Your Daily Epiphany

Manifesto of a Progressive Single Female Land Owner

2011-11-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

I’m of the last generation that grew up on analogue communications – hand-written letters and no email, typing on Corasable paper in college. Word processors – the DOS kind – entered the workplace the year after I graduated, in 1985. The only phones we had was our land line, and when I was in the car, out shopping, or off picking blackberries in Webster, you couldn’t reach me. If I got lost on the way home, I stopped at a gas station and looked at a map. Cell phones looked huge and ridiculous, and having and using one cost a fortune.

Everyone raised after that point grew up with their lives being broadcast in some fashion. With email, GPS and online social networks, status updates, options on electronics and web sites with default settings on “track,” it seems that we live much more publicly than we used to, which is good in a lot of ways, but also a double-edged sword.

Privacy is a huge area of Constitutional rights that I think could use a serious shot of adrenaline. It is the very core from which We the People store and build our power. It is the locus of our integrity as individual human beings. Keep in mind as well, that with the increasing economic disparity, the Middle Class has not only lost out on income but also on privacy. With every home lost, gone is also a power base, a zone of autonomy, independence, and influence.

Privacy is the reason why the government is not supposed to tap your phone without a warrant. It is why the government can’t force you donate one of your kidneys to Rupert Murdoch, even though he’s stinking rich, and you are the only perfect match for him, and without your kidney he’ll die. Privacy, of course, is the seat of bodily integrity, and that is a kickass feminist discussion for another day.

Privacy is a zone in which we can interact freely and without government surveillance or interference. It is the zone of liberty in which, provided you don’t bother anybody else, you can do as you wish. It is also the zone in which the people are sovereign to their government, as in they get their powers from us, and all rights and powers are reserved to the People. That’s express in the 9th Amendment. It is also grounded in "The Penumbra of the Constitution."

Privacy is not the same as secrecy. It can be open to the public. It can be transparent with documentation, but it can also be free of governmental supervision and surveillance. My home is a gun-free, bigotry-prohibited, progressive-friendly, human liberation zone. It took me until my late 40s to be able to afford it and get in here, ‘cause the mortgage and taxes ended up being less than my monthly rent in NYC. Now I am a single-female homeowner and tax payer. How many times has that happened in human history, without having to marry some nobleman or captain of industry, minister to his needs, and have him die before I died of repeat child-bearing?

The private sphere is a crucial power base for the Middle Class. It is the very essence of democracy, in which every man and woman can be a king, a free and autonomous political being. As such, as a private citizen who has dominion over this land and this ediface, I want to devote the resources I have to the movement and towards the expansion and acquisition of more zones of privacy within the reach and control of the Middle Class.

25,000 who survived on 9-11

2010-09-11T21:48:00.000-07:00

It was supposed to be the Democratic Primary for Mayor of NY. Mark Green was the front runner. Mike Bloomberg was kind of a joke, another really rich guy who wanted to buy his way into public office and political power.

The primary in September, 2001, was where the mayoral election in October would be decided. The Democrat most likely to be nominated was considered a shoo-in in the general election in November. So getting the right Democrat for the NYC mayoral race was the order of the day on September 11th.

Because this was effectively the election that would choose NYC's next mayor, a lot of people were off voting on the morning of Sept 11. That is why there were only 25,000 people in the building, instead of the 50,000 on ordinary mornings around 9 or ten.

But the election wasn't the only thing contributing to the 25,000 who happened to not be at the Towers.

For many families, September 11, 2001, the first Tuesday after the long Labor Day weekend, happened also to be the First Day of School. Parents were late to work at the Trade Center because they were personally dropping off the kids at school. So they weren't there and didn't die.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 also happened to be the day after Monday Night Football, the season opener, which happened to be the NY Giants against the Denver Broncos, a rematch of the legendary Giant Superbowl Championship of 1986. The game was in Denver. On the night of September 11, Giants fans all across the tri-state area parked themselves in front of the tube, with a healthy supply of superb munchies and beer. They dug in for the game, way past their bedtime on a work night.

Yup, TANKED.

In sum, many people who had watched the Giants MNF game the night before, were tired, maybe hungover, definitely ticked, annoyed, irritated, or pissed off and depressed due to Denver handing the Giants their asses. So they overslept and made like slugs and ended up late for work. Indeed, on that morning-after, the achy, lingering putrescence of New York Giants loss may have actually saved the lives of thousands of New Yorkers.

And then, of course, you had the incomparable contribution of the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority police, and various Court Officers, Marshals and security throughout the downtown area. They got at least 25,000 people out of the Towers before the buildings collapsed. Talk about the ultimate sacrifice.

Oy vey! They're building a mosque at Ground Zero!

2010-06-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

The only way someone could be upset about this is if he or she equates Islam with terrorism and assumes that all or most Moslems sponsor or approve of anti-American terrorism. That is a grossly erroneous assumption.

Islam didn't call for the attack on the WTC. Extremism and radical fundamentalism did...as well as sheer, batshit crazy, criminal impulse.

Supporting the building of the Cordova center two blocks from "Ground Zero" is not just some knee-jerk "politically-correct" attempt at appeasement of a hostile population. This is to give members of one religion the same access that an American city would give to *any* religion. It is to remain true to our democratic principles of equality and religious freedom.

Yes, it creates -- or rather affirms, since there was already a Mosque in the vicinity of Ground Zero -- an Islamic presence in the area. But this is an Islamic institution whose own principles stand in stark opposition to the violent radical fundamentalism of various Wahabist sects. This mosque openly embraces diversity in faiths and advocates tolerance. It will further cultivate and support moderate, mainstream Islamic communities who are integrated in and invested in their greater American communities. This can only be a good thing. It is crucial that Americans support and help to cultivate mainstream, moderate Islamic communities. That is a cornerstone in the delegitimization of the violent, fundamentalist sects.

Where building a house of worship in a given community is at issue, if we start saying that a different standard for approval applies to Moslems than the one for everybody else, we've just stepped out onto the same slippery logical continuum as the 1938 laws in Germany -- Jewish doctors are not allowed to treat Aryan patients; Jewish teachers cannot teach at public schools; Jewish citizens are banned from serving in public office -- or as imprisoning Japanese American citizens in internment camps. There is no principled distinction between these measures. The difference is only of degree.

And what the fuck is this development lately in our country that it is okay to attempt to surgically strike out certain fundamental civil rights of individuals, based on how certain people look or based on their religion???

This ain't right, Jeff. You know what I'm talkin' about.

Waterboarding is against UNITED STATES LAW

2009-06-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

I can't believe the utter crap reasoning I've been seeing in DEFENSE of TORTURE. "We need to do it "-- all competent evidence to the contrary that it actually helps and to the affirmative that it actually hurts -- "because the attack on the US on 9-11 was an atrocity."

That is the very essence of a false argument, linking two things that have no relationship to one-another, other than indulging our sense of anger and helplessness respecting the attack on 9-11. And I speak as someone who breathed in the debris from the WTC as it rained down on my home...and personally know people who died, including the 20 firefighters from my neighborhood.

YES, the terrorists are utter savages and barbarians, and we should fight them FIERCELY in the field. NO MERCY.

But once they are in our custody and control...once they are CAPTIVE PRISONERS..., they are no longer a threat. They are helpless. They are human beings AT OUR MERCY.

The only conceivable threat that a captive prisoner presents to us is in the hypothetical situation, the "ticking time bomb scenario," which makes for a good episode of "24," but is so remote in actuality that in no way should the exception decimate the rule. Moreover, it's just a BAD IDEA to base major national security policy decisions on fictional television shows, as opposed to on our law, our foundational constitutional principles and on the settled professional insights of expert interrogators in the field.

Professional interrogators in the FBI and CIA -- folks like Matt Alexander, leader of the interrogation team that located Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaida in Iraq and murderer of tens of thousands, by using relationship-building methods and non-coercive techniques -- have stated repeatedly that even in the "ticking time bomb scenario," torture is the LEAST efficacious method for extracting the information needed to save lives. Befriending the subject, winning them over, using deception...these are all methods that have consistently proven MORE EFFECTIVE than torture in gaining useful and reliable intelligence.

Speaking of intelligence, it is far better to employ our brains, smarts and the accumulated know-how of professional experts to gain crucial information than it is to allow our EMOTIONS and desire for revenge to govern our responses in these situations.

What the defenders of torture stand for is akin to saving the village in Vietnam by incinerating it. We would "save" our country by voluntarily incinerating our Constitution, intentionally violating U.S. LAW, and decimating our country by destroying everything it stands for, everything that makes us great, everything that makes us a LAW-ABIDING DEMOCRACY.

Resorting to torture is the pussy's way out. It is a reaction rooted in fear and lack of faith in the greatest system of justice and democracy on this earth. We allow the terrorists to scare us into destroying ourselves. The decimation of the US becomes an inside job. Such a reaction could not be more anti-democratic, more barbaric, more ANTI-AMERICAN.

For shame!

No, Rabbi Pomerantz. You are wrong.

2009-06-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

In a column published today on Newsmax.com, Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz employs stunningly tortured logic to hold President Obama responsibile for Wednesday's terrorist shooting by white supremacist James W. von Brunn, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

As a Reform Jew and a Zionist, I find Rabbi Pomerantz's remarks utterly mortifying. I cannot believe this guy is a chaplin for the State of New York. He says:

Just last week, Obama told his worldwide audience more than 100 million people that the killing of six million Jews during the Holocaust was the equivalent of Israel's actions in dealing with the Palestinians.

Although the rabbi speaks here as if he is quoting Obama directly, that is not what the President said. Rather, the President simply iterated two truths that are not in conflict -- that the Holocaust was an atrocity against humanity and that Israel has a part to play in improving the plight of the Palestinians within and adjacent to its borders.

President Obama called on the Palestinians to abandon violence...and for the Israelis to abandon the continued expansion of the settlements on the West Bank. He held BOTH sides accountable for the part they MUST play in making a lasting peace in the region in the future. He did NOT state that the plight of the Palestinians was *equivalent* to that of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. To put such words into President Obama's mouth stops just short of libel.

What I will say as a New Yorker and a Reform Jew is this: Because of our persecution in the Holocaust, Jews here and in Israel MUST stand against persecution of people based on heritage, ethnicity or national identity, no matter how relatively mild that persecution may be. NEVER AGAIN means we MUST stand for equal rights for ALL human beings, regardless of race, color, creed, nationality, etc. To stand for Israel's security is not in conflict with these goals because security measures can and MUST be aimed against those whose behavior-- not identity -- presents a threat.

American and Israeli Jews can and must oppose the violence of Hamas while vigorously defending the rights of the Palestinian people to a country and the blessings of peace, security and prosperity. That is my position. My grandmother violated the United States Neutrality Act to ship arms to Israel during the wars in 1967 and 1973. I was raised to support Israel as a Jewish homeland, and I do fiercely stand for Israel and against antisemitism. I also stand for the equal right of the Palestinian people to their own homeland, side-by-side with Israel.

Obama did indeed condemn the violence perpetuated by Hamas. He is not letting the Palestinian people off the hook.

To state that President Obama's views "help create a danger as great as that posed by the Nazis to the Jewish people," is histrionic crazy talk, so over the top it is beyond credibility.

I see this as a common flaw among many of my fellow Jews and fellow Zionists, the false belief that to hold ourselves and our beloved Israel accountable for the part we have played in exacerbating the suffering of our Palestinian brothers and sisters is to sew the seeds of our own destruction. This is the fundamental misconception that has kept and continues to keep Palestinians and Israelis mired in perpetual conflict.

