Via Electrolite:
Teresa Nielsen Hayden commenting on modern politics (go to her comment on this post):

I find I care less than I used to about the hairsplitting fine points of a politician’s positions, and more about hearing his or her disintermediated voice. It isn’t just a matter of aesthetics. I believe there’s a largely unacknowledged divide between politicians who still believe we’re all members of the same polity, all citizens together; and those for whom I’m just a member of the voting audience, watching but not otherwise a participant in our regularly scheduled pantomime of democracy.

What she said!!
[It’s ironic that I’d misquote a book when talking about an editor, isn’t it?]

May just be the bravest, most honest man I know. Read this, and do it somewhere quiet, where you can read and think and cry all at once.

I’m having a horrible time accessing any blogs hosted on Blogspot today. Is anyone else seeing this??

From Rough & Tumble:
A Robert Novak piece suggesting that the race is a dead heat:

The nightly tracking poll taken for the California Teachers Association, made available to Republicans last Friday morning, was startling. Thursday night’s telephone interviews about the race for governor showed beleaguered Republican candidate Bill Simon leading Democratic Gov. Gray Davis 34.2 percent to 33.7 percent. The three-day tracking roll gave Davis a mere 2.7 percentage point lead.
Those numbers collide with Democratic surveys that show a double-digit lead for Davis.

He goes on to outline the tactical issues this presents for Bush … to come out and campaign, and maybe pull off an immense upset, or stay out rather than risk tarring his reputation with a Democratic blowout.
The losers are, as usual, those of us who live in California. His comments about Davis couldn’t ring more true:

Diluting these immense advantages, Davis is undoubtedly the most unpopular governor of California that anybody can remember. Prominent Democrats privately express contempt for him as a relentless fund-raiser without principles. One well-known elected government official told me he had endorsed Davis as far back as the 1998 Democratic primary but now considers him ”another Nixon.” He rages that Simon is about to be wiped out, propelling Davis into the White House. He plans to vote for Green Party candidate Peter Miguel Camejo.

As do I.
And while I await my critical missive from Ann, fighting the good fight for the local Dems, the rubbernecker in me hopes for a dramatic Election Day.
The Times this weekend buried a potential bombshell in the race, as convicted influence-peddler-to-the-stars Mark Nathanson’s 1993 statements are due to be released.

In a ruling that could embarrass Gov. Gray Davis in the final days of his re-election campaign, the U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the release of a corrupt state official’s secret assertions about a decade-old bribery scandal at the California Coastal Commission.
En route to federal prison in 1993, Mark Nathanson, a Beverly Hills business executive who had confessed to orchestrating a $734,000 bribes-for- permits scheme while serving as a coastal commissioner, offered information about a state official with whom he said he worked to get campaign contributions from commission applicants, court records show.
Prosecutors dismissed Nathanson as a liar and refused to cut a deal, and he wound up serving three years in prison. Two letters detailing his allegations were sealed for years by a federal judge, then made public only in heavily censored form.
But on Oct. 7, the Supreme Court refused to hear a last-ditch plea to keep the documents secret and their release is believed imminent.
The timing is terrible for the official whom sources familiar with the case say Nathanson accused — Davis, then the state controller, and now a governor running for re-election.

Stay tuned, folks, it may turn out to be a ballgame.
I just wish I could care more about the outcome.

No, that’s not a typo, that what comes out when I repeatedly bang my head on the keyboard.
During my allotted ¾ hour of blog reading this morning (I’m not an addict, I’m not!), Jeff Cooper sent me over to Thomas Spencer, someone I haven’t read before.
About four paragraphs in, I started banging my head.
I’m not going to do a graf by graf ‘fisk’ of him, that’s so 1Q 02; I’ll simply pull some quotes and make some general comments.

W’s approval numbers are coming down. It’s time for some more war-mongering. But, wait, that’s not working. How about war itself? Surely that’ll work won’t it? It might get a few folks killed but, hey, who gives a damn about that, right? (Don’t you know Karl Rove has said something just like that to W recently?)
The sniper thing in the D.C.-area continues. Of course, we all know it’s the gun control folks behind it all, right?
Even W’s Justice Department can’t ignore how Enron and the big energy companies were gaming the California electricity grid. I suspect they’ll try though. As we all know, the public’s watchdog was bought off two years ago by their buddies in the energy business. We’ll see I guess. Don’t hold your breath that “Kenny Boy” sees the inside of a jail any time soon.
Here is more proof that the Heritage foundation is just a mouthpiece for the White House’s war effort. Of course, we already knew that, didn’t we? Is there really such a thing as a “conservative think tank?” Thinking? Really?

