Yesterday's money quote was Kathy Griffin saying that watching celebrities come out and defend Michael Jackson's pedophilia was disgusting. Couldn't have said it better, myself.

In a fit of train-wreck watching, I got in about 45 minutes of EmJay before my brain tried to implode.

So, uh, not to see a conspiracy here, but how um, coincidental? Convenient? is it that Michael's celebrity defender du jour was Nicole-Lionel's-Daughter-Ritchie? She who "stars" with her best friend Paris-I-Am-SO-A-Serious-Intellectual-Damn-It-Hilton in Fox's newest reality show. You know, the one where the two rich girls go live for a month in West Mustache, FlyOverState, USA. The one that Paris is unable to hype on the talk show circuit because of her other video?

But, Nicole-Lionel's-Daughter-Ritchie could, if anybody would give her airtime to do it. It's just that, well, let's just say she doesn't have Paris' borzoi-like good looks.

Wait! She just happens to be EmJay's god-daughter. OHMIGAWD! Like, two celebrity birds with one set up and number two shot. Tell me some hot young producer didn't earn their pay this week figuring that out.

I'm not sure if I'll ever do this again, but I'm doing it today.

1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.
2 quilts, drop another 20 points off my cholesterol, master skinning, master CSS, mosaic around the koi pond

2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.
Patti Ruiz, my best college bud; Kathy Kirkhardt, from high school; Leapin' Larry, but that won't happen because he's dead; Jill Clark from high school; Kathleen Sullivan, from Texas by way of New York -- last heard to be in Virginia

3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.
surf, roller skate, sing on key, pilot a hot air balloon, speak French

4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).
Buy a major league baseball team and the stadium to put them in; create a film scholarship in memory of Nick Cannon, my college friend who died of AIDS; create another one in memory of Leapin', who died of war; buy a huge tract of land in the middle of nowhere with a river running through it; build my dream house on it (includes horse and stable)

5. List five things you do that help you relax.
drink; smoke; watch the koi; play with the dog; sew

Damn, I hate these idiots running around my city. Carpet baggers. They claim to be anarchists, and yet they rely on the electronic media to advertise their protests and demands. Here's a little something to chew on: true anarchy would destroy the electric grid, bring down all media, stop running water and sewers, and leave us little better than cave dwellers (not that there's anything wrong with that).

True anarchy would allow the police you taunt to shoot you and damn the consequences, of which there would be none. Well, you may argue, they wouldn't be policemen. And you'd be right. They'd just be pissed off people with automatic weapons and riot gear. Sort of like the knights of old, in their armor, smacking the crap out of the little people wearing rags.

Here's another something to chew on, other than your grainy tofu from your community kitchens: if the average household income in a third-world nation is about five bucks a year, and a 10-year old, who has no chance of going to a non-existant school anyway, is making about 50 cents a week sewing Nike sneakers rather than being a child sex worker, what's the problem? You don't want to support sweat shops in Asia? Fine. Don't buy the products.

You need more? Here's more: You cannot have it both ways. You cannot pay $30 an hour to an American laborer who belongs to a union, and expect to pay bottom dollar for the product he makes. If you pay minimum wage, you can sell for minimum dollar. If you pay through the nose for your workers, their health care, their education benefits, their retirement benefits, and their union organization, then profit must be made somewhere along the line.

Finally, if you want to make changes in the world, don't go out in the streets with banners and jollies that look like a day at Fantasy Fest. Take a lesson from the French students of the 60s, and look like a fucking angry mob of serious people. Or, and here's a real hard thing to swallow: grow up and create change from within.

Vote in every election from Dog Catcher to President. Do volunteer work in your own back yards. Get jobs, and make policies that benefit everyone. You want to live on a commune? Move to Israel and live on a kibbutz. That'll let you get your fill of both politics and socialism.

But, please, take your idealized views of anarchy and get the fuck out of Miami. Thanks. Have a nice day.

No, probably not. Like every other blogger on the planet, it seems, I use Blogrolling. Unlike every other blogger on the planet, I tried to recreate my bloglist during the Laura debacle, and so completely ruined any chance of getting my list back when the lists were replaced with backups.

I'm now waiting for Blogrolling to complete their roll over to new servers so that I can start over.

On the work side of life, my boss is on the other side of the planet for three weeks, leaving me to suffer the slings and arrows of stupidity by myself. Are you, my readers, as tired of the repetition of idiocy here at my office as I am? Today's stupid-o-gram from the PR office asked if I had put information on the web about the Free Trade crap going on down town. Well, no, I hadn't. Of course I hadn't, seeing as how the PR office is the freaking gate keeper of all content, and they hadn't asked for that to go up. They still aren't asking, as far as I can tell from this e-mail, because they only asked if it was up, and what did I think about putting something up if nothing was up already.

What I think, I can't put in an e-mail, and probably shouldn't put here. I think that what ever they want me to do, it's three days late and several dollars short. The damn conference is half over. The crap they're sending me is about street closures and alternate routes to get to work. Hey, genius! People have probably figured it out on their own by now, and what with your crack record for prompt and useful information they won't be looking on the hospital's website for that, anyway. They'll be going to the Miami Herald site, and how pathetic is that, considering that you wouldn't want to use the Herald to wrap fish, much less get information.

