Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

The slow-walk of justice for Republican wrongdoers has been setting some kind of a record in NH. Tiny blurb in Thursday’s Union Leader: A new trial for accused 2002 GOP phone jamming conspirator James Tobin is expected in either December or January. Tobin’s conviction on phone harassment and conspiracy charges was reversed by a federal appeals court in March and remanded to the trial court… Briefs will begin to be filed in September.

So–federal crime in November, 2002 as paid professional staffers for the NH Republican State Committee and the RNC conspire to jam Democrats’ phones on Election Day. Eventually, one FBI agent in Boston is told to look into this on a part-time basis, but instructed not to follow up on leads to Washington, DC because “other agents” will cover such leads. Such leads, if followed by anyone, yield no indictments, testimony, or the slightest evidence that other FBI agents worked on the case.

Wait two years

In 2004, James Tobin was serving as New England chair for the Bush/Cheney campaign when hints of his phone-jamming role leaked into the press. Conveniently, he was not indicted until December, 2004, more than two years after the phone-jamming. It took only a few days from Tobin’s indictment until millions of dollars from the RNC started flowing that month into payments for his defense lawyers. But…

Wait a year

… it took another year for the case to come to trial. Tobin was found guilty in December, 2005 by 12 NH jurors. And Tobin’s lawyers, within a few days, had transformed their hundreds of pages of objections into multiple appeals of Tobin’s conviction.

Wait a year

In January, 2007, a bizarre spectacle played out in Federal Appeals Court in Boston–watching it unfold, I predicted that Tobin’s conviction would be overturned–as it was, on very narrow procedural grounds, in March, 2007. The judgment clearly stated that Tobin could be re-tried.

Moving comparatively quickly, when events in March get some follow-up in July!

So now, it seems, in December 2007 or January 2008, NH will re-try Mr. Tobin. Will he finally take the stand and respond to some questions about the crime that took place more than five years in the past? Will the many links from Mr. Tobin to his bosses in Washington, DC get any exploration? Will the lonnnggg slow-walk of the phone-jamming case finally speed up now that a pardon from Bush would need to come before January of 2008?

Wait a few more months…

…and these questions will be answered.

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH): “Our society treats both perjury and obstruction of justice as extraordinarily serious crimes, ones for which people are put in prison,” Gregg told the AP.

Senator John E Sununu (R-NH) strongly agrees: “These acts are not merely technical violations of federal law; they demonstrate a broad and consistent pattern of behavior designed to corrupt our system of due process.”

Is impeachment called for? Sununu says it is:

“The President has undermined the judicial process, shown contempt for judges and officers of the court, and failed egregiously to uphold his oath of office. The President should be impeached. Those who will vote to exonerate a President who has shown such contempt for our judicial system either discard the evidentiary record, or willingly betray their own oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.”

Gregg says so too:

“In a country based on the system of laws, which is really the great gift given to us under the terms of our Constitution, there needs to be a consistency of application. The idea that all people are equal under the law is not a relative term.”

Bzzt–thank you for playing! These quotes all come from 1999, when perjury and obstruction of justice were dead serious matters to Republicans Gregg and Sununu–and their target was President William Jefferson Clinton. But perjury and obstruction of justice are much more forgivable now–and how sincerely President Bush agrees with them!

Thanks to Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire for getting me started on this!

Bad news about the Smithsonian’s path under now-ex-director Lawrence Small has been leaking out for years–as early as 2001, scientists started raising red flags about his leadership. In 2005, Congressional audit deplored the “underfinancing” of museum upkeep. In 2006, a sweet but secret 30-year pact signed with Showtime. But the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, which doesn’t seem to read the New York Times, had no clue that their oversight of Lawrence Small should include some actual–what’s that thing called again?–oversight.

Which brings us to this morning’s NY Times story and the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents “taking responsibility” for failing to keep on eye on Lawrence Small. The Board’s response is such a gem of PR-speak it bears reprinting:

“It’s never easy to do this kind of self examination, and we wish we’d been doing it on an ongoing basis.”

Step one: We are already suffering, please don’t be mean to us.

“But it is what it is,” she added. “Certainly the importance of assuring the public trust — and the Congressional trust — is why we moved at such a pace. We met every week since Larry’s resignation to try to make sure we brought forward this set of recommendations so that we can turn the page.”

Step two: Talk about what we did right–even if what we did right was mainly cooperating when forced to take a look at what we did wrong. Step three: Describe future goals with metaphors that imply your forgetting our misdeeds is a necessary prelude to making things better.

Ms. Stonesifer said the governance committee’s report was aimed at ensuring accountability. “There is a need for ethics and transparency in everything we do,” she said.

