Last night, Pete and I were sitting on the couch talking over our day when the TV switched to a tease for the CBS 11:00 news featuring a bit about New York’s new archbishop.

Tata: I wish they would stop talking about this. I just don’t care.
Pete: It matters to a lot of people.
Tata: Is the news just for Catholics?
Pete: This is kind of a big deal.
Tata: It’s not general news. I don’t care whose religion is having a change of the top oppressor. Maybe mention it and move on, but no. This morning’s news was devoted to this bullshit, and I don’t care.
Pete: Well, a lot of people would say this matters to them.
Tata: I’d like to hear something detailed about the economy because that matters to EVERYONE.

You might say I’m in something of a mood about the assumptions and distortions of the newscasts on WNBC while I’m bicycling half-asleep first thing in the morning. Today’s thoughtlessly repeated beauty was that the tea party protests were a grassroots movement, which is simply a lie. The tea parties were organized and funded by Republican operatives and promoted by Fox News. That’s the exact opposite of grassroots which word you will see misused in connection with these events. Putting that aside for the moment, it was delightful to see a report about NY Governor Paterson’s proposal for a bill recognizing same-sex marriage.

Gov. David A. Paterson on Thursday will announce plans to introduce legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, according to people with knowledge of the governor’s plans.

Mr. Paterson’s move, which he first signaled last week after Vermont became the fourth state to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed, reflects the governor’s desire to press the issue with lawmakers in Albany as other states move ahead with efforts to grant more civil rights to homosexuals.

The action in Vermont, where state legislators overrode Gov. Jim Douglas’s veto of a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, came less than a week after the Iowa Supreme Court granted same-sex couples the right to marry.

HOORAY! We are on the road to equal protection under the law. Yippee! Enlightenment makes a comeback! But as if on cue, the new archbishop closes the segment with a promise to send us all back to the Dark Ages.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan today promised to oppose Gov. Paterson’s same-sex marriage, just one day before it will hit the floor of the Legislature.

“You can bet I would be active and present and, I hope, articulate in this particular position,” Dolan told reporters.

The question – one of many the new archbishop took from reporters at his first news conference in Midtown – came as state lawmakers prepared to begin debating the controversial issue.

“The topic you raise – other topics that are controversial that the church has a message to give – you’ll find that I don’t shy away from those things and I wouldn’t sidestep them,” said Dolan.

If he’s got a political opinion he’s invited to speak it as a private citizen, but if he’s marshalling his flock his church should lose its tax exempt status. I’d love to see that, actually. I don’t believe anyone will move to strip the Catholic Church of its tax exemption, which is sad. It would provide a great example for those fucking megachurches which have royally screwed with our separation of church and state. If this is now a fight between Paterson and the Archbishop, and not a civil rights issue for the people of the State of New York, I’d like to see it called for what it is.

This is why the archbishop’s arrival shouldn’t take up a half an hour on the morning news: the Catholic Church shouldn’t get this kind of influence over the lives of people who do not choose to follow its teachings.

New York Times:

Oil Companies Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead

In other news: Duh.

The Obama administration wants to reduce oil consumption, increase renewable energy supplies and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation.

But the world’s oil giants are not convinced that it will work. Even as Washington goes into a frenzy over energy, many of the oil companies are staying on the sidelines, balking at investing in new technologies favored by the president, or even straying from commitments they had already made.

Our top story tonight: Duh.

BP, a company that has spent nine years saying it was moving “beyond petroleum,” has been getting back to petroleum since 2007, paring back its renewable program. And American oil companies, which all along have been more skeptical of alternative energy than their European counterparts, are studiously ignoring the new messages coming from Washington.

Duh: film at 11.

The administration wants to spend $150 billion over the next decade to create what it calls “a clean energy future.” Its plan would aim to diversify the nation’s energy sources by encouraging more renewables, and it would reduce oil consumption and cut carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

The oil companies have frequently run advertisements expressing their interest in new forms of energy, but their actual investments have belied the marketing claims. The great bulk of their investments goes to traditional petroleum resources, including carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands and natural gas from shale, while alternative investments account for a tiny fraction of their spending. So far, that has changed little under the Obama administration.

When we return from commercial: traffic, weather and Duh.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most investments in alternative sources of energy are coming from pockets other than those of the oil companies.

