Tuesday, May 13, 2008
life, the universe, and everything
Hey, you sass that hoopy Dave Awl? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is! (And we saw it last night at his birthday party!)
Happy 42nd, Dave!
05:11 AM CST [Link] [Confess]
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Nuns in the News
The nuns are fighting back.
The whole country saw the real world implications of Indiana's tough new voter ID law on Tuesday. A group of 80 and 90 year old nuns were stopped from voting.
A similar bill is under consideration in Missouri -- again. That state's Supreme Court already struck down a previous effort to restrict voters in 2006. But the Republicans never stop.
This time, the nuns in Missouri aren't sitting back. Today, several sisters joined other voters who will be disenfranchised and Missouri's kick ass Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, to oppose the legislation -- just as the Missouri House was passing its discriminatory bill.
09:04 PM CST [Link] [1 Confession]
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
overhead Beatles
The tops of the moptops -- a very cool photo of unknown origin posted at Glorious Noise.
Check out all those wires! Good thing they never walked around stage much.
05:26 AM CST [Link] [2 Confessions]
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Nuns in the News
Oh, hell no!
More proof that voter ID laws are bullshit:
About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.
Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.
The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.
As dday at Hullabaloo notes:
This is merely the one story that's been reported. You have to expect there are many more; in fact there are several more later in the story. Of course, the Scalia-Thomas-Alito-Roberts faction on the Court will tell you that's just the price we have to pay for dealing with the scourge of non-existent voter fraud.
Anyone else find it ironic that the uber-Catholic Opus Dei nutjobs on the Court prevented nuns from voting? I bet those old-school sisters can still wield a mean ruler! They should bloody those justices' knuckles!
Of course, Scalia would probably dig that.
06:19 PM CST [Link] [Confess]
Monday, May 5, 2008
guest of honor!
Shortly after the Chicago Reader article about the whole primary voter disenfranchisement brouhaha, I got a phone call from a woman named Eileen inviting me to a dinner party.
Eileen and her partner, Brian, started hosting these monthly parties several years ago, getting together groups of interesting and unusual people to eat and talk. The couple was eventually profiled in the Trib for their eclectic salons. The event died off for a while, but Eileen revived the parties a few months ago after reading about the Profiles in Courage awards. She wanted to start honoring regular people who do brave things.
And apparently that's why she called me and Angela, the other woman who reported election problems at our polling place that day and received a metric fuck-ton of grief and name-calling from bloggers and the media in return. Eileen -- whom neither of us had ever met -- thought we did the right thing in spite of the odds and deserved good food and conversation for our troubles.
So that was cool.
And last night Angela and I were guests of honor at the Sunday Night Dinner Club. We got to bring our fellas and meet a bunch of interesting people (some of whom were new to the fold and some who had been attending for ages) and eat delicious veggie chili and pet a nice dog named Murray. Oh, and we had to tell the tale of the "magic pens" several times each, but people were nice about it and no one called us stupid.
That was also cool.
I've been needing cool things in my life lately. Last week was a bad week (if you've been following our little family saga), and being appreciated by a couple dozen strangers was oddly invigorating. Hell, just getting out of the house and talking to people was a fascinating change of pace! I've been feeling really isolated and alone lately, partly because I keep getting sick with flu and headcolds and whatall, which means I have to stay home while Jim takes care of his mom (chemo = no immunity to anything), and I end up moping around the house by myself feeling crappy and getting nothing productive done. So, yeah, just putting on nice clothes was a kick. I also baked some cookies.
Um...I'm not sure where I'm going with this little pity party. So, let's just recap: Dinner was nice. I feel less lonely. Ta-da.
06:48 PM CST [Link] [1 Confession]
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Bill Moyers sums it up
Moyers on Wright:
Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the warmongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins.
But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right.
After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.
Jon Stewart recently played tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the Oval Office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America.
This is crazy and wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.
Which means it is all about race, isn't it?
That Hagee quote linked above isn't from 2005 -- it's from a radio interview two weeks ago, right during the middle of the Wright frenzy. How many times have you heard that interview played on CNN or seen MSNBC devote a full hour of expensive punditry to its meaning to the McCain campaign?
06:33 AM CST [Link] [Confess]
Saturday, May 3, 2008
coooooool
Slo-mo dogs and lasers!
09:31 PM CST [Link] [Confess]
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