If i could meet...

About 10 years ago, i first started to get the notion that i'd like to meet someone famous. I've had heroes and bands and actors, etc. all my life. I've never really had any real desire to MEET anyone. sure i'd be glad to meet Harrison Ford when i was in 2nd grade, but i never really thought "I WISH i could meet so and so".

...Until about 10 years ago.

I'd moved to New Orleans and realized that my favorite band, Elastica, was broken up (essentially) and I'd never seen them live. more to the point, they'd played live in New Orleans, a mere few hours from where i was living as a fan, and it never occurred to me to even go see them. Now I can't. it just seemed so stupid of me. I was sitting there thinking I'd like to SEE some of these people i like. maybe even MEET them. i mean, why not? I could maybe even MEET someone i liked. Just then I realized it would be GREAT to see Sinatra. within a year he was dead.

A few years later I found Hunter S. Thompson. i started reading any and everything i could get my hands on when it comes to HST. It came to my head, you know, I could maybe even MEET Hunter Thompson. It may be a real disappointment. It might take a TON of effort or planning, but I could arrange something and maybe just say "Hi" or "I like your work". I wanted to have that some contact. It was strange to see that, but it felt nice to say 'why not'? Maybe it would not be meaningful, but rather it would be a way to touch something that was important to me or see it in front of me in a way that was immediate. That it wasn't a radio wave beamed to my world from across a continent. These things had never really occured to me.

a year or 2 later he was dead too.

I've seen a few people that meant something to me in the last few years. Now I've figured out someone else. John Waters. It isn't even that I'm a die hard fan of his movies (though i do like them). It's just every time i see him do an interview, I cannot help but finding interest or connection in some way (often related to how he views Baltimore). Anyway, just a thought. hopefully I can meet him before he's dead (i have a bad track record here). He seems pretty personable.

Hey, i have friends in Baltimore. maybe i could buy him a cup of coffee...?

More Fetus Fealty

Not much of a comment from me on this (See below), but follow the link above and see a great article by one of my favorite legal columnists, Dahlia Lithwick. She delivers a very interesting read on the recent abortion case decided by the Supreme Court. here's a snip:

And then Kennedy quickly returns to the business of grossing us out. With a stirring haiku about how "respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child," the justice interpolates himself between every one of those mothers and every child she might ever bear. Without regard for the women who feel they made the right decision in terminating a pregnancy, he frets for those who changed their minds. ("It seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.") (The "infant," not the "fetus.") As both the dissenters and my colleague Emily Bazelon

have pointed out, this portrayal of a rampant epidemic of regretful women may or may not be scientifically accurate. (The American Psychological Association doesn't think so.) But even if the numbers of women who would truly choose differently if they could choose again are larger than most of the medical literature indicates, one might question whether such women should be the pole star of national abortion policy.

Nobody disputes that whether or not they decide to go through with an abortion, women face a heart-wrenching choice. But for Kennedy only those women who regret the decision to abort illuminate some deeper truth. And Kennedy's solution for these flip-flopping women is elegant. Protect them from the truth. "Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details," he concedes. "It is, however, precisely this lack of information concerning the way the fetus will be killed that is of legitimate concern to the state." In Kennedy's view, if pregnant women only knew how abhorrent the procedure was, they'd always opt to avoid it. But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out in dissent, Kennedy doesn't propose giving women more information about partial-birth abortion procedures. He says it's up to the Congress and the courts to substitute their judgment and ban the procedures altogether. ("I'm sorry Bianca, there is a procedure out there that may be safer for you, but some day, you will thank me for sparing you from it.")

Posturing for the Fetus

Have you heard of "partial birth abortion"? well, that term is not a medical term. it's made up by abortion opponents so that they can have a strawman procedure to 'ban'. this gets the
public used to the idea of banning abortion procedures. the procedure is extremely rare and virtually never used as anything but a last result. More to the point, it is usually ONLY used when something is going seriously wrong.

The legislature has attempted to ban certain late term abortions, termed 'partial birth abortions', but always failed due to the unwillingness to include exceptions for the health of the mother. Even President Clinton said he would have signed off on the ban had the exceptions for the mother's life been made. Previously, the US Supreme Court struck down the laws because they always lacked this exemption. I have yet to see whether there are any preserved exemptions for the mother's life. if not, the court has just reversed itself.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how - not whether - to perform an abortion.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

One of the Giants in literature has died. Click and read. I don't think i'd do him justice here today.

One More Cook for the Stew?

from the Washington Post:

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

OK, it may just be me, but it seems that the real problem isn't that they can't find someone to the job. the problem is that they feel the need to have such a "Czar" in the first place. Think about it. we have 2 wars, so to speak, and evidently this is too much for the President, the Sec. of Defense, and the joint chiefs of staff? I'm sorry, but if we could manage WW1 and WW2 without a "Czar",but we cannot do the same now...? Well then, the Administration is simply finding new depths to its incompetence.

We were at the beach...Everybody had matching towels

I've had the song "Rock Lobster" (by the B-52s) in my head for weeks now. i think this is the culprit. I've been feeling sorta hypnotized, honestly.