On that note, I’ll add – ‘thinking, really’?? Tom, you’re not a commentator, you’re a cheerleader. You need some pom-poms and a letter sweater with ‘DNC’ on the front. I hope your plan works, and the rhetoric gets you ‘seen’ and picked up by the party – those staff jobs can pay well – but even as partisan rhetoric, this makes me want to take a shower.
Now, other than damaging my delicate sensibilities, this matters for two reasons.
First, because the average American isn’t a moron, and knows when they’re being shilled…and both parties are shilling like mad…and the disgust of the voting class is palpable.
Next, because it conveniently ignores the culpability of his team (sadly, it’s mine as well) in looting the public purse, and building Sky Boxes to keep the unwashed at bay. We are in an era when the entrenched political classes have sold their souls to powerful monied interests, to the clear detriment of the average American. From top to bottom, good people go into the system and venal functionaries rise to the top.
As long as each party can blow enough smoke at the other guys as the cascade of scandal unfolds, they have some prayer that their own venality, self-interest, and corruption will get overlooked. Because I’m a liberal, I’m supposed to overlook the sins of ‘my guys’ and put a magnifying glass to the sins of the ‘other team’. Well, fuck it. They’re all sinners, and until enough of us are willing to stand up and point to the dirt on our hems, this problem isn’t going to go away.
This isn’t a sport, we aren’t divided into teams, and my children’s world is at stake.
So good work, Tom, catch you later. And Jeff – what the hell are you thinking?
[Update: I went over to Tom’s blog, and no, I don’t think I read it too carelessly. Tom, do me a favor: find three things you’ve said in the last 90 days that challenge any Democrat in remotely the manner you attack the Republicans…I’ll be standing by.
Now look, partisanship is a Good Thing. I don’t think we can, or should, all live in the mushy middle. And hardball politics has been a part of American politics (not to mention, say, Florentine poltics) for a long damn time.
But as I note here, the way it is being played now, it’s a loser’s game.

Who says Doonesbury stopped being funny and relevant about ten years ago??…me, for one…but now that he’s mentioning blogging, do I have to reconsider??

Via Andrew Edwards, Thomas Friedman’s column in the NYT. The key excerpt:

Think of it like this: There are two ways for a government to get rich in the Middle East. One is by drilling a sand dune and the other is by drilling the talents, intelligence, creativity and energy of its men and women. As long as the autocratic leaders of Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia can get rich by drilling their natural resources, they can stay in power a long, long time. All they have to do is capture control of the oil tap. Only when a government has to drill its human resources will it organize itself in a way that enables it to extract those talents — with modern education, open trade, and freedom of thought, of scientific enquiry and of the press.
For all these reasons, if we really want to hasten the transition from autocracy to something more democratic in places like Iraq or Iran, the most important thing we can do is gradually, but steadily, bring down the price of oil — through conservation and alternative energies.

Yeah!! What he said!!
The sad fact is that the oil-producing countries are rich junkies; their lives and health are falling apart, but the trust fund manages to keep them afloat, hooked, and unhealthy. Without it, they would hit bottom and have to change. With it, the decline is prolonged.

The newly-laid-out LA Times has some pretty good stuff on the editorial pages this morning (registration required, use ‘laexaminer’/’laexminer’):
First, a great article by David Friedman on the changing job climate in California, and some of the longer term implications.

Few Californians seem aware of the state’s disturbing economic circumstances. The economy is losing well-paying blue-collar and middle-class jobs at an astounding rate, especially in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, growth is increasingly concentrated in a handful of outlying counties. As a result, California’s economy is fragmenting as never before between slow-growth, politically powerful population centers and pro-growth, politically marginal counties that surround urban cores. And California’s leaders seem indifferent.

Next, a great column by the sometimes infuriating, sometimes enlightening John Balzar on the ways our perception of terror are driven by the media:

A while back, Americans could wring their hands because their nation had become too callous. Now, if we’d only take a deep breath we would see that we’re too callous and too fearful at the same time.
Terrorism in its many forms, whether school shootings, shopping-center shootings, far-off truck bombings or poison-by-mail, is not just a physical danger but also a rising threat to our mental composure. Lately, I’ve found myself in any number of macabre conversations in which people seem to have slipped their moorings entirely.

Finally, a column by my personal muse, Jill Stewart on the role and demise of the New Times, and the role of media in Los Angeles…

Some hated us, prayed for us to disappear. Others, although certainly not happy with our coverage of them, came to like New Times because it skewered their enemies, too. We were equal-opportunity lambasters. We just wanted to force crucial issues into the open, to keep our massive region from devolving into a West Coast urban nightmare a la Detroit.

…an honorable goal, and one that we should all share.

