me-too'd the piece, unless they're just always doing this). He thinks the Times went too damn far, even if he feels their pain:
Y'see, the thing is, Ezra, behaving like a caricature might make you a caricature, or even a paragon of caricature-ness, but it does not make you any more elite than anyone else who reads the same fucking magazines and espouses the same carefully selected "tastes". That comment is twice as condescending as anything in the Times piece, which merely occasionally disdained a group of corporate operators who deserve occasional disdain. You and your cohort grew up in an atmosphere of celebrity chefs and cooking networks and Bon Appétit, and so you imagine that, having inhaled enough culture dust, you're all officially gourmands by now, able and accredited to denounce fusty food snobbery in the name of the Little People.
Pah. It's painless expertise, and unearned (later, seeking an adjectival gotcha to substitute for any evidence supporting his thesis--these folks really ought to learn to keep their opinions about grammar wars and Middle East ground combat to themselves--Ezra will ask, "Can a batter really be 'insipid'?" And rather than point out that "insipid" can mean "lacking vitality or imagination" as well as flavor, we will stick to the subject and note that even batters lacking distinct flavoring agents [beer, brandy] may be designed specifically for meat, fish, vegetables, or fruit, and of varying viscosities, and as such may be horribly misused--obscuring, say, the delicate flavor of seafood, as Ms Cook reported). Palates are born, not made; still, their training is more arduous than cycling to the market. It's possible there are a few out there worth listening to which are attached to people still in their early twenties (the adult palate generally surfaces around age 25; before then you are clamoring for the sweet gooeyness of Not Poison and the, yes, insipid richness of Mother's milk. Afterwards you will long simply for the container) but if so they belong to people raised in the restaurant business or the wealthiest homes, not to everyone who buys Swiss truffles. None of them, I daresay, is yours. Had you dedicated yourself to connoisseurship these would be the early days of your learning to distinguish St. Julien from St. Estèphe, or Nahe from Rheingau, and your tongue would be too busy for any half-assed lecturing.
But hey, live and let live. Yglesias and Klein are at least readable, if one foregoes one's devotion to English, and as for McArdle, there's always Roy to read her.
I got there late. Seems the Cool Kids got all hot and bothered by the condescending tone of this Times piece on chain restaurants, though where it is they found the condescension I'm still not clear. It's all handled well by Roy's commenters, who point out, among other things, that the article in question didn't sneer, and wasn't even as critical as it might be, that both the reverse snobbery and the reverse classism [ 1) all snooty New Yorkers are from Peoria 2) chain restaurants are therefore their national cuisine 3) therefore their dislike of chains is simple pretension] is bogus, and, somewhat surprisingly to me, that the delicacies at Olive Garden are one variety of corporately-distributed frozen Boil-In-Bag grub or another.
(Let me explain: maybe I shouldn't find that all that surprising; it's just that it flies in the face of common sense as well as culinary wisdom. Pasta is ages-old fast food. You could cook all the pasta you needed for the weekend Thursday afternoon--excepting the really tiny stuff like capellini, which takes one minute to cook from dry--and drop it in boiling water to reheat when needed. No compromise in quality. Why freeze? The people who run these Concepts will tell you it's quality control and chain-wide uniformity of product, which is bullshit; it's the ability to short labor costs and rampant employee turnover.)
Before we move on to Ezra, honorable mention to Susan of Texas, for this response to "Why would anybody read the Atlantic's columnists?"
When you ignore them they multiply, like little supply-side rats.
So, as to Ezra (because I have no idea why anyone would have me-too'd the piece, unless they're just always doing this). He thinks the Times went too damn far, even if he feels their pain:
I'm pretty much your consummate coastal elite (I biked back from the farmer's market today with a baguette and artisan cheese fastened to my rack)
Y'see, the thing is, Ezra, behaving like a caricature might make you a caricature, or even a paragon of caricature-ness, but it does not make you any more elite than anyone else who reads the same fucking magazines and espouses the same carefully selected "tastes". That comment is twice as condescending as anything in the Times piece, which merely occasionally disdained a group of corporate operators who deserve occasional disdain. You and your cohort grew up in an atmosphere of celebrity chefs and cooking networks and Bon Appétit, and so you imagine that, having inhaled enough culture dust, you're all officially gourmands by now, able and accredited to denounce fusty food snobbery in the name of the Little People.
