For Bookies: Writers and Their Rooms

I don't mind working in a bit of clutter. It's your head that has to be clear.
Beryl Bainbridge
More here.

Belfair Barbie: Day 8 (of 9)

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Washington market:

(Nine of these are making the email rounds among a variety of Puget Sound area women. I received it in a forward from my daughter, who works in Bremerton.
There will be one a day until they run out.)


' Belfair Barbie'
This recently paroled Barbie comes with a 9mm handgun, a Ray Lewis knife, a Chevy with dark tinted windows, and a Meth Lab Kit. This model is only available after dark and must be paid for in cash (preferably small, untraceable bills) unless you are a cop, then we don't know what you are talking about.

Behind The 'Obama Is Muslim' Smear

The Washington Post investigates the internet evidence compiled by a young woman scholar and Obama supporter, follows the threads and identifies a few people. It's an interesting detective story, but there's really no ending, just a question.
If anybody can do this to anyone — anonymously — how to fight it?

How The World Eats

East German Family

Andrew Sullivan today linked to a Time magazine photo gallery from a fascinating book by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio called Hungry Planet. They visited and photographed 30 families around the world, their week's worth of groceries, their marketing, their favorite foods and recipes. See more here and here.

Dino Rossi Afraid To Be Republican

The state of Washington has a new electoral system for its primary in which the top two vote getters go on to the general no matter which party they belong to.
The new system also means candidates can choose any political designation they wish.
Rossi apparently has decided his "brand" should be "GOP Party" in his effort to be elected governor, TPM  reports today.
The chairman of the Republican party in Spokane county, who is running for insurance commissioner, is calling himself "No Party Preference," and admits it's a bad time to be branded Republican.

Heh Heh Heh

Andrew Sullivan calls these Mental Health Breaks.

Bainbridge Island Barbie: Day 7 (of 9)

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Washington market:

(Nine of these are making the email rounds among a variety of Puget Sound area women. I received it in a forward from my daughter, who works in Bremerton.
There will be one a day until they run out.)

'Bainbridge Barbie'
This yuppie Barbie comes with your choice of BMW convertible or Hummer H2. Included are her own Starbucks cup, credit card and country club membership. Also available for this set are Shallow Ken and Private School Skipper. You won't be able to afford any of them.

Unity Day Prep

When two superstars share the same stage, what do they share backstage?
23/6 at Huffpo publishes the secret memo.

Shelton Barbie: Day 6 (of 9)

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Washington market:

(Nine of these are making the email rounds among a variety of Puget Sound area women. I received it in a forward from my daughter, who works in Bremerton.
There will be one a day until they run out.)

' Shelton Barbie'
This pale model comes dressed in her own Wrangler jeans two sizes too small, a NASCAR t-shirt and Tweety bird tattoo on her shoulder. She has a six-pack of Bud L ight and a Hank Williams Jr. CD set. She can spit over 5 feet and kick mullet-haired Ken's butt when she is drunk. Purchase her pickup truck separately and get a confederate flag bumper sticker absolutely free.

Woman Behind Obama

Claire McCaskill, senator from Missiouri, where she helped him win the primary, is one of his closest advisors.
I love this quote:

McCaskill's advice has made a difference in more subtle ways, too. She says Obama sometimes has "a tendency to explain the intellectual rationale for something he's done before he explains what was going on in his heart."

After his remarks in Pennsylvania that rural voters bitter over the economy "cling to guns and religion," Obama tried to explain by saying his "syntax was poor."

"I teased him about using the word syntax," McCaskill said. "I said, 'Barack, where I come from that's the tax you have to pay on beer.' Sometimes it's better to say 'I screwed up' than to say 'I got the wrong syntax.'"

FISA

Senate won't vote on it until July.

Wake Up And Smell The Coffee

It could be enough.

FISA: So Much for Hope

AP says it goes to a vote Thursday.

Ethanol Bad, But What's Good?

