in. At least, as of this Thursday.

This might even make the GOP primary debates worth watching again: the lack of Fred has made those seem like rather silly exercises.

Meanwhile, at the grassroots level, the Fredheads will be conducting monthly "Fund Fred Days," beginning on Friday, Sept. the 7th.

I love the smell of charismatic GOP presidential campaigns in the morning . . .

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Just blend it away.

Via Glenn, who has switched to kitties lately in the wake of the Michael Vick scandal. (I like "your larger blending projects" as a euphemism for "sweet, adorable mammals.")

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. . . who may or may not be African-American. It never seemed like a pressing priority to enquire in our first few months of working together, but now that we've put out most of the urgent fires, I'm starting to get curious.

Of course, one musn't go up to another person and say, "I know we've been working together for over a year . . . but I never got around to asking you if you're Black. Whaddya think? Happen to know, offhand?"

I believe part of my interest in race stems from my own mixed heritage. Most of my family members laugh at me when I claim to be Osage Indian (to the tune of 1/164 or whatever it is), but if I didn't have that ancestry, my brother might look like he's related to me: as it is, we appear to be of completely different ethnicities. Teachers never believed me when I explained that the Good Student with the Dark Skin was my brother. Some of them had to be revived with smelling salts.

When we were teenagers, my father—ever the "travelling salesman" type—recommended that my brother change his last name to Garcia, and attempt to get a college scholarship based on that faux-ethnicity. At the time, I had a good laugh, but if The Older Sibling had listened to that outrageous advice, he might not have been rejected from Harvard.

Of course, Baldilocks once hypothesized that a lot of us ultra-pale Anglo-ish Americans who can trace our ancestry back to the Mayflower (yes, it's true: I could join the DAR, if I wanted) may have Africans in our lineage.

There is, after all, the matter of my lips, which are rather full for someone as pale as I. And: my brother's mysterious, hyper-hyper-curly, kinky hair. He got that, by the way, via our very racist (and very blonde) grandfather. Hm. The plot thickens.

With any luck, my employee and I are very distant cousins—and both of us are related to the great Frederick Douglass.

It's unlikely that I'll ever get around to asking. The fact is, I tend to see actual race as a fairly arbitrary thing. And for my money, very few people have been pure-blooded anything for at least 100 years: the Nazis were simply too late.

As was Professor Fractal, who proclaimed in the 1980s that "the races should all be mixed. And I want to do that personally."

I've been meaning to tell his wife about that, of course . . . it's so unlike him, really. But he did say it.

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And I think this will create positive ripple effects. But I'd still like to see a path to citizenship, for those who merely came here to work their butts off. Call me sentimental.

Or: call me the kind of pragmatist for whom a two-pronged attack seems wiser than a frontal assault. (Isn't there an old saying about "good generalship"? Place that quote for me, please . . . AtH? Mr. Manitoba?)

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I'm tempted to buy them myself, and leave 'em out for my mom's Pit to have fun with.

Perhaps I'm missing it—I don't follow the story closely, because it makes me want to cry/commit genuine, old-fashioned homicide—but has that scumbag ever apologized to dogs, or dog-lovers? Because I rather think the NFL will be fine without him.

As far as I'm concerned, the Federal guidelines should be modified, so that anything a dog-torturer does to the animals is fair play for his own sentence.

Not that I'm angry, mind you.

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Zendo D asks some tough questions about New Orleans.

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I came down with an acute case of clientitis—that blessed, blessed disease.

And I spent two consecutive weekends on the couch, alternating between Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the latest issue of The Atlantic.

It wasn't the actual hours I put in this past week and the week before: it was a question of trying to figure out how to use a limited amount of time most effectively, and being as useful to the client as possible, when one of the pivotal players there was in a rather difficult position. I had to make continuous judgement calls regarding what matters he would or would not want brought to his attention.

Total mess. Knocked the stuffing out of me. Plus, my battery problems make it harder for me to work on the laptop from the living room. So, Dead Tree Media seemed like the obvious choice when it was time to go into nervous collapse.

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Goldstein on media bias and "unnatural" acts.

Via Glenn.

Of course, if one wanted a more neutral example that doesn't involve sexuality (the media rationale being that we are such gay-bashers anyway, it's positively a public service to "out" members of the GOP, and it's much more relevant to assign an "R" than a "D" to those accused of sex acts), one might look at coverage of corruption among public officials. In those particular cases the trend is to either label the miscreant "Republican" or not to mention his/her party affiliation at all.

