The Republic of T.

This is not your country. Nor is it mine. That we were born here, along with our forebears hardly matters. This has been the message of the Tea Party since its incorporation — and of conservatism itself for more than a generation — to anyone who doesn’t fit their demographic, in terms of race, religion, politics, etc.

It is most often expressed by the Tea Party’s declared desire to “Take our country back.” This is not your country. Nor is it mine. It’s theirs, and they’re “taking it back.” This raises a few very important questions: “Who are they taking it from?”, “Who are they taking it for?”, and “How do they plan to take it?”

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There are, I think, certain events that make it clear that the period you refer to as your “youth” has irretrievably faded into the past. One is when the musical acts you listened to almost obsessively have greatest hits collections, anthologies and (yes) even boxed sets in their catalogs. Another is when you favorite acts become fodder for summertime reality/nostalgia television shows. (Also, clubs dedicate whole nights to the music that comprised the soundtrack of your formative years, now reduced to a “theme.”)

I think another such moment is when the technology you used to listen to all that music goes the way of the Betamax — as Sony has announced will happen to its Walkman.

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If you’ve ever emailed and have never gotten a response, I hereby apologize. There was a time when I was on top of my email inbox every day. But something happened along the way to becoming a working parent of two young children. Now, I’m lucky if I checked my email every few days. There are, on any given day, more things that I want and/or need to do that I have time to do. So I make choices. If, for example, I want to write, email is likely to fall by the wayside.

It’s not unusual for me to have several hundred, or even more than 1,000 emails sitting in my inbox. So, never mind getting to the bottom of my inbox. That’s something that happens maybe every few weeks. The best I can do is to scan my inbox for priority emails and “star” them so that I could keep track of them. It’s a great system, and it had me wishing for a way to have those emails automatically placed in a high priority email inbox that I knew to check first. I even tried to figure out how to use Gmail’s filters to do something close to that.

Google must have been reading my mind, when they developed Gmail’s priority inbox.

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• I Don’t Blame Gay Voters

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Still looking for a reason to vote? Here’s a three word answer: health care reform. I’m not sure why Democrats aren’t running on it, but it’s a big step towards "change we can believe in" — the kind that some 66,882,230 (53% of the popular vote compared to Bush’s 47.9% in 2000 and 50.7% in 2004) voted for in 2008. Parts of it are already in effect and making a difference in live of millions of Americans, and some of its biggest changes — expanding coverage to millions of Americans, lowering costs to seniors, and prohibiting some of the insurance industry’s worst practices — are yet to come.

That’s why the GOP is promising to do all it can to repeal health care reform, take away the benefits Americans already enjoy, and block future benefits. That’s also why health care reform has to be defended. It represents not only change we can believe in, but change we still believe in.

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• I Don’t Blame Gay Voters
• What About the Parties?
• Will Tea Partiers get out the vote?
• Op-Ed Columnist: Falling Into the Chasm
• SHOCKER: Black Republican Candidates Bitchin’ Bout Lack of GOP Support
• Will Tom DeLay Go From Dancing With the Stars to Aging Behind Bars?
• When corporations ruled the earth
• The Tea Party Should Be Crazy for the Tea Party to Work.
• Keeping Fear Alive: The Deficit Hawks Push Their Agenda
• Ten Things You Can Ask Candidates Running for Office
• After the Midterms: Why Democrats Move to the Center, and Republicans Don’t
• How Obama Lost the Narrative
• Gay Voters Angry At Democrats Could Sway Election
• Voters are in the dark on campaign spending
• Tea Party Robber Barons

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A last month, I was toying with the idea of taking part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

To build without tearing down. I like that idea. That is, I still like that idea.

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I think Ezra got it about right, re: NPR’s decision to fire Juan Williams, following his “Muslim=Terrorist” remarks on Fox News. It may have been that NPR was looking for a reason to fire Williams, and he gave it to them. They, however, acted too drastically and too quickly. As Ezra said, if NPR wanted to fire Williams the best option would be to simply wait out his contract and quietly declined to renew. Maybe people would have questioned whether it was his remarks to O’Reilly that put him over the top, but NPR could have simply declined to comment. (Heck, they wouldn’t even have to tell Williams himself.)

And, no, I don’t buy Williams claim that NPR’s decision is a “chilling assault on free speech.” I say the same thing to Williams I said to Dr. Laura.

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• Bob Cesca: The Republican Swindle About 'Obamacare and Stimulus'
• Why Ginni Thomas made that weird phone call to Anita Hill.
• Ginny Thomas reminds women we should be thanking Anita Hill
• It’s about brown people, not securing the border
• What populism isn't
• Michael Moore | Michigan Blues
• The Thomas Clown Affair
• The New Dark Financial Ages
• The Pulpit of Bullies
• The courage of “Conviction”
• The Southern Strategy lives
• Wendell Potter: Thank You, UnitedHealth Group. Your Jaw-Dropping Profit Announcement May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered.
• A Robin Hood Tax to Pay for the Wars
• Americans hate feeding poor children at school

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As my carpal tunnel issues — which go way, way, way back — continue, so does my search for the perfect mouse.

I think I may have found, if not the perfect mouse, then a close contender.

Sometimes last week I went, when I found myself reaching for another wrist brace, I went on another virtual search for the “perfect mouse.” How can there be a “perfect mouse”? Aren’t they all pretty much the same? Well, yes. Most of them haven’t changed significantly since the first computer mouse was invented. In the long history of the mouse, the essential design hasn’t changed much at all. Look at the mouse that came with your computer, and you’ve pretty much got it.