The ethanol industry is apparently tanking because of high corn prices. Some say 123 of 160 plants in the U.S. will close within months. But I haven't seen anything saying what will happen then.

Silverdale Barbie: Day 5 (of 9)

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Washington market:

(Nine of these are making the email rounds among a variety of Puget Sound area women. I received it in a forward from my daughter, who works in Bremerton.
There will be one a day until they run out.)

'Silverdale Barbie'

This collagen injected, rhino plastic Barbie wears a leopard print outfit and drinks cosmopolitans while entertaining friends. Percocet prescription available as well as newly built, reduced price condo.

FISA Hope?

Call your senator and ask him/her to oppose the FISA compromise bill and support a filibuster.
Here's the toll-free number: 202-224-3121

Greenwald says it appears there’s a slim chance the FISA opponents can delay action in the Senate long enough for it to just go away until there’s a new administration.
Dodd and Feingold apparently have the tricks to run out the clock and legislation like this drops in importance as other things take precedence with the approaching election and other, more important bills.
Harry Reid announced yesterday he won't vote for any of it either. Further analysis by Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake is that Reid will hold up FISA to get the housing bill the Dems want and which Bush has said he might veto, then recess for July 4 and come back, do the Iraq supplemental and lastly, FISA.
It's time enough to continue to apply pressure on Democratic senators to support a filibuster. Or not.
NOTE: FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act which, as now written, allows wholesale warrantless wiretapping of Americans and also grants amnesty to the telecommications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration's previous illegal warrantless spying.

Ann E. Dunwoody

From Huffpo via AP

WASHINGTON — For the first time in American history a woman has been chosen for promotion to four-star general.

The Pentagon announced Monday that President Bush nominated Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody to head the Army Materiel Command, responsible for equipping, outfitting and arming soldiers throughout the Army.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first woman to attain the rank of a full general. By law, the Army is limited to 11 active-duty four-stars, including the Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey.

CFCs Recycle

From NYT today:

Recycling them is about to get easier. Home Depot, the nation’s second-largest retailer, will announce on Tuesday that it will take back old compact fluorescents in all 1,973 of its stores in the United States, creating the nation’s most widespread recycling program for the bulbs.

Welcome To Clusterdouche!

Being a Brief History of Republican Product Placement Now That Their Brand is Finally Dying the Cancerous, Painful and Hopefully Merciless Death It Has So Long Deserved
and more here.

Port Orchard/Olalla Barbie: Day 4 (of 9)

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Washington market:

(Nine of these are making the email rounds among a variety of Puget Sound area women. I received it in a forward from my daughter, who works in Bremerton.
There will be one a day until they run out.)

'Port Orchard/Olalla Barbie'

This tobacco-chewing, brassy-haired Barbie has a pair of her own high-heeled sandals with one broken heel from the time she chased beer-gutted Ken out of Shelton Barbie's house. Her ensemble includes low-rise acid-washed jeans, fake fingernails, and a see-through halter-top. Also available with a mobile home.

Eye Candy

There's a reason for the category on the right, and you need to go to The Sartorialist right now. Because it's summer. Blogging.

It's Your Consitution (hint:FISA again)

UPDATE BELOW.

Okay, I know I've been harping on this a lot, but A LOT is what it takes.
Please, DO THIS.
From the Philly Inquirer today, via Greenwald:

The cover-up is nearly complete. With congressional approval, the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans' overseas phone calls and e-mail for nearly six years will be spared the third-degree treatment by any judge or jury.

At the same time, Bush or his successor would have virtual free rein to continue the massive antiterror surveillance sweeps of communications to and from this country.

Whatever the risk from another terror attack, Americans' privacy would be the assured casualty from these antiterror tactics. . . .Indeed, Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) said the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act offered no safeguard against future lawless spying. . . .

The [telecom] lawsuits offered the best means to plumb what occurred during the spy program. That avenue would be blocked now, and it's doubtful that reviews ordered by several agencies' inspectors general will provide a better public accounting.

