Just went over to Amazon, and realized that I have links to them and should check and see…wow!! I’ve made $5.85!! I can’t quite justify this to the bank holding the mortgage as real work, but that’s still kinda cool. And we’ve had about 8,800 unique visitors to date; at this rate, we’ll hit 10,000 next weekend, in time for the two-month anniversary. That’s really exciting…
And mostly, it’s the 500-some emails that I’ve received; I’ve definitely met and corresponded with some good folks.
Let’s see what the next two months holds.
I don’t know how other folks do it, but I have a Word document with notes for blogs that I keep updating. Here’s the list (I make no promises about what I’m actually going to write about!):
– Finish Shooting and Mindfulness
– Fine-Grained Politics (what I called ‘Little League’ politics)
– redo 4th Generation Liberalism re Public Health and Education
– Bourgeois vs. BoBo values
– Gun Regulation
– Workable Cities
…and current events (especially when Skybox Davis does something stupid).
Work calls.

In this week’s L.A. Weekly (I was looking for a plastic surgeon, outcall escort, and a restaurant for dinner Saturday night…), Marc Cooper, no friend of the Republican party, goes after our education first, second and third Governor Skybox.
A sample:

But on the moral test of his own administration, the governor simply flunks out. Davis’ response to the lawsuit has been to stonewall the issue, prolong the case, run up a gigantic legal tab to the benefit of some of his powerhouse campaign contributors, and allow little Johnny to twist slowly, slowly in the wind.
For anyone who doubts the state of our schools, I recommend a review of a recent Harris survey of California public school teachers, which can be found on the Web at www.publicadvocates.org. Of 6 million public school students in the state, 19 percent attend schools where at least a fifth of the teachers are uncredentialed, 32 percent go to schools without enough textbooks to be taken home for study, and 32 percent find classrooms either uncomfortably hot or cold. A million students deal with closed or non-working bathrooms, and nearly 2 million California students share classrooms with roaches, mice or rats.

Maybe it’s all a plot to get us to vote for vouchers? Woodchipper, anyone?

Global News Watch has an interesting article looking anew at the history of the Crusades.

I’m not normally a fan of the Wall Steet Journal editorial page. Unlike Forbes, which at least reads like it prides itself on criticising stupidity and theft in the boardroom, the WSJ has always stood fast behind its audience.
But today, Peggy Noonan writes a takedown on the Masters of the Universe that I wish I’d written…

No, it’s not about the vodka…I’m told by people who drink that stuff that Grey Goose is better…it’s about the kind of personal philosophical rigidity that I’ll argue can lead to all kinds of bad things…from terrorism to gridlock.
Demosthenes has a great post today on it, using a graphic-novel series called the ‘Watchmen’ (I’ve got limited knowledge of these, although after reading ‘From Hell’ on the recommendation of a friend, I’ll be looking at more).
I’ll suggest that this is a part of the same Romantic rejection of the ‘bourgeois’ values of moderation, compromise, and community that I discuss when I talked about the Isiah Berlin book ‘The Roots of Romanticism’

In this week’s New Times L.A., the smart, acerbic and damn good looking Jill Stewart dissects Hahn’s “Save the City” rally and the blind ignorance of Ellay’s powers-that-were to the real forces pushing for secession.
Politics in the Zeros leaves for vacation with this post:

Among the endorsers of the email is Mike Antonovich, member of the powerful L.A. County Board of Supervisors. This is big news, Antonovich is a serious player, can marshal huge resources, and is, to my knowledge, the highest profile politician to date to endorse secession. (Note to those who may be confused, the Valley wants to leave the City of L.A.. Antonovich is a supervisor for the County of L.A. If the Valley leaves the city, it will still, of course, still be in the county).

Think about it.

From CNN: The Who’s Entwistle dead at 57 – June 27, 2002.
I always like the Who better than the Stones or Beatles; they always seemed smart and dark at the same time.

The late Roger Zelazny was a terrific writer (note that I don’t ghettoize him by calling him a terrific SF writer). In one of his books, Creatures of Light and Darkness, he offers the definitive prayer:

Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I
say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have
done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not
forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible
benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I
ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may
be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in
my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may
not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your
receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and
which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.

Says it all, don’tcha think…

So we had dinner with George McGovern last night. No, really.
It was one of those big ‘annual dinner’ things, and we were – for a variety of reasons – asked to sit at the table with him. And somehow, it got my mind spinning about a lot of issues in politics and political history … of America and of me as well.
So a couple of posts will probably fall out from this today; here’s one of the first.
I talk to my political friends a lot about ‘Little League’ politics, in which political capital is built in small chunks by, for example, showing up at Little League events. Our (active, crowded) Little League always has a local politician at the Opening and Closing Day ceremonies, and somehow that always seemed like a good thing to me.
I know some elected officials, and I know how mindblowingly hard it can be for them, spending every waking moment at some kind of function or event or another. Watching Senator McGovern last night, as we listened to a whole lot of speeches from outgoing officials talking about last year and then incoming officials talking about next year, I was struck by how many events like this must lie behind him, and how his personal history – and the personal history of any senior politician here in the U.S. – is built at dinners like that and firehouse pancake breakfasts, scout lunches, and Little League ballfields.
I like that. I like that lots more than modern big-time electoral politics, which is built on large donors, Astroturf campaigns (campaigns that are built to look grassroots, but are really centrally funded and coordinated), and big media buys.

So we’re arguing about the Pledge case over brekkie, and I’m surfing on the laptop, and I find someone who perfectly sums up my position:
From Live from the WTC: (please forgive me for quoting the whole thing, it’s just too good, click over anyway and give her come counter love, will you please?)

So an appeals court just ruled that its unconstitutional for students to be led in a Pledge of Allegiance that contains the words “Under God”. And I know that you all rushed to your computers with the burning question: “What does Jane think about that?”
Well, on the one hand, I think that the words “Under God” don’t belong in the Pledge. It’s more sonorous without them. Go ahead, try it: “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” And it doesn’t belong in a nation where not all the people believe in God.
On the other hand, what the hell is wrong with our country that this kind of stupid liberal hissy fit gets raised to a constitutional case? I mean, c’mon. . . “my kid can’t be exposed to the word God, because they might be so contaminated by it that they’ll never recover, and there’s no reason that I should teach her to skip the “under God” part, because why the hell should I be expected to display a little moral courage?” Okay, I’m ranting, but why are we wasting time on this? Is having those words in the pledge what the Founders were worried about with the separation of Church and State? No, dear, they were worried about burning heretics, not burning cheeks from the shame of Not Fitting In, as if never feeling uncomfortable were some sort of implied constitutional right.
And think of what else this implies. It means we can’t ever have anything said in class that might disagree with someone’s religious beliefs; bye-bye, evolution. It means that we have become a nation of such pantywaists that the mere word God can send both coasts into a swooping faint. Oh, I think the court should uphold him. And then I think we should all dedicate a tiny portion of the rest of our lives to making fun of the idiot who brought this suit until he’s ashamed to show his face in decent company.