We need a paradigm shift, or we will NEVER have peace.

I am a Reform Jew. I love God. I love Israel. I love my Palestinian neighbors out here in Brooklyn, and I love my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Rabbi Pomerantz does NOT speak for me. And I know I am not alone in feeling this way as a Jew.

Cheneyan Doublethink and Newspeak

2009-06-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised Dick Cheney has the gall to come out and publicly defend torture of detainees by American authorities. As far back as I can remember, from McCarthy to Tricky Dick and Spiro, to Gingrich and Ken Starr, to Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez and Karl Rove...and that drooling idiot in the corner with the lace collar and the propeller hat..., these guys on the far right have been utterly shameless. So why should I expect an dirty old dog to suddenly learn new tricks?

Cheney refers to water boarding by the sanitizing euphemism, "enhanced interrogation techniques." He does this despite the fact that current, effective statutory law, judicial rulings and international treaties unambiguously define water boarding as torture. Let's leave aside the fact that Abu Zubaydah was "interrogatorily enhanced" over 80 times in one month.

According to Cheney, however, when Cheney calls water boarding an "enhanced interrogation technique," suddenly and magically it is no longer torture, not illegal, not a horrendous way to treat a captive human being.

Cheney's coinage is a classic example of "Newspeak" a central weapon in the totalitarian propaganda arsenal, illustrated so indelibly in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. With Newspeak, something is not what it is simply because the government authorities say so. To challenge the government’s statement is to commit a treasonous act, to invites government scrutiny and police intrusion into one's life ... like having all of one's phone calls and internet transmissions tapped, without a warrant.

Oh wait. They did that.

A self-proclaimed minion of "the Dark Side," Cheney has never wavered in his staunchly optional relationship to factual accuracy and, well, reality. If he could, he would suck the entire world into the black hole that is his psyche, so we all might play a part in the dark puppet show of Cheney's most paranoid fantasies. Combine Cheney's contempt for facts with Karl Rove's head for political strategy; add in their mutual appreciation of the manipulative power of fear, and you've got one diabolical formula: Strategic Mendacity -- a pattern of making stuff up to exploit people's fears.

Here is how strategic mendacity works: Put forth false factual assertions that justify one's position and put the burden on your opposition to marshal the facts necessary to set the record straight. Blanket the world with bullshit, and leave it to your opponent to dig the fuck out. Strategic mendacity has proven exceedingly effective, particularly in the period following 9-11, when overflowing wells of fear throughout the American public primed the field for absorption of megatons of bullshit.

It's a brilliant diversionary tactic. Instead of openly debating matters of policy and law on the merits, the Rovians mine the field of public discourse with factual misrepresentations, deliberately planted to mire the opposition in the effort required to expose and debunk the lies. It's a dirty tactic that works like a progressive tax on the opposition. Valuable time and effort that could be spent on positive efforts towards change and progress get wasted instead on Republican Roto-Rooter Research duty, sifting through the sewage.

Which leads me to one of my favorite pieces of Rovian Newspeak -- We are fighting this "War on Terrorism" in order to preserve and protect our freedom. Meanwhile, the government taps Americans' phones without probable cause, turns air travel into a universal stop-and-frisk, and obliterates core constitutional principles like the presumption of innocence and freedom of assembly.

We're preserving and protecting our freedoms by setting up a second judicial system, a shadow system of justice, outside the jurisdictional reaches of the United States Constitution, unbound by the need for a speedy trial, legal representation, the right to confront one's accuser, the right to due process or any hearing at all, prior to the deprivation of a human being's liberty or property. And this is all okay.

Newspeak. Doublethink.

Strategic mendacity, like "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," drove us into an unnecessary war in which thousands of young Americans gave their lives and still more their limbs, their mental health, their ability to support their families and to simply enjoy life. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives were wiped out, blithely dismissed as “collateral damage” in the greater battle for "freedom" or to wipe out WMD...or whatever.

Let us not forget, for years the Bush-Cheney administration fought the release of the numbers on Iraqi casualties. They sought to keep from us crucial information bearing on our personal responsibility as citizens of a democratic country, waging war upon the people of a foreign land. As far as the Bush-Cheney administration was concerned, the First Amendment to the Constitution simply would be on hold for as long as Bush-Cheney could make their state of emergency endure.

It is nothing short of an outrage that the connection between Iraq, Al Qaeda and the "War on Terror" -- the entire justification for going to war -- was one Big Lie after another, backed by intentionally-stilted intelligence reports, cooked up to provide after-the-fact support for foregone conclusions dictated by Bush, Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Saddam had weapons of mass destruction because Dick-Bush-Rummy said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the patriotism of anyone who would question this claim is inherently suspect. Newspeak.

One particularly galling aspect of strategic mendacity is that the mainstream media, in a misguided effort to "fairly represent both sides of an issue," habitually give equal billing and air time to the psychotic claims of the Cheney-Rovites. Their arguments are deemed newsworthy not because they are factually sound but because of their entertainment value.

This was the unintended consequence of the side-by-side coverage of the May 21 speeches of Dick Cheney and President Obama. The entertainment value of the cage fight death match elevated Dick Cheney, a personage who should be shrinking into obscurity in disgrace, to the same level of public relevance as President Obama. This "even-steven" approach to coverage confers an undeserved legitimacy upon Cheney and the toxic bullshit he shamelessly disseminates to the American public.

Let us also not forget that when Joseph Wilson published credible evidence questioning the accuracy of the Dick-Bush WMD claims, the Administration – indeed Cheney – responded by deliberately blowing the cover of Valerie Plame, an active intelligence officer of the CIA! This is the same Vice President who had the gall to fault both President Obama and Nancy Pelosi on their support of the CIA. Simply mindbending, eye-crossing, head-exploding gall. Chutzpah.

Newspeak.

An old saying among trial lawyers holds: "A jury will forgive a witness anything, except for a lie." One lie, and anything else the witness might say will be dismissed as non-credible and worthless. If a witness will lie about one thing; he will lie about anything.

With that in mind, it is dumbfounding to me that either Rove or Cheney has the nerve to show themselves in public, let alone to speak on any subject, when the American public has countless examples of reasons to never credit another single word that Cheney or Rove may utter.

Helpful Tips for the Newly Unemployed

2009-04-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

With the recent economic downturn, millions of qualified American workers in good standing are being laid off by their companies. Many of these employees have had double-digit and often double-decade years of service with their employer. The sudden change in status is an enormous blow not only to your income and ability to support your family, but also to your self-esteem and emotional well being. Having a place to go every day, where you can be productive and from which you can derive a sense of satisfaction, is a key stabilizing factor in your life.

As a professional recruiter, I speak to people dealing with this situation every day -- good, highly-credentialed people laid off in 2008 or as early as last week. Here are some tips on how to cope that I have been sharing with all the candidates I’ve been speaking with:

When you get laid off . . .
• Do take a vacation, but end it at a certain date. You might give yourself exactly three days to do absolutely nothing—take a couple of days to hang out, do fun and lazy things, sleep until noon, watch DVDs of every television series and movie you've missed.
• After those three days, get busy and stay busy. Treat your search for a job the same as you would treat a project at work.
• Make it your job to find a job.

Every weekday . . .
• Get up early and at the same time every day.
• Go to the gym or for a run if that was your pre-work habit.
• Shower and get yourself looking polished (make up, hair care, etc.)
• Get dressed in business casual clothing, as if you were going to work. You are!

Do all of the obvious things:
• Update your resume.
• Create or update your page on Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Start reaching out to all of your professional/work world contacts, let them know that you’re looking and what you are looking for, send resumes where appropriate, and line up references and letters of recommendation.
• Reach out to all of your old classmates, everyone you've ever known from everywhere.
• Post your resume on professional/skilled work job boards and school-related outlets.
• If there’s a government or school-related placement office, go there. Browse their job listings and post your resume there.

Do some less obvious things:
• You can extend your "vacation" by every day that you take on active projects in your home and outside your home. No more procrastination.
• Clean out your garage, attic, basement, closets, and bedroom (this is good for the soul).
• Hold a garage sale or stoop sale.
• Donate old clothing and stuff you can't sell to a cause that needs it.
• Take a day to go to museums or art shows or a cultural activity that inspires you and feeds your soul.

Feeding your soul is valid self-care to help you find a new job/career!
Remember, unstructured time is the enemy. When you hang out and watch TV, it eats at you and makes you feel guilty and badly about yourself. You can end up in a downward spiral of feeling badly, which saps your motivation; the lack of motivation keeps you from being productive, and that, in turn, makes you feel even worse. As Woody Allen once said, "Eighty per cent of success is getting out the door." Or something like that.

Do not let idleness gain a foothold!

Now REALLY GET BUSY:
• Make your own business cards on the Web or professionally, if you can afford it.
• Research free training programs on the Internet. See if programs are available in real life in your community, through houses of worship, government programs, civic organizations, and take one (or two).
• Take a class; brush up your skills; learn new skills; get a certification in Six Sigma, ASQ, CPIM, CPA, anything that will enhance your employability and send you to the head of the pack.

Volunteer in your community!
• Get out in real life where you can meet people.
• Always bring your business cards and hand them out liberally.
• Keep extra resumes in your car, briefcase, handbag, knapsack, or whatever.
• When you meet someone who could be a valuable business contact, be prepared to give them your card or resume. Get that person’s phone number and email address!
• After you've given out your business card or resume, call or email that person within 24 hours (the sooner the better) to follow up with them on any opportunities they may know of that would be a fit for you.
• Also keep in mind that when you help others, you will keep your skills sharp and feel needed and good about yourself. That is huge in terms of feeling good about yourself and nurturing your motivation to keep going!
• And you can include your community service on your resume!

Be mentally prepared to sit for many interviews.
• If you are someone who is accustomed to walking in, nailing your first interview, and getting the job, for now that situation is over. Competition is that intense. Instead, be prepared to sit for 5-10 interviews or even more.
• Treat every interview as a learning experience. Even if you don't get the job, the interview itself is still a valuable experience in which you get to rehearse how you present yourself, your qualifications, and your skills. With practice, you inevitably become more at ease and more skilled in touting what you have to offer.
• Again, if you don't get the job, don't take it as a judgment against you or the value of your qualifications. Someone else may simply be a better match based upon the finer points of their credentials or experience.

A special note for professionals seeking jobs:
Professionals should avoid general all-purpose job boards. You're better off posting your resume in boards specifically targeted to your area of specialization (like APICS for Supply Chain Professionals or AICPA for CPAs).

If you are a professional worker (accountant, engineer, EHS supervisor, supply chain manager or account manager, teacher, healthcare professional, regulatory affairs professional, etc.) -- the kind of professional dealt with by professional recruiters -- take care not to overexpose yourself on public boards on the Internet, like Monster and CareerBuilder.

If your resume is posted all over creation, or if you apply directly to employers, you can eliminate the motivation for recruiters to work with you. If it is likely that employers in your field already have your resume (because you submitted it directly, or they pulled it off Monster) in their files, then a recruiter will not get credit for bringing your resume to the employer's attention. Accordingly, the recruiter will be precluded from representing you, and your resume will stay buried in the employer's files.

