Arizona Blues, Part 3

One last bit of Pharyngula cross-posting in response to the Arizona shooting (actually, these have been responses to the responses to the shooting):

This just in: Rand Paul is still a jerk!

Actually, I recall from his appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show during the campaign that he's a pleasant, polite fellow... but his ideology is jerkish, and his comments on this shooting are no exception. First a perfunctory expression of concern for the victims, then an immediate pivot to right-wing anti-regulatory talking points:

Paul was quick to condemn the act of violence and to offer his prayers and thoughts for the shooting victims during a "Fox News Sunday" interview. That said, he argued, the shooting was an outlier that does not necessarily reflect systemic regulatory problems. [emphasis added]

...followed by a bit of remote diagnosis (and as a physician, shouldn't Paul know better?)...

"It's probably about a very sick individual and what should have been done for that person," he said.

[and later]

Paul, an ophthalmologist, went on to offer a psychological analysis of the suspect. "I looked at some of the writings of this young man," he said. "And from a medical point of view, there is a lot to suggest paranoid schizophrenia, that this man was a really sick individual." [again, my emphasis]

SRSLY? Frist much??

And, of course, what would a right-wing response to a shooting be without that hoariest of anti-gun-control cliches?

"But the weapons don't kill people. It's the individual that killed these people."

Say, edit that just a bit, and it'd make a great bumper sticker, wouldn't it? <sigh>

Arizona Blues, Part 2

Another post cribbed from my comments at Pharyngula:

Hmmm... I want to comment on some of the conversations I've seen around the web about violent imagery:

I have problems with the many "Democrats do it too" and "everybody does it" rejoinders I've heard, on a couple counts —

First, many of these arguments are based on the preponderance of military metaphors and similes in ads, speeches, and political commentary, but I think there's a material difference between standard military imagery and the very particular, personal, and specifically gun-oriented rhetoric we've been seeing from the right recently. We have a long tradition of using war and military operations metaphorically in English, not only to describe political campaigns¹, but in all walks of life. Frequently these metaphors get mashed up with sports metaphors (many of which are themselves military metaphors). Perhaps the pervasive use of military metaphors doesn't say anything too complimentary about our culture, but it's hard to argue that such commonplace, everyday usages amount to incitement: Nobody's going to shoot up a crowd because Chuck Todd says Democrats are focusing on battleground states, where they're raising armies of volunteers, using these troops (among whom I myself have occasionally been a footsoldier) in tactical assaults on key swing districts. Nor will Rachel Maddow saying that House Republicans "have chosen Health Care repeal as the hill they want to die on" likely drive the gunmen into the streets. These bits of common, well accepted figurative language are not the same as the much more indivdualized rhetoric we've observed recently, which names names, implicitly suggests specific sorts of assaults on specific people, and features not the broad conglomerative language of armies, but the particularized language of individual hunters, killers, and their very personal weapons. Even the word targeted has a very different resonance when it's used in a strategic analysis of a campaign than when it's paired with a gunsight image and the name of a targeted individual. Context matters!

And that's my second objection: Many of these "y'all do it, too" arguments neglect context. At the surface level first: I've seen clips of a Democratic campaign spot that briefly uses what many claim is a gunsight superimposed over the opponent's photograph... but the context (the ad copy, the other images in the ad, the theme of the ad) makes it abundantly clear that it's really intended to be a focusing reticle on a surveillance camera, a visual representation of the Justice Department investigation the ad references. Even though some may think it looks like a gunsight, a gunsight would be a total non sequitur in this context. Conversely, many try to exonerate Sarah Palin's website target map by claiming the symbols there aren't really gunsights but surveyors' map symbols... and it may, in fact, be true that that's what those specific markers were published as. But in the context of Palin's website, and the general themes of her discourse, it's clear they were intended to be seen as gunsights. They were understood as gunsight symbols at the time (including, chillingly, by Rep. Giffords herself), and AFAIK neither Palin nor any of her associates disavowed that interpretation (though they may have by now, IMHO disingenuously if so, in the wake of the shootings). Surveyors' marks in that context would've been as much a non sequitur as a gunsight would've been in the previous example.

