Life in the Petri Dish, Part Two

Yesterday it was a proposal to permanently eliminate business property taxes and significantly cut corporate income and capital gains taxes in a state that's looking at a major budgetary shortfall. Today in Jan Brewer's Arizona, we are reminded of exactly how important the Janet Napolitano firewall was in the statehouse.

A major abortion bill has cleared its first hurdle at the Arizona Legislature.

The House Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday endorsed the Republican-sponsored bill on a 5-0 vote, with Democratic opponents boycotting the hearing and not voting on the measure.

The legislation would require a pre-abortion waiting period and mandatory disclosures to women seeking abortions. It also allows pharmacists and health care providers to refuse to participate in abortion or emergency contraception on moral grounds. Other provisions toughen the existing law on parental rights.

Let's look at that scorecard. Gutting public education, gutting health and human services, instituting a conscience clause, mandating anti-abortion scare tactics? Check, check, check, and checkaroony. I normally deplore slippery slope speculating, but I really have to wonder what's next on the all-conservative-policies-all-the-time experimental agenda. The Sonoran Desert Protection Plan has to be on shaky ground these days, along with any other environmental conservation measure that's been flung up in the path of the belly scrapers. Perhaps some even nastier anti-immigration policy is in the works. Maybe we'll one-up North Dakota and give full personhood rights to sperm and unfertilized eggs (as long as they reside in the bodies of legally-here heterosexual Americans, of course). I'm sure all we need to do is wait until tomorrow to get even more good news.

Conscience clauses. Fuck me. Waiting periods. "Mandatory disclosures." I certainly can't wait to get some clarification about what that entails. Wait, wait, let me guess. Did you know your baby has fingernails? Fuck. Me. Oh, wait, here we go.

[The] proposal also would require that a patient be informed of alternatives to abortion, medical benefits and government assistance available pre- and postnatal, the medical risks associated with both having an abortion and carrying the fetus to term and the probable gestational age and physiological characteristics of the fetus.

Ur behbeh haz fingernalz! Check.

Now how about that conscience clause? Here's the full text of the bill. At the very top of the document it's made clear that "abortion does not include birth control devices [or] oral contraceptives used to inhibit or prevent ovulation or conception." Okay, great--it's a nutter bill, but at least it's grounded in a rational definition of abortion, right? What could go wrong? Oh. Apparently the definition can be ignored when it comes to constructing the conscience clause.

A pharmacy, hospital or health professional, or any employee of a pharmacy, hospital or health professional, who states in writing an objection to abortion, abortion medication or emergency contraception on moral or religious grounds is not required to facilitate or participate in the provision of an abortion, abortion medication or emergency contraception.

So given the fact that the bill goes out of its way to clarify that oral contraceptives intended to inhibit ovulation--in other words, exactly what emergency contraceptives are--are not abortion equivalents, it's pretty clear that the inclusion of Plan B within the conscience clause is purely a sop to pharmacists who either failed the progestin section of the final exam or are too interested in making sure whores suffer the consequences of their wanton fucking to care. Or it's a sop to the legislators who will vote for this anyway and like to think Plan B is abortion. And, by the way, the reporter who wrote the story for the Citizen should be just a little bit ashamed for wording the article in a way that conflates EC with pharmaceutical abortion. In either event, Rep. Barto can't be bothered by the problems this might cause to women in rural areas of the state--and remember, no less a luminary than Cindy McCain herself said the only way to get around Arizona is by small private plane since there are no roads here:

The prime sponsor of the legislation, state Rep. Nancy Barto, downplayed any hurdles the provision would represent.

"Certainly, people in rural areas are accustomed to traveling long distances for services," said Barto, R-Phoenix. "This isn't going to keep women from receiving these prescriptions."

See, if you're already used to having to drive 50 miles to the pharmacy, it won't be at all inconvenient to drive another 50 when the first pharmacist invites you to fuck off, and then another 50, and another 50 until you manage to hit a Walgreen's with a pharmacist who will actually do his job! Why are you complaining? Harpy!

I hope Sec. Napolitano totally rocks Homeland Security and turns it into an effective, functional agency so that it will have been worth it for her to give the Maricopa County Republicans a two-year head start on turning Arizona into a conservative politician's paradise. But this sets the bar impossibly damn high.

Welcome to the Ehrlenmeyer Flask

*cracking knuckles*

Well, well, well, this morning's paper brought the news that post-Janet Napolitano Arizona is rapidly being converted into a lab for experimental Total Republican Policy Immersion, and I'm not sure whether we're rats or fruit flies in this scenario. The state is already looking at a budget shortfall of $2.4 billion in the next fiscal year, so the next logical step after gutting education and human services--"logical" here meaning "prescribed under conservative fiscal dogma"--is to... cut taxes! Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted Monday to permanently repeal the state property tax rather than allowing it to return this year after a scheduled three-year hiatus.

And lawmakers sent out clear signals that repealing the property tax may just be the beginning of Republican efforts to cut taxes, particularly on businesses.

Committee members began debating — but did not vote on — another bill from Rep. Rick Murphy, R-Glendale, who chairs the committee. The bill would cut corporate income taxes, reduce property taxes companies pay on equipment and slash the taxes paid on capital gains.

The reasoning is as expected; Arizona's existing property tax structure is on the ouch side, hitting businesses at twice the rate of domestic property taxes and rolling equipment in excess of $65K into the assessed valuation, and so discourages businesses from moving here. And the Republican reaction is equally expected; rather than modifying the structure, they want to eliminate the property tax outright and cut the corporate income tax rate in order to lure more companies here. And this will result in an immediate $250 million shortfall for the state this year.

It's a tossup. The equipment tax is a strong disincentive for more lucrative manufacturing operations. More companies opening up shop here means more jobs. Across-the-board property tax elimination, corporate rate cuts, and a proposed whopping 57 percent reduction of corporate capital gains taxes means less revenue for the state. And our new solidly Republican state government has already shown that less revenue means zero support for education and social services beyond the stuff that's federally mandated, because they cannot for the life of them recognize any connection between the quality of public education and the quality of the jobs that will be available to graduates of the system.

The revenue loss would mean less money for education, [Tucson High teacher Elizabeth Slaine] said. And Arizona's economy won't improve unless there are people qualified to be in business.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, scoffed at that contention.

"Education does not create jobs," he said. "Entrepreneurs and businesses create jobs."

Good luck building your business with people who can't read or do basic math well enough to fill out your purchase orders, Andy. I'm not sure where the entrepreneurs you're counting on will be coming from, unless you're assuming they'll all have to be lured in from out-of-state with your massive tax breaks. Hell, while you're at it, why not simply convert Arizona to a mainland offshore island economy, where no uncomfortable questions are asked of corporate masters and a permanent underclass is being readied as we speak?

Sweatblogging

Spring sprang over the weekend. Now it is hot.

Yet again, I failed to see any of the films nominated for Best Film, although I did see Wall-E. Which had a nominated song and some technical awards. For me that's pretty good. As much as I love the movie theater popcorn, I do not love paying upwards of nine-ten bucks to sit in a room with people who bring infants and toddlers to definitely non-age-appropriate movies, who idly text on their phones throughout the movie, or just sit and have full-volume conversations during the movie. And it sucks, because I used to love going to the movies way back in the day.

I paid to see Raiders of the Lost Ark twenty times in the theater. Twenty! Total geek in high school! Total geek still!

Total geek who hasn't gotten around to seeing Slumdog. Is it on video yet?

I liked Hugh Jackman as host, and had no idea he could sing. Sophia Loren frightened me. You know she was just waiting for someone to ask uh, what now? about that homemade pot-scrubber dress so she could coolly remove their head with a single icy glare. I also liked the mini-affirmation ceremonies for the best acting noms. Everyone goes home a winner!

In other news, I am still apparently not back into it enough to dive into politics. Coming soon, I promise.

Mmmmmppphhhh

After a day jam-packed with utterly mundane domestic chores, I am unapologetically sitting with my feet up watching the Tar Heels biff it to a bunch of guys dressed like mustard bottles and enjoying the best snacks the kitchen has to offer. If pale ale and Girl Scout cookies are wrong, I don't want to be right ever again.

Thin Mints. Le sigh.

What a fuck of a week. My deepest personal misery can never touch the super special suckwad misery that accompanies my kid's life unraveling. His best friend is still in an undisclosed location in California and CPS can barely muster the energy for a shrug in the boy's direction. And he (my kid) got cut from the varsity volleyball team in a decision that spurred the captain to come apologize to him on behalf of the rest of the team for the coach's baffling rostering decisions. But! He got his driver's license today, so maybe things will start to turn around for him.

