Tag: The Stars Hollow Gazette

Well after all Pickering, I’m an ordinary man.

Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance to live exactly as he likes and do precisely what he wants.

An average man am I of no eccentric whim, who likes to live his life free of strife, doing whatever he thinks is best for him.

Well… just an ordinary man…

But let a woman in your life and your serenity is through.  She’ll redecorate your home, from the cellar to the dome, and then go on to the enthralling fun of overhauling you!

Let a woman in your life and you’re up against a wall.  Make a plan and you will find that she has something else in mind, and so rather than do either you do something else that neither likes at all!

You want to talk of Keats and Milton, she only wants to talk of love.  You go to see a play or ballet and spend it searching for her glove.

Let a woman in your life and you invite eternal strife.  Let them buy their wedding bands for those anxious little hands.  I’d be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling than to ever let a woman in my life.

I’m a very gentle man, even tempered and good natured who you never hear complain, who has the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein.  A patient man am I, down to my fingertips; the sort who never could, ever would, let an insulting remark escape his lips.  A very gentle man.

But let a woman in your life, and patience hasn’t got a chance.  She will beg you for advice, your reply will be concise, and she will listen very nicely, and then go out and do exactly what she wants!!!

You are a man of grace and polish, who never spoke above a hush, all at once you’re using language that would make a sailor blush.  

Let a woman in your life and you’re plunging in a knife!  Let the others of my sex tie the knot around their necks.  I prefer a new edition of the Spanish Inquisition than to ever let a woman in my life!

I’m a quiet living man who prefers to spend the evening in the silence of his room, who likes an atmosphere as restful as an undiscovered tomb.  A pensive man am I, of philosophical joys, who likes to meditate, contemplate, far for humanities mad inhuman noise.  Quiet living man.

But let a woman in your life and your sabbatical is through.  In a line that never ends comes an army of her friends, come to jabber and to chatter and to tell her what the matter is with YOU!  She’ll have a booming boisterous family who will descend on you en mass.  She’ll have a large Wagnarian mother with a voice that shatters glass,

Let a woman in your life?  Let a woman in your life!?

Let a woman in your life- I shall never let a woman in my life.

(Celebrating 10 years since I proposed to my ex-fiance.)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

So.  Do you think The New York Times finally gets it about the Protect America Act?

Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.

…

The law then, and now, also requires the attorney general to certify “in writing under oath” that the surveillance is legal under FISA, not some fanciful theory of executive power. He is required to inform Congress 30 days in advance, and then periodically report to the House and Senate intelligence panels.

Congress was certainly not informed, and if Mr. Ashcroft or later Alberto Gonzales certified anything under oath, it’s a mystery to whom and when. The eavesdropping went on for four years and would probably still be going on if The Times had not revealed it.

…

To defend themselves, the companies must be able to show they cooperated and produce that certification. But the White House does not want the public to see the documents, since it seems clear that the legal requirements were not met. It is invoking the state secrets privilege – saying that as a matter of national security, it will not confirm that any company cooperated with the wiretapping or permit the documents to be disclosed in court.

What about our Democratic Congress?  Glenn Greenwald–

… they are now not only capitulating to, but actually leading (in the form of their Intelligence Committee Chair, Jay Rockefeller), the Bush/Cheney crusade to legalize warrantless eavesdropping and institutionalize lawlessness through telecom amnesty.

…

That is the same failed strategy that Democrats have been pursuing with complete futility for the last eight years. In 2002, they became convinced by their vapid, craven “strategists” that if they voted for the war in Iraq, it would take national security off the table and enable the midterm elections to be decided by domestic issues. In 2004, they decided that they would reject a candidate who provided too much of a contrast on national security (Howard Dean) in favor of one who, having supported the war and with a record of combat, would neutralize national security as an election issue.

…

Notably, the one time they actually allowed a contrast to be created on national security — in the run-up to the 2006 midterm election, when they were perceived to be the anti-war party and the GOP was perceived to be tied to Iraq — they won a decisive victory. When they seek to remove national security as an issue by copying Republicans, they lose.

I don’t get it.  Mike Tabbi–

The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what’s to come if they win the White House. And if we don’t pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there’s still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame.