But I'm not naive enough to assume that people on "my side" of the political aisle are all innocent, and I'm sure some Democrats have crossed the line into inappropriately violent campaign rhetoric. But here again, context matters: A Democrat whose ads seemed to be soliciting violence against an opponent would be an outlier (and, I hope, would be condemned, or at least corrected, by his/her fellow Democrats), because there has been no general tendency on the left² to promote gun culture or images of personal violence as part of its electoral strategy. There has been such a tendency on the right³: There has not been just one appeal to "Second Amendment solutions" or "the blood of patriots and tyrants," nor just one candidate featured in ads with a gun in his hands, nor just one campaign event involving shooting, nor just one person showing up at a rally with a gun strapped to his leg. Instead, gun rights, gun ownership, and the relevance of guns to political action have been broad themes of political discourse on the right.

And in that context, putting a gunsight on a map or exhorting your followers to "take out" your opponent is vastly more toxic and risky than the same communications would be without such a violence-oriented rhetorical backdrop.

More censorhip is not — must not be — the answer. Instead, the answer must be for all of us to be more conscious of the rhetorical context our own metaphors create, to be more openly critical (and consistently so) of our fellows who cross the line, and, as voters, to absolutely stop rewarding this sort of campaigning with our votes. I think that's what Keith Olbermann was getting at in his special commentary Saturday, and many others have echoed.

I said I wasn't naive about my fellow Democrats; I am naive enough to hope this horrific tragedy will serve as a wakeup call. I don't want political discourse that's more "civil," in the sense of backing down from an honest contest of ideas and ideologies, but I do want a political discourse that's less reliant (preferably not at all) on images of personal violence. It may be that only crazy people would act on those violent images, but even if that's so, it's incumbent upon the vast majority of us who aren't crazy to stop giving them ideas.


¹ As an aside, while I haven't looked up its etymology, I suspect the word campaign itself, in its political context, is a military metaphor.

² Yes, yes, I know what passes for the left in the U.S. isn't so leftish by international standards.

³ No, I don't mean to be tarring all Republicans with this assertion. I imagine moderate Republicans (if they're not extinct in the wild) and even mainstream conservative Republicans are chagrined by the naked appeal to violence adopted by many of their more radical colleagues.

Reverse Blogwhoring: Arizona Blues, Part 1

I've been spending a lot of time on Pharyngula since the shootings in Arizona Saturday, and I thought I might post versions of a couple of my longer comments there as blog posts here... which is a turnaround on the usual blogwhoring practice of commenting at some other blog for no reason other than to redirect traffic to your own. So here's the first comment, in response to another commenter who had objected to a plan from Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA) to criminalize "language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official," in part on the grounds that it was cowardly of a congressman to attempt to safeguard himself and his federal colleagues when others had been injured and killed. I said...

I agree that Brady's proposal may be wrongheaded — credible threats of violence against public officials are (AFAIK) already illegal, and Brady's proposed change would put protected political speech at risk of prior restraint on the basis of what is effectively subjective literary analysis — but to suggest his motivation for making it is cowardly personal self-protection is, you'll pardon me for saying so, foolish on your part.

The security of our elected representatives is an important issue not because they're too cowardly to face the risk, but because they're our elected representatives! They deserve extra protection under the law not because they're more valuable as individuals than "regular people," but because, in addition to their value as individuals, they represent the rest of us. When the gunman fired a bullet into the brain of Gabby Giffords, he was not only attacking a daughter, a wife, a sister-in-law, a respected colleague, and no doubt a friend to legions; he was also attacking every citizen in her district by proxy, and attacking the very concept of representative government¹. When you target a public figure for violence, you're doing violence not only to a person, but also to everything the office that person holds stands for... and thus to everyone that office represents.

The tragic price paid by others in that crowd should make us more determined, rather than less, to stand up for the personal inviolability of those individuals willing to take on the grave responsibility of public service.