Instead, do your research to locate job boards specifically aimed at your field or profession; post your resume in those boards, and do reply to job ads listed by recruiters. Take care to reply ONLY to ads for jobs for which you can be fairly considered a match -- that is, jobs where your experience and credentials do match at least 3 of the MUST-HAVE requirements posted in an ad. That is the best way to make a valuable and truly productive contact with a recruiter who actually works in your field and will be proactive in helping to market your resume for the job listed or other jobs similar to it.

These are just some beginning tips. The key is to keep yourself busy, productive, and feeling good about yourself while you hunker down to find a good job.

http://www.exek-recruiters.com
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Member of Society of Manufacturing Engineers

Throwing Shoes at George Bush is WRONG!

2008-12-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that I can't bloody stand President George W. Bush.

WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.

I object mightily, however, to the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at the President during a joint news conference with Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday. Shoe-throwing may seem a small offense in comparison to the war crimes Bush stands accused of in the forum of world opinion, and ultimately, I hope, in a court of law. Bush's own wrongdoing, however, remains irrelevant.

The crux of Bush's offenses turn on his lawlessness: his unlawful invasion of Iraq and his flouting of the Geneva Convention and of the United States Constitution. Another act of lawlessness -- an assault against an individual and an act of aggression against a visiting head of state -- remains unjustifiable. Two wrongs do not make a right.

A shoe is the least of what I would like to throw at George W. Bush. More than anything, however, I would like to throw the book at him: specifically, my very thick book of United States Constitutional Law and my book of international law, including the laws against torture.

The act not only dishonored George Bush. It dishonored the office of the United States Presidency. It also dishonored the rule of law, which is the very foundation upon which civilization stands. Those proclaiming Muntader al-Zaidi a folk hero might well argue that the journalist dishonored the office no more than President Bush himself has, during his disastrous 8-year reign. That doesn't make the shoe-throwing incident right.

Those who ache for the restoration of respect for human rights must practice such respect for precisely those individuals we personally revile the most. If we cannot protect them and levy punishment in accordance with the rule of law, then we cannot protect anyone.

A Much-Needed Ned for the United States

2008-12-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama is the United States' "Ned," the guy you meet shortly after coming through a crazy, traumatic experience -- like being abandoned in a foreign country by a superjerk travel buddy or suffering through eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Just when you thought all hope was lost, this guy shows up out of nowhere and reintroduces you to what normal is and what normal feels like. Following in the wake of an ordeal that beat you down and made you wonder if you were crazy, the rediscovery of normalcy feels like a revelation:

"Oh yeah, that!"

To illustrate the meaning of Ned, I offer this story: On my post-bar-exam jaunt through Europe in late summer 1989, I had a falling out with my travel buddies. One night in Bologna, they called me to their room to advise me that I would not be welcome to join them on the next leg of what had until then been "our" trip. If I wanted to get from Italy to anywhere else on the planet, I was on my own.

I wish I could say they ditched me for having very audibly hooked up with the swarthy, green-eyed Venetian down the hall at our pensione...or for inviting the Italian Olympic skiing team to crash in our suite...or for being the one who magically never had cash when restaurant bills or admission fees turned up and who never quite got around to settling up with fellow travel mates for amounts owed. If I was going to take the penalty, it would have been nice to at least have had the pleasure of having committed a satisfying crime.

Alas, the real reason was not nearly so glamorous or fun. On the first night of our trip, before we made it out of the gate at JFK, my travel buddy -- let's call him "Dick" -- got himself arrested. Our British Air flight to London had been delayed by two hours, and our luggage had been loaded onto an earlier flight, which was now in the air, over the Pond, without us. Plus, our seat assignments on the flight, which we had booked months in advance but apparently never checked, sucked.

So of course, merely six months after the crash of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, with our flight delayed, our baggage out there in the ether somewhere, and our seats positively sucking, it somehow made sense to Dick, standing at the check-in desk, trying to change our seat assignments, to make a joke about bombs in our bags.

I was in the waiting area reading People Magazine and blissfully unaware of the colossal act of stupidity that had just transpired behind me. As Dick returned from the check-in desk, a bunch of cops and men in burgundy polyester coats and walkie-talkies closed in around us. Next thing I knew they were putting Dick in handcuffs, taking him away to the Port Authority jail and asking me if I knew what he had said.

I must have looked sufficiently baffled, shocked and clueless to fit the profile of the "stupid little blonde girlfriend," because the cops dismissed me immediately, a development that eased my panic at the prospect of getting searched.

Then, with the law of bodily searches still so fresh in my post-bar-exam head, a dreadful realization dawned on me. We were in a fucking international airport terminal, the one place on earth other than a Turkish prison where you would have the least possible protection against against bodily invasion by law enforcement authorities. Not only could Dick and I get searched under the usual state laws of arrest and probable cause, the guys at the international airport could do a cavity search if they felt like it, just to keep in practice….

Mind you, had Dick's verbal diarrhea occurred after 9-11, we both would have woken up at Guantanamo, with our luggage blown up by the bomb squad and every orifice on our persons sore, chafed and emptied out. We were lucky.

Fortunately, this was 1989, so we simply missed our flight and spent several hours at the Port Authority jail awaiting disposition of Dick's case. By 3 or 4 a.m. the FAA and FBI had decided that Dick was more stupid than dangerous and, therefore, not worthy of their charges or time. New York State, however, slapped him with a misdemeanor, amounting to the airline version of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, gave him a court appearance date, and cleared us for departure the following morning.

Two mornings later, upon arrival at Heathrow Airport, Dick took a good ten minutes at customs while I breezed right through. This inspired Dick to make a joke about drugs in our bags.

You know how you make an ugly face, so that your mother tells you, "Don't do that, or your face will freeze like that"? From that moment on, my OMFG-I-can't-believe-how stupid-you-are expression -- the squinty eyes, the scrinched up nose, cheeks, forehead and mouth, as if I was sniffing Elizabeth New Jersey -- was permanently frozen on my face and pointed at Dick. It also didn't help that Dick kept telling me to "Shhhhhh."

It can't have felt good to be on the withering end of my holy-shit-you're-an-idiot face. By Amsterdam Dick and I started taking separate rooms at hotels. We hooked up with two other law school friends, who happened to be following about the same route as ours through Europe. Dick shared a room with them. This new arrangement seemed to take the edge off and eased tensions between Dick and me. Together we traveled from Amsterdam to Munich to Salzberg to Bologna, where our new travel mates took me aside and advised me that on our next leg to Paris, Dick's delicate psyche would require the comfort of the absence of me and my emotionally devastating face.

The next morning, they headed off to Paris and left me behind in Bologna, to fend for myself. First, I had a transatlantic cry over the phone with my obviously worried mother. Then I set out to look up another law school classmate, Ned, who had done his junior year abroad in Bologna and had returned this summer to recover from the bar.

I found Ned at a nearby pensione, one that happened to be nicer than mine and that had a vacant room right next to his. So I moved over. That day Ned took me on a tour through Bologna. As we meandered through the intimate, porticoed streets, with their reddish brown walls and pale gold and white ceilings, Ned took the time to point out all the highlights: the Piazza San Pietro, the Chiesa San Domenico, where Guido Reni is buried, the tower at the University of Bologna, where Da Vinci first used a telescope to gaze into the stars. Next we went to the University art gallery, where we saw paintings spanning from the cartoonish renderings of the medieval period, to the brilliant color and representational fidelity of the Italian Renaissance, and finally to the delicately brilliant light, elegance and lyricism of the Italian Baroque, all represented through one common theme, which Ned encapsulated perfectly in his comfortingly familiar "Lawn Guyland" accent: "Madonner-and-child, Madonner-and-child, Madonner-and-child, Madonner-and-child…."

That night Ned brought me and his guitar to one of his favorite trattorias. The food was inexpensive and delicious, and the long tables invited socializing and celebration. We discovered we knew a ton of songs in common and sang ourselves into the early morning hours. Equipped with a spiky hairdo, bigass earrings, a hearty red table wine and the voice for it, I did a mean version of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," accompanied by Ned and the laughter and applause of our Bolognese hosts.

As we wended our way back towards the pensione, a revelation came over me:

"Hey, I'm having a normal vacation!"

You know, where you have fun and don't feel self-conscious and go on adventures and actually enjoy the company of your companion.

Oh yeah, that. Normal.

The next day, Ned introduced me to Florence. Florence, Italy. First, Ned set me up at a nice, reasonably-priced, well-situated pensione in Florence. Then he took me on a tour of the city, to help me get my bearings. The attractions were too many to list, so he pointed out the key landmarks: the Duomo, the marketplace, the Piazza Della Signoria, the Ponte Vecchio, and what turned out to be my favorite: the Chiesa Santa Croce, with Michelangelo's tomb and its magnificent Giotto frescos, capturing the moment when the mind of humanity turned a great, big corner: linear perspective.

Ned introduced me to the most fascinating and overwhelmingly beautiful city I had ever seen, and not once did he even remotely hint that any quid pro quo was involved. He was a perfect gentleman.

Oh yeah, gentlemen. They're good. Keep them.

Having a blast with Ned reassured me that there was nothing wrong with me that had led to my having been being so rudely ditched. I was perfectly capable of having a good time and being charming, so long as my travel buddy didn't make stupid jokes, get himself arrested, give all my potentially-searchable bodily orifices a heart attack, or tell me to "Shhhhhh."

Ned headed back to Bologna that evening and left me to explore Florence. I planned on staying there for a few days before going back to meet Ned at the end of the week and contemplate another city or heading back to the States.

That night I found myself at a lovely trattoria. Barely two pages into my novel -- (I was reading Mary McCarthy's The Group.) -- I was befriended by five absolutely adorable Italian soldiers, who paid for my dinner and entertained me enormously. Among these nubile young men was one cute little Bolognese fellow who ended up taking the train back to Bologna with me later that weekend.

The rest of my trip was a magical journey of joy and discovery. I went wherever I wanted to go, without rancor, without having to negotiate or compromise and without having to worry about cavity searches. No matter where I went to eat, I wouldn't get two pages into my book before someone struck up a conversation with me and bought me my meal. I made friends and influenced people. I had such a good time, I stretched one week in Italy out to three.

Florence immerses you so deeply and densely in art and history that it utterly overwhelms the senses. It takes time and to absorb all the visual input. On this trip, I hadn't been prepared for everything I ended up seeing. I needed time to decompress, just to sort through it and make sense of it all. I was determined to return after taking a couple years to read up and educate myself on Italy and Italian art history.

I did, in fact, return in 1991, all by myself for 21 days in Bologna and Florence. I went on a quest to find the female artists of the Italian Renaissance. I found them, along with the Italian Baroque. Met up with that little Bolognese soldier boy, too.

Back to the story. Because of Ned, I not only rediscovered normalcy, I launched into on a whole new epoch of my life, something begun when I was lost and abandoned in a foreign country. I could have returned home in defeat, but instead I ended up having a great, confidence-building adventure. Because of Ned, I discovered some of the greatest passions of my life: history, art and all things Italian. Ned not only showed me "normal," he hooked me up with transcendence. Cool.

Hey Ned, I can't remember your last name, but if you're out there, friend me on Facebook, okay? I mean, you changed my life and everything.

Now, every time I hear President-Elect Barack Obama speak, I get the same feeling of relief and revelation as I did when Ned rescued me in Bologna.

Obama talks about things like filling positions in his administration with people who are not only competent. They are the premier experts in their field. Oh yeah, looking for people who are actually qualified for their responsibilities is so sensible, so refreshing, so normal.

Today Obama said that he wants his cabinet to be filled with experts who will provide him with a variety of opinions on the issues and that he prizes "vigorous debate." So he cares about finding out what is actually going on, so he can make informed decisions, based on the facts.