I must be depressed, because I'm starting to have accidents that leave marks. I've never been one of those people who intentionally cut themselves, or anything like that. I just get clumsy when I'm depressed. This means that I am currently walking around with a chunk of my left pinky missing (chopping garlic with a recently sharpened knife, and somehow managed to get the finger pad under the blade). I have a bruise the size of a tangerine on my right forearm from getting on an elevator. The woman standing in front of the control panel looked like she was holding the door open button as she watched me get in. She was not. She was merely watching people enter the elevator. Since I was the last one on, I was the one the doors shut on. Hence the bruise.

I'm also stressed, which is leading to a flare-up of perioral dermatitis. For the laymen, that means my face is breaking out around my mouth and chin. Causes? Stress, and being a middle-aged white woman. OK. Got anything in there I can actually do something about, Doc? Cause I can't change the white, aging, female part. And the stress? Well, fuck. Mummy has Alzheimer's and just fell, broke her hip and is in rehab with a bionic joint. Daddy has leukemia and is holding steady. Work sucks left nut. The economy is in the toilet, and Bush is in the White House riding roughshod over the world. The Dems are mounting one of the most pathetic panel of choices I've ever seen, leading me to believe that Bush will actually WIN the election this time and thereby get another four years in power, which leads me to view the world situation with something less than hope.

So there is my fucking life in a nutshell. Ennui or angst?

Those who know me well, know that I have several dirty little secrets. One which I am willing to discuss publicly is this: I am a gear head. I refused to learn to drive until I was well into my teens, failed my driver's test the first time I took it, and didn't own a car until my senior year in college, but nevertheless, I am a gear head from the git-go.

I love, love, love Monster Garage. I remember clearly the first few sports cars I ever saw. My brother (who is seven years older than me) had a friend with a red Fiat Spider. Can't remember the friend's name, but I remember the car.

One of my earliest memories of my cousin Milton was a "date" that he took me on one summer's day in Newport. I loved (and still love) horses, and so he took me to an equestrian event. I don't remember the riding or jumping, but he picked me up in a red Ford Mustang convertible with white leather interior.

My father has a friend in Atlanta who is a sometime auto racer. Paul came to visit us once when I was maybe fourteen. He arrived at night in a white on white Shelby Cobra Mustang. There were chrome hood clips. Chrome wheels. White interior. A real Shelby Cobra, not a kit or a factory labeled edition.

I didn't know why, but I knew it got me hot. Hell, I might not even have been sure about the hot, but I know it did something to me.

I loved Big Daddy Roth and Ratfink. I wanted a woodie for my non-existant surf board. I stole a book from the public library: a how-to manual for chopping a VW bug into a dune buggy.

All of this is just a lead-in to tonight's big entertainment. My honey is taking me to the Auto Show. Vroom. Tomorrow I will, no doubt, have a new must-lust-after car. I guarantee, it'll be a stick, it'll be a convertible, and it'll be red.

I have this little ritual every morning. I read the paper. It's good for me, because there is usually something in those inky pages that starts my heart even better than a second cup of coffee. This morning it was a "style" article about the current hot trend: knitting.

The story featured a woman whose first project was described as an afghan for her living room. And I suppose it was her project. After all, she commissioned me to make it for her. She told me she was so inspired by my work that she was taking up knitting. I'd like to think that maybe, after she bought that first set of needles, she decided that she could knit better than me, and so made another afghan to replace the one she paid me $500 for. The article continued on to say that after the afghan she has knit several shawls and scarves and a purse with a beaded handle. How nice.

That led into a side bar about beading and other crafts. The featured artisan/teacher in that story is another woman I know. She learned to bead from another friend, a jeweler. She teaches alongside that same jeweler, as her assistant. Neither my name nor my jeweler friend's name were mentioned.

Apparently, you are only worthy of ink if you come to be a craftsman as a second career, after homemaking or trophy wife. Those of us with degrees and 20+ years in the field are just shit out of luck.

And so, just like the graphic design profession has been taken over by people with desktop computers and a couple boxes of software and clip art, artisans have been replaced by dilettantes with too much time and sufficient amounts of money to buy supplies. They have "house shows" and they sell to each other. It has become a status thing to touch the pearls at one's throat and murmur that it was purchased from a friend who has become "a jeweler." I guess that saying it came from a friend who has become proficient at bead stringing doesn't have quite the same cachet.

Sort of like saying that the gorgeous afghan tossed oh-so-casually- across one's tooled leather reading chairs was a commissioned piece rather than a knit of one's own.

Well, bite me. When do I get to have a second career? Although, to read my resume, I'm already on my fourth or fifth. I've been a graphic designer (print) and a web designer. I spent several years as a commercial photographer (product work, catalogs, like that) and color printer. I did a season as a political campaign advisor. (Word of advice: if you end up like I did, voting for the opposition, your candidate was no damn good.) I spent a couple of my earlier years in post-production for film. Non-theatrical release, primarily, but I did work on the titles for "Harlan County, USA" which took the Oscar that year for Best Documentary. Got to hold the little gold guy, too, when Barbara Kopple brought it over to the optical house to share.