My own congressman is also a friend; in fact, I was talking to him at a local event Saturday morning, perhaps at the time this was happening in Arizona. When I got home and saw this news, my blood ran cold. I don't need to think my congressman is a coward — in fact, he is the polar opposite of that — to be desperately concerned for his safety. If some deranged right-wing gun nut comes for him at a public event, there's a chance I'll be there, and at risk... but it's certain he'll be there. I need him to stay safe, and we all need an environment in which it's safe for our leaders to lead.


¹ Please note: I'm not making wild suppositions about his motivations here; I'm making observations about the impact of his actual acts.

My Letter to Senator Mark Warner

It's been a long time since I've posted here, and I really wasn't sure I'd ever return to this blog, but I had something I wanted to get off my chest, and it didn't fit in my newer foodie blog: Yesterday I noticed a Huffington Post story in which Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is quoted as equating the "super left" of the Democratic Party and the "MoveOn.org crowd" with the extremists of the Tea Party movement.

As it happens, Sen. Warner spent part of his young life in my home town of Vernon, CT, and graduated from the local high school. I've met him on a couple occasions at fundraisers for Vernon resident, Congressman Joe Courtney, and I cheered as loudly as anyone when Warner was elected to the Senate in 2008, replacing the retiring Republican John Warner (no relation). I knew he was more conservative than I am, and that Virginia is more conservative than Connecticut, but his attack on Democratic progressives saddened me, and I felt I had to respond. Here is the text of the letter I just posted to his Senate website:

Dear Senator Warner:

I am not a Virginia constituent, but I am a proud resident of your old home town of Vernon, Connecticut. I’ve met you on a couple occasions when you’ve been gracious enough to lend your presence to fundraisers for my congressman, Joe Courtney, and I had a brief friendly chat with your father at the polls this year on primary day. Vernon and Rockville High School are proud to call you our own.

So it was with more than a little dismay that I read your recent comments equating the “super left” of the Democratic Party and the “MoveOn crowd” with the Tea Party movement on the right. Obviously I don’t have the inside knowledge you do, but to a relatively well informed, engaged layperson like myself, this comparison smacks of the very same sort of false equivalency that has folks claiming Rachel Maddow is a mirror image of Glenn Beck, and that leads the media to treat paranoia about “death panels” and birth certificates (or, more recently, assertions that the president is spending $200 million per day to travel to India) as if they were legitimate news stories, on the same level as stories based on actual facts.

I recognize that both your state and you personally are relatively conservative, and there are surely factions of the Democratic Party that are well to your left. I don’t think MoveOn is really as far to the left, ideologically, as the Tea Party seems to be to the right, but even if we stipulate that it is, there’s a world of difference between rational, principled advocacy of an ideological position, on the one hand, and the sort of inchoate rage and fact-free fearmongering I have personally witnessed from the Tea Party.

Last summer I attended several of Congressman Courtney’s Town Hall meetings on the topic of health care reform, at which the crowds were dominated by self-identified Tea Party activists. I’m quite sure you would have been shocked to see the rage and personal insult directed at your friend Joe Courtney, who is as thoughtful and principled a man as I have yet met in public life. These remain the only political events I’ve ever attended at which I have been nervous about my physical safety; these crowds were much ruder – and much less rational or well informed – than anything I’ve ever witnessed on the left… including several passionate anti-war rallies hosted by MoveOn and similar groups during the Bush administration. And based on what we witnessed during the run-up to the recently completed elections, the Tea Party has gotten worse rather than better since those angry summer days.

Clearly you have philosophical differences with some Democrats to your left (including, no doubt, me), and more power to you for speaking out. But please refrain from making sweeping equations between our party’s left and the craziest elements of the American right; such comments can’t possibly add anything useful to our already severely challenged political discourse.

Thank you for your attention…

I actually agree with Sen. Warner that extremism in our political discourse can be toxic, but I think we far too frequently mistake strong ideological differences with extremism, and we too quickly judge the worth of ideas by their distance from the ideological center rather than by their rationality, humanity, and basis in fact.

