Cooking and other observations

This Marriage Amendment Thing

I've managed to get all my information on this from listening to CSPAN radio in the car. (You can listen online if you don't live in reach of DC-area radio, or have satellite radio, which is kind of a waste of ten dollars a month.)

Anyway, it's a stupid idea. What I've heard came from a panel discussion hosted by the Cato Institute and the Center for American Progress, and then from a bunch of Senate newbies, mostly Republicans, since they didn't invite Ken Salazar or Barack Obama.

Guess who sounded smarter? That the bunch of law school profs and think tank fellows, both "liberal" and "conservative," have more going on upstairs than a gaggle of Senators should come as no surprise. Anyway, my favorite sentiment was that the amendment was put together by a bunch of very bad lawyers. The guy who made that remark also pointed out that the Federal Marriage Amendment, as written, would not affect the Massachussets decision legalizing same-sex marriage there; it would, in fact, dispense with marriage altogether, in a civil sense. It seems that the Goodrich decision said that same sex couples must receive equal treatment with regard to marriage and the legal benefits thereof. So either the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could raise the standard for same-sex couples or lower the standard for different-sex couples.

The same dude, a professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown, claimed that the FMA "Constitutionalizes" casual sex. I'm pretty sure our Forefathers would have something bad to say about that, as would the Fundies. (Well, maybe Thomas Jefferson would think that was OK. Who knows?)

In the mean time, Jim DeMint of South Carolina is convinced that marriage is under attack because of a Swedish study he (supposedly) read about how out-of-wedlock births increase when the definition of marriage changes. My guess is that a staffer read the study. I'm not entirely convinced that DeMint himself can read.

I still don't understand why some people are frightened of gay and lesbian couples who want to get married. My awe that any two people would choose to stay together for what's supposed to be a lifetime remains, no matter their genders. If marriage and family are so important, why not encourage folks who have not previously been able to be families in the legal sense to get married?

I know, the whole family-as-a-code-word thing is a huge lie. On the other hand, if the Federal Marriage Amendment actually attacks the institution of marriage, well that's the best kind of irony. Unfortunately the Constitution has no room for irony, in between freedom of speech, due process of law, and we're really sorry about that whole slavery thing.

I'm not too concerned about it passing, although weirder things have happened, but I'll be damned if I understand why we're still talking about it, except that certain political factions won't shut up about whatever the current iteration of "family values" is.

I keep losing track.

Magic

OK, so I've slacked considerably on my movie reviewing duties because I'm obsessed with the hurricane and the situation in the Gulf Coast Region. Sue me, it's interesting.

I knew right off that we weren't going to hear any truth from government officials. That's just a no brainer: you go to work in management for the rat's nest that runs this country and you leave your acquaintence with truth and objectivity in a storage unit. Anybody who believes otherwise is delusional. I figured that the least varnished statements would come from military people, by which I mean the people who actually do the work in the military, not the guys in Washington who spend their time talking from a TV studio in the Pentagon.

What I wasn't counting on was Magic Johnson. He was a guest on Larry King's somewhat unseemly extravaganza of where you can donate tonight. He came to talk about what his foundation is doing, which is fine. He's an extremely wealthy man. He owns a lot of stuff and he does a lot of good with his money. At the end, when Larry was trying to cut him off, he went on a bit of a tirade about how sick the lack of planning for such a disaster was, about how the suffering shouldn't have happened. He blamed local, state and national govenrnments alike for keeping information from the public.

He did this calmly and solemnly. Magic Johnson has the widest possible smile. He can turn the world on with it, but he was not a happy man. He said things that every American ought to be saying: why did this happen, and what can we do to make sure it never happens again?

He intimated that we, as citizens, are strong enough to handle the truth, and he's right. We have to be. We live in stupid times when the various levels of govenment think we're all lulled into a stupor, that we don't care what's happening outside our front doors.

Of, by and for the people, people. We are this country. The Katrina deaths are on my hands and yours, because we let our government atrophy to point where they were going to happen soomer or later; because we don't demand accountabilty from our government.

Every last one of us would have gone down there to help get those people out of the hospitals and the so-called shelters to safety if we could, but we can't. That's why we pay for government institutions.

They failed. We failed.

Let's not fail in so spectacular a fashion again. Let's pay attention from now on. We have to get ourselves together and be the biggest, most powerful fucking lobby on the planet, not for some special interest. America is not a special interest, and it's not a code word for right and left to throw around.

Don't make me quote the Gettysburg Address. OK?

File under S, for subterfuge

So. Deep Throat has outed himself.