GPW (also via Insty): "Craig should resign." Yup. We're beyond the "dead girl, live boy" stuff, thank goodness—but I don't think it's too much to ask that elected officials get, you know—a room.

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I wish I were there.

ScanMan writes:

I'm sitting in a colorfully lit tent listening to
guitar music watching ornately costumed people
wandering aimlessly, seeking true purpose.

In the distance, someone's dancing to "Lets do the
Time Warp Again" at the Rocky Horror theme camp.

In the middle of the Nevada desert, there is little
purpose.

I dunno. I think dancing the Time Warp might qualify, in a pinch.

Of course, the name of the song is "The Time Warp." Just in case you're interested. (Hey! How come no one wants to hang around with proofreaders and fact-checkers in his/her spare time? Here's a real-life conversation:

"Would it help you if I were to correct your entries on the household shopping list?"

"No. And it wouldn't help the marriage, either."

No rest for the wicked—or the obsessive-compulsive.)

Have a great time, Mikal and ScanMan. Send lot of larfs & pix.

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are the result of grotesque hyperbole.

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More on the Rosia Montana mining controversey. The environmental extremists are looking worse and worse.

If it were up to me, everyone would see Mine Your Own Business; the points it makes go well beyond Transylvanian gold.

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1 As bad as the environmental extremists look, they smell even worse.

Posted by: John at August 23, 2007 05:27 PM (njYUy)

2 Maybe these environmental wacko's will pay the local folks their wage differential. (I know there is as much danger of that as the wacko's minding their own business). This crap will continue until we figure out a way to hit the environmentalists in the pocketbook. Can ATH write a movie about the environmentalists having to pay the locals?

Posted by: RWB at August 26, 2007 03:42 PM (jaO5K)

3 Anything he accomplishes in that arena has to be managed through extreme stealth . . . believe me.

Posted by: Attila Girl at August 27, 2007 11:30 PM (VgDLl)

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That's one way to get people away from abortion, and onto the Second Amendment.

I realize that it's different on the SoCon side of town, but in the libertarian camp guns are, hands down, Rudy's weakest issue—just as free speech has been John McCain's.

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I'll take it.

(Okay. Fixed.)

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This nice doggie site is wonderful. It doesn't just include examples of media bias and reflections on how to combat Breed-Specific Legislation (BSL); it also has lots of pretty pictures of lovable Pit Bulls.

Since yesterday was the day of the Big Nonprofit Meeting, I stayed over at my mom's place on Friday night. I usually ask her to take the dog in with her at night and close the door, so I don't have to worry about putting all my gear and books and purse and jewelry up/out of reach.

But the other night the puppy sounded like she wasn't settling down quite yet, so I went in and brought her back out to the hall. My mother got up later to get her midnight snack and found us curled up together on the rug. Apparently, I didn't wake up when the mom raided the refrigerator, but she checked the dog bowl and got out some dry food. I hear that was too much for Mandy, who had to desert me so she could go into the kitchen and show my mother what a good dog she was. There is, as I understand it, genuine magic in the sound of a dog-food canister.

So I woke up alone and went back to bed—which means the back couch in the family room at my mom's.

In the morning my mother came back out, and the dog with her. Mandy jumped onto the end of the couch, and curled up there at my feet while my mother made breakfast.

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So, after the meeting I'm putting something away and I overhear this priceless tidbit:

A: "I can't believe we gave that project such a good sendoff."

B: "But—Holy Crap!—what a lot of work. I told Ms. Subcomittee Chair that after that many months of us busting our butts, she owes me either a dry martini, or one really big joint."

A: "Get her to cough up both. I'll meet you two at your place next Friday; you take the joint, and I'll have the martini. With a little luck, she can pay it all off in one night."

They say that if you really want to get to know yourself, you should work in a nonprofit for a while . . .

As for me, I think I wasted my time on the wrong subcommittee.

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[Spoiler-free. I think.]

The husband and I saw Phoenix on Monday, and now I'm re-reading the book again. It's only my third Potter book in as many weeks. I'm half shocked and half delighted to see myself spinning into full-bore fan-girl mode this way, of course. It happens so rarely for me: every 30 years or so. When I'm 75 I'm quite certain some bit of popular culture—something current—will catch my eye, and I'll obsess over it. For a year or so, I'll be hip. I'm counting on it, if you want to know the truth.

It's a difficult moment, though: my husband has seen The Order of the Phoenix, but has not read The Deathly Hallows. My mother has read The Deathly Hallows, but has not seen The Order of the Phoenix (we may attempt to catch it in 3D, if it's still around next week).