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• Even More On The Origins of the Deficit
• Robert Reich | The Perfect Storm
• Preeti Vissa: We Don't Have to Throw Homeowners Overboard
• Don’t Believe The Bank Lobby: Foreclosure Fraud Is Bad For Homeowners And The Economy

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• Will the Tea Party Crack Up?
• Robert Kuttner: Recovery, Please
• Survival of the richest
• Wall Street Defrauds the Middle Class Again: Why We Need Real Regulation
• Op-Ed Columnist: The Rage Won’t End on Election Day
• Ignorance as Authenticity
• Mike Lux: Worse Than Watergate?
• This Inspiring Chilean Miner Rescue Was Brought To You In Part By Black People
• Why It’s So Hard to Slash the Bloated Pentagon Budgets
• Tea Partiers and Their Ethnocentric Views.
• It’s Time For Jail Terms
• E.J. Dionne, Jr. | “Crazy Carl” and the Limits of Anger
• On Loving Queer Kids
• No True Fiscal Conservatives In The U.S.

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It occurred to me last night that parenting turns the mundane into milestones, causing strange emotional reactions. I had one of those while we were folding the laundry during “Desperate Housewives” (as we do every other Sunday night.) I had folded a tiny pair of Dylan’s underwear, and was putting them on his underwear pile when the hubby noted, “Awwww. Dylan has an underwear pile now.”

We’ve been in the throes of “potty training”/”potty learning” for the past week now, and Dylan has transitioned from diapers to underwear most of the time. Needless to say, it’s been a week of outfit changes, and a bit more laundry on Dylan’s part, but he’s getting it. For the last few days, he’s kept his diaper dry when he had one one, and kept himself dry when he had his underwear. Last night, the big deal was that he did No. 2 in the potty, something he’d only done at school to date, which earned him a Thomas the Train sticker.

I found myself getting misty-eyed that Dylan has an underwear pile. It’s just another sign that he’s growing up, and isn’t really a baby any more, even though I still think of him as one sometimes. (And in many ways he’ll always be our baby, to me.)

Of course we realized that it means the day we change our last diaper is on the horizon, and the diaper genie will be a thing of the past. But I still had a slight lump in my throat over the new underwear pile in our lives. It signifies the beginning of something, yes. But it signifies the end of something too. Something precious I’m sure I’ll miss just a little bit.

But I won’t miss diapers. Period.

You talk about the president
Won’t stop the air pollution
Just put ya hand on ya mouth
That’ll help the solution

“Respect Yourself” – The Staples Singers

I’ve been fighting a chest cold for the few days, after finally going to the doctor about the nagging cough, that was the result of chest congestion, which was the result of sinus congestion that crept downard despite my best efforts at treating it with over-the-counter mediciations and prescribed allergy medicine.

Two prescriptions, one inhaler, and two day later I’m back in the land of the living. I decided to take my lunch break as an opportunity to get a much needed haircut, and have a working lunch at my desk afterwards. I was just about to get up from the chair when the strangest thing happened.

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You talk about the president
Won’t stop the air pollution
Just put ya hand on ya mouth
That’ll help the solution

I’ve been fighting a chest cold for the few days, after finally going to the doctor about the nagging cough, that was the result of chest congestion, which was the result of sinus congestion that crept downard despite my best efforts at treating it with over-the-counter mediciations and prescribed allergy medicine.

Two prescriptions, one inhaler, and two day later I’m back in the land of the living. I decided to take my lunch break as an opportunity to get a much needed haircut, and have a working lunch at my desk afterwards. I was just about to get up from the chair when the strangest thing happened.

(more…)

You talk about the president
Won’t stop the air pollution
Just put ya hand on ya mouth
That’ll help the solution

I’ve been fighting a chest cold for the few days, after finally going to the doctor about the nagging cough, that was the result of chest congestion, which was the result of sinus congestion that crept downard despite my best efforts at treating it with over-the-counter mediciations and prescribed allergy medicine.

Two prescriptions, one inhaler, and two day later I’m back in the land of the living. I decided to take my lunch break as an opportunity to get a much needed haircut, and have a working lunch at my desk afterwards. I was just about to get up from the chair when the strangest thing happened.

(more…)

You talk about the president
Won’t stop the air pollution
Just put ya hand on ya mouth
That’ll help the solution

I’ve been fighting a chest cold for the few days, after finally going to the doctor about the nagging cough, that was the result of chest congestion, which was the result of sinus congestion that crept downard despite my best efforts at treating it with over-the-counter mediciations and prescribed allergy medicine.

Two prescriptions, one inhaler, and two day later I’m back in the land of the living. I decided to take my lunch break as an opportunity to get a much needed haircut, and have a working lunch at my desk afterwards. I was just about to get up from the chair when the strangest thing happened.

(more…)

Here’s another reason to vote in the mid-term elections this November: Conservatives think you need a pay cut. As I’ve said once or twice before, conservatives’ bottom line message is simple: America has economic problems because too many people have had it good for too long; and when they’re worse off again, the nation and its economy will be better off. The people they think had it too good for too long are you and me, and almost anyone who punches a clock to pull a paycheck.

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How on earth anyone with the very public history of Carl Paladino becomes a serious candidate for governor of any state — let alone New York — is a mystery to me beyond all understanding. But, these are strange political times, when former right-wing fringe becomes the mainstream of the Republican party.

For the most part, I tend to ignore what Paladino has to say about anything, except for when he starts saying what he’d do if elected; like reviving the workhouses of the Victorian Era. But when he goes off and says something so blatantly ignorant about gay people, I can’t help but respond.

Paladino says:

The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino, told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year.

Addressing Orthodox Jewish leaders, Mr. Paladino described his opposition to same-sex marriage.

“I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” he said, reading from a prepared address, according to a video of the event.

Getting married? Raising a family?

Need I say it?

That’s. So. Gay.