Deltiology: Blogging in Boston

Tale of the Mail
This week alone I've received some interesting junk mail (I use the term not to demean, but to distinguish this mail from personal mail or bills).

I got a piece today in a standard business envelope that features a small picture of the president that was apparently taken right after Flight Suit Boy determined that someone in the Oval Office who had already dared question his tax cut proposal had taken his or her impertinence a step farther and cut a rotten egg fart. Red lettering next to his face reads, "Your Survival Guide to the Bush Administration." Hmm. Is this the big check I need to move into the tax bracket that's actually going to benefit from the tax cut? Is it directions to the local blood bank? I flip it over and find that, of course, they want money. But, "For only $12 a year!" I get this: "Survival tips from columnists Molly Ivins, Howard Zinn, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Eduardo Galeano. Plus, warning signs of the "New McCarthyism," and how to agitate against George W.'s messianic militarism." Oh, it's just The Progressive. Sorry, folks, can't spare the ten bucks. I promise that if I can ever get a job with dental coverage, I'll go to a really hip dentist who keeps you in his waiting room.

And here's a provocative piece of mail. I'm advised to not even open it if I "believe in big media." On the envelope are pictured Bill O'Reilly, Brit Hume, and some other folks from Fox News. I'm confused. Are they big media? Big egos, yes. Big sucking wound where their integrity used to be, check. Cabeza grande, at least, on O'Reilly. That thing's got a No Parking sign on it. It's got a guard shack. But big media? Fox? Oh, I get it, as I rip open the envelope. The friggin' Nation wants me to subscribe. What's their subscriber base? Dudes, I read you in the public library like all the bums.

Last week I got something from Nancy Pelosi asking me questions about Democratic positions. But no good questions. It was the junk mail equivalent of "How's my hair?" She could have gone on C-Span and said "Everything's cool" and saved some trees. Nancy, you wanna please me? Get that killer instinct. Go fuck somebody up who deserves it.

And now today, a big blue 9x12 envelope containing "Time-Sensitive Petitions." The headline (yes, today mail has a headline) reads, "The Bush Administration's Assault on the Environment -- and what you can do to stop it." This piece is from an organization called Earthjustice, whose slogan is "Because the earth needs a good lawyer." (I'm confused again. The earth? Like the freaking dirt? Save the soil? What ever happened to the Earth? You know, the third planet from the sun? The big capitalized ball of carbon and calamity? Who's the president of earth, ee cummings?)

Well, they want me to sign these petitions. And they need money. So I can just sign the things (four of them, addressed to Bill Frist, Tom Daschle, Denny Hastert, and Nancy Pelosi). Or I can sign them and send along a contribution (even environmental lawyers have to pay the rent). If I send some money in, I get . . . . you guessed it, PBS viewers, a tote bag featuring the artwork of Elly Simmons, who, judging by the small picture of the bag that is included, might be a grade schooler.

And now I'm looking and looking . . . and looking . . . and there it is, printed at the bottom of ONE of the six different pieces of paper included in this large envelope sent to me by an environmental group based in Oakland, California: "Recycled Paper."

Classic "I'll find my self-awareness after I find my car keys" comment of the year
This from Jayson Blair, ex-journalist, to Newsweek, in a bloated story:

"I can't say anything other than the fact that I feel a range of emotions including guilt, shame, sadness, betrayal, freedom and appreciation for those who have stood by me, been tough on me, and have taken the time to understand that there is a deeper story and not to believe everything they read in the newspapers."

Aren't we all just a little like Osama?
Rumsy thinks so. Asked to assess Bin Laden's fate, the Secretary of War had this to say: "He's either alive, or he's alive and injured badly, or he's dead. Who knows?"

For the record, I fall into category A, as do most of my friends.

Tiger couldn't tame this golf course
Here is the latest redistricting map proposed by Tom "Dale Gribble of the House" Delay and his merry band of GOP strongarms. Make sense?

Invasionary forces to market "getting your fucking head blown off" to Iraqis as end result of looting
I can't believe we'd put that wonderful relationship we have with the Middle Eastern people in jeapordy by threatening to kill looters.

One representative of the American military, when asked to clarify this new policy, said, "They are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around" -- the word being that assaults on property, violent crime, and whatnot will be dealt with by the use of lethal force. Apparently the invasion was so overwhelming that Iraq fell into coalition (read: American) hands before a lot of the people our government sent over there got a chance to shoot at anybody.

As for making sure the "word gets around," warnings about lethal force -- and the possibility that Flight Suit Boy himself will fly in on a fighter jet in a Lethal Force costume -- will replace the Baghdad Times sports page above the urinals of popular sports bars in the region. Highly rated television programs will carry a message at the start of each show worded as follows: "If you got the TV that you are currently watching by looting, we will shoot you. So you better enjoy "C.S.I." while you can." Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks is also being forced -- as part of her efforts to regain her citizenship by demonstrating her commitment to fervent, mindless nationalism -- to repeat the warning during shows on the group's current tour. The Chicks are not playing in the Middle East, but the White House is confident that any remarks made by Maines concerning the Middle East will be picked up by most mainstream news sources on Earth, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter.

What's next, Tom "The Dale Gribble of the House" Delay using Homeland Security agents to spray White House for termites?
The Department of Homeland Security is being used to track down Texas Democrats. And we thought Tom Ridge was supposed to help protect us from terrorists, not Democrats.

And yes, the Department of You Thought They Couldn't Sink Any Lower But Hey Remember These Are Republicans They Represent The Real Strivers In Our Great Great Nation thought you'd like to know that state troopers at the beck and call of the GOP have "staked out a hospital where one lawmaker's premature twins are being cared for" and made it difficult for staffers there to do their jobs.

Right under his picture in the dictionary
Ben Tripp on why he is finally able to call Flight Suit Boy the F-word.

This isn't Must See TV, folks. Karl Rove just can't cancel Osama and make him go away
Deltiology is paying a few bills this week, but when he gets home from the slaughterhouse it's good to know that there is excellent, must-read blogitude like this to read. The guys filling in at Daily Kos are doing a great job.

We might be finding out now that the worst thing Bush could have done was to try to make Osama Bin Laden into a historical footnote -- in lieu of catching him and completely dismantling his organization (instead of thinking of new ways to get himself quoted in the Al Qaeda recruitment brochure). As the search for WMD in Iraq continues to turn up nothing, the Osama Question becomes even more nerve-wracking. Why did the American mainstream media let the Bush Administration off the hook when it decided to wipe Osama off of the front page and therefore out of the minds of many Americans?

Bush fiddles while Rome burns, and all the mainstream media can do is praise his playing.

Sometimes in life you have to scroll way the hell down the page
I am an insignificant microbe.

There's a-gonna be a hangin' on the House floor
The "AWOL Democrats" have been found in Oklahoma, dining at Denny's and plotting their next move. While I could probably spend a few thousand words chuckling about the strange fact that an Austin newspaper can call anybody AWOL without blushing, the real laugher here is that House Speaker Tom Craddick is about to ask the federal government for help arresting the Democrats, since the Texas Rangers have no jurisdiction in Oklahoma. I double dog dare ya, Tommy, to call in the Feds. How's it gonna look when the federal government is used to basically enforce a vote on redistricting that is being driven by the White House? Think Karl Rove will be on the lead horse, with Tom "Exterminator" Delay close behind blowing his trumpet?

The Waco Tribune has pointed out the hypocrisy of Craddick, who has called the Democrats "chicken D's" for leaving the state:

"Craddick has no one to blame but himself. He helped write history when he was one of 30 members of the Texas House who disappeared during the 1971 legislative session."

Add it to the stack of GOP hypocrisy files. Natalie Maines ought to be ashamed to be from the same state as these people.

Blame me, Massholes
I bought an air conditioner to stick in one my windows Saturday. So of course today it's in the 40s and raining. I take full karmal responsibility.

Like Texas Republicans need an excuse to shoot people
Boy does it suck when the Democrats play dirty, doesn't it? Gets those 'publi-panties in just so many wads.

Texas Democrats are "hiding out" to block a vote on a congressional redistricting plan being pushed by Karl Rove, I mean Republicans. Of course, this opens up the Democrats to a bunch of jokes about how they're most effective when they stay at home, but that's okay. I'm happy to see the GOP'rs squealing -- everything bad always happens to them, ya know.

From the Statesman (which I assume is the brother paper of the Stateswoman):

"House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, ordered the Department of Public Safety to hunt down the missing members when it became clear the House didn't have the 100 members needed for a quorum. The missing includes 53 who submitted letters announcing they would not be showing up.

"That's not the process," Craddick said of the mass exodus. "And I think the 'chicken Ds' that did this ought to be ashamed of themselves today. And that's what they are, is a bunch of chicken Ds.""

Aw, Tom, what are you gonna do, put them in Congress Jail?

Tweed is good
Can we hear a little more about Josh Marshall's freaking dissertation drama? I hope Brown sews his elbow patches onto his jacket fast so he can get over it.

