HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Blame Canada. Not.

The real culprits in the death of fat people.

Also Merry Christmas

Joy to all, peace, music, and love be with you.

Top Ten of Zeroic Proportions

Fafblog.  'Nuff said.

The 800th (by Rightist Reckoning) Post

Powered by Journey videos (it's All Your Fault, Lisa Golden!), this compilation of opinionated and informative links owes its existence to 5 days of "no, that's not quite," and "but I have stuff to do!"  (Which led to commenting on lots of stuff on Dreamwidth--have I mentioned that I still have 3 invite codes?--in lots of different directions, because I half-know a lot of stuff--but not on useful projects or useful knowledge increase.  But I digress.)

Dave and Joe host a party for the holidays.  And why it matters:

It struck me last night just how wonderful this whole thing was. Joe and I, together, are hosting a 'do' at work. It wasn't that long ago when we lived in a time where gay people did not live openly, were not acknowledged as couples, did everything to avoid notice. Now here we are part of a relationship both acknowledged and honoured at work. Too, I will be there, as a person with a disability in an office that is fully accessible and where any of our members or staff with disabilities are welcome to drop by and participate.

Mexico City is down with that.

Ten people who might consider a much lower profile in 2010, according to Michael Arceneaux at The Root.  Also, some minor signal-boosting.

As someone who is conflict-averse, I winced along while reading Jill's posting:

We had the sense that all Bill Clinton wanted was quiet. I understand this mindset, I have it myself, coming from a family that experienced a fair amount of shouting fights and uproar in my childhood. When you grow up as a conflict avoider, you tend towards twisting yourself into a pretzel and jumping through hoops in a vain effort to just have some peace and quiet. It's a terrible way to live and it doesn't teach you that sometimes people will disagree and you have to learn that capitulation is not always the best way to resolve a conflict. You have to learn that your viewpoint is just as valid as anyone else's, and that you have a right to defend it.

And having mentioned Lisa (yeah, I know I'm being boring, but the universe is trying to trick me into a state of calm before dropping the next set of disasters on me, and in the interest of not having said disasters dropped, I'm trying to stay mildly paranoid (cue Black Sabbath).  Also to find the earrings that picked up my telepathic search for them and burrowed deeper into the apartment midden of Doom), I'm linking to parts 1 and 2 of her reaction to the reaction to Julie Powell's memoir, Cleaving.

The fact is - infidelity is but one way to hurt your spouse. There are sins of commission and sins of omission. No one ever wants to talk abut the damage done by withholding affection or love or intimacy. No one wants to discuss how marriages begun in one's twenties might just outlive their realistic shelf life when the couple reaches their forties, fifties or sixties. Perhaps the whole reason we've seen a cultural shift in the average age at which people marry for the first time is because the younger generations understand that who you are when you're twenty-two isn't the person you want to have picking out the person with whom you'll spend the rest of your life.

Why we have to keep on fighting for health care payment reform.  And what we lose by not having single payer, and how our politicians (and when I say "our politicians" here, I mean the ones who claim to be on our side) have betrayed us.

Brief review of Muhammad:  Legacy of a Prophet, with one of those quotable sentences:

Catholics cooperating with Quakers to promote understanding of Islam: interfaith activity is alive and well in Orange County.

Ann Louise Nixon Cooper, 1902-2009.

Last, and very much least:  Why rigidity is a bad thing.  From Obsidian Wings, with a whipped-cream sentence:

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't treat such inflexibility kindly.

Faux Perles

So two Internet venues have pointed me at Peggy Noonan's "The Adam Lambert Problem," which is two too many; the one I can blame is No More Mister Nice Blog, since the other was closed before I thought to cite them.  Probably fortunately.

Anyway.  Steve M. of No More Mr... flicks the fly and yawns:  "Yeah, maybe some people felt that way -- for about a day or two. But this is an incident most of America has forgotten, an incident that, by a long shot, isn't even the #1 celebrity sex story of the end of 2009, much less the #1 zeitgeist story."  And in the comments, it was stated that there are real concerns out there, and Mr. L. just doesn't rate.

Note to the Ms. Noonans out there:  "Pearl-clutching" is a term of derision.

(Full disclosure:  I saw some of the video.  I was more concerned about all the stupid spikes.)

Out and About

Driftglass upends a classic.

