I recently returned from Venice

Where I had a wonderful time, except for one little, tiny problem: US Airways managed to lose one of my suitcases - the suitcase that had my Carnevale costume in it! The other suitcase, the one with the shirts and skirts (bad sadly not the underwear), showed up after only a couple of days' delay, which was only to be expected, since I got switched onto a different flight at the last minute, after missing a connection.

For all the sordid details, visit the fine website, US Airways Lost My Costume, set up by my good friends who had exactly the same thing happen to them when they flew through the same airport (Philadelphia), on the same airline (US Airways) one week earlier. What are the odds of that? Hmmmm.

Anybody know a luggage-thief in Philadelphia?

Today I actually posted a diary. . .

. . .on DailyKos. I'm getting some good comments, too.

Here's the link, and here's the text:

A Realization about "your average democratic voter"
by Robespierrette

Fri Jun 30, 2006 at 01:26:41 PM PDT

As a Precinct Committee Officer, I've canvassed the few blocks around my house once or twice a year for the last few years, and I'm just starting to kind of know a few of my neighbors. I'm in a nice neighborhood which, like many, rarely has anyone at home.

I do see one of my neighbors from time to time, and he knows that I'm a Democrat. He's a democratic voter, but like most folks, doesn't have a lot of time to follow what's going on in DC.

In talking to him recently, I realized something (and maybe it should have been obvious to me - I'm a little dense :). Follow me past the cut:
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Here's my neighbor, a well-to-do, well-educated democratic voter, who asks me the occasional question about "the Party", usually on the subject of message or platform, or "have we gotten it together?".

Most recently, he asked me what the Democrats in DC were doing. And I stepped back with him for a moment to explore what he thought they were supposed to be doing.

Turns out, he was under the impression that Democrats had a lot more ability to get legislation voted on. He understood that we would most likely lose anything we brought up, but he thought we could at least be having those debates. (insert the sound of me slapping my forehead). I had to explain about how the Republicans control the Committees, and how the majority has quite a lot of control over what makes it to the floor.

I explained that the Republicans don't want to debate anything substantive (if they can help it) before the elections, and want to concentrate on stuff like flag burning, gay marriage, and generally "fear". And I emphasized the importance of getting a majority back in at least one chamber, so that the issues that are important to all Americans can get a chance.

My realization was this: even our own friendly voters don't necessarily get how this works. Heck, I probably don't have a great grasp on it. And if that's the case, how less-clued-in are casual voters?

And my conclusion: Never assume that people are starting from the same page as you - even if they're Democrats who pay attention to the news and vote regularly. They may have a very inflated opinion of what our folks in DC can do in the current circumstances, and a correspondingly exaggerated disappointment in them.

My trip to YearlyKos: Part Two

(I've just seen that I took 19 pages of notes on this trip - warning: I'm only on page 5 at this point)

The highlight of the entire convention (for others as well, not just me!) was the CIA Leak Investigation panel.

If any of you haven't been obsessively following this story like the "plamologists" have been, it's this whole business involving the revenge taken by the Administration against Ambassador Joseph Wilson, through the identification of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA operative. This was political payback, pure and simple, to silence potential whistle-blowers, esp. those in the CIA. In an interesting turn of events, we've learned that Valerie was working in WINPAC (Center for Weapons Intelligence, nonproliferation, and Arms Control), and that a lot of her work had to do with - catch this! - Iran. So, when her cover, and the cover of the front-company she worked in, were blown, we lost some of our ability to tell what's really going on over there. Was this crazy, Machiavellian neo-con maneuvering, or just stunning incompetence? I favor the second explanation, since I don't give the Administration that much credit. . .

And before I get to the details of the panel, I just want to gush a bit about Joe Wilson. He's a really, really decent guy. And here's a plug for his book, which I'm currently reading: The Politics of Truth.

So, the panel itself:

To the extent that there has been continued public attention and a reasonable level of accuracy in the coverage of this topic, it has been due to the efforts of the "blogosphere", so it was cool to see some of the prime actors brought together to talk about what's happened and where it stands. The panel was moderated by Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake. I'd heard of FDL, but didn't know that Jane was a movie producer, with credits like "From Hell" and "Natural Born Killers" (not to mention that she's an elegant, slender, blonde). Having someone like her as a "face of the blogosphere" certainly helps displace those notions of teenagers sitting in basements. . .

Oh, and this panel made it onto C-SPAN! (The first link on that page should be to 4 hours of lo-res convention coverage, beginning with the Plame panel).

Ambassador Joseph Wilson introduced himself as "Mr. Valerie Plame", and reminded everyone that this isn't about "Wilson and his wife", but a contrived, calculated distraction - a means of changing the subject away from the Administration's warping of intelligence, such as the infamous "16 words" in the 2003 State of the Union address. He told us that "we can and we must stand up to the schoolyard bullies", and finished up with a quote attributed to George Orwell: "In a time of universal deceit, the simple act of telling the truth is revolutionary".