Pah. It's painless expertise, and unearned (later, seeking an adjectival gotcha to substitute for any evidence supporting his thesis--these folks really ought to learn to keep their opinions about grammar wars and Middle East ground combat to themselves--Ezra will ask, "Can a batter really be 'insipid'?" And rather than point out that "insipid" can mean "lacking vitality or imagination" as well as flavor, we will stick to the subject and note that even batters lacking distinct flavoring agents [beer, brandy] may be designed specifically for meat, fish, vegetables, or fruit, and of varying viscosities, and as such may be horribly misused--obscuring, say, the delicate flavor of seafood, as Ms Cook reported). Palates are born, not made; still, their training is more arduous than cycling to the market. It's possible there are a few out there worth listening to which are attached to people still in their early twenties (the adult palate generally surfaces around age 25; before then you are clamoring for the sweet gooeyness of Not Poison and the, yes, insipid richness of Mother's milk. Afterwards you will long simply for the container) but if so they belong to people raised in the restaurant business or the wealthiest homes, not to everyone who buys Swiss truffles. None of them, I daresay, is yours. Had you dedicated yourself to connoisseurship these would be the early days of your learning to distinguish St. Julien from St. Estèphe, or Nahe from Rheingau, and your tongue would be too busy for any half-assed lecturing.
Tuesday, May 6
Take It Back
DON'T get me wrong; the carnival's got to come to your town every so often, and it's gonna be loud and Hair Metal-y, and the rides will be of questionable maintenance, and the games will all be fixed. Under the circumstances it might just as well be democracy, since it probably treats the animals a little better.
But Indiana is no place for this sort of thing. Indiana is a place where other people's enthusiasms are always unfortunate.
Last night one of the screen readers for the local CBS affiliate tossed to some veteran CBS streetwalker so he could inform us that this was the first time in forty years Hoosier votes in a Presidential primary would actually count. Apparently he was just there to check our math, since that's been the point of every other sentence uttered on local news for the past month. Or maybe he was using his Hypno-vision to try to convince Hoosiers it made sense.
If so I'm immune. "You're a veteran CBS newsman, whoever you are, and I'm trying to recall one example of anyone at the Tiffany Net in the last forty years complaining that Indiana wasn't involved enough in the process," I told him, but he didn't seem to get it. "Indiana suddenly matters? Indiana's been a reliable Republican state for those same forty years (which is every other every-other-sentence we've heard the last four weeks). Is there a Republican race still going on? I must've missed it. There are two nominal Democrats nominally left in the race, and as I understand it (if you'll forgive my natural disinterest in other people's enthusiasms, or in Government By The People Who Pay Attention To Such Things) a substantial win in Indiana could, potentially, make the other one cry. Also, if I recall correctly, Iowa and New Hampshire got to choose from among twelve or sixteen Democrats, and we're supposed to be excited about two. Indiana has a statewide inferiority complex, but it's not about Iowa or New Hampshire. This is like getting excited because you're the fourteenth caller and you get to father Madonna's next child.
Leave us recall that the Indiana Voter was already discounted by the Times weeks ago; after six PM tonight no one is going to be analyzing what Hoosiers have to say to the nation, because the answer is Could we get some more breadsticks when you have a minute? We're not selecting a Democratic nominee, we're getting a chance to register which candidate's skid marks we dislike the least.
There's a simple fix to all this, an easy way to make the major party primaries equally accessible to all, and to make the votes of every American count toward the selection of our next President.
Do me a favor and don't look for it.
But Indiana is no place for this sort of thing. Indiana is a place where other people's enthusiasms are always unfortunate.
Last night one of the screen readers for the local CBS affiliate tossed to some veteran CBS streetwalker so he could inform us that this was the first time in forty years Hoosier votes in a Presidential primary would actually count. Apparently he was just there to check our math, since that's been the point of every other sentence uttered on local news for the past month. Or maybe he was using his Hypno-vision to try to convince Hoosiers it made sense.
If so I'm immune. "You're a veteran CBS newsman, whoever you are, and I'm trying to recall one example of anyone at the Tiffany Net in the last forty years complaining that Indiana wasn't involved enough in the process," I told him, but he didn't seem to get it. "Indiana suddenly matters? Indiana's been a reliable Republican state for those same forty years (which is every other every-other-sentence we've heard the last four weeks). Is there a Republican race still going on? I must've missed it. There are two nominal Democrats nominally left in the race, and as I understand it (if you'll forgive my natural disinterest in other people's enthusiasms, or in Government By The People Who Pay Attention To Such Things) a substantial win in Indiana could, potentially, make the other one cry. Also, if I recall correctly, Iowa and New Hampshire got to choose from among twelve or sixteen Democrats, and we're supposed to be excited about two. Indiana has a statewide inferiority complex, but it's not about Iowa or New Hampshire. This is like getting excited because you're the fourteenth caller and you get to father Madonna's next child.