They better. I've been too heartsick to do much besides bury myself in work, not even slacking enough to update the blog more than a couple of times.

There is a lot to talk about, after all. We have North Dakota deciding that zygotes have equal legal standing to actual people and superior legal standing to their mobile incubators the women carrying them. We have the Arizona legislature deciding to cut off all non-federally-mandated funding to the Division of Economic Security, which administers minor programs like children & family services and services to people with developmental disabilities. Oh! And we have Hootie-Hoo Carla advancing to the finale of Top Chef! Swoon!

I will get to these topics tomorrow. Today I am busy with a Thin Mints tower.

This is not a Cupcake Blog

Public service announcement:

Many, many readers have found their way here after Google searches returning this innocent little picture:

I brazenly nicked it from the Google myself back on my birthday, because it was the happiest little cupcake picture I could find. I would like to eat it even now.

So if you have come here in search of cupcakes, you will be sorely disappointed, but if you are interested in breathless up-to-the-minute updates on what it means to be a totally cool cutting-edge middle-aged lesbian Tucson archaeologist who may or may not have an unhealthy fixation on Rachel Maddow, do stick around.

Or if you're Homer and want to bake me some highly glutenized cupcakes like the one in the picture, you can do that too.

We now continue with our regularly scheduled John McCain Is A Total Douchebag programming. Enjoy!

Oh, This is Nice

Just a reminder, if we needed one, that no matter what happens in Hawaii or how loud the post-election anti-Prop 8 protests were or how many lesbians finagle marriage licenses in Tucson, the crap is still out there, and it's thick. The following is merely a short excerpt from a full-page ad run in the Salt Lake Tribune.

For example, by holding hands and kissing in the public area of: an apartment complex playground, in a family neighborhood, at a party, or to present one's self as a homosexual person in the workplace, is stating and displaying that he or she practices sodomy, and if backed by law, will force the acceptance of homosexuality as a relationship equal to a man and woman relationship.

Quelle horreur. By holding hands in "the public area of a party"--do you need a press pass to get in there? I am confused--you send a message about a specific sexual practice. Kinda throws our annual Christmas party into a whole new light; O Holy Night indeed! I'm not sure what message is sent by a straight couple holding hands, although the way this is written, apparently all hand-holding couples are broadcasting their affinity for non-P/V sex, since orientation isn't exactly specified there in the present active participle. Utah, you can has it. I was there once, or at least my right hand was, for maybe ten seconds while playing at the Four Corners Monument. That will be plenty for one lifetime.

Top!Secret G-woman knows how to keep me cheery! By sending along stuff from Andrew Sullivan she knows I didn't get around to reading!

Huh

Friday's Daily Star announced that two lesbians got a marriage license from the Pima County clerk in Tucson during a Freedom to Marry protest on Thursday. The original plan appeared to have been for a male couple to attempt to obtain a license as a centerpiece of the protest, and that part went off without a hitch when their application was rejected on the basis of the word "bride" having been scratched out and replaced with "groom." So then the lesbians decided to give it a go and just left the form unaltered. The clerk shrugged and said whatevs, and they walked out with a signed, stamped, and notarized marriage license, leaving their fellow protestors a bit dumfounded and forcing a slight change in the program from full-on protest to slightly befuddled celebration.

[Clerk of the court Patti] Noland said her clerks do not ask about a couple's gender when they apply for a marriage certificate.

"It doesn't matter one way or another. If they fill out the form and swear it's true and correct, we'll issue the marriage license," Noland said.

The women could face charges of fraudulent schemes and practices, a Class 5 felony.

The women are prepared to argue that the information they provided and swore to is accurate, and that they cannot be held liable for an inherently faulty legal form that presupposes "bride/groom" rather than "party 1/party 2." No one is really expecting any charges to be filed, and no one, unfortunately, is really expecting any state-sanctioned nuptials either. The local marriage equality folks are lining up the ACLU and Lamba Legal for the inevitable court case when the state--bound both by statute and the reprehensible constitutional amendment passed in November by every fucking county except ours--refuses to honor the license that was issued.

Still, interesting times. Interesting decision by the clerk who okayed the application, interesting reaction by the head clerk, and, I'm sure, an interesting bit of litigation coming down the pike. Stay tuned.

Back, if a Bit Boggled

The runaway is alive, at least, and his foster mother is pretty sure his drug-addict biological mom has taken him to California. The cops are about as disinterested as they can be, possibly because the kid in question is 16 and male and with biological relatives, despite the fact that they were stripped of their parental rights because of, oh yeah, that little major drug problem. They told the foster mom to call them if she figures out exactly where he is and then maybe they'll try to get him back.

My ex, who works for the division of state government that encompasses Child Protective Services, says the cops are fairly worthless in cases like this until CPS and the foster care system get on their asses. I hope that happens soon. I just want the boy to come home so my son can get his life back on track--it's not every day that the guy you've been best friends with since fourth grade just disappears--and then I want to hug him and strangle him. Haven't decided which order those will happen in yet.

Goddamn Kids

We have been taking a brief hiatus, hopefully no more than a few days. My son's best friend ran away from home Sunday night and has yet to be definitively located, so my focus needs to be someplace other than political and cultural snark for now.

Hug 'em if you got 'em.

John McCain is a Fucking Tool

Remember the John McCain we had during the campaign? The one who scoffed at Barack Obama's ability to get anything done in Washington because only he, St. John Bipartisan McCain, had an established record of putting partisan politics aside and reaching across the aisle for the greater good of the country? Yeah, that guy? He doesn't exist any more.

But this week, with President Barack Obama in the White House and McCain back in Congress, the Arizona senator has played a prominent and uncompromising role in rallying Republican opposition to the Democratic majority and its stimulus plan.

McCain's actions in the stimulus debate make for a very different leadership profile than he touted during the presidential campaign. His push for tax cuts as well as spending cuts, and his slashing, partisan rhetoric, are a far cry from his role a few years ago in leading a bipartisan coalition that sought compromise on how the Senate handles judicial nominations.

The Senate debate on the stimulus plan is only a few days old, but McCain's already demonstrating a distressing readiness to engage in campaign-style obfuscation to score political points at the expense of that greater good.

"This bill has become nothing more than a massive spending bill," he has said. "To portray it as stimulus flies in the face of reality."

Does McCain understand what stimulus is? It is an injection of cash into the economy, and providing federal and state agencies with funding to spend on projects that have to be contracted out to private companies that will then be able to, you know, pay their employees to do the work is a far surer syringe than yet another round of tax cuts that will ensure the wealthiest Americans have even more cash to sock away in untouchable offshore accounts. So yes, it is a massive spending bill. But it will spread the wealth to a far greater segment of the population and result in concrete, material results that benefit society as a whole than the same amount of money handed out in the form of tax cuts. And ain't nothin' wrong with that.

Let Rachel break it down for you.

Friday Again? That Was Quick

The week screamed by and I barely noticed. Some items pinging my radar today:

In the Whole Lotta Good, Little Bitta Crap department we have Obama capping a week of signing SCHIP and capping bailed-out-executive compensation at $500K (sniff, sob) by reversing course on federally-funded faith-based organizations and deciding they can go ahead and keep discriminating in hiring after all.

Obama clearly singled out the policy during a July campaign speech, declaring that "if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them — or against the people you hire—on the basis of their religion."

But once he won the election, religious conservatives began lobbying Obama and his transition team on the issue.

Thursday's announcement surprised and pleased religious conservatives, who had a strong ally in Bush and had been pressing the new Democratic president to revoke his earlier promise.

While this may not be as bad as it looks on the surface--a review process has been put in place to "ensure that federal programs and practices involving grants or contracts to faith-based organizations are consistent with law," allowing specific grants to be evaluated for legality in hiring--the glossy picture doesn't show the details of what was probably intended to be a compromise but has come back looking like capitulation. Capitulation to conservatives, again, for no apparent gain other than the ability to cite specific examples of attempted cooperation and accomodation of decidedly non-liberal viewpoints, while giving a tacit imprimatur to religious discrimination and using federal funds for just a little bit of proselytizing on the side.

