get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

Jimi has left the building. Writer and now former Cleveland blogger Jimi Izrael has gone south to Lexington, Kentucky and this morning has an Op-Ed in the Herald-Leader. In Sincere Senate Would Put End To High-Tech Lynchings Izrael jumps all over last week’s Senate apology for failing to pass anti-lynching.

Forget for a moment that the problem was not a lack of laws; there were already Federal laws on the books covering murder and accessory to murder. Izrael’s beef is that the apology was:

…reckless pandering to the elusive, unsophisticated black electorate easily moved by civil-rights era nostalgia. It’s a play for absolution from the civil rights illuminati who broker in white guilt and perpetual black victimhood.

He continues:

The apology would have more resonance if it was accompanied by a grant to develop public school curricula that — from the extermination of Native Americans to the genocide raging in the Sudan — would teach about the ramifications of racial discrimination and intolerance.

Just handing out apologies for societal wrongs is a lot like giving out pieces of candy on a playground: Once you give one, then everybody is gonna want one.

Forgiveness for any wrong action is contingent upon three actions: first, the recognition that a wrong was committed; second, action to correct the wrong; and third, a commitment to not repeat the wrong.

Izrael’s right, an apology is one the first step.

My Soundtrack: The Wizard by Medwyn Goodall.

[Update: I’m taken by the fact that while Wal Mart played no part in Kelo v. New London, it seems that nearly every new story that I’ve read this morning mentions the Bentonville Behemoth as a beneficiary of the decision. Scary, huh?]

The Supreme Court decision yesterday in Kelo vs. New London is a strange creature. In a 5-4 decision the court ruled that government may take private property for commercial development deemed in the public interest.

The full text of Kelo, et al. v. City of New London et al. is posted on the Supreme Court’s website.

The vote did not go how you might think it did. Voting in the majority were:

Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy and Souter.

Voting in dissent were:

Justices O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas

Huh? you very well may be asking. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? A win for developers should be a win for the Conservative wing of the court, right? Well, no. Recall my observation that Conservatives are driven by the Cult of the Individual and Liberals are driven by the Cult of the Community.

The decision focused on whether or not the City of New London, Connecticut could take — actually pay a fair market value determined by the city — for Susette Kelo’s home to make way for:

a development plan that, in the words of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, was “projected to create in excess of 1,000 jobs, to increase tax and other revenues, and to revitalize an economically distressed city, including its downtown and waterfront areas.”

The majority said that the development was a greater public good than Kelo’s home.

In her dissent Justice O’Connor wrote:

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result. “[T]hat alone is a just government,” wrote James Madison, “which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”

Don’t want your home to become the corner of a Wal Mart Super Center? Tough, if your local government decides that the super center is a greater public good than your home.

I’m with Justice O’Connor on this one. But then she’s long been one of my favorite Supremes.

My Soundtrack: Western Bound by Terry Oldfield.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… The Hanged Man’s Song by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… Desire by Stephen Dunn; On My Screen… Queer As Folk: No. 409 (*) directed by Kevin Inch, written by Shawn Postoff.

My Soundtrack: Divine Connections by Medwyn Goodall.

I’ve been tagged twice by the book meme; first by Tish at Hope, Love, Sex and Dreams and now by Sandy at M.A.W.B. Rather than risk the wrath of two strong, competent and beautiful women, I bow and deliver my responses to the Book Meme. Tish and Sandy are working from slightly different memes so some questions are doubled.

[Update: 27 June — I’ve belatedly discovered that another friend has also tagged me with the Book Meme. Whymryhmer, the opiniated, free-thinking poet-philosopher from Dallas , sent me the same meme as Sandy. I think I’m memed out.]

Question No. 1 — You are stuck in Fahrenheit 451, which book would I be? I’d be Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In the Dark.

Question No. 1 — Total Number of books owned, ever. Tough to estimate, but I currently own about 2,400 books (see photo above of part of my book case). Add to that I estimate another 600 that I’ve bought and either resold or given away over the years for a round 3,000. I figure I must have read at least three books for everyone I’ve purchased so make the virtual library 12,000 volumes and counting.