…

Democrats insist that the reason they can’t cut off the money for the war, despite their majority in both houses, is purely political. “George Bush would be on TV every five minutes saying that the Democrats betrayed the troops,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Then he glumly adds another reason. “Also, it just wasn’t going to happen.”

Why it “just wasn’t going to happen” is the controversy. In and around the halls of Congress, the notion that the Democrats made a sincere effort to end the war meets with, at best, derisive laughter. Though few congressional aides would think of saying so on the record, in private many dismiss their party’s lame anti-war effort as an absurd dog-and-pony show, a calculated attempt to score political points without ever being serious about bringing the troops home.

…

But any suggestion that the Democrats had an obligation to fight this good fight infuriates the bund of hedging careerists in charge of the party. In fact, nothing sums up the current Democratic leadership better than its vitriolic criticisms of those recalcitrant party members who insist on interpreting their 2006 mandate as a command to actually end the war. Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee and a key Pelosi-Reid ally, lambasted anti-war Democrats who “didn’t want to get specks on those white robes of theirs.” Obey even berated a soldier’s mother who begged him to cut off funds for the war, accusing her and her friends of “smoking something illegal.”

…

Even beyond the war, the Democrats have repeatedly gone limp-dick every time the Bush administration so much as raises its voice. Most recently, twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to grant immunity to phone companies who participated in Bush’s notorious wiretapping program. Before that, Democrats caved in and confirmed Mike Mukasey as attorney general after he kept his middle finger extended and refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Democrats fattened by Wall Street also got cold feet about upsetting the country’s gazillionaires, refusing to close a tax loophole that rewarded hedge-fund managers with a tax rate less than half that paid by ordinary citizens.

Instead they simply pretend to live in fear of the Villagers, a group of ineffective toothless sycophants (Greenwald again).

… there are plenty of people who still insist that people like Chris Wallace and Brit Hume are real journalists, somehow distinguishable from the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Shouldn’t this question from Wallace, by itself, preclude that assessment? Is Wallace’s embarrassingly deferential inquiry really any different than the defining question asked of the Commander-in-Chief which exposed Jeff Gannon:

Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines. And Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work — you’ve said you are going to reach out to these people — how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Both Wallace and Gannon — with the opportunity to question the U.S. President — basically asked: “Mr. President, how do you handle so well the fact that your political opponents are so crazy, malicious and anti-American”? Just compare Gannon’s mentality (“how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”) with Wallace’s (“are you ever puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us?”). Brezhnev-era Pravda would have been too ashamed to ask such blatantly subservient questions of political leaders. But Chris Wallace is a Very Serious Journalist and Fox is a real news network.

Real journalists?  Yup, just like Tweety and Timmeh and Shuster and Mrs. Greenspan and Wolfie from AIPAC and Candy and Mr. Matlin and the Beckmiester of hate.

Serious.  Respected.

Pfui.

Do you miss Mitt?

Conventional wisdom says perhaps you should, for now the focus will be entirely on the Democratic jackass race that shows no signs of melting down until June if then.

• Mukasey: No, I Will Not Investigate Waterboarding
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker – February 7, 2008, 11:44AM
• Mukasey: No, I Will Not Investigate Warrantless Wiretapping
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker – February 7, 2008, 1:10PM
• Mukasey: The Law Is What The Justice Department Says It Is
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker – February 7, 2008, 3:00PM
• Mukasey to Muckraker: Get Press Releases off The Website
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker – February 7, 2008, 3:55PM
• Mukasey: No, I Will Not Enforce Citations for Contempt of Congress
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker – February 7, 2008, 6:24PM

Your Bonus Muck-

• We Don’t Discuss Interrogation Techniques until We Want to
  
  By Paul Kiel – February 6, 2008, 1:03PM
• White House Insists on Confirmation of Torture Memo Author
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker- February 6, 2008, 4:35PM

  … For more than three years, Steven Bradbury has been the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, the crucial Justice Department office that has the power to issue “advance pardons,” as former OLC head Jack Goldsmith put it. But Senate Democrats, because of Bradbury’s role in approving the warrantless wiretapping program and enhanced interrogation techniques that include waterboarding, have opposed White House efforts to have him confirmed and remove his acting status.