Let's set aside the skankiness that "outed" right next to 'Deep Throat" lends and think about this for a second. My first observation is that the last time Throat was in the news, a few months ago, somebody remarked that the real Deep Throat looks at least a little like Hal Holbrook in the film version of All the President's Men.

What do you know? That part, at least, seems to be true. In photos of Mark Felt from the Watergate era, he bears a vague resemblance to Holbrook's skittish, bitter "garage freak", which turns out to be Felt's sunken cheeks and bags under the eyes.

But there are doubters and questioners, are you surprised? Keith Olbermann spent close to 20 minutes talking with John Dean about the holes in the Throat story on Tuesday night's Countdown. (And if you're not watching Countdown, you're missing out; it's the best thing happening on cable news. 8 p.m. eastern on MSNBC.)

Both Olbermann and Dean are big Watergate geeks, so it makes sense that they would shine a flashlight through the fabric of this old story to find the places where it's a bit threadbare, but they and the other qubblers seem to be missing a couple of major points. One, that Woodstein deliberately misled readers of All the President's Men in order to cloak the source's identity; and two, that they have continued to steer a curious public down blind alleys in order to keep the story alive.

Is this a good thing to do? Hell if I know, but I can hear the weird construction guys in my alley talking about  J. Edgar Hoover's death and Felt's possible motivation for talking to Woodward. So I guess it worked. I think Woodward is a hack because he stuck around Washington, where he  can drink for free the rest of his life just because he's Bob Woodward.  Also, he ditched his first wife to marry his kids' au pair, whose nickname was Jugs. And largely because of her marriage, as the gossip goes, Mrs.. Hack has a career as a writer, which started at the WaPo. It beats dues-paying, I guess.

 

Meta Note: The link that I used above to get a photo of Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat is from a 1998 News Hour with Jim Lehrer feature on anonymous sources. (You have to scroll about half way down the page to get to the little photo, though.) I was working on the web site for that show at the time. It's entirely possible that I made the original page for the story.

 

Dear Tom DeLay

I just want you to know that I feel a little sick to my stomach when some House Republican I've never heard of addresses you as "Leader." As in Thank you, Leader. That's just wrong. You're not running a cult.

OK, you're not supposed to be running a cult.

"Leader" was Bob Dole's Golden Retriever.  I'm just saying.

Also,  I would feel a lot better if you and your Tony Robbins hair would leave Terri Schiavo's case alone. Stay away. Stay far away. Apparently it's bad to let her husband and legal guardian make the medical decisions that he thinks she would have made under the circumstances, but it's just fine for you and your disciples to cut funding for food stamps, Medicaid,  Head Start, and so on, and so on and so on...

I can't think about this case. It makes me angry. My justification for calling myself "pro-choice" has always been that I want the U.S. government to stay out of personal medical decisions.  I've heard, more than once, that I was being ridiculous, that abortion wasn't really a medical procedure per se, and that government would never try to intervene in an individual case.

This mess gives "keep your laws off my body" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

So Tom DeLay, Jim Senseenbrenner, the folks at Operation Rescue who are funding this whole scam... they can all burn in hell. And I hope they do.

I do not care whether Terri Schiavo lives or dies. I really don't. I just want her parents, her husband, their lawyers, and the House Majority Leader to shut up about it already. This family's trouble is none of our business.

Tom, don't you have anything better to do?

What's in a name?

So. "Jeff Gannon" says that he began using a pseudonym because his name. James D. Guckert, is hard to pronounce. (Olbermann covers this pretty well in his latest blog entry, so I won't bother to report the cites. You can go read his take on it if you want more details.)

Well, that's fine. I understand completely. Although I don't actually reveal my last name online for basic privacy reasons, I will say that my last name is not the one that I was born with. Mine didn't seem hard to pronounce. The rest of my family did just fine with it, and my brother's wife even took it on when they married.

That said, the name was deceptively hard for people to spell. Having to correct the spelling on a daily basis made me annoying and tiresome, along the lines of "No, that's M-O-U-S-E. (Heavy sigh.)" When I transferred from one college to the other, I had a hard time obtaining my transcript because my last name was misspelled in the registrar's office. Yes, I had unwittingly enrolled in college under a name that wasn't mine.  It was about that time that I decided to change my last name. To make it easier on my family, I adopted the surnames of the great-grandmothers who were alive when I was born, one from each side, as luck would have it.