No doubt there are thoughtful people in the Tea Party movement, but that doesn't mean it and MoveOn (for example) are comparable: The most "extreme" progressives and liberals I know are by no stretch of the imagination equivalent to the hateful, rude, and stubbornly ignorant people I have personally met and experienced among self-proclaimed Tea Partiers. I respect Sen. Warner's opinion, but there really aren't always two equal sides to every contest.

Call Your Representatives To Support Healthcare

I've been meaning to resuscitate this blog for a while, now, and as before, it's a political imperative that's gotten me off the dime. This coming week, the U.S. House of Representatives may finally take the crucial step in getting healthcare reform passed. While you may have already registered your support with your members of Congress, it's important that you do so again: The opponents of reform are more active and vocal than ever, and your representatives need to know not only what your opinion is, but that their constituents have their backs on this. It's personal for me, but it's also an important step forward in this nation's public policy.

At the risk of repeating myself a bit, here's the text of an e-mail I've just sent to my local political friends and associates:

It looks like the U.S. House of Representatives may take the crucial votes on passing healthcare reform sometime in the coming week. I've just called Joe Courtney's district office in Enfield (860-741-6011) to register my support for passage, and I'm writing to urge you all to do the same.

Many, if not most, of you know Joe and have spoken to him on this issue, but while Joe already knows where we stand (and we know where he does), he's mentioned to me in the past that numbers of phone calls, letters, and e-mails -- for and against -- matter, because his office gets requests for the tallies. So even though this is something that ought to "go without saying," it's important that we call and actually say it. And please pass this reminder along to your other friends within the 2nd CD, post it to your Facebook page or blog, or do whatever else you can to get the word out. It's important that our representatives hear from all of us.

You can call the Enfield office any time -- no need to wait for business hours -- and leave a voicemail. And while the action this coming week will be in the House, it wouldn't be a bad idea to also call our senators (Sen. Dodd's CT office phone number is 860-258-6940 and Sen. Lieberman's is 860-549-8463), and to remind the White House that it's crucial the President continue to lead on this issue.

Healthcare reform is a vital issue for all Americans; we need to be sure the voices of the naysayers don't drown ours out.

If you're reading this from somewhere other than the 2nd Congressional District of Connecticut, here's a tool to help you contact your own congressperson and senators. Please do it today!

My Letter to the President

Well, I've been meaning to reanimate this blog (again), and today's news that Barack Obama plans to announce a multiyear freeze on much of the discretionary federal budget has sufficiently pissed me off to finally prompt a new entry. Actually, it prompted me to write a letter to the White House, already delivered through the online system, with a signed paper copy going in Wednesday's mail. Rather than reinvent the wheel, let me just tell you what I told the president:

Dear Mr. President:

My name is Bill Dauphin, and I’m proud to be your constituent and your supporter. You called the nation to hope, and I responded with time and treasure, phonebanking and canvassing for you in the Hartford, Connecticut, area during both the primary and general election campaigns. When I stood on the Mall, just over a year ago, and watched you sworn into office, it was one of the proudest moments of my nearly 50 years of life.

In today’s news comes word that you plan to announce a long-term freeze on discretionary nondefense federal spending. As I write this, of course, you have not yet given your State of the Union Address or announced the details of your proposal; perhaps the final plan will not terrify and disappoint me as much as what I have heard today does. But for today, I am both disappointed and terrified: At a time when we desperately need a robust government, acting in meaningful and sustained ways to reform our healthcare system, create new jobs, develop new green energy technologies, address climate change, rebuild our infrastructure, reform public education, end our wars and bring our troops home, and rebuild the shattered trust of the world… at a time when we so urgently need to move forward on all of that, an a priori promise to freeze the budget seems instead like a retreat into the pernicious Reagan-era falsehood that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

I beg you, sir: don’t give in. I know the American people seem angry, but surely you realize much of that anger is born of manufactured fear, the result of deliberate and cynical manipulation on the part of the enemies of progress. You must not let your policies mirror the people’s fear: This is a moment instead for leadership. Where federal programs are truly ineffective or wasteful, by all means you must cut them. But you also know that much of what the government does, it does better, and more efficiently, than the private sector can, and much more of what government does is that which the free market would never provide at any price. To accomplish the things you dared us all to hope for will require investment, not parsimony. Raise taxes if you must – raise my taxes – but do not abandon our nation’s future, my daughter’s future, for the sake of a superficial veneer of “fiscal responsibility” and a brief moment of political calm.