Like a Whisper's Prof. Susurro showcases women poets of color.

Daisy has music videos up for (in reverse order) Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Carly Simon, the New York Dolls and Wishbone Ash.

I'm in the back, remarking on all the new gray in Obama's hair, listening to the Rondo Capriccioso, and wondering if the thief who stole the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the gate at Auschwitz is some species of Holocaust denier who intends to suggest it was never there.

798

Strong words from the Sideshow on the health care payment reform battle and the shifting political stances of the major players.

It was just a bargaining chip he intended to throw away. And that puts him far to the right of the American people. Do not tell me that just because he has gotten away with this so far, this proves that the American people are "moderate". The American people are not "moderate" in Village terms, they are moderate in American terms, which means they are not insane enough to want to be, as so many smart people have noted, forced to buy lousy insurance they can't afford. And once they realize that this is what Obama is forcing on them, they will hate him even more than they hated George W. Bush.

Because when I'm that mad, I can't word.

Anyone We Know?

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2009/12/14/

Still Magic

Actor/singer explains his life with rock 'n' roll.

Season's Greetings

Happy Hanukkah!  (or however you spell it.)  May your lights remain lit!

ETA:  Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast proposes Major League Dreidel.

Fafblog is Not Alone

Shark-fu's dream of Rupert Murdoch's true self:

“I give you the information I think you should have the way I think you should have it. I give you conservative pundits and personalities all pre-programmed to maintain your fear and confusion so I can continue to dominate you – for this you should thank me.”

To paraphrase a line from North by Northwest, an awful lot of people are confronted with Rupert Murdoch and see only his money.  Back in 1976, however, he bought two New York newspapers: the New York Post, which up to that point (I know; hard to believe now) had been a liberal voice in the region, and the Village Voice, a weekly with a national readership and reputation which mostly reported on the local (to Greenwich Village primarily and secondarily to the rest of New York City) art scene and relevant national politics.  If you click that last link, you'll notice that Murdoch was unable to digest the Voice.  But he destroyed the Post as a newspaper.  If you hear a cry of "The Post is not a newspaper," that's me.  So yeah, I despise him.  In case you wondered.

In Memoriam

Yosef H. Yerushalmi, historian.

I have not read his work, nor met him.  Just so you know.

In Memoriam

Gene Barry, actor.  (The New World version of Patrick MacNee.)

They've Lost Bruce

Bruce Springsteen:

A BRIEF STATEMENT FROM BRUCE
Like many of you who live in New Jersey, I've been following the progress of the marriage-equality legislation currently being considered in Trenton. I've long believed in and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples and fully agree with Governor Corzine when he writes that, "The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is -- a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law." I couldn't agree more with that statement and urge those who support equal treatment for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to let their voices be heard now.

Individual items don't have links, but this is demarcated by a box, which should be on (or near) top for a while.

Say What?

Shellfish harvesting resumes in Alameda

I did a double-take before realizing that mussels are not part of the hiring process.

Yahrzeit and the War

John Lennon, 29 years ago.  Next year, he would have been 70.  I can't imagine.

Bob Herbert on the toll the wars exact:

The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.

(I wouldn't know about that--there's a lot of denial out there.)

"Prepare to Panic"

Arthur Silber gets totally blunt about "health care reform."  Judicious use of the usual four-letter word.

Adventures in the Empyrean

The retreat/reflection was interesting, centering on the Spe Salvi encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI.  It's a wide-ranging document, citing Dostoevsky and Marx.  I'm going to go read some St. Augustine.

One of the things I got out of it, though, is that the Pope should start a blog.

On to the dream, which featured a seriously weird apartment building with the remains of rails buried under debris in one corridor and a semi-transparent floor allowing one to see the tracks on the next floor down, preceded by [a beautiful woman] in a nearly-red flared-skirt dress whom I embraced.  The other stuff going on was probably the stuff important to my subconscious, but that, of course, is the part I forgot.

Delayed Business

OK, link is fixed:  Avedon Carol on the health care reform process.

People who really want genuine health care reform that would cut costs should spend less time trying to pass this bill and more time demanding that real cost-cutting, in the form of universal single-payer with real enforcement on restraints on insurance companies, be put at the foundations of the bill. Every concession to conservatives should be removed from it. Get rid of anything supporters of health care reform would have to explain away. Fight four-square for a bill like that, and you'll have the public with you in no time. That's the only way to get real health care reform - fight for it.