Whoa.

This is what a President is supposed to feel like -- smart, thinks on his feet, capable of listening and giving a spontaneous, responsive answer, one that comes from his brains and heart, not from a pre-fab list of talking points.

Here is a guy who can not only tell you what newspapers he reads. He can tell you what they said and why he agrees or disagrees with them. He also can tell you who wrote the articles and what their bias or interests are likely to be. This guy can most definitely point out quite a few Supreme Court cases with which he disagrees. Why, he can show you recent Supreme Court opinions with which he agrees but which he would have analyzed and written differently, had it been up to him to write the opinion.

There's grey matter between them thar big ears! Hallelujah! What a refreshing change.

I can only hope that our journey over the next four years with the Obama Administration will turn out to be as enjoyable, revelatory and paradigm-shifting as the one I got by the good grace of Ned.

JOY

2008-11-05T07:52:00.000-08:00

With Barack Obama's victory in the Presidential election of 2008, we the people of the United States can rejoice at having once again fulfilled our potential to become "a more perfect union," this time in a HUGE way, with the election of a black man to the Presidency of the United States. And yet this milestone, which has inspired joy in so many, has also, somewhat understandably, aroused apprehension among those who voted against Obama.

To be happy that an African American won the election is not an indictment of or accusation against those who did not vote for him. Nor is it a statement that his supporters voted *for* him because of his race.

After 372 years of subjugation of people of color in America and 232 years where only Caucasians have held the office of the US Presidency, to not recognize the quantum leap forward that Obama's election represents is to dismiss a key moment when we as a society realized the true potential and promise of our founding principles.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....

What is significant, indeed crucial, is that Obama himself did not run on race. He spoke of race only when absolutely pushed to the wall, when the Hillary campaign started blasting him on his association with Reverend Wright -- a strategy which sought to arouse and exploit fears among white people that Obama conformed to the stereotype of "the Angry Black Man."

That was the situation that prompted Obama to write and deliver his speech on race:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html

When the McCain campaign, particularly through Palin, started rousing fears with their accusations that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," and Representative John Lewis, a hero of the Civil Rights Movement, -- a man who had personally witnessed the church burnings, the fire hoses, the murders of Goodman, Scherner and Cheney, as well as the murders of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King -- called the McCain administration out on these tactics, the Obama campaign distanced themselves from Lewis' statements, expressly rebuking the association Lewis had made between John McCain and George Wallace.

The Obama campaign statement pulled the emphasis of the discussion away from race and back towards a more neutral critique of "angry divisive rhetoric" and then, even more notably, they moved the message back into the "positive" column, by stating the need for unity "a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together."

I think it was this constant, steady, consistent and *color-blind* emphasis on unity and the positive that won over the Independents to Obama's side and ultimately led to his victory in this election, not to mention the intense affection of all those who gravitated to his cause.

I think the more people saw and really got to know Obama, the more they liked him and saw that, even though he was relatively inexperienced in terms of years spent in public service at the national level or in an executive capacity, he had the brilliant mind, judgment and temperament to be an outstanding chief executive. He was the most qualified candidate for the job.

And then there was that breakthrough....

What It Means to Elect a Constitutional Scholar as President of the United States of America

2008-11-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

For me, having come from New York University School of Law, my orientation towards the title of "constitutional scholar" is the same as that held by the members of that community.

At the law school, the term "constitutional scholar" was no more remarkable than "electrical engineer." It held a certain prestigiousness, not unlike that of "neuro-surgeon" or "nuclear physicist," because it is one of the most highly-esteemed areas of study and practice.

That said, I am sad to think that the term, "constitutional scholar" would be regarded as somehow romantic. If the study and mastery of constitutional law has come to be regarded in the American consciousness as some kind of quixotic ideal, then it is a testament to how low we have sunk as a republic and how little regard we have come to have for our civil rights and our constitutional principles and aspirations.

We can find the evidence for this intensely regrettable decline in the passage of The Patriot Act, the eavesdropping on American citizens without warrant or probable cause, the avowed American disregard for the Geneva Convention in international warfare as codified by the US Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales, the active practice of torture and physically coercive interrogation techniques, imprisonment in offshore locations without a hearing, the attempt to suspend rights of habeas corpus....

The urgency with which Americans have handed over their civil liberties, hand-over-fist, in the purported interest of security, out of fear, has established a poignant occasion for the restatement of the words of our founding father, Benjamin Franklin:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

I hope that with the election of a constitutional scholar to the United States presidency, that we will see over the next decade the redemption of regard for our constitutional rights and that the title of "constitutional scholar" will be redeemed from trivialization as a merely quixotic ideal. My sincere hope is that the vocation of "constitutional scholar" will at least attain the status of a routine and unremarkable specialization, if not total restoration of the high esteem it once held.

Why I Am Not "A Globalist"

2008-11-04T06:48:00.001-08:00

I would not describe myself as a globalist. I don't think "whether globalism is a good idea" is the right question.

Globalization is inevitable, given the prevalence and ubiquity of modes of communication and travel -- the telephone, the Internet, satellite technology, television, radio, airline travel, etc. These are the means of export, import and exchange of ideas, culture and trade...into a constant intermingling.

The right question is HOW do we effect this intermingling? So some resistance to unfettered "globalization" is in order to ensure that the values (economic, moral and ethical) inherent in the ideas, culture and products in the intermingling are fairly and ethically regulated and distributed.

To have one value dominate all others via globalization could be a bad thing. For example, if globalization favors inexpensive labor...resulting in the concentration of manufacturing or sourcing of materials only in countries that abuse or mistreat laborers...then globalization is bad, and I am against it.

The all-or-nothing orientation towards globalization doesn't really work very well. Because the channels of transmission and transportation are irreversibly open (or at least because their restraint is so prohibitively expensive and difficult), trade in and the exchange of ideas and products will continue and expand. The genie is out of the bottle, and there is no stuffing it back in.

There needs to be regulation of global markets in trade to preserve fairness, to protect workers in terms of wages, hours and safety, and to preserve and protect the environment.

In terms of political globalization, there are certain universal principles that should be given global expression -- the universal rights of human beings to self-determination, to government of, by and for the people, the right to elect one's own leaders, the rights to free and unfettered expression, the right to bodily integrity and reproductive freedom, and so forth. At the same time, there is also a need to for certain checks and balances that will allow these principles to manifest in ways that preserve and are respectful of variations in culture and ethnicity.

We need to make sure that globalism does not become the means of economic, cultural or moral imperialism due to the advantage held by stronger and more potentially dominant participants.

What an Epiphany: The Prospect of Putting a Constitutional Scholar Into the Oval Office

2008-11-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

I love that Barack Obama is a Constitutional Scholar. He approaches all the issues as a scholar would...with an open and curious mind, eager to hear, appreciate and truly understand the philosophies and arguments with which he does not agree. As the brilliant legal scholar that he MUST be to have graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School, he has to be able to anticipate and argue ALL sides of an issue. This will give him the ability to take in all perspectives on any of the issues he will face as President and to synthesize them into a decision, a solution.

I am so excited for the election today. I am eager for Obama to be elected. I'm not counting my chickens, but if he wins, I think he will be a great president...great for the country and great for the standing of our country in the world.

My deepest hope on the International front is that he will end the habit of the US to prop up dictators and for us to return to our roots as a force for the promotion of true democracy in the world. Now that the cold war is over, there is no need for us to prop up dictators, just to have a force that opposes the Soviets or China.

It has long been a counterproductive strategy that has come back to bite us all too often -- from our propping up of the Shah of Iran leading to the Iran Hostage Crisis to our propping up of Sadaam Hussein so long as he was fighting Iran...and we all know what THAT led to.

Once again we will start to make substantive progress in environmental matters, trade pacts that require the elevation of conditions for workers worldwide...and that will reduce the unfair advantage that work forces in countries like China and Mexico have over American workers.... I feel like our country will FINALLY start moving forward again.

Why I Support Barack Obama

2008-11-04T06:43:00.000-08:00

As the Democratic primary process got under way, I started out genuinely torn between Hillary and Obama. I loved the Clinton presidency. I had heard Hillary speak several times before she ran for the presidency, and I always loved what she had to say.

But I was angry that she voted for the authorization of power to Bush to go into Iraq. I was also apprehensive that the vicious partisanship and polarization that had been directed towards both Bill and Hillary Clinton during the first Clinton presidency would recur. I wanted something different from the array of Clintons and Bushes who had held the Oval Office for the past 20 years. Something inside me felt that we needed someone new.

The more I've learned about Obama, the more I've grown to like him and to love him. Many are worried that he is too liberal, but the more you examine him and delve into his past, the more you will see that he is actually a closet centrist. He started out at the anti-establishment margins -- in the black neighborhoods of Chicago, where he had to join a somewhat radical congregation to establish his street cred as a black leader. Hence Reverend Wright.

BUT -- as he has risen from community organizer to state senator, from the tough streets of Chicago to the hallowed precincts of the Senate in Washington D.C., he has gravitated to the center. What I have learned about his childhood and schooling through law school tells me that this movement towards the center is more in line with who Obama truly is.

Obama is a biracial man who was raised in a white family. To have peace within himself, he had to have found a way to reconcile and harmonize both sides of his heritage and identity. I can absolutely see the parallel in his mission and drive to reconcile and harmonize the competing and all too often conflicting sides of our American heritage and identity. He is a unifier by nature, all the way down to his DNA.

Is Tom Delay Stupid or Just Fucking Evil? What "Negative Liberty" Really Means

2008-10-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

Tom Delay was just on Hardball, stating that Barack Obama hates the US Constitution because Obama has described the Constitution as being composed of "Negative Rights."

HOLY SHIT! I didn't know you could be THAT STUPID without your head exploding, but apparently Delay has mastered this art. Either that, or he is deliberately lying on the meaning of "negative rights." (Oh yeah, we're talking about Tom Delay.)

"Negative rights," also known as "negative liberty," is an essentially CONSERVATIVE philosophy regarding the rights granted under the Constitution. It does NOT mean that "the Constitution is Bad."

"Negative rights" or "Negative Liberty" means that the Constitution does NOT obligate the Government to grant citizens a bunch of entitlements. The Constitution does not give citizens the right to GET anything. Rather, the concept of "Negative Rights" means that the Constitution requires the Government to LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE.

THAT is the meaning of "Negative Liberty" or "Negative Rights." It is a perspective on Constitutional interpretation that has been developed most extensively by scholars at The University of Chicago School of Law. As a lecturer at U Chicago, Obama would have been very familiar with this essentially Conservative and Libertarian philosophy on Constitutional rights.

Accordingly, it should be clear that Obama was referring to an interpretation of the Constitution best summed up by Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis:

"The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men — the right to be let alone."

To claim that Obama's description of the Constitution as made up of "negative rights" meant that Obama was saying that "The Constitution is bad," or that Obama doesn't like the Constitution is so stupid, ridiculous and deliberately misleading that an army of Constitutional Scholars need to be invited onto Hardball to personally kick Tom Delay HARD in the keester!!!

HOLY SHIT WHAT A LYING ASSHOLE!

John McCain on NYC and DC "Elites": Who died on 9-11 you dirty fuck?

2008-10-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

There isn't much that John McCain and his Caribou Barbie running mate, Sarah Palin, can say that doesn't make my skin crawl. In their interview this week with Brian Williams, McCain dropped some remarks that have me spitting blood:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27343688/
New York, D.C.: Snooty elite central
McCain and Palin did differ on exactly what they meant when they criticized “elite” segments of American society, which they have mocked in an attempt to connect with what Palin called “hard-working, middle-class Americans.”

