happy mother's day

There is nothing more inspiring than when you are out for a jog feeling pretty good about your fitness level & performance when a woman passes you . . . going uphill . . . pushing a jog stroller . . . with twins.

The Fire is Burning

The Arcade Fire is no longer an underground sensation or one of those bands where people say "oh yeah, they sound familiar." I first heard of them in the fall of 2006 and they didn't immediately grab me. At the time I was more skeptical of semi-electronic sounding music and preferred being able to listen to each instrument in turn. They vocals on the songs I heard also seemed a bit obscured, which doesn't generally suit me.

It was the following spring or summer that I learned - listening to their first full length album "Funeral" on the metro to and from work and internships. Their music has something special and I still can't quite put my finger on it.

Friday night I saw them in concert for the first time. They played DAR Constitution Hall here in D.C., which is not one of the better places to see a show. Having come up on the Allman Brothers and then Phish and Widespread Panic, I am accustomed to seeing concerts where there aren't a great deal of stops between songs and the songs are generally between 6 and 8 minutes, so it was difficult to adjust to shorter songs with longer stops after each song. The 80 minute set is what I'm used to being the first set, not the whole show.

But all that said, the show was great. The energy in the room started to coalesce about half way through and the band did a nice job building momentum into the end of the show and the encore. If you have a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it.

Their records, however, absolutely must be on your shelf. No collection is complete without them. This could be the best band of the decade.

Even more taken than I was, a writer from the Washington Post characterized the band as "a sort of modern-day art-rock answer to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" and found "an undeniable grandeur and a thrilling vastness to the songs . . . but it's no empty bombast: In the studio and especially in concert, Arcade Fire's emotional music plays as deeply meaningful, soul-stirring art."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050500995.html

Here are 2 mp3s from their show in New York on February 17 of this year. The first is a bit slower and close to spoken word. The other is not:

My Body is a Cage

Keep the Car Running



* I should recognize that the brothers who lead the band are from Texas, although they moved to Canadia before forming the band.

tit for tat

I'm not sure what Ms. Goodling expected to happen when she declined to go before Congress and lie for her boss, but we all could have seen this one coming:

Justice Dept. Announces Inquiry Into Its Hiring

By ERIC LIPTON and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Justice Department has begun an internal investigation into whether a former senior adviser to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales improperly tried to fill vacancies for career prosecutors at the agency with Republicans loyal to the Bush administration, department officials said Wednesday.

The inquiry focuses on whether the former adviser, Monica Goodling, sought to determine the political affiliations of job applicants before they were hired as prosecutors — potentially a violation of civil service laws and a break with a tradition of nonpartisanship in the career ranks at the Justice Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/washington/03attorneys.html


And I sure am excited to learn that the biggest richest most complex tax evaders don't get audited because they are too big rich and complex. Now that's something to set your sights on:

I.R.S. Curtails Many Audits in Tax Havens

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Internal Revenue Service is curtailing audits of many people who use offshore tax havens, even when agents see signs of tax evasion, because agents fear they cannot meet a three-year deadline for finishing an examination, Congressional investigators have found.

In a report to be released on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office found that I.R.S. agents are so hobbled by “dilatory tactics” by offshore taxpayers and other problems that it takes almost two and a half years to complete a typical audit.

Many I.R.S. agents told the G.A.O., the investigative arm of Congress, that the “safest way” was often to stop an audit prematurely and sometimes to refrain from starting one in the first place.

The I.R.S. reported that almost $300 billion in investment and business income was moved out of the United States in 2003. Analysts at the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that the annual outflow has shot to more than $400 billion since then.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/business/03tax.htm

not as easy as it seems

at first blush, even the NRA agrees that people who have been involuntarily committed and deemed mentally ill or a danger to them self or others should not be able to purchase guns. Indeed, it is a rare thing that the NRA supports a restriction on gun sales, or individual's right to purchase guns, so this must be a no-brainer right?

I'm not sure. Of course, it is already illegal for people falling within these categories to purchase guns. The problem lies in reporting by state agencies who are bound by state privacy laws. With the events at Virginia Tech fresh on everyone's mind and conscience, there is a new push to enforce these laws by creating or giving full effect to the national data base against which background checks are performed. That is something I do not support.