Dan Froomkin of the WaPo talked about how the press coverage has lurched from public record, or even ignorance of public record, to spin from defense counsel. He had several theories about why the press coverage has been so bad, which mostly boiled down to the media taking the "path of least resistance".

Murray Waas of the National Journal talked about how he is the only reporter on the War Rationale(s)/CIA Leak story full-time, and he mostly writes for a magazine with a circulation of only 13,000. He feels that most of the "press problem" is budgetary. Newspapers have very little budget for investigative journalism, with their profit margins so slim. And those few investigative resources are stretched thin, and under a lot of pressure to produce column-inches.

Marcy Wheeler (blogger "emptywheel" of DailyKos and The Next Hurrah explained her motivation for doggedly pursuing this story: that Iran-Contra never got properly explained to the public, and that's why this "cast of characters" is back (Poindexter et al). If we can tell this story, perhaps, perhaps that won't happen again. She sees a role for bloggers in digging into why and how reporters are being spun. We have the numbers and leisure to explore the reasons for various lawyers' pronouncements to the press, and to examine the meaning of each court filing.

Larry Johnson is now an international business consultant, but he has previously worked for the CIA and the State Department, and he was a member of Valerie Plame's class coming into the CIA. He's a lifelong conservative, who came forward because he "can't stand seeing conservatives defending the indefensible". He sees the need for everyone to keep hammering the facts, since damage was done, which he sees as nothing short of treason. He emphasized that we can't let this affair be painted as partisan - it's about the functioning of our intelligence services and our government.

Christy Smith has worked as an attorney. She has been doing a lot of legal analysis for the discussions at Firedoglake. She contributed a good explanation of what the grand jury hearing about this case is. As one would not know from the press coverage, the results from the Fitzgerald probe are being presented to a regular grand jury, not a special grand jury. Thus we got a lot of bad reporting when the "term" of the grand jury was up (when they handed down the Libby indictment). A special grand jury can be convened for a particular investigation, and that type of jury adjourning without "finishing up" would be significant. The regular grand jury is just the grand jury empanelled to hear all investigations going on at the federal level in DC. So, every two years, a new jury is brought in, and any federal prosecutor in DC seeking an indictment brings his case before these same people. They are only required to be available two days a week, and they are often not called. As Christy pointed out, "no one wants to waste a grand jury's time", since that could prejudice the jurors, not just against that particular indictment, but against all the prosecutors' cases. She wishes someone would actually stake out the jury room, so we'd know who was being called (or called again and again) to testify. The press got used to Ken Starr's office leaking all kinds of stuff to the press, which was terrible. Patrick Fitzgerald is running his investigation professionally, and we should be pleased that we're not getting any leaks. But that doesn't mean the press should ignore developments. . .

Next up: "The Culture of Journalism: Getting a story out there"

My trip to YearlyKos: Part One

I just got back from Las Vegas, where I attended the first-ever YearlyKos Convention. This was a fantastic event, and I came back feeling absolutely wiped out - but also energized about politics, and about what we "amateur" political writers and thinkers can do to improve the state of democracy in America.

Here's a story from the New York Times. Oh, and another one.

This was the first time since Dean's big Seattle rally that I've been at an event with heavy press coverage. And it's certainly the first time that I've really felt like part of the story.

Part One of an extremely long report:

I got there Thursday afternoon, in time to catch part of the "Pacific Coast Caucus", a well-moderated discussion, which had turned to what improvements we were all looking for on the ground in our local parties and campaigns. Coordination and training of canvassers and phone-bankers came up, as well as what we as bloggers can do to best direct efforts to where they're needed. I met "demandcaring", a really smart lady (MIT grad and PhD from Stanford!), and we hung out quite a bit during the rest of the show. She was bemoaning her screen-name, since it's a play on words, and therefore doesn't lend itself to being said out-loud. At least she didn't have the misfortune to be one of the folks with a string of random numbers and letters!

Next, there was a caucus of the science bloggers, which of course got bogged down with how to argue with ID'ers at school board meetings, and other ways to combat the forces of ignorance. A couple of high-profile folks from Europe were shocked and discouraged that this was the big topic here.

There was an evening party with cocktail food, a keynote by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, and humor from Laughing Liberally and Tom Tomorrow. Afterwards I took the opportunity to pick up a signed copy of his latest book of cartoons, Hell in a Handbasket. And I met "Trendar", a British ex-pat with an executive job in the Bay Area. We got along famously, and wound up closing down PF Chang's.