A gum-popping tween could spot the stupidity of this discussion. Oil companies have no obligation to develop anything. Nothing at all. In seventy years, they’ll be out of business if they don’t, but that’s their problem. Our problem is what we are doing and not doing to develop clean energy sources, and by ‘we’ I mean you and me. We. Why doesn’t the New York Times know that?

Six years ago today, we invaded Iraq.

Iron’s the traditional gift for a sixth anniversary.

Wouldn’t it be great if we clapped Cheney in them?

Discovered this day in 1781: Uranus.

Herschel’s music led him to an interest in mathematics, and thence to astronomy. This interest grew stronger after 1773, and he built some telescopes and made the acquaintance of Nevil Maskelyne. In the spring of 1781, William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, using a homemade telescope in the back garden of his house in New King Street, in Bath. He called the new planet the ‘Georgian star’ after King George III, which also brought him favour; the name didn’t stick, however: in France, where reference to the British king was to be avoided if possible, the planet was known as ‘Herschel’ until the name ‘Uranus’ was universally adopted.

Color me impressed. I’ve discovered many things in my various backyards: lightning bugs, a high school ring, unexpected pet poop – but never a planet. Perhaps if we spent more time on our patios, additional planets would reveal themselves. You see, whatever’s spinning out in space has done so for essentially all eternity. We just don’t see it until we’re ready.

Tata: Just so you know, I’m likely to drink a bottle of wine tonight and turn up tomorrow looking like dog chow.
Lupe: You were exceptionally lovely on Monday so we’ll average it out.

Pete and I are planting meaty beefsteak tomatoes. I plan to name them all Herschel in hopes of noticing tomatillos I don’t remember planting but must have been there all along. Today is also the anniversary of the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was a person and not just a famous tragic figure. Less and less will be known about her as time passes, the people who knew her take to the ether and she is swallowed by lore. Rosemary, as Ophelia said, “rosemary for remembrance.” Ophelia wasn’t talking about memories, but that gets lost, too. And basil. I like basil. Last night, Jon Stewart tore up one side of Jim Cramer and down the other after a protracted series of tearings up and down. I had waited so long to see just such a thing, just such a series of things, that at first I didn’t realize what I was seeing. After a moment, I remember thinking Jon would let him get away, as Jon has let so many before. Then I saw I was wrong, as I often am. Jon was out for blood. Jim was defenseless and mewling: a bully challenged often cries. It was always going to be thus, but now we are ready. We are ready to see the Masters of the Universe reduced to bitter tears.

Scott Horton:

The idea that the 9/11 attacks raised the prospect of domestic military operations “for the first time since the Civil War” is infantile nonsense.

Suddenly, all that duck and cover bullshit I remember makes more sense. I didn’t imagine that! After the towers came down, I never bought for a moment that we faced an unprecedented threat. Dude, my fucking WOODEN DESK was supposed to protect me from nuclear holocaust, and I should be shaking in my shoes because four airliners killed a few thousand people? I’m no math genius but even I know my odds of being in the path of that disaster or another like it were truly close to fucking ZERO. But you know what I am afraid of? Avaricious, bed-wetting bureaucrats with dreams of goddamn empire and bloody-minded sychophantic lawyers to back ’em up.

Suppose al Qaeda branched out from crashing airliners into American cities. Using small arms, explosives, or biological, chemical or nuclear weapons they could seize control of apartment buildings, stadiums, ships, trains or buses. As in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, texting and mobile email would make it easy to coordinate simultaneous assaults in a single city.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on New York City and Washington, D.C., these were hypotheticals no more. They became real scenarios for which responsible civilian and military leaders had to plan. The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law, because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War. Could our armed forces monitor traffic in a city where terrorists were preparing to strike, search for cells using surveillance technology, or use force against a hijacked vessel or building? In these extraordinary circumstances, while our military put al Qaeda on the run, it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios–even if, thankfully, those circumstances never materialized.

I’m sure I’m not the first to say this but fuck Yoo and the horse he rode in on. We kids imagined ourselves en flambe every single day of primary school; we were always conscious of where the air raid shelters were. I handled the idea that thousands of people were in the path of a terrorist attack thirty-five miles from my address without making myself the Center of the Universe and there was no need to eviscerate my civil liberties, thank you. There was never any need to arm airports and subway stations. There was no need to put cameras at every intersection, nor is there any need now for an Orwellian Department of Homeland Security. There was no need to torture anyone. So fuck him, now and forever. Fuck him. Yoo doesn’t deserve the company of civilized human beings. He deserves the Rudolf Hess Spandau treatment, and he may get it, as Horton notes:

…I’m delighted that Yoo has published a piece discussing the circumstances in which he prepared the memo. Now I expect to hear no invocations of privilege when he is called to testify about it under oath.