In other capitulation news, I think I'm capitulating on trying to understand the machinations at work as the Senate holds the stimulus bill up by its ankles and shakes it in hopes that something good falls out of its pockets. It came in at $880B, climbed to $920B, moderate Republicans tried to trim it to $650B, and now it's settled at about $800B. And still no one is sure what needs to be in it and what needs to be out. I sure as hell don't know.

Some items on the cutting board included $99 million in technology upgrades for the State Department's National Cyber Security Initiative, $200 million for benefits for Filipino veterans, $55 million for the Historic Preservation Fund, and $122 million for the Coast Guard to purchase new or renovated polar icebreakers.

But senators also debated whether to keep in the bill numerous big-ticket items that their colleagues had fought for. About $14 billion in Pell grant funding appeared to have survived, but some senators were targeting at least $10 billion in other education programs. Billions of dollars in energy efficiency incentives and state aid also were under review by the centrist group.

Could the problem be that the scope of the stimulus package is simply too far-reaching and hopelessly broad? We are in a state of panic and everyone agrees that somebody has to do something right now about it, but one of the first rules of surviving a disaster is to compartmentalize. We need economic triage, and what's coming out of the House and Senate at the moment is the equivalent of the guests in a ballroom that's caught fire running around screaming with their hands in the air trying to put out all the fires and collect all the fur coats and save the champagne and finish the quickie in behind the stairs and hey how about we strip that old wallpaper while we're in here instead of assessing, planning, and executing a series of small tasks in order.

Don't get me wrong; I love Filipino veterans as much as the next guy, and appreciate the need for polar icebreakers--although if the Coast Guard can just wait a few months, all the polar ice should be gone anyway--but I don't know that their funding belongs in this bill. The on-fire ballroom absolutely needs some ADA-compliant toilets and low-energy compact fluorescent lighting, but the plumbers and electricians should really wait to get in there until the fire is out or there might not be enough money left over to pay the firemen, and then no ballroom left to upgrade. Can we not have a series of stimulus bills that are graded to address the most pressing needs first?

That, of course, would require a majority of senators to agree on those most pressing needs, and prospects for that are grim.

My Terrible Dark Secret

I may or may not have kind of a thing for Martha Stewart, not in a dykey way, just an awkward awestruckness at her ingenuity. I definitely have a totally dykey thing for Rachel Maddow, as you may have surmised. And I like carrot soup.

Forthwith, what it looks like when my worlds collide.

Monday Recession Blues

Hot on the heels of Homer's succinct summation of Arizona's new all-Republican state government on, well, the state of Arizona, we learn this morning that a Tucson city councilman has proposed a one-year waiver of impact fees for developers in an attempt to jumpstart the construction industry in the area.

The money that would be given up is funding that would pay for infrastructure and services around the new commercial and residential developments.

[Rodney] Glassman's proposal has broad support from the development and construction sectors. In fact, Glassman said he crafted it after meeting with several commercial and residential developers.

In fact? I'm sure he did. Glassman claims that allowing developers to forego impact fees would foster more urban infill development and curtail sprawl into the few outlying areas that remain untouched by the housing boom of the early '00s. Considering that the impact fees were instituted in the first place to rein in that sprawl, wherein developers were allowed to cram as many crackerjack houses onto lots as they could without being liable for the resulting exponential increase in demand for high-volume roads, utilities, public safety, and schools, this argument sounds just a wee bit counterintuitive to me.

Also confusing my limited brainpower this morning is the continuing connection of a metropolitan area's economic health to new housing starts. I understand that guys in construction need to build houses in order to get paid, but has anyone noticed how many houses in fairly new developments are standing vacant? Or vacant and unfinished? Or how many houses in established neighborhoods are for sale? Who exactly is supposed to buy and live in all the new houses Councilman Glassman is hoping to help build? It's not a big Habitat for Humanity project he has in mind.

It's a similar boggling argument to the one made by Representative Don Manzullo (R-IL) on Rachel Maddow Thursday night, in which he insisted that a better use of stimulus money than infrastructure improvements would be subsidizing new car loans so that American auto manufacturers would get the new orders they need to stay in business.

You take a $5000 voucher, you go to your Chrysler dealer or dealer of your choice, you buy the car, you knock 25 percent off that car, then you could buy a nice Jeep Patriot for less than $300 a month!

Well, okay. Buying that nice Jeep Patriot with government help still means I'm out, what, $299 a month, and that I've helped keep a couple hundred Illinois GM workers on the job for an additional couple of months before the company folds. The end result is that they're still out of work sooner rather than later and I'm stuck with a shiny new SUV I can't afford to make the payments on or keep in gas. Take the cash for those umpteen million $5000 vouchers you want to hand out and pour it into rail upgrades and bridge repair and updating the electric grid, and while it still may be only a few thousand workers here and there whose jobs are being preserved--likely none of them in the auto industry--in return for those continuing individual paychecks and individual boosts in buying power we get something concrete to show for it. We get infrastructure improvements that ultimately benefit everyone. But the Republicans somehow think it's socialism when government money is used for public works rather than for individual conspicuous consumption.

Pulling back to Tucson, now, the question remains of who benefits from impact fee suspensions besides Pulte Homes and Diamond Ventures when the rest of us are stuck with the bill for the new roads, sewers, and gas lines that will be run to the new houses. And what, exactly, is supposed to make infill more attractive than blade 'n' grade when the cost to the builder is all the same.

We Also Has a Migraine

Ancient and not-so-ancient people the world over drilled holes in their heads from time to time (or hacked good-sized chunks out of their own skulls with stone knives), and after the past 24 hours that is starting to make more and more sense to me.





















This might have helped yesterday.

They always hit in the wee hours of a weekend morning, like 3:30 wee, which severely limits my chances of getting a Torodol shot from my doctor's office. Can it ever be during regular business hours? Heavens no.

Figure VIII is the ticket.

Would you like to be Boltgirl for a day? Find an icepick. Draw an imaginary line connecting your left and right temples. Hold the icepick horizontally and place the point at the intersection of this imaginary line with the outside of your left temple. Have a friend drive the icepick into your head along this line, preferably with a four-pound crackhammer, until the point of the pick is lodged directly behind your left eyeball. Leave it there for 48 hours. Maybe tie a weight to the handle of the pick so it wiggles every time you move your head. There, wasn't that easy?

In other news, the Super Bowl is today and I sincerely hope my head stops exploding long enough for me to drink enough beer to make it explode in different ways. Chez Bolt is not rooting for the Cardinals, despite being located in the same state. The girlfriend grew up outside Pittsburgh and the Steelers have always been my AFC team of choice, and, besides, Bill Bidwell is slimy, the Cards never made much of an effort to be friendly to Baja Arizona, and all the taxpayer money that went to build their very strange looking stadium in Glendale opened the gates to an ongoing flood of public funds to that godawful municipality, which has since sucked more than the lion's share of resources to west Phoenix and left Tucson more and more in the dust.

And thus ends the bitchfest for this weekend.

In Which We Haz a Sad

I think I retired from soccer tonight. After having worked reasonably hard in the gym for the past few months, dropped some poundage to make my creaky knees happy, and pumped up the cardio fitness... I embarrassed myself pretty well on the field after all that. Knees were stubbornly sore, feet forgot how to be quick, legs decided they didn't want to be fast, former decent touch on the ball apparently took off for Maui sometime last week without telling me. We play in the bottom division and I can't keep up any more. Not even with the girls.

So I am washed up at 41 after 32 years of playing, with about a ten year break there in there to go to grad school and have the kid and stuff. Highlights were a 3rd-place finish in the Indiana State Cup with my women's team when I was in high school (no high school girls' soccer in South Bend back then), a season and a half on the club team at Northwestern (no varsity soccer in the Big Ten except for Indiana and Michigan back then, and the verbal assurance that I could walk on at Notre Dame didn't come with any scholarship money attached), and a co-ed championship in Tucson in 2000 that saw my teammates vote me Player of the Match in the final game. Permanent souvenirs include missing cartilage in both knees and a patch of scar tissue on my left shin that will never go away.

The days of goofy tan lines are over. I am now relegated to 40 Year Old on an Elliptical Machine Land. Ah well.

Friday Fun Day in BoltLand

Snuggies frighten me. I'm glad somebody has take action.

Barry, Object Lesson. Object Lesson, Barry.

Okay, Mr. Bipartisanpants. You made a big deal about wanting to reach across the aisle and work with legislators from both parties to solve this giant economic disaster that both Democratic and Republican lawmakers contributed to, and that both Democratic and Republican voters are suffering from. That's great and noble and a wonderful example for our nations children and, apparently, fairly short-sighted.