Palin said “elite” was a state of mind — “just people who think that they’re better than anyone else.” It cannot be identified by geography, income or level of education, she said.

McCain disagreed.

“I know where a lot of ’em live,” he said, laughing. The out-of-touch elites are “in our nation’s capital and New York City.”

“I’ve seen it. I’ve lived there,” he said, referring to Washington. “I know the town. I know what a lot of these elitists are — the ones that she [pointing to Palin] never went to a cocktail party with in Georgetown.”

These elites, he said, “think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves.”

Oh, you mean like the people who were murdered on 9-11? Those bad guy members of the financial "elites" from companies like Cantor Fitzgerald, Thacher, Proffitt & Wood (a law firm, damned dirty lawyers!), and Oppenheimer Funds -- all companies that were housed in the World Trade Center, along with their elitist employees?

Who do you think died that day, sir? Who are the Americans who paid with their lives for the sin of engaging in free enterprise? For the sin of benefiting from deregulation policies that YOU supported? How could you forget those 658 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald, all trapped in the top floors of the North Tower, without hope? Do you mourn only for Joe the Firefighter? Joe the Port Authority Police Officer? Joe the Court Officer on his day off? Joe the Paramedic? But surely not Joe the Illegal Alien busing tables at Windows on the World...or should I say, "Jose the Busboy"...

Your out-of-touch elitists in Washington couldn't have included the people murdered at the Pentagon, could they? You must be so disappointed that the members of your hated Georgetown cocktail party set escaped with their lives, thanks to the heroic self-sacrifice of the passengers on Flight 93. How sad for you that that plane, believed to have been aiming for the White House or the Capitol Building, crashed instead in an empty field in Schwenksville PA. If only it had reached its target, there would be several hundred fewer Washington "elitists" for you to hate.

How quickly you forget, Mr. McCain, that these "elites" in NYC and DC are the envy of the world. Funny that your hatred and bitterness towards their vibrance and enterprising drive has taken on a creepy similarity to the contempt that motivated the mastermind of their murder, Osama Bin Laden to target them as the Root of All American Evil. And yet, here you are, giving tax cuts to their living peers. Olbermann nailed it: truly "McCain in the Membrane!"

The exploitative financial elites are your Frankstein monster, sir. You abdicated your responsibility as an elected official to reign them in with reasonable regulation. You're 120 years old, and you still haven't figured out that these guys on Wall Street push everything to the outer envelope of what is allowed by law? The crash of the housing and financial markets actually came as a surprise to you? And now you hide behind your bogus-populist facade, you flip-flopping fascist fuck.

Go ahead, shit all over the greatest city in the world, Ground Zero in the attack on the United States. We elitist residents of New York City, including all here who depend on the economic activities of the Financial District workers for our livelihoods -- Joe the Hotdog Vendor, Joe the Shoeshine, Joe the Waiter at the Blarney Stone, Joe the Stock Boy at the legal forms shop -- will never forget that it was our city, New York City and DC that took Bin Laden's hit right in the gut.

So we were American enough to be attacked by Bin Laden, but not American enough to be represented by you? So that's how it is, eh? Well that's just fine. Turn your back on my city. We New Yorkers never needed your shit anyway.

Random Thoughts on G-d and Good and Evil

2008-10-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Something got broken. G-d created everything, including good and evil, but G-d delegated responsibilities to human beings. Once things got delegated to us, everything got all screwed up. That is one theory.

I keep coming back to Job in the desert, covered in boils, having lost his wealth, his family, and his health, and he RAGES at G-d.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME!"

And G-d's response pretty much amounts to..."Excuse me, do you have an appointment?"

We are specks, flecks, dancing dust...with self-awareness. We are a miracle. And we are here to partner with G-d, to mend a broken world, to make connections, to send sparks of healing spirituality out into the world.

How the world got broken, I'll never completely understand. And G-d could certainly fix it without us. If humans disappear from the earth, G-d will still go on. The earth and the universe will still go on without us. Higher realms too. But while we are in the middle of this miracle of being here on earth, our job as humans, our duty to G-d, is to leave the world better for our having been in it.

Rep. John Lewis' Exact Words on McCain Campaign Hate-Mongering

2008-10-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

Hear, hear!

"As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

"During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

"As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."

Bobby Murcer Was a Mensch

2008-07-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

Bobby Murcer, Yankee broadcaster, former Yankee Center Fielder, philanthropist, author, and one of the best human beings you'll ever have the good fortunate to know of, passed away earlier this week, on July 12th, after a year-and-a-half battle with brain cancer.

Bobby wore many hats in his life, but one word sums it all up. He was a Mensch -- a truly good person. One of the finest gentlemen ever, Bobby carried himself with class, but what really made him special was that he was approachable -- warm, gentle, self-effacing, and FUNNY! Bobby Murcer could make anybody smile, or at the very least, during Yankee games, he would never grate on you if you happened to be in a foul humor.

On Saturday, as my mom and I talked about Tony Snow's death, I mentioned Bobby Murcer and his amazing fight with brain cancer -- how it had aged him 20 years in the space of a year. I had no idea that Bobby was dying at that very moment. I had wondered why we hadn't seen him calling any more games since May, and I hoped he was okay and would be coming back soon. I had no clue that our Bobby was in big trouble. It's so goddamned sad. Bobby had so much more left to give. I wasn't close to being finished with him. No one was.

When I got the news a few hours later that Bobby had died, I cried out in shock. I really thought he was getting better. I remember my game-watching buddy, Phil, mentioning that he was worried about Bobby earlier in the 2006 season. Bobby was forgetting things, losing some his clarity during games. I remember a few younger fans on our baseball site making fun of Bobby when he said something absent-minded during a game. The older game-watchers shut the youngsters down with a little history lesson on Bobby's importance and why he was a HUGE figure with the Yankees...the link to Mantle, Mattingly, Munson and more. It is really scary and sad to think that once again, Phil had called it when he detected that something was slightly off in Bobby --something we all made little of at the time.

I remember the Old Timer's Day when Bobby picked Alex Rodriguez as his batting coach. Alex explained to Bobby that he had prepared a special bat just for Bobby by scratching on the sweet spot the words, "Hit it here."

Bobby was a better player than his career stats reveal, as about one-fifth of his at-bats in Pinstripes took place at Shea Stadium, during the renovations at Yankee Stadium. Interestingly, his BA and OBP were about the same (.299/.365 at Shea; .293, .369 at Yankee Stadium), but his slugging percentage at Yankee Stadium (.521) was more than 25% greater than his slugging at Shea (.407). Bobby's power hitting suffered greatly, due to the Lefty-hostile dimensions at Shea.

Bobby's leadership at the time of Thurman Munson's tragic death may be his most memorable contribution to the Yankees. We all mourned along with Bobby and felt his tremendous heart in his eulogy of Munson, his incredible performance in the Farewell to the Captain game, and his superhuman endurance in getting through everything in the immediate aftermath of the death of his best friend.

Bobby played that night's game without having slept for 48 hours and single-handedly beat Baltimore by putting up 5 RBI, the only runs scored by the Yankees in that game, with a clutch 3-run homer in the 7th inning and a walk-off single liner up the left field line that brought in the game-winning 2 runs. I get choked up remembering that Bobby gave his bat from that game to Diane Munson. You know how much it meant to him to come through for his friend and his friend's family. Just tremendous heart and soul.

I was at the Stadium, for the season opener in 2007. My seats are very close to the YES booth, so when they flashed Bobby's name on the scoreboard after playing the "Forever Young" montage on the Jumbotron, I called out, "Bobby's HERE?" I turned and saw Bobby standing there, in the YES booth, and waved at him directly. You just couldn't believe all the love, adoration and respect that was flowing to Bobby in that moment. Imagine having that -- all of Yankee Stadium filled to the rafters with people cheering for you out of sheer love and wishes for your well being. Overjoyed simply by your presence. What kind of a person do you have to be to get that?

That was Bobby Murcer. So easy to love. A pleasure to listen to during games, with his soothing baritone voice, lilting Oklahoma accent, his understanding of baseball from having lived it, and his gentle, good-humored delivery. I always loved how, on those many occasions, when Michael Kay would say something that betrayed extremely low baseball IQ, Bobby would kindly but firmly set the record straight, without attitude or shaming.

Bobby was just such a fine person, a lovely man, a gentleman.

Godspeed, Bobby. We all love you so!

The Estrogen Warrior: On Fighting Fibroids

2008-04-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

I've posted in a private discussion forum, on Craig's List, about my experience with fibroid tumors and the surgery I underwent in 2005 to remove them. The responses I received tell me I need to post this information in a place more readily accessible, so it won't get buried after a few weeks.

I worked very hard at the time to research Fibroids, their physical and emotional symptoms, and various treatment options. If what I learned can help other women, then this space will be well-spent:

Any kind of change in your cycle as noticeable as follows calls for a gyno visit:

How old are you? Any spotting between periods?

When I had fibroids, particularly one that broke through my uterine wall, my periods were heavier and lasted 10 days, with spotting in between.

I experienced RAGE and feelings of clinical depression. When I got my period, the hormone spikes would KNOCK ME ON MY ASS. At times I got so spazzed out and hyper-stimulated, speedy-feeling, I felt like I would have a heart attack. I was lashing out at people twice my size, but I did not care.

Like that one day when this big oaf of a guy insisted on pushing his way into my subway car before I could get out: I'm sure he has no idea what a miracle it was that I did not stab him through the heart with my umbrella.

I asked my general practitioner and my surgeon about hormones and their effect on my emotions and sense of well-being. They pretty much threw up their hands...but not first without offering to put me on The Pill. When in doubt, write a script. No one could explain to me why the hormones were affecting me or even how the hormones worked. The literature said that hormonal tests were not reliable because hormones can fluctuate so much during the course of a woman's menstrual cycle.

Thanks for nothing, assholes!

Well, almost nothing. Once I got SURGERY -- not therapy, not anti-depressants, not prescription hormones, just straight up surgery to remove the offending fibroid -- my hormones went back to normal and the insane mood rushes and RAGE disappeared.

Poof! Happy again.

It blew my mind to see how a treatment that was purely physical (surgery) could have such a dramatic effect on my emotional state.

Now, I'm 44, back to totally normal 5-day cycles, and happy as a lark. Go figure.

Fibroid tumors are very common in women aged 30-55. If you have some combination of the symptoms described above or notice any change in your normal menstrual cycle, get it checked, poopsie.

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=88017269

Gitchyer Scalpel the Hell Off My Uterus: Alternatives to Hysterectomy

2008-04-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

Oh HELL YES, I Kept My Uterus! And it should not be exceptional. Until recently, however, doctors would routinely remove uteruses, reckoning that once a woman had had children, the uterus was merely occupying space -- useful only to the odd roving cancer, seeking a place to take hold.

That's right ladies, according to traditional practitioners of patriarchal medical science, once your uterus stops making babies, it becomes either excess baggage or a ticking time bomb -- regardless of your family history or personal risk of developing cancer.

PHUQUE THOSE A-HOLES!

As soon as I was diagnosed with fibroids, I researched the hell out of treatments for it, and I learned that there are several techniques for removing fibroids that leave your uterus and ovaries intact.