Leave us recall that the Indiana Voter was already discounted by the Times weeks ago; after six PM tonight no one is going to be analyzing what Hoosiers have to say to the nation, because the answer is Could we get some more breadsticks when you have a minute? We're not selecting a Democratic nominee, we're getting a chance to register which candidate's skid marks we dislike the least.
There's a simple fix to all this, an easy way to make the major party primaries equally accessible to all, and to make the votes of every American count toward the selection of our next President.
Do me a favor and don't look for it.
Monday, May 5
Next Week: Smith & Wesson Debate Handgun Violence
What: "How to See This Mission Accomplished".
Where: Times Sunday Opinion back page
Intro: For the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s declaration of the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, the Op-Ed page asked nine experts on military affairs to identify a significant challenge facing the American and Iraqi leadership today and to propose one specific step to help overcome that challenge.
The Experts:
L. Paul Bremer III
Anthony Cordesman
Gen. Paul D. Eaton, USA (ret)
Nathaniel Fick, Center for a New American Security
Frederick Kagan
Richard Perle
Danielle Pletka
Kenneth M. Pollack
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Ouch. Quit It: Slaughter, Huffington Post, March 20:
"Hayden's post and many other commentaries surrounding the fifth anniversary of the invasion are a microcosm of the problem with our Iraq policy as a whole. The debate is still far too much about who was right and who was wrong on the initial invasion and far too little about how, in Obama's formulation, to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in."
Where: Times Sunday Opinion back page
Intro: For the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s declaration of the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, the Op-Ed page asked nine experts on military affairs to identify a significant challenge facing the American and Iraqi leadership today and to propose one specific step to help overcome that challenge.
The Experts:
L. Paul Bremer III
Anthony Cordesman
Gen. Paul D. Eaton, USA (ret)
Nathaniel Fick, Center for a New American Security
Frederick Kagan
Richard Perle
Danielle Pletka
Kenneth M. Pollack
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Ouch. Quit It: Slaughter, Huffington Post, March 20:
"Hayden's post and many other commentaries surrounding the fifth anniversary of the invasion are a microcosm of the problem with our Iraq policy as a whole. The debate is still far too much about who was right and who was wrong on the initial invasion and far too little about how, in Obama's formulation, to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in."
Friday, May 2
That Aprille With His Shoures Soote
Greenman
shredded LCL
Siberian bugloss
arthritis
Yellow-shafted flicker nest
cyst
Thursday, May 1
I'll Vote In Person, But I'm Seriously Considering Living Here Absentee.*
OUR story so far:
1) Friendless and issueless, Indianapolis Republican mayoral candidate "Lonesome Greg" Ballard attaches himself to the Racist Star's headline writers and makes the city's escalating murder rate his campaign theme. 2) The White People's Property Tax Revolt, LLC., accidentally puts him in the mayor's office. 3) Ballard launches a three-pronged attack on crime: he showily muscles out the Democratic, and democratically-elected, former sheriff who's heading the newly-merged Indianapolis Metro Police Dept.; he appoints a showy committee to demonstrate he's Doing Something, to be headed by former Marion County Prosecutor Scott Newman; and he starts turning up at showy crime-related press ops, jostling current Marion County Prosecutor and former Dan Burton henchman Carl "Facetime" Brizzi for angles.
Now, I have to admit that in the annals of political painting-the-hull-without-scraping-the-barnacles-first this one is remarkably successful, as the Racist Star almost immediately is moved to stop publishing year-to-date crime rate comparisons.
Jump to April 23, when a masked man robs a local bank branch, and in the process shoots Katherin Shuffield, a teller who is pregnant with twins. It's the sort of crime which shocks and outrages a community, unless its mayor and prosecutor turn up on local news to assure the voters they'll hunt the perpetrators down. And it's always nice when they can find the time to make it to dais a couple days later when the arrest of five people is announced with, oh, let's call it fanfare, despite the acknowledgement that none of them was the guy who'd actually robbed the bank and shot Mrs. Shuffield.
Now, first, I'm no criminology expert--I've never even been convicted--but it did seem to me that having five people in on a one-man bank heist would play hell with the overhead. And the whole story gets a mite fuzzy here, because, well, because that's the way the people responsible want it. Apparently acting on a tip, police arrested four men, and the next door neighbor for good measure. The next morning they stopped a guy driving a car matching the description of one that might've been the getaway car. He turns out to have a record and some cocaine. And he gives them the name of the shooter. And by the end of the weekend Metro Police are able to announce the end of a crime spree--two charges of false reporting, plus the coke bust, and the drug paraphernalia/child neglect charges on the neighbor. Neither the mayor nor the prosecutor was on hand for those announcements.
The weekend also brought news that the woman's twins, initially thought to have survived, died of extreme prematurity, while she remained in critical condition.