There should not be a federal law that preempts state privacy protections, especially for the mentally ill. There should not be a federally centralized list of all the crazy people in the country. If you want to buy a gun, then I think you give up certain privacy protections and one of those is being forced to divulge your mental health history.

But I do not want to buy a gun, and I do not want my name or anyone else's name in that database. Being put in a database is an infringement on your privacy, and you should not be forced to do that so that other people can buy guns more quickly. This returns us to the world of a couple day waiting period - it could even be an overnight or several hour thing. Each state would be networked and when you want to buy a gun, the dealer sends out the request and any states that have you on their list respond.

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02guns.html

see also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050200282.html


in other news, this is why I try to stick with Organic foods as much as possible:

Millions Of Chickens Fed Tainted Pet Food
Risk to Consumers Minimal, FDA Says

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; A01

At least 2.5 million broiler chickens from an Indiana producer were fed pet food scraps contaminated with the chemical melamine and subsequently sold for human consumption, federal health officials reported yesterday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050102071.html

These Gray Days

The funny thing about spring time is that you oscillate between days of gray skies and rain, wishing for the sun to come out, and then the sun comes out for a couple days and all you want is some rain to wash away the pollen.

These Gray Days
Lyrics by Jerry Joseph

It's a thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
A thin line between charity and greed
What I want, what I need
Lately I ain't had much to say
Something seems to tie my tongue
On these gray days

A thin line between loneliness and crowds
Talking till you're burning, baby
A thin line between heaven and catastrophe
Who we really are, who we really want to be
Lately when things don't go my way
I'm taking comfort in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between the oven and the sun
Thank God for giving me the cover
These gray days are better than none

Thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
Lately I've tried to learn to pray
To see the miracle in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between danger and the fun
Hold tight, my enemy and lover
These gray days are better than none

Lately I try to understand
Am I acting like a child or acting like a man
Do we take each other hostage
Or are we simply holding hands
Who's to say, on these gray days

Download an mp3 of this song from The Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh NC, April 21, 2007.
Full show from http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=506103

Sidetrack hijacked

I remember in college a good portion of my friends had prescriptions to ritalin or other ADD drugs. They would doll them out when people had tests or papers, or honestly sometimes when people just had a hair up their ass and wanted to snort some pseudo cocaine I guess.

The trick that people learned was that when they took the stuff, they had to go study before it kicked in because if they didn't, they'd end up totally focused and zeroed in on something other than their books. I can't count how many times the house got cleaned up because someone forgot that rule, or I'd come home during spring exams and the grass that hadn't been cut in months would not only be perfectly mowed (with the diagonal checkerboard no less), but the clippings would be raked, the sidewalks edged, and the hedges trimmed.


What made me think of this? Well, it's 10:00 on a Thursday night. I have my first exam of the season on Saturday (which is also happily my second to last exam of all time, assuming all goes well). I put the coffee on around 8:30 and so far I know a lot about lawn striping and the failures of previous Carolina Panther drafts, but I don't know much more about Conflicts of Law than I did when I dropped an extra sugar cube in my java.

prologue: based on my google searches, I have discovered that the lawn care term of art is not "diagonal checkerboard" but that the effect is a variation of "lawn striping"

All my Ex's live . . .

Over a year ago I started a serial topic called "Texas is Great," but it never got off the ground. Well here is the latest installment. You can check out previous posts here, or by scrolling down a little and clicking on the "Label" list at right.

Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, April 25 — A revolt by lawmakers has blocked Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to make Texas the first state to require sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

In a 135-to-2 vote that appeared veto-proof, the Texas House gave final passage on Wednesday to a Senate bill that bars the state from ordering the shots until at least 2011. Even many supporters of the governor resented Mr. Perry’s proposal as an abuse of executive authority.

“There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease,” said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston who sponsored the Senate bill to overturn the governor’s order. It passed 30 to 1 on Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/us/26texas.html

The worst thing about this episode is that the Gov. was trying to do something that is truly progressive and what I think is a wonderful expenditure of resources. I understand that to many people an STD may not be a "true communicable" disease, but legislators need to look at public health realities rather than their personal sense of morals when deciding how to address medical issues.