(The top four shelves in the book case are all fiction, and yes, I’ve read each one at least once. The bottom four shelves are non-fiction and I estimate I’ve read about 70 percent of those and used the other 30 percent as reference.)

Question No. 2 — Have I ever had a crush on a fictional character. Many, but I’d have to say the one I fell the hardest for was Anne Rice’s Mona Mayfair. I’ve always thought this was because Mona is Anne, and if I’d have had a chance to beat out Stan, I would have tried my damnedest to do so.

Question No. 2 — The last book I bought was The Deluxe Edition of the 2005 Writer’s Market. (For the record, the last work of fiction I bought was Lawrence Block’s short-story collection: Enough Rope; and the last book of poetry I bought was Marge Piercy’s Colors Passing Through Us.

Question No. 3 — Five books that mean a lot to me. That’s a tough one. I have a list of The 18 Books That Have Shaped My World. Forced to pick five of those I would select:

Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien,
Dune by Frank Herbert,
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Shogun by James Clavell, and
Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse.

Now I’m going to risk the wrath of the meme gods and not tag anyone else with this. I figure that there are enough copies floating around out there in the blogosphere. And if I get dishtowels, well so be it.

My Soundtrack: Messenger Fro m Sirius by Medwyn Goodall.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

I know a little bit about coffee. I understand the meaning of shade-tree grown. I get the whole espresso roast/grind/tamp thing. But what I know is only a lowly comma on page 648 in comparrison to the wealth of knowledge in William H. Ukers’ 1922 masterpiece: All About Coffee.

I learned about the book yesterday when I pulled a much smaller text from Sarah Wilson-Jones’ office bookcase and asked her if it was any good. She told me that she hadn’t read it, but that if I really wanted to know about coffee I had to read the brown book on the bottom shelf.

At nearly five pounds and 818 pages, All About Coffee, isn’t light reading. The book is also out of print. But, of course, the Cleveland Public Library system has a copy that I’ve ordered. The really cool thing is that someone with way to much free time has scanned in the book and converted it to a PDF file.

Do you know the coffee legend of the Absynnian goat herd Kaldi? I didn’t. But it’s in Ukers book on page 30.

Coffee, dancing goats; does it get any better than that?

My Soundtrack: The Elven Forest by Medwyn Goodall.

Sometimes a little laughter is good for the soul. I used to have to make do with only a weekly dose of Julie Larson’s Dinette Set in the Cleveland Free Times. But then I discoverd a daily source. It makes me smile to know that Burl and Joy Penny too have to deal with Wal Mart.

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, 1968 by various.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… The Hanged Man’s Song by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… From June to December by Wendy Cope; On My Screen… Queer As Folk: No. 409 (*) directed by Kevin Inch, written by Shawn Postoff.

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, 1970 by various.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

On Monday morning I start learning how to rebuild and repair espresso machines. I’ll be serving as apprentice to Phoenix Coffee’s Mr. Espresso Fixit Dennis Skitzki and working at the St. Clair office where the beans are roasted and packaged.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when I got an email from Sarah Wilson-Jones, the owner of Phoenix Coffee. In the email, Sarah wrote:

Dear Friends of Phoenix Coffee,

Do you know anyone with a passion for coffee who is also passionate about fixing things? Someone who has a natural mechanical aptitude who also loves helping people? Someone with natural curiosity, a penchant for experimentation and tinkering who doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty and moving heavy espresso machines?

Someone who enjoys getting to the root of a challenging and possibly mysterious technical issue rather than just taking care of the surface symptoms?

I have found that you, my friends and acquaintances, are often my best HR resource. Right now I have two talented senior coffee/espresso technicians who are often overwhelmed with work and who are at retirement age.

We need to find someone we can train from the ground up who will be able to run our whole service department someday. While we are not in a position right now to hire a new full time technician, we would be able to start right away with the right person on a part time basis, and as their skill level increases (and I can sell some service contracts), work into full time.

I sent off a return message:

Shalom Sarah,

I”d be very interested in talking to you about this position.

I come from a long line of JOATs. I learned from my father and grandfather how to disassemble and repair just about anything you”d find in a home. I also became a decent rough carpenter, mason, plumber and electrician.