You called your book The Audacity of Hope. Well, we’ve had the hope; it’s time for the audacity.

As I say in the letter, maybe it'll all look better after the big speech... but frankly, I ain't waitin' underwater. For all that some have been frustrated with him, Obama represents the best combination of intelligence, progressive ideals, and political pragmatism we've had since the 60s; if he can't outwit, outlast, or outplay the lies and fearmongering of the nattering antigoverenment mob, we are well and truly hosed.

Anybody know if they sell a Rosetta Stone program for New Zealandish?

Oh, No You Don't

I know lots of folks on the left are somewhere between disappointed in and royally pissed off at Chris Dodd, but we Democrats here in the 2nd CD of Connecticut worked too hard, too recently, to get rid of Rob Simmons to let this happen.

My first real active involvement in politics began in 2006, and one of the key elements in waking me up was a (then) high school kid who put up a blog called Bye Bye, Rob, devoted to helping Joe Courtney take Simmons' place in the House. Having successfully said bye bye, I'm not inclined to say howdy to Simmons in 2010.

This is just the beginning, of course, but unless someone can show me a Democrat who can beat Dodd, and beat Simmons, and deliver more for progressives than Dodd has over the years, I know who I'll be supporting for Senate in 2010.

First Drugs, Now Sex; Can Rock and Roll Be Far Behind?

After yesterday's revelation that federal agents would no longer raid medical marijuana distributors that are operating legally under state law, now comes word that talks have begun on ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy regarding gays in the military.

It's like I said: Quietly, without fanfare, we're seeing the basic attitudes of our government change for the better. Republicans may fear an activist government; I cheer one that increasingly treats me like an adult.

Is It Polite To Say "No Shit, Sherlock!" to the SecDef?

Because that's the only response I can think of to this headline:

Gates: Obama is ‘more analytical’ than Bush.

Nice to have a master of understatement leading our forces, eh? Actually, now that I think about it, it is nice to have a master of understatement leading our forces.

Not With a Bong, But a Whimper

The Michael Phelps/bong hit story broke during my recent blogging interregnum, so I haven't had a chance to favor you with my thoughts on the matter. I don't actually have a dog in this fight: I don't smoke pot, and with the exception of a tiny handful of furtive, youthful experiments, I never have. That said, I thought all the hoohaw over the picture of Phelps with a bong was ridiculous.

Understand: Pot is not a performance-enhancing drug (maybe for archers or biathletes, but not swimmers!), nor (by all accounts) is it banned by FINA outside of competition... so there was no issue of "cheating," a la the steroid and human growth hormone revelations in baseball or the blood doping and erythropoietin (EPO) scandals in cycling. Further, while I doubt anybody would claim with a straight face that the infamous picture doesn't show Phelps actually smoking pot, it certainly doesn't constitute clear evidence that he was: There's no way to prove, from the photo alone, that there was pot (or anything, for that matter) in the bong. So it's not surprising that authorities declined to prosecute him.

In fact, it's shocking that they would even think about it: Under South Carolina law, possession of an ounce or less is a misdemeanor. I would never argue that Phelps should get special favors because of his fame, but he shouldn't be harassed because of it, either... and when was the last time you heard of a "regular person" being prosecuted because a photo of him possibly committing a simple misdemeanor showed up on teh intertoobz months after the fact? Let's be serious, shall we?

Ahh, but the Richland Country sheriff apparently has a rep to maintain as a Miami Vice-style crusader against "drug crime." Not for nothin', but haven't we had about enough of law enforcement from the Carolinas trying to make a name for itself on the backs of prominent athletes? And isn't calling this a "drug crime" a bit hyperbolic anyway? What Phelps did was partake of a mild intoxicant while enjoying himself at a party. If it had been a beer or a glass of wine (or a Sardonic Buddha), nobody would've thought a thing of it. And if we had halfway rational laws on this point, the law would treat it just as if it were a beer or a glass of wine.