Let the prosecutions begin.

I really needed a good laugh.

Limbaugh To Convene A ‘Female Summit’ To Figure Out Why Women Hate Him

That’ll do it.

I’m no genius but this seems like it might be important.

Wikileaks publishes a billion dollars of semi-secret reports

Oh boy.

Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress.

The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to abortion legislation. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress’s analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year.

A billion dollars? How does one estimate a dollar value for “quasi-secret reports?”

However that hasn’t stopped a grey market forming around the documents. Opportunists smuggle out nearly all reports and sell them to cashed up special interests – lobbyists, law firms, multi-nationals, and presumably, foreign governments. Congress has turned a blind eye to special interest access, while continuing to vote down public access.

Oh. There’s a market for government reports. I should have known. That building my car drives to five days a week is a government document depository library, which means the public must be allowed access. Sometimes, that means people sleep on the sofas – okay, every day people sleep on the sofas – but it also means that no member of the public can be denied access to the documents. Those regulations may change as documents are increasingly online only. We have observed a sharp decline in the number of printed titles. The implications are sobering. I remember the first time I held in my hand the NTSB report on the downing of the Korean jetliner. I was holding history and my hand felt hot. Later, it turned out I was allergic to MSG and shouldn’t have eaten the egg drop soup, but you know what I’m saying. Back to Congress:

Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO.

Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet.

Each time the topic of opening up the reports comes up, it runs into walls erected by opposing lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who “like many members of Congress, views CRS as an extension of his staff,”. If the reports were made public, “every time a member requests a particular document, the public may infer that he’s staking out a particular policy position.” (Aaron Saunders, Stevens’ spokesman, Washington Post, 2007)[4].

This article is having a bit of trouble with time travel, but who doesn’t, really? After I visit the Middle Ages, I can’t control my split ends, and let’s not even discuss Ted Stevens’ problem with chapped lips. So there are two lists: alphabetical , which is big and all, and chronological, which suddenly tells a whole different story. This stuff has been a secret? Look at the explosion of documentation during 1998 and 1999, leading to an avalanche of papers by 2000. Some of these reports read like freshman comp papers. What the hell?

Obviously, we’ve got some reading up to do.

Sometimes, my people can be astonishingly stupid.

The drive to make Italians eat Italian, which was described by the Left and leading chefs as gastronomic racism, began in the town of Lucca this week, where the council banned any new ethnic food outlets from opening within the ancient city walls.

Yesterday it spread to Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan, which is also run by the centre Right. The antiimmigrant Northern League party brought in the restrictions “to protect local specialities from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines”.

Luca Zaia, the Minister of Agriculture and a member of the Northern League from the Veneto region, applauded the authorities in Lucca and Milan for cracking down on nonItalian food. “We stand for tradition and the safeguarding of our culture,” he said.

Milan. Really? Recent host of the Olympics?

You can find a motherfucker anywhere. There’s one now. Here’s a hint: the guy who says he stands for tradition is really interested in dismantling everyone else’s.

Mr Zaia said that those ethnic restaurants allowed to operate “whether they serve kebabs, sushi or Chinese food” should “stop importing container loads of meat and fish from who knows where” and use only Italian ingredients.

Asked if he had ever eaten a kebab, Mr Zaia said: “No – and I defy anyone to prove the contrary. I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto. I even refuse to eat pineapple.”

Good. More for me. Also: my family’s from there so I happen to remember the Veneto’s vast empire was based on trade with the entire world, such as it was, including pineapple growers.

Mehmet Karatut, who owns one of four kebab shops in Lucca, said that he used Italian meat only.

Davide Boni, a councillor in Milan for the Northern League, which also opposes the building of mosques in Italian cities, said that kebab shop owners were prepared to work long hours, which was unfair competition.

What? What? What what what? What?

“This is a new Lombard Crusade against the Saracens,” La Stampa, the daily newspaper, said. The centre-left opposition in Lucca said that the campaign was discrimination and amounted to “culinary ethnic cleansing”.