I used to think my mid-life crisis would involve becoming a professional chef, but that field too, has become overrun with dilettantes and bored second-careerists, and I'll be damned if I follow that trend.

From the "Now I have heard everything" files.

My cousin reports this fesh new hell outrage: skeevy bare feet propped up on the chair back in front of the offender at a movie. Yes. Shoes are removed. Skeevy, stinky, poor hygiene-hampered men's feet are plopped on the head rest of the seat in front. And left thus for the entire movie.

Much relief when the lights went down and the feet were no longer visible.

Ewwww. That's just gross. My cousin noted that of course, the feet were foul, because anyone who had the good manners and good sense to NOT remove shoes and socks in public would also have had good foot hygiene. That leaves the swine with skanky feet and equally skanky public behavior free to do what he did.

Cousin points out that said skank had a female companion, which leads to the observation that there's someone for everyone.

My ex-husband, the anti-christ, used to pick his toe nails and then smell his fingers. I leave it to your imagination how many times I saw that little quirk before I started calculating what it would take to get the divorce finalized.

If you guessed one, you would be correct.

It's not like I have a thing about feet, I don't. I do have a thing about bad foot behavior. But then, I have a thing about all bad behavior, so feet just fall in under the general heading of "things not to do in public with your body." Regular readers will know where I'm going with this.

DO NOT: pick your stray facial hair, your nose, your toenails, your zits, your boyfriends zits. DO NOT play with your various pierced parts, especially those in your face.

Thank you.

It's raining. It's hot and it's raining. The color of the sky belies the temperature. If you didn't know better, you'd think it was a Rochester sky. You'd expect it to be cold, biting through your sweater to soak deep into your bones. And you would be wrong.

This is the tropics. This is a hot, muggy rain. The sky, the rain, the Bay. They all blend into one another in a gray, gray drizzle.

The red lights on the chopper pad glow, but dimly. There is no frosty aura. There is only heat, and rain.

Perfect weather for staying in bed with the covers pulled up over one's head and the air conditioner set to nuclear winter.

I, of course, am at my office, writing this blog entry and trying to look like I have work to do, which I do not. My work life this week is being played out in Dilbert. I am dealing with the titanium bottleneck. No job is small enough to pass through the clog that is our PR department. They sit on information like nesting brood hens. Brood hens with dead eggs, because nothing ever hatches out.

So here I sit, pretending to update the organization's website, when really I'm just venting my frustration on my own, personal site.

Tomorrow, I take another road trip. Don't get excited, it's not anywhere anyone would want to be.

Clark blasts the poseur in chief

Wesley Clark says Bush "pranced around in a flight suit" with no long-term strategy for Iraq -- and as U.S. soldiers die daily, there's still no plan.


Nov. 4, 2003 | Since the end of major combat operations, more than 2,000 U.S. soldiers have been injured or wounded in that conflict [in Iraq]. I've been through Walter Reed. I've seen missing limbs; I've looked into mothers' eyes. I've seen it all before. This is where I came in on the picture, in Vietnam. In the case of Iraq, it's a long record of tragedy, deception, miscalculation, misdirection by an administration that had in its heart an intent to go after Saddam Hussein before they ever came to office.

It's an administration that was warned that the greatest threat to American security was not Saddam Hussein, or North Korea, or Iran, but was instead Osama bin Laden. An administration that's ducked its responsibility for the events of 9/11.

Harry Truman said: When you're commander in chief, the buck stops here. What we have today is an administration that likes to take credit, but it won't take responsibility. We all saw our president when he landed on the deck of that aircraft carrier.

Now wait a minute. Now wait a minute. That was a pretty good-looking flight suit, you got to admit. But the thing is, a lot of brave Americans have worn and fought and some of them died in that flight suit. And he landed on the deck of that carrier, and now we found out this week that the banner behind him that said "Mission Accomplished" -- he didn't have anything to do with it: It was just his White House advance team that prepared it, while it was the sailors that really wanted it there. Next thing you know, we're gonna hear him say the sailors told him to prance around in a flight suit.

The serious issue, though, is this: When you're the commander in chief, your most important responsibility next to upholding the Constitution is safeguarding America. When you're the commander in chief, or a commander in any military operation, and it goes right or wrong, you have an obligation to do an after-action review. We did it as captains, lieutenant colonels, colonels, and generals. You do it with the commander and his staff. You ask: What happened? Why did it happen? And how can we do better next time? That's your responsibility as a commander. I don't know why our president can't do it for the tragic events of 9/11.

Instead he's ducking and bobbing and weaving, and denying the commission that's requesting those documents -- the very documents that are essential to conduct the review -- that he apparently won't conduct and lead himself.

