Surfk9

Posting

I have never said how much I admire bloggers who can post multiple times a day. I fully intended to begin blogging every day, but life always seems to intervene. So, hats off to the uber bloggers of the world.

Not in My Happy Place

I am not in my happy place today
Something bad came to stay
This is not to say
I will stay this way

Hope!

Hope emerged from Pandora's box after all of the bad shit jumped out.

I do not let my children whine about bad stuff that happens, I do let them be pissed if they lose-just no whining. I shall not indulge.

Nothing in particular

GottaLaff over at Cliff Schecter's blog Has a great post on Government Spying 101. Seems that the Bushies came to power and immediately began spying on us.  Lovely. And oh, by the way, who do the Democrats think Bush was spying on?  It is appalling that they would even think about giving Bush more power to pervert.

I didn't post on it (or anything else for a month) but I'm really glad that Al Gore won the Nobel.  He has become an example to all Americans about how an individual could have a positive impact on the world.

9/11

It's hard to put how I feel about 9/11 in writing as my feelings are so ambivalent at this point. 9/11 has been debased by our political establishment into nothing more than a cheap hooker plying her trade under streetlights and in dark alleys. The damage done to our civil institutions, our treasury, our standing in the world, our moral authority and the debasement of our culture in the name of 9/11 is incalculable. And yet the pimps who facilitated the perversion remain in power, enabled by a corrupt and complicit corporate media intent on giving us a steady diet of  Brittany and Lindsay Lohan punctuated only rarely by morsels of sanitized news and Administration spin designed to perpetuate our newly minted culture of fear. It's all tits and terror all the time.

And yet I look at my family and see my extraordinary wife and my beautiful children and I cannot help but have my hopes renewed. The journey of my wife these last six years has been amazing.  From profound grief on 9/11 and the period after. She has committed herself to moving to a higher level of endeavor.  In her case she did this by engaging in the study of Law.  She will graduate this spring.  I have never seen her so alive (which is strange considering how tired she is from lack of sleep). Surfgrrrrl has grown into a fine young woman who shows extraordinary talents and is a good, caring human being.  Surfpup has grown into a fine young man with a great outlook on life in addition to his intellectual and physical talents. For myself, I would not have begun blogging if it were not for 9/11 and the subsequent wars. Finding the blogosphere has been one of the best things in my life outside of my family.  Finding so many people out there with whom I could find community has inspired me to become better as a human being. This would not have happened without 9/11. the development of the blogosphere into a potent corrective political force would not have occurred without 9/11.

It is not in my nature to stay depressed for very long.   It is in my nature to be optimistic. 9/11 has had  a profound effect on our society.  Much of the effect has been very bad. Yet among the bad things are many positive things that have happened in spite of the bad. The growing of the family and the connections of community will, in the end, overcome the forces of authoritarianism and fear.

   

Random Thoughts

I spent today at home due to a reaction to some seafood that I ate yesterday.  A full day of sloth punctuated by trips to the bathroom.  It is remarkable how quiet it is here when the kids are at school, and how many strange random sounds the cats and birds and who knows what other kind of creatures make.

There is very little in the news to get excited about.  Scooter Libby's PR campaign to stay out of jail continues apace.  John Dean has some thoughts on the subject a new column for FindLaw.

Apparently a whole shitload of White House emails got deleted. Emptywheel has some thoughts on the subject including the fact that the deletions stopped (at least for Rove) after Patrick Fitgerald began issuing Subpoenas related to the Plame case.  I've got a feeling that before this is all over the Plame case is going to come back and bite the White House on the ass big time.  However, it sure looks like Rove is much more afraid of Fitz than he is of the Congress. Do you think that if  Leahy and Waxman notice that too, they might kick things up a notch. Heh...Heh...

Roger Waters Leaving Beirut

Pink Floyd has been my favorite band for a long time.  I have been listening to The Final Cut on my ipod lately. Roger Waters has a been a consistent anti-war voice.  This video of Leaving Beirut is great. Enjoy!

A Retirement

I went to the retirement party for one of the folks that I work with today. She has been, for many years, an advocate for the childcare program in the agency I work for. She is one of the most intelligent and compassionate people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. She is also an old Berkeley hippy, which means that I got along with her from the moment I met her.

One of the anomalies of working in government is that there are strange positions that are funded through various mechanisms.  The childcare advocate is one of those positions.  They are the public face of the childcare licensing done by the state, but they are also the advocate within the bureaucracy for the providers.  They are funded by special license plates that are available to the public. 

At the party there were many folks from agencies, councils and other organizations that I had never heard of who all spoke of this woman's commitment to the goal of providing a safe environment for children in childcare. The image that I took away by the end of the party, was that of a woman who was fearless in the pursuit of a goal that she felt was worthwhile.  Her fearlessness meant that she spoke uncomfortable truths to power and that she challenged the status quo. She also built bridges of trust and respect.

Sometimes, in the course of your career, you are blessed by the association with special people who have the ability to inspire, who have the fortitude to push for and accomplish necessary changes in society and who have the vision to conceptualize  a world that can be better place to live.  I am happy for her retirement, I am saddened that she will not be around to share her exceptional spirit with the office.

Nothing in Particular

One of the things that I have noticed about my habits in blogging is that I tend to write when either I am pissed off or something interesting happens. Tonight, having undergone oral surgery today and being vicodin empowered, the outrage meter is somewhat askew and nothing remarkable has happened.

The above notwithstanding, I have a growing feeling of unhappiness over the inability of the Democratic Party in Congress to craft a unified front in opposition to the Bush administrations war lust. Now, I don't pretend to know what goes on in private meetings between the Administration and the Congressional leadership. I would hope that the congressional line is something like, "Look Dumbshit, if you bomb Iran, we'll impeach your ass". Hell, even the master of Senatorial equivocation, Joe Biden has said as much in the media.(OK, look I am Vicodin impaired and I am not going to link to it, but he said it this weekend). This is a start.  But the rubber meets the road in Iraq. One of the problems with the Democratic caucus in the House is the "Blue Dogs".  These folks, many (but not all) are from conservative Southern districts are afraid of being labled as not supporting the troops. These forty or so members seem to have paralyzed the Democratic leadership. The Murtha plan is wildly popular (polling in the mid 60's) with the American people and these guys are running away from it. The progressive caucus (which is considerably larger) is being marginalized in this whole mess. It's time for the progressive caucus to say,  here are the terms we will agree to to vote for any further funding of the war period. The terms we will agree to are no more than the Murtha plan. If the administration wants money, they will have to come to us. PERIOD.

John Prine

In the early seventies, one of my favorite artists was John Prine, his song Flag Decal  was one of the best anti-war songs written.  The link above is to his rendition in 2004 after he had undergone treatment for throat cancer. Enjoy!

Life Sucks

We have been dealing with the passing of Surfgrrrl's best friend Bob-It's mother.  Bob-It has been a fixture around the house for the last three years.  He has been living with us for the last month, since his mother went into the hospital.  We had first discussed the idea of him living with us in September, when his mother was talking about moving south of San Diego.  We certainly weren't prepared to deal with his mother dying.  She passed last Wednesday.  There was an open house at a friend of the family's house today.  Bob-Its father has agreed to leave him here until the end of the school year.  Bob-It is a good kid who doesn't deserve to have to deal with this kind of crap.  Sometimes, life sucks.