You agreed to strip funding for Medicaid family planning from the package because it got John Boehner's purity-drenched undies in an uncomfortable knot (in fact, it gave him such a whopping case of the vapors that he totally accidentally said the program would cost 100 million dollars rather than actually saving 70 million dollars over the next ten years and providing comprehensive healthcare to thousands of women who can't afford it otherwise). You did this because both sides have to compromise and sacrifice certain things in the spirit of cooperation, right? And because poor women are so used to taking it in the teeth anyway, the Medicaid family planning was the easiest symbolic sacrifice to make in order to win Republican support for a stimulus plan that was guaranteed to pass the House anyway due to the Democratic majority, right? Right?

The vote was 244-188, with Republicans unanimous in opposition despite President Barack Obama's pleas for bipartisan support.

Oh. Well, that was totally worth it, then. It was also totally worth it to commit $275B to tax cuts and only $90B to infrastructure projects. Because it's far more important to give individuals $500 tax breaks that will most likely go either straight to a credit card bill or to China, via Wal-Mart, than to fix bridges that will, say, allow millions of people to drive over the Mississippi River for the next forty years without winding up sandwiched between cement and dirty water.

Yes, you signed the Ledbetter Act, and that's both way awesome and way overdue. That makes me happy, and I'm still happy you won. But for fuck's sake, stop giving away shit when--remember this?--you won, and when you already have the votes you need lined up, and when you know the other side will sit on their hands no matter how much woman- and minority- and gay-repressing stuff you cede to them in the name of "bipartisanship." They know they're losing the war, but they'll happily posture all day to wring every last concession out of you they can. You think you're being cooperative. They think you're being a pussy and are ready to jump all over that six ways to Sunday.

Bush never quite got the "fool me once" saying down. You need to make it your mantra.

A Heart-rending Plea for Assistance

Can somebody please get my head on right as regards the Twitter? Seriously, am I supposed to let my followers know what I'm doing on a minute-by-minute basis, or just daily, or what? And is it bad that I forgot to check in for maybe three months after setting up the account? Am I obligated to pay attention to it now? I am flummoxed and do not enjoy the sensation one bit.

Well, Knock Me Over with a Feather, Volume Three Thousand and Four

I really need to get out for a hike so I can post some nice pictures and wax lyrical about the natural beauty of Arizona. Because otherwise I'm stuck writing about Cathi Herrod, who is neither, and it hurts me where I live.

A gay commitment ceremony planner in Phoenix has filed a proposal to create "civil partnerships" in Arizona that would entail all the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage but leave the magic word "marriage" to the straights. It's the usual list of visitation and inheritance rights, plus marriage-like requirements for financial support of spouse and children, as well as provisions for legal dissolutions mimicking divorce without calling it that. He even included a bit barring the partnership ceremonies from being performed during any religious service in order to calm fears among the more hysterical Christian set that their churches would be co-opted for leather bear weddings every Saturday in June (although that probably means the proposal automatically flunks constitutional muster, but I do appreciate the effort).

Cathi Herrod isn't biting.

Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which backed both earlier ballot measures, said her group will oppose this plan to create what she called "marriage counterfeits."

"Marriage — and the benefits of marriage — should be reserved for one man and one woman," Herrod said.

So another day, another plea for special rights from the people who backed a constitutional amendment that was marketed as only being about protecting sacred sacred marriage from the homos, and goodness me of course isn't about taking anyone's rights away and certainly isn't going to keep anyone from hiring very expensive lawyers to cobble together some documents that don't cover every contingency and may or may not stand up in the face of opposition from conservative ICU nurses or distant Baptist relatives you met once who are more entitled to your property after you die than is your partner of thirty years. Of course it's not about that.

Except, of course, when it is.

Required Viewing for Tonight

Blago's peeps inexplicably booked him to appear on Maddow tonight (1/27/09); apparently they are not familiar with the good doctor's Enhanced History Reenactment Event explaining the early stages of the pay-to-play scandal. Or with last night's summary of Helmet-hair's whirlwind media tour yesterday.








Well, this should be fun.

More Fun In Ex-Catholicdom

Another day, another couple of flights of stairs further down into irrelevance for the Holy Church.

These things do not upset me any more, nor do they surprise me. With each successive outburst, be it a Vatican flunky blaming birth control-spiked female urine for male impotence or the pope haughtily calling global gag rule-rescinding President Obama arrogant, the layers are peeled back just a little bit more on true nature and the lie is given to protestations about the dignity of individuals.

The most recent dust-up came courtesy of an excommunicated British priest reinstated over the weekend by Papa Ratzi; the Brit and three others had been booted for being ordained by some crazy-ass ultraconservative archbishop who broke away from the church in '69 because he didn't like the changes brought about by Vatican II. One of these changes was presented in an encyclical that said Catholics had to be nice to Jews and stop calling them Christ-killers and stuff. The Brit, one Bishop Richard Williamson, apparently has troubles with this one, given his propensity for Holocaust denial (eh, only a couple thousand Jews were killed, and none of them gassed, and if any stray ones did happen to be gassed it totally wasn't Hitler's idea) and Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theories (they started the first two world wars and are trying to start the third one right now, which by the way they kicked off by blowing up the World Trade Center in a controlled demolition).

The Vatican officially cleared its throat yesterday after that little awk-ward! moment and reminded the world that the former Hitlerjugend pope does not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body and expects the rest of the church, including Bishop Williamson, to follow suit. Williamson's still back on the roster, though, without having to sit out any games for conduct violating team rules.

But is there more? Oh, of course there's more. The Vatican only got its Prada panties in a wad over Williamson's reams of anti-Semitic comments. His anti-gay comments? They're giggling right along. Way back in '97, Williamson wrote a piece for the Saint Pius X Society newsletter--we've talked about this little group of nutters before--about homosexuality. Apparently feeling no compunction to parrot the usual lines about respecting the dignity of all God's children, he found that line between dignity and deprecation which is usually demarcated by gay=pedophile and vaulted right over it with miles to spare.

However, God did not wait for the founding of the Catholic Church to instill in men the horror of this sin, but he implanted in the human nature of all of us, unless or until we corrupt it, an instinct of violent repugnance for this particular sin, comparable to our instinctive repugnance for other misuses of our human frame, such as coprophagy.

Therefore what is "innate", or in-born, in human nature concerning homosexuality is a violent repugnance.

He could have stopped there, really, with his poo argument wrapped up in at least the veneer of polite society with the standard detached scholarly language and ecclesiastical syntax of all pastoral documents, whether they come from the pope or the parish priest or a schismatic bishop. But instead, he bizarrely veered off into what I can only describe as the contra argument presented in gayface.

"Oh, but Our Lord had chawity,(unlike thumwun we know who wath tho nathty to Pwintheth Di!). Our Lord loved thinnerth, and faggotth, and tho thould we!!"

Awesome. At first I thought he was doing Princess Bride for some unfathomable reason, but no, he's lisping. Right there in the middle of his very grave and dignified statement. Faggotth? Really? Did the Vatican repudiate any of these statements? Even the bit about coprophagy (seriously?), for fuck's sake? Um, no. No, the Vatican did not.

And for that I say thank you. Really, thank you. Thanks for showing your true colors. Don't even try to brush this guy under the rug or yammer about him not really representing the church's teaching about the very subtle difference between calling a person's innate nature repugnantly ticket-to-hell stamping and calling the person himself repugnant and hellbound. And don't say he was only mincing and lisping for effect while he was still in his state of schism and therefore not really Catholic. You own this bastard part and parcel for as long as you keep him, and the lack of an official wrist-slap rebuke that the church loves and respects all human beings, even the faggotth, speaks volumes. It's nothing we didn't already know, but it never hurts to be reminded.

So keep it up, Rich and Ratzi. Keep showing yourselves to the sun.

More, of course, at the Blend and Box Turtle Bulletin.

Actions Louder than Words

Dismayed though I may be to come to the conclusion that Hopey let his politician's instincts shepherd the words that fell out of his mouth during the campaign (particularly the fluffy part of the herd including God, is, in, the, and mix), I can get over it pretty quick if the quality of printed words he signs his name under continues to be this high.

Support for the LGBT Community

"While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect."