Friday morning, the desert sun woke me up at 6am, despite my best efforts, so I went down to grab a bagel in the coffee shop. I wound up, with Dr. Laniac, discussing the Nash equilibrium and the "tragedy of the Commons" with two hung-over college-age Libertarians who were waiting to go to the airport. It was entertaining. Then it was off to "Championing Science" with Gen. Wesley Clark, PZ Myers of Pharyngula (one of the top science blogs), and Chris Mooney (author of The Republican War on Science). Gen. Clark focussed on what policy can do positively ('50s push for science education) and negatively (the current "manufactured" crisis in education, both in terms of allowing creationism to seep into the classroom, and budget cutbacks for research and education). Chris Mooney talked about the process used by the right-wing machine to get bad science used in policy (think tanks and advocacy groups are being used to do an end-run past universities, peer-review, etc.). His money quote: "Misinformation on science is inherently political: Respond in kind!" PZ talked about the challenges we face, which need good science to inform policy: peak oil, climate change, pandemics, declining biodiversity, international competition. He suggested that to get more "pro-science community activism", we need to pry scientists out of their labs and classrooms, get them engaged and speaking out publicly. The panel finished up with a short bit from Wendy Northcutt of the Darwin Awards.

More to come. . .

Abject* Lesson

A friend of mine is facing a situation worse than any I would have imagined possible for him. And in the spirit of learning from others' experiences, I ask everyone who reads this to think - really hard - about the following:

If you were to find yourself suddenly cast into a terrible situation, where you absolutely had to rely on the help of other people - do you know who those people would be? And would those people be both willing and able to help you?

Imagine the worst financial crisis, coupled with a life-threatening illness, then throw in some relationship and family complications. Who could you call on? What could they do for you?

If you don't have ready answers (and kudos if you do), start thinking about who you surround yourself with, and how you interact with them . . . for, until catastrophe strikes, there's still time to make some friends, or make amends with old ones.

*abject, being of the most miserable kind, from the Latin ab jacere: to cast out

My old flame. . .

There's an old tune (not Cole Porter, as I had imagined) that goes:

My old flame, I can't even think of his name,
But it's funny now and then, my thoughts go flashing back again
to my old flame

And this crept into my mind, not about an actual old flame, but about my first acting partner. I recall the piece we performed with great detail, I can even remember some things about the rehearsal process, but his name? No.

It's been so long since I got a chance to really act, and I'm determined to sign up for a non-trivial acting class, though it scares the holy hell out of me. And I think that first acting assignment came back to haunt me for this one reason - it was fantastic! It was incredibly, all-consumingly wonderful. Exhausting, ecstatic, thrilling. And probably because I got an acting partner, in a stupid, freshman-elective class, who was willing to do the work. God bless him for it, wherever he is.

It had no business being as good of an experience as it was.

We were assigned a scene from the Play "Loose Ends" (no, not the infamous "abortion" scene). The characters are a couple in their 30s. We were college freshmen or sophomores, and I wasn't even 19. The scene takes up where the couple have just finished a picnic lunch with friends, and their friends have left. They have been living apart - one in Boston, the other New York, ostensibly for career reasons - and whichever one of them arranged the lunch obviously invited the other couple as a buffer, so that their first interaction in what has probably been weeks would not be private. They talk about trivial and less-trivial things, and then they kiss. It could have really sucked.

Now, we had a great acting teacher, who mercifully turned us on to the proper use of props, but I also called in reinforcements. A dear friend of mine was taking one of the "real" acting classes for Theater majors (she was studying Choreography), and I appealed to her for coaching help. Later, she couldn't remember having "done anything", but she put us through a couple of exercises her class had done, and they really got us focussed. The one that sticks in my mind is one where you perform the entire scene in physical contact with your partner, but adjust and change your contact with every line of dialogue.

On the day of the performance, I got so wrapped up in the scene that the audience didn't even exist. My partner and I did mundane things, quibbled, comforted each other, lost our tempers and threw things, and then reconciled in a quiet but intense kiss. You could hear a pin drop. I looked over at the group of students all sitting on the wooden floor of the studio, and saw three girls in the front row literally crying - and then applauding madly. I don't know if I can even express how I felt at that moment, but all I wanted was to find a way to do it again.

I wonder what his name was. . .

Trapped on an old Mac with Netscape. . .

I haven't abandoned this blog. Seriously. But Blogger suddenly stopped working on my old Mac with Netscape. I could look at my blog - smell it, taste it, hear it - but not touch it.

For some reason, when I asked to post, I could enter a title for my post, but no body text. (Prior to that, the body text would fail to wrap, so I had to scroll sideways forever to look over a long paragraph, but at least I could type!).

So what am I doing posting? Well, I held my nose and downloaded Internet Explorer 5.1 and I'm using that. Ewwwww. I feel unclean. It's ugly looking as well as inherently evil.

Hopefully by Christmas, I'll have a nice new shiny iMac, probably with something like Firefox. And hopefully, the nice people at Blogger will support that. . .