Which brought Carl Brizzi, who may or may not have once been Danny Burton's chief melon squeezer, back to the spotlight as he demanded that the World's Third-Worst State Legislature™ declare life begins at conception, on the grounds that the man who shot Mrs. Shuffield can only be charged with feticide in the death of her twins, and a Class C felony is barely worth a notch on a hotshot prosecutor's gun.
If convicted he could get as little as two years! scream several dutiful Indiana newspaper columns, as though a case infamous enough to get local politicians fighting for air time might result in a minimum sentence for the guy who gunned down twins. (The presumptive sentence for a Class C felony in Indiana--this is assuming it's all one is charged with--is four years.)
It's an odious crime, to be sure, and anyone with a heart has to feel the loss--meaning we expect our elected legal representatives to be immune--and to hope beyond hope that Mrs. Shuffield survives, whatever that does to Brizzi's conviction rate. But we might look first at what he does not propose to do: raise feticide to a higher class felony, re-formulate the notion of "viability", or call for a ban on, or increased penalties for the use of, semi-automatic handguns like the Tec-9 reportedly used in the shooting. And we might ask, "Why?" Except we know the answer. Rewriting the feticide law--it passed two Republican-controlled Houses in 1999 over the veto of the late Frank O'Bannon--would be messy, arduous, and exacting, and the Indiana State Legislature can only do the first of those. It would expose both the slippery rationale for the law and the serious weaknesses of its enforcement and potential for abuse.
Local teevee coverage was instructive. Brizzi gets his face time, introduced by a warning from the anchor team that his solution "may prove controversial". Why, yes, yes it may. And it may prove cynical and opportunistic, and it might pander to a political constituency the Prosecutor will depend on to fund his further career moves, not that I expect you people to mention those, or investigate anything. Really, we're just thankful you bothered to nod, however briefly. Both the teleprompter readers and their non-telegenic cousins at the Racist Star saw fit to ask Planned Parenthood of Indiana for comment, just in case somebody in the audience might have missed where all this is supposed to fit in the script.
What we have instead is an episode of 24, where an easily roused rabble imagines recognizing the rights of Blastocyst Americans will put trigger-happy bank robbers in the hellholes where they belong, and leave everyone else alone (excepting the people who intend to move onto abortion providers next). What we don't have is something that'll add one day to the sentence of the perp in question.
That is, of course, assuming we stop holding press conferences and actually find the guy.
__________
*False. I've never voted in an Indiana primary, and I never will so long as one has to declare oneself a member of a major political party.
1) Friendless and issueless, Indianapolis Republican mayoral candidate "Lonesome Greg" Ballard attaches himself to the Racist Star's headline writers and makes the city's escalating murder rate his campaign theme. 2) The White People's Property Tax Revolt, LLC., accidentally puts him in the mayor's office. 3) Ballard launches a three-pronged attack on crime: he showily muscles out the Democratic, and democratically-elected, former sheriff who's heading the newly-merged Indianapolis Metro Police Dept.; he appoints a showy committee to demonstrate he's Doing Something, to be headed by former Marion County Prosecutor Scott Newman; and he starts turning up at showy crime-related press ops, jostling current Marion County Prosecutor and former Dan Burton henchman Carl "Facetime" Brizzi for angles.
Now, I have to admit that in the annals of political painting-the-hull-without-scraping-the-barnacles-first this one is remarkably successful, as the Racist Star almost immediately is moved to stop publishing year-to-date crime rate comparisons.
Jump to April 23, when a masked man robs a local bank branch, and in the process shoots Katherin Shuffield, a teller who is pregnant with twins. It's the sort of crime which shocks and outrages a community, unless its mayor and prosecutor turn up on local news to assure the voters they'll hunt the perpetrators down. And it's always nice when they can find the time to make it to dais a couple days later when the arrest of five people is announced with, oh, let's call it fanfare, despite the acknowledgement that none of them was the guy who'd actually robbed the bank and shot Mrs. Shuffield.
Now, first, I'm no criminology expert--I've never even been convicted--but it did seem to me that having five people in on a one-man bank heist would play hell with the overhead. And the whole story gets a mite fuzzy here, because, well, because that's the way the people responsible want it. Apparently acting on a tip, police arrested four men, and the next door neighbor for good measure. The next morning they stopped a guy driving a car matching the description of one that might've been the getaway car. He turns out to have a record and some cocaine. And he gives them the name of the shooter. And by the end of the weekend Metro Police are able to announce the end of a crime spree--two charges of false reporting, plus the coke bust, and the drug paraphernalia/child neglect charges on the neighbor. Neither the mayor nor the prosecutor was on hand for those announcements.
The weekend also brought news that the woman's twins, initially thought to have survived, died of extreme prematurity, while she remained in critical condition.