Then I did something radical. I filed papers in court to make the whole thing legal. In doing that, my pseudonym became my legal name. I could get a White House press pass with it and be in the clear. (Hey, eyeroll.net publishes fairly regularly, and it is certainly a legitimate source of news about recipes with carrots and the joys of living with Maine Coon Cats.)

So if Mr. "Gannon" is serious about wanting to jettison his last name, there are above-board ways to do just that. Perfectly legal in all 50 states. You fill out some easy paperwork, pay your filing fee, sometimes you have to post a notice in public, but not always; and boom, you turn your plan into a plane.

I'm sure that plenty of substitute teachers mangled his name, but for the time being, he needs to shut the hell up. I don't think they made him pose for those pictures, and they sure didn't tell him to hang out in the White House lobbing bonbons at Scott McClellan and the POTUS.

Falling on the wrong sword

If you have been following the trials and tribulations of Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine and their refusal to reveal anonymous sources in the flap over the Valerie Plame outing, well, you're the only one. Congratulations. You're probably a noodge.

Which is OK. Here at eyeroll.net, some of our best friends are noodges.

Or perhaps you, like just about everybody else, have been Bloggers on the Rampage thing. Big Media certainly has. (Eason Jordan resigns from CNN; "Jeff Gannon" is a fake reporter who may have also been a male prostitute. Ring any bells?)

But I was struck by this story. Gov. Robert Ehrlich, of Maryland, has banned all state employees from talking to two Baltimore Sun's reporters that cover state politics because he was displeased with their coverage of his administration.  (He's a Republican, and his bone, it seems, is bringing slot machines to Maryland to bulk up the state treasury. I'm really surprised that the GOP let this clown run on that platform. I guess he represents the Bill Bennett wing of the Republican party.)

U.S. District Court Judge William Quarles, of the Fourth Circuit, wrote, in dismissing the case:

"The Sun seeks a privileged status beyond that of the private citizen. The Sun seeks the declaration of a constitutional right that neither the Supreme Court nor the 4th Circuit has recognized - and, in fact, seeks more access than that accorded a private citizen."

Now. I hold a degree in journalism. (But I don't hold it very close to my face, if you know what I mean.) I have worked as a journalist in both print and broadcast media. Mostly feature writing, because I'm a girl, but I did pay attention in class. One of the principles I took with me from my days as a student of journalism is that a reporter's responsibility to readers is to get access where individuals cannot.

Media credibility is weak on so many fronts, and the stories I've mentioned all contribute to that, as does the super-domination of news coverage by large corporations. Still, I am concerned that in between whining about blogs and frothing about the ability to protect the identities of anonymous sources, a so-far successful attempt to freeze out reporters who are unfriendly to a political agenda has gone largely unmentioned.

If a few reporters have trouble gettining information from future sources, that's an annoyance for a few individuals. If a state successfully muzzles unfavorable press, that's a problem for the public at large. Citizens depend on reporters being free to report the activities of their governments.

I know which sword I'd fall on.

The whole Social Security flap

I don't really have any news about this. If you're looking for news, Josh Marshall can hook you up.

My issue is that I'm mad. The "Social Security is going down the toilet" meme is as old as I am. The closest I can come to finding its roots is David Stockman, who was Reagan's budget director, but it may go back even further. 

I was listening to C-SPAN Radio in the car yesterday (I know, quelle surprise) and they had a call-in show where they were asking for comments about the future of Social Security from the under-40 set. I heard a shocking number of people say that they would be happy to leave it as it is if they could guarantee that their children wouldn't have to participate. Now, I guess I can understand that, but I don't think it's fesable unless Congress would vote to guarantee benefits for every worker currently in the system, but otherwise cut it off. Meaning that if you've paid a dime into it now, you're in; if you haven't, you're on your own.

I can't see that happening.

What makes more sense to me is two moves that would seem like political suicide to most, but since I'm not a politician and I don't care for the majority of people who are politicians (why do I work in politics, again?) the untimely end of some careers isn't going to bother me. I don't think it would bother most Americans.

Step one: raise the cap on the amount of  a worker's wages on which the government collects payroll tax. There is bipartisan support for this from moderates in Congress. Some have suggested exempting the first $15,000 of wages, which I think is a fine idea. They can even call it a tax cut if they like.

Step two: means testing. Sit down and shut up, Congress. I'm pretty sure that we can all agree that anybody who retires with significant income from investment does not need to collect on this insurance policy. That's what the I in FICA stands for. If a person's means changed, then that person would immediately be eligible to collect. To make it more palatable, allow those whose income from investments and assets is above the test level to collect a smaller benefit.

Taking these two unpopular steps would solidify the I/O ratio.