-- Barack Obama, June 1, 2007

• Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest category of hate crime reported and made up more than 15 percent of such crimes. President Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, President Obama passed tough legislation that made hate crimes and conspiracy to commit them against the law.
• Fight Workplace Discrimination: President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. While an increasing number of employers have extended benefits to their employees' domestic partners, discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace occurs with no federal legal remedy. The President also sponsored legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
• Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
• Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: President Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006 which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried couples.
• Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell: President Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Additionally, more than 300 language experts have been fired under this policy, including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. The President will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense goals.
• Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.
• Promote AIDS Prevention: In the first year of his presidency, President Obama will develop and begin to implement a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy that includes all federal agencies. The strategy will be designed to reduce HIV infections, increase access to care and reduce HIV-related health disparities. The President will support common sense approaches including age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception, combating infection within our prison population through education and contraception, and distributing contraceptives through our public health system. The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. President Obama has also been willing to confront the stigma -- too often tied to homophobia -- that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.
• Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS: In the United States, the percentage of women diagnosed with AIDS has quadrupled over the last 20 years. Today, women account for more than one quarter of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. President Obama introduced the Microbicide Development Act, which will accelerate the development of products that empower women in the battle against AIDS. Microbicides are a class of products currently under development that women apply topically to prevent transmission of HIV and other infections.

The parts on prosecuting voter suppression and eliminating drug sentencing disparities are nice too. As well as the whole thing about eliminating racial profiling.

And yesterday, Day One, also brought us the pay freeze for senior White House staff and strict regulation of lobbyists (even as the Bush administration disperses to top-dollar jobs within the industries they had allegedly been regulating), and the promise of Guantanamo closing. Things are, dare I say, looking up.

Red Stars Draft Part... Four?

Tempting as it is to play Calibrate That Gaydar with the Chicago Red Stars' roster, I will content myself with noticing that they drafted one Megan Rapinoe out of Portland last Friday, and also that she got rid of that awful fauxhawk she was sporting before the college season. Now if she can avoid blowing her ACL for a third time, the Stars may be pretty charmed indeed.

No word on what this means for the Chicago-Washington rivalry, or if it has inspired a certain member of the Freedom to crank up her rehab schedule a bit.

Inauguration Day Occasional Liveblogging

7:57 (Tucson time): The flag is bungeed to the mailbox at home--lesbian resourcefulness at its best--and the coffee is brewing in the office. We have donuts. We are watching and waiting.

Michelle just handed a beribboned box--chocolates? cow print lingerie for Dallas?--to Laura, and now they're heading inside the White House for their own coffee. Not sure about the pale gold dress; I guess it's appropriately solemn and looks like it's warm enough to withstand a dash from limo to door without too much discomfort. Holding out hope that she'll change into something funner and more royal blue for the balls.

Jesus, look at all those people. My toes would be falling off at this point if I were out there. But it's an awesome sight and I hope things stay friendly and nobody gets stupid. Anticipating a stirring call to service in Obama's speech, and enough calls to unity and country to make even the bitterest heart swell with something approaching optimism. Bring it, Hopey.

8:22: I want a donut.

8:39: I should have known better than to get excited about Rachel co-anchoring MSNBC's coverage as long as Chris Matthews is anywhere near a microphone. He's talking over everyone, and I have yet to get a visual of the good doctor. Is she wearing a hat with ear flaps? That would be too adorable for words.

Oh, there's Ted Kennedy, in--as Tweety says--a Don Corleone hat. The man had part of brain hacked out, for chrissakes, let him be.

The White House doors have opened, so coffee must be over. Annnnd here come... Lynn Cheney and Jill Biden. Jill's curiously not sporting duct tape over her mouth, so coffee was probably every bit as entertaining as I suspected it would be.

8:43: John Kerry comes out in a gaggle of cowboys. I'm confused. And there's the Cheney lesbian. Now the sentries are saluting but no one's coming out. Awkward! Oh, now here comes Cheneybot on Wheels. Has anybody checked that cane he's holding across his knees? Not that Obama needs to worry; he'll probably accidentally plug Lieberman instead.

Ah, here come the boys. Oh, they're riding together. Awkward times two!

9:12: Mama Biden's in a wheelchair, but looks like she's ready to hop out. Olbermann says Bush 41 is "walking old." Concur. Bar hasn't changed a bit, which may be the singular advantage to looking like you're eighty throughout your sixties and seventies. Here are the Carters, looking good. Now Clintons. Love the color of Hilary's coat, and thank god the woman was sensible enough to wear pants on a cold-ass day.

9:21: Ooh, there's the Lincoln bible. It's big. Good thing Michelle's an athletic woman.

And there are the moving vans. Slightly less inspiring.

Squeeeee! Here come the girls! Sasha is rocking that orange scarf and mittnes. Again, love the color of Malia's coat. Do you sense a pattern here?

9:29: Look at all those people. Unreal.

Here come Michelle and Jo.

Tweety needs to STFU already. Oh, is Rachel still there? The boys actually pause long enough for her to both start and finish a sentence. I still have not seen whether my earflapped hat fantasy is coming true.

Here comes Bush. The crowd has burst into Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye, and the Marine band promptly strikes up a jaunty cover fire tune. Oh dear. It might be just people in the vicinity of the MSNBC mikes several hundred yards from the stage. Huh. Not sure if I should say funny as hell but not quite as classy as we would like, or not quite as classy as we would like but funny as hell.

Oh, here is the official Bush and Cheney introduction, accompanied by Boehner and some other douchebag. The tepidness of the applause is overwhelming, although MSNBC wisely switched to mikes on the stage rather than those in the midst of the rabble.

9:37: Biden. Feinstein and Pelosi. Obama coolly strolling through the corridor.

Oh, is Eugene Robinson still here? He manages to slide a word in edgewise past the Matthews/Olbermann goalies.

We switch to NPR out of frustration over the MSNBC audio freezing up. And hear an in-depth discussion of how many people are wearing purple. And red. And blue. And coats. And hats. WTF?

And here comes the man. Cool as a fucking cucumber as the bezillion people in the crowd go nuts.

10:26: Chief Justice Roberts mangles the oath, inevitably condemning us to four years of wingnuts howling that Hussein isn't really the president because he didn't recite the words required by the Constitution, but Obama follows up with a good speech. Nice shout-out to the atheists, major mad props for the shout-out to the Constitution, in whatever distant corner it's been cowering and whimpering for the last eight years, mush-appreciated reminder of that whole equality and justice thing.

Oh, and Rick Warren? Hypocrisy, ur nailing it egzactly. And I'm sure Jesus enjoyed you sharing with the crowd all the little pet names you have for him.

I'm not feeling the poem, but that's okay.

And I have no idea what Joseph Lowery is saying, but the cadence is nice. Oh, now I'm getting it. Maybe his mouth was cold at the beginning; lord knows I have trouble talking when my face is frozen. Now he's rhyming. Amen!

Now I want to watch the parade, and hope the video feed catches up a little. Are the shriners going to be there? It ain't a parade without a fez.

Cheneybot 2000 Initiates Self-Destruct Sequence

Dick Cheney will be attending the Inauguration in a wheelchair tomorrow, allegedly because he pulled a muscle in his back while moving his stuff out of the bunker. Sympathetic as I should be to the whole pulled back muscle idea, I suspect that his robo-heart only functions while he is still officially in power, and they don't want it to be too obvious when he slumps over at "so help me God."

Meh.

My Facebook status says I'm sitting back and watching for a while, which was my personal admonition to self to absorb and think rather than scurrying off to blog each new thing rubbing me wrong when all I want is to join in the giddiness over the inauguration.

Uh, no, that didn't exactly last very long.

Rick Warren is America's Pastor^TM and it's high time I accepted it. The token bone tossed to the gay folk who got their knickers in a twist when the high-profile invocation gig was handed to a vocal homophobe turned out to have less meat on it than the Thanksgiving wishbone. Bishop Gene Robinson got the real opening invocation, we were assured, you know, because it happened first and was the big We Are One populist concert at the foot of Abe Lincoln's statue yesterday, and of course Team Obama had planned that invite way before anyone even knew Rick Warren was going to get center stage, so shush and be happy you're in the big tent. Except that nobody watching TV heard Bishop Robinson's invocation, because HBO didn't broadcast it. And no more than a couple dozen people at the Lincoln Memorial heard it either, because the sound system got shut off right before he began and only got turned back on in time for everyone to hear "Amen." And today we find out that the decision to schedule Robinson just before HBO's official start of coverage came not from HBO but from the Obama team.