I had a vaginal myomectomy. That is, the gynecological surgeon went in through the vagina and dilated my cervix to gain access to the inside of my uterus and removed the offending fibroid from there. The surgery was performed under general (maaaan, that was sweet -- pure oxygen ROCKS), and I went home the same day.

This is a COMMON procedure. I got a surgeon who had performed MANY of these surgeries, so she was very experienced with it.

There is also a procedure where they go in, surgically, through a small incision in your abdomen. Also a common and uncomplicated procedure.

A couple weeks before surgery I was given a hormone that shrinks the fibroids, making it easier to remove them.

I was hellbent on keeping my reproductive organs and my fertility intact, so *I* could decide whether and when I would have children.

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=88019809

My Uterus Is Not Excess Baggage, TYVM!

2008-04-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

1) My surgery was totally covered under my Health Insurance. (Aetna, at the time.) I had the procedure done at NYU Medical Center by Dr. Maria Betancourt. She was AWESOME.

2) I was extremely proactive about researching fibroids and remedies for them and for their symptoms -- medical, natural/nutritional and surgical treatments.

3) I learned that women who undergo hysterectomy are 300% more likely to develop *heart disease.* That little stat blew my mind right out. You are also more likely to develop problems with controlling urination and other health issues. The uterus is a powerful muscle that helps to keep your other abdominal organs in place. So patriarchal doctors' assumption that the uterus is just excess baggage after child-bearing is HORSE HOCKEY!!!

4) I learned that the state of women's health research and doctors' understanding of women's reproductive organs and of hormones and their roles/effect on our mental and physical health is woefully deficient. So we owe it to ourselves to learn as much as possible about our health, to research issues like crazy, and to ASK QUESTIONS. I was HELL-BENT on keeping my reproductive organs and fertility and not letting anybody cut into me unless they could convince me that it was absolutely necessary and the LEAST INVASIVE METHOD POSSIBLE.

This is why I make a point of posting openly about this stuff. If anyone has any questions, they can ask me about it. The women's movement has made a big difference in improving our health options and forcing more attention and research on women's health, but they still have a looooooooong way to go, and we have to keep the pressure ON.

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=88020519

Woman = Camel; Fibroid = IUD

2008-04-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Here's my theory on the fibroids ability to trigger hormone-rushes and hormone-caused mood swings...

I think the fibroids, particularly those that embed in the uterus, function the same way an IUD does. And IUD fools your body into thinking it's pregnant. It's very common in pregnancy to get hormone rushes that make your moods swing like crazy.

I read a long time ago that the idea for the IUD traces back to the Bedouin tribes, who would push stones up into the uteruses of female camels to keep them from getting pregnant.

So a fibroid is like a little stone that fools your body into thinking it's pregnant, and your body, thinking it's pregnant, starts producing estrogen out the wazoo and goes hormonally bonkers, resulting in mood swings, from deep depression to intense rage.

Also, having a fibroid embedded in your uterine wall will make you incapable of actually getting pregnant, because it will prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the inside of your uterus.

I researched fibroids by Googling "Fibroid" or "Fibroid Tumor" or "Fibroid Surgery." Unfortunately, I had my surgery in 2005 and have since gotten a new computer, so I don't have all the web sites I saved.

Before I started spotting between periods -- which is what got me to go to the doctor -- my periods started getting heavier. They were noticeably heavier for about 2 years...and yeah, they got clotty too.

If you're having these would urge you to go to the gyno. Get a "transvaginal ultrasound" and see what it says. If you have fibroids (which are very very common in women 30-55), then do your Google search. There's lots of stuff out there, some of it conflicting, so read as much as you can...and sift out the crap by paternalist doctors (the authoritarian, arrogant a$$holes) and look for woman-centered, woman-positive materials, things that treat you as an individual with dignity and a brain -- not a potential guinea pig who can be drugged up and cut up in the Name of Science.

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=88022111

I'm Hormonal: Get Over It.

2008-04-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

We need to talk more about PMS and hormonal issues -- not as an excuse for bad behavior but to demand that more resources be allocated towards medical research into female cycles and hormones and their effects on women...so that there can be SAFE, non-cancer-causing treatments for hormonal irregularities.

The state of medical understanding about hormones and their function and effects on women is so deficient, it would BLOW YOUR MIND.

As late as the 1990s, doctors were prescribing hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to women to counteract menopause-related symptoms. In one series of studies on HRT, the evidence that HRT CAUSED breast cancer was *so strong,* the researches had to cancel the studies because they could not ethically continue them.

When I was having fibroid-related hormone rushes and spikes, I regulated the swings very effectively by eating soy products (a mild estrogen substitute that *reduced* the effects of estrogen rushes on me and also progesterone cream derived from yams.

The estrogen in pharmaceutical HRT is derived from HORSE PISS. It was named "Premarin."

Get it -- Pre-MARE-in. Unreal what Big Pharm subjects us to. And too many doctors buy into drugs uncritically cuz the sales reps give them gifts and kiss the doctors' butts. It's a real racket, and we've got to protect ourselves from it by arming ourselves with as much knowledge as possible.

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=88022797

Fighting Fibroid Symptoms With Diet & Natural Treatments

2008-04-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

In the time leading up to my fibroid removal surgery, I had very little energy. Just a trip shopping or to the Botanic Gardens with mom would leave me very tired and cranky. In the last couple months before surgery, I felt very weak. Just one drink of alcohol would WIPE ME OUT.

I didn't realize how weak and sick I felt until after the surgery, when I went back to feeling normal again. I had totally forgotten what normal felt like.

It creeps up on you over time, so it can really fool you. I was probably anemic and should have been taking an iron supplement to make up for the blood loss.

I did make some changes in my diet and started taking certain vitamins:

Diet change was the "No white carbs diet." Low fat, nothing fried, no sugary sodas, no fruit juice, nothing with high fructose corn syrup.

Lots of fruits and veggies. Dried fruits, preserves, honey and molasses were all fine. No white flour or wheat gluten. Subbed instead with Wasa Bread, rice wafers, brown rice, and that cool German bread that has no wheat gluten in it.

At least one dose of something with soy in it every day -- Soy yogurt, edamame, tofu, etc. That controls estrogen naturally by occupying estrogen receptors in your bod. Fools your body into not producing so much estrogen.

Supplements:
Evening primrose oil
Vitamin E & C (combined in one pill)
Vitamin B Complex
Calcium & Magnesium (combined in one pill)
Flax Seed Oil (Omega 6 & 3)
Should have included an iron supplement.

I'd take them at breakfast, lunch and dinner, which also assured me of getting plenty of hydration.

I also used Progesterone cream (derived from Sweet Potatoes); you can get this at any Health Food Store.

All the above was recommended in a book Susan M. Lark, MD, who specializes in fibroids, endometriosis and other hormonally-related maladies.

Oh yeah, the Giants Won the Super Bowl!

2008-02-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

It's February 24th, and I still can't believe the Giants won the Super Bowl. This is also the first time I've updated the blog in 2008, so I officially suck as a blogger. I appreciate the comments and kicks in the ass to update. I've missed you too, and I've really been derelict in doling out epiphanies, especially since I promised them on a Daily Basis. So here's just a little one....

Holy shit, the Giants won the Super Bowl. Their run to Glendale and victory over the 18-0 New England Patriots was the nicest surprise of 2007-2008. We figured, our team is young. Eli hasn't clicked yet. Our Super Bowl is 2-3 years away. Then we played the Patriots in the last game of the season and lost, 38-35, by only three points.

That meant we could beat them. Then we beat Tampa Bay in the first round of the playoffs. That's an improvement over last year right there. Then we beat fucking Dallas and make Terrell Owens cry. Giants fans are like, "Whoa. What the fuck is going on here?" This is also the 9th Road Win in a row.

Next we're playing the Packers, led by that old Geezer, Brett Favre, and we're starting to think, "Hey, you know, we can beat these assholes." In minus-4-degree weather I'm putting my money on the nubile young quarterback from New York, not on the 40+ brittle, beat-up senior citizen from Green Bay.

Apparently, Eli never got the memo that wearing gloves would screw up his ability to pass or drive the ball down the field. He missed the script where he got outplayed, outshown and beat by the grisled veteran, Favre. It was, after all, Brett's last chance to make the Super Bowl. This was supposed to be Brett's Year.

Or not. We beat the Packers. Holy shit we beat the Packers! Really beat them! With Tynes' field goal in overtime. In dramatic fashion. After missing two previous attempts, he boots a frozen football that in those temperatures must have felt like a lead balloon. Tynes' foot was totally black and blue after the game. He booted that bitch!

Wait a minute. What the fuck? We actually BEAT the Packers??? You mean we're going to the...no, wait. No wait.

No way, are you kidding me? The New York Giants are going to the motherfucken Super Bowl. We are not! Holy shit. We are going to the Super Bowl. These Giants are NFC Champs! Holy shit! What the fuck? This wasn't supposed to happen this year. This is great! This is fantastic!

Holy shit!

Against the Patriots, led by Mr. G.Q., Tom Brady. 18-0, on the verge of making history with a Perfect 19-0 Season. In the Giants' corner we have dorky baby brother Eli, with the childlike, aw shucks, Huckleberry Finn face.

Only by this time, I'm thinking, we can win this bitch. We have now had 10 road victories. In the last game of the regular season, we lost to these assholes by only 3 points. That means we can score on em...score high...and we can beat them.

In the playoffs, we beat every team that had beaten us in the regular season. And at the Super Bowl, the Giants would be the visiting team. We can beat these Beantown mother fuckers. 19-0 tee shirts and commemorative magazines my balls! No, no, no. I'm talking eleven consecutive road wins. We can win this.

The game starts, and the Giants D beats the living shit out of Brady. The O hangs onto the ball in the first period for more than ten minutes, breaking a Super Bowl record, and then scores a field goal at the end of the drive. At the time we bitched that it was only a field goal. But we had kept the Patriots from at least 2 driving opportunities, had we gone 3rd and out, and oh yeah, we won the Super Bowl by 3 points. Even though the Pats came out with a touchdown on their drive, that field goal right there won the game.

The difference between this game and the last game was that the Giants D showed up and dealt a brutal relentless beatdown on Brady. They threw him off his rhythm and held him to his lowest score all season. And once again, as he did throughout the playoffs, Eli played mistake-free ball. He didn't give up interceptions. Eli's arm, the one vaunted to be better-than-Peyton's, showed up. To whit, that gorgeous slow motion spiral to Plax in the end zone to win the game. But I've gotten ahead of myself.

The 2nd and 3rd quarters were a chess match. Each team keeping the other from scoring. Then just as the 4th quarter got under way, a couple of friends sitting in the Giants family member section at the Super Bowl, enlisted the aid of one team member's father, in finding a discrete place to release some of the ashes of Bob in Annapolis, a season-ticket holder, fixture at Giants training camp and legend to the members of BigBlueInteractive.com, who had died unexpectedly, early in the season, of complications following back surgery.

As Bob's ashes whirled around the edges of the field, magic started to happen. David Tyree catches his first touch done pass of the season. Brady, that prick, drives down the field and gets another touch down.

Eli has less than 3 minutes to drive down the field and get a touch down. No fucking way. Yeah, right, but thing is, Eli has always had this weird ability to go bonzai in the final 2+ minutes and come back to win games. Our young kid sticks around for the whole game. I look at my brother and say, "He can do this."

We are standing, pacing forwards and backwards in front of the sofa as Eli drives the Giants down the field. We're kind of swaying to and fro like we've just drunk 12 beers, and we're 50th on line for the Porta John.

