Karla's bachelorette party this weekend seems to have put the kibosh on Zelda's Inferno meeting this weekend. But no reason I can't do a little writing exercise. Let's start with a phrase extracted semi-randomly from the latest Urbanite: "is not going away"

is not going away
it is not going away
it is coming closer
whatever it is
gravity is drawing it in
the essential longing of all things to be together
expressed as a force proportional to the product of the masses and inversely pro
proportional to the square of the distance between them

(more or less, that is, leaving Einstein to nap for the moment)
it is not going away
it is staying in place
staying by your side
will not abandon you

It seems to be mandatory for everyone to post some 9/11 remembrance piece today. So...

In the fall of 2001, I had a Tuesday happy hour gig at Leadbetter's Tavern in Fells Point. September 11 was a Tuesday that year.

I figured that music would be cancelled, out of the question, on a day like that. But after watching CNN and listening to the radio at home alone all day, I wanted to be around other people. So, grabbing my music gear just in case, I went downtown.

The streets were empty. But the bar was packed: no one wanted to be alone.

As it turned out, I ended up playing. And so what I remember most is the feeling of being the center of attention (in between the TV reports at least) at a time like that, of having fifty or sixty scared and angry people focusing on you.

I also remember two young men, Marines who knew their leave was just about to end. The younger one, maybe just barely 21, was all gung-ho; his buddy, a little older, was quieter, shaking his head, knowing the shit was about to get deep. I remember how they both groaned after Bush gave a speech with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. They tipped good, and I played any request of theirs I could. I wonder where they are today, hope they're okay.

A few years later, I was finally able to write a song about my experience that evening:

"No Words of Wisdom"
Tom Swiss

Everybody's looking at me
They ask me to sing and play
But I've got no words of wisdom
For a day like today

I came down here with my guitar
To help you pass the time
We could have a drink and have some fun
And sing these songs of mine

Now everybody's looking at me
They ask me to sing and play
But I've got no words of wisdom
For a day like today

Alan Turing was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the Twentieth Century -- indeed, one of most brilliant mathematicians ever. During World War II he was instrumental in breaking the Nazi's "Enigma" code. In the process, he developed much of the theoretical framework for the field of computer science. The mathematical model of computers that every comp sci major learns about, the "Turning machine", was his invention. Every time you use a computer -- such as reading this -- you are benefiting from his genius.

But let's get back to the fact that he helped defeat the Nazis and thus helped save the UK, and all of Western civilization.

Usually, people who help save a nation are treated with gratitude. But Turing was gay.

In the homophobic society in which he lived, that was a crime. His security clearance was revoked, he was prosecuted, and sentenced to "chemical castration" via hormone injections. In 1954, he committed suicide.

Over 55 years later, the UK has finally apologized for its wretched treatment of this heroic genius.

Betsy McCaughey is widely regarded as the person responsible for starting the "death panel" rumors. In this press release, she disputes a recent profile piece the New York Times did about her.

Here's what's interesting: her objection to doctors being rated on whether they help patients articulate their own wishes, and whether those wishes are adhered to:

Doctors' quality ratings will be determined in part by the percentage of the doctor's patients who create a living will and the percentage who adhere to it. (And quality ratings affect a doctor's Medicare reimbursement)

The "adhere to" part is especially dangerous. Some people say "they'd rather die than be on a ventilator, but when the time comes, they choose to live. Doctors will incur penalties when families do not adhere to end of life written plans. - a horrible conflict of interest. As a patient advocate, I see these difficult situations and know that government should not be
involved.

Let's be clear: if you can decide for yourself whether to die or to remain on a ventilator, your living will is not in effect.

But putting that nonsensical part aside, if you're in a condition where you can't decide, and you've left a living will or advance directive, presumably you want that to be followed! (Else, why did you make it?) Whether it says "pull the plug" or "hook me up to every machine you've got," you want your doctor to follow your directions.

It's not your family's choice, it's your choice. If a doctor disregards a patient's wishes, of course they ought to be down-rated!

It seems what McCaughey and her ilk object to is you being able to make your own decisions about end-of-life care. That's what this is about: these folks want to give you the same treatment they gave Terri Schiavo.

Tom Tomorrow, author of political cartoon This Modern World, on Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst during Obama's speech:

You’d think that an elected representative heckling the President of the United States during a speech to Congress would be considered inappropriate, but as the summer’s town hall disruptions made clear, the right wing is operating under an entirely different set of assumptions than most, you know, sane people. Honestly, I think Wilson could have walked up to the front of the room, pulled down his pants, and taken a dump right on the podium, and he’d still be applauded by the wingnut media. Wilson may have just put himself on the short list of Republican presidential contenders for 2012.

(If you haven't seen it yet, this week's TMW, "Then and now with Goofus and Gallant", says it all about how the left and the right are treated in the supposedly "liberal" MSM.)

If Bob Cesca is right about what's in Max Baucus's version of the health care reform bill, that it contains a mandate to give your money to private insurers, then that version must not pass. Indeed, no reform at all would be preferable to this give-away to the insurance parasites that got us into this mess -- a bill authored by the industry it's supposed to reform:

The short answer is that Baucus receives around $1500 a day from the health care lobby and PACs and he needs to keep his financiers wallowing in their own filth. But a more specific answer can be defined by who wrote the Baucus Plan.