Mr. President, the American people are asking: Turn over those documents! Explain to us how it is that 3,000 Americans and citizens of 80 other countries were attacked in our land on 9/11. What did your administration know? When did you know it? And what were your actions to protect us and to preclude it from happening? And don't be leaking documents blaming it on junior FBI and intelligence officers. Harry Truman said, "The buck stops here." He meant on the president's desk, the president's desk.

And we went from 9/11 to Iraq. We went to Iraq in secret. We, the American people, weren't told that a decision was being made in the days right after 9/11 to attack Iraq -- it took Bob Woodward to tell us that in his book. He was given access to 18 pages of top-secret classified National Security Council documents, I guess, and Iraq figured prominently.

An American journalist heard Don Rumsfield talking on 9/11, that very day, saying: I wonder if we can use this to attack Saddam Hussein? And my military friends told me within 10 or 12 days after 9/11, they said: Sir, we're going after Saddam Hussein whether he did 9/11 or not. Because this administration, they don't know how to fight the war on terrorism -- they just want to take down states.

We were treated to bait-and-switch. The American people were told that we would get Osama bin Laden, dead or alive. We attacked Afghanistan, all right, and in the middle of it Gen. Tommy Franks was busy preparing war plans in secret to go after Iraq -- which had no connection -- at least none that's been established so far.

We didn't finish the job in Afghanistan. Instead, we plotted, planned, maneuvered, implied somehow, that Saddam had nuclear weapons, or was about to have them, remember? Vice President Cheney was certain. Condoleezza Rice said, "You can't ask for the smoking gun. It might be a mushroom cloud." Remember?

And there was always that implication that it was Osama bin Laden there with Saddam, and that by attacking Saddam we were going to get Osama bin Laden. I would say it was a case of, at best, misleading. I mean, if I were an American consumer and bought something on grounds like that, I'd be calling the Better Business Bureau and seeking a good lawyer.

And they took us to war without an adequate plan, without adequate forces. The troops did a great job. They forced their way into Baghdad, they took down the statue of Saddam Hussein. The resistance has continued, it's intensified, it's gotten worse. Jerry Bremer was appointed over there, admitted he didn't have an idea, nobody else did, what they were doing. And today, on a day in which 15 more Americans were killed, in a tragic escalation of the war, there's still no success strategy, there's no plan, there's no leadership to assure our soldiers, and their families, of the rightness of our cause, or of the fact that what we're doing makes strategic sense in terms of American interests.

Where's the leadership? Where's the accountability? And when courageous Americans come forward and try to speak up, to challenge the administration and hold them accountable for the mess, what happens? They're told that to ask questions -- well, that might mean giving aid and comfort to the enemy! Since when, in a democracy, is it unpatriotic to ask questions about your country's policy? That's what I served 34 years in uniform to protect!

Well, there are places in America where people did stand up and did speak out, and one of those is in San Francisco. And it wasn't unpatriotic. And I commend you for it, and I thank you for it.

But you know, this administration's failure of leadership -- it isn't just limited to Iraq. It's here at home, as well. For three years in America, incomes have dropped; the number of uninsured has risen; and we've accumulated the worst budget deficit in American history. Three million private-sector jobs lost, the worst job-creation record in 70 years. Unemployment is up from 4 percent to 6 percent. An additional 1.7 million Americans sinking into poverty last year, 700,000 of them children.

This administration wants to take credit because last quarter the GDP rose at an annual rate of 7 percent, as Americans cashed in their savings, through refinancing, to buy school clothes for their children, and spent the few meager dollars that middle Americans, ordinary people, got off the tax cut? Come on. To this administration: Stop taking credit and start taking responsibility, that's what I'm looking for!

I'm running because I've watched for three years as this administration has undermined the values that have made our nation great. And all the while they've wrapped themselves in patriotism and the American flag! Or at least, that's what they've tried to do. I've seen them taking pictures at every opportunity with our soldiers in the background. But you know what they've really wrapped themselves in is nothing more than radical, right-wing ideology. And they've tried to wrap our country in it as well, but we're not going to let them!


This is an administration that's put ideology above all -- and especially in its agenda for our courts and the Constitution. The consequences for our rights and freedoms are profound, and I need your help to bring change to the leadership and direction for our country.

I started at the beginning ... about the foreign policy. The domestic record is about the same. If you remember, in 2000, Mr. Bush didn't run as a right-wing ideologue, he was the opposite. He talked about the "soft bigotry of low expectations." He promised to "leave no child behind." To a lot of Americans, he must have sounded moderate, reasonable and fair. They voted for him. Of course, as you know, he lost. But that's a matter for another speech.

And after the election, Mr. Bush began to show his colors. First he nominated John Ashcroft to be attorney general. OK, you're the lawyers, I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think John Ashcroft is much of an attorney and I know he's not a general! And he's certainly not a moderate.

And Mr. Bush chipped away at reproductive rights, rolled back environmental laws, started rolling back workers' safety laws. But I don't think it was until the PATRIOT Act came out that we realized just how far from the mainstream Mr. Bush and his administration were attempting to stray. Because it wasn't until we saw the PATRIOT Act and how it was implemented that we realized how little respect they have for our civil rights and civil liberties.

