Happy Blogiversary to a favorite blog buddy.

and Dude! It turns out I'm not the only one who thinks highly of yer talent....



[Please leave comments at Driftglass's place. At age 4, his blog is old enough to take it.]

Salon tonight 9 Eastern

See you next Monday. (Thanks TexBetsy for reminding me to take down the invite...)

Oh gee, I thought I wasn't going to have anything to blog about today.

h/t Sullivan, this guy is MY CONGRESSMAN. Speaking of "blog against theocracy"....

QUIZ: which word doesn't belong in the sentence?

"[O]n Sunday, March 29, Newt Gingrich will convert to Catholicism, the faith of his third wife, Calista Bisek."

What is your opinion of Code Pink?

There is an effort by Code Pink to create a hand-knit, pro-peace banner to carry to the White House on Mother's Day. I'm knitting (bright pink acrylic, ick, but it will stand up to strain and weather, particularly sun bleaching) four-inch squares which will be sewn by others into the larger piece, with contributions from around the country.

There was a comment (on the knitting forum where I announced my intentions) that Code Pink carries all kinds of negative baggage because of their behavior at Congressional Hearings.

And I'm thinking, maybe those Code Pink ladies should just sit there and knit.



I wish, actually, that I had the ovaries to risk arrest for peace, rather than something less involved. But to each her calling.

Comments open on this, after all, I make fun of PETA's methodology all the time. What do you think?

Over at the big blog today.

We were a bit short-handed over at the big blog today, so I was over there helping out. Salon tomorrow night. All's well.

Quick and Dirty on a Saturday Night

h/t Heather for the video and April Winchell for the punchline mp3's.

Saturday Song

There's something so bloggy about a big-name musician (Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies) recording a YouTube in "The Bathroom Sessions" AND allowing embed on the video. Love those guys.

On the GOP Budget Publication Thingy...

Accommodations for Michele Bachmann were made.

Dear IRS: It's in the mail.

The good news is, I don't owe a cent, and will get some back. That's how you want your taxes.

But it was a fascinating exercise from a historian's standpoint. I'm a little astonished at how much my life has changed in the past year, and how it took sitting down for two hours with paperwork to make that register. Divorced, bought a house, moved out of state, changed my family structure...and the IRS had a line-item for each one of those, at least.

I can see a historian/archeologist saying to his work-study undergraduates: "see if you can find the tax records." That and funeral records and you'll really get to know the folks and what they valued.

-------------

I emailed the fellow bloggers on this, but wanted my readers to know as well.

Dr. Zaius wrote me this am, and I'm passing it along as a favor to him, because I love that simian.

"The reason that I write is that I am intrigued by a contest that Bubs has posted on his blog. His daughter, Nora O'Sullivan, is hoping to win Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors Spooksmodel Contest. The contest is judged by online voting."

BG here: Nora is the only contestant dressed like a nurse. Also, she had the good taste to not have blood on her picture. Vampiresses are so 1988.

The link to the contest is here.

The link to Bubs' blog is here.

Whatever you guys can do....Thanks.

Why didn't CNBC see that?

Didn't that screaming CNBC guy see it coming when Goldman Sachs started paying out in Scooby Doo "ruh roh" checks?

But seriously, I had to order new checks this am, and the whole "what do your checks say about you" was hard to stomach.

What does it say about America that the top five checks sold by my bank are "Winnie the Pooh"?

Our Winnie the Pooh Checks share all the fun of the Hundred Acre Woods with you. These Winnie the Pooh Checks bring all the fun and friendship of Eeyore, Tigger, Piglet and Pooh to your wallet.

God knows I need more fun in my wallet, but the most fun is when my checks say "this woman has money in her account." Which hey, is more than you can say for Goldman Sachs.

Carnival of the Liberals 87

There were an amazing number of spam submissions over at the carnival site this time around, but it was easy to find good proletariat harvested wheat among the spammer tares, and below are the ones I enjoyed reading.

Montag presents MAN ON THE STREET posted at I Miss Fafblog, Spot.

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Tough Negotiators, Those Bushies! posted at Mad Kane's Political Madness.

Stephanie Zvan presents In Which I Explain the EFCA posted at Almost Diamonds.

Mike Di Leo presents President Obama Announces Website For Holdout Opponents posted at Lost in Tarnation.

Roger Nehring presents Way to Go New Mexico! posted at equa yona.

Angry Max presents The Quests for Truth and Blood posted at Pterodactyl Puke.

JimD presents Saturday Musings: 'All The News That's Fit To Print' Edition posted at DeRosaWorld.