Which brought Carl Brizzi, who may or may not have once been Danny Burton's chief melon squeezer, back to the spotlight as he demanded that the World's Third-Worst State Legislature™ declare life begins at conception, on the grounds that the man who shot Mrs. Shuffield can only be charged with feticide in the death of her twins, and a Class C felony is barely worth a notch on a hotshot prosecutor's gun.
If convicted he could get as little as two years! scream several dutiful Indiana newspaper columns, as though a case infamous enough to get local politicians fighting for air time might result in a minimum sentence for the guy who gunned down twins. (The presumptive sentence for a Class C felony in Indiana--this is assuming it's all one is charged with--is four years.)
It's an odious crime, to be sure, and anyone with a heart has to feel the loss--meaning we expect our elected legal representatives to be immune--and to hope beyond hope that Mrs. Shuffield survives, whatever that does to Brizzi's conviction rate. But we might look first at what he does not propose to do: raise feticide to a higher class felony, re-formulate the notion of "viability", or call for a ban on, or increased penalties for the use of, semi-automatic handguns like the Tec-9 reportedly used in the shooting. And we might ask, "Why?" Except we know the answer. Rewriting the feticide law--it passed two Republican-controlled Houses in 1999 over the veto of the late Frank O'Bannon--would be messy, arduous, and exacting, and the Indiana State Legislature can only do the first of those. It would expose both the slippery rationale for the law and the serious weaknesses of its enforcement and potential for abuse.
Local teevee coverage was instructive. Brizzi gets his face time, introduced by a warning from the anchor team that his solution "may prove controversial". Why, yes, yes it may. And it may prove cynical and opportunistic, and it might pander to a political constituency the Prosecutor will depend on to fund his further career moves, not that I expect you people to mention those, or investigate anything. Really, we're just thankful you bothered to nod, however briefly. Both the teleprompter readers and their non-telegenic cousins at the Racist Star saw fit to ask Planned Parenthood of Indiana for comment, just in case somebody in the audience might have missed where all this is supposed to fit in the script.
What we have instead is an episode of 24, where an easily roused rabble imagines recognizing the rights of Blastocyst Americans will put trigger-happy bank robbers in the hellholes where they belong, and leave everyone else alone (excepting the people who intend to move onto abortion providers next). What we don't have is something that'll add one day to the sentence of the perp in question.
That is, of course, assuming we stop holding press conferences and actually find the guy.
__________
*False. I've never voted in an Indiana primary, and I never will so long as one has to declare oneself a member of a major political party.
Wednesday, April 30
Underwear Will Be Worn On The Outside, So We Can Check.
(The following didn't post yesterday, due to some blogger problem I was in too big a hurry to notice. Reposted now as just too damned good to miss.)
Last night Channel 8's Leslie Olsen, who is that wondrous thing, a real reporter working on teevee news, interviewed a couple of teachers from John Marshall Middle School, or, as it is more commonly known, Troubled John Marshall Middle School. Marshall has failed to meet No Child Left Behind guidelines since the moment they were put in place, and, in accordance with consequences of that well-intentioned piece of legislation, is now subject to the whim of the same people who were in charge of seeing to it this didn't happen in the first place. By way of guaranteeing a different result.
Same story, different year. Last year the IPS administration simply decided to tack on another 25 days to the school year. Which they accomplished by fiat. Teachers in those schools didn't even know if the District intended to pay them for working. (This, apparently, is because it didn't intend to, or were going to offer to let teachers draw down their sick days if they wanted to be paid, until disabused of the notion.) Teachers were told that if they didn't like it they could put in for transfers.
IPS lost an unfair labor practices suit over that affair early this month. So, naturally, they've seen the error of their ways; now they're just pink-slipping the entire staff.
Okay, that's not quite accurate: it's only 90%, and I'm just assuming they gave 'em pink slips, since that's required by state law, not just easily-ignored employment contracts. So they might be judgement-proof this time. There's a first time for everything.
Of course Being Within Your Rights and being smart are two different things. Perhaps teachers are at fault (the two who spoke to Olsen, who are reportedly among the number who won't be forced to transfer--it's being left to the
The principal's a good guy: young, enthusiastic, whip-smart. He applied for the job at my Poor Wife's school a couple years ago, when she was on the evaluation committee, and he was her choice (she thinks strings were pulled to send the guy to Marshall). One hopes for the best for all students, and the people who try to improve thngs, but one is eventually left hoping that the Big Idea hucksters behind them fall on their collective ass. I understand that they have little choice--God help the man, especially the African man, who's put in charge of an urban school district in this day and age--but one may cooperate with one's kidnappers without seeming so damned enthusiastic about receiving the opportunity. NCLS is a scam, and it's not accomplished anything beyond churning already roiled waters. It didn't protect John Marshall Middle School from a cooked-up White People's Property Tax Revolt, and it doesn't offer any solution beyond requiring the already-publicity-hungry superintendent to thrash about in search of more publicity. It'd just be nice if he managed to show the people who do the real work some respect, even if he doesn't mean it.
