Impolite Company

Abortion Donuts

Sigh.  When they say things this ridiculous it really makes my job redundant (ALL: Krispy Kreme Celebrates Obama with Pro-Abortion Donuts):

"The next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama's radical support for abortion on demand – including his sweeping promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act as soon as he steps in the Oval Office, Jan. 20.

The doughnut giant released the following statement yesterday: 

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies -- just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet "free" can be.

Just an unfortunate choice of words? For the sake of our Wednesday morning doughnut runs, we hope so.  The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that "choice" is synonymous with abortion access and celebration of 'freedom of choice' is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand.

Hey, ALL, It's not always about you:  the fortunate reality is that words have certain meanings in context and in the context of free donuts on inauguration day, the freedom of choice being celebrated is the freedom to choose our leaders.  And what sort of free donut we want: glazed, crullers, jelly filled, boston creme, chocolate covered, chocolate covered with creme, sprinkles, etc.

Please join me in a quick little Sprockets-type of dance with the National Abortion Anthem by those baby-killers, Devo, Freedom of Choice:

D.C. Inaugural Photographs

Flickr has a group pool going of inaugural photographs from all kinds of people who are in D.C. for the festivities.  I'm going to post the slideshow here and, if my calculations are correct, as the pool grows the slideshow will continue to be updated with new pictures.  This seems like a way for poor folks like you and me who can't get to DC to see what the regular folks are seeing out there on this very exciting weekend.  And it seems like a better idea than switching the blog colors to red, white and blue--this is more my style.  Once you hit the "play" button in the middle of the slide, the slideshow should start (though I sometimes have to monkey with it).  If you hit the "expander" button in the bottom righthand corner, it will go full screen ("esc" to escape!).  Hope y'all enjoy them, I'm sure I will:

Inauguration Weekend and Day Events

Courtesy of The Guardian.co.uk--I hope they will forgive me for copying the whole thing and if they want to grouse about it I'll take it down:

Saturday January 17

Obama and his family trace Abraham Lincoln's train journey from Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore to Washington DC. Lincoln had to be smuggled by train into Washington for fear of assassination. Obama leaves from 30 Street Station in Philadelphia on a charter train. He will pick up Joe Biden and his family in Wilmington, Deleware: Biden famously travelled daily from Wilmington to Washington for his job in the Senate. Tens of thousands are expected at the stops. 'Ordinary" Americans will be on the train with Obama.

Happy Birthday, Stephen Hawking

Garrison Keillor just reminded me a few minutes ago that today is cosmologist and mathematician Stephen Hawking's birthday.  Here's a clip of him on Charlie Rose in which he talks a bit about the somewhat shaky prospects for the human race (2:36):

That Recurring Nightmare

You know the one, where you're giving a speech in front of your high school English class and you look down and realize that you're naked?  Or the one where you're coming back from gym class and someone sneaks up behind you and depants you in front of all the girls?  Or the one when you're riding on the chair lift at the ski lodge, you fall out of the seat, your pants get caught on the chair and get ripped off of you and you're left dangling (and dangling) naked until they can reverse the lift and get you down?  Sheesh, thank god it's just a bad dream...Chairlift Mishap Strips U.S. Skier.  (rather than remain a total tease, here's a link with some more pictures--the guy is unidentifiable in them)

Joe the What?

War correspondent.  Joe the War Correspondent.  I'd sort of made a promise to myself a while back that I was never going to include any sentences that include the Joe the Blank formulation in this blog again, but I feel compelled to use it here.  The Plumber who was going to save John McCain's campaign is apparently going to Israel for a ten day reporting gig on the Israeli/Hamas war for ultra conservative website www.pjtv.com.   That's right, there's an online media outlet out there called PajamasTV and Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher will be reporting from Israel for them.  I'm not sure if he's less qualified to be a war correspondent or a commentator on economic policy but I'm pretty certain that it's a toss-up at best.  I do know this much--it's a pretty shrewd move by the folks in their PJs because I for one would never have been aware of their existence, much less poked around their site for a moment outside of this daring hire.  And they'll probably get all there is to get out of him in those ten days.