Of course, the act was jammed through Congress in a matter of weeks; it wasn't carefully drafted; it wasn't debated fully; it was passed in the heat of the moment, in the dark of the night. And there are a lot of provisions in it that should deeply concern Americans.

More fundamentally, last month a Justice Department report was released that indicated that the attorney general not only has used the PATRIOT Act, but he hasn't exactly explained to us how he's used the PATRIOT Act yet. But he has admitted that he's expanded the reach, using it to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with terrorism themselves: drug crimes, blackmail, child pornography, white-collar crimes, and more.

It's become, instead of an act to remedy and prevent 9/11, it seems to have become an act of convenience, not an act of patriotism. In two years, the act has grown tentacles. And they have a long, long reach. But John Ashcroft is not through there, he wants to expand it and have PATRIOT Act II.

I think it's time to say: Stop, stop, Mr. Ashcroft! Lay it on the table! Let's see what you did with the PATRIOT Act! Take it to the Congress, let us see every single incident in which you invoked the PATRIOT Act. What did you use it for? Why did you use it? Why couldn't you have used another provision? Why couldn't you have gone to a judge to get a warrant for wiretapping instead of going on in secret? Why do you need access to those library records -- have you ever gotten access to them?

We should lay it all out! If there are pieces that can be justified, OK, we'll consider it. But let's lay it out, and let's have it fully accountable, and in the meantime let's suspend the provisions that allow the searches and seizures without subpoenas and warrants, let's suspend them right now, and go back to real justice.

I believe law enforcement needs all the tools necessary to deal with the problems of terrorism. But I don't believe you can win a war on terror if you give up the essence of who we are as Americans. So let's lay it out. Let's lay it out through Congress, full legislative review, show us the pluses and minuses.

When I was a kid growing up in Arkansas ... we had something we called the bookmobile. Maybe you remember it -- they used to drive it around to schools. It had important documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And they'd say: OK, kids, you're going to get 10 minutes off ? the bookmobile is outside. No test in math today. Go out and walk through the bookmobile and look at the replica of the Constitution of the United States.

And you'd goof off for a few minutes. It was more fun than a fire drill, after all.

We need to take the results of the review of the PATRIOT Act to the American people in a bookmobile -- around to a hundred thousand towns and cities and communities across America. We need to ask Americans to think again, what is it that this country stands for? How much is it right to give up in order to secure the protection that we need to thwart terrorism? Because this is a matter for the people to decide. It's our Constitution, not John Ashcroft's.

Now we're hearing about this PROTECT Act. It's another in a long list of ironically named acts from this administration. I love these labels. According to a memo released this month, the last one by John Ashcroft: What the PROTECT Act does is forbids prosecutors from agreeing to downward departures for federal sentencing guidelines except in rare circumstances. And when a judge orders a downward departure after a prosecutor objects, then the prosecutor reports the judge to the Department of Justice.

Now, what exactly does this mean in practice? For prosecutors it means the prospect of a growing backlog of cases as plea-bargains are more rare before judges. It means the possibility, as Sen. Kennedy put it, of winding up on a DOJ blacklist.

And what does it mean for Americans? That's what we need to be asking -- because it's a real blow at separation of powers. It's a real blow at what America stands for.

I don't want you to think I'm too partisan on this. Let me quote what Chief Justice Rehnquist said about Ashcroft's attempts to collect information on judges who downwardly depart. He said, "It could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate the individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties."

I concur. And I don't agree that often with Republican judges.

And I don't want this Bush administration trying to tell judges how to do their jobs. He's appointing, or trying to appoint people, to positions on the bench who aren't qualified to be there. I believe in having people on the bench who are fair and impartial. That's a sound expectation of the American people. It's the foundation of our legal system. But apparently Mr. Bush has a different vision of our courts. And he's pursued a campaign to appoint a series of right-wing ideologues in the same way he's pursued an ideological and unilateral foreign policy.

One of his first acts was to terminate the role of the American Bar Association in evaluating his nominees. That's a practice that's been used since President Eisenhower, and every single Republican and Democratic president, until this one, has continued that tradition.

Mr. Bush has repeatedly refused to confer with Democratic senators on judicial nominees for federal vacancies. So much for that claim of bipartisan tone and bringing people together.

I mean he doesn't focus on qualifications; he focuses on ideology. And the amazing thing is, he seems to make no secret of it. He said that Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia were his mold for picking judges. But in this country our rights and liberties are protected in the United States Constitution.

Frankly, I think it's outrageous that Mr. Bush appoints people based not only on their allegiance to the document, but on their willingness to impose a personal ideology. A personal ideology designed to roll back established constitutional rights. And it amazes me that some in that other party had the audacity to criticize Democrats for appointing judges that are "judicial activists" while they pat themselves on the back for appointing "strict constructionists." I think all of us know that while Mr. Bush's nominees are guilty of a lot of things, strict construction is not one of them.

The problem is, it's not just that his nominees are conservative. It's that they're ready and willing to overlook the law, in order to achieve an ideologically driven result of the law.

