Live from New York!

It is official. I am not a resident in the fine borough of Brooklyn; land of the Dodgers, hipsters, corner delis and overpriced housing. Having only lived here for a total of five days thus far, with the packed boxes possibly still more numerous than the unpacked ones, I have to say, I &hearts BK. I am sure that there will be plenty more posts about the BK and NYC in general, but I wanted to share some lessons I learned from moving here:

• Budget trucks are sometimes not considered trucks (they are allowed to use the car speedlimit in OH, PA, and NJ) and sometimes consider trucks (see Holland Tunnel).


• I have confirmed my severe dislike for NJ - and this is based on experiences OFF the Turnpike, thank you very much (although the Turnpike also sucks)


• Nothing makes you feel like a packrat more than moving to a one-bedroom apartment in NYC.


• Despite what people from NYC want you to believe, NOTHING runs more efficiently here -- it is all a big lie


• I am very luck to be marrying E. (alright, I already knew that &mdash moving here just confirmed it)


• Cleo likes long rides in trucks even less than she does in the car. I think that she might possibly like it even less than getting her fingernails clipped, which may be the doggie-version of the inner-most ring of Hell


• I have the best friends in the world! No, seriously, I do.

My internet access is still sporadic, but I wanted to reconnect - even if temporarily - to my comrades in the 'osphere.

Pause in Normal Programming

I will be moving and not have a whole lot of access to the tubes in the next week or so, but for all my union brothers and sisters, I leave entertainment behind:

Good News, Bad News?

According to the NYT, the junior Senator from New York and senior Senator from W.V. are proposing a bill to revoke the war authorization granted to the President in 2002.

Good news or bad news?

Déjà Vu

Why won't this man go away?

Although this story is somewhat old, I was reminded of it from a post on Free Exchange by someone named "cps" who I am not sure should be believed, but since I think that he spent time in Utah fighting crazies, I will give him the benefit of the doubt...[1]

Anyways, while the Free Exchange story was about the latest installment of the Bush Administrations' game called "Finding the perfect fox for this particular henhouse", the post links to a story about Ward Connerly's latest attempt to find states to continue his crusade. Having just fought against one of these disasters in Michigan, I hope that the people of the states of Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah (alright, I only really reserve hope for rizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota)start thinking about this campaign early and, for heaven's sake please at least force a real discussion about race and gender and not be so timid. This is their goal, to make it a political campaign:

"'He [Connerly] will seek to divide each state and will generally be successful,' said Waymire [Connerly's spokesman on the Michigan campaign], who called Connerly 'a brilliant political strategist.' He added, 'There is no good to come out of this, and nobody benefits except for Ward Connerly and his association.'"

As DR pointed out at the end of the campaign here:

...and now I think I've pretty much convinced mysel that Prop 2 opponents ought to talk about race. Here's the thing. The core of the argument against affirmative action programs is the claim that race doesn't matter in America. That claim happens to be false, but when supporters of affirmative action avoid talking about race, they themselves make it seem as if it were true. I mean, if we can have a debate about affirmative action without mentioning race, how could it possibly be true that we ever need to think about it?

So, please, please, please, please have a real discussion about race in this country. Talk about Katrina; talk about black male incarceration rates; talk about school quality differences; hell, talk about NBA officiating but just have a real conversation. If you do have the conversation, you may win or you may lose the ballot initiative, but at least you are discussing one of the fundamental inequities in American society. But if you insist on following a strategy with an 0-3 record, you lost even the opportunity to really talk about fundamental inequality in America.

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[1] If this is, in fact, untrue - I will be happy to delete this statement from this post.

The Dismal State of Higher Ed

This week in the Huffington Post, Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the lack of value of a college degree. Yes, I know, this is the same Barabara Ehrenreich of Nickel and Dimed and who helped found (with SEIU) United Professionals, a quasi-union in order to help out white collar workers who have been downsized or can't find jobs. Unfortunately, while she talks about college grads in her "manifesto", she apparently believes that Higher Education is "a scam."

Chiding MIT for releasing the Dean of Admissions, Ehrenreich writes:

Can you be fired for doing a great job, year after year, and in fact becoming nationally known for your insight and performance? Yes, as in the case of Marilee Jones, who was the dean of admissions at MIT until her dismissal last week, when it was discovered that she had lied about her academic credentials 28 years ago.