I carry my own tool box wherever I go – I loaned your mother my pipe wrench one morning – and I know how to use everything in it.

I also spent a year in Navy technical schools learning electricity hydraulics, pneumatics and electronics. On board the USS Bainbridge I was responsible for the maintenance, operation and repair of several million dollars worth of equipment involved in the storage, movement and deployment of rather large-surface-to air missiles.

You know about my passion for coffee. The idea of being a coffee/espresso technician is a fascinating one. There”s magic in espresso. Being a bit of a wizard would be really cool.

To which Sarah replied:

Cool! Let’s get together to talk about it. Would you come down to the roastery? That way you could see the operation and possibly meet Dennis and Ron, my two senior techs. Dennis is the Espresso Wizard and Ron is Coffee Brewer Fixit Guy.

We got together this morning — I was a little early and got a chance to talk with Dennis before Sarah arrived — and after two hours I walked out with some coffee reading materials, the usual W2 forms and a handshake to come back on Monday and give it a whirl.

Dennis reminds me of my grandfather, the kind of guy who seems to feel what he’s working on; someone who might appear to lay hands on when determining what is out of sorts.

The hours are flexible enough that I won’t have to cut into my writing time, and, of course, I’ll be blogging the hell out of the experience.

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, Hits Of The ’70s — 1970-74 by various.

Wal Mart’s continued reliance on a $2.5 billion annual hand-out from tax payers for its employee health care costs is getting Congressional attention. According to Wake Up Wal Mart:

Today, Senator Kennedy, Senator Corzine and Congressman Anthony Weiner will hold a press conference with Joe Hansen, President of the United Food & Commercial Workers announcing the introduction of the Health Care Accountability Act (HCAA). The Act will help determine the extent to which taxpayers are subsidizing the health care costs of our nation’s largest employers. Most importantly, this legislation marks the beginning of our campaign to make Wal-Mart pay its fair share for health care.

Why should my tax dollars subsidize a retailer where I don’t shop? And for the people who do shop there: do you know how much the hidden Wal Mart tax is costing you?

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, 1969 by various.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… The Hanged Man’s Song by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… The Bracelet: To Julia by Robert Herrick; On My Screen… Queer As Folk: No. 409 (*) directed by Kevin Inch, written by Shawn Postoff.

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, 1967 by various.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

The Los Angeles Times thought it knew best and it got burned when it it went live with a wiki experiment in editorial pages. The good news is that the paper is going to regroup and try it again. Jeff Jarvis has a great take on why the Times’ wiki experiment went south so quickly. In Wiki cooties and the death of editorials Jarvis writes:

What this really points toward is the death of the editorial page. Why the hell do we need editorials anymore? In their day, they were the voice — the bully pulpit, as Rupert Murdoch says — of one person: the publisher, the guy who had the ultimate conch, the printing press. We, the people, never said we gave a damn what he thought, but we had no choice but to listen. And so over the years, he convinced himself that we cared. What if we don’t?

The truth is that an editorial is just another blog post written by one person within one viewpoint. Here’s a case where you can’t argue that it makes a difference having a journalism degree and a newsroom. Editorialists and columnists get to read the same stuff we do and they put on their pants and opinions just the way we do. So why should they have rights to the mountaintop? Who died and made them Moses? Let the people speak.

Do you really care what Brent Larkin or Alex (The Snake) Machaskee think?

Me neither.

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, 1966 by various.

For years I have put this question to conservative friends and I’ve never received a satisfactory answer: what is it about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that so deeply disturbs reasonable, thinking people? I have been engaged in serious discussions with people whose hatred for Sen. Clinton is so palpable that they shake and stutter at the mention of her name.

For the record, I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, but I didn’t vote for him in 1996. If it were not for the millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours flitted away on his impeachment, President Clinton would have gone down in history somewhere along with Millard Fillmore

But from day-one, Sen. Clinton has been a lightening rod of monumental proportions, and I didn’t get it.

I know all the standard answers: she’s a tax-and-spend-liberal, she’s a radical-lesbian-feminist, etc., but somehow those labels didn’t justify the level of vehemence against her.