Just look at Justice Brown, his recent nominee for the 9th Circuit. The California State Bar evaluation committee actually rated her "not qualified." The State Supreme Court noted that she was prone to insert her personal conservative views into her appellate opinions and was insensitive to established precedent.

She's taken strong stances against reproductive rights, affirmative action, worker protection -- contrary to precedent. She's spoken favorably about the Lochner decision. She's called the Supreme Court's decisions in the 1930s to uphold the New Deal legislation, "the triumph of our socialist revolution." I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to say that in America I think we can do better.

I think we need justices who respect the law. Who are fair and impartial. Who look at the case. Weigh the evidence. Consider the precedents. And work through the established legal method of discovering the law in the solution to the immediate problems at hand.

But I don't think that's quite what's going on. Instead what I see is more of an effort to transform the court systems starting at the ground floor. Bringing in people of particular viewpoints at the trial and appellate courts. Three years into his administration [unintelligible] by judges who dominate a particular point of view. And if he has an opportunity to fill all the vacancies, then every single circuit, including the 2nd and 9th, will be dominated by Republican judges. He's appointed a total of 167, including 29 circuit judges, in just three years.

I spent my time in the United States Army nonpartisan. I believed you work with the commander in chief for the good of the American people and you followed the law. I don't support partisan agendas over what's good for this country. And I'm speaking here on these matters today because I'm concerned about what's good for the country. We need judges with a judicial temperament, not representing a hard-line ideology.

While it's true that Democrats did filibuster Judge Pickering this week, there's a lot of [unintelligible] in Washington, but that's part of this democratic process. When I taught political philosophy at West Point, I went back and talked about the Federalist Papers, the basis for the Constitution, and I remember teaching Federalist 51 -- you remember it too. They said it this way, "If men were angels there would be no need for government. But as they are not, let interest counteract interest, and ambition counteract ambition."

So, it's the best form of government yet developed by the mind of man, and sometimes it does look difficult. Well, when we hear about the four filibuster cases, just remember, that during the Clinton administration, 20 percent of the judicial nominees during those eight years never even received a confirmation vote. They often languished for years beforehand as Republicans used every procedural trick in the book to hold up their appointments. I remember what happened [to] Judge Richard Paez and to Marsha Berzon, now serving on the 9th Circuit: Judge Paez more than two years, Judge Berzon more than three years, in waiting.

And I don't have to tell you how high the stakes are, because if you look at all these Supreme Court decisions, as you must, look at how many of them have been decided by a 5-to-4 vote. And if you think that doesn't matter so much, talk to my friend Al Gore.

So I'm very concerned about this election in 2004. I'm concerned not only because we have an administration that seeks credit but won't take responsibility in its foreign policy. It doesn't really have domestic policy, just domestic politics. But also an administration that, if it is returned to office, is likely to profoundly change the substance of American law. The issues are profound: separation of church and state, the right of privacy, reproductive rights, all those will be at issue during the next four years.

That's what's at stake in this election. It's clear, because you can look at what Mr. Bush has already been attempting to do to the legal system. That's why I'm asking for your support here today.

I've got a different view of the Constitution and our courts than George W. Bush. I've lived under it in the United States Armed Forces. I studied it, supported it, was judged by it, and believe in it. I believe in giving our prosecutors the discretion they need to do their jobs; appointing judges with diverse backgrounds who are fair, independent and committed to law over ideology; treating those judges with respect, letting them do their jobs free from surveillance and intimidation. And most importantly, I believe in upholding the Constitution of the United States all the time, not just when it's convenient.

I've traveled around the United States for the past six weeks talking about jobs, and healthcare, and foreign policy, especially Iraq. And I'm concerned. I'm concerned because this country is in difficulties that it hasn't been in for a long, long time. I'm concerned because in a democracy, if you want to keep it, you have to fight to preserve it. It's a gift, but it's a gift that has to be renewed by the commitment, the interest, the courage of every member of the elected. If it's neglected, it will transform itself into something else. We've seen it. It's the record of history. We're the greatest democracy, but we're not the first.

So I'm concerned. That's why I'm asking for your vote.

Justice Kennedy wrote in the Supreme Court's long-awaited opinion in Lawrence v. Texas that as the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for a greater freedom.

What I want to do as president is provide the leadership to help this country move forward to find our greater freedom. And if you feel the same way, and if you share this vision, I hope you'll join with me so we can get this country off the right-wing path it's on and on to the right path for all Americans.

I'm on the NRA Blacklist. I signed up my very own self. I think that being on the blacklist of an organization whose goals I oppose is a good thing. I always wondered if my political beliefs put me on a blacklist during the Nixon years. I'm pretty certain that if John Ashcroft knew my name and ever stumbled across my other blog, the Peaceblog Project, that I'd be on HIS list with a bullet.

If you oppose ending the ban on assault rifles and other stupid ideas that the NRA is bullying the spineless morons in Washington to pass, then you should sign up to be on their list, too.

Here's the link.

