No blogging zone
I’m out of town for my Mom’s 75th birthday celebration. I’ll post some good stuff on Sunday and Monday.
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Weekend Reading
This weekend I’ll be reading Doris Lessing’s novel The Grass Is Singing and, also, a history of whaling called Leviathan by Eric Jay Dolin.
The Grass Is Singing is written by a woman who spent her younger years in the former Rhodesia. (Now Zimbabwe) The book, published in 1950, is set in apartheid South Africa.
It tells the story of a relationship between a white farmer’s wife and a black servant on the farm. As you might suppose, such a relationship was not quite the program in apartheid South Africa.
Imagine writing something people are still reading nearly 60 years later. How many bloggers will ever be able to say that? [Read more →]
Immigration bill, dead, again
I can only smile. It was clear several weeks ago that immigration reform in this form wouldn’t pass but our president isn’t good at taking no for an answer. Therefore, he had to bring this bill back up, again. Read said that the Republicans, folks from the president’s own party, needed to step up to the plate. They didn’t. All of the White House lobbying didn’t do squat expect waste the Senate’s time.The president got only 12 out of 49 Republicans to support his bill. Amazing.
Immigration reform is clearly dead for the next year and a half. The whole thing was put together strangely. The Dems who were pushing this bill thought if they could lump enough stuff together everyone would have to vote for it. I would have do it piecemeal. First, border security. Next, fix the process for getting into this country. Next, fines and enforcement here. crackdown on businesses hiring these economic refugees. Fourth, figure out what to do with the folks that are here. That’s the way that I would have tackled the issue but then again, there is a reason that I’m a trauma surgeon and not a politician. 
Update: As I have looked at this clip, I see a president Bush without the swagger that he once had. He looks sad. He looks beatdown, defeated. When you think about how the president looked 2 years ago when he had “political capital”, he was a completely different man. A lot has happened in 2 years. During this time, President Bush has not had one major accomplishment. Not one. Social Security went down in flames. Immigration has gone down twice by his own party. He did get Alito and Roberts but Miers was sunk by his own party, again. President Bush may turn out to be the lamest of all the lame duck presidents. [Read more →]
Mission Accomplished - 4 years later
On one hand it seems like only yesterday we were basking in the glow of victory with President Bush. I can tell you that I was happy that we were declaring victory. I was looking forward to the next speech tell us that our troops were coming home. Well, that speech never came.
On the other hand, I’m a skeptic. As a trauma surgeon, my job is to see the down side. My job is to see what can go wrong and intervene. I never felt comfortable with the invasion of Iraq. I never thought that job in Afghanistan was completed. I never quite bought Colin Powell’s presentation.
I guess my official position was guarded optimism. The bad news is that I didn’t have wait very long before it was clear that I was correct. You can’t just walk in and walk out of country and expect everything to roll for you. You just can’t. I don’t think that it is a law of thermodynamics but it is a law of the Art of War. It is a law of human nature.
Immigration In Buffalo & Texas
A book I recently read makes a point about Buffalo, New York in the early 20th century that may have relevance to the immigration debate in Texas and in America today.
The book is Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography by David S. Brown. Richard Hofstadter was a political scientist and author who lived between 1916 and 1970. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning Age Of Reform. [Read more →]
HB - Edwards supports wife
This was an excellent move by John Edwards’ campaign. Follow up your wife and go on Hardball. Talk about Coulter and the rest of the venom spewing neocons.
Bush Legacy
Glenn Greenwald’s book is #14 on Amazon. My copy came in yesterday. I’ll read it this weekend. My review is coming either on Sunday or Monday. Get your copy today!
A most ridiculous suit (lawsuit)
A judge took a mom and pop dry cleaners to court over some lost pants. Judge Roy L. Pearson sued Soo Chung and his wife for $54 million. Yep, $54 million. I don’t understand it. I’ll never understand it. Even if it was my favorite, my lucky, my damn grandest pair of pants that I had ever owned, I don’t understand dragging these folks into court. Ask for $100. Ask for $400 for pain and a decrease in your luck factor but $54 million. That’s a waste of the court’s time.
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From NYT:
A District of Columbia administrative law judge who filed a $54 million lawsuit against his neighborhood dry cleaner over a pair of missing pants will not get a penny, a court here ruled Monday.
Judge Judith Bartnoff of Superior Court ruled that Judge Roy L. Pearson Jr. failed to prove that Custom Cleaners misled consumers with its “satisfaction guaranteed” sign. For that matter, Judge Pearson was not even able to convince her that they had lost his pants.
“The court finds that the plaintiff is not entitled to any relief whatsoever,” Judge Bartnoff wrote. (more…)
Elizabeth Edwards confronts Ann Coulter
Coulter was her usual predictable self. Nice to see Elizabeth call in and make her point that Ann smears and really doesn’t have any evidence to back up her smears.
Since I posted this early this morning there has been a lot of backlash (here, here and Randi Rhodes did a very good job talking about the Coulter problem. )
Why did Chris Matthews put Ann Coulter on for an hour? Major political figures only get 3 - 5 minutes. Why? Crazy.
Write MSNBC. Tell them, politely that you will watch politicians intelligently discussing the issues but you have little time for the politics of slander.