But maybe now I know what does. Edward Klein’s book, The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President, hits the bookstores today and I’ve got a copy ordered (I’m No. 12 on the list) from the library.

The book has gotten plenty of prepublication attention including the assertion last week by Matt Drudge that Chelsea Clinton was the result of a drunken Bill Clinton raping his wife. Klein’s response in an interview with Rebeca Traister on Salon this morning, is:

…the Bill-raped-Hillary-to-get-Chelsea scandal fluffed by Matt Drudge last week, was taken out of context; the drunken Clinton was just making a joke about how his wife was frigid.

I think the most important comment from Klein came when he says of Sen. Clinton:

I think she’s the closest thing we have today to what I would call a Nixonian character. Like Nixon, she is paranoid; she has an enemy list. Like Nixon, she has used FBI files against enemies. Like Nixon, Hillary believes the ends justify the means, and like Nixon, she has a penchant for doing illegal things.

I believe that the order to get those FBI files came directly from Hillary to Craig Livingstone. I believe that the miraculous discovery of the Rose law firm billing files two days after the statute of limitations ran out was also an illegal act. I think she lied to the country when she said that this Monica Lewinsky matter came as an utter and complete surprise to her.

If Sen. Clinton was a Republican she would be the Conservative goddess far outshining Phyllis Schlafly or Ann Coulter. But she’s not. She’s a Democrat. And that pisses people off. She should be one of theirs damn it.

A friend of mine met Sen. Clinton a few weeks ago and I asked her what she thought. Her reply was that:

Hillary has a presence. I suppose I would say in a blink she commands your attention. I’ve always felt that the sound of a person’s voice is important. She has the voice.

Holy shades of Bene Gesserit training.

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, 1965 by various.

I have been fumbling now through more than 30 posts concerning Wal Mart to articulate what I think is the core of the Liberal world view and why Wal Mart is anathema to that view. Then yesterday I read a 4 June speech by Sen. Barak Obama. The junior senator from Illionois, 99th in Senate seniority, framed perfectly what I’ve been trying to say.

At the end of the Civil War, when farmers and their families began moving into the cities to work in the big factories that were sprouting up all across America, we had to decide: Do we do nothing and allow the captains of industry and robber barons to run roughshod over the economy and workers by competing to see who can pay the lowest wage at the worst working conditions?

Or do we try to make the system work by setting up basic rules for the market, and instituting the first public schools, and busting up monopolies, and letting workers organize into unions?

We chose to act, and we rose together.

My Soundtrack: AM Gold, The ’60s Generation by various.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… The Hanged Man’s Song by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… A Thunderstorm in Town by Thomas Hardy; On My Screen… Queer As Folk: No. 409 (*) directed by Kevin Inch, written by Shawn Postoff.
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My Soundtrack: Artificial Intelligence by various, excerpts from the movie soundtrack.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

What does a 2nd term president who increased his vote total by more than 12 million and became the first president in a dozen years to garner more than 50 percent of the vote do to put his popularity numbers in the toilet? According to Ryan Lizza’s Term Limits piece today in the online edition of The New Republic, you follow the example of President George Bush. Writes Lizza:

Bush’s job approval ratings have dropped into the mid-40s, a sudden loss of confidence that no second-term president has experienced since Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton’s approval rating never dropped below 53 percent during his troubled second term — impeachment notwithstanding — and, for most of those years, Clinton enjoyed support in the 60s.

Ronald Reagan remained in the 60s through the first two years of his second term and saw Bush-like ratings only after Iran-Contra broke. That Bush’s political health is in sharp decline is indisputable. But the causes of this deterioration have been misdiagnosed.

The real diagnosis, according to Lizza?

… the most important explanation for Bush’s problems is what might be called his bait and switch. Bush campaigned in 2004 on one set of ideas, but he is pursuing a radically different agenda. His program has been inverted.

The issues he talked about the most last year, such as terrorism, are off the radar, while those he rarely highlighted are front and center.

Do you feel scammed? I don’t.

My Soundtrack: Perspectives by Matthew Abelson.