Then Eli miraculously escapes that sack attempt and launches that crazy pass to Tyree, who with a Patriot hanging off of him, catches the ball with his fucking helmet! What the fuck was that??? And then comes that magnificent 13-yard pass to Plax.

There are still 35 seconds left. I'm not allowed to get happy until we stop Brady on this last campaign. BOOOOOM, Alford slaughters Brady. Well, why shouldn't he be allowed to get a good pop in? Rookies need to learn too. "Here, this is how to clobber a star quarterback. Isn't it fun?"

Patriots go for it on 4th down and blow it. One second left. Ball in Giants' possession. No we haven't won yet. What? What the fuck is Belichek doing? He's shaking Coughlin's hand and running off the field with one second on the clock? One last snap, Eli kneels.

Super Bowl Won. Not only the biggest upset in Super Bowl history, but also the Best Play in Super Bowl History. Best Super Bowl Game ever.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Egg Nog + Pumpkin + CuisineArt + Pumpkin Pie Spice equals

2007-12-23T16:50:00.001-08:00

OMG why haven't I been doing this all my life? Thank gawd I bought two quarts of nog. I need this in an IV Drip STAT!!!

The 2007 Feeding Frenzy is so ON.

2007-12-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

Plus Mom brought lamb chops, a cauliflower and Black Bean Soup. Plus I've got stewing beef chili and corn. And fixins for Tater Tot Casserole, including chopped turkey, cheddar cheese, mushroom soup, salsa, sour cream pickled jalapenas and wieners. Ice cold milk and oreos and salt & vinegar chips. And Beef Jerky.

And if you really wanted a peanut butter and fluff sandwich, you can have that too. Or Roast beef and provolone on rye, with some sandwich pepperoni, thin-sliced, to give it some kick. And roasted peppers or Sun-dried tomatoes....

Whatevs...The 2007 Feeding Frenzy is in its final stretch.

2 Girls 1 Cup: Holy Shit

2007-12-06T23:10:00.000-08:00

Well, thanks to those bastids on BBI, I mustered the courage (or maybe the insanity) to go ahead and watch the 2 girls 1 cup video.

HOLY SH*T THAT WAS FLOCKING GROSS!!! Who the flock does that??? Are there actually people out there who actually get turned on by that kind of thing??? How revolting!!!

And what kind of sh*t was that??? Who the hell sh*ts like that? It didn't look like sh*t. It looked like chocolate mousse.

And who can sh*t on command like that for the camera? Were they sitting around all day in that little break room, waiting for that chick to be ready to make a big sh*t??? I think not!

I think they must have had her do that pre-colonoscopy thing the night before, sh*t her brains out into a toilet (TYVM), drink that blue-cleansing stuff, and then after she was empty and germ-free, they took a freakin cake frosting squeezy bag and injected the chocolate mousse up her butt.

Cuz NO WAY does anybody eat that much sh*t and not flocken die!

And people are afraid to eat packaged spinach? Cuz there may be traces of cow dung in it? No WAY did that chick eat that much....it can't be real.

And OBTW, the reaction videos on YouTube are HILARIOUS!!!

My RingTone is "Enter Sandman"

2007-12-01T10:15:00.000-08:00

This means that every time my cell phone rings, that unmistakeable bass chord riff prods my emotional muscle memory into expecting Mariano Rivera to jog in from the bullpen and nail down a Yankee win. That means I am in the 5th row of the Upper Deck, just above the Yankee dugout, at Yankee Stadium, full of Carvel, Cokes and Italian sausage, peeing my pants.

Only I'm not there, I'm at home, in my office, guzzling coffee and writing letters and making phone calls. Then, suddenly, the riff starts, and my heart thinks Mariano is going to come running in from the kitchen. Plus, my muscle memory needs to get up, loft my right fist into the sky, Jeter-style, and start headbanging....

Often, I let the phone ring a while, so I can enjoy the buildup. If I get to the part where the crescendo happens, the place where you start head-banging with abandon, the call goes to voice mail. So I have to answer before I really lose it...which is kind of like something else that's like trying to hold back a sneeze.

So usually when I answer, I just start cracking up...because it's so ridiculous to have "Enter Sandman" play every time I get a phone call. And yet it's hilarious because I get to have these insane little "Woopie, woopie!" moments at odd times throughout my day.

On Compassion, Evil and Morality: Spiritual and Philosophical Musings

2007-11-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

I always liked the saying, "We are spirits having a human experience."

I think compassion is natural to human beings and that we tend towards it a great deal more, and certainly more easily, than we do towards hostility and warlike behavior. The latter is acute and profoundly draining. You simply can't keep it up all the time. The former is heartening, rejuvenating and reassuring. It makes us feel better to be on either side of it.

Rather than think of lofty ideological reasons for why we care about what we do to and with others...why we care about others and take account of them in our decision making..., I think it is fair to say that we do it because it feels good. We were made to interact this way.

We are also built to make meaning of events in life. We are meaning-making creatures. That is what the Fall, the eating of the Apple of the Tree of Knowledge did to us. It granted us not just consciousness, but self-consciousness -- the ability, no, the NEED to make meaning of our circumstances, and the need to feel that we are doing the right thing.

Just the ability to make sense of something makes it possible to get through incredibly challenging and upsetting situations. If it makes sense to you, you can deal with it. If it doesn't, it's very upsetting. One feels helpless. That is the worst.

So we vary in our need for contact and interaction which is often in tension with our need to protect ourselves and have reasonable personal boundaries.

What is amazing are the insights of minds such as Solzhenitsyn, who said that people do not commit genocide or perpetrate atrocities because they woke up one morning and decided to be evil dictators. They do such things because they believe it is the right thing to do...that they are justified. We need to feel justified.

In "People of the Lie," N. Scott Peck described evil as people who could turn off their consciousness, and kind of blank out to the evil of what they were doing. They made it okay with themselves. Such as the parents of an 11 year old boy whose brother had just committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a rifle... Peck discovers that on the Christmas after the brother had died, the parents gave the surviving boy a rifle for Christmas.

Peck, stunned, asked the boy how he felt about receiving the same kind of gun that his brother had used to shoot himself. The kid replied "It wasn't the same kind of gun."

Peck gently presses the point that it is the same kind...to help ease the kid of out of denial.

The kid insists. "It wasn't the same kind of gun. It was the same gun. It was THE gun.

Peck talks to the parents about this, they explained: "It was a perfectly good gun. Why let it go to waste?"

THAT disconnect RIGHT THERE, my friends, is where immorality happens.

What DeeDoo is DeeDooing

2007-11-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

Dee Doo had a very good Thanksgiving weekend. He hung out with my brother, Larry, and me all day Saturday, got lots of rubbins and play time, successfully ignored Sweet Pea and had himself a wonderful time. Later in the afternoon, he parked himself in the bedroom windowsill and had a nap, with Sweet Pea, 4-5 feet away from him, out cold in the office chair.

The big test came later, when Sweet Pea decided to get up, stretch her legs, catch a bite and have a pee. She jumped around a bit in the bedroom, wandered from the chair to the food dish, jumped up onto the desk, headed out to the kitchen, and returned to the bedroom in a single zoomie. Dee Doo opened his eyes, watched, yawned and stayed put.

That was huge. In the past, he would have gone on alert, abandoned his post on the windsill, and gone after Sweet Pea at her food dish, in the litter box or on her way to the litter box. Yesterday, he just let her be. Good boy!

Dear Fellow Sportsfans: I told ya so about ARod, Love, Schnitzie

2007-11-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

They all said it was because he was my husband, along with Mariano Rivera. Yeah, I have two husbands. So? I accept only the very best. And, it should be known that my love for Mariano is virtuous, chaste and pure while my love for Alex is of the more earthy variety...in addition, of course, to my sincere admiration of him as a primo athlete.

So yeah, while conversations went on about how the Yankees would fill the hole at 3rd, and names came up like Wilson Betamit (Hello, he's a bench player, not a starter; an upgrade on Miguel Cairo, and that's not saying much), Mike Lowell (WS MVP for the Red Sox, are you fucking kidding me?), and Scotty Brosius (Oh not *that* again. Please compare Brosius' stats to Alex's and just stop talking), I would stubbornly post, "The Yankees need to stop the nonsense and sign the best player in the game, at 3B or otherwise, and that's ARod."

People said, "I'm sorry, Schnitzie. I'm afraid that boat has sailed."

And I said, "Nonsense, I'll believe he's really gone when he signs with another team." The mere thought nauseated me. I posted about what I saw as the most important issue in Alex's consideration: He needed to be with a team that would be in the running for the post season, not in a few years, but every year over at least the next three years. Alex wants to play in a World Series. He's never done that before. He wants to win a World Series too, but first he'd like to make it past a 7-game championship series.

So when the Yankees -- with new owners in charge, Joe Torre gone, and the new manager unknown -- started talking about having "a transition year" to rebuild the rotation and bull pen, ARod likely bridled at the possibility of being on a team that wasn't aiming to make the post season and go for the Ring now.

The Red Sox were on the verge of sweeping the World Series. This was the team ARod had accepted a pay cut to join, but the Player's Association nixed the deal. Had the deal gone through, ARod might have had 2 Rings by now. Perhaps this idea was in his thoughts and conversations with Scott Boras. Still, I could not imagine ARod, having already fought for and won over the fans in New York, would then want to start all over again, from scratch in Boston, with fans whose scrutiny could make a colonoscopy seem relatively non-invasive by comparison.

For all he knew, if he came back to the Yanks, PoPo, Mariano, Melky and Cano would all be gone. Torre was already gone, but I don't think that influenced ARod's decision. Torre was always milque toast in his support of ARod. He batted him 8th in the Division Series against the Tigers, without telling him beforehand. Not nice. No love lost there.

So Alex opts out in Inning 6 of the World Series, effectively forfeiting $21 million dollars of Idiot Texas Rangers subsidy. The Steinbrenners say, "Don't let the door hit you...!" New York loses its mind -- as if every man in the Tristate area has been unceremoniously dumped by the hottest, most beautiful chick ever to give him the time of day. And now that she's given him the heave ho, he's made it his mission in life to expose the ho in the heave.

"ARod is a ho," they said. "It's all about the money."

I said, "Hogwash," it's all about "the Ring."

In the midst of this, before word of the secret negotiations leaked, I sent a letter to ARod in which I said: "I hope with all my heart that cooler heads will prevail and come to terms and that I will continue to enjoy the privilege of watching you play in my home stadium -- 'The Cathedral' -- every Sunday. I would like nothing more than to see you win your World Series in the Pinstripes. " I also sent him a CD, with Frank Sinatra's rendition of "Soliloquy: My Little Girl," from the musical, Carousel, because when asked who inspired his amazing April power hitting streak, ARod named his baby daughter.

On Wednesday, the next week, word broke that ARod was meeting and negotiating with the Yankee owners. That ship had not sailed. I had worried that my comments, on a public sports board, where many members are more knowledgeable that I, would seem ridiculous, crazy, unworthy of posting amidst the crazed hot stove postings by the Fantasy guys, who were already well into reconstructing the team. I posted anyway, just to say it: "The Yanks need to re-sign ARod. End of story."

Well, well, well. Turns out I WAS RIGHT, and EVERYBODY ELSE WAS WRONG!"

He's back: Hank Aaron award winner, Most Clutch Player 2007 , Silver Slugger 2007 winner, 2007 AL MVP, and the Third Baseman for New York Yankees -- Number 13, Alex Rodriguez.