Tuesday, April 29
Pinch Me, I'm Dreamin'
HILLARY CLINTON: On second thought, I do have a comment. Jeremiah Wright is entitled to his opinion, like every American. And while there's no one more qualified than I to deplore the systematic trivialization of our political process, let me just add that Jeremiah Wright is one of millions of American voices that are never heard on the evening news unless someone's trying to make political hay out of them, and likewise one of millions of generally unheard Americans we desperately need a President to listen to.
BARACK OBAMA: I've complained publicly about "manufactured issues" dominating our politics. What I've since realized is that manufactured campaigns bring manufactured issues on themselves.
I've run a campaign calling for change, but the change it was designed to bring about was my move from the Senate Office Building to the White House. I've implied that all forward-looking people supported me, and that the old-style thinkers who supported Senator Clinton were part of the reason America is in the shape it's in.
Well, that's simply not the case. It was an electoral calculation. And I say so now not because it has produced a divided electorate--for which I'm truly sorry--and not a clear-cut and early victory for my campaign, but because I was wrong to do so.
Working-class Democrats are the soul of the party and of the country. They're the ones who created the party that stood up for the rights of people of color at the expense of electoral college advantage. They, and the "older voters" I may have denegrated--and to whom I now apologize--face "change" more forthrightly and with more bravery than any other group of Americans--change in economic or social status, in local identity, the outsourcing of jobs and the bias against older workers, deteriorating health, loss of mobility, independence, and a sense of belonging. Change is not the ability to set the clock on the DVD player. It's not the wisdom to choose the best cellphone or WiFi provider. It's the ability to face down whatever life throws at one, provided one is treated as fairly as his fellows. That's the sort of "change" the Democratic party stands for, and the sort of change I'm going to work for from this moment, whether as the next President of the United States, or a Senator from Illinois.
JOHN McCAIN: To be perfectly honest with you, I never liked the coloreds to begin with.
BARACK OBAMA: I've complained publicly about "manufactured issues" dominating our politics. What I've since realized is that manufactured campaigns bring manufactured issues on themselves.
I've run a campaign calling for change, but the change it was designed to bring about was my move from the Senate Office Building to the White House. I've implied that all forward-looking people supported me, and that the old-style thinkers who supported Senator Clinton were part of the reason America is in the shape it's in.
Well, that's simply not the case. It was an electoral calculation. And I say so now not because it has produced a divided electorate--for which I'm truly sorry--and not a clear-cut and early victory for my campaign, but because I was wrong to do so.
Working-class Democrats are the soul of the party and of the country. They're the ones who created the party that stood up for the rights of people of color at the expense of electoral college advantage. They, and the "older voters" I may have denegrated--and to whom I now apologize--face "change" more forthrightly and with more bravery than any other group of Americans--change in economic or social status, in local identity, the outsourcing of jobs and the bias against older workers, deteriorating health, loss of mobility, independence, and a sense of belonging. Change is not the ability to set the clock on the DVD player. It's not the wisdom to choose the best cellphone or WiFi provider. It's the ability to face down whatever life throws at one, provided one is treated as fairly as his fellows. That's the sort of "change" the Democratic party stands for, and the sort of change I'm going to work for from this moment, whether as the next President of the United States, or a Senator from Illinois.
JOHN McCAIN: To be perfectly honest with you, I never liked the coloreds to begin with.
Friday, April 25
It Ain't The School, It's The Principal Of The Thing
SO my Poor Wife took me out to eat last night, which is a rarity for us, because...oh, wait, I'm sorry, but that just reminded me of last night's News. At some point after the local hairdos decided the godawful US economy was actual news--in their defense they were awfully busy fluffing Tax Protesting Wealthy People most of last year--and presentable news at that (they're not the same thing), we started getting...wait, I forgot that they actually did cover bad economic news last year, viz., the rising cost of the petrol they needed for their suburban Panzers, just as the current round has been sparked by what has or may yet happen to their mortgages. We like to be fair. Anyway, since the point where it has become permissible for people making something between Above Average and Exorbitant salaries for reading at a High School Level While Telegenic to knowingly nod their coifs at the plight of the Typical Working Man we've gotten all sorts of Focus stories, and, frankly, even though I find these more acceptable politically, and epistemologically, than the anti-tax crap, and lots more than the nightly celebrity and electronic gizmo parade, it quickly reduces to the same flavorless gruel. So last night they're talking about the toll a slumping economy is having on local restaurants. And boy was I ever glad my recent surgery wasn't abdominal as David Barris led off with, "Indianapolis is a city known for its great restaurants."