The GOP attack machine
I'm almost bored by the idea that the GOP continues to navigate politics without a hint of shame or ethics. They don't play fair. Democrats worry about policy and its effects on, you know, people, and Republicans just decide who's unpatriotic in order to meet their needs. Big news? Nah, but Dan Kennedy at the Boston Phoenix has a good piece on it this week anyway:

"The effect is to create an atmosphere in which dissent -- and dissenters -- are publicly humiliated, their careers and livelihoods threatened, thus serving as an object lesson to anyone else who might think about deviating from the Republican-defined patriotic line. And yes, of course, people have just as much right to protest and boycott the Chicks as Maines did to speak out. But there is an organized quality to the efforts of the Republican Attack Machine that goes far beyond the spontaneous anger that conservatives might legitimately feel.

Then, too, attacking the likes of Maines and Robbins is akin to throwing red meat to the mob, aimed at nothing more than keeping the anger boiling. The Republicans reserve their most lethal attacks not for mere entertainers, but rather for their political foes."

It's worth a read.

Lt. Governor of SC tries to play "Days of Thunder"
What is it with the GOP and Tom Cruise? First Flight Suit Boy pretends that he's in "Top Gun." Now a GOP underling in the SC government tries to channel Cole Trickle.

SC Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer has a great part-time job. For $70K a year, he has to be on time to preside over the SC Senate.

Tuesday Bauer got caught trying to just that. He was clocked doing 60 mph in a 35 mph zone in downtown Columbia and pulled over by a Columbia city police officer:

"In a police report, Vanhouten says once the vehicle was stopped Bauer ran back toward the patrol car in what Vanhouten says was "an aggressive manner." The Republican lieutenant governor says he was "in no way aggressive or threatening." Bauer says he would never threaten a police officer.

Unable to get out of his car in time, Vanhouten drew his service revolver and ordered the Bauer to stop and raise his hands. The report says the man complied, at which time, Vanhouten frisked Bauer."

Bauer was issued a ticket for reckless driving. According to sources of the Wyeth Wire:

"They had a joint session today over at the statehouse to elect college/university trustees. As Andre was walking down the aisle, various house members started singing "zoom, zoom, zoom." Best of all, when the Senate was leaving the house chamber, (Reading Clerk) Bubba Cromer got on the mike and shouted out "God's speed, Andre.""

The Wyeth Wire also points out that the SC Governor designated Wednesday (the day after Bauer tried to win the Assembly Street 500) as Law Enforcement Memorial Day in South Carolina and, the same day that Lt. Gov. Jeff Gordon explains himself. As the Wyeth Wire points out, "you can't make this stuff up folks."

Flight Suit Boy in Columbia to remind SC voters that he exists
Yes, the boy king is in Columbia, SC today -- a week after Democratic presidential candidates convened there for their first debate -- to speak at the graduation ceremony of the University of South Carolina, which happens to be my alma mater.

Maybe I'm just ill informed, but I thought that universities, especially really big ones, would probably have their graduation speakers arranged well ahead of time. It seems like something you'd want to plan. But as recently as the first week of May, the slot was still open, and rumors began to swirl that FSB would be the speaker.

It's possible that the school knew a long time ago that FSB would be the speaker, but the story is that the White House is being very careful about revealing Bush's whereabouts ahead of time, for fear that the Dixie Chicks and opening act Cat Stevens may mount a concert near his location when they learn of his coordinates.

Well, it's true. He's there today. Speaking. Smirking. And receiving one of those honorary degrees.

And the timing couldn't be better, since the Democrats were on campus just last weekend to introduce themselves both to SC voters and to the rest of the people in the country who got to watch the debate at 3 a.m. on one of their local ABC affiliates.

Many will write off South Carolina as unimportant to the Democratic campaign, just as Massachusetts (where I live and vote now) is a lost cause for anybody named Flight Suit Boy. But let's look at a few numbers and interesting facts, if only for fun:

1) No Democrat has been elected president without winning a sizable portion of the South since Calvin Coolidge did it back during the Iron Age.
2) Jimmy Carter (a Georgia native) was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win SC.
3) In 2000, after dirty politicking helped Bush beat McCain in the SC primary, Bush beat Gore by more than 200,000 votes in SC.
4) In 1996, Dole beat Clinton in SC by only about 65,000 votes, but it could have been worse. SC loves a crackpot (they elected Strom Thurmond every six years from 1788 to 1996), and Ross Perot got about 64,000 votes in the Palmetto State.

Update: Apparently the subject of Flight Suit Boy's address to 1,200 graduates (most of the graduates will be honored on Saturday) was the Middle East, particularly the Israel-Palestine problem, and the notion that free trade might just be the answer to all their problems (remember when we were told to go shopping after 9/11?).

When your boss reads your blog -- and doesn't dig it
Jason Butler, of the BostonWorks blog, has a couple of interesting entries here and here about how bloggers may find employers cracking down on their off-the-clock activities.

Writes Jason:

"Many bloggers have been disciplined, by termination or its threat . . . . because of what they've written on their sites.

Some of these people should have known better, but in this challenging job market, is there anywhere your employer cannot follow you?"

The second link above links to a few stories of bloggers whose cyber and real worlds have collided.

As a job seeker who would like to re-enter the club of the solidly employed AND maintain my status as an online smartass, this hits close to home.

Fox News Biased? -- "I'm shocked Rick -- shocked! -- to find that gambling is going on in this casino!"
The Guardian is reporting that Fox News is under investigation in the UK for alleged impartiality (thanks, KP, for the link). No details yet on whether Fox's arrogant display of its determinedly anti-First Amendment stance helped prompt the investigation.

And no word yet on whether Anti Coulter's head has popped off.

This just in: Bill Bennett is great
Generally sort of dull conservative columnist Cal Thomas compares Bill Bennett to the authors of the Bible. Check out the link if only to see the byline photo of Cal gazing to the heavens as if they rudely opened up just as Thomas was making a critical point in a dinner conversation.

How afraid of Hillary Clinton is the GOP?
She's already said -- many times -- that she will not mount a presidential campaign in 2004, but a letter written and circulated nationwide by GOP Senator George Allen of Virginia is the basis of a campaign to stop her anyway:

The letter begins like every appeal to the public made by a Republican in the last two years -- it tries to make the audience feel afraid:
"Are you ready for a new Clinton era in Washington? It could happen. But only if you let it."

From the CNN piece:

"Allen, who also serves as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, writes that his group will launch "a new mission: To stop Hillary."

A $120 donation earns donors "Platinum Member" status and makes them eligible for a membership card, lapel pin and ceremonial American flag.

"Only with your support will we have the resources to battle the multimillions of dollars Hillary Clinton is raising from deep-pocketed liberals," the letter says."

There are a number of ways to spin this:
1) Allen is so incompetent that the GOP doesn't want him anywhere near the smear campaigns they plan to mount against the Democrats who are, you know, actually running for president. And because the conservatives have even deeper pocket than these so-called "deep-pocketed liberals," they can afford the extra warpaint.
2) The current crop of Democratic candidates is so unimpressive that the GOP is confident it can devote its resources to petty hate campaigns against Hillary.
3) Hillary has taken another look at some old poll numbers and just might be ready to jump in the race, in which case it's every Republican's duty to keep her out of the White House lest her election result in the world exploding.

What do you think? It stands to reason that if the GOP can spend $1 million+ to pretend that Flight Suit Boy is actually some kind of military hero, instead of a deserter, (oh wait, that was our money they spent, wasn't it) then the money they'll spend out of spite against Hillary is no big deal.

I didn't know they had the Internet in Alabama, but as an ex-southerner, I have to smile at the name of this blog.

Yes, in 2003, state flags still make news
The state of insanity, um, Georgia raised its new flag today -- the one that doesn't have the Confederate flag on it:

"The new flag went up immediately after Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a bill to replace an unpopular design adopted in 2001.

The 2001 flag was a blue banner that contained a small Confederate emblem along the lower edge. It succeeded Georgia's 1956 flag, which was dominated by a large Confederate emblem that was added by the Legislature at the height of Southern resistance to integration."

Now if these supremely progressive Georgians could only get all their kids, black and white, to go to the same prom, they would have created a modern-day utopia.

Update: Dig Joe Conason on how the removal of the Confederate-favored flag might come back to bite the GOP on the tush.

Espionage linked to GOP
A Republican activist is suspected of being a double agent who hoodwinked the FBI (shocker) and might have funnelled money to the GOP.

Will the story of Flight Suit Boy's "military service" again catch fire? And will it be Rove's fault?
So maybe the story of Flight Suit Boy will hang around long enough to gather some steam after all. MediaWhoresOnline cites a number of stories that detail how then Acting Russian Prez Vladimir Putin used a similar stunt as a propaganda ploy in March 2000. This story in the Christian Science Monitor describes Putin "making an unannounced trip to war-torn Chechnya by SU-27 fighter jet." Putin "cut a dashing figure, climbing out of the aircraft in a bomber jacket and pilot's mask." Watchers of state-run television in Russia were bombarded with coverage of this stunt.

So we already knew that Bush's stunt was shameless, arrogant, and an insult to our military. Now we find that it wasn't even original.

As MWO puts it (echoed by Daily Kos), "Bush's favorable treatment (a slot in the ANG even though he performed abysmally on his tests) followed by his desertion is finally going to be an issue, ironically because Karl Rove has made it one."

