just a thought

Has anyone thought to tell the birther clowns that if the President is deemed ineligible for the office we don't get a new election or McCain in the White House, we get . . . President Biden!

Careful what you wish for, jerks.

hometown blues

The people who built it they loved it like I do
There was hope in the trainyards and something inspired
It once was ionic, but it's been painted shut
I found passion for life in Tacoma

From "Thrice All American" by Neko Case

Sure, it's about Tacoma, but that song brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Especially the last line of that verse.

I found passion for life in Tacoma

I envy people who have a sense of place, and that line expresses a sense of place so simply and beautifully. No matter where she finds herself, Neko Case knows she belongs to Tacoma, and Tacoma belongs to her.

As for me, I hate the question "Where are you from?"

I live in Seattle, but I'm not from there. As much as I loved living in Minneapolis, I never belonged to that city. I have a tattoo of a Wisconsin state highway sign on my chest, but I'm no more a 'Sconnie than I am a Minneapolitan.

My life has been spent adrift in geographic impermanence; never anywhere long enough to get a sense of place and always knowing that sometime sooner than I would like, the time would come to hang my hat somewhere else.

It's one thing to have a home, and I've had plenty, but it's another to belong to a place. That, I never have.

my best friend

Ordinarily sparse, the kitten cages in the cat room at the Humane Society in Golden Valley, Minnesota were full of kittens this visit. A scraggly-looking brown tabby with a giant head sat at the front of his cage, mewing plaintively and poking his huge paws between the bars, while his ink-black litter mate napped indifferently in the back. I stopped at the cage to tug at his paw, and he immediately purred, loudly and intensely, and his plaintive mew turned to a contended chirp. I was struck. This was my cat.

Castor and his brother, Pollux, came home to live with me in my little apartment on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. They followed me to an apartment on Lyndale Avenue, and finally to Seattle, where they settled in to Liberty House like it was built for them.

Knowing Castor as I do now, I know he wasn't unhappy in that cage in Golden Valley. He wasn't begging to be adopted, or clamoring to be let out; he simply couldn't understand why, in a room full people, he wasn't getting any attention. It was the only thing he really craved.

After four years of a beatific life, my best friend passed away yesterday. I don't believe in the afterlife, but if I'm wrong, I hope Castor's is a perpetual Indian Summer with plenty of falling leaves to chase, lots of squirrels to stalk, and a warm lap to nap in whenever he wants one.

I'll miss him.

Fitzgerald for Attorney General

Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney who caught Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevic allegedly trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat,is the same attorney who sent Scooter Libby to jail for covering up for whomever in the Bush Administration leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak (we're all looking at you, Mr. Vice President).

I'd piss my pants with glee if President-Elect Obama makes him Attorney General.

good fucking god

Gov. Palin credits a witch-hunting African pastor with praying her into the Alaska Governor's office. No, seriously:

At a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8 this year, Mrs Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church as a guest preacher in late 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid.

In video footage of the speech, she is seen saying: “As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he’s so bold. And he was praying “Lord make a way, Lord make a way.”

“And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not “oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,” no, he just prayed for it. He said “Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.”

And back in Kenya, Pastor Muthee was busy gettin' all 17th Century on old ladies:

The pastor speaks of his offensive against a demonic presence in the town in a trailer for the evangelical video “Transformations”, made by Sentinel Group, a Christian research and information agency.

. . .

According to accounts of the witchhunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.

high life

We do it for the candle in the sky
Here's a toast goes out to those
That can't handle they high
--Atmosphere
"The Arrival"




I'm now two weeks into my return to the trudge-through-the-mud that is life in corporate America, and I just can't get my motor running. My body might be at my desk, but my mind is still sharing a 32 ounce High Life with evil cat while we sit on a rock overlooking the Pacific.

Which is where my body really ought to be, as well.

black helicopters

Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has been chronicling and examining the various activities of extreme right wing groups for some time. He writes in this post about racists on the internets hoping Senator Obama wins in November, then fails as a President so that white folks learn once and for all that we can't trust the darkies:

If you thought the far right went nuts in the 1990s -- when the Democratic president was a white Southern male -- just wait till there's a President Obama. Progressives should be bracing for it.

Remember all the black helicopter loonies from the 90s (Hank Hill's loony neighbor on King of the Hill, Dale Gribble, is a dead-to-rights satire of the type)? The end of the Cold War took away the bogeyman they needed to feed their wierd fantasies of manliness and glory, so they turned their energies to hating the Clintons, the U.S. Government, and the U.N., while Rush Limbaugh and others in the talk-radio echo chamber provided plenty of fodder. It was the crazy-ass rumor mongering that turned me off of politics in the 90s.

When a Republican took the White House and started a war in the Middle East, these loonies had a new, Islamic bogeyman and their mistrust of the government changed to lock-step approval of warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention in Guantanamo and ohter such threats to American civil liberties. They especially won't be happy if a President Obama manages to end the war and take away their new bogeyman. And, as Dave points out, it'll be much, much nastier than it was in the 90s.

The good news is that liberty held on in the 9th to win 5-4.