December 2007 archive

Ain’t technology grand? I can sit here in China and zoom in on my son’s backyard in America with Google Earth.

Perhaps someday I will be able to watch my grandkids play in realtime.

The technology is here…now.  Our government uses it for National Security.  There is no doubt that it can (and probably has) serve our military well in Iraq and Afghanistan, our Intelligence community in many foreign lands and our scientists in tracking environmental information around the globe.

But what if someone wants to watch my grandkids running through the sprinkler in their underoos.

or…

Watch you as you read this post?

I’ll be a little more scarce, around here, for the next several months…

As I already posted at that Orange Place:

Former Daily Kos Contributing Editor Steve Soto is taking a sabbatical from helming The Left Coaster, and I’ll be filling in as temporary principal writer. I should be posting at least twice a day, Monday through Friday, for the next several months. The rest of the site’s superb writers will always be there, and when Steve returns, I will remain as a Contributing Writer.

Needless to say, this is a somewhat daunting and very flattering position to have been offered. Because of that, it will now be my top blogging priority. I will crosspost at DocuDharma, in addition to writing one exclusive, per week, there, and I will also crosspost some to Daily Kos; but those of you who enjoy my writing will now find most of it at The Left Coaster. Those of you who are tired of my haranguing about candidate-bashing diaries will also want to visit The Left Coaster, just to keep site traffic up, and keep me distracted from distracting you. And those of you who neither know nor care who the hell I am can continue safely neither knowing nor caring, but you’ll also want to visit The Left Coaster, because it’s where the cool people get informed!

I’ll still be here, sometimes diarying, sometimes commenting, and generally trying to help the cause. The Democratic Party remains a very imperfect vehicle, but within the political system, I do believe it is the best vehicle for effecting positive change. I remain an ideological idealist, but a pragmatist. I remain a partisan. I continue to hope that, after the primary wars are finally over, we will come together and rid ourselves, once and for all, of this dangerously hyper-extremist iteration of the Republican Party. At the same time, I am determined to help reestablish the Democratic Party as the people’s party. Daily Kos is a big part of that movement, and I hope The Left Coaster will also continue to do its part! Hope to see many of you there!

I’ll be here when I can. Where else in the tubes can I find such civility?

Once again, House Democrats appear ready to punt.

According to the Washington Post:

House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday.

In a complicated deal over the war funds, Democrats will include about $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush has requested, emergency drought relief for the Southeast and legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, Hoyer told a meeting of the Washington Post editorial board.

If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end. But it would also be the clearest instance yet of the president bowing to a Democratic demand for more money for domestic priorities, an increase that he had promised to reject.

So, let’s be clear: for eleven billion dollars more in domestic spending, House Democrats are willing to waste hundreds of billions more on the disastrous war in Iraq. Not to mention, you know- lives. Perhaps it should occur to them that there would be a helluva lot more for domestic spending if we weren’t busily bankrupting ourselves in Iraq. Not to mention, you know- lives.

I’m sure it will come as great comfort to our troops, the families and friends of our troops, and the Iraqi people that we’ll have more money for domestic spending. Certainly, their lives are worth it. Or something.

Meanwhile, our ostensible coalition has all but evaporated. According to a different Post article:

President Bush once called it the “coalition of the willing,” the countries willing to fight alongside the United States in Iraq. The list topped off in mid-2004 at 32 countries; troop strength peaked in November that year at 25,595. The force has since shrunk to 26 countries and 11,755 troops, or about 7 percent of the 175,000-strong multinational force, according to mid-November figures provided by the U.S. military.

Everyone else is coming to their senses, but not us. Not even with a Democratic Congress.

Armando?

My Mom will be 78 on Tuesday.  She is a stiff-upper-lip Yankee, born and raised in a tiny town in Vermont.  This was the 4-room school she attended (and at which she received a superb education) and graduated from as the top 14 percent of her class of 7:

Ported by request

An old political friend of mine – whom I describe after the jump – has written a book on the 1780s, the decade that led from victory in the Revolutionary War to the enactment of the Constitution.  It’s called Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution; I think it’s brilliant.  Given that it’s by an old friend, you shouldn’t take my word for it; consider instead that it was up for a National Book Award last month and is now ranked #6111 at Amazon.

I have rarely seen a more perfect book for netroots bloggers, who are among today’s Unruly Americans.  It focuses on the period between victory in the Revolutionary War and ratification of the Constitution.  It argues that what we love about the Constitution – primarily the Bill of Rights – derives not so much from the political philosophy of the great and familiar Framers of the document, but from the common men of the time who refused to bend to them unless their interests were secured.  On reading it, you will recognize the arguments and passions of their day, which echo into ours.

(More below.)

It is my Birthday.