Special interest: how to use blogs to teach writing
As a sometime English composition teacher, I enthusiastically pass on this link to Setback Music, whose keeper is a professor of comp. He is beginning what could turn out to be an illuminating and helpful discussion of how to use blogs in writing instruction.

Fly . . . in . . . to . . . tha . . . Danger Zone
The White House has been forced to come clean and admit that they lied lied lied in their explanations of Flight Suit Boy's plane ride to the USS Lincoln:

Bush wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday. "He wanted to see it as realistically as possible. And that's why, once the initial decision was made to fly out on the Viking, even when a helicopter option became doable, the president decided instead he wanted to still take the Viking."

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cal) has asked for a full accounting of the costs of this trip. One cost that won't make the list of line items is the fact that the crew of the USS Lincoln had to remain at sea for an extra day so that Bush could use them as campaign props.

War is not theatre, Flight Suit Boy
Senator Robert Byrd has spoken on the Senate floor about Flight Suit Boy's $1 million USS Lincoln stunt.

A taste:

President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures. American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the President's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial. This is real life, and real lives have been lost. To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the President to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech. I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely and skillfully, as have their countrymen still in Iraq, but I do question the motives of a deskbound President who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech.

And another:

War is not theater, and victory is not a campaign slogan. I join with the President and all Americans in expressing heartfelt thanks and gratitude to our men and women in uniform for their service to our country, and for the sacrifices that they have made on our behalf. But on this point I differ with the President: I believe that our military forces deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and not used as stage props to embellish a presidential speech.

Cincy de My Own
Amigo G.L. in Cincinnati writes in to comment on, among other things, the disconcerting form of "bully patriotism":

"But, hey, patriotism is at an all-time high, right? For example, students at the University of Cincinnati were partying over the weekend to celebrate Cinco de Mayo (because all the undergrads here have ties to Mexico, what with the city being predominantly German Catholic and all), and as they flipped cars and set bonfires, their chants of "UC UC UC" quickly turned to chants of "USA USA USA." Every day is USA-day, even other nations' holidays. Imagine the USA chants at the Republican rally to commemorate 9/11 (Will W. fly in to Ground Zero in a military jet then? I'm horrified to think what he might do.)."

I'm horrified too. I'm also afraid that Democrats will let Flight Suit Boy get away with it. There's no evidence so far that they'll stand up to Bush/Rove if they use the GOP convention to dance on the graves of 3,000 American citizens in an effort to get votes.

Some frightening numbers regarding the 9/11 investigation
Did you know that the budget for the 9/11 Commission (officially the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) has a budget of $12 million? The commission was initially given $3 million to investigate the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 people. By comparison, the government approved a $50 million budget for the investigation of the Columbia shuttle disaster. Want another comparison? The GOP tab for poking around in Bill Clinton's sex life came to about $30 million.

Comments are cool
Feel free to partake.

Eject, Bush! Eject!
Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune is one of the few members of the media that I've seen actually willing to examine the irony of Dubya's "Top Gun" show. While David Broder and Bob Novak went on "Meet the Press" to talk about how good Bush looked in his flight suit costume, few have dusted off the shoeboxes where they keep those Globe clippings detailing Bush's aversion to service while a member of the Air National Guard.

Writes Zorn:

"Last week, though, the president all but wore a "Kick Me!" sticker on the back of his flight suit when he decided to land on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the co-pilot's seat of an S-3B Viking jet.

Imagine the derisive merriment in the columns and on the chat shows if former President Bill Clinton revived the skirt-chasing issue by touring a sorority house or if Gore delivered a lecture to the engineers at Netscape Communications Corp. Think of the snickering and the sardonic rehash of history.

But for Bush in flyboy attire, a discreet silence. The only voices I encountered raising this issue were David Corn in the Nation; Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin, who asked, "Tell me if you ever heard of anybody with as powerful a resistance to shame as Bush"; and talk station WLS-AM's token progressives Nancy Skinner and Ski Anderson, who spent a full hour Sunday afternoon savoring the irony of it all."

Props to Skippy, who got the link from Cursor.

Is Karl Rove hiding under your bed?
I don't see it on their website, but this week's New Yorker has a Nicholas Lemann profile of Karl Rove. Make sure you have your magazine tongs handy.

Here's one chunk from the article that attempts to get at Rove's central philosophy:

"In the Rove schema, the large, centralized, public structures of the modern, regulated welfare state are to be mistrusted, and smaller, more private, more local forms of human organization are to be admired. It's this view that accounts for his conviction -- and that of many other Republicans -- that their party is anti-elitist: the define elite status in non-economic terms . . . . . One might find it curious that that Rove, of all people, would see himself and his party as the dispossessed outsiders, but this identification of government with elitism rather than with democracy lies at the core of Rove's ideology. It explains why Rove's Republican-majority America would be not just pre-Great Society, and not just pre-New Deal, but pre-Progressive era."

Lots of good stuff to be found at Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, a blog that does a good job of blogging about bloggers who are blogging about various stuff all over the web, including Chicks-in-the-Sticks news and a bit about how lonely it can get when you're a Dixie Chicks protestor -- because you care.

Cheney and the Succession Question
I thought this was old news, but it seems Dick Cheney has agreed to be Bush's running mate when the dynamic duo tries to get re-appointed in 2004. Wasn't this confirmed months ago -- that Cheney's health problems wouldn't keep him from running for Veep again? Maybe this time the reason for getting the news out is to confirm that Cheney's status as one of the more conflicted and corrupt people on the planet won't keep him off the ticket.

In any case, a second term for Cheney would lead to a fun succession question for the GOP come 2008, when there's a good chance Hilary Clinton will try for the Democratic nomination (we're speaking speculatively here, though a Hilary candidacy is a strong possibility in any scenario). Back when it looked like Cheney was just one or two roast beef sandwiches away from an eternity of hellfire and brimstone, I thought that maybe Bush would put Condi Rice on the ticket (not because even without the right experience, she'd be a good choice, but because Flight Suit Man is more obsessed with his legacy than Clinton ever was) -- but that raises succession questions too, since it's hard to imagine the GOP asking their southern conservative base to elect an African-American woman president four years later. A Condi v. Hilary matchup in 2008 would be great, but it wouldn't be any fun watching neck conservatives decide which was the lesser of two evils.

"We hate it when our friends become successful"
Ben Fritz of Spinanity.org takes to Salon's pages to combat the "Gore-ing" of John Kerry. As a resident of Boston -- and a Globe reader -- I've been watching Kerry get attacked for no good (by that I mean fact-based) reason for two years. Here Fritz puts some of the myths about Kerry to bed.

Rock bottom job offering of the week. Put up fliers in the posh suburbs of Boston for beer bling.

From the Department of Damage Control
I posted a link Friday to a UPI story that had Condaleeza Rice squashing chickenhawk plans to go to war in Syria. Now I've learned at the Memory Hole that that story was pulled and replaced by this piece that denies any such actions by Rice.

You don't say when we're going to play the Dixie Chicks! I do! (pause) Play the Dixie Chicks.

This Dixie Chicks thing, I know, I know . . . who cares? Well, it's just too funny. Seems that a couple of DJs at a country music station in Colorado Springs, CO have been suspended for playing the Chicks.

The statements of KKCS station manager Jerry Grant are a little curious. Apparently the powers-that-be at the station were going to start playing the Chicks again ("Most stations are starting to play them again anyhow") -- they just didn't want these darned DJs making the decision for them.

From the story: "The station has received a couple of hundred calls and 75 percent favored playing the music." That other 25 percent is made up of noted country music fans/speed-dialers Diane Sawyer and Ari "People need to be careful what they say" Fleischer.

Everbody's having a good time piling on the nine (as of this moment) Democratic presidential candidates for not showing in last weekend's Columbia, SC debate that have a unified vision, or, as Doris Kearns Goodwin put it on "Meet the Press," an understanding of the "larger argument." (No, I don't know where Doris stole the phrase)

But am I wrong? Isn't it May? Of 2003? Is everything supposed to come out clear and defined in the first debate of these candidates? If Clinton had a handle on the larger argument back in May 1991, how come I still didn't know who he was at that point? (If anybody knows how the 1992 Democratic candidates ranked in May of 1991, lemme know.)

These candidates -- and let's be fair, some of them won't be candidates after the first primary, if they even last that long -- are just sticking their feet in the pond at this point. Nothing they say now is going to find its way onto a campaign sign that somebody's holding in 2004. So relax. A little.

Friend, academic, and preeminent mixtape-maker C.F. is blogging on budget cuts to education. He has his blog -- Setback Music -- set up to take your comments, so go give him a hard time and call him on some of his unsubstantiated claims. And ask him why he doesn't even bother to list his old friend among his favorite blogs.

I highly recommend Setback's music links (look on the right side), as the author of the blog has impeccable taste.

Update: The situation has been rectified, albeit sarcastically.

From the Department of You're either with us or against us

Bush makes a statement about Cinco de Mayo and doesn't mention Mexico presidient Vincente Fox. A non-story? In his previous two CdM statements, Bush did mention Fox. Then Fox refused to give support to Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Meanwhile, there's this other country that borders the United States, and they're pissing off the Bush Administration too.