• Today’s Must Read
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker – February 7, 2008, 9:44AM

  If it’s seemed to you that the administration has blundered its way into its recent pro-waterboarding PR offensive, you’re right.

• GOPer: 99% of Americans Would Support Waterboarding
  
  By Paul Kiel, TPMMuckracker – February 7, 2008, 2:25PM

Bonus coverage from emptywheel–

“Are you the people’s lawyer or the President’s?”

DocuDharma has kept an admirable concentration on the real issues that confront us, centered primarily on the essential lawlessness of the current administration and it’s Congressional and Village Idiot enablers.

Update: Conyers Says He’s on Edge of Starting Impeachment

by David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org

Friday 2008-02-08 04:34

h/t: Tigana

So tomorrow we’re set up for what are likely to be a string of defeats on the Protect America Act extension which we’re all supposed to ignore because we can’t keep our concentration focused on anything except cheap plastic distractions like the Super Bowl (congratulations Obama for your Giants endorsement) and Super Tuesday horse racing (go Sea Biscuit).

Glenn Greenwald–

In the Senate, Democratic and Republican leaders have, according to Congressional Quarterly and others sources, reached an agreement as to how to proceed on the FISA vote this Monday. There are currently numerous amendments pending to the Cheney/Rockefeller Senate Intelligence Committee bill, almost all of them introduced by Democrats (with one co-sponsored by Arlen Specter) and most of them (if not all) unacceptable to the White House and the GOP.

The essence of the new agreement is that most of the amendments will be subject to a simple up-or-down vote — if they get 50 votes, then they pass — while several of the amendments will require 60 votes to pass (allowing, in essence, the Republicans to filibuster those amendments without actually having to go to the Senate floor and engage in a real filibuster).

Senate Democratic leadership sources are trying to claim that this is some sort of victory for Senate Democrats, and echoing that sentiment, even some of the most insightful and knowledgeable around — such as McJoan at Daily Kos — are hailing the agreement as evidence that “Dems didn’t cave” and that “they held tough.” Unless there is something I’m overlooking, I don’t understand that perspective at all.

Update III-

UPDATE III: Dan Froomkin, quoting The Providence Journal’s Scott MacKay, has excerpts from former GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee’s new book:

The book excoriates Mr. Bush and his GOP allies who repeatedly fanned such wedge issues as changing the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, abortion and flag-burning. But he saves some of his harshest words for Democrats who paved the way for Mr. Bush to use the U.S. military to invade Iraq. . . . “The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were,” writes Chafee. “They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom. “Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one’s hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish,” writes Chafee. “That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.” Chafee writes of his surprise at “how quickly key Democrats crumbled.” Democratic senators, Chafee writes, “went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration’s nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?”

Chafee was describing the 2002 lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, but the description is just as apt today. And his description of what Democratic Senators did back then after meeting with White House and Pentagon officials sounds a lot like what many of them do today after meeting with White House and NSA officials.

Read it and weep.

Are you clear what’s happening here?

Tomorrow is another day of struggle and all cranky and hung over I expect you back at work.

It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race…

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel.  I will drink life to the lees!  All times I have enjoy’d greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those that loved me and alone, on shore;  and when thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim sea…

I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart!

Much have I seen and known- cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments.  Myself not least, but honour’d of them all.  And drunk delight of battle with my peers far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades for ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use.

As tho’ to breathe were life!  Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me little remains; but every hour is saved from that eternal silence, something more…

A bringer of new things; and vile it were for some three suns to store and hoard myself and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle.  Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil this labour, by slow prudence to make mild a rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness, and pay meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone.

He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port.  The vessel puffs her sail.  There gloom the dark, broad seas.  My mariners, souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me- that ever with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine, and opposed free hearts, free foreheads…

You and I are old.

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.  Death closes all, but something ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done; not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks.  The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs, the deep moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends,  ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.  Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows, for my purpose holds- to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down.  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides and tho’ we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are- One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses, Alfred- Lord Tennyson

So.  You’re not looking for meta or political, but the personal reminiscence or poetry.

Well on Wednesday you’ll get typeset Tennyson, but today you get me and Kools.