And if you know anything about Indianapolis you didn't get from the New York Times you are no doubt cursing me right now for not warning you about drinking anything before you read that. That is the single most dishonest comment I have ever heard broadcast, and that includes all defenses of George W. Bush's intellect. And it's only the relative size of the market here that prevents it from bringing down the entire legal edifice surrounding the First Amendment. Indianapolis is absolutely, without question, empirically demonstrably the worst restaurant town of any city with potable water. Honestly, the Chamber of Commerce would have blushed to say that.
And then, as if to prove the point, we discussed the effect of Our Newly Rotten Economy with the manager of The Old Spaghetti Factory™ (Now Offering Pastabilities!). Which is just one of the many great Indianapolis restaurants that envious other cities have copied.
And the guy says that his business is down, yes, but it'll survive. But he has friends who work in other concepts which have closed down. Other Fucking Concepts! This is why I've spent my life avoiding business people.
What was I going on about? Oh, so we're having a semi-pleasant evening dining on Chinese concepts, and my Poor Wife says she's forgotten to tell me the story about her Principal.
This will dovetail nicely with Roy's discussion of this George Eff Will shite (caution: George Eff Will shite). In comments mere mortal dispenses with the column, and Jay B. dispenses with Will.
Now, my Poor Wife has worked for so many principals in her career that we've lost count, but you can count the good ones on the left hand of a punch-press operator. The current one is not one of them. And she tells me that he's been transferred to another high school for next year, and he's already spending all of his time over there. Not that anyone particularly misses him, or would, unless they're in the habit of checking the office where he spends all his time. This sort of shuffling is common (and indicative of one really big problem with the public schools, one which is caused by George Eff Will, the meddlesomeness of anti-public school rightists and their business model solution for everything. Or, rather, everything except failing banks.); this will be the third-straight principal of her school with a three-year tenure, and, like the other two, he'll leave a damp chair and the occasional unintentionally humorous email.
What he's taking to the new place is the modern disorder which insists that such people are not administrators, managers, or facilitators, but entrepreneurs. And, as you know, an entrepreneur is a guy who shows he earns his disproportionate recompense by firing some of the people who do the real work and leaving the rest to pick up the slack. And this is, reportedly, exactly what he's done, having already gathered together the staff and told them they'll each need to reapply for the jobs they currently hold, as he's rumored to be about to do with the faculty.
Which, of course, would violate any number of union rules, which is not exactly a new practice for the current administration of Indianapolis Public Schools (which imagined, just last year, that it could simply order teachers in two elementary schools to work all year, without even addressing pay or vacation issues), and which we'll get to in a moment. But first, who is it among the rabidly anti-unionists out there who imagines this is a good idea? It can't be anyone who's ever actually worked for a living, unless you want to count Jack Welch. It's a conceit of the idly wealthy, the inherited money operator of a string of dry-cleaning establishments, or the sinecured Washington Post comic-intellectual. Do things sometimes need a good shaking, a well-considered streamling, a sad reduction? Frequently. Does indiscriminately terrorizing every last employee accomplish good things? What does common sense say? I'm not sure where the idea that people work better when they're afraid of termination every hour of the day comes from, but I suggest it comes from people who want them to volunteer to work overtime without pay, or else the trainers of fighting dogs. Ditto the idea that the world is chockablock with better qualified people just waiting to take the jobs of anyone displaying insufficient obeisance. It's curious that in a society so enamored of its own militarism that this point should be lost. Grant didn't fire half the Army of the Potomac, or make every artillerist reapply for his job; he did what he was supposed to do and put their skills to better use. No doubt there are leaders out there who can beat your'n with his'n and hisn' with your'n. No doubt there are people out there with the individual teaching talent to improve a classroom or a schoolhouse worth of test scores. And no doubt they are exceedingly rare. When did we exempt leaders from getting the most out of their charges? (I believe the answer is "when Reagan took office".)
As for the unions--I'm not conversant with the contents of the IPS collective bargaining agreement, which the World's Third Worst State Legislature™ gelded a few years back (and only IPS's, by the way; that's America, toots), and at this point it remains a rumor (but from a knowledgeable source) that teachers are next on the list--there is certainly some amount of protection accorded by seniority, though it's not absolute. But even if there were none, who's stepping into that newly-cleared-of-deadwood verge? And who decides? Some bozo who can't be found in his own school half the time, but who knows how to play politics? That sounds like a solution, I suppose, if you don't know the first thing about it. Or if you're the sort who imagines wearing self-consciously anachronistic neckwear is a contribution to American letters.