Incentives to Fail

The New York Times has a good piece this morning on the bonus structure of Wall Street firms, focused particularly on Merrill Lynch.  The upshot of it is that if you pay outlandish bonuses to employees based on short term company profits, you give them an incentive to work like hell to drive up those short term profits and little incentive to look at the long term stability of those investments.  And that's how it worked on Wall Street--wages were relatively low but the annual bonuses could be astronomical.  And this is what fueled the rush to snap up risky mortgages and package them into securities, which put pressure on mortgage lenders to sell more mortgages and gave customers an outsized view of how big a mortgage they could afford. 

I've got a few quotes from the article on the other side:  The Reckoning--On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real.

Jennifer Gale Has Died--Updated with Obituary Link

For Austin folks I don't need to explain much but for those of you who aren't from around here, Gale was a perennial candidate, homeless person and was the self-described conscience of Austin.  Last year we lost Molly Ivins, certainly a better known advocate outside of Austin but I doubt anyone would argue that Molly was any more passionate than Jennifer.  It's up to the rest of us now to "Keep Austin...Austin."  Jennifer was found dead in front of a downtown Austin church this morning.

Here's her campaign platform for her newly organized run for mayor (Vote Jennifer Gale for Mayor):

1. Healthcare, Dental, full physical and eye exam every year by paying in monthly.
2. Representation through weekly meetings at Reagan, Crockett, Anderson and Travis High School.
3. Widespread Single-Stream Recycling and an Austin MRF.
4. Recognition of Lesbian and Gay Relationships.
5. Our pets want a "No Kill" policy, spay and neuter.
6. Children's education in law, physics, chemistry, calculus.
7. Expanded bus routes
8. Bike avenues, Bike Lane removals
9. Drug Rehabilitation
10. Work for the homeless and incarcerated.
11. Rebates for solar power and hybrid cars
12. Maintain aquifer and park areas.
13. Promote farming and animal husbandry
14. Voter Choice
15. Neighborhood Integrity

The Statesman has published her obituary today:  Eternal Austin Political Hopeful Jennifer Gale Dies.  Burnt Orange Report has a good idea--donate to House the Homeless in Jennifer's honor.  BOR also posted the following video of Jennifer before the Council (four minutes):

No Hope for Homeowners

Well, no hope to be found in the congressional program that started taking applications back in October.  HUD's Hope for Homeowners program, run by the Federal Housing Administration, has received 312 applications as of this date and it was designed to help 400,000 homeowners.  Bush Administration HUD chief Steve Preston blames Congress for the design of the plan and Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee blames the administration's input on the program in part. 

What's wrong with the program?  A lot.  Lenders don't want to get involved because it limits the amount of mortgage value the feds will guarantee (initially set at 90% of the original mortgage, this was later raised to 96.5%) because they'd much rather gamble on losing the entire value of the mortgage outside of the program?  Makes sense to me.  Homeowners aren't thrilled with the program either, as there are plenty of limitations on them and forces them to split any increase of value with the government when they sell the house.  If you want to get a better breakdown on why the program is breaking down, check it out at HUD Chief Calls Aid on Mortgages A Failure:

He [FHA Commissioner Brian Montgomery] said Capitol Hill lawmakers were hampered by a philosophical divide within their ranks when they cobbled the program together and that led to a compromise that made little sense.

"There were two philosophies on the Hill: Let's throw the barn door open and help as many people as we can regardless of the reasons. Or we need to make them pay because they should have known what they were doing," Montgomery said. "They found some middle philosophical ground, but that philosophical middle ground made [the program] unworkable."

He Came at Me with a Pizza

(The title is an obscure Monty Python reference--can anyone name the source?)
One of the principles we stress in our self defense training is that if you are the target of violence and you survived to tell the tale, and strategies you employed to get out alive were the correct strategies to use--when you feel your life is threatened, do whatever you think will work to get away.  I just caught a little article on the BBC about a Florida pizza delivery man who overcame armed robbers with a large pepperoni.  Here's their account (US Man Uses Pizza in Self Defence):

A Florida pizza delivery man who was challenged by armed robbers in the city of Miramar got in first with his own weapon - a large pepperoni pizza.

