The Case for California Secession

Will Durst says it best:

http://www.alternet.org/story/14531

God and Walmart in Arkansas - Oy vey!

From the Interfaith Coalition:

Wal-Mart Transforms Arkansas Town Into Multi-Faith Mini-Metropolis
“Residents of Benton County, in the northwest corner of Arkansas, are proud citizens of the Bible Belt. At last count, they filled 39 Baptist, 27 United Methodist and 20 Assembly of God churches.

For decades, a local hospital has begun meetings with a reading from the New Testament and the library has featured an elaborate Christmas display. Then the Wal-Mart Jews arrived.

Recruited from around the country as workers for Wal-Mart or one of its suppliers, hundreds of which have opened offices near the retailer's headquarters here, a growing number of Jewish families have become increasingly vocal proponents of religious neutrality in the county. They have asked school principals to rename Christmas vacation as winter break (many have) and lobbied the mayor's office to put a menorah on the town square (it did).

Wal-Mart has transformed small towns across America, but perhaps its greatest impact has been on Bentonville, where the migration of executives from cities like New York, Boston and Atlanta has turned this sedate rural community into a teeming mini-metropolis populated by Hindus, Muslims and Jews.” (New York Times, “In Wal-Mart's Home, Synagogue Signals Growth,” 06-20-06)

Democratic Panel Limits New Primary States

by HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press Writer

Published 12:13 pm PDT Thursday, June 22, 2006

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - A Democratic National Committee panel considering changes to the presidential primary calendar voted Thursday to allow just two other states to join Iowa and New Hampshire in voting early in 2008.

If the full DNC adopts the recommendation, one state would be allowed to hold a caucus between Iowa's caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and a second would hold a primary shortly after the New Hampshire contest.

Supporters said limiting the new states to two instead of the four some had proposed would accomplish the goal of increasing racial and ethnic diversity without front-loading the calendar or diminishing the traditional roles of Iowa and New Hampshire. Both states have been criticized as unrepresentative of the country given their size and nearly all-white populations.

"I think the diversity we want to achieve in terms of race and union membership and geography and all those other things can be looked at from the context of achieving some, but not all, in the context of the extra primary, and some, but not all, in the context of the extra caucus," Ralph Dawson of New York said during a Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting by conference call. ....

But Mark Brewer of Michigan said the plan doesn't go far enough and suggested adding three or four other states.

"I don't think we're going to achieve the goals this reform is intended to achieve," he said.
Also voting against the proposal was Kathy Sullivan of New Hampshire, who said compressing four events into 18 days will force candidates to pick among them rather than participate in all four.

"I fully support the idea of having more diversity in the process. However, I don't believe this process is going to work to produce a field of candidates that will be running in all the states," she said.

She also noted that the plan could violate New Hampshire law, which requires the state's primary to be scheduled a week or more before any "similar election." The state could face sanctions if it doesn't comply with the Democrats' guidelines.

Ten states plus the District of Columbia have applied to fill the two slots: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, South Carolina and West Virginia.

The committee will meet next month to select the two states.

------------------------

The Democrats needs to stop dancing around this stuff and just set up a phased series of primaries which each inludes a balanced lineup of large and small states. This could be partially regional in nature to hold down travel costs, but overall there should be a clear set schedule running from New Hampshire through June.

The current “frontloaded” system is a total wreck. Many of the candidates wade through snow drifts most of the way as every state back leaps everyone else to get to be first. Remember when Super Tuesday actually meant something? (Like giving Jesse Jackson frontrunner status, in one of the marvelous unintended consequences of Democratic political history.) The wholr thing is pretty much done by mid-March, leaving months and months and months of abolutely nothing until the summer conventions.

This is not rocket science. Everyone has a map. We see which states are big, which states are small, which states are industrial and which states are rural. Figure out a reasonable schedule and nag the relevant states to set it up. The Reps might even go along with it because a lot of them have a similar complaint about the process.

Let’s have campaigns instead of drag races. It’s a helluva lot more interesting when you get to run instead of roar. It builds drama, builds momentum and never quite know where it'll take you. And isn't that what politics is all about?

The Longest Day

Left - partygoers greet the summer solstice at Stonehenge.

Pagans have all the fun. They party when the sun comes up. They party when the sun goes down. They party when the moon comes up. They party when the moon goes down. They party when the days get shorter. They party when the days get longer.

It’s truly a testament to Christianity's sheer persistence that it won out over these folks in Europe.

Fortunately, kids still wanna have fun in, and all these pagan celebrations are just the thing for the frisky young partygoers in any era.

Summer solstice is a sad day for me. It means the days are getting shorter. It’s odd that the summer sun spends less and less time with you. Think of classic summer and you think of long hot nights which seem to go on forever. Maybe that’s part of the attraction. If the fun really starts after the sun goes down then maybe the ever shorter days are nature’s gifts to us.