And the keynote address for the MLK Day service at Ebenzer Baptist in Atlanta? Delivered by Rick Warren. Because nothing says equality like a guy who fights to deny certain peoples' civil rights.

Guess it's time to get over it. Rick Warren wins. Because working to eliminate poverty (good) trumps supporting African pastors who encourage murdering suspected witches (bad), because claiming to respectfully disagree about Biblical morality (good) trumps equating gay marriage to incest (bad). Complaining that Gene Robinson was rendered silent and invisible is the height of unappreciativeness because he got invited in the first place, and that should be more than enough. We Are One, unless we're gay, in which case we need to stop all the fucking whining, because apparently you're allowed to call dibs on discrimination, and when we bark back it makes us the bigots.

The Inauguration is about so much more. I want it to be about so much more, but how many times are we supposed to hold our noses and look the other way because we can find enough good to trump the bad that keeps tumbling out into plain view? It didn't need to happen this way, and that's the part that bothers me the most and tempers my enthusiasm, my hope, for what comes next.

Tomorrow I'll celebrate the exit of the most corrupt and destructive adminstration in American history. As for the rest, well, I'll be sitting back to watch.

Additional and far more eloquent commentary here, here, here, and here.

Mail, We Get Mail

If you so much as sent out a positive vibe about Barack Obama during the campaign, you probably landed on the barackobama.com mailing list, and you probably got the same e-mail I did this morning:

Never having been one to be rude, I promptly replied.

What am I doing tomorrow? I will be, for roughly the 14th consecutive day, wondering what the hell you guys were thinking when you invited Rick "Hitler is My Role Model and African Pastors Who Advocate Witch Hunts and the Executions of Gays Are My Best Buds" Warren to give the invocation.

Why, what are you doing?

They may have been looking for something more along the lines of signing up for the Renew America Together project, but you can never be too sure about these things.

Suddenly Summer Sunday

Barely two weeks past Epiphany and not only is it NO MORE HAPPY CHRISTMAS in Tucson, but no more winter as well. We have vaulted directly into a long succession of what would be perfect Chicago June days, 73 degrees, bright blue skies, and so much sunshine that the shady side of the street is very inviting, but with enough of a breeze to make it okay if you can't marshal the energy to stroll over there. The burgers-on-the-grill scents wafting out of Bob Dobbs' Bears and Cubs neon-signed windows, paired with the occasional whiff of cigarettes from the patio completed the illusion.

Then the prickly pear pads I had to dodge in order to continue down the sidewalk brought me back to the desert. Well, that and the hoots coming from the Cardinals bandwagon jumpers watching the game at the bar and in many houses I passed on the way home.

The flock of lesser goldfinches has returned to our yard, along with the house finches and white-crowned sparrows. Gila woodpeckers have polished off the suet cake in the feeder my dad made for us, and continue to squawk from all points of the yard and surrounding trees. The hummingbirds perched in the mesquite squeak their hope for new sugar water. Spring has sprung, calling me up to the trails in the Catalinas while water's still running. It finally cracked 0 in Chicago yesterday. This isn't a bad place to be in January.

In Which Rick Warren Self-Godwinizes

You probably saw this already, but it bears repeating. Rick Warren plans to take over the world for Jesus using the model of that great mid-20th century motivational speaker. No, not FDR. No, no, not Churchill either. JFK? Nope. No, goofball, he's invoking the hands-down best organizer and mover of men (and women and children and old folks and Gypsies and homos and, oh yes, Jews) the world has ever seen.

He invoked Hitler.

Yes, Rick Warren wants people to come to Jesus with the same fervor the brown-shirted kids of 1940s Germany brought to the Hitlerjugend. Because that certainly ended well for lots of people.

Watching this fucktard share the podium with Barack Obama on Tuesday was going to make me want to puke enough the way things were. Now it's worse. Is Obama going to shake his hand? Bro-hug him? There are factions you really do want to reach out to, and then there are factions you don't want to touch with a goddamn fifty-foot pole. A guy who advocates mindless, conscience-free blind obedience and loyalty is one of those. And I don't give a flying fuck if Warren claims he was only lauding the brownies' belief in and dedication to their cause and their leader, somehow in cold dissociation from the havoc they wreaked and carnage they wrought. Because you can't divorce anything about the Nazis (not the efficiency, not the BDSM chic, not the choreography, nothing) from the whole picture just to have a convenient example to reference.

Especially not when both your organizations are known at least in part for, shall we say, less than inclusive policies toward Jews and gays.

Sigh. Hey, at least Gene Robinson got the B-team gig at the Lincoln Memorial.

Random Saturday Bits

Blogging whilst on painkillers sounds very appealing right about now, but since I have none I will settle for blogging whilst propped up on a heating pad and wondering exactly how many oxycontin a body could theoretically take before going Limbaugh. Because currently it feels like my left trapezius has ripped itself away from my spine and is currently in negotiations with the deltoid and triceps to blow this cowtown and hop the next train for LA. Who knew some innocent pushups could derail things so badly? Am I really that old? Fuck.

Airplane disasters! Speaking of prescription knockout pills, I am deathly afraid of flying, so the images of the plane floating in the Hudson with a ferry sidling up to it saying o hai yur not supposed to be in teh water gave me a serious case of the willies. I can pull it together enough, though, to roll my eyes at the inevitable yowling about miracles and angels and God being the co-pilot and say well, can't definitively go either way on the God/angel thing due to their convenient inherent invisibility, but what we can say with 100% confidence is that what they did have on a very well-designed and built aircraft was a pilot with Air Force fighter experience, a side venture teaching aviation emergency response and survival, and oh yeah glider training, and an actual corporeal co-pilot who hopped into the 36-degree water to retrieve life vests for passengers and flight attendants to organized the evacuation and passengers who followed instructions and helped each other. They had the best of humanity all rolled up into one incident. Oh, and there wasn't any ice on the river or barges in the way, so I guess if you're looking for something to pin on divine intervention you can choose that over luck, but whatevs. Did I mention I hate to fly? If I gotta do it, I hope that pilot or one of his students is driving my big sky bus.

Inauguration Mania! Well, sure. I'll watch it at work and then have a few people over for dinner that night, and will try to keep my creeping bitterness at bay by repeating it's not McCain it's not McCain over and over if that's what it takes to scrub the image of Rick Warren from my brain. And since I can't make it to DC for any of the official Inauguration Gay Orgies, does anyone know where the Tucson one is going to be held? You know, just in case my dinner party starts to drag.

Facebook craziness! Many people I went to college with all discovered Facebook in the past month, maybe six weeks, which means it's been one big weird timewarp since then of catching up, looking at pictures, and wondering how so many of these people manage to do things like ski Whistler and fish Barbados when I can barely get my bills paid on time. Be that as it may, there still needs to be some oh-so-clever word coined to describe the weird little rush you get when long-lost friends suddenly pop up again and want to send you a Martian or potted plant or some other damn thing, and they don't look a day older than when you were drunk-ass 22-year-olds stumbling up the stairs to the el platform together. Except that they do, because you do too.

Back hurts! A lot! Diving into the Tiger Balm momentarily!

Gene Robinson, Full of Grace

Maddow got an exclusive with Bishop Gene Robinson last night about his invitation to give the kickoff invocation for Inauguration Week, and the bishop demonstrated absolute grace and congeniality. I think I would have preferred a little sound and fury to go along with it, since it ended up signifying nothing anyway.

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Robinson has been a semi-official advisor to the Obama team for a while now, and, based on what he said in the interview, he certainly has a more active role with Obama than Rick Warren does, so it's not surprising that he didn't ripple the waters very much. I have to admit disappointment in his dodge of Rachel's question about Obama's apparent flip from a 1996 statement that he fully supports marriage equality and would fight any efforts to oppose the same, choosing instead to say that he feels Obama is committed to equal rights for all Americans--when his unequivocal opposition to gay marriage on religious grounds during the campaign really seems to indicate something different.

The bishop is happy and appears to be optimistic. I get the sense that he takes the don't tell lies commandment more seriously than some of his more vocal evangelical brethren, but then again he probably takes the whole forgive their trespasses against us thing seriously too, so I do not know if his lack of rancor regarding the Warren invitation truly reflects a big picture that is better than I think or if it reflects a Christian life the way it's actually supposed to be lived re: bein' all nice and stuff.

I am certain that Rachel should not wear that shade of green, though, at least not in combination with reflective neck makeup.