QuakerDave presents Be(ing) a citizen of the world. « The Quaker Agitator posted at The Quaker Agitator.

PhysioProf presents Constitutional Originalism, Natural Law, and The Ninth Amendment, posted at Comrade Physioprof.

Max Pearson presents The Progressive Puppy: Reality-based sex education? Not in my home state. posted at The Progressive Puppy.

The next Carnival of the Liberals will be held April 8 at Liberal England.

Have you ever hosted Carnival of the Liberals before? If you're a blogger and you haven't, get off your ass and give back to the fold, my friends. I wrote the details in this post. It's still the (pinko lace panties) revolution, comrades.

Thanks to everyone who submitted posts. Keep the faith and keep blogging.

I hate deadlines, but...

Today at 5 Eastern is the deadline for submitting blog posts to Carnival of the Liberals. Details here.

Regarding Blog Against Theocracy, I'll be gearing up on that this weekend. The blogswarm is April 10-12. Please be reminded that the blogswarm is for posts in favor of separation of church and state. While posts entitled "Why I Hate God/Religion So Very Much" may be well-written (and if they are well-written you may want to submit them to Carnival of the Godless), they are off-topic for Blog Against Theocracy. Thanks.

Also not accepted as submissions by me anywhere ever, are posts related to "CH3AP M@ILING L1STS". What kind of f**knozzle spams a blogswarm?

Live chat with Blue Gal and other bloggers 9-10 Eastern

Join us next week!

No headphones, webcam, or download needed.

Pat Buchanan opens my eyes. No, Really.

Pat Buchanan doesn't like the apparent casual nature of Barack Obama's presidency. And before I join Chris Matthews in a knee-jerk giggle to the old Latin-Mass lover, I think he has a point. I made this video, which, I'm sure, Pat Buchanan has watched many times just so he can boogie to the Ting Tings:



But watching Pat catch flak for his opinion made me think a bit more about why Obama has made the choice to make the presidency more informal. It runs deeper than just appealing to young people. I was on a train in the past two weeks and gawd, are those college students today addicted to their I-phones. That's obvious, but what are they doing with them? Texting friends. People they choose to be in touch with electronically.

I've noticed a change in my own internet behavior in the past two months. I'm writing this at 2:27 in the afternoon, and true story--I have not checked my actual email inbox today yet. I have email notification and watched the messages as they have come in, but I haven't actually opened and read a single one yet.

But I have read my tweets. And sent out two myself.

You guys know I'm a Twitter believer. But I have come to see that the big bulletin board of people I WORK with on the blogs is the real essential part of my day, more than even email. Therefore, I can't imagine giving up a larger portion of my life to text messaging. Good god, how do people with those little devices ever get anything else done? (I can testify that on a train they don't.)

If Barack Obama is going to tap into the political power of the Iphone/Twitter/text generation, he has to be desirable enough on that level that he will be let into that world. It's a scary and very predictable thing that in a world awash in information, we are all becoming that selective in what kind of information we allow onto our screens.

Is it going too far to say that Obama has to be the kind of President who is also a Facebook Friend in order to have his voice heard? Excellent question, Mister Buchanan, but no matter how we answer:


kthxbye

I likee!

Don't keep calm and carry on.
Originally uploaded by moleitau

I posted the "keep calm and carry on" poster at the big blog the other day and a kind reader sent me this.

And by the way, if you think I'M bad on the whole economy thing, you should read Rushkoff at Arthur Magazine. He thinks we should let the economy die. Yeah.

Sitting on the (virtual) Left Bank, watching the (class) war go by.

I'm astonished at how like the last progressive revolution this one will be. There are muckrakers (Matt Taibbi) evil big business villains (AIG) and really, Barack Obama should be reading the biographies of Woodrow Wilson rather than FDR. I worry about our addiction to experts to solve our problems. Timothy Geitner was chosen (and so was Tom Daschle at HHS) because of their expertise, but that expertise is due to their closeness to the problems that they're facing. You apparently can't be an "expert" in the healthcare crisis without having been a lobbyist for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, or an expert in Banking without having "Citi" on your resume.