NRA BLACKLIST

It's been a busy weekend here at Girlyshoes. On Halloween, we went out to dinner with friends, at a lovely little place that had a special, all-black and orange menu for the night. The stuffed squash blossoms (stuffed with goat cheese and chopped kalamata olives) were particularly delicious. The black risotto, not so. All was made good, however, by the arrival of our creme brulee with a spider web of spun sugar and a champagne flute full of reduction of blueberries. A snifter of brandy, and a seat outside, and the evening was complete.

Saturday we got up at the crack of oh dark thirty and drove downtown to participate in a little (totally voluntary) community service. It was Hands on Miami Day, and we pitched in with a couple thousand other like-minded individuals to clean up and spruce up and just in general make good various projects around Miami. My group had the pleasure of spreading mulch around about 200 trees in a seaside park on the north end of Miami Beach, in the still un-gentrified stretch between the hot forties, and the even hotter eighties.

Yesterday we did Dim Sum with my girlfriend and her daughters to give her a send off as she starts a 6-month commute to Philly. Then home and did all the household stuff we hadn't done on Friday night or Saturday.

And today, I'm back at the old same place, doing the same old same old. But tonight, I'm off to the triple digit street numbers north, to say good bye to another friend who has decided, by virtue of some random survey or another, to move to what the survey said was the hippest place in America: Austin, Texas.

I'd like to know how that survey worked, and who, exactly, took it. But since this particular woman has been channeling Martha Raye for years, and since you can buy cigarettes in Austin, I think she'll be fine.

Yesterday the train was packed on the morning ride. It was a sea of teal and black as folks flocked downtown to grab a spot on the curb for the Marlins' tickertape parade. Parents with kids and old people and business women who just happened to have chosen to wear a black suit with a turquoise blouse to work that day.

From somewhere behind me came a voice, a judgmental and carrying voice. "Where are these people's priorities?" the woman whinnied. "Why should these men be called heroes just because they can hit a ball? Why have a parade? Those men dying in (pause as she struggles to remember exactly where we've sent our men and women to slaughter and be slaughtered) Iraq, they're heroes, because they didn't want to be there."

Forgive me as I stifle a yawn. Au contraire, my humorless worker bee, every single one of the men and women in Iraq signed up for the privilege of defending our right to have a parade for baseball players. Maybe not in so many words, but there you are. In case you don't remember, America has a totally volunteer military. Not one person is there because they were conscripted. They may not have actually wanted to serve in a hot war, but they chose a career where that was a possibility.

And that begs the question, Madame, did you, if you think that the war in Iraq is a bad thing, did you write or call your legislator and voice that opinion? Did you vote in the last presidential election? Do you ever vote? Do you ever voice an opinion to the men and women representing you in Washington, who have the power to send those young heroes to war? Or do you just yap on the train, hoping to convince the world of your moral superiority, because you don't think a World Series deserves a parade.

Here's another question, you-who-are-too-serious-for-sports: would you rather your child be honored as an athlete, or a dead soldier?

When, as a nation, did we become so humorless? Is this grim reality a product of September 11, which the pundits claimed would put an end to irony forever? Or is this an outgrowth of political correctness, where all people must be equal, dammit, even if it means putting ballerinas in lead boots, and athletes in vision-destroying glasses.

That was the premise of Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions", which, I recall, I found tedious when I read it. Perhaps Mr. Vonnegut was more of the visionary and less of the burned-out hack I thought him to be. Maybe it's time to re-read that book.

In the meantime, get over it. Tell a politically incorrect joke and smoke a cigarette while you drink a martini at lunch.

My team won that night. I was sitting in the middle of a clutch of Yankees fans. Hmmm, not particularly gracious in defeat, that bunch. But then, my motto has always been "Obnoxious in victory, bitter in defeat.", which actually could be the motto of both the New York Yankees and the University of Florida Gators.

On Saturday, I watched the game with my 85-year-old father. Daddy summed up the experience when he said "The only thing that would have made this sweeter would have been to have the TV cameras on George Steinbrenner when his head blew up. You know he won't be sleeping tonight. He'll be up figuring out who to fire and who he can buy."

To all of the so-called baseball fans out there who complained that this wasn't the series the fans deserved, that they should have seen the Red Sox and the Cubs, I'd like to say: Bite my teal blue ass.

This was a great, a fucking great, a fucking great, classic World Series. The Marlins came from behind to get into the wild card race, and beat Philllie. They were down against the Giants, and came back in three straight to beat Barry Bonds. They were down against the Cubs, and came back in three straight to beat Prior and Woods, back to back, in freakin' Wrigley Field. Something that hadn't been done in over a year. They were down against the New York Yankees, the dynasty, the mythology, the big honking money and egos, and popular opinion and what did they do? They came back and beat them, in the greatest baseball cathedral in the world. They beat the Yankees in Yankee Stadium with Babe Ruth watching from Monument Garden. They played better, they played harder, and they played for the love of the game, because they were getting about 12 fans a game, and about minimum wage.