WaPo series takes a look at Big Green

Don't miss the scary collection of pieces in WaPo about the Nature Conservancy, the world's biggest environmental non-profit. In the last decade, the Conservancy (called "Big Green" by the authors of the WaPo series), which has pledged to protect and save precious lands, has made a lot of corporate friends and undertaken some questionable activities and shady deals.

Most notable among the Conservancy's long list of "compromises" with corporate America is its strange position on drilling in protected lands:

"In Alaska, the Conservancy has stood silent as environmentalists battle proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The decision to skirt the fight followed intense debate in 2001 by the Conservancy's board, which yielded in the end to the wishes of its Texas and Alaska chapters, senior Conservancy officials said.

Two major oil companies that support the Alaska drilling -- BP and Exxon Mobil -- hold Conservancy leadership council seats. Exxon Mobil has donated $5 million to the Conservancy. Another supporter of drilling, Phillips Alaska Inc., has given at least $1 million, records show."

There's more. Check it out.

Excellent piece by Paul Krugman in today's Times about Bush's flight suit charade aboard the USS Lincoln.

One bit:
"Some background: the Constitution declares the president commander in chief of the armed forces to make it clear that civilians, not the military, hold ultimate authority. That's why American presidents traditionally make a point of avoiding military affectations. Dwight Eisenhower was a victorious general and John Kennedy a genuine war hero, but while in office neither wore anything that resembled military garb.

Given that history, George Bush's "Top Gun" act aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln — c'mon, guys, it wasn't about honoring the troops, it was about showing the president in a flight suit — was as scary as it was funny."

It's nice to see someone leaving the Bush White House without help from security

Mitch Daniels, Bush's budget director, will resign in the next 30 days. Daniels has his eye on Indiana's 2004 gubernatorial election. Democratic incumbent Frank O'Bannon will be completing his second term and cannot run again.

Update: Slate's Daniel Gross tells us why Mitch couldn't cut it in the Bush White House.

Suffering from post-war stress reduction

I am ready to diagnose myself. I just noticed that for the past four days, instead of turning on NPR when I first wake up, I've turned on local blowhard sports radio to find out why the Red Sox don't have any decent relief pitching. All according to plan . . . .

So now Bill Bennett claims that he is going to give up gambling, even though he hasn't actually admitted that there's anything wrong with it -- at least not the way he does it. He says that he gambles "too much," and that this is not an example he wants to set.

The story will likely lose its legs before we get a chance to see how the Bookie of Virtue kicks the slots habit (which is a pathetic way to gamble, relying, as it does, 100 percent on chance). Surely he thinks himself above all the losers hanging out at Gamblers Anonymous.

The real reason he's making the quitter claim is probably the asskicking his wife has been giving him since the story broke on Friday. It's well known by now that the contact info Bennett left with the casinos was his Empower.org address, not his home address. And now Mrs. Bookie of Virtue says her hubbie doesn't a problem. Hey Bill, where does dishonesty count among your leading indicators of a society gone to seed?

So you've seen the news reports of mass graves of rebels that are being discovered in Iraq? Do you think anybody will think to send the funeral bill to George Bush the Elder, who told these people to take regime change "into their own hands" in 1991 and then turned his back on them?

Michael Tomasky has a sharp piece in The American Prospect about the Democrats' misplaced energies as the 2004 election approaches. Here's a scary part:

"Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee made an announcement on April 21 that is in every way more offensive and shocking than any idiocy that tumbled out of Santorum's mouth. For the entire history of the two-party system in this country, the parties have had a gentlemen's agreement that the conventions will take place before Labor Day, with the real, head-to-head campaigning to commence thereafter. But as we know very well, we are no longer dealing with gentlemen. So now the Republicans announce that they are going to meet in New York City about three miles from Ground Zero as near to the anniversary of the tragedy as possible. And they in essence acknowledge, discreetly but quite openly, that the purpose is to squeeze as much political gain out of the attacks, and the national-security issue, as they can.

This is a many-layered offense -- to the traditions and integrity (such that remains) of the American political process, to the firefighters and police officers who did not give their lives so that Bush could later use their deaths to get a bounce in the polls, to every American citizen who doesn't drink Karl Rove's Kool-Aid, and to plain decency."

Tomasky's gripe is that Democrats are good and ready to let Bush and Rove get away with this without raising a stink, but they'll all comment on the foibles of little fish like Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum.

If I seem a little out of it in the week ahead, it's just because it's the first week of South End Baseball. I'm not a father and I'm not a coach, but I like being able to walk down the street in my Boston neighborhood during the spring and watch some hot Little League action.

I'm not about to tell you that my home state flagship paper is worth reading, but it does have this funny bit from 756-year-old Ernest Hollings, who just recently became the senior senator of South Carolina following the retirement of Strom Thurmond:

Hollings on Bush's inability to build global support for the war in Iraq: "This is the only fella in history who got Germany not to go to war."

Of course, it would be wrong of me to tell you that I hail from the Palmettuh State without posting what some people, some with better letter writing skills than others, might call a disclaimuh.

Job news and job blues and I can play both

On Friday a "creative staffing agency" that hasn't called me in over a year called with a golden opportunity. Well, golden overstates it a bit. The agency "associate," Julie, began by apologizing that the opportunity she had for me didn't pay very well. Then, as she shuffled papers around and thought aloud about what she was supposed to tell me first, she confided that she was "pretty new" to her job (Six months as it turns out!!! What planet is she living on?!?! When I'd been at my last job six months the CEO carved my face in the side of a mountain.).

The job, which involved writing and editing copy for a travel company ("a big company," said Julie), paid a whopping $13 an hour. And here I am pretty close to the blood bank and the sperm bank and buying a pair of panty hose and robbing a bank. So I listened. And it got worse.

Though the job would have started right away, it was in Woburn, which lies somewhere north of Boston and, I'm sure, several bus transfers away from where I live down here in the City Proper. So of those thirteen dollars, five of which would probably go to the government, I'd probably spend eight dollars on my gas tank just so that I can sit in traffic through the Big Dig and be like those other people. Hell, that's thirteen dollars an hour and George W. Bush gets all of it.

Julie told me she'd consult her boss -- since I was such a perfect candidate for this job -- and call me back in a couple of hours. I didn't feel so good. I tried to get some brown rice to stay down. I like it because I can afford it.

In the meantime, there's this other company that wants to bring me in -- sometime -- to do some consulting and whatever, and so I gave them a little nudge. Just a little hey-I'm-about-to-be-working-in-Woburn-and-actually-probably-losing-money-on-the-deal-just-so-that-I-can-put-travel-writing-on-my-resume-and-just-so-,-you-know-,-I-can-actually-travel-by-which-I-mean-leave-my-apartment-to-do-more-than-take-out-the-garbage nudge. And the good people at Consulting Company That Wants Me, Inc. firmed up their commitment, and things are good, and it's walking distance, and it's better than $13 an hour, and that's the long story short, another long story short in the day of the underemployed and hustling.

Friend K.P. in Boston sent along this article about how Condi Rice put her moderate foot down on the invasion of Syria hoped for by neo-cons -- not because it would put the administration on shaky justification ground (though they seem to love it there), but because the 2004 election looms, and it's high time that Bush at least throw out some lip service that Fox News can pretend applies to those who make up the six percent unemployment rate. Anyone remember what happened when a bunch of minutemen, euphoric over the British surrender, tried to take Canada? Hint: We don't own Canada.

Take your meds, fool

If yesterday's display on the USS Lincoln left you drooling and lying in a fetal position, Joe Conason's Salon piece is worth reading. It won't stop the drool, but it might help you put your "isn't the idea of Bush speaking on an aircraft carrier kind of a joke?" thoughts in order.

Anybody wanna double down on Bill Bennett's credibility?

The Washington Monthly and Newsweek are reporting that Bill Bennett, the US morality czar and definer of virtues, has gambled away about $8 million in trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.

From the Newsweek piece:

"Reached by NEWSWEEK, Bennett acknowledged he gambles but not that he has ended up behind. 'Over ten years, I’d say I’ve come out pretty close to even,' Bennett says, though he wouldn’t discuss any specific figures. 'You can roll up and down a lot in one day, as we have on many occasions,' Bennett explains. 'You may cycle several hundred thousand dollars in an evening and net out only a few thousand.'”

So gambling's only wrong if you lose? (By the way, records show that he's lying when he says he doesn't end up behind at the end of the night.)

I don't mind the gambling. Hey, it's his money. Of course, I don't go around telling people how they ought to live.

Blogger and all-around smartypants Josh Marshall of TPM at long last has it piled higher and deeper.

Boston area readers should note that Monday, May 5th, the city's ban on smoking in public places goes into effect. As a non-smoker, I've always been very supportive of smokers and their right to make everything within a five mile radius smell like an ashtray -- really, I've spent a lot of time in bars and around smokers and I'm quite sensitive to their needs -- but even I'm looking forward to being able to go out to a local pub and not have to sun my clothes the next day.

Well, the hatemongers who hoped that country music fans in South Carolina would string the Dixie Chicks up must be disappointed. About 15 protestors showed up outside the kick-off show of the Chicks' summer tour at Greenville. Hell, those aren't even Marty Burke at the Masters numbers, are they? Fifteen people?!? Inside, the crowd cheered and sang along with Natalie Maines and the Chicks.