I love articles about demography, marketing, and grouping of individuals along education and class status. These articles are never completely accurate, and some are out-and-out wrong. Take this one, by in The Atlantic Monthly, :

...perhaps these times of hardship will see a return of the true bohemian, as in the days when the Left Bank was actually squalid. Stylistically, some artistic people are returning to thrift chic (either Goodwill retro wear, or something akin to the party a girlfriend threw recently called “Bitch Swap,” where you trade around the rags you’re tired of). ….listen for poignant, witty Frank O’Hara stories about transformative experiences that occur on public transportation (in the rain), on This American Life. As Borders stores shutter, perhaps we’ll see a reflowering of public libraries. In any case, unable to secure those astronomical loans, more Xers will have to start rubbing shoulders with The Other, living in truly mixed neighborhoods, next door to such noncreative types as Kohl’s-shopping back-office workers and actual not-yet-ready-for-their-close-up-in-Yoga- Journal immigrants.

This economic catastrophe is teaching the Xers that their prized self-¬expression and their embrace of personal choice leads to … the collapse of capitalism. Time to inculcate not those self-satisfyingly hip and rebellious values—innovation! self-fulfillment!—cherished by the creative class (a class, after all, that includes in its ranks those buccaneering entrepreneurs who’ve led us down the primrose path), but those staid and stolid values of the bourgeoisie: industry, sobriety, moderation, self-discipline, and avoidance of debt.

Okay, who the HELL is she talking about? Well, she’s talking about herself and her artist/writer LA/New York friends. People who have, or until recently HAD, paid jobs at the Atlantic. Remember David Brooks, when he assured the “bourgeois bohemians” or Bobos, as he called them, in 2001 (also in The Atlantic):

“…there's talk of widening income gaps, and there are certainly widening social gaps -- between the people who shop at a Restoration Hardware, for example, and the people who wouldn't get all the verbal references at a store like that, all those sly references to F. Scott Fitzgerald novels and such. But as I went around the country, I didn't find much social resentment.

Actually, I saw a woman get arrested at a Restoration Hardware in Palo Alto for yelling at some of the rich customers. She was yelling "You rich bitch!" and things like that. I thought, Here's real social resentment—here comes the revolution! But other than that incident I really didn't find much. What I did find was a society that doesn't resent the elites—that doesn't have a clear sense that some people are better than others. Everybody seems to belong to their own little clique. There's no sense of inferiority. And therefore no sense of resentment.

So does that mean that Boboism is here to stay?

I don't see anything toppling it. I don't see any mass populist revolt against it. What I do see is an elite that's very good at co-opting things. Marx said the most dangerous elites were the ones who could absorb the talented members of the oppressed classes. And thanks to admissions committees and outreach programs and things like that, Bobos are very good at absorbing talented people into their ranks. So I really see this group lasting and lasting and lasting.

David, honey, Arianna Huffington is BANKING on "absorbing the talented members of the oppressed classes" and paying them in eyeballs, isn't she? And Brooks, you must kiss your lucky ass every morning that the public has a short memory, but that kinda goes without saying.

I never cared much about money, particularly in terms of salary. That sounds like a lie, even to me, but then I remember an interview I had, the interviewer asked me if I cared about money and I said no. The job interviewer said, "It's obvious from your resume you don't." There was another opportunity I had to go into management once. My boss loved my work at IT helpdesk and suggested I could move into IT management. I looked at him and said, Boss, I've seen my supervisor's computer desktop. It's full of "continuous process improvement” folders. Why would I want to give up a job where I'm actually helping people to work on that kind of ...I didn't say Bullshit but he was a former drill sergeant, so I didn't have to. I know I had his respect for my decision, since he was the same way. What you do and what you fix is much more important than what other's name you. I can smell a person impressed by the title "manager" a mile away and I avoid those people.

The thing is, we have a President like that, now, too. It's really shaking up Washington that oh my fucking god the President really doesn't care about power. Well, get this: he does care about power, but only to the extent that power will help him accomplish something. He was born after 1960. Coincidence? I think not.

I'm not laying blame and saying "the economic debacle is not MY generation's fault." This is about "You’ve handed my generation a huge mess and expect us to find a way to put Humpty back together again. What we’ve got to work with is a dustpan of worthless dollar bills owned by China."

The largest generational divide in this country is between those Hillary Clinton’s age (62 ish) AND those Barack Obama’s age (47 ish). I do feel for those almost ready to retire who feel the rug has been pulled out from under them, but get this: a whole big lot of 40 somethings don’t think Social Security will be there for them at all, let alone some fucking mutual fund.

And I really shake my head at the “journalism” above, because it points not to a real drive to end greed and downsize, but to, let’s be honest, poverty chic. The boomers will never be old and poor. They will be the seasoned and frugal generation. Everything that happens leads to the “ever new kind of cool” that boomers are so addicted to. My friend JR put it so well, “The generation that INVENTED the lifestyle is going to find a way.” Economic need? Ooh, let’s make elder communes. Tap water reduces the landfill! Local food, thrift stores, vintage! No matter what and no matter how bad it gets, the Clinton/Huffington generation will make their response to it cool.