I used to smoke Kools, the worst cigarette in the world because it’s Mentholated and filtered with asbestos.  I’d smoke until my lungs felt “brown”.

One time, while I was smoking Kools, I got invited to a party with a bunch of people I didn’t know.  They also didn’t smoke and the girls were kind of cute and interesting and I didn’t realize at the time how much I stank.

Eight hours later I emerged (having been welcomed and accepted and indulged in what I most desire which is intelligent conversation with peers) and I got in my car and right after I fired it up I fired up a Kool.

And right after I turned the corner out of sight I parked and barfed my guts out from the sick.

Did that stop me?  No.  I went on to smoke and not smoke.  I finally started (I’m done now) once again at a High School Reunion where I practically ripped open a cigarette machine for a pack of Merits because I felt inadequate.  So did the girl with the biggest tits in second grade who was right next to me and would have banged me in the hall if my fiance hadn’t been in the ballroom.

Gotta love reunions.

From there I went on to a point where it was kind of a bonding ritual between me and the dad.  He’d always smoked and so had his mom and dad.  They liked the smell and so do I.  You can smoke in my car if you like, I’m already dead.  I know exactly how long it takes to smoke a Kent III King- 5 minutes because that’s how long our mandatory breaks were.  Smoke them to the stub and crush them in the tub I have my last ashtray hanging around unclean to remind me what my lungs look like.

But there came a time when I decided I was done so I went on the gum and it’s been a while.

Ah. Everyone still loves Don Vito and the Corleones on the rock hard hockey puck chicken circuit.  At least that’s what they say to my face.

Why I even had my friend Vincenzo drop by.  We were very civil.

While I sometimes speak ex cathedra there is only one capo di tutti.

I wish to make it clear that 200 – 500 words and a graphic is only a suggestion for a front page piece, not a requirement.  It’s actually rather easy to be Front Paged here, all you have to be is good.  We’ll make it look pretty if you don’t have artistic sensibilities to be offended.

Not that being good or Front Page aspirations are a requirement to post- you get 2 (count ’em) TWO! essays a day so you can easily change your mind about what’s important, follow BREAKING!!! developments if you care to.

On the other hand there are three Pony Parties a day (@ 9, noon, and 6) if all you have is a comment for an Open Thread and Muse in the Morning, DocuDharma Times, and 4 at 4 are also there for your convenience.

We encourage participation of all kinds.

Maybe Monday.

I want to keep on this FISA/PAA attack because Obi Wan, it’s our only hope.  Or is it?  Greenwald says it’s the only way into the bowels of this administration’s misdeeds, but probably not there are so many of them.

935 Lies

The blogger on top of the details is (as you might suspect if you’ve been paying attention) Tim Tagaris lately of the Dodd campaign.  He may be posting elsewhere, but I’m mostly running across him at Open Left (ttagaris@dK, 1 diary a day bites kos- we were 0 == ‘Hide’ before you!).

His latest is time stamped 14:46:21 PM EST and practically all of it is-

Hearing now that Reid filed a 30-day extension and then filed cloture on that extension. If cloture is not invoked on Monday at 4:30, we’ll then vote on invoking cloture on extension.

Previous to that he posted-

Now! We might have a showdown

by: Tim Tagaris

Thu Jan 24, 2008 at 14:05:25 PM EST

Here’s where we stand right now to the best of my knowledge.

There will be a cloture vote at 4:30 on Monday.  There are two potential outcomes here.

a.) Republicans get 60 votes.  In which case, there will only be one amendment pending to the final bill, and that is Feingold/Dodd on blanket warrants, I believe.  That will get tabled quite easily (much like Judiciary was today), and then the Intelligence Bill as we know it will get a a vote for final passage. b.) We stop Republicans from getting 60 votes, and we’re right back where we left off today — with no agreement on whether or not there is a 50 or 60 vote threshold to pass amendments.

Why is this a big deal?

Well, because there are a number of amendments out there that would serve as “poison pills,” forcing a presidential veto.

Before people got all bogged down in Thug debate crap we had this-

FISA: Republican Temper Tantrums

by mcjoan

Thu Jan 24, 2008 at 03:11:18 PM PST

We need 41 votes to prevent this. That means flipping members of the gang that caved on the Leahy amendment and/or Clinton and Obama returning to DC for the Monday vote, which is very likely given that the SC primary will be over and that is the night of the state of the union.