But of course from moment to moment I'm not sure what I should—or may—talk to either one of them about. I musn't say too much about Hallows around the house, or I'll ruin it for my husband. I musn't discuss the casting choices in Phoenix with my mother, or I won't get a fresh perspective on it when she does see the film.

These, of course, are high-quality problems. Unless I do let something slip.

I'm ready to call my stepmother, who has a theory about some exotic discontinuity she thinks she caught in Hallows, that she was bursting to tell me two weeks ago—before I'd read the thing. I mean, sure: I've found some tiny little irregularities, but that's to be expected. After all, I'm a freakin' fact-checker, and Rowling suspended this work over the course of seven gazillion-paged books. It would have been bizarre if I hadn't caught a tiny error or two. The stepmother theory is different, of course; she honestly thinks she's caught Rowling in a major inconsistency of characterization. Naturally, I'm dying to know what that might be.

[Spoilers permitted in the comments section, if necessary: Honey, don't read this thread all the way through.]

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"Every day that your husband doesn't link me, I feel vaguely aggrieved. Is this pathological?"

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. . . on why we fight.

Via Insty.

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Beth at My Right Wing Conspiracy just let Ellen Goodman have it over her assertions about the paucity of women in the blogosphere. (Wait. I thought Goodman was only alleging that the leftosphere was sexist. Guess I was wrong . . .)

Yeah. Loved Goodman using support-for-Hillary as a litmus test. The Daily Kos is definitely where I'd go to find centrists of the type who might vote for Hillary. (There is more to a candidate than her internal plumbing, Ellen.)

UPDATE: Juliette tells us where not to go if we want our preconceived notions of an "old boys' bloggers' network" confirmed.

And Sissy Willis thanks us for the trip down memory lane.

Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake defends the leftosphere:

There’s plenty of sexism in the blogosphere, don’t get me wrong, with a strong dose coming from the right wing and an even stronger dose coming from the “why don’t you link to me” crowd on the left. But this “there are no women in the blogosphere” whinge is deeply sexist and insulting to those of us with two X chromosomes who work all day at this and what we’ve managed to achieve. [. . . ] It’s a narrative that both wingnuts and the MSM alike are fond of pushing and my guess is that it’s off to the races thanks to misniformation provided by people who don’t blog, aren’t the community builders of the blogosphere and haven’t had enough exposure to it to have any kind of sophistication to their analysis. With people in the MSM on the receiving end only too willing to erase us women from the political landscape in order to grind their axe, I don’t expect we’ll be getting the kind of credit we deserve any time soon.

Well, Jane, you know: not every wingnut is pushing that same narrative. There are exceptions.

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Which means that I finally dared to read Caltech Girl's review, though she does keep it nicely spoiler-free. (The link, of course, does contain spoilers.)

She quotes the first review as pointing out that Book #7 in the Harry Potter series lacks charm, but that didn't really concern me. Given how much had to be packed into this installment, it was inevitable that its structure and pacing would be different from that of the others. I was absolutely aghast, after all, when I finished The Half-Blood Prince and realized how much ground she was going to have to cover in the final volume.

But she manages it—the trade-off being that the last book reads like an action movie some of the time. But I never remember anyone complaining that the Die Hard series lacked "charm."

The thing that Rowling attempts, in this series—and largely manages, quite well—is that she duplicates the experience of adolescence, in real time. That is, subsequent generations will be able to read one of these books per year, at an appropriate level of development. I don't think that's ever been done before: even the Little House books, though they come close, don't change in the same way. The sentences get a bit longer, but the words don't. The subject matter becomes courtship, rather than store-bought soap vs. homemade. What doesn't get broached are the Big Issues: good vs. evil, the permanence of the soul, the enticing possibility of life after death. And those books remain charming. Yet charm is not part of the experience of being 17 years old. Not in any conventional sense. It's appropriate that it falls by the wayside as one moves along in J.K. Rowling's series. (I did once read a fascinating article in American Heritage that discussed The Long Winter, and suggested it as a candidate for Great American Novel. Certainly, it is the most adult of the Little House Books, and the bravest. But it is still social history more than politics and theology.)

I found myself in these last few Harry Potter books (as with the very early ones) thinking once more about A Wrinkle in Time, which also tackled the subject of evil. And Madeleine L'Engle came to exactly the same conclusion J.K. Rowling did: when good sets out to fight evil, it is the power of love that is its main weapon.

And those who have truly given themselves over to evil cannot see this.

More below the fold, spoilers and all. more...

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