We're facing more than an economic crisis. This is a race to the bottom at the moment, and one of the problems is, those of us who never had a big stake in capitalism aren't all that upset about it. I was reading Figleaf (nsfw) the other day and this statement astonished me: "Despite having been homeless for nearly two years and nearly homeless for another two I don't really think I know that much about poverty...in gendered terms," Well, setting aside the gender part of his statement being under-housed for four years is a sure sign of knowing quite a bit about poverty.

Is Figleaf in denial?

I spoke to a fellow gen xer about this and he said "well, but compared to the underclass in the third world he is not in poverty." I agreed, but see where we 40 somethings took that? Not to pitchforks and torches, but to bowing our heads that we are not in Darfur. It's a crazy-ness, because we have a right to get mad at the greed that says it's okay for a Presidential candidate to NOT KNOW how many fucking houses he owns off the top of his head, and a gifted white guy writer is semi-homeless for four years, but that's okay because, what, his wife doesn't own a brewery estate? And after all, at least white guy gifted writer isn't in Darfur. What is fucking WRONG with this picture? I don't get it sometimes.

A lot of boomers genuinely agree with the following simple rules:

1. The world owes everyone on this planet a decent home and a enough to live on.
2. And we've all been put here to help each other get there.
3. We’ve got to give up greed on an individual level to make that happen.

Too many of the wealthiest people on the planet don't get that. Here's an extreme thought: what if everyone who subscribed to Real Simple, Voluntary Simplicity, and Yoga Journal had cashed in what they didn't need to live on, most of their 401K's, for Darfur? They didn't, and I'm not chiding them for that. I'm saying there's a huge difference between voluntary poverty for the sake of patting one's own back in yoga sun saluation. Welcome, America, to not-so-voluntary poverty. Greed is not good.

This is not a dollars and cents problem. It is a sense of right and wrong problem. Paul or whoever wrote this down for Paul in Corinthians and Ephesians, so many centuries ago, got it. (from the Weymouth Translation)

The weapons with which we fight are not human weapons, but are mighty for God in overthrowing strong fortresses. For we overthrow arrogant 'reckonings,' and every stronghold that towers high in defiance of the knowledge of God.

For ours is not a conflict with mere flesh and blood, but with the despotisms, the empires, the forces that control and govern this dark world--the spiritual hosts of evil arrayed against us in the heavenly warfare.

I have my own myopia, in that I have surrounded myself with poor struggling writers online. So I think that’s who matters. We’re the creative class who won’t be adopted by Arianna for no money down, not because we’re holding out for her money but because we really truly don’t want it on her terms. I love the Twitter bio: “will eventually grow up and get a real job. Until then, will keep making things up and writing them down.” But that’s Neil Gaiman’s Twitter bio, the guy who wrote Coraline and Sandman. Age? 48, baby. A real job? Huh.

The squalid Left Bank is now virtual, you see. And we've even got a philosophy (natch) called New Puritanism. It's the perfect muckraker/progressive/'save the world and bite the hand that feeds' zeitgeist:

The terms New Puritan and Neo-Cromwellians were coined by Jim Murphy, associate director of the Future Foundation, to describe a perceived trend in British society. The term, which has been adopted by a number of main stream newspapers and other media, refers to the increasing tendency for the young middle classes to accept increasing regulation and self regulation of their life curtailing the "consumption culture". ...The Observer suggests a further example: at the point of sale in a major High Street store the assistant states "I'm duty bound to ask you if you want to open a store card with a preposterously uncompetitive interest rate". The reporter declines. "Good," he said, "I never push them, sometimes I don't even mention them, because they just encourage people to get into debt. Personally, I'd ban store cards." Clearly such suggestions have implications for many aspects of the economy...

Gee, I'd like to buy that High Street store clerk a fair-trade latte. Wanna meet me after yoga class?

Saturday Song

I seriously love this website.

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lab.drwicked.com

I'm writing a long post about class and generational politics and Obama and I couldn't get it started and now I did. I've used this technique many times but having an online tool that goes after you to keep going is really really nice. Thanks, Dr. Wicked, may I have another?

Working on putting together Carnival of the Liberals (details on how to participate are here) plus doing the round-up for Mike both days this weekend. Plus the long post. Life is good.

First in a series?

click image for larger and feel free to steal.