Think spring and you think changing weather, rains and new flowers. Few think of long nights. But the day is as long on April 20 as it is on August 20. Yet even in Sacramento it’s rarely hot by that time. Despite the pagan calendar, to me, spring officially begins when daylight savings time arrives in early April. Spring to me means the start of long walks on pleasant evenings, a chance to reacquaint myself with neighbors and community. I even dedicate my first stroll after the clocks snap forward. It’s my own mental and spiritual spring fertility rite.

So now, after the summer solstice has come and gone, it’s BBQ in the back yard, meeting the neighbors at the community pool and taking in the sounds of the season on a quiet evening. Maybe it’s good that the days get shorter during summer. It reminds us that it doesn’t last forever.

Sign of the Times

Seen on a Sacramento area bumpersticker yesterday:

"I'm already against the next war."

Father's Day

It’s cool being a dad today. No one expects you to do anything so anything you do makes you look like Mother Theresa in boxers.

I loved driving around Oakland with Leroy, playing with him in the park, reading to him in the library and hanging with him in coffee shops. I got loads of “ooh, ahh!” looks, free snacks and coffee. “Be a dad and get stuff!” What a slogan.

Nothing beats changing a diaper in public if you’re a dad. There you are, swabbing poop off your son’s butt and people stare and nearly swoon over the sight. Since we’re still stuck in a social expectation that moms do all the work, dads get a handicap just for showing up.

The expectation is a pretty new thing. In a story I recall titled something like “The Short History of the Traditional Family”, the author noted that the experience of men leaving the home to travel far away to work is a consequence of the industrial age. Before the factories went up, most people like on farms and in small towns.

Dads simply didn’t have to go far to go to work. Farmers work at home, with the “office’ right outside the front door. Tradesmen, like blacksmiths or even professionals such as attorneys, kept offices at or near home. Dads could and often were instrumental in childrearing. Women often had to help bring in money too, in some way, so parenting had to be shared. Only when the industrial age arrived could many families afford to keep mom unemployed and at home.

For today’s dads who are working back toward the real “olden days”, not the crap we see on 1950’s and ‘60s teevee, it means a donation of latte or French fries as they work back to the real role of dads down through the ages. Don’t tell anyone that there’s nothing odd or unique about it. At four bucks a throw, a nice latte tastes best when it’s free.

The World (yawn) Cup

The photo to the left of two passionate supporters of Sweden's World Cup soccer team is all you need to know about why the US will never take the Cup as seriously as the rest of the planet. We simply can't meet this standard of devotion.

Not that I care. I honestly don’t care. I’m sick and tired of being told that I should care because Botswana, the Ukraine and Honduras care. If they want a world soccer championship so bad that it causes hometown women so cavort shamelessly then hey, cool. More power to them. But that doesn’t mean I have to care.

Soccer to me is bunch of guys kicking a ball and kicking a ball and kicking a ball until someone finally scores. It’s like hockey in that whenever anyone does score it’s so surprising that the announcer has a stroke, the players react with stunned disbelief and any player who does it more than three times gets nominated for sainthood in any Catholic country.

It's dull. Extremely dull. And unlike the Swedes and Brazilians, we'll never have the kind of fans who could make it a heckuva lot more interesting. Even the Poles know how to play. Their hooligans wanted to organize a World Cup ass-kicking tournament, my thug vs. yours, and make the best set of brass knuckles win.

Soccer looks like a sport which is a heckuva lot more fun to play than watch. I’ve had friends who play on the weekend and come in on Monday looking like they’ve gone to the mat with a horny mountain goat. But for me, yawn.

I write this as a local Sacramento sports writer goes on record against a local station choosing to honor its contract with the WNBA champion Sacramento Monarchs over the US vs. Italy game at the same time. Chill, the station says, we’ll run the game on tape delay after the Monarchs game. Horrors, says the writer. This is World Cup soccer and you’re letting lady basketball players trump ‘em?

Yes, because there are still probably more people around here who would rather watch ladies dribbling than Eyeties embarrassing Americans in a game few Americans really care about. Welcome to the real world of sports marketing, dude.

It’s not that I’ve never been exposed to soccer. I grew up near San Francisco’s Balboa Soccer Stadium, where marvelously named teams like the Hibernians and Sons of Italy took on Guadalajara and the Arab Americans. You could tell who played who after each game by the bottles left behind. Rose and Dos Equis meant the Sons vs. Guadalajara. Soccer was offered during gym class. But as a spectator sport I’d rather watch lacrosse. And I really don’t like lacrosse either.

So World, have your Cup. Enjoy your festive womenfolk. Party on like it’s 2099.

Just don’t bother me with it. I’m waiting for the Giants vs. Tigers in the 2006 World Series.

San Francisco Uber Alles

A shameless cross-post, but relevant:

---------------------------
By Garrison Keillor

Jun. 07, 2006 / People who live in mud huts should not throw mud, especially if it comes from their own roofs. As Scripture says, don't point to the speck in your neighbor's eye when you have a piece of kindling in your own.

