Thought That Came Unbidden

I have to stop reading the news because it’s starting to make me paranoid. Some things that have stood out for me lately:

1. The U.S. has recently sworn in to his second term a man completely unqualified to be President.
2. This same man has proposed a Federal Budget that slashes social programs, most notably Education, and forecasts with no supporting indicators huge growth in the economy while he calls for slashing a deficit of his own making that is larger than that of all his predecessors combined.
3. America is embroiled in a fight to “bring peace and democracy” to a small, poor, but strategically located country that has been under the rule of a dictator who was largely financed by the U.S. in the first place.
4. Civil liberties are under attack as evangelical Christians try to get discrimination codified as law.
5. The CDC has found a rare, sexually transmitted disease spreading among gay men, a disease for which there is no known treatment.
6. The poor continue to get poorer as the economy shrinks, cost of living increases, and what few new jobs are added to employment rolls are largely minimum wage, no benefits, hourly employment.
7. The Democrats can’t find their asses with both hands.

If you guessed 2005 you’d only be half right. All of these descriptions characterize events from 1985. So nice when we learn from our mistakes.

Unless I missed it, which is quite possible, NYTimes.com has changed its business model.

It used to be that if you were registered and logged into your account, you could send anyone the full text of any current article via the e-mail this article functionality. No longer. Now you can only send a link to the article, which, I’m sure, requires the person following that link to <look of shock and horror> register at NYTimes.com in order to access the content.

I suppose I shouldn’t be bitching. I’m still getting the New York Times for free. Wonder when that will change.

Today is Mardi Gras (literally Fat Tuesday), the last day of the spring festivus before Lent begins.

I used to give up being an agnostic for Lent but then the irony got to be too much even for me.

And trust me, if you’re drunk enough, and enough of a smart ass, you don’t have to show in New Orleans to get the big set of beads.

There’s been quite a bit of controversy in the DC area of red light cameras. You know, those automated monsters that take a picture of your license plate should you happen to run a stop light.

Some folks have argued that the city is simply using the cameras as a revenue source. And this is a bad thing why? Yes, yes, I know, the city’s police are supposed to ensure public safety. That might require them to get out of their cars, though, so don’t hold your breath for that one.

Some folks have argued that the red light cameras are a civil rights violation; that the photographing of someone without their permission is illegal. After days of listening to a myriad of stories about all the cameras and the stupendous monitoring center the Department of Homeland security (oh, come on! Do the Hitler Youth salute with me!) set up as a precaution for Dubya’s $40 million party but not one story about how those cameras have been removed and the monitoring center has been shut down this arguement seems pretty specious.

So citizens around the area have taken to purchasing license plate covers and sprays that try to defeat the red light cameras’ flash bulbs, obscuring the number so no ticket can be issued.

Why would you ever need one of these if you don’t run red lights?

Yesterday I sat in traffic behind a woman who had a piece of plastic that was so opaque over her back license plate I couldn’t read the numbers in broad daylight from four feet away.

Let’s not call it civil disobedience, people. It’s cheating. Don’t want to get photographed, don’t run red lights. It’s pretty simple.

Oh, yeah, and the last time I checked it cost $120 to run a red light in DC.

A couple of days before the inauguration my boss flaps down a column she’s cut out of The Washington Post and says “Here, write something about this, would you?” I read the column, it’s by E.J. Dionne who is notoriously liberal, though he didn’t used to be back when the Post still at least pretended to be a left-leaning newspaper (repeat after me: Woodward and Bernstein) which is largely a screed against President Bush, but Dionne’s remarks about ownership society and the poor jump out at me as relevant to the work the current non-profit does so I write the following:
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