But you know how liberal those people in Greenville, South Carolina can be. This is the same county that tried to keep the Olympic torch from passing through town in 1996 in order to protest the Olympic Committee's less-than-damning-to-eternal-hellfire views on homosexuals.

You may be on the Lincoln, but I knew Lincoln, and you, sir, are no Lincoln

If you didn't see Bush's speech from the deck of the USS Lincoln (I can understand if you're repulsed by the notion of Bush "speaking" anywhere near the word Lincoln), you didn't miss much. Every word, grunt, and wink from the president was greeted with applause, but given the fact that the Lincoln has been out to see for ten months, Bush could have dropped his pants and taken a whizz on the deck and received thunderous applause as long as at the end they got to go home.

My favorite part of the speech is as follows:
"We have begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated."

The rhetoric here is interesting, because it implies that if WMD are not found (which is a growing a possibility), then it's because those evil Iraqis done gone and hided 'em (and that those silly UN weapons inspectors were actually watching the Arabic translation of Austin Powers Goldmember instead of looking for weapons). The second piece of the sentence is just plain funny -- is there any doubt that the Fox News audience now believes that there are hundreds of sites where WMD are waiting to be found, instead of what this sentence actually says (just hundreds of places that will be looked at)? Like a lot of what Bush has to say, this speech is practically begging to have itself taken out of context by News Corp. stooges for the administration's benefit.

Thursday is nearly always reader mail day

The sad story of "Anything that Floats" somehow caught the attention of the Globe's BostonWorks blogger who graciously passed along this link. Thanks, JB!

Friend and cyberprotege C.F. gets dizzy about the blog phenomenon: "Let the circle be unbroken. That article was pointed out to me by a blog, I read it, passed the info on to you, and now it's on another blog. Blog nation! Did I tell you that I just signed up for one with blogrolling.com? Well, there's no there there, but soon there will be. There. There."

G.L. in the Nati is heartened by my ability to sell off my possessions for quick cash, and sees hope to unload that John Entwistle CD for 50 cents after all.

It truly is a wonderful blogalicious world.

Neal Pollack, you magnificent bastard.

If you don't know what the hell Neal's talking about, read this piece about James Frey first. Or this one.

Could this be true? Daniel Gross writes at Slate today that "even if the economy does add 2 million jobs by October 2004, he will still have presided over the only job-losing presidency since Hoover." Democrats who don't mind playing dirty -- imagine that -- might want to refer to the H-word when talking about Bush as much as they possibly can.

Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?

Friend and fellow news junkie C.F. wonders today in our email discussion why our discussion has cooled down now that we're in the occupation stage of the Iraq invasion. He's frustrated: "We have been strangely silent. But this is all according to plan. The neoCon magnates in the White House and State Department are well aware of the short attention span of most Americans, and probably knew that if they could just tell enough stories about the war that we'd become tired of talking about it, their lies about WMD and the threats that Saddam supposedly posed to the USA would fade away."

I think he's right, in large part. But it's not just a case of everyone hitting the buffet for a plateful of comfort television. I still haven't switched over to Laci Peterson and "Mr. Personality." I feel a great fatigue from constantly scouring the web for news, annotating articles, looking for sources and quotes and statistics and facts to back up what I want to say. It's tiring. But my own attention span doesn't bother me as much as that of the mainstream media and their rush to just put this all behind us. I'm reminded of the 2000 Election controversy, when the mainstream media repeated the GOP line that "Americans just want to move on," which helped pressure Al Gore into bowing out.

Even Thomas Friedman at the NY Times, who wrote time and time again that finding WMD was necessary to justify this invasion, has recalibrated his expectations. The Disney/Clear Channel/News Corp. media is busy punishing the so-called "losers" in this war by putting the Dixie Chicks and Madonna on trial for thoughtcrime. It's disturbing, and I have to hope that the voices of dissent and skepticism will make it through the period of fatigue and get a much needed second wind. The powers ruling the country have limitless resources, so the second wind is crucial.

Nothing's shocking when it comes out of the mouths of coddled ballplayers

We're no longer shocked -- if we ever were -- when professional athletes reveal their bigotry and homophobia, are we? This week the Colorado Rockies organization is doing damage control in the wake of some not that interesting comments made by reliever Todd Jones. Asked about what his reaction would be if a teammate turned out to be gay, Jones said, "I wouldn't want a gay guy being around me. It's got nothing to do with me being scared. That's the problem: All these people say he's got all these rights. Yeah, he's got rights or whatever, but he shouldn't walk around proud. It's like he's rubbing it in our face. 'See me, Hear me roar.' We're not trying to be close-minded, but then again, why be confrontational when you don't really have to be?"

As far as I know, Jones wasn't asked about a scenario in which a baseball player flaunts his homosexuality and behaves in a confrontational manner. To Jones, apparently, for a good person to simply be on the team is confrontation enough.

Jones, who makes $1 million a year to pitch a couple of innings every few days, went on to imply that the performance expectations for a gay ballplayer should be higher, "Because if (the team) thinks for one minute he's disrupting the clubhouse -- if he doesn't hit 50 homers or win 20 games -- they're not going to put up with that." Jones' sliding scale is interesting: the gay player who keeps his head down and doesn't get "confrontational" can hit .220, but any gay player who dares to play a Maria Callas record in the clubhouse better put up Hall of Fame caliber numbers. Jones' beliefs seem out of step with the dominant conservative view that gays should not receive special treatment, no?

Not that it matters, but the 35-year-old reliever hails from Marietta, Georgia, which has rarely been referred to as the San Francisco of the South.

Fun job listing of the day: this might be my best chance for a beach vacation this year.

The "No Jobs for You" section of my local newspaper, also known as "Boston Works," has been publishing a little ditty called "View from the Cube," in which people who work in an office someplace go on for about 24,000 words about the nuances of their office's water cooler or the beauty of the conference room, or daydreaming.

The brief wave of stories written by the unemployederati might be on the decline. Perhaps the Globe, in publishing these "Cube" stories (which I never noticed before I joined the ranks of the un(der)employed, probably because I never had much reason to browse the Jobs section of the paper), is trying to convince readers that yes, there actually are some people who are still gainfully employed. I'm glad they have so much time to write. So do I, only I don't have medical coverage.

Here's my own "View from outside the cube" that I don't think the Globe wants, but I wrote it and so I'll paste it here for no good reason, other than that you might see yourself in the story.

Anything That Floats

We used to meet up at a place called Lucky's that's in a basement on Congress Street. There isn¡¦t a sign to let you know what¡¦s there, but a couple of years ago when the place first opened happy hour was stacked with the hip web designers, project managers, and graphic artists that had filled the loft spaces across Boston's Fort Point Channel in what really isn't Southie, but is nevertheless South Boston.

You can drop in Lucky's tonight and probably find a big group from the financial services company that takes up a sizable chunk of the occupied rental space along Congress these days. The Boston office of the little engine that ultimately couldn't that I worked for -- a networking consulting company with, at its peak, 250 or so employees sprinkled in cubicles across the nation -- used the place to wash down the news of the company's second really huge gash of a layoff. It was summer then, and most of the people in the Boston office that hadn't done any firing convened in Lucky's during lunch to begin the commiseration and, of course, the drinking that the layoffs seemed to call for. There was no bad blood between the cut and kept; those who had been retained sipped next to guzzlers, crossed the street to stumble to the end of the workday, and then reconvened in Lucky's to catch up to their fallen comrades. The bartender knew everything we knew -- the dwindling cash pile, the shrinking customer base, each victim's predicament -- and she honored us by creating a version of the margarita so beautiful that everyone, myself included, convinced themselves that being unemployed wasn't all that bad. As the marketing writer, the person in the company who daily pumped out pleasant passages about our company's capabilities in a changing market, I was called upon to brand the bright red concoction: the Lifeboat.

And now more than a year and a half has passed, and I'm still going to layoff parties to knock around old stories with former co-workers. But we don't go to Lucky's anymore, which used to be conveniently down the street from our sixth-floor office. Now more people are gone than are left, and so Lucky's isn't such a good spot anymore. At the early layoff parties, we traded hilarious stories of blown sales calls, notoriously inept employees long gone but not forgotten, and projects long finished. This night, when we meet at the Boston Beer Garden in Southie to commemorate the exit of two long-time employees, the talk is of interest rates, the non-existence of severance pay, and the difficulty a manager faces re-entering the marketplace at middle age.

Now it's real, now the possibility of never getting hired again actually makes sense, and everybody sips. This night the manager -- let's call him Tom -- who gave the bad news to probably fifty employees is dropping by to have a pint or two. This time it's his turn, after the new CEO saddled him, either purposefully or out of desperation, with a sales figure he could not hope to meet.

The usual stories are told. One of the former sales guys is a brilliant comedian -- at least so far as he has a community made up of those who get his references -- and he keeps us laughing with impersonations of the past CEO (a walking trail of saliva), a former sales rep ("a neck that threw up"), and a Marketing slash Client Relations slash Business Development guy who never quite accomplished anything, but had a familiar way of striding through the office in his Harvard Business School wingtips. A few talk of new jobs, new house additions, new children on the way. Lost connections are remade: "How's she doing?" "I heard he got married." "How's she like it over there?" A network engineer recently let go reveals that he is working as a cashier at Filene's Department Store. At first, no one can believe it, but then, and I think I am not alone, we remind ourselves that sometimes it's better to not just sit around the house (the one with the mortgage).