The reality is that girls are sexually active at a young age. They are unlikely to ask their parents for the vaccine and many of the highest risk families probably can't afford it anyway. The government is in a position to save their lives, and the Texas legislature voted almost unanimously to let them die instead.


on the iPod:
Ryan Adams, Jacksonville City Nights

marching one by one

Today the ants are busy
beside my front steps, weaving
in and out of the hill they're building.
I watch them emerge and—

like everything I've forgotten—disappear
into the subterranean, a world
made by displacement.


These are the first words of Natasha Trethewey's poem Monument, from her Pulitzer Prize winning book Native Guard. She was on the News Hour this evening. Check the MP3 and more of her poetry here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_trethewey.html


News of the Day

People like this give good normal liberals a bad name. When Nancy Pelosi thinks you're focusing on the wrong part of the story, that should make you stop and reevaluate the reasons why you're doing what you're doing and why you get out of bed every day.

Democratic lawmaker seeks to impeach Cheney

Reuters
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; 7:44 PM

(Corrects day of the week in lead to Tuesday)

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Democratic lawmaker opposed to the Iraq war initiated a bid on Tuesday to remove Vice President Dick Cheney from office that even his own party leaders dismissed as futile.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio introduced three articles of impeachment in the Democratic-led House of Representatives against Cheney, accusing him of having misled the country into its 2003 invasion of Iraq and, more recently, threatening Iran without cause.

"I believe the vice president's conduct of office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation," said Kucinich, who is making a long-shot bid for the White House.

Shortly after Democrats took control of Congress in January from Bush's Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not consider impeachment, a highly divisive issue that could tie Capitol Hill into knots.

"Nothing has changed. It's off the table," said Nadeam Elshami, a Pelosi spokesman. "We're focusing on tough issues like bringing the war in Iraq to a responsible end."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/24/AR2007042401963.html

$$$

This is the time of year that everyone hits up everyone for fund raising support for a good cause. Tina is my fourth friend to send me such an e-mail - I've already contributed to a charity that rescues homeless animals, a ride for research into childhood diabetes (that's the one you're born with, not the one you earn by eating like shit for years upon years), and my cousin's Relay for Life team, which earned over 20k.

Soon I'll be sending my own e-mail trying to raise money for the Race for a Cure breast cancer run/walk here in D.C.

I know that receiving these e-mails can get tedious, but after participating in the Race for a Cure last year, I can attest to how meaningful it is to see someone contribute to your cause and support your efforts. So - don't blow your whole wad on the first e-mail that comes across your in-box. The important thing is giving something, not giving a lot. Drop a 10 or 20 spot and the person will feel huge.

I kept a mental list of everyone who contributed to my fund raising and thought of them all as I ran my race.

So, if I did it right, I added a $ tracker on the side of my blog for Tina's efforts to go work with children in Costa Rica. Costa Rica - I know, that was my reaction, but what are you gonna do? She's my friend and I support her. You can too.

OCD Much?

The people that live above me vacuum a lot. I mean like, WAY too much. They are vacuuming right now - 10:17 on a Tuesday night. I hear them vacuum about 4 times a week, and I'm not home THAT much.

I don't know what to tell them. It doesn't bother me that much, but that's only because I am a student and it isn't that loud. I figure I just shouldn't say anything in case I ever start playing music late at night and they try to complain.

"What? You think my music's too loud?!!? Shouldn't you be vacuuming anyway?" And then they will suddenly realize that I am right, they should be vacuuming, and run back upstairs having forgotten that my music was too loud.


NEWS OF THE DAY:

I'll start working for the government next year, making less money than I could if I were working for the private sector. I hope these clowns don't ruin what really is a good benefit for me - and a program that probably goes a long way to getting commuters off the road.

U.S. Employees Selling Transit Passes Illegally, Investigators Say

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, April 23 — To save gas, cut air pollution and unclog roads, the federal government gives its workers about $250 million a year in bus and subway passes. But many of the employees drive to work anyway and sell the transit passes on the Internet for cash, according to Congressional investigators.

“The metro cards are brand new, never used and do not expire,” read one online description for subway passes in Washington, where many of the sales originate. “I am selling these because I receive them monthly as part of my benefits at work, and I now have too many.”

Government employees who resell the passes are committing fraud, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, scheduled to be released Tuesday by Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/washington/24perk.html