If the Democrats can hold together on this one, if they do more than just 41 votes but actually hold together as a party against this massive Republican abuse, this bill can be derailed. And this is a massive Republican abuse. Every Democrat who had an amendment pending, and that includes Diane Feinstein and Sheldon Whitehouse, need to vote with the Democrats to prevent cloture on Monday.

Hit the phones, e-mail, and faxes hard until Monday afternoon, folks. We need to flip as many of these as possible.

And from emptywheel on FDL this action list-

The Republicans have refused to allow an “upperdown” vote on any amendment since the Leahy substitution amendment went through. They’ve called for a cloture vote to vote on the SSCI bill, with just one minor amendment.

…

… several of these amendments, though they propose something the Administration has said would be okay, would really cause Bush to veto the bill.

The idea is cloture allows Bush to conduct his spying as he wants to, with Congressional approval. Whereas Reid wants to deliver what Bush has said he needs, rather than what he really wants but won’t admit to.

…

We’ve got three and a half days to get at least three of the following people to flip their votes from the vote on the Leahy substitution:

Bayh (202) 224-5623 Carper (202) 224-2441 Inouye (202) 224-3934 Johnson (202) 224-5842 Landrieu (202)224-5824 McCaskill (202) 224-6154 Mikulski (202) 224-4654 Nelson (FL) (202) 224-5274 Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551 Pryor (202) 224-2353 Salazar (202) 224-5852 Specter (202) 224-4254 (What the hell–he had an amendment ignored today, too)

…

We can win this one.

These are the posts referenced by Glenn Greenwald in his next to last update before he urges you to tune into Tim Tagaris.

So there you have it.  The current situation as far as I know it.

Of course there were thousands of comments in the live blogging threads.  Good luck.

Quisling

Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling (18 July 1887 – 24 October 1945) was a Norwegian army officer and fascist politician who served as Minister President of German-occupied Norway during World War II from 1942 to 1945. During this time, he claimed to be the head of government while the constitutional government was exiled in London. After the war, Quisling was convicted of high treason and subsequently executed by firing squad. His surname has become an eponym for “traitor”, especially a collaborationist (see Quisling).

It was once my job to host a delegate from the international part of my club, a visitor from Norway.  While we were traveling around we happened to pass through New Haven and I mentioned it was the home of my favorite traitor- Benedict Arnold.

“Benedict Arnold?”, all innocent she.

“Vidkun Quisling.”

She practically spat at me.  “How do you know about him?”

I read history for if we forget we are condemned to repeat it.

Glenn Greenwald has two pieces of wisdom today-

For apologists of Democratic Party passivity, who claim endlessly that Democrats can stand for nothing because they’ll lose elections if they do, such a claim is not only craven and self-destructive, but factually inaccurate as well. From a new poll released today, commissioned by the ACLU:

Majorities of voters on both sides of the political spectrum oppose key provisions in President Bush’s proposal to modify foreign surveillance laws that could ensnare Americans, according to a poll released Tuesday. The survey shows nearly two-thirds of poll respondents say the government should be required to get an individual warrant before listening in on conversations between US citizens and people abroad. Close to six in 10 people oppose an administration proposal to allow intelligence agencies to seek “blanket warrants” that would let them eavesdrop of foreigners for up to a year no additional judicial oversight required if the foreign suspect spoke to an American. And a majority are against a plan to give legal immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping. “Across the board, we find opposition to the administration’s FISA agenda,” pollster Mark Mellman said Tuesday.

…

The argument that Democrats should allow chronic lawbreaking because doing otherwise is politically risky ought to be too corrupt an argument for anyone even to entertain. But for those who believe in that calculus, it’s also just factually false.

Consequences for ignoring congressional subpoenas: None

Your Harry Reid-led Senate in action-

(H)e wants to spout this Bush claim that the Senate must comply with the President’s orders immediately because he wants to pressure and shame Dodd, Feingold and any others who might support them out of filibustering telecom immunity and new warrantless eavesdropping powers. Dodd is ruining your weekend, preventing your fun retreat, not letting you go to Davos — all because he wants to grandstand with “talking this to death.” The President said he wants this done and we must give him what he wants and now, and I am acting with my good friend Mitch McConnell — who is explicitly hoping to bully the House into passing the same bill in one day that the Senate passes, just like happened back in August — to make sure this all happens with as little disruption and debate as possible.