Many in our group, in fact most, live outside of Boston, in the dullburbs to the north and south, and so work serves as a vital connection to a social life. Dave, who endures jokes about giving out Filene's discounts to his former co-workers, checks out early, and an uproar is raised when he tries to put down money to cover his drinks.

The network engineers, the people I once had the job of portraying as technical all-stars, have come out of this in good shape for the most part. But the project managers and business development folks -- the people people -- are worried. When we were a young company collecting clients like baseball cards -- I've got a Fleet, a Verizon, and an AT&T -- we sent out internal blast-mail that celebrated a recent success: a conference call that bowled over the client, good work highly praised, or a new client signing on the dotted line. Today the Boston employees who go to work in the abandoned office space worry about throwaway lines in e-mails from client reps that might spell doom, or middle management changes in the client operation that threaten delicate business relationships. Like a lot of places, back in the beginning we were imagining a new corporate experience, a way of recreating the very notion of the "the workplace." Today, the company motto is "It's a paycheck."

At 10:30, after most have left, the core group remains that always remains, this time waiting for Tom, who happens to be a forty-something guy who loves punk rock and happened to find himself in the position to present severance packages to a lot of people. Of the core group, two are still employed, two are not. I am not.

Tom stepped up -- there is no better phrase for it -- and laid me off back in March of 2002, a few weeks after my boss had been phone-fired by the CEO and I'd dedicated myself to polishing up my resume (and the resumes of a few co-workers who had had enough faith in the high-tech boom to swear off the written word in favor of code), reading as many newspapers online as it took to kill the morning, and, when the need arose, penning this or that proposal or piece of sales melody.

Wasn't much of a dialogue when Tom finally took me aside:

"Do you want to hear the spiel about how we are low on finances, we don't have many clients, and the pipeline is weak?"

"No," I'd said. "Let's just skip to the severance."

At nearly 11, Tom arrives, having made a complicated journey around the city from a school function to where we sit in Southie. At that point, I and the rest are deep into our drinking regimen, the full giving-over that always seems to happen at these things. A buddy of mine raises a glassy eye, just an inch above his sixth or seventh Captain and Coke, and refers to the "dozens" of people that showed up just to greet the guy who'd laid them off. We all laugh; it's nearly true, and Tom knows even now that he's whacked a lot of people. He whacked me and, at the time, I thanked him for it.

The company somehow moves on, down to a skeleton crew serving a couple of clients, keeping it going as long as they're a smidgen profitable -- today absentee investors, not ideals, pull the strings. And sitting there in Southie nursing my fifth pint of Guinness, a luxury I can't really afford anymore, I'm wondering why. The company moves forward like a ship taking water, and when it gets a little too heavy, somebody goes overboard. The waitress comes over, weary, her hair falling out of its bun, but we don't want anything more. They don't serve the Lifeboat here, but that's fine. At this point we'll settle for anything that floats.

From the edge of civilization. The very edge.

Roxanne, one of the "stars" of the reality movie The Real Cancun gets deep for a moment:

"I'd rather be known for this instead of being smart or something. There's a million people who are smart. There's only 16 of us who were in Cancun together."

Amen, Roxanne. You don't have to put on the red light. We can tell by the wet t-shirt that you're available.

Don't use that Pearl Jam "Vitalogy" CD that you found at the bottom of a drawer as a coaster! Someone wants to pay you for it. Those textbooks that you picked up free at the book fair when you were a starving adjunct comp teacher? Big bucks! Sell sell sell, and then find out when the next book fair is. That penny paperback copy of Siddhartha that you keep around because it reminds you of when you would read a penny paperback copy of something like Siddhartha? Get rid of it. That hardback copy of Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation that you found on the street? Yep. That's going to make somebody's day. Got anything Jonathan Franzen wrote before he wrote The Corrections? Cash in on the man's lit-cred while he's still got some (hurry).

I may actually get to eat in May.

Can't talk now. Have to sell my books and CDs to pay the rent and keep food on the table. No wait. Already sold the table. Tough times.

This is what happens when you sleep through history

Here's a word you're going to be hearing and reading a lot in the coming months in stories about the Republican Party: hubris.

After Newt Gingrich used his "Contract for America" to stage a Republican revolution a decade ago, he quickly demonstrated how arrogance can overcome ambition, how one might push a stance so far that one winds up alienating a lot of the same people one seeks to conquer and lead. Gingrich wound up disgraced; that he now functions as a hypocritical stooge for the Secretary of Defense's war on the State Department is fitting.

Very recently, we saw Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, fed up with the Bush Administration's "you're either with us or against us" rhetoric (which was the code of this White House even before Bush used the words when talking about terrorism), crossed out all the GOP engagements in his datebook and went indie. At the time his defection from the GOP tilted the balance of Senate seats in favor of the Democrats.

And now, in the immediate aftermath of the war in Iraq, it's happening again, and it's hard to see how anyone in the Bush White House (anyone who might have been awake in the past decade) would let the same sins of pride that took down Gingrich and ticked off Jeffords do damage again.

But let's look at the hubris being displayed now:
1) The president LIES about Rick Santorum, calling the right-wing senator from Pennsylvania an "inclusive man," when Senator "No Right To Privacy" has gone to great lengths to make it clear that he is NOT an inclusive man. The other scary senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, has this to say about the effects that Santorum's beliefs might have on future elections: "It depends on how it plays out. Washington is a town filled with cannibals. The cannibals devoured Trent Lott without cause. If the cannibals are after you, you are in deep trouble. It depends on whether the cannibals are hungry. My guess is that it will blow over." No comment from Senator Eat Your Neighbor on whether cannibalism is better or worse when practiced in private.

2) GOP backers run ads equating Republican senators Olympia Snowe (Maine) and George Voinovich (Ohio ) with French opposition to the war in Iraq because they have questioned big tax cuts at a time of growing deficits and a war that no one has been able to accurately price yet. Will Snowe and Voinovich be compelled eventually to join Jeffords in the indie ranks?

3) An article from the neo-con bible The Weekly Standard that I've already commented on here puts forth the overly simplistic premise (beneath the layers of faulty logic, tired and dated generalizations easily debunked by first-year western civ students, and falsehoods) that because the United States has the best military force on the planet (and thus won easily in Iraq), that conversative thinkers have been correct about everything dating back to Jim Crowe.

4) Diplomacy is given no real chance to prevent a war in Iraq before Rumsfeld sends the war machine in (albeit a cut rate one). The war is swift and decisive. Now Rumsfeld appears ready to fold the State Department into his own office.

After Gingrich's revolution, pundits wondered how the Democrats would pick themselves up off the floor. After the Republican victories in November of 2002, the pundits wondered the same thing. But there's a growing possibility that once again, the GOP will be overzealous in its powergrab, and they'll be hoisted upon their own petards.

Downloading days at the Boston Cyberarts Festival

For readers who might be in the New England area, I'm reprinting this preview of the Boston Cyberarts Festival that I wrote for Light magazine. Light's content does not appear online, and I'm only willing to reproduce it here because the April issue in which the article appeared is about to be the old issue.

The festival kicks off this weekend and runs through May 11th. Preview is as follows:

Here we are, just black ink on glossy paper, just words gathered and arranged into sentences. Here's a word, here's a word, and then another, and we're nowhere close to the binary coded, visually loaded world of the 2003 Boston Cyberarts Festival.

The biennial festival convenes for the third time in locations from Portland to Providence (but concentrated in Boston and Cambridge) starting April 26th and offering up by May 11th a few hundred hard drives worth of visual and performing arts created with the aid of computer technology. Organized by local non-profit Boston Cyberarts, the festival is a collaboration between arts organizations, educational institutions, high-tech industry players and individual artists from around the world.

George Fifield, the festival's director (also media arts curator at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln), stresses that although Boston is a natural setting for demonstrating the intersection between the traditional arts and technology, the festival, like the Web, is worldwide in scope. Says Fifield, "Every year the quality of the works gets stronger, and every year we have more international participation."

In addition to exhibits of new technology's influence on the visual arts, music, and performance, three weekend conferences will give participants a chance to examine the impact of technology on public art, improvisational video performance and literature. "Just putting a piece of digital art on the street is one thing," says Fifield, "but including it in a conference that brings about a greater understanding of it is quite exciting."

Lest the festival get tagged Geekapalooza '03, just boys with new toys, it¡¦s important to point out that cyberart is less about a new meaning for art, and more about new ways to create it -- the laptop gets as much play as the violin or the paintbrush, and at this festival they interact to inspire the same exploration of meaning as those old school paint-on-canvas things hanging in the MFA. The digital thrills are a big part of the experience, of course -- jaws are fully expected to drop at the sight and sound of many of these exhibits -- but these artists, dealing with themes ranging from personal freedom to the history of Vietnam, are logging into how we live just as a painter employs a brushstroke to capture how we move.