And Now, a Soccer Note

Were I the general manager of the Chicago Red Stars, Chicago's entry in the upcoming Women's Professional Soccer League, I might be a tad bit tweaked at Kate Markgraf. Markgraf has been an anchor in the central defense for the national team for the past few years, compensating for sub-par speed and more physical geekiness than you might expect from a national-level player with excellent positioning and reading of the game. The Red Stars tabbed her as one of their three picks in the national team allocation, which was designed with the dual purposes of acquiring the players with the top skills and best potential for being a fan draw, particularly for season-ticket buyers. Markgraf fit the bill because of her value as a mentor for up-and-coming defenders, even if her own field impact is waning with age, but mostly because of her engaging if geeky personality and Notre Dame pedigree, which was calculated to pull dozens, and possibly legions, of loyal Chicago-area Domers into the stands at Toyota Park.

What could go wrong with that? Oh, this. The Stars announced on Saturday that Markgraf will miss the entire 2009 season because she's pregnant. Wait. Let's reword that for maximum impact. Markgraf will miss the entire inaugural, make-or-break, chip-on-the-shoulder, put-up-or-shut-up season of pro futbol feminino's last realistic shot at existence. Were I Emma Hayes, I would not be so distressed at losing the increasingly lead-footed Markgraf in the back--she's not going to make or break either the team or the league, and they do have US Player of the Year Carli Lloyd on the roster--but I would be mighty annoyed that I pissed away my second pick on a player who wasn't committed enough to the team or new league to, I don't know, ensure she'd be able to play.

Maybe the pending baby was unplanned. That part's nobody's business, but still, a second-chance league that hasn't even gotten out of the gates yet should write a no-pregnancy clause into every big-name player's contract. At least for the first year. NuvaRings all round!

Cognitive Dissonance, Part Two Million

There are parts of Indiana I absolutely love, places my heart goes back to over and over again: South Bend, where I spent the majority of my adolescence, and McCormick's Creek, a state park near Bloomington where I spent some of the best individual weeks of my life.

Indiana, the nice part.

You can keep the rest of the state.

Opponents of same-sex marriage said today that they would try again to amend Indiana’s constitution to prohibit gay unions, this time with a re-worded amendment they hope will answer critics’ concerns.

In previous legislative sessions, the proposed amendment stated: “Marriage in Indiana consists only of the union of one man and one woman. This constitution or any other Indiana law may not be construed to require that the marital status or the legal incidents of marriage be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

Turner said that the changed language is meant to be clearer. It would not bar domestic partnerships, he said, but would bar civil unions.

It is uncertain whether the measure will make it out of the legislature and onto the ballot, since several key legislators--unlike their colleagues in Arizona--understand that marriage equality is already banned by statute, making an amendment redundant. The proposed amendment's biggest obstacle is one Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, the speaker of the Indiana House. I went to school at various times with two different guys named Patrick Bauer, but I don't think either is this guy. In any event, I'm at least gratified to see a South Bend Democrat stand up for what's right.

I am not the least bit gratified to hear Tony Perkins shilling for the amendment on behalf of the Indiana Family Research Institute, as reported over on the Blend. This is the organization, remember, that had Tony Dungy shilling for contributions at a protect-marriage-dinner shortly after the Colts won the Super Bowl, and which is repeating the lie that the amendment is only about sacred holy fucking matrimony, not not not civil unions. Despite both of the amendment's sponsors in the state legislature clearly stating that civil unions are in their sights as well.

Side note: fundamentalist Christian apologists argue that the commandment forbidding false witness is not, after all, an injunction against lying in general, but specifically directed at witnesses giving false testimony in legal proceedings against other Hebrews. So modern Christians are free to lie, lie, lie their pants off when it's convenient for stomping on gay folks, a giant get out of jail free card, immunity in the big Jesus elimination challenge they're more than happy to nominate us for.

Too much Top Chef, Boltgirl? Possibly.

Whatevs. The callus is too thick for these things to sting much any more. McCormick's Creek and the Grotto at Notre Dame still call my heart. My head, meanwhile, says meh, you still live in Arizona.

Mysteries of the Intertubes

I confess to occasionally checking the Sitemeter, with "occasionally" here of course meaning "sometimes on an hourly basis." We take our validation where we can get it and are not sorry. Maybe a little ashamed, but not much.

Anyway. I apparently have a reader from Rwanda. Interesting! But who got here by searching "erotic stories." Do not want to know!

In Which We Are a Lame-Ass Excuse for a Semi-Political Blogger

I did not watch or listen to W's last presser today, because this close to the end of the nightmare I did not want to be spurred to grind what's left of my nubbin teeth by the sound of that voice or whatever random words it was saying. One of my co-workers gave it a gallant effort but had to stop after the "misunderestimated" intro--W apparently has been watching a little too much Frank Caliendo; at least he didn't feel compelled to fill the uncomfortable, laughterless silence that followed with a heh heh heh. Jon Stewart probably had a field day. Will check tomorrow.

Oh, I was very gratified to hear Ken Blackwell explain that anybody can get over teh gay if they just try hard enough.

The answer is that I've never had to make the choice because I've never had the urge to be other than a heterosexual, but if in fact I had the urge to be something else I could have in fact suppressed that urge.

Neato! As I remarked to Top!Secret G-woman this evening, this is like me never having had the urge to eat a kalamata olive, but being totally sure I could resist one if the temptation had ever arisen. Just like I could completely suppress the urge to write with my left hand or go to the Talladega 600. Or the urge to breathe water. Thanks for the insight, Ken!

And with that, I'm off to bed.

Oh, for the Fuck of Fuck

The Daily Star's cartoonist earns his salary, I guess, by pissing off half the people half the time. This morning appears to be my turn.

I wrote a letter in response, and am waiting breathless by the e-mail to see if they'll print it.

I am very disappointed to see Fitz (1/8/09) fall prey to the meme that having a negative reaction to discrimination against gay people is in itself bigotry, or that liberals are the most intolerant people in the world because they won't play along with other people's attempts to enshrine into civil law their aversion to people different from themselves. I completely disagree with the beliefs of people who voted for Prop 102 in Arizona and Prop 8 in California, but I do not, as a result, work tirelessly to strip them of certain civil rights. If I am "bigoted" against those who decided to legally declare me a second-class citizen (and who would gladly return to the days when it was legal to fire me or evict me) simply because of who I happened to fall in love with, I suppose I'm also bigoted against the KKK and Holocaust deniers.

Dumbass.

Cathi Herrod Will Not Go Away

Not content to have led the charge on Prop 102 (which enshrines second-class citizenship as the sole birthright of Arizona's queer population) Ms. Cathi Herrod, Arizona's chief Harpy-in-Residence, has just snicked a new notch on the right side of her belt with Arizona's approval of an official anti-abortion license plate after a nine-year fight.

The plates will feature a drawing of a young boy and a young girl in a two-inch box on the left side, with the words "choose life" along the bottom, where regular plates now have the motto of "Grand Canyon State."

Aside from allowing motorists to publicize their views, the arrangement also has financial benefits. Out of the additional $25 the state charges for special plates, $17 goes to the sponsoring organization.

"Proceeds from these licenses will support basically providing alternatives to abortion and promoting life," Herrod said, predicting her organization will be able to sell thousands of the plates.

The proceeds will go to the Arizona Life Coalition, which means they will be distributed among member organizations such as Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Tucson and Phoenix as well as Herrod's own Center for Arizona Policy. Despite the assertion by the AZ Life Coalition that disseminating "accurate information" is required by member organizations, rest assured that the money that will now be funneled to them with the full cooperation and facilitation of the state will help promote the ongoing message that abortion always causes psychological harm to the woman, imperils her future fertility and the health of any future children she might birth, as well as supporting Christian evangelizing of panicked women who happen to find the Crisis Pregnancy Center first in the phone book.

My only solace is that the wording on the plate, "Choose Life," implies--thoroughly inadvertently, I'm sure--that choice should still be the major component of the process, rather than compulsory full-term birth.

The natural response would be to push for a plate reading "Preserve Reproductive Choice," but the state commission created to approve special plates is ready to commit institutional suicide rather than risk being asked to approved the next special-interest plate that comes down the pike--this approval took a federal appeals court judge to force them to wield the rubber stamp--so this may be the last special plate Arizona gets. And that makes Cathi Herrod very happy.