Also, Bernanke should be spanked, the tears of rapist sympathizers, and a link to a gorgeous version of "Carol of the Bells."

UPDATE:  More on the subject:

But think about this: The administration said publicly that they had no intention of passing a public option. They said it where the insurance companies could see it. They started from the weakest possible negotiating position. And the only reason we are still even talking about the public option is that enough people decided to push back. As far as I can tell, most of them are pushing back only because the administration has given them the go-ahead to do so. But we still have no reason to believe that the public option is in any way their goal. Maybe they just figured out that they needed a bit of grass roots steam to power their fake threat to the insurance companies to get them to play ball.

If you're not reading The Sideshow, you're missing some of the best political writing on the Web.

I will be taking part of my journey to God today, so watch out for 15-car pileups. ;-)

Goo Goo G'Joob

Fafnir's pie is missing.  And he knows whodunit.

While I'm Waiting for That Link to be Fixed

The Mahablog is on fire this morning:

In a nutshell — health reform legislation is being gutted of the most critical cost control measures by “centrist” legislators who complain the cost control measures are too costly. So the aspects of the bill that make it fiscally responsible are being removed in the name of fiscal responsibility. At the same time, Republicans who for years have badmouthed Medicare and sworn to dismantle it are scaring seniors by telling them the health care bill would ruin Medicare.

That Tolling's Been Going On Awhile...

Arthur Silber urged the reading of the latest posting by Chris Floyd.

So I did.

I guess we're in trouble.

...[S]hould we give credit to such a regime, single it out for praise, whenever it happens to behave in a rational manner on one issue or another? After all, functioning governments of every kind do a multitude of worthy things for their people every day. They build roads, lay electric lines and sewer pipes, maintain the food supply, sponsor medical research, facilitate technological developments, adjudicate civil disputes, provide disaster relief, maintain parks and recreation areas, etc., etc. – the list is virtually endless. And this was equally true of, say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union, and other regimes imbued with a crimeful essence. Would you have told a dissident opposing the depredations of Hitler or Stalin or Franco or Tojo or the apartheid regime in South Africa that he or she must always be sure to point out any constructive thing these governments do, and give them credit for it?
[...]
...extreme systems force that kind of triage upon us. Raoul Wallenberg could not end the Holocaust; he could only save what was in relative terms a very small number of people at the margins. But who would deny his heroism, and wish that he had not sought such small but deeply meaningful mitigations? Conversely, who among us would have suggested that Wallenberg, in the dire moral urgency of his mission, take time out to give credit to the Nazis for, say, their "Strength Through Joy" recreational programs for ordinary workers, or their remarkable highway system? Or in our time, do we require Shirin Ebadi to praise the Tehran regime for its social housing programs, or Aung San Suu Kyi to give credit to the Burmese generals for building roads or installing storm drains?

In Memoriam

Robert Degen, who was at least partly guilty of the Hokey Pokey.

The December "From the Archives" obituaries are wonderfully rich.  James Baldwin...Grandma Moses...

More Skewers, Please, We Still Have Corn

Why extraterrestrials don't eat us

"Well at the very least they would've eaten us," says Giblets. "Just look at us, all marbled with succulent fat and dripping with tasty earth juices!"
"Maybe they're vegans," says me. "Or maybe we taste all weird an gamey."

and the purpose of the war in Afghanistan.

And just as America can't afford to abandon this war, surely it can't afford to abandon the Afghan people, who without the American military would be left to the savage whims of their hated enemy, the Afghan people.

Mostly, you can't beat Fafblog! Except sometimes.

L'Amuse-Bouche

Driftglass pokes at the current apostasy of Andrew Sullivan.

Next Step

Banning divorce.

(Not, strictly speaking, serious; but, y'know, slippery slope stuff.  It would be like re-instituting stoning for adultery:  Too many hypocrites conservatives would be personally inconvenienced.)

Takedown

The Slacktivist calls out the authors of the Manhattan Declaration and names their sin.

Metamorphosis

Barack Obama turns into Lyndon B. Johnson.  Bad sign.  Jumping into quicksand is never the smart thing to do.

ETA:  And then there's this matter.