As Fifield points out, no other festival takes all kinds of digital art together and presents them under the larger category of "cyberarts." The media mosaic of the Boston Cyberarts Festival -- with electronic music, interactive visual art and digital animation, just to start -- mirrors the interplay of different digital technologies in our daily lives, in which IM chats and stops at the ATM are as routine as a trip to Dunkin Donuts.

The exhibits and performances themselves defy precise explanation„owords in black ink can do only so much with ones and zeroes. Major artists from around the world will gather at Brandeis on May 3rd to take part in a day-long marathon spanning the half-century history of electronic music. Brandeis music professor and electronic music artist Eric Chasalow says that the Slosberg Recital Hall will be transformed into a "musical instrument" blending live traditional concert instruments and electronics. "Our goal is to present both new music and classic pieces of electronic music," says Chasalow. "At Brandeis we have the right space and the high-end equipment to present these pieces like most people have never heard them." Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick, and Steve Reich are just a few of the electronic music pioneers whose algorhythmic works will hold the spotlight at some point during the noon-to-midnight session. The presentation also includes a seldom heard four-channel version of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Junglinge, probably the most famous piece of electronic music in the world.

Other exhibits and performances recast the audience as participant. At the New Center for Arts and Culture, David Small's Illuminated Manuscript enables the "readers" of this interactive e-book about freedom to manipulate the content. Info@Blah at the Boston Center for the Arts examines, through both static and interactive artwork in various media, the information overload that is the cumbersome byproduct of our datacentric age.

One tradition of art that the festival does embrace -- in addition to the desire to connect with the audience -- is the self-reflexivity that is a natural part of art still in its Model T stage. The Ballad of Wires and Hands at the New Arts Center features interactive illustrations and kinetic sculptures that explore how the advances of the last century have contributed to contemporary art. At the Mobius Gallery, twelve artists explore the book -- yes! black ink on white pages! -- as an evolving piece of subject matter. Hypercollision brings together kinetic sculpture, computer graphics, games and robotics in installation areas around the MIT Museum. And the MIT List Visual Arts Center presents a number of visual exhibits, including a collection of the finest Flash art from the Internet.

Many free or low cost events dot the festival schedule, April 26 ¡V May 11. For more information, check out www.bostoncyberarts.org or call 617.524.8495.

Fun job listing of the day. I love the title, but I think I have too much integrity to get a bed moving for this little money.

Today's Rick "Why don't we do it in the road" Santorum update:

The president, via The Ari Fleischer Blowhole, throws his support behind Senator Puppy Love. Per prez, the Distinguished Tail Chaser from Pennsylvania is an "inclusive man." That's a pretty fat softball pitch right there, but I'm going to resist the urge to smack it out of the park.

If you're going to make fun of anybody named Hitchens, make sure you don't leave Christopher out.

US soldiers save lions and cheetahs found in Bushdad palace. Until proper food for these animals can be rounded up, the soldiers plan to feed them relics from the National Museum of Iraq.

The Weekly Standard continues the neo-con mission of making everything in the world so simple and devoid of complexity that even our president can understand it. In today's episode of conservative circle jerkery, contributing prisspot Hugh Hewitt calls out the "caucus of the wrong," which includes such world leaders as Tim Robbins, the Dixie Chicks, and a Yale prof. When are the people at the Neo-Con Bible going to come clean and admit that they have just as much fun thinking of labels like "caucus of the wrong" as they do thinking up the rest of their tripe?

More shameless lies from Kristol's rag, which seems with each passing day to become more of a parody of itself. In this one somebody called Noemie Emery argues that like Saddam, biased media bigwigs have lost influence. Really? I guess this guy is just a scrappy Aussie running a mom-and-pop shop, right?

Is it scary that I would type the word "Rumsfeld" into the Ebay search engine? Is it scarier that I would find a whole lot of Rumshwag?

I'm humping the legs of this story for all they're worth

I'm all over this Rick "Do it in the butt with your sister" Santorum story. Now his comments about consensual sex have pissed off polygamists (Question: Do polygamists feel superior to mere bigomists?).

Juicy bit:

"Owen Allred, 89, head of the United Apostolic Brethen, based in the Salt Lake City suburb of Bluffdale, agreed with Santorum in part.

'He is absolutely right. The people of the United States are doing whatever they can to do away with the sacred rights of marriage,'Allred told The Salt Lake Tribune.

But Allred said Santorum's inclusion of polygamy in his list tarnishes a religious tradition whose roots are traced to biblical figures such as Abraham, Jacob and Moses — defiling them as 'immoral and dirty.'"

I wish I'd made this up.

If looting you is wrong, I must work for the right

Thanks to Gary in the 'Nati for passing along this story regarding one of the so-called winners in the War for Reputations and Ratings in Iraq, Fox News. Seems that looting, not love, is the international language.

Juicy bit: "So far, only Benjamin James Johnson, who worked as an engineer for Fox News Channel, has been charged. But officials said more charges could be brought and more seizures of stolen items are expected in what is being dubbed "Operation Iraqi Heritage.""

Operation Iraqi Heritage?

Thanks for the mail. Keep it coming with ideas and comments. Don't forget to rate me using the little meter on the left side of the blog. Word on the cyberstreet is that people who have highly rated blogs get big Iraq Reconstruction contracts.

Fun local job listing of the day: UNCUT.

Let's say that Thursday will be Reader Mail Day, shall we, and hope that it gets better than this as time goes on?

"Fun blog to read . . . How did you get your blog page set up? That looks like fun."
--G., poet, Cincinnati OH

"Cool. I only found out what a blog was like 2 months ago. Pathetic. I like your web site, too. What does Roman Wilderness mean? (I'm not too smart these days.) Did you really take the foreign service exam? My sister's new NYC beau just took it a week or so ago. He had me correcting his grammar on a few practice essays."
--K., professional student, Nashville TN

"I'm glad you're blogging."
--C., professor, Chico CA

"yes, looks good, although i smile when i see you using words like "peeps" and "hey kids" and stuff like that."
--C., writer, Boston MA

"Nice, people critiquing your writing there? BTW I am very concerned about the attacks on State recently, this shit is starting to get out of control."
--K., high-techster, Boston MA

Be sure to send comments/questions/feedback.

At least five factions or exile groups in Iraq have stepped up and claimed to be in power -- with the approval of the US government. One has already offered its group a pay increase (who says we can't spread Congressional government abroad?).

In a major step for both democracy and westernization in the way of women's rights, one of these factions is led by a female. Her name is Hallie Burton.

As was to be expected, the Rick "Closer kin, Deeper in" Santorum story is becoming a semantics exercise for people who seem not to care that Senator Doggy Style's remarks, while they don't really break any laws, prove that he's at least a dullard. Thank goodness all the protest rallies are over -- we need to rassign some police officers to bedrooms around the country.

The must-read comic relief piece of the week is in the Weekly Standard/NeoCon Bible, where Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel, in a semi-coherent article titled "The Redistribution of Honor," make the "argument" that the victory in Iraq is enough to debunk every non-conservative idea put forth in the last thousand or so years. The US victory has, according to these two dudes, reconfigured the "moral hierarchy" (wonder where on the hierarchy they'd place all those Santorumians who want to get it on with their dog?).

The authors of the piece -- one a senior fellow at Pepperdine and the other a professor at the Cooper Union -- point out the winners and losers (with heavy, nose-in-the-air emphasis on the losers) in the recent war. The Bush Administration, with all of its cowboy rhetoric, might have desensitized some of us to arrogance. But this gloat piece goes beyond mere Ari Fleischerisms to a claim that's bold even by Weekly Standard standards.

Among the losers (and you can decide for yourself which of these the neo-con wankers really need to beat their chests over): Susan Sarandon, the Pope and all those other wussy clerics who opposed the war, Brent Showcroft (cardinal sin: his opinion didn't jibe), the Congressional Black Caucus, "tenured radicals" who think it's always 1968 (let's not assume right off that the authors of thise piece are tenured conservatives; we know that no conservative thinker would ever accept tenure), "left-wing dinosaur Robert Scheer" (how old exactly is Dick Cheney? Rumsfeld?), Sean Penn, Hamid Dabashi (described as the "Kervorkian Professor of Iranian Studies" at Columbia), and anyone else you can think of who might have failed to lick the boot of the Bush Administration in the last two years. The Europeans are described as "reliably people without honor." It must be comforting for the neocons to believe that they can rely on France and Belgium for something.

It gets funnier: among the WINNERS are blogapologist Andrew Sullivan, MSNBC, and that brave old Fox News, "for whom the war enhanced both reputation and ratings" (because you know, that's what it's really about, reputation and ratings).

There isn't time (or energy) enough right now for a full Flaming Lips debriefing. But let me say here that it was as frontman and head cheerleader Wayne Coyne described it: "like an enormous birthday party." I've rarely seen a big ballroom performance that was more inclusive -- and more about having a good time -- than this one.

Last week I saw Yo La Tengo in the same venue (Boston's Roxy). Ira, Georgia, and James -- though I love them dearly -- come across as plodding old farts singing over dentures by comparison. I realize that the bands are apples and oranges -- you don't compare the music. But for the concert experience, the Lips' lyric, "You won't let those robots defeat me" is apropos. At a YLT show, the most exciting moment is maybe a week later, when you tell your friends who live in cities that weren't tour stops that you saw Yo La Tengo in concert (maybe you mention an interesting cover they did, or describe Ira's 15 minute guitar freakout, which you couldn't really see because he knelt on the stage and you were behind a glut of people).