It is the reason my Dad joined the marines…that and the fact he was drafted. And when he returned from the Pacific and got married, his first child was born on December 7….to remind him of things he would never speak about.

So what did I do on my Birthday?

I remembered my parents and missed them. Contemplated on how I look like my mother now that I am the age that she was when I remember her best. I even sound like her.

Well, today we went to a luncheon where the speaker was FDR! An actor dressed and imitated FDR, quoting from his speeches and answering questions from the audience. It was obvious he didn’t like Republicans…too bad.

What got me was the old wheelchair and the braces! He even wore the old-style braces!

My mother contracted polio(infantile paralysis) in the same year FDR did. He was 39, she was 3. Like FDR, she had gone to the beach (at Lake Michigan in Chicago, probably Rainbow Beach,) to swim and cool off in the water. The next day she was sick. It was painful. Her Aunt and her mother were by her bedside day and night. She was totally paralyzed for a time. She even went blind. Then she began to recover. Slowly she regained movement in her arms and hands. Her sight returned. She could even move her legs, a little. One foot could even show some movement in the toes and flex her foot. However, the movement was slight and the other leg was totally immoveable. It was only a movement paralysis, since there was still pain, and hot and cold sensations. She always felt paralysis was an inappropriate term because she still had feeling sensations in her limbs.

The cute little three-year-old, sitting in a chair with a kitten would never run and dance again. When the five-year-old is managing the stairs withher new doll(whose head is ceramic), she falls and drops it and the head breaks. She is still sad after 50 years.

It was strange the way the muscles atrophied on her body. No muscles in the legs, just skin and bone with huge knobby knees. Her back seemed to have some muscles missing. The ripples of thick muscles next to grooves of absent ones was always a mystery. Even her hand displayed the ravages of polio. The thick, fat, muscle of the thumb was totally absent.

My Mom used heavy braces and crutches all her life. The braces made of steel and leather weighed 10 pounds. She used the same braces until one broke from metal fatigue about five years before she died. That means the braces were close to 40 years old. When my parents found a brace-maker, he remarked at how well-made they were. Her new pair were not quite as good.  

Studies have shown that polio victims experience a relapse around the age of 60. She became very weak and died of congestive heart failure at that age.

My mother was very strong, she used her arms to walk, and used to be able to navigate stairs and ride buses with ease. My parents met at the Art Institute. She was a professional artist working for the WPA for many years. A pattern maker for work uniforms and a commercial free-lance artist in Downtown Chicago.

It was funny to see her walk on all fours down the hall when she did not have her braces on.

Her greatest worry was that her children would contract polio and she made sure we received all the vacinations. She was so glad that a vaccine had been found! Salk and Sabin were her heroes.

****

Although Roosevelt was good…he really didn’t move well with his braces….he had a few of the movements down. The tappinf of the side of the knee to straighten the races as he stood up and the swaying from side to side using the back and chest muscles to walk with the heavy braces.

My best memories are of my conversations with my mother and her teaching me how to draw, showing me techniques that I still use today.

My favorite memory is of her holding my first son, her first grandchild.

My memories are the best part of my birthday. They are a way of keeping her close to me.

I’m trying to figure out how to write about why I started blogging over at the Great Orange Satan on immigration.

There’s so much information I have packed into my poor brain over the past several months, that I don’t know where to begin.

Guess perhaps I should start at the beginning!

Ok, will do.

kyledeb’s The Correct Term is Migrant on August 22.  

It is impossible to have a real conversation about immigration in the U.S. if people can’t even agree on the terminology that they are debating with. Conservatives automatically become hostile when they read or hear the word “undocumented immigrant”, and progressives often call people that use the term “illegal alien” racists. Both terms are incorrect.

When describing the 12 million people that have illegally immigrated into the U.S. the best term to use is the word “migrant”. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if people opposed this, this shouldn’t be a controversial claim. The rest of the world uses the term migrant to describe people that immigrate into the country illegally. The BBC uses the word migrant. So does Prensa Libre, Guatemala’s main newspaper. The list goes on and on.

Immigration is actually a U.S.-centric term. An immigrant is someone who migrates into your country, an emigrant describes someone who migrates out of your country, but the accurate term to describe this population from a global perspective is migrant. It flies in the face of the U.S. citizen ego, but most migrants come to the U.S. with the intention of returning, and many do. Migration describes their movements better than immigration does.

The typical comment:

You can respectfully disagree

with the actual definitions of words all you want.

But using your special definitions of words instead of the generally agreed upon definitions will achieve only one thing – guaranteeing that you will not effectively communicate with anyone who does not already agree with you.

My very first comment was a response to Mariachi Mama’s comment:

sorry too late to tip or rec nt

To which I added one of my most insightful comments:

ditto. nt.