Vittorio Castellani, a celebrity chef, said: “There is no dish on Earth that does not come from mixing techniques, products and tastes from cultures that have met and mingled over time.”

He said that many dishes thought of as Italian were, in fact, imported. The San Marzano tomato, a staple ingredient of Italian pasta sauces, was a gift from Peru to the Kingdom of Naples in the 18th century. Even spaghetti, it is thought, was brought back from China by Marco Polo, and oranges and lemons came from the Arab world.

Unfortunately, stupid seems contagious in Lombardy. Well, except for the chefs, who seem to know something – I can’t put my finger on it – about food?

Mr Castellani said that the ban reflected growing intolerance and xenophobia in Italy. It was also a blow to immigrants who make a living by selling ethnic food, which is popular because of its low cost. There are 668 ethnic restaurants in Milan, a rise of nearly 30 per cent in one year.

The centre Right won national elections in April last year partly because of alarm about crime and immigration. This week there was a series of attacks on immigrants in bars and shops after the arrest of six Romanians accused of gang-raping an Italian girl in the Rome suburb of Guidonia.

Filippo Candelise, a Lucca councillor, said: “To accuse us of racism is outrageous. All we are doing is protecting the culinary patrimony of the town.”

Your crusade against kebabs will curtail rape complaints. I’m almost sure of it!

Massimo Di Grazia, the city spokesman, said that the ban was intended to improve the image of the city and to protect Tuscan products. “It targets McDonald’s as much as kebab restaurants,” he added.

There is confusion, however, over what is meant by ethnic. Mr Di Grazia said that French restaurants would be allowed. He was unsure, though, about Sicilian cuisine. It is influenced by Arab cooking.

…And invaded by everyone who every built a rowboat. My family’s from there also, which would probably skeeve Mr. Di Grazia just a bit. I happen to know the Sicilians hate him back; that whole occupation thing, you know.

Anyway, this campaign is going to backfire because meat on sticks is undeniably delicious.

I hesitate to predict further into the future than tomorrow morning, not because I don’t see where we’re going but because I see We are lots of Us, and I have been confused. I have little stamina, work in short bursts and require naps about which I am quite serious so don’t call me. Tomorrow is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, which we can honor by heeding the call for a national day of service. What’s that, then?

Millions of Americans are expected to honor Dr. King and answer President-elect Obama’s call to service by volunteering on the January 19 King Holiday. More than 12,100 service projects are taking place across the country, more than double last year. Americans will make it “a day on, not a day off” by delivering meals, refurbishing schools, reading to children, signing up mentors, and much, much more.

Yeah… never before would I have believed a word the government said about Dr. King, but things are different for everyone now, so back to me. For years, I contented myself with small projects, connecting stuff with people who needed stuff and anonymous donations because I didn’t trust myself to be able to finish the job, whatever the job, before I went limp with exhaustion. Yesterday, I saw a poster in the family store for a food pantry collection in the tiny town. It hasn’t been publicized well, so I don’t expect much, which might be fine for a normal person but Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Still, for me, it’s a leap into the unknown. I am going to meet people and see what I can do. I predict tomorrow morning, I will really learn a thing or two, and one or both will be humbling. That’s got to be good for everyone, right?

Ben Wattenberg’s appearance on The Daily Show scared me. I was afraid he’d get away with saying any old poisonous thing. Jon Stewart softens his style when confronted with an older person or a genteel woman. His interview of Nancy Pelosi earlier this week contains a few Jon, did you hear what she just said? moments, for example. But back to Ben Wattenberg – or more specifically, back to me, on the edge of my seat last night: Jon lets a few very dangerous assertions get past him before he’s had enough.

Let me declare, now and forever, that after 9/11 I supported the bombing of NO ONE, the declaration of war on NO ONE, no shredding of the Constitution, no denial of anyone’s human rights, no lunkhead rush to vengeance, no. At no time have I ever supported the insensible and grammatically insupportable War on Terror. No. And I know plenty of people who did not lose their minds and wet their beds, plenty of people who opposed rash action and depraved indifference to genocide and torture – you probably number among those people. The media’s narrative says EVERYONE supported and supports this pointless, endless, and cowardly fool’s errand. It simply isn’t so, and insisting doesn’t make it so.

Now – with that much straight – now, we can start talking seriously.