O’Reilly loses argument to 16 yo
I thought that Bill O’Reilly was really a disingenuous (lying) partition talking head. He bullies guests and staff. He has an ego the size of Kansas. It appears that he has lost an argument to a 16 yo high school student. The student was nervous but prepared.
On a good note, it is very nice to see a thoughtful 16 yo. This guy has been brought up to think and to think critically about issues. Good for him and his parents!!!
C&L has more here.
Working
It is summer and folks are drivin’ too fast, partyin’ too much and just being…well, people. That means that I’m workin’ my butt off.
Tons of stuff to blog about. No time now. Hopefully, I can say a little something in the morning. If you missed the 4 part series in WaPo about Vice President Cheney please check it out.
BTW, buy Glenn Greenwald’s book. My copy came this morning.
New Bumper Sticker
I have a new bumper sticker on my car here in Houston. It reads “God Bless All Nations.” Below the words are some religious symbols. Maybe 20 of them. I don’t know what all the symbols represent and I don’t care.
I already have a sticker on my car that says “Texas Democrat.” This sticker led to an exchange in a supermarket parking lot. A man thanked me for surrendering the country to the Muslims. I told him he was welcome. Though instead of saying “you’re welcome” I really said something very much different.
( If the Muslims can deliver universal health care I am willing to discuss terms with them for control of the nation.)
A previous bumper sticker I had read, ‘Hail To The Thief—George W. Bush 2000.” People kept taking it off my car while I was parked. Three times I found it crumpled up next to the car.
That was okay though because I had bought four of them for just such an eventuality. I finally pulled it off for good when I had some car troubles in rural Wharton County, Texas.
I love the people of Wharton County. But as I was waiting for AAA, I did not want some sheriff or local to come and arrest and/or shoot me. The Anti-Bush sticker I pulled off in Wharton County was the last one I had.
We’ll see what trouble my new bumper sticker brings
Senator Kyl wins the Worst Person in the World
Senator Kyl seems to be catering to Right Wing talk show host.
Whitman on Capital Hill
Remember that it wasn’t that long ago when Christie Todd Whitman was considered a serious Presidential candidate. Not any more. She was up on Capital Hill trying to defend the indefensible. How did the EPA recommend that it was safe to breath all of that dust?
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From CNN.com:
The former chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fought off fierce criticism Monday that the agency did not do enough to protect September 11, 2001, rescue workers from toxic pollutants.
“I fully appreciate that the events of 9/11 touched raw emotions, but I am disappointed at the misinformation, innuendo and outright falsehoods that have characterized the public discussion,” Christie Todd Whitman told the U.S. House Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee.
Rep. Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat from New York, at Monday’s hearing read aloud from a September 13, 2001, EPA-issued press release that said air quality near the still-burning pile of rubble at Ground Zero was “unlikely to cause significant health effects.” (more…)
Ferrari’s 60th birthday
I have only driven one once. No words can describe it.
Salt Content Of Galveston Bay
Galveston Bay, not far from where I live, is a series of many different environments under all that water.
When I’ve looked at Galveston Bay in the past, what I saw was one undifferentiated body of water. I was wrong. Many factors, such as salinity and water depth, create a variety of environments.
This is something I’ve learned about by reading Galveston Bay by Sally Antrobus and Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion by Alan Burdick.
We might term Galveston Bay as an environment both seamless and fragmented. It is one bay. At the same time, certain creatures can live near sources of fresh water and other creatures thrive in areas where the salinity is higher.
This diversity in what might appear to be just one ecosystem, alerts us against making generalizations about other complicated things. Sweeping statements about a certain places, about groups of people, or about individuals are likely to be incomplete or just plain wrong.
In moments of frustration, when I’m inclined to see some thing or some person as all or mostly bad, I am going to try and think about the complexity of Galveston Bay.
How Green is your favorite company?
There is a way to measure.
Young MC
It was only a matter of time before I found some Young MC to post. When Young MC was rappin’, back in the day, he seemed to come out of nowhere. He was immediately embraced by corporate America (Pepsi commercials) who was trying to connect with a younger audience. That sunk him right then. The rap world moved away from main stream by adding more expletives and adding more half-naked women to their videos. Young MC did another CD but it wasn’t close to being as successful as this one.
I guess I should mention that he was writing rap lyrics before he jumped in front of a mic. He wrote some of Tone-Loc’s most successful raps - Funky Cold Medina and Wild Thing.
Bus’ It.
Katrina and the Waves
I need something very happy after posting about Darfur which seems to suck the live right out of me.
Darfur
This video is almost too sad to post. This video comes with a warning of graphic scenes. I think that they were tastefully done. The Bush administration has had so many failures it is hard to single out the best, worst, biggest. Darfur must be in the top 2 or 3.
Fixing this crap would be relatively easy. We need the will and the money. We don’t have either but we can ask our kids for a loan. We go in with overwhelming force (Powell doctrine) and restore order. Criminals go to the Hague. Set up a temp government. Deliver basic services. Set up democracy institutions. No, really, democratic, not the faux thing that we set up in Iraq. 3 - 5 year commitment for the good of humanity. Not for oil or for profit. No Halliburtons. Just because it is the right thing to do. Damn it.
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Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
