Deborah Lipp

The worst thing about all the incredibly crappy ‘reality’ series out there is it didn’t occur to anybody to make the one ‘reality’ series that would be worth watching.

I’m talking, of course, about a series following the Katherine Harris campaign.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving, the train wreck that keeps on wrecking, the catastrophic failure that just goes right on failing. It’s the entertainment event of the century. Because, let’s face it: loathsome + clueless + disaster-prone = Comedy Gold.

All is not lost. Maybe when it’s all over (which could be sooner than November), HBO could turn it into docufarce, in the vein of The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. (In fact, I’ll bet Holly Hunter could do an hilarious Katherine Harris.) But hell, I would even settle for a sitcom. Imagine the possibilities… » Read more..

DiVinyls – Back to the Wall
Social Distortion – Ring of Fire
Go-Go’s – Daisy Chain
Wire – I Feel Mysterious Today
Ennio Morricone – The Ecstasy of Gold
Wire – Two People in a Room
Hüsker Dü – She Floated Away
The Clash – I’m So Bored with the USA
Siouxsie & the Banshees – Christine
DJ Shadow – Organ Donor

Bonus track:
Lene Lovich – Home

So…what are y’all listening to?

As your substitute Deborah for the week, I feel duty bound to mention that over at Pandagon Pam Spaulding posts about a crazy fundamentalist attacking Wicca. Sigh. Sort of a dog-bites-man story, really, and nothing terribly new in it…except that she also mentions the guy’s co-author, Dave Hunt, who has written about the evil of using psychic powers:

While acknowledging that many psychics are fake and use tricks to deceive clients, Hunt believes some psychics are used by demons to make destructive predictions. He believes assassin Sirhan Sirhan, for example, had demonic psychic powers and predicted the day that Robert F. Kennedy died. [emphasis added]

Umm…right.

Somebody should tell this guy that George Bush used his demonic psychic powers to predict the date of the Iraq invasion.

So everybody already knows that Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the illegal electronic surveillance program. I think we can all say ‘obstruction of justice’, but I’m pretty sure Congress (this Congress, with this president) can’t.

I was struck by this key exchange, reported in the Washington Post:

“It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman, asked Gonzales.

“The president of the United States makes the decision,” Gonzales replied. [emphasis added]

d’Fuh?

I’m pretty sure Specter wasn’t asking who Bush is (we already know he’s the Decider); Specter was asking why the Decider Decided the Way he Decided. Gonzales’ response will go down in history as one of the all-time classic non-responsive answers.

Just for perspective, let’s try this out in some everyday-type situations:

Officer: Why didn’t you stop at that stop sign?
Driver: The driver makes the decision.

Mom: Why didn’t you do your homework?
Kid: The kid makes the decision.

Really, that’s the level we’ve sunk to with this administration.

The scariest part is that Gonzales (and Bush and the whole lot of them) probably think this is an answer–that the provenance of the decision makes it unquestionable. It’s the executive infallibility doctrine in action; under the influence of people like Addington and Cheney, they’re so ideologically committed to executive supremacy that it doesn’t even occur to them that simply asserting it might not be sufficient.

And the sad thing is, they’re probably right; despite some sharp questioning by Specter and Dianne Feinstein nothing more is going to come of this latest outrage than came of the hundreds before it.

[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]

Hell, there has to be some advantage to still being at work at 8:30 pm, right?

Yesterday I slammed the Washington Post for an article about ‘conscience’ and healthcare professionals that failed to include a single quote from anyone who had been denied service. I take that back, partly; Jesurglisac points me to a companion story that is entirely from the point of view of the victims of ‘conscience’.

The article has some genuinely heartbreaking stories; I thought this one was the worst:

But some patients agreed to be interviewed, including Deb, who was turned away by pharmacist Gene Herr at a drugstore in Denton, Tex., in 2004, when she tried to get the morning-after pill after being raped on a date. She discussed her experience with a reporter for the first time on the condition that her last name not be used.

“It almost felt like I was being raped again,” said Deb, who had already tried two other pharmacies. “I couldn’t believe someone could do something violent and then I couldn’t have a choice about what to do about it. The horror of what I went through was almost as bad as the first assault. It was like twisting a knife in a wound.” » Read more..

Via Mahablog comes the story of an anti-choice EMT fired because she refused to transport a patient who was supposed to get an abortion.

Naturally, she’s suing. First reaction: WATB doesn’t even begin to describe this pathetic excuse for humanity.

But as Barbara points out, her story doesn’t add up:

…who calls an ambulance just for an elective abortion? There’s got to be more to this story that Adamson isn’t admitting. Such as, what sort of medical emergency required the patient to go to a hospital by ambulance to terminate her pregnancy? » Read more..

[Random Flickr-blogging explained. See also excellent contributions from Doug Hoffman, Dionne (scroll down on the right sidebar), KarenM, Debra, Jurassic Pork, Ben Varkentine, our very own Nobody in Particular, SAP, and Dan Wolf (who muses on the possibility of an audio equivalent of random Flickr-blogging).]

IMG_7226
Originally uploaded by Mai Le.

I know this dream. I’ve had it lots of times. I’m in bed and for some reason there’s a whole bunch of people in my bedroom, people I barely know. And I’m supposed to be doing something, maybe this is a party and I’m the host, and I would if they would just leave the damn bedroom long enough for me to get up and get dressed.

It’s unsettling to see your dreams depicted in someone else’s photos. I have no idea what’s really going on here. Maybe it’s a movie set; maybe it’s Art; I don’t know. The weird disjunction between sleeper and people standing around goes unexplained.

[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]

Kevin Drum explains why. I tend to feel like I should have an opinion about everything, but sometimes it’s a whole lot smarter just to acknowledge the limits of one’s understanding. (Of course, as Kevin Drum observes, these reasons apply to bloggers; they don’t excuse the President of the United States from having to deal with the situation.)

If you do want to understand what’s going on, though, Mahablog has a series of thoughtful and informative posts about the whole ugly situation, and Bush’s disgraceful failure to act on it.

[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]