Herrod said the legal fight to get the plates was worth it. "The 'choose life' message affirms the value of every human life," she said. Herrod said that message will "absolutely have a positive impact" on those who see the plates.

You're right about that, Cathi. Seeing one of those plates will absolutely make me want to impact the driver's face with my fist. How awesome would it be if the first one I see is on your car? Answer? It would be totes awesome, at least for one of us.

Obama Appointment Inside Analysis: Anonymous Source Edition

We can giggle nervously and uncomfortably about Obama's mulling CNN's very own Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General--at least he hasn't gunned anyone down, unlike Tucson's very own Richard Carmona--but two done-deal appointments (Elena Kagan and Dawn Johnsen) are ones we can get behind and be happy about it. So says a friend with direct experience. From the e-mail machine:

I think that Elena Kagan as SG and Dawn Johnsen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel are both *excellent* picks. Kagan is almost literally universally admired on the left and right. She has had a stellar career and has really done wonders at Harvard (inc. recruiting top conservative law profs to the school). That she doesn't have appellate experience is not a big deal - other SGs have lacked it, and the key to the job is brilliant legal thinking and she's got that. It's of course possible she won't be the best at oral argument, but she'll probably do fine.

It will be hard for anyone to improve upon Paul Clement, the SG for most of the Bush years, who was truly an over-the-top brilliant amazing SG, probably the best appellate advocate ever in that spot*, but falling short of that is no shame. Anyway, while I guess she's liberal, I don't think that's shown up much in her work over the years, it's not a particular calling card of hers like it would be with, say, a Laurence Tribe or something, so it would be wrong for people to focus much on that. For 98% of cases, there's no difference between a conservative administration and a liberal one. The other 2%'s a bitch, but that's the way it goes, and it's Obama's call, not hers, which way the case will be argued (but obvs she has significant input into strategy on such a case). My Federalist Society colleague took a class from her at Harvard and said "she is a rock star."

As for Johnsen, I first came across her when I worked on the Violence Against Women Act. Johnsen was legal director of NARAL at that time so she was in on lots of lobbying and strategy sessions and I remember her well from that. I couldn't always keep up with the legal discussions over the bill at that time since it was before law school, but she was one of the few people who really stood out to me then for her astuteness and quick-mindedness and general brilliance. I've kinda followed her work over the years because of that connection, though mostly over the past few years that's meant seeing her on the Lehrer Report talking about executive power (and abuses thereof) under Bush, and she's been equally impressive on that front as on the feminist front. She worked at OLC long ago so she really knows that office, so I think it's a very good pick, and potentially the most important one he can make at DOJ. Any smart person can be SG -- I would've preferred Kathleen Sullivan over Kagan, but Kagan's a great choice -- but at OLC you really need someone who's truly brilliant for that office to work the way it's designed to (OLC's job is basically to set limits for the president, to know when to tell him NO, so you need a really good thinker to be able to set those boundaries properly, which did not happen under Bush b/c it was so politicized).

Also, there had been a lot of talk about Kagan maybe being Obama's first pick for Supreme Court justice. But by having her as SG, I think that goes out the window- I don't think he'd elevate her within a year or two, which is when the next opening's likely to occur. I think she'd reasonably have to be SG for longer than that. So I think this means that his first pick will be a minority, and I'm pretty sure he wants to appoint the first Latino to the court, which means Sonia Sotomayor's (brilliant 2d Cir judge who I think is pretty well-respected on both sides of the aisle) stock just shot up significantly. Also, IIRC, Sotomayor was put on the federal bench (district court) by Bush 1, then elevated by Clinton, so she's an even safer bet for Obama. I don't know whether she's been involved in any controversial decisions in the 2d Circuit that people could arguably characterize as ideological. Nothing jumps out at me.

* As a minor example of his brilliance, Clement never brought anything with him when arguing before the Supreme Court. He just went up to the podium and held court, as it were. Some arguments at lower courts are certainly doable without notes, but at the Supreme Court??? Dude, I love that guy - the best in the business. Extremely conservative, but still I can't think of anything that should keep him from the Supreme Court.

There was also an interesting tidbit at the end of the e-mail hinting at a rumor my source will not commit to characterizing as either wild or not so wild, that the vaunted Mediterranean diet may not be so heart-healthy as thought, at least not for one of the current supremes. Although, should Death come a-knockin', he'll most likely just say vaffunculo to Death's bony ass with a chin flick and be done with it. Interesting nonetheless, and possibly putting Kagan or Kathleen Sullivan in play for a second SC pick sooner than anticipated, so do stay tuned.

Cutting-edge analysis, we haz it!

Return to Ordinary Time

Despite the residual conditioning of a liturgical calendar that purses its lips and reminds me that Christmas is not over until Epiphany, my senses shake their collective had sadly and inform me that the holiday has, indeed, dribbled to a close. A few bowl games are still lingering in the hopper and leftover ham is sitting in the fridge waiting to prop up an omelet, and maybe half the houses on the block still have lights up, but it's effectively over for another year, leaving the vast expanse of January and February in front of us. As Januaries and Februaries go, we could do far worse than to spend them in southern Arizona, I suppose, since living in the desert means the winter storm that blew in this morning with low clouds and drizzle grading into rain and sheets of snow sweeping the mountains can be delighted in as a brief diversion giving us a different view, a respite from the sunshine and perpetual summer that is surely returning by midweek.

No resolutions are being cooked up in Chez Bolt this year. I try to avoid them, in any event, given my propensity for setting myself up for enough failure in ordinary time, so no need to up the ante for the holiday if there's no gun to my head. If I was being forced to resolve under duress, I would focus on actual cooking. A Barnes & Noble gift card from the girlfriend's ex-husband (bizarre extended family, we haz wun) was cashed in for Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, which has filled my fantasy life with all sorts of wonderful stocks, soups, and pastas (only on page 90 so far). Between that and the Top Chef obsession, I hope my kitchen turns out some quality dishes this year for my table and my freezer. And, in this perfect world, I will spend more time and money at farmer's markets and less at Safeway, and maybe save enough to eat more legitimate meals and fewer quesadillas.

Good living. It is my fondest hope and intent. As I head back to a daily grind in which mistletoe and evergreen boughs are conspicuously absent, I resolve to give it my best shot. If not, well, shit happens. May you find what you're looking for in 2009.

Relative Bliss

You may have hit a few blips, a few bumps in the early 2009 road, but take solace in the likelihood that your year has been nowhere near as crappy as my neighbor Daniel's year so far. He lives down the block, and we just met for the first time yesterday when his terrified but adorable puppy showed up in my yard.

The dog--an apparent Rotty/Dobie mix named Bruiser--had a PetFinder tag on his collar, so the girlfriend was able to track down his owner's name and number while Bruiser, all tail tucks and full-body wiggles, climbed into my lap to be comforted while he waited to be taken home.

Daniel walked up with a leash a few minutes later, looking like someone had gobsmacked him with a figurative cinder block, and mumbled that his girlfriend had just ransacked his house, sold his car, and stolen his computer before walking out on him, and had let the dog out in the process. He stammered out his appreciation to us, clipped the leash to Bruiser's harness, and walked back down the street, softly telling the dog I didn't think I'd see you again.

Good luck, man. Can't top that tale of misery.

Our Leading Economic Indicator

Let me preface by saying that rubber fake testicles hanging off the backs of trucks, especially when they cost in the neighborhood of twenty bucks, may be the most singular means of communicating "Hello, I'm a giant douche" the world has yet seen, and their squickiness is trumped only by the fact that they apparently were invented by a 70-year-old guy, although googling "truck nuts inventor" isn't giving me a reliable source for that half memory.

So yeah, I had thought they were the stupidest thing I had ever seen. Then I went to K-Mart (do. not. ask.) and saw this in the parking lot.

















Need a closer look?
















Truck Nutz, DIY version.

Wiffle balls. On a zip-tie. I salute you, Mr. Suzuki X-7 driver from Texas, for your refusal to let your dumbassery wilt in the face of recession. You understand the importance of faux genitalia on your vehicle, and if you can't buy the powder-coated aluminum version, you will just slap these homemade babies way off-center on your tow hook and say to hell with anyone who thinks that might maybe make you ever so slightly more of a douchebag than the ninety million other dumbasses with anatomically correct, if oversized, fake nuts on their trucks. Well played, sir. Well played.

Mud-flap silhouettes will undoubtedly have to be cut out of 7-11 hot dog wrappers starting any day now. Fix the economy, Barack. We can't take much more of this.