It's incredible to hear Democrats try to justify their capitulation on grounds that they forced Bush to accept an additional $95 billion worth of domestic spending. Unemployment insurance and higher-education benefits for veterans, great stuff. But since when is it right to horse-trade over the cherished, constitutional right to privacy?

There's still time for the Senate to stand up for the Constitution and reject this deal.

UPDATE: So, uh,TPM says this means there will be a filibuster. I dunno.

Red Hat Ladies

of Salem, OR, at Oregon Gardens. June 2008.

How To Be Womanly

An old, but always timely story from the L.A. Times.

Equal but different.

You hear that a lot on the lush green campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

God values men and women equally, any student here will tell you. It’s just that he’s given them different responsibilities in life: Men make decisions. Women make dinner.

This fall, the internationally known seminary – a century-old training ground for Southern Baptists – began reinforcing those traditional gender roles with college classes in homemaking. The academic program, open only to women, includes lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies.

Philosophical courses such as “Biblical Model for the Home and Family” teach that God expects wives to graciously submit to their husbands’ leadership. A model house, to be completed by next fall, will allow women to get credit toward bachelor’s degrees by learning how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation.

It all sounds wonderful to sophomore Emily Felts, 19, who signed up as soon as she arrived on campus this fall.

Several relatives have told Felts that she’s selling herself short. They want her to become a lawyer, and she agrees she’d make a good one. But that’s not what she wants to do with her life.

More to the point, it’s not what she believes God wants of her.

“My created purpose as a woman is to be a helper,” Felts said firmly. “This is a college education that I can use.”

How Retired Am I?

So retired that I didn't believe it is Tuesday, not Monday, until noon. Good thing I didn't email that blogger at WashBlog and tell him to correct his time dating system. Oh, wait.

Sun Blogging

Best outdoor chair evah! Go buy one. It folds into its canopy, which becomes the carrying case with handles adjustable for back packing it.
Mine were free from generous son-in-law.

Appeasement

Andrew Sullivan has some good stuff today.

Those Damned Hippies

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers offers some personal insight:

As someone who was definitely a Hippie let me expand upon your statement,

"But in the reaction to a doomed war, in their sense that mankind faced an existential crisis as destructive weapons technology spread, in their understanding that Christianity was not, at its core, socially productive or in any familiar sense, socially conservative, the hippies were onto something."

Those aspects of Hippie culture, to which I subscribed and lent what leadership abilities I then had, that were most critical were definitely based upon an understanding of essential Essene Christianity.

The culture was a communal, love based collaboration in a spiritual quest to bring peace, end bigotry - then against African and Native Americans, shortly adding women and not too long after Gays - stopping nuclear proliferation and war, and saving the planet from the rampages of unfettered exploitation. (Love in the Christian sense, though at 19, when I first got involved the sexual aspects were pretty attractive too.)

In a very strong sense, the hippies were a Conservative force. One that believed in Jeffersonian agrarian principles, practiced the Golden Rule, and direct religious experience, often enabled or enhanced by the use of psychotropic drugs such as Marijuana, Mescaline, psilocybin and LSD.

One of my favorite anecdotes of the period was being driven in Northern Arizona by an attorney who'd agreed to take a case for my room mate and me because it was on his way to a meeting to hear Barry Goldwater speak. We spoke about the war in Vietnam, the riots that had occurred after the assassination of MLK and the shooting of Bobby Kennedy and George Wallace, and the need to preserve the fantastic landscape through which we were driving. I remember the conversation because we agreed that the rioting after MLK seemed to be a reasonable, through regrettable response to that outrage (this 1968 ultra conservative was pro civil rights), that it was very frightening that there were forces willing to assassinate leaders rather than vote for them, and most startling, that we agreed that if we were unwilling to do what was required to win in Vietnam, we should leave. We even agreed that to win, would probably destroy Vietnam to the degree that the victory would be Pyrrhic.