Funny story. Baucus and his staff forgot to delete the name of the author of the plan from the Acrobat version of the document. Whoops!

In the Properties dialogue box of the PDF, in the "author" slot, the name Liz Fowler appears. Fowler is a Baucus staffer who was with the senator in the early part of this decade but left to take a breather in the private sector and only returned to Capitol Hill last year. During her time in the private sector, can you guess where Fowler worked?

She was the VP for Public Policy and External Affairs at WellPoint, the health insurance parent company of Blue Cross.

Really, it wouldn't matter if Baucus had written the legislation himself, since he's wholly owned by big pharma and the insurance giants. Between 2003 and 2008, they paid him over a $1,000,000. This is the guy who, in discussing his real employer's position on health care reform, said ""Merck is not ready for single pay. I mean, America."

So here's another loopy conspiracy theory: the right-wing National Legal and Policy Center found (cleverly hidden right out in plain sight at www.fbo.gov) a Request For Proposal "to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites." The blogosphere is abuzz with how this is an attempt by Obama's secret team of socialist fascist secret Muslims to create an "enemies list"

Or, as Hot Air exposes...not.

The Presidential Records Act (PRA) essentially requires each administration to keep every pixel and keystroke ever published for later review by Congress or investigators, in case illegal activity takes place. We have seen this invoked ex post facto to the Clinton and Bush administrations, in the latter over e-mails sent and received outside the White House mail system. At that time, legal experts and investigators insisted that everything produced by an administration for anything remotely concerning official business had to be archived within the EOP. [Executive Office of the President]

A more careful reading of this RFP shows that to be the project. The contract directs the contractor to archive the “information posted on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence“, including social networking sites like MySpace, Twitter, and so on. It doesn’t call for everything on those networks to be archived, but only “information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence[,] both comments posted on pages created by EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites.” In other words, the archiving will include interaction on EOP websites and pages, but not anything else.

In other words, this massive spying effort is nothing more than applying the retention requirements for Presidential e-mail to Facebook and Twitter messages.

Somehow I'm sure that if the Obama administration didn't do this, these same folks would be complaining how he was using social networking sites as an attempt to get around the PRA. (Like, say, how Bush administration crooks used an e-mail server run by the Republican National Committee to circumvent the PRA.)

I don't know how I almost missed this sad tale of anti-Muslim bigotry, fundamentalist Christian craziness, and political opportunism from the Religious Right.

Rafiq Bary is a 17 year old girl from a Muslim family. About four years ago, she converted to Christianity. A few months ago, her father bought her a laptop and she started spending all of her time on Facebook; sometime around here -- I would suspect under the influence of some wacky fundamentalist Christians -- she became convinced that her father was going to do her in in an "honor killing." (Because, you know, I always spend a lot of money on an expensive gift for someone before I do them it. And I like to economically support someone, house and feed them, for several years after they've done the thing that motivates me to kill them, before I do the deed.)

She ran away, and someone -- I would suspect the same wacky fundamentalist Christians -- bought her a bus ticket from her home in Ohio to Florida. There, she lived for two weeks with wacky fundamentalist Christians Blake and Beverly Lorenz, from the Global Revolution Church, whom she had gotten to know through a Facebook prayer group.

She being a minor and all (and one suffering from delusions induced by the craziness of others), the usual course of the law would be to send her back to her parents. But, you know: those people are Muslims. And so:

Bary's case has, in recent weeks, become a huge deal for the Religious Right and has been getting lots of coverage from places like Fox News, WorldNetDaily, OneNewsNow, and Human Events and has also been championed by several Religious Right groups like Concerned Women for America, the Traditional Values Coalition and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

From a 1944 ad for war bonds. The poetic linebreaks and capitalization are as in the original.

...

Let's put an end to the foul prejudice fanned by our
Enemies...

By our obvious enemy, the goose-stepping Hun...and
Our more insidious one, the unAmerican American.

When you find anyone -- yourself included -- thinking,
Speaking, acting, with racial or religious prejudice --
STOP IT!

If Smith, Kelly, Cohen or Svoboda is good enough to die
For us, he's good enough to live with us...
As an equal.

Be American!

Here's a head-scratcher:

Most cultural conservatives -- not all, but most -- are opposed to multiculturalism. They believe that Western civilization is superior, that English literature should be taught in schools and not Chinese literature, that classical Roman mythology should be emphasized and that of the Native Americans given little if any mention, that French and German history is more relevant than that of India or Japan.

However, if you suggest that contemporary England, Germany, France, or Italy might have some useful examples of modern political solutions (in, say, the field of health care), if you say that these nations might have some useful ideas, many of these same people will tell you that you're un-American, that you ought to move to Europe and stop trying to change America.

So, can anyone tell me when exactly the dividing line is? When did Europe stop being the font of all that is good and civilized and an example that we should study and follow, and start becoming the embodiment of decadence?