ARod is coming back to the Bronx.

I was right, and I will never allow any of you who were wrong to live it down. Forget it. I will never allow my fear of what others might say or think to keep me from posting exactly what I think, no matter how crazy or stupid it may be. I am holding this one over your heads forever.

No one can ever tell me anything ever again.

I. Told. You. So.
Bitches!
Oh hell yeah.

The Doomsday Cat Toy

2007-11-21T15:42:00.000-08:00

Take a tightly crumpled tinfoil ball.
Have a thumbnail or comparable tool.
Use thumbnail to push in a groove around circumference of ball.
Tie pastry box string tightly around groove.
Dangle tinfoil ball in front of cat.
Swing ball and drag on floor.
Watch cat explode.

And now, a word from our attorneys:
You *have to* be very careful with this toy. A chaotic, squiggly cat can easily get string wrapped around its tail, paw or, god forbid, NECK, and something horrible could happen. So don't play with this toy unless you can give cat and toy your undivided attention.

If cat does get something tangled in the string, be prepared to let the string go if you can't quickly grab hold of cat and get the string off. Do not chase or call after the cat. Cat may go streaking off with ball bouncing behind him. Try to be calm so cat will sit still. Then gently go and check string, and be prepared to just cut it off.

(I did have to cut the string off of Pansy's tail once while playing with this. It's no different, really, than playing with a fur attachment on Da Bird. The tangling can happen, especially at high cat speeds.)

You can play with this toy only when you can supervise without distraction. That means NOT when you are on the cell phone, NOT when you are cooking, NOT when you are on drugs, alcohol, operating machinery, or otherwise preocuppied, and NOT if you're gonna hold this blogger or anybody else responsible for something bad that happens due to your own negligence or stupidity in making or using this toy. When you finish playing, store in a place inaccessible to the kitty.

That said, holy crap...what a way to get a full run out from a 6-and-a-half-year-old, way-too-smart and easily bored cat like THIS GUY:

The Yankees are Talking to My Husband, ARod

2007-11-14T13:13:00.000-08:00

Just so we are CLEAR. I am officially on record that I want the Yankees to sign Alex Rodriguez. I want to see my husband in the Cathedral of Baseball next year. I want to watch the rest of his career and his retirement IN PINSTRIPES.

To hear that these discussions are in progress is officially my Epiphany of the Day, and if he signs with the Yankees, it will be one of the Epiphanies of my lifetime.

Hooray!!!

This is what I live for: Lily is adopted

2007-11-14T06:28:00.000-08:00

Now this is what it's all about.

Back in June, I learned that my now dear friend Benny at North Carolina Saint Bernard Rescue was trying to get this poor girl out of jail in Georgia:

She was a nameless, stray Saint Bernard, who had landed in a brutal shelter in Liberty County, Georgia. For weeks Benny and the director of NCSBR had been trying to get her out, but the poor girl got stuck in lockdown due to a Parvo outbreak. Unable to liberate her, NCSBR tried to have their own privately funded veterinarian come in to examine and try to help this dog, but the authorities at the shelter refused permission.

Left with no alternative but to pray for the girl's survival until they could come and get her, the good folks at NCSBR did the one thing they could to afford her some dignity and elevate her out of the dire straits in which she had found herself. They gave her a name.

They named her Lily.

After 2 weeks in Parvo lockdown the PTB at the shelter finally approved Lily's application for parole. Starting out one Thursday morning at 5 a.m. Benny drove 17 hours round trip to fetch Lily and bring her back to North Carolina. A more detailed account of Lily's journey, including their close brush with a 5-car wreck on the highway, is here:
Lily's Story

Benny found Lily in such bad shape that he took her straight to the NCSBR's veterinarian, where she stayed for several days. She was filthy, emaciated and had every parasite known to dog, including the potentially fatal heartworm. The vet's office cleaned her up, treated her for the easy parasites -- fleas, intestinal worms, ear mites, etc. -- and returned Lily to her new foster home. Because Lily was so weak and ill, the director of the NCSBR personally fostered Lily in her home.

The next order of business was for Lily to gain enough weight and strength to undergo her spay operation. This is where I came in. I decided to sponsor Lily, and along with a group of kind animal lovers on a private Craig's List forum, who donated cash, food, supplements and supplies to this sweet girl, I pitched in a nice chunk of inheritance money that I had gotten upon losing my father earlier this year. I offered the money as a "matching donation."

Before Lily could make it to her spay operation, she came down with a bad intestinal virus. You worry about such illnesses in a healthy dog, but in an emaciated dog, already compromised with a bad heartworm infestation, such a condition is life-threatening. Fortunately, Lily pulled through and finally started to gain weight.

During the operation, however, Lily crashed on the table and almost died. The vet put her in their ICU, and Lily managed to pull through. Thank doG!

By this point, Lily had cheated death at least 5 times: She wasn't PTS at the shelter; she survived the Parvo outbreak; she narrowly missed being in a major car wreck on the highway during her transport to NC; the stomach virus; crashing during her spay operation.

Now she faced the ultimate hurdle in her journey: Treatment for the heartworms. A dog infested with heartworm has a heart that looks like it's been shot through with linguine. It is a disgusting thing. The treatment involves painful shots, given in the dog's lower back. The medicine shot into the dog contains arsenic and can itself be fatal. Then, as the dog sheds the heart worms, they can travel to the veins and arteries and cause fatal blockages, so the dog must stay completely stationary -- confined to a crate.

Lily's breathing was very labored for at least a week, and when she started coughing up red blood, the foster mom took her back to the vet for a steroid shot and observation. Within a few days, her breathing became more normal, and she was back on the road to recovery. A bunch of us on Craig's List pitched in for her feeding, for supplements, even for CDs with harp music to help her heal while confined to her crate, and always always always prayers and PAWSitive juju.

Finally it was time for Lily to go to the vet, to see if her crate rest was at an end and how soon she would need another treatment. When the vet reviewed the records on Lily, he discovered that she had been given a dose for a dog half again her size...in other words, an overdose, which by all rights, should have killed her. Yet again, Lily cheated death. And having survived the overdose, she was now heartworm-free. No further treatment would be necessary. The vets had inadvertently put Lily on an aggressive treatment regimen, and what didn't kill her, for reals, actually made her, if not stronger, than at least free of all heartworm and ready to begin a whole new chapter.

About 4 weeks later, a foster family came forward to take care of Lily until she was strong enough to be adopted. The family had two children, 5 and 1. The five-year-old had once gotten knocked over by a rambunctious St. Bernard and was afraid of them as a result. But sweet, easy-going Lily proved to be a gentle, trustworthy friend. The family officially adopted Lily a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. They love her.

Here's the happy ending to Lily's story:
http://members.petfinder.org/~NC351/lily.html#UPDATE_-_Early_November_2007

Here is Lily now, well, rid of all the parasites, including the heart worm, spayed and UTD on her shots, and in her very own Furever Home, growing up with children who love her:

This is what I live for. I'd love to meet her some day. =:-)

On a slow day for epiphanies

2007-11-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

I've got these guys!

Pansy

Dee Doo

and Da Krayzee Peanutty (aka Sweet Pea)

Another, more recent pic of the Sweet Pea

These are my fluffies, my furkids, the little posers (and hosers) who make me laugh, keep me company, occasionally stress me out, and mostly melt my brain.

My brain needs melting on a regular basis, to keep it from overwhelming the universe... These guys are really good at their jobs. They'll be regular characters in this blog, so I figured I should introduce them already. Plus, I felt guilty that I still didn't have a picture of Pansy in here.

She really deserves it. Pansy is my Zen kitty and my sanity saver. And she puts up with a load of shit, particularly from this guy, for example:

She's a great girl and has an outstanding sense of humor. At some point, I will give you the bios on each of them. But I'm tired and need to give Dee Doo his night time snicky snacky. If I can get him up -- 1st day of his daily Prozac regimen and all.

Wake up, Dee Doo, it's time to go to bed!

Feline Epiphanies: What Dee Doo is Dee Dooing

2007-11-13T06:47:00.001-08:00

Let's start with what he is not doing this morning. Dee Doo is not attacking Sweet Pea. Or he is not attacking her yet. Either way, this is progress. As we embark on Day 9 of Dee Doo's Prozac regimen, he continues to have mini-kitten-sized epiphanies, like walking into the bedroom, seeing Sweet Pea on the bed and walking past her, which is a big improvement over walking into the bedroom, seeing Sweet Pea on the bed and making a beeline to her carotid artery.

This morning Dee Doo's entrance into the bedroom was more of a relaxed, leisurely stalking session. He strolled in, took a look at Sweet Pea, who was parked on the end of the bed, walked below her on the floor, and just as I prepared to get up and intervene, he continued past her and under the extra desk, towards me. I gave him a nice rub to reward him.

Then he circled back and sat on the floor, again, just below Sweet Pea, and pretended to look away and focus on other things. After about a minute, he got up, walked towards the head of the bed, with his tail lightly flicking, and made like he was going to jump up on the bed. With that, I got up from my chair and went towards him. He continued to loiter around her and wouldn't obey my command to walk towards my left pointer finger (with treats and the clicker ready in my other hand).

I suspect he is using the approach to Sweet Pea as a way to get me to give him a play session. That is, the smart, little bazturd has made the connection that going near her gets my attention -- same as with scratching at the closet door, jumping up on the credenza in my bedroom, or jumping up on the buffet in the living room and knocking shit on the floor -- behaviors that had eased with the meds and with my making a loud, nasal buzzer sound.

I caved to his feline persuasion techniques, aka extortion -- Play with me, or the fluffy silver thing gets it -- and gave him a play session in the rear room. At least what Dee Doo wanted was in line with the Cat Shrink's orders: 2 daily play sessions, pointer treat training, plus.25 mgs of Prozac, every other day for a week, and then every day. Today will be his first day on the daily dose regimen. Let's see how he does on twice as much of the heavy stuff.

Epiphany Bulletin: Jorge Posada Will Retire a Yankee

2007-11-12T21:34:00.000-08:00

Tonight we get a bonus epiphany! At the eleventh hour, before he hit the free agent market, Po Po signed a 4-year $52 million contract with the Yanks! Woo hoo!

Now the Yanks just need to sign to sign my husband, Mariano Rivera. Don't let him get away, Ca$hmoney!

And while you're at it, it's time for Little Steins to stop being a dick and sign my other husband, Alex Rodriguez, you know, the AL MVP, the greatest living player in baseball? So what if Scott Boras is a money grubbing sonofabitch! That's his job.

Alex needs to bust 756, 757 and 800 in the Pinstripes. Hellooooo.

Hood Pumpkin Egg Nog

2007-11-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

I am dead meat...or just meatier. Not yet but soon...guaranteed.

Why?

Pumpkin egg nog.

I came across it while food shopping after work today: Hood Limited Edition Pumpkin Egg Nog.

Of course! Why didn't I think of that? Egg nog, nutmeg, nutmeg, pumpkin.

I took a swig as I filled the fridge. Unbelievable. Like pumpkin pie in a carton. I hadn't had dinner yet, but one good swig deserves another. Smooth, creamy, sweet, absolutely divine. I made a liquid dinner of it...because I can.

Oh. My. Gawd.

Limited edition, huh? I need to consume as much of this as possible before it goes away. Before the end of this holiday season, there will be a whole lot more of me to love. Goody goody!

I wonder how this tastes with rum? (Holy shit!)