I'm pretty sure that these ideas in concert would be called liberal, leftist, possibly even Communist.  In my world, they are fiscally conservative. Where the government insurance policy steps in if and only if the recipient needs to collect.

I know that solving the Social Security problem is not that simple. The effort to market the simple solution would be colossal, for one thing; and the AARP will still look down from their opulent headquarters on New York Avenue and dispense the Gray Panthers to Capitol Hill to decry this effort to deprive them.

I don't know about you, but  I'm tired of being lied to by our elected officials and armies of lobbyists. It's time for that to stop.

OK, back to political ranting

So, Alberto Gonzales. The president's lawyer, whom the pres thnks ought to be America's lawyer.

I listened to some of his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee when it happened, and I was appalled, though not surprised, at how disingenuous he was. I should not be kind to this little man.

The number of times he squirmed or slithered out from under a senator's question was either masterful or actionable. I'm not quite sure. He's such a... lawyer.

Even though some of my best friends really do have law degrees, I have to say that lawyers have a very unique perspective on truth. It's similar to that of  journalists, which I know from training and experience. Truth is mutable. It is flexible. It is not really all that important.

What is important is candor. Alberto Gonzales is a stranger to candor.

One of the bloggers at Daily Kos summarized the comments of several Democratic senators in their votes not to confirm John Ashcroft in 2001. It is valuable reading, because, as the blogger points out, the principles expressed four years ago still apply. I particularly like this bit from Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)

Remember, the attorney general is not the president's counsel; he has a counsel for that. The attorney general is there for every one of us, Democrats, Republicans, rich, poor, white, black, no matter who you are.

When Gonzales fails to respond to a question from one of our elected representatives, he is not simply disrespecting that individual. He is doing more than lying for the public record, he is lying to the very people he is being appointed to serve and protect.

I have no doubt that he will be confirmed, just as I have no doubt that he is very qualified to be executive counsel, but I do not think he is an appropriate choice to be Attorney General of the United States.

I'll be interested to see how this, and the Rice confirmation, play out.

Do my ears deceive me?

So I was watching Hardball, and Matthews asks Kay Bailey Huchinson (R-Texas) about Barbara Boxer's (D=Calif.) questioning of Condoleeza Rice, complete with quotes from Condi herself, about her exhortations that Iraq was a nuclear threat back in, oh, 2002.

So Kay responds "I don't think she thought Iraq was a nuclear threat, she was just looking for justification to go into Iraq."

I have to think that wasn't in today's talking points. I'll have to go and check the transcript when it appears, but I may have to forgive Chris "Tweety" Matthews for one of his transgressions from last year.

I listened to some of the confirmation hearings on CSPAN radio (WCSP, at 90.1 on your Eff Emm Dial if you're a DC area resident, or the best possible reason to get satellite radio if you're not) and I am still not convinced that Ms. Rice has the oratorical skllls to be Secretary of State. She sounds scared to me. I think part of the  shakiness in her voice comes from the fact that she knows she's lying through her prominent teeth.

On the up side, her hair looks a little better now than it did a year ago. Not that that really matters, I'm just saying.

Not so greatly exaggerated now

It looks like Yasser Arafat is dead. I say that's a good thing because his funeral was already scheduled, and it  would be pretty strange if you had a funeral for a guy who's still languishing.

I'm trying to imagine the eulogy: 

Tap... tap...is this thing on? Um, OK.  So, Arafat, we're going to miss you when you're dead, and we will honor your memory. But right now we're mostly embarrassed that you're not, you know,  dead. Yet.  We're all pretty sure that's going to happen, like, I keep expecting my phone to ring, and then we could get on with the whole mourning thing.... wailing, gnashing of teeth, shooting of guns in the streets... the whole thing. We're gonna do it up right.... is this thing on? OK, well, thank's for coming. We'll let you know when he's  for real dead, but don't go before you try the falafel. They're fantastic!

My real question about the media coverage is this:who put out the Arafat-as-embezzler press release? Apparently this is not news to the Palestinians, but I was shocked to hear that Arafat has the entire wealth of the Palestinian Authority tied up in a dark warren of accounts and investments, and that the whereabouts of the Authority's money may have gone to the grave with him.

Sure. it sounds wrong and corrupt to us, but apparently everybody knew it was happening. That doesn't make the complete lack of accounting a good thing, but I really want to know why all of a sudden the former political hacks that pass as journalists on some cable networks are rubbing their fat little hands together over this so-called story.

There's a game being played with the American worldview, and I'd like to know who's pulling the strings.