I see by the papers that the Republicans want to make an issue of Nancy Pelosi in the congressional races this fall: Would you want a San Francisco woman to be Speaker of the House? Will the podium be repainted in lavender stripes with a disco ball overhead? Will she be borne into the chamber by male dancers with glistening torsos and wearing pink tutus? After all, in the unique worldview of old elephants, San Francisco is a code word for g-a-y, and after assembling a record of government lies, incompetence and disaster, the party in power hopes that the fear of g-a-y-s will pull it through in November.

Running against Nancy Pelosi, a woman who comes from a district where there are known gay persons, is a nice trick, but it does draw attention to the large shambling galoot who is speaker now, Tom DeLay's enabler for years, a man who, judging by his public mutterances, is about as smart as most high school wrestling coaches.

For the past year, Dennis Hastert has been two heartbeats from the presidency. He is a man who seems content just to have a car and driver and three square meals a day. He has no apparent vision beyond the urge to hang onto power. He has succeeded in turning Congress into a branch of the executive branch. If Mr. Hastert becomes the poster boy for the Republican Party, this does not speak well for them as the Party of Ideas.

People who want to take a swing at San Francisco should think twice.

Yes, the Irish coffee at Fisherman's Wharf is overpriced, and the bus tour of Haight-Ashbury is disappointing (where are the hippies?), but the Bay Area is the cradle of the computer and software industry, which continues to create jobs for our children. The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco , Texas . There may be a reason for this.

Creative people thrive in a climate of openness and tolerance, since some great ideas start out sounding ridiculous. Creativity is a key to economic progress. Authoritarianism is stifling. I don't believe that Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard were gay, but what's important is:

In San Francisco, it doesn't matter so much. When the cultural Sturmbannfuhrers try to marshal everyone into straight lines, it has consequences for the economic future of this country.

Meanwhile, the Current Occupant goes on impersonating a president.

Somewhere in the quiet leafy recesses of the Bush family, somebody is thinking, "Wrong son. Should've tried the smart one." This one's eyes don't quite focus. Five years in office and he doesn't have a grip on it yet. You stand him up next to Tony Blair at a press conference and the comparison is not kind to Our Guy. Historians are starting to place him at or near the bottom of the list. And one of the basic assumptions of American culture is falling apart: the competence of Republicans.

You might not have always liked Republicans, but you could count on them to manage the bank. They might be lousy tippers, act snooty, talk through their noses, wear spats and splash mud on you as they race their Pierce-Arrows through the village, but you knew they could do the math. To see them produce a ninny and then follow him loyally into the swamp for five years is disconcerting, like seeing the Rolling Stones take up lite jazz. So here we are at an uneasy point in our history, mired in a costly war and getting nowhere, a supine Congress granting absolute power to a president who seems to get smaller and dimmer, and the best the Republicans can offer is San Franciscophobia? This is beyond pitiful. This is violently stupid.

It is painful to look at your father and realize the old man should not be allowed to manage his own money anymore. This is the discovery the country has made about the party in power. They are inept. The checkbook needs to be taken away. They will rant, they will screech, they will wave their canes at you and call you all sorts of names, but you have to do what you have to do.

----------------------------

Again, ain't it funny that the people most afeared of the homos don't have any themselves? And that the places most likely to be hit by terrorists, like San Francisco, object the most to the "war on terror?"

School's Out

Whew. I never knew the end of the semester could come with such a rush. And I don't even go to school.

Last Friday was the last day of my son Leroy's second grade year. It was a good year, too. His record card was good, he's got a crew of buddies who want to get together over the summer and the P.E. teacher still calls him a model student. So why am I pooped?

I feel like I've just left my second job. Managing getting him out of the house, getting him into bath and bad and everything in between is a lotta work. A whole lotta work. The challenge of doing it tag team with your working wife is that you gotta manage the tag teaming on top of it. Someone's gotta keep track of whether the field trip form was returned, and who's attending the teacher's meeting and whether his library book is in his backpack to be returned to school. Oh yeah, today's kids get to bring a snack to school to eat during recess. Leroy helps us remember that in the morning.

Then we're off to school, a three block walk with the (literal) girl next door, a highly sociable kindergartener Leroy's been friends with for two and half years. It's like herding cats.

Walking to school got me involved in a local project to get more kids to walk and bike to school. I grew up in San Francisco, and walking was -the- way we got to school. My momma wouldn't looked at me liked I was nuts if I suggested she had some moral obligation to drive me to school, which was around ten blocks away, over a freeway and through a busy intersection near a BART regional transit station.

I wouldn't have asked her anyway. Heck, I'd miss the fun of walking in and walking back home with my own crew. But that was then. Today, kids more than not are driven in by parents, often on the way to work. It's rush, rush, rush, then drive, drive, drive and then start the school day in the middle of a small traffic jam outside school. It ain't right.

So some parents and I started the Bannon Creek Traffic Tamers to get more kids to walk and bike to school. We held events, put out a newsletter and got teachers to help us bring the message into the classroom. But it was work.

So now, summer is here, and the living is easy. Or easier. Now it's just getting Leroy to his summer camps, two weeks at his school year aftercare, a week at church camp, a week at a rock climbing camp (fake rocks) and a week at a Zoo camp. Nothing much to manage.