Step four: Talk about “accountability” as something that will happen in the future and to people other than the current wrongdoers. Step five: Give lip-service to ethics and transparency and any other virtues that sound good.

“Yes, we had a problem,” she added. “The Regents accept responsibility, and we’re ready to move forward.”

They accept responsibility! Not guilty, your Honor! Let’s give that brave, honest, already-suffering Smithsonian Board of Regents a hearty handclasp of thanks and “move forward” and “turn a page.”

Time for all us taxpayers to stop being mean to these so-sorry millionaires and reach deep into our pockets for some tax money to start repairing seven years worth of misgovernance of the Smithsonian, which is or was and hopefully will be again a proud national treasure.

ThinkGeek’s Annoy-a-tron might sound funny or cute–but what do you think of this email they quote from a “satisfied customer” who planted one on a co-worker?

I have watched this simple device transform an (until-now) mild-mannered colleague into a spitting, cussing, paranoid lunatic.
He has ordered all of the staff he supervises (not a small number) to locate the source of the dread beeping before doing anything else (but since they are in on the prank, they haven’t been much help). So he waits, white-knuckles gripping the edge of his desk, anticipating the next beep…nearly bursting that vein on his temple as he shouted it: “That beep has been F***ING with me for HOURS now.”
He has called the facilities department to schedule a maintenance worker to investigate. He speculates that “they” might be doing air-quality testing in the building. This beep must be some device in the ducts detecting dangerous levels of asbestos in the air. Or worse. Radon? Aerosolized mercury? Legionella spores?
The beep means something. What does the beep mean? Is it a warning? It sounds urgent, doesn’t it? It’s telling us to do something. But what? … I imagine that soon he will begin to take things apart. He will methodically dismantle all of the electrical devices in his office, creating an unusually precise metaphor for what is happening in his psyche.
I am reminded what a thin and fragile thread keeps us attached to sanity. Today, this tiny little device helped me break a co-worker’s mind, and I thank you for the sinfully pleasurable schadenfreude.

Sinful pleasure in other people’s pain is increasingly marketed to young men. Marketers vie for some bad-boy demographic that gets a charge out of guys insulting their girlfriends or a bunch of guys teaming up for hours of sport humiliating some coworker.
OK, let me be really old here and give some advice. Marketers want to sell stuff, not to make your life better. Making your life better requires teaming up with other people, some of whom sometimes will really annoy you. When you hurt people who thought you were on their team, you risk turning friends into enemies or at least skeptics. You damage the team, which was your team.
I’m a fan of ThinkGeek, but this time I don’t like what they’re selling.

Cary Tennis, you might think, writes advice columns for Salon–not poetry.

But some of his writing–all it needs to be blank verse is chopping a few line breaks into its punctuation:

You take your place at the table and you do your part.
You do your part in the ancient chain of being and history and fathering,
of war and redemption and wounding,
of burdens too heavy to carry and roofs too old to keep the rain out,
of hardy shrubs aspiring to be trees and old warriors wandering lost among their medals.
You take your place at the table and you do your part.

That fragment was part of Cary’s advice to an adult son unsure how to help his increasingly troubled Vietnam-veteran father.

Only part of what makes Cary Tennis “poetic” is his use of wording and cadence. His work runs in the old (Old-Testament old) tradition of poet as prophet and healer, poet as expositor of the Big Picture.

• A young couple kvetches about their nightmare cat–Cary says that the really big issue here isn’t a cat but “whether you cringe with shame or beam with pride when you think of this years from now.”
• An anxious mother wonders how to explain to her already-troubled eight-year daughter that Dad plans a sex change? Stop with the verbal reassurance and throw a party, says Cory–let the family celebrate that Dad can be happier being who he really is.
• A young woman agonizes over being guilt-tripped toward inviting difficult but pushy friends to her in-laws’ lake house. Cory’s advice helps her figure out how to say no “..in the traditional sense of its meaning no. Or, as Albert Einstein replied when asked if he wanted some coffee: no.”

If some of the problems above seem a bit exotic, not to say borderline twee, here is Cory’s response (expurgating one word you won’t find in my blog) to the modern but heart-breaking question “How long will it take me to get over my divorce?” Cory says healing arrives, but not on schedule, only…

… in due time,
and you will receive it as a gift;
you will see that this was not
some .. accident on the way to an appointment with life
but life itself,
your life, your fate,
with bloody scratches from your own fingernails dragged heavily across its back.

Oxford lovely building, part 2

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

What’s a “McJob”?

• “an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service -sector” (From the OED)
• “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition)
• “a low-paying, low-prestige job that requires