And it should come as no surprise that preserving Arizona's beauty was a shared wish, though I suspect on many of the aspects of that topic we now hold important but which were then relatively unknown by most people, we'd have disagreed. All I know is we both hated the cancerous growth that was Phoenix. Even then.

Of course, Hippidom was co opted by the greater culture within the context of fashions and music, AIDS and other STD's put the kibosh on free love, and Nixon and Republicans of the day so frightened the older generation about their own kids that being against war and thermonuclear weapons was seen as treasonous. And not actually being Jesus meant that turning the other cheek and acting peaceably ended with the police riots in Chicago and the Hell's Angels at Altamont.

Oh, Noes!

James Dobson Accuses Obama of Distorting Bible

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement's biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution.

Port Townsend Barbie: Day Three (of Nine)

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Washington market:

(Nine of these are making the email rounds among a variety of Puget Sound area women. I received it in a forward from my daughter, who works in Bremerton.
There will be one a day until they run out.)

' Port Townsend Barbie'

This doll is made of actual tofu. She has long straight brown hair, arch-less feet, hairy armpits, no makeup and Birkenstocks with white socks. She prefers that you call her Willow . She does not want or need a Ken doll, but if you purchase two Port Townsend Barbies and the optional Subaru wagon, you get a rainbow flag bumper sticker for free.

Filibuster FISA 'Comprmise'

Petition Dodd, Feingold and Obama.

Save Public Broadcasting

The vote is tomorrow. Sign the petition here.

RIP George Carlin

But we will always have the 7 words.

Bremerton Barbie: Day Two (of Nine)

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Washington market:

(Nine of these are making the email rounds among a variety of Puget Sound area women. I received it in a forward from my daughter, who works in Bremerton.
There will be one a day until they run out.)


'Bremerton Barbie'


This Barbie now comes with a stroller and 2 infant dolls. Optional accessories include a GED and bus pass. White boy Gangsta Ken and his 1979 Caddy were available, but are now very difficult to
find since the addition of the infant.

There's Google and Then

there's Pipl. Just how much of you is out there on the intertubes, anyway?
If you guess way too much, you'd be right.

Snicker Sunday

Gail Collins of the NYT at her best today on choosing VPs.

I’m praying that McCain selects Mitt Romney so I can repeatedly revisit the time Mitt drove to Canada with the family dog on the station-wagon roof.

Or perhaps they could both pick Michael Bloomberg...

...Other than that, picking a running mate is — no disrespect intended — like picking a pet. How much time are you planning to spend with the little fellow? How much exercise will he be getting on an average day? On one extreme, you have the William Wheeler model (“There’s the living room. Go find a corner and sleep in it.”) On the other end, there’s the Cheney version in which the pet takes over the checkbook, diversifies the family investment portfolio and starts strafing at the neighbor’s cat.

Watch 6 Minutes on FISA

then Do This.


Thanks, Julimac

P.S. My letter to bburton@barackobama.com

Dear Mr. Burton,
I have been a supporter of and contributor to Barack Obama since the Iowa caucus.
I believed he would protect the Constitution. His reluctant support for the newly revised FISA bill, with its enlargement of the government's power to spy on Americans, is hugely disappointing.
I am asking that Obama show us the courage and hope we need to recover our rights, filibuster the telecom immunity provision as you promised, and demand Congress substitute an extension of the PAA for the fatally flawed bill.
If he does not take a leadership position on this vital issue, my dollars in the future will go toward defeating the Democrats who have sold us out.

Sincerely,

History Sunday

Description: Photograph of Letta Crapo-Smith taken by F. Friend. Annotated on reverse by Detroit painter Helen Keep, "Letta Crapo-Smith, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. H. H. H. Crapo-Smith. The first person from Detroit to have a picture in the Paris Salon, [signed] Helen L. Keep." Crapo-Smiths (1862-1921) was a painter from Detroit, Michigan.

The Smithsonian has a photostream on Flickr of all kinds of pictures from its collection available for your viewing and use. At last, your taxpayer dollars work for you.