Well maybe, just maybe, we're getting a little more rational. In the wake of the Phelps story, Rob Kall of the Huffington Post suggested that it might hint at a turning point in drug policy; today, relatively quietly amid the continuing cacophony of economic woes and the gathering budget battle, comes word that the federal government will no longer raid distributors of medical marijuana in states where it is legal. It's not legalization, nor is it exactly an earthshattering shift in policy... but I think it represents a shift in attitude, a move away from the stern-daddy disapproval of conservative rule, that will eventually lead to liberalization of social policy on many fronts. Every journey begins with but a single step, after all.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, "this is the way a policy ends."

Funny How Time Slips Away

I really don't have much to say about the passing of Paul Harvey... but it was a shock, when I heard the news tonight, to realize how long it's been since I last actually heard that iconic voice. I still hear it in my head, and have often imitated it, when promising to tell someone the rest... of the story.

Calhoun Agonistes

Today the UConn men's basketball team won its last home game of the regular season, ensuring that it will be ranked No.1 in the next national rankings and leaving only the season's final game between the team and its 11th Big East championship. Three seniors were honored, and a banner was unfurled celebrating Jim Calhoun's 800th career victory as an NCAA Division I head coach, achieved in the previous game at Marquette.

Calhoun, already enshrined in basketball's Hall of Fame, is only the 7th men's basketball coach in NCAA history to reach the 800 wins milestone. He's won 2 national championships at UConn, and this year's team, which Calhoun has said he loves coaching, appears well positioned to make a serious run at another title. So everything in Jim Calhoun's life must be just great, right?

Not so much.

You see, a week ago, at a postgame press conference, Calhoun had a testy exchange with local blogger, photojournalist, and political activist Ken Krayeske, who asked Calhoun how much of his $1.6 million state salary he planned to give back to help ease Connecticut's budget crisis. "Not one dime" was Calhoun's emphatic response, and the circus was on. A week later we've heard from everyone and his half-brother, up to and including members of the Connecticut legislature and even our Grandma Governor herself... and it doesn't look like the story is going away any time soon.

So here are my thoughts, for whatever they're worth:

• Even before this incident I knew, from various news coverage and sports columnists, that Calhoun had the potential to, on occasion, Not Be a Very Nice Man™. But if you only listened to the reactions, and didn't see the video, you'd think he'd thrown a Bobby Knight-style tantrum. In fact, he doesn't say anything obscene or abusive or threatening; he doesn't throw anything or make any threatening gestures or leave the podium; and while he raises his voice, it would hardly qualify (at least on the video I've seen) as screaming or even really yelling. He gives a combative, rude answer to what was frankly a combative, rude question; as Hartford Courant "On the Fly" sports columnist Don Amore said in Friday's paper, "Reporters do get yelled at once in a while." (Print only, apparently; sorry for the lack of link.) It's part of the job.

• There may be a serious conversation to be had about why we pay coaches so much money in this society, but ambushing Calhoun in public about his salary probably hasn't started that conversation, or really shed any light on the underlying issue, as the Courant's Jeff Jacobs (no Calhoun lapdog) pointed out recently. $1.6 million in salary (and much more in ancillary income) may seem like a lot of money for teaching kids to play ball, but by the standards of his profession, Calhoun is not overpaid... especially when you consider he's arguably one of the 7 best ever to do what he does.

• It bothers me to single out folks and ask them to give back money they've legitimately earned just because they earned it working for the public. It seems reasonable when we're talking about highly paid public employees like Calhoun, who could seem to spare a dime or two... but it's all too easy to apply the same logic to rank-and-file public employees, who are already underpaid and underappreciated even in the best of times. Indeed, by some accounts, it was Krayeske's concern over proposed cuts to lower-level state employees. I salute that concern, but I fear that telling Calhoun "your money comes from the state, and the state needs it back" risks setting a precedent that will ultimately harm all public employees, rather than helping the less fortunate ones.