Challenging day today, capped by someone breaking the window in the van and stealing Tenacious G’s purse while we were at a party in Santa Monica; so while she’s on the phone to the credit card folks, I’m doing a little blogging…we’re both pissed off at the jerk who did this, and at ourselves because we know better.
The day was tough in no small part, because the boys seem to be a little more restless than usual. Under 6 soccer early, then home, and while we were doing chores (with the supposed help of the boys), Littlest Guy and Middle Guy were streaking around the house. I swear that they not only broke the sound barrier, but that once there were flashes of Cerenkov radiation as they went by.
We got the core chores done, with little help from them, and as I started to go into Wrath of God Mode and think about just putting them into their rooms and just nailing the doors shut for a few days, something clicked and I decided to back off and solve the problem in another way.
We were supposed to bring something to the party, and I’d planned on baking something; I thought about some tarts, but time and energy were short, so I decided to knock out some chocolate chip cookies (I make awesome chocolate chip cookies).
I got Littlest Guy into the kitchen, and we rounded up the ingredients. Brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, butter, flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, imitation vanilla (when you bake with it, you really can’t tell the difference).
We batched the ingredients into ‘wet stuff’ (sugars, eggs, vanilla) and ‘dry stuff’ (flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon), and started measuring everything out. I got him to scoop the ingredients into the measuring cup, and suddenly he wanted to taste everything; so we did. We took a small portion of every ingredient and tasted them as we put them into the bowls.
And suddenly, I wasn’t stressing, and he wasn’t acting out; we were just two guys standing in the kitchen cooking together.
His brother came in and helped get the Kitchenaid set up (he knows that those who don’t work don’t get batter), and we started mixing everything together. MG showed LG how to separate eggs (the recipe calls for one egg plus one yolk), and we only made a small mess while doing this…and when I didn’t get upset at that, all three of us knew that we’d managed to make it into a pretty good day.
Here’s the recipe: the core is from Cook’s Illustrated, hands down the best cooking magazine out there.
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Melt 1 – ½ sticks of salted butter, and let cool until it is warm
Add 1 cup brown sugar, plus 2 Tbsp
Add ½ cup white sugar
Blend until smooth.
Add 1 egg, plus 1 yolk
Blend until smooth
Add 2 tsp vanilla
Mix in a bowl:
2-1/8 cups unsifted bleached flour (compress slightly when measuring)
½ Tsp baking soda
½ Tsp salt
2 Tsp cinnamon
Add dry mixture to wet and blend until uniform and smooth
Add 1-1/2 semi-sweet chocolate chips (quality counts here – I use Ghirardelli)
Mix until uniform
Cool in the refrigerator for 20 mins (makes it easier to handle the batter)
Flour your hands, and make 1-1/2” spheres; place them on an oiled cookie sheet – give about 1” of space between them.
Cook for 12 – 14 mins at 325. I usually have two sheets worth of cookies, and swap the sheets between oven racks at 7 minutes.
The cookies should be light-colored, slightly crackled, and very thick.
Take them off the sheet and cool on racks.
Try not to get sick on the batter.
Have your kids help you…

I’m stunned to see that William Burton and I disagree on something of substance. I’m actually going to spend the whole time at the party tonight drinking solemnly and thinking about this…
…but for now, I think he’s waaaay off base (sports pun!!) in this post in which he thinks that N. Korea is a bigger priority than the Middle East. I’m not sure if he’s just so torqued at the Bushies (yes, they are insanely corrupt) that he’s just being disagreeable…but here’s the deal:
The North Koreans probably have or will shortly have a Bomb. Pakistan has a Bomb. India has a Bomb. South Africa may well have a Bomb (or that could have been an Israeli bomb). There are too damn many Bombs out there for comfort (as I’ve noted). But at this point, I don’t see the pattern of behavior (in the last 40 years) that would lead me to believe that North Korea would use their bombs belligerently (as opposed to, maybe selling them to a terrorist organization). Without the backing of China, North Korea is pretty much a speed bump militarily (a big one, to be sure, and if I lived within 100 miles of the DMZ, I’d certainly have a different position).
The Islamists, OTOH, have established a pattern of aggressive action (c.f. Manhattan, Bali, East Timor, etc.), and while Saddam isn’t an Islamist, he sure is moving to their side as fast as his polished brogans will take him.
So this North Korea thing needs to be dealt with, and to be honest I may have to give this one to Bush…the only reason I can imagine for them to go public with this now is because they are worried that they’re on the dance card headed by Saddam right now.
But I wouldn’t be getting all panicky about it, Bill.
When the alcohol wears off tomorrow, I’ll revisit and see if I still feel this way.