And if you know anything about Indianapolis you didn't get from the New York Times you are no doubt cursing me right now for not warning you about drinking anything before you read that. That is the single most dishonest comment I have ever heard broadcast, and that includes all defenses of George W. Bush's intellect. And it's only the relative size of the market here that prevents it from bringing down the entire legal edifice surrounding the First Amendment. Indianapolis is absolutely, without question, empirically demonstrably the worst restaurant town of any city with potable water. Honestly, the Chamber of Commerce would have blushed to say that.
And then, as if to prove the point, we discussed the effect of Our Newly Rotten Economy with the manager of The Old Spaghetti Factory™ (Now Offering Pastabilities!). Which is just one of the many great Indianapolis restaurants that envious other cities have copied.
And the guy says that his business is down, yes, but it'll survive. But he has friends who work in other concepts which have closed down. Other Fucking Concepts! This is why I've spent my life avoiding business people.
What was I going on about? Oh, so we're having a semi-pleasant evening dining on Chinese concepts, and my Poor Wife says she's forgotten to tell me the story about her Principal.
This will dovetail nicely with Roy's discussion of this George Eff Will shite (caution: George Eff Will shite). In comments mere mortal dispenses with the column, and Jay B. dispenses with Will.
Now, my Poor Wife has worked for so many principals in her career that we've lost count, but you can count the good ones on the left hand of a punch-press operator. The current one is not one of them. And she tells me that he's been transferred to another high school for next year, and he's already spending all of his time over there. Not that anyone particularly misses him, or would, unless they're in the habit of checking the office where he spends all his time. This sort of shuffling is common (and indicative of one really big problem with the public schools, one which is caused by George Eff Will, the meddlesomeness of anti-public school rightists and their business model solution for everything. Or, rather, everything except failing banks.); this will be the third-straight principal of her school with a three-year tenure, and, like the other two, he'll leave a damp chair and the occasional unintentionally humorous email.
What he's taking to the new place is the modern disorder which insists that such people are not administrators, managers, or facilitators, but entrepreneurs. And, as you know, an entrepreneur is a guy who shows he earns his disproportionate recompense by firing some of the people who do the real work and leaving the rest to pick up the slack. And this is, reportedly, exactly what he's done, having already gathered together the staff and told them they'll each need to reapply for the jobs they currently hold, as he's rumored to be about to do with the faculty.
Which, of course, would violate any number of union rules, which is not exactly a new practice for the current administration of Indianapolis Public Schools (which imagined, just last year, that it could simply order teachers in two elementary schools to work all year, without even addressing pay or vacation issues), and which we'll get to in a moment. But first, who is it among the rabidly anti-unionists out there who imagines this is a good idea? It can't be anyone who's ever actually worked for a living, unless you want to count Jack Welch. It's a conceit of the idly wealthy, the inherited money operator of a string of dry-cleaning establishments, or the sinecured Washington Post comic-intellectual. Do things sometimes need a good shaking, a well-considered streamling, a sad reduction? Frequently. Does indiscriminately terrorizing every last employee accomplish good things? What does common sense say? I'm not sure where the idea that people work better when they're afraid of termination every hour of the day comes from, but I suggest it comes from people who want them to volunteer to work overtime without pay, or else the trainers of fighting dogs. Ditto the idea that the world is chockablock with better qualified people just waiting to take the jobs of anyone displaying insufficient obeisance. It's curious that in a society so enamored of its own militarism that this point should be lost. Grant didn't fire half the Army of the Potomac, or make every artillerist reapply for his job; he did what he was supposed to do and put their skills to better use. No doubt there are leaders out there who can beat your'n with his'n and hisn' with your'n. No doubt there are people out there with the individual teaching talent to improve a classroom or a schoolhouse worth of test scores. And no doubt they are exceedingly rare. When did we exempt leaders from getting the most out of their charges? (I believe the answer is "when Reagan took office".)
As for the unions--I'm not conversant with the contents of the IPS collective bargaining agreement, which the World's Third Worst State Legislature™ gelded a few years back (and only IPS's, by the way; that's America, toots), and at this point it remains a rumor (but from a knowledgeable source) that teachers are next on the list--there is certainly some amount of protection accorded by seniority, though it's not absolute. But even if there were none, who's stepping into that newly-cleared-of-deadwood verge? And who decides? Some bozo who can't be found in his own school half the time, but who knows how to play politics? That sounds like a solution, I suppose, if you don't know the first thing about it. Or if you're the sort who imagines wearing self-consciously anachronistic neckwear is a contribution to American letters.
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