Saturday, March 13, 2010

It's Spring, Time To Visit Paris

I fooled with this for a little while and zoomed in on a French (presumably) contrarienne trimming her geranium. Kewl.
Nice eye candy in a week in which the Sartorialist seems to be off his feed and shamelessly promoting his uninteresting girlfriend.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Honorary Contrarienne

Janet Yellen has been nominated and unanimously approved.
Apparently she's going to be No. 2 at the Fed, too. Krugman approves so how can we not?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Erm, About That GOP Economic Path

If you haven't been paying attention, and why would you after all, you might have missed the little skirmishes over Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's so-called miracle road to the future whereby we privatize Social Security and Medicare, cut taxes to the rich and live happily ever after in a permanent deficit-free zone.
Well, surprise. It's a crock.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Can Legalization Be Far Behind?

Contrariennes — or our daughters — may be stoners. Who knew? Me.
According to a recent study by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an estimated 8 million American women smoked up in the past year—a lowball figure that reflects only those willing to cop to it. Among them is the upper-middle-class Pottery Barn set: One in five women who admitted to indulging in the previous month lives in a household earning more than $75,000 a year.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Jaw-Dropping Technology, And Yet...

From the Kitsap Sun newspaper, March 9, 2010:
— A fire that destroyed a barn on the 12400 block of Olalla Valley Road also left Comcast cable and Internet customers across the Kitsap Peninsula without service Tuesday evening.
The fire burned through Comcast's fiber optic lines and threatened nearby power lines...

McCain/Lieberman: Doddering On The Brink

would like to repeal the Magna Carta or something.
...one particular provision effectively ends the presumption of innocence for all of us. That provision codifies the President's right to define any criteria he chooses to deliver any individual into the legal Twilight Zone defined by the bill.

Headline O' Teh Day

I just love it when two Republicans get down and dirty.

Crist Suggests Rubio Waxes His Back

Monday, March 8, 2010

Erm, About Spring

Forwarded this around today and it got rave reviews. My favorite line is in italics.
I didn't know Pollit was a poet (don't say that out loud). It's from her 2009 book The Mind-Body Problem and, oddly, I happen to be reading Rebecca Goldstein's novel of the same name. Coincidence? You be the judge.

The Old Neighbors  by Katha Pollit


The weather's turned, and the old
neighbors creep out
from their crammed rooms to blink in the sun, as if
surprised to find they've lived through another
winter.
Though steam heat's left them pale and shrunken
like old root vegetables,
Mr. and Mrs. Tozzi are already
hard at work on their front-yard mini-Sicily:
A Virgin Mary birdbath, a thicket of roses,
and the only outdoor aloes in Manhattan.
It's the old immigrant story,
the beautiful babies
grown up into foreigners. Nothing's
turned out the way they planned
as sweethearts in the sinks of Palermo.
Still, each waves a dirt-caked hand
in geriatric fellowship with Stanley,
the former tattoo king of the Merchant Marine,
turning the corner with his shaggy collie,
who's hardly three but trots
arthritically in sympathy. It's only
the young who ask if life's worth living,
not Mrs. Sansanowitz, who for the last hour
has been inching her way down the sidewalk,
lifting and placing
her new aluminum walker as carefully
as a spider testing its web. On days like these,
I stand for a long time
under the wild gnarled root of the ancient wisteria,
dry twigs that in a week
will manage a feeble shower of purple blossom,
and I believe it: this is all there is,
all history's brought us here to our only life

to find, if anywhere,
our hanging gardens and our street of gold:
cracked stoops, geraniums, fire escapes, these old
stragglers basking in their bit of sun.

It's International Women's Day

and as a second-wave feminist, let me just say that I continue to support any incompetent, pandering, asshole woman's right to get just as far as any incompetent, pandering, asshole man.
That said, three (count them!)  women of the GOP: Anglin' Angela McLowan (R-FOX), Lashin' Liz Cheney and, and...somebody else. I had it right here.
Oh, yeah, Jivin' Jill Vogel.
Hmm, might have a roller derby team in the making.
The Cheney link is a long profile from NY Magazine and, you guessed it, she could run for president. She'll have to, really, because Sarah will have crashed and burned by 2012.

Oh, yeah, and another thing. Katherine Bigelow won best director Oscar yesterday. Definitely competent, not an asshole that I can tell. Pandering, well a little, maybe. But my inner Chad loved the movie. My outer Rebecca liked Generation Kill much better.