Suffice it to say that it takes a lot for me to get down on YLT . . . that's how good the Flaming Lips were tonite. They played a lot of music from both Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (or whatever the hell it is) and The Soft Bulletin, and of course "Jelly" from Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, which was hilariously prologued by a screen projection of John Stewart (back when he was only a baby) introducing the Lips when they played his old late night talk show.

The first act on the bill (for these East Coast shows anyway) is a scrappy group of Iowa punkers called The Sun. A slimmed down version of Sparklehorse (featuring, I guess, the half of the band that's into downers) followed, but only played a couple of songs before the Lips came on (word is that Nick Cave thinks these guys are a little depressing . . . okay, I made that up . . . but knowing the name on your ticket stub, while the 'Horse are on stage you're just waitin' for a superman).

And we're off to see Flaming Lips. A full report of bunny costumes, white suits, and peacelove glitter to come.

"I'm shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment!" Or something like that, right? Conservative (and gay) pundit Andrew Sullivan is pretty surprised to hear an upstanding guy like Santorum come out in favor of policing the bedroom. Sully's meta-narrative of this ongoing story is interesting.

The Rick Santorum story is starting to grow legs. Here see his complete interview with an AP reporter that took place April 7th.

One excerpt:
Santorum: "The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society."

Another:
Santorum: "We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."

It's not surprising when statements like these are made in the week following the big "Bible movies" extravaganza of Easter weekend, but this interview apparently took place over two weeks ago. So why are we hearing about it now?

A serio-comic email debate is taking place among friends regarding this Salon article on Ralph Nader's chances of rising above the status of political sideshow attraction in the 2004 election. A summary of the argumentative wheat and chaff soon to follow.

More proof that Colonel Sanders is a relentless killer who must be stopped, regardless of the originality value of his recipe.

Singled out in a review of Hungry? Boston: The Lowdown on Where the Real People Eat! by online mag GroovyStylie.

Do-gooders need apply: there's a website looking for folks who have Greenpeace and Big Brothers on their resume. Good thing, 'cause I'm looking for something in the low teens at sixty hours a week. I want to help people. Really. (Okay, that's cynical, but hey, it's a buyer's market like crazy out there in JobWorld)

Fun job listing of the day. You'll know when it gets this bad out there for.

For months, skeptics criticized our government's efforts (or non-efforts) at diplomacy with regards to iraq. Conservative hawks slammed these skeptics and questioned their loyalty. Well . . . . today Newt Gingrich, speaking to the American Enterprise Institute in DC, referred to the "collapse of the State Department as an effective instrument." I guess we can count gingrich among those skeptics -- but it seems clear that his intention is to draw a distinction between the Bush administration and the State Department. Could my buddy colin powell's days be numbered? Will he soon find himself a little underemployed too, or sending out one of those mass emails with his new yahoo email addy???

since one of the many purposes of this blogaliciousness in which i am currently engaging is to showcase to the global community my editorial mojo, i'd be remiss if i didn't take this opportunity to urge my peeps in the Boston metro area to pick up LIGHT, a brand spanking new monthly magazine devoted to Boston arts and entertainment. the april issue is on the street now -- and it's free.

i'm a regular contributor to LIGHT, riffing and rambling on local events, arts happenings, and interesting trends. in the debut issue, i preview the Boston Cyberarts Festival.

And a big FYI . . . LIGHT is NOT: Cooking LIGHT, LIGHT Magazine, EarthLIGHT Magazine, Candle LIGHT Magazine, HeartLIGHT, LIGHT, Red LIGHT, OR Point of LIGHT -- but I'm sure these are all fine pubs (ahem).

don't worry . . . they won't all be that long, kids. but don't fret: size isn't that important anyway.

portrait of diplomacy as a young man

In a fever of honesty that I’ve reserved for this space, I’ll admit that for the past several months the personal and political have often, for me, crossed paths. The economic boom of the late nineties ended roughly the same weekend that I moved to Boston, and since getting laid off in March of last year, I’ve scrapped to make a living and hoped that the job market for writers like me would recover. The job hunt, mostly virtual these days, keeps me tethered to my dial-up connection, and I’ve filled those hours between sending my resume to this or that employer by gorging on the twenty-four hour news cycle chronicling the demise of our country’s diplomatic dexterity. Needless to say, for a liberally-minded writer who every week eliminates some other expense from my already spartan budget, watching our leaders put the homefront crises on the back burner has been frustrating. Saddam’s statue is on the ground, people are about to fill their pockets, and I’m wondering if I’ll be able to make next month’s rent.

So of course I signed up to take the Foreign Service Written Exam. What drove me to it, besides my love of the Google? Why does a guy like me even consider joining the corp of diplomats and international Americans, when for the past nearly two years I’ve had everyone from Dick Cheney to the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame tell me that my opinion doesn’t matter?

First the flippant: the promise of cheaper rents, a taste for foreign cuisine honed across the river in the People’s Republic of Cambridge, the giddy desparation of being able to get excited about anything that even hints at medical benefits. Most of what I know about diplomacy comes from Under the Volcano.

I signed up to take the test in Boston. Colin Powell sent me an email postcard. No one, it said, was more excited about my decision to embark on a career with the State Department. My friends did virtual doubletakes over instant messenger.

A cursory glance at the study guide told me that I probably wouldn’t have to worry about reconciling my own political beliefs with the demands of a career in the foreign service. This stuff was hard -- particularly if you only keep the trivia of American history in your head for the purpose of "Final Jeapordy." The “job-related knowledge” portion of the test asked me to remember obscure articles of the Geneva Convention that I hadn’t even learned back in my days as a history major. Sample questions asked me to identify the nations of entire regions -- never mind that eastern Europe isn’t exactly the same place I studied back during the Cold War. The English expression section seemed designed to annoy me away from even bothering.

My first act of diplomacy would be to set myself -- and anyone who knew I was taking the test -- up for failure. I casually took a practice test and answered correctly only thirty-two of seventy questions on history, policy, and government. Oh well, I thought, it’s only one Saturday morning in an otherwise free weekend.

Test day arrived. I’d given up on studying, thinking that one either knows this stuff, or should probably just forget about it. I tromped through a drizzle to the John Hancock Convention Center in Back Bay and got in line. The crowd I had just joined was pretty much what I thought it would be. Overwhelmingly white. Clothing and hairstyles that suggested higher education and emo music-inspired idealism. Most of the people I saw -- aside from a few codgers -- were in their twenties. A few looked to have only recently put college in the rearview mirror, if they had in fact finished.

Suddenly I felt confident. After all, they have to hire somebody, right? Each year thousands take the written exam, which is the first step in the hiring process. In fiscal year 2002, the State Department hired 465 foreign service officers. They were looking to fill 514 jobs with my class, the highest level of hiring ever.

I’d vaguely hoped that the test would be administered by a bunch of guys in black suits and dark sunglasses. I thought I’d be patted down, maybe get dragged out of line and booted for having a ring in my ear. But the proctors were actually a small group of congenial African-Americans who would have looked just as comfortable at a church social.

The testing began. The lead proctor asked for anybody lacking a Number 2 pencil to raise his or her hand. About eight hands flew up in the air! Shouldn’t this be enough to disqualify a few people right off the bat? Do we really want to hand over sensitive documents to people who aren’t even careful enough to read the clear instructions about what to bring?

This anal side of my character would only in handy if I made it to the oral interview stage. I tried to relax.

Actually cracking the seal on my test helped me relax even more. This was going to be a piece of cake. If these questions, which proved that the purpose of the study guide was to scare off the lazy and unambititious, were part of the process, no wonder our status in the international community is as upright as a vegetarian’s at a Texas barbecue.

The knowledge portion tests one’s ability to work in a dull corporate environment -- certain questions on issues like hierarchy and conflict resolution gauge your ability to keep your noise out of trouble, keep your mouth shut, and keep your head down and surf the Web on the slow days. I’d worked in a failing startup, so this was easy cheese to me. Other questions evaluated one’s bodily state: awake versus asleep. On the sample test, I’d been asked about the Boxer Rebellion; on the real deal, anybody who’d at least tripped over a computer had five or six gimmes (e.g., the acronym ISP stands for what? or this one: what does it mean to "bookmark" a web page?).

The test was broken down into four sections: the job-related knowledge (the history part), essay, a sort of personal inventory, and English expression. The essay portion asked me to choose one of four controversial issues and write a persuasive essay espousing a view. As I sit there debating whether to tackle state-standardized testing in schools or funding for the arts, I wonder if the government brings in handwriting experts to examine the loops and jots of our writing to rule out the unsavories. I choose the education question and go with a ra-ra answer in favor of the teachers and students. Everybody wins. Except the government.

The personal inventory section is the most surreal. Here they gauge your modesty ("How many times have your friends or co-workers said you were great in the last year?") and your multiculturalism ("How many foreign films have you seen in the past year?"). It would be a joke if they didn't ask you to list examples.

The English expression portion of the test is last, and I'm annoyed when I'm not the first guy to finish. I'm the second, and it's still raining, and I have the rest of Saturday free to look for a job.