• More broadly, it doesn't strike me as fair to single out individuals for systemic social problems. I'm a progressive: I support more progressive taxation, and I believe that the huge disparity between the poorest and wealthiest among us is a problem that urgency requires solutions. But it requires systemic solutions; just singling out wealthy individuals for demonization takes us farther from, not closer to, sustainable answers to this issue.

• Finally, many of us think the UConn basketball program is a good investment. Not only does it create countless jobs far beyond the borders of the Storrs campus, but it makes countless Connecticut citizens happy. Not just the coaches and players, and the players' fellow students, but also people like me, who have no personal connection to the university but cheer its teams as our own. At UConn, due in large part to the personal efforts of Jim Calhoun and his fellow Hall of Famer, women's coach Geno Auriemma, basketball is a source of pride throughout the state. It's easy to say that times are hard, and some luxuries need to be discarded... but its just as true that in hard times, people need even more desperately to have things to cheer for, and to help them stave off the despair they can too easily fall into. Entertainment — including sports — has a long history of helping see us through dark times; we should remember that when we're tempted to demonize it as wasteful or frivolous.
  

Zounds!

Wow. Get a little busy at work, have a couple weeks of inexplicable sore neck, and somehow, before you know it, your $100 tennis racket needs to be restrung. And I haven't just been neglecting this blog, I've also been ignoring my Facebook page and commenting less than usual at Pharyngula. The truth is, I just haven't been spending much time at my home keyboard; the scary thing is how quickly a temporary lull can turn into weeks.

It's not that I haven't had things to say; I've just lacked the energy, or maybe the presence of mind, to say them. Starting this evening, I'm going to try and turn that around. More latersoon.

A Bit Early for Cherry Blossoms

A while back I mentioned that I was interested in experimenting with a martini-like cocktail using kirschwasser in place of the dry vermouth.

A couple days ago, I gave it a whirl. Starting with the extra-dry (8-to-1) martini recipe from Mr. Boston Platinum, I simply replaced the 1/4 oz of vermouth with an equal quantity of kirsch, and then added a dash of orange bitters, per the classic original martini recipe described in the guide's introduction. In this first try, the cherry flavor of the kirsch was virtually undetectable, so I tried again, doubling the amount of kirsch and leaving everything else the same.

Honestly, this drink still tastes mostly like gin (I used Hendricks), but that's the way of all martinis, isn't it (and hardly a bad thing, I might add)? It does have a somewhat brighter flavor than a martini made with vermouth; while I wouldn't encourage anyone to run out and buy kirsch for this purpose, it might make an amusing variation if you have some at hand:

Martini Blossom

• 2 oz gin
• 1/2 oz kirschwasser
• dash orange bitters
• garnish w/twist of lime

BTW, if you don't already have orange bitters in your liquor cabinet, it can be hard to find in stores, but you can buy it online.

A President I Can Get Behind

Noted without comment:

Last Dance in DC

I realize the shelf-life of "what I did at the inauguration" posts is just about expired, but I did promise I'd post my pictures from Monday. I started out by volunteering at the MLK Day of Service event at RFK Stadium, assembling care packages for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (does anyone else recall that "CARE package" used to mean something more specific?). Also helping us pack goodie bags were (during my shift) incoming Attorney General Eric Holder, incoming VA Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki, incoming Homeland Security Secretary Gov. Janet Napolitano, and Senator Chris Dodd (with his kids). Plus, I gather, my group just missed seeing Michelle Obama. As far as I could see, these worthies were actually taking turns working; not just gladhanding and talking to the press.

After my shift was up, I headed over to the Cannon House Office Building to visit the office of Joe Courtney. I didn't have tickets to pick up, but I thought it would be fun to see the office, and to say hello to some Courtney staffers I'd met in the course of a couple campaigns (including John Hollay, the first person I met who knew not only that Obama would be president someday, but that 2008 would be the time). I should've thought harder about this: It turned out that the very many people who did have inauguration tickets to pick up accounted for lines, at each of the public entrances, stretching halfway around the building. I decided it would be the better part of valor to leave the congressional offices to those with actual business there.