And I gotta say, too, and please don't make a liar out of me, Mr. Loria, that the owner, when he took the mic in the locker room after it was all over, sounded like an old time baseball guy. Like someone who loves the game. He thanked the fans, the coaches, the team, the manager, the staff. He grinned like a mule eating briars. He looked like a guy who isn't going to sell off the team so fast that by the time they get to the obligatory White House dinner, there won't be anyone left in a Marlins uniform who was on the field that night.

That's what Wayne Huizenga did, the bastard, and that's why the Marlins only get a handful of people in the park. Because we are STILL PISSED OFF.

And because it's a football stadium, dammit, no matter how many hot tubs you stick in the corners, and how many times you tell us it's really convertible to baseball. It isn't. It's hot. It's a cement funnel for heat. But that didn't matter to the fans at the end.

And what an end it was. That baby-faced, rocket-armed Beckett got the tag to end the game, the series, the season.

Damn, but I love this sport. And a thank you for some excellent reporting, Mr. Dan LeBatard, of the Miami Herald.

I'm going to my first World Series game tonight, and I am so psyched for this it's ugly. I'm wearing the lovely teal and black of my not-so-stinky Marlins. I have my official Marlins baseball cap. I'm wearing earrings best described as psycho-rainbow pirrahnas.



And I've made a sign to hold up as a shout out to all my friends in the Baseball Swap. It says, simply, GLUB!.

Why glub? Because the Tigers fan signs her e-mail with a roar. And what do fish say? Right.

I'll be in the right field foul corner, just above the Marlins' bullpen. Does life get any sweeter for a baseball fan? Yes, but only if we win.

GLUB!

You know it and I know it. All women love baseball. It's outdoors, there are no stupid pads to distract from the players, uh, charms, and it's almost like ballet. It's a great sport, and when the cameras pan the stands, who's out there but women and lots of them.

So why, then, are all the World Series ads directed at men? Viagra, Levitra, Ford F150 trucks, Hummers, beer and jock itch powders. Oh. And that ratty Fran Drescher ogling a Carson Kressley look-alike commercial for Old Navy. Tell me that's aimed at straight women? I think not. I think not lesbians, either. In fact, I'm not really sure who that ad is for.

The last time I went to Shea, the Mets PR group had it figured out. They sold baby doll shirts for women, hair scrunchies, scarves. Like that.

I tell you, I'd like to see some chick ads during the world series. Victoria's Secret ads. Perfume ads. Sports car ads that show women driving. And speaking of women driving, has anyone ever seen a man drive a Hummer anywhere other than in the commercials? Not me. I only see the ubiquitous soccer moms, with cell phones up to their ears and no visible children. Which raises another question: since when is soccer the American Child's sport? What ever happened to baseball and softball? Or even kiddie football? What spin meister figured out that the most ear-catching sobriquet for that particular market sector should be "Soccer Mom"? Are the Soccer Moms married to the NASCAR dads?

Why can't there be Soccer Dads and NASCAR moms? Are there even NASCAR moms? What do they drive? Ford F150s? Rusted out beaters because the old man ain't paying child support like he's supposed to? Ick. I don't even want to think about this.

What I do want to think about is how those hot baby fish are going to bounce back tonight and beat the snot out of those overpaid, overexposed, over confident big, bad Yankees. And what I'm going to wear to the game tomorrow night.

I tried, I really tried. I went to the gym and worked out for an hour, to raise my tolerance for dumb. I got home, pulled some freshly-made guacamole out of the fridge, opened a bag of blue corn chips and collapsed on the couch.

I watched as the poor, dumb schmuck David was schooled in how to address the butler. He couldn't do it. Not a nice boy raised in the Southwest, he couldn't. Anybody older and/or in a position of authority is addressed as sir. Except, the butler kept trying to explain that David couldn't call him sir. David's response to this? "Yes, sir. Oops, sorry, sir, uh, Paul..." and it trailed off as he bit down on that last "sir."

The girls, on the other hand, had no problems ordering the staff around and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. And smoking, lord love 'em, they are smokers. They also sleep really late, and bitched and moaned about having to get up at 8 in the morning, hung over. They come down to breakfast in sunglasses, discussing how they look like rock stars.

At the meeting where the joke is set up, they fall for it, hook, line and sinker (fishing reference for people looking for a comment on the World Series and the Marlins). The chick hostess says, the guy who wants to meet you is an American cowboy. This pushes buttons like you cannot believe. Someone says something like "We are European women, we do not think this is funny." The hostess says, "An American cowboy with an 80 million dollar oil inheritance." The girls think that this is no longer a joke, and start getting all slitty-eyed at each other, calculating what it will take to win the cowboy's heart.

Cut to the cowboy getting to pick out his own horse for the next part of the scam. Ladies, I am here to tell you now that he is more attached to that horse than he will ever be to any of you. He took longer to pick it out, and felt better about it, than he will ever feel running this scam. The horse is real. You women are not.

And that was when I realized that I will not be able to watch this train wreck, no matter how much I wanted to. It just isn't fun to watch raw greed and unscrupulous behavior on display. Unless it's national politics, and then, well, it's a little bit slicker.

So, Jodi, don't worry. I just can't watch it. I'm going back to VH1, and the Independent Movie Channel, now.