If and when telecom immunity is passed (thereby forever extinguishing any hope of investigating and obtaining accountability for the President’s illegal spying programs), and the Bush administration (and subsequent presidents) are vested permanently with vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers to spy on Americans, it will be because Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership conspired to ensure that it happened. They aren’t just standing by meekly, failing to oppose it. They are actively enabling it with as aggressive a posture as the Republicans could possibly have employed had they still been in control of the Congress.

UPDATE: For an excellent summary of just how radical and invasive these new warrantless eavesdropping powers are that Senate Democrats are about to enact, see this comment here, complete with citations.

Harry Reid.

So have you ever had it happen that you had to call up technical support?

Yes, well… I’ve been on the other end of that line and that’s one reason why I’m very considerate when I have to call.

So tonight I’ve been struggling with my cable company (hopefully for the last time) and my DSL provider and the manufacturer of my Wireless Router.

Here in Stars Hollow the BIG game was the one between the Pats and the Chargers and right after kickoff the cable went out.  Then it was on again.  Then it went out.  Then it was on again, but the picture was fuzzy, but when I unplugged my VCR and DVD it was less fuzzy but the cable modem still didn’t work.

Did I mention the BIG game?

So calling the cable company was of course useless because the lines were jammed, but the wrinkle is that I have a wireless sharing arrangement with my neighbors (who pay me off in blueberry muffins) and some of them called MY technical support hotline wondering what was up.

“Look at the Patriots!” I said and when they replied it was snowing in Foxboro I said- “There you go!”

I do have DSL also so I popped that right in the loop, but got the same result I always have before, which is that while it would plug right into any particular computer it would just not talk to my Wireless Router at all.  So I was fine but everyone else suffered and while that may seem a metaphor for our age to some I was unsatisfied with the result.

I had other boats that needed floating and the rising tide was not doing it.

You see it all has to do with your DHCP setting and I have pages of variations that don’t work and was reduced to the last refuge of the desperate.

Of course I experienced the same frustrations that everyone always does, the endless voice mail “Press 3 if you having problems with this menu” and the inevitable “We’re sorry but all our technicians are busy at this time.  The estimated hold time is…  Please leave your name and number and we will call you back.”  I’ve never actually had that work.

The DSL people were hopeless.  “You have WHAT kind of Router?  Never heard of it.”  Trendnet BTW, sold in CompUSAs across the country by the gagillion (I’ll miss CompUSA, the Manchester one is within driving distance and now I’ll have to order early and wait overnight).

So I took a nap and at 3 am I got right through to the Trendnet dude and 6 settings and reboots later here I am, just as obnoxious as ever.

I had mostly passed on a topic after finding my next masterpiece of character assassination (pre-Whore, you can comment now, but it future promotes at 10 am and that’s early enough), but I have my readership that streams The Stars Hollow Gazette and was diligently poking at my insomnia when I ran a check on my fictional self that turned it up as the seventh hit in a Google search.

I’m not sure what that means.

I am now more famous as a member of DocuDharma than I am for Naked dKos w/Poll?

It’s all very odd.

Miss me?  Not much.  If I am only now getting past this week in drama and angst without going ballistic what is that?  Why should you care since I only exist to amuse you.

I am fictional.  A figment of imagination infused with your interpretation, no more substantial than a dream.  Reality is an apple that falls from a tree every damn time.

Speaking of, I was amused by this bit on Atrios.  Follow the links.

I don’t work blue or not blue.

I do work professional so I apologize for missed marks, but people read too much into insubstantial photons and it is never personal except when it is.

I try to amuse you and make you think like I do which is an impossible task, you are not me- that is too much to ask.  The only attitude I control is my own.

Left or right, up or down I am essentially a clown and you may think me sad but in fact I am glad.  I’m happy to be my fictional self and ok with the choices I’ve made.

The results?

I could have been a rock star astro naught, but instead I am what you’ve got.

Who are you?