So I wandered over to the Capitol, to look at the preparations underway for Tuesday's ceremony, and then down the Mall, checking out street vendors' wares (don't let anyone tell you Obama is bad for entrepreneurship!) and stopping in to visit several museums. The U.S. Botanic Garden was a particularly welcome island of warmth on a frigid day, and I also stopped in at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (as it turned out, my spot on the Mall Tuesday would be adjacent to the Hirshhorn). And, of course, the space cadet in me finds it impossible to visit DC without at least poking my nose into the National Air & Space Museum.

Frozen but well satisfied, I headed back to the Metro, and out to the friends I was staying with in Virginia. As for Tuesday's event, until I'm able to upload my handful of cellphone images, all I can offer are my handsome commemorative tickets from the very excellent Virginia Railway Express commuter train. VRE is selling the leftover tickets to collectors, but mine are legitimately "game used":

The Department of Unintended Truth

Is is just me, or does the masthead/logo for Sarah Palin's new political action committee betray her true intention: to blow an Alaska-sized hole in the country:



Jus' sayin'...

(h/t HuffPo)

Has It Really Been a Week?

OK, I stupidly lost most of my pictures from DC, and the ones I managed to salvage weren't great, but I've finally got what I do have sorted out. Here I am on Sunday, at the We Are One event at the Lincoln Memorial (click here to go to my album from Sunday):


And if my bad photos aren't enough, here's my bad, handheld, movie-clip video of a wonderful moment from Sunday's concert:



Oh, and by the way, in case you missed it amid all the excitement about Tuesday's swearing in, the (then) President-elect gave a great speech on Sunday:



As I noted, I've lost all my pictures from Tuesday's event (except for a few in my cellphone, if I can ever figure out how to download them), but I did get some from my wandering around town on Monday. I'll post those tomorrow.

My Letter to the White House

PZ Myers, Cephalopod Overlord of Pharyngula, noticed a certain lightness of being in the air yesterday, and I couldn't agree more.

In fact, I was moved — for the first time in my life — to actually write a letter to a sitting president:

Mr. President: I want to thank you for moving quickly on closing Guantanamo and CIA black sites, on lifting the global gag order and endorsing stem cell research, and on committing your administration to transparency and openness. I knew these were your values and goals when I was knocking on doors and making phonecalls, but it's gratifying to see them so decisively reaffirmed in your first days in office. I know there will inevitably be setbacks, but I look forward to great things ahead.

I could've gone on at greater, more effusive length (no big surprise to those who know me), but the contact form at the White House website has a 500 character limit.

Oh, well... suffice it to say that Obama's first 50-some hours in office show him to be a man who knows there's work to be done.

An Epic Celebration... and an EPIC FAIL!

The absence of posts for almost a week isn't a sign that I've fallen back into my previous bloglazy habits, it's just that I've been ramblin'. I traveled to our nation's capitol for the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama II as the 44th President of the United States (FSM, that sounds great!). The whole thing was wonderful, from the Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial to the inaugural ceremony itself.

Now for the EPIC FAIL part: I'd post pictures, but somehow I managed to either hash or accidentally delete about half of my digital photos, including all of what I shot on inauguration day. Of what's left, about half are still stuck in the camera (don't ask how electrons can get stuck, either... just know that I can see them on the camera's screen, but I can't get them to my computer). I am, as they say,"working the problem," and I'll have some pictures to post soon, I hope. In the meantime, here's a transcendent (and unexpected) moment from Sunday:



...and another moment of blinding beauty from Tuesday:



Watch Yo-Yo Ma's face as he plays: The joy you see there is some hint at what I was feeling, standing proudly with my fellow citizens at the third Jumbo-Tron back from the platform.

More later...

Update, 5:33 pm: Apparently the quartet employed a prerecorded hedge against the cold. Doesn't diminish my admiration at all: They were really playing, and what we in the crowd heard was really them... even if it was an earlier "take."