Eric Lopez Devictoria, 40, flung the piping hot pizza at the gunman, then turned on his heels and ran.

He made a safe getaway, according to the Florida Sun-Sentinel, despite one shot being fired as he fled.

Giving for Christmas

Christmas is such a grand mix of the secular and the profane--it's truly American in ways few other things are.  On the one hand, we celebrate our families, our communities, the people we love, taking time out from our jobs and the other regular fixtures of life to spend time together, sometimes at great sacrifice traveling across the country or opening our homes to any and all comers.  We sing carols, try to take some time to think about the things in life that are important to us and share the warmth and love of our human relations and often we take quiet and contemplative moments with our God or our thoughts of how things should be.  This facet of Christmas time is filled with the spirit of all that is good about Americans and humanity--community, cooperation, love, fellowship, faith, hope, generosity and charity.

And then the other hand.  The other hand can be garish, loud, insistent and aggressive.  It's the constant commercials for Christmas sales and buy this now and trumping childhood memories by giving someone (or yourself) a shiny new luxury car.  The other hand can be profane and ugly fights over how we are killing Christmas by calling it by other names and ignoring the fact that the marketplace is doing far more damage to the holiness of the day by making it an exchange of things rather than a sharing of time and love and values.  Too often the time we take off to spend with our loved ones and our communities is ruined by pressures we put on ourselves to buy the perfect gift or put on the perfect show of Christmas dinner, Christmas lights or proper Christmas kitsch.

Christmas is both of these things, sacred and profane, because we carry these two sides with us wherever we go and the bigger the stage, the more obvious the dualism becomes.  And it probably doesn't do us much good to deny that we have both sides as part of our selves.  I always try to do a little something nice for my self over the holidays (this year it was a new camera lens I wanted) because I have that acquisitive side just like anyone else.  But I also want to embrace the community and connectedness side of Christmas as well and I love it when people use gift-giving to show they know me and know what's important to me. 

Though I can't open it until the 25th, a friend of mine sent me a gift that came wrapped up in a Lance Armstrong Foundation envelope--I may not talk about cancer a lot around here, but this friend knows that supporting cancer research is very important to me going way back to my childhood.  There are so many great charities out there (including Sun Dragon Martial Arts, the non profit where I serve on the board) and especially at a time when our social safety net is frayed around the edges I know they'd appreciate even a small gift in honor of a person that you love.  Use  a small gift like this to tell your friends, I love you, I know what's important to you and because it's important to you I want to support it in your honor.

The Austin Chronicle (Donate for Christmas) has a good article on some fine charities to get your brain thinking--maybe one or two of them would be a good match for a gift in honor of your mother or your little brother.  Whether it's giving to your church, supporting research you think is important, making a gift to a local food bank or finding an organization that fights for causes you and your friend or loved one find important, embrace the sacred, community-building, love and life affirming side of Christmas.  And then go grab that glass of egg nog and crank up the big fat Christmas lights on the porch, listen to some Andy Williams or Bing Crosby and try to figure out what's in the big heavy package that rattles a little bit.

Chicago Workers Occupy Factory

Republic Windows & Doors in Chicago closed up shop when monthly sales dropped from $4 million to less than $3 million and they could no longer pay their bills.  They couldn't pay their employees either, leaving them without severance pay or the benefits they had earned from years of service.  So the workers have taken over the factory in a peaceful sit-in, demanding what they've earned.  And they've got the President-elect on their side (Obama:  Laid-off Workers Occupying Factory in Chicago are 'Absolutely Right'):

“When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right,” Obama said Sunday at a news conference announcing his new Veterans Affairs director. “What’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy."

The New York Times has written about it as well:  In Factory Sit-in, an Anger Spread Wide.  Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is threatening to stop doing business with Bank of America if they don't reopen the factory's line of credit:  Illinois Threatens Bank over Sit-In.  Here's a Flickr slideshow of the workers (Photos by Metroblossom):

Incredible Mumbai Slideshow

This is from a Flickr account of a guy named Kalpak Pathak, a photographer from Salaam Bombay. I've really only just discovered Flickr as a source of some really good photojournalism from the eyes of locals rather than those of Westerners.  There are over 200 pictures in this, so don't feel like you have to watch them all.  You can always go to his Flickr site and browse more selectively.