And, the great insight learned from this action is that, "But in the last three decades the percentage of jobs requiring at least some college has doubled, which means that employers are going along with the college racket." She also goes on to say that she believes that most employers want college-educated students for one of two reasons: 1) Because they know how to conform or 2) they are in debt up to their ears and, therefore, become subservient employees unwilling to risk being unemployed.

What is even more depressing is the comments after the article. These are people who read the Huffington Post who are vehemently against colleges and believe them to be a racket as well. One notable post reads:

Nice post. 'Bout time.

My experience with Ivy League is that if you actually used your mind, i.e. challenged the tenured professor and the carefully crafted conclusions (history) then you would receive a grade reduction; regardless of how well argued your case.

Indoctrination.
How NeoCon.

I don't care if we launch Free Exchange on Campus, or FACE, or any number of other initiatives. The true NeoCons have done such a good job destroying the American academy with an "employment focused" and "market based" attitude with the complicity of the current American academics who refuse to enter into "political" discussions because it might "taint" their research. If this is what readers of the Huffington Post believe, then we are doomed.

I would also guess that most of them don't know that more and more of our teaching is being done by contingent labor. Employees who can be hired and fired at will, who keep their office hours in their cars, and can't take the time to remember their students' names because they have a thousand of them. Until we are successful at getting the Ehrenreichs and Huffinton Post readers of the world to understand where the American academy has changed, then we are going to be woefully unsuccessful in front of our own legislators.

Maureen Dowd is on Notice

Several weeks ago, I posted about Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a homophobic epithet. Wobblie noted in the comments that Bob Somerby had written about how Maureen Dowd was also complicit in painting Edwards as a "breck-girl" on at least five different times (repeating an insult slung by the White House press office). Since then, Dowd has also gained noteriety for writing (behind subscription wall) about John Edwards' hair cut and how Michelle Obama is emasculating her husband.

Hilzoy has written a couple of posts on Dowd's ability to play into the "Democratic men are wimpy and not 'man' enough to be President" while always relieving herself the responsibility of making these claims. She always says that she is simply reporting what "others" are thinking. I mean, she has no problem with these men, but others might, so she just wants to "report" it so that they can plan accordingly (as if no one knew that this was the standard screed about Democrats as if none of us remember how the entire RNC convention in 2004 was about how John Kerry wasn't "manly" enough [1].

Beyond calling Democrats "pretty boys" and aiding and abetting the Coulters and Cheneys of the world, today she is blaming Tenet, Colin Powell and Democrats for the war:

If Colin Powell and George Tenet had walked out of the administration in February 2003 instead of working together on that tainted U.N. speech making the bogus case for war, they might have turned everything around. They might have saved the lives and limbs of all those brave U.S. kids and innocent Iraqis, not to mention our world standing and national security.

It would certainly have been harder for timid Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards, to back up the administration if two members of the Bush inner circle had broken away to tell an increasingly apparent truth: that Dick Cheney, Rummy and the neocons were feverishly pushing a naive president into invading Iraq with junk facts.

General Powell counted on Slam Dunk -- a slender reed -- to help him rid the speech of most of the garbage the Cheney office wanted in it. Slam, of course, tried to have it both ways, helping the skeptical secretary of state and pandering to higher bosses. Afterward, when the speech turned out to be built on a no-legged stool, General Powell was furious at Slam. But they both share blame: they knew better. They put their loyalty to a runaway White House ahead of their loyalty to a fearful public.

It's also worth noting that, in a previous column, Dowd reverts to her criticism via "gender" analysis of Tenet: "Slam Dunk always presented himself as the ultimate guy’s guy, a cigar-chomping spymaster who swapped jokes with the president. But now he shows us his tender side, a sniveling C.I.A. chief bullied by “remote” Condi."

While I have no problem blaming Tenet for the disaster and agree with the CIA officials calling for him to accept blame for what happened donate half his royalties to the servicepeople wounded and killed in Irag; and Colin Powell certainly went the UN even though he really wasn't comfortable; and the Democrats were far too timid in the run up to the war; but I think that Dowd has selective amnesia that her own paper and Judith Miller also contributed. Or for that matter, that the President lied to the nation! I hope she keeps criticizing Tenet, but for goodness sake, can we stop blaming "timid Democrats" and start blaming "lying Presidents"?

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[1] This is when she's not making stuff up.

Baseball not Found

via scribbling.net.