Pleasure Cruises in Pirate-Infested Waters

Photo by Corsair Owner (Creative Commons License)

Never, ever say that I don't follow the big, international news around here, particularly if there are pirates involved.  In the latest pirate attack off the coast of Somalia, pirates chased, fired on and attempted to board am Oceania line cruise ship, The Nautica.  The pirates failed as the ship took evasive actions and got away from them.  From the BBC (Cruise Ship Evades Pirate Attack):

Oceania Cruises, the Miami-based company which owns the Nautica, described the events leading to the incident on their website.

"The skiffs, approaching from a range of approximately 1,000 metres, attempted to intercept the vessel's course," it said.

"Captain Jurica Brajcic and his officers immediately began evasive manoeuvres and took all prescribed precautions."

Mumbai Attack Slide Show

As I may have lamented around here, when I return home for holidays I return to the digital dark ages, a world of dial up internet access and USA Today.  I generally don't try to fight it and allow myself to shut down on keeping up with the news and world events.  So I know very little about how things went down in Mumbai but I did just run across a very good Flickr slide show of original photos from the siege (there is some blood). 

I want to give full credit to the photographer, Priyam Dhar--you can visit his Flickr photostream and see his other photos there.

Consequences of Gay Marriage

Sometimes a graph is a really good way to tell a story (H/T Daily Dish):

more music charts

Medic!

Greetings and salutations.  Last night during my rank promotion test for Seido karate (Sun Dragon Martial Arts & Self Defense) I sprained the index finger of my right hand.  You got it, my mouse-clickin' finger.  Plus, I had an eight o'clock meeting downtown this morning.  The upshot of all this is, as you may have noticed, I'm off my blogging game today leaving dozens of people without the benefit of my unblinking eye on the national and global scene.  I'm sure you'll all get along fine without me but I didn't want to just fade away without a word of explanation.  And, truth be told, I'll probably do some posting here in a few hours but I didn't want to leave you hangin'.    

Thanks for your patience; I'll see you in a bit.  By the way, I think the promotion went pretty well and I'll post a picture or two if I find an appropriate one (one in which I look appropriately badass).

g.

Pirates Aren't Funny Anymore

September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day (Arrrrgh).  Pirates have parrots on their shoulders, hooks instead of hands, walk with a limp, invariably have some sort of eye trouble that requires a patch and drink a lot of rum.  But those happy-go-lucky Somali pirate marauders have just made a major mistake--they messed with oil.  A group of Somali pirates just hijacked a supertanker with $100 million worth of crude oil on it and I'm afraid that their salad days are now over (Pirates Anchor Supertanker Off Somalia).  They may get a big payoff for this heist but gone are the days of the wink and the smile and the nudge-nudge.  You don't mess with oil. 

Fair play to you and all that but you pirates are screwed.  Oops--Arrrrgh.

By the way, the pirate picture is by Lludovic (displayed here thanks to a Creative Commons license) and you can see the original here:  Lludovic's Pirate in Situ.

Here's a serious article about piracy, questions about connections to the Islamist insurgency in Somalia, and the possibility that global terrorists could turn to it to raise funds and disrupt the oil supply:  Oil Capture Spotlights Somali Pirate's Reach.

Austin & National Prop 8 Protests

In the wake of the approval of Prop 8 in California, gay and lesbian groups as well as straight supporters across the country are planning a coordinated protest tomorrow, Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 12:30.  These protests are intended to be family-oriented, peaceful and positive, not vulgar and hate-filled.  If you're interested in where your local protest will be, visit Join the Impact.  Details for the Austin protest are on the other side (Austin:  Join the Impact):

Congratulations!

My good friend Mac Shadix is hitting his one year anniversary as the owner and operator of The Buffalo Press.  He hasn't yet made the jump onto the internet, so I can't really give you a taste of his current handiwork.  But back in the day before he bought the paper he did keep The Flo News Online updated occasionally with some of the pieces he did.  Congratulations, Mac!  I couldn't find a picture that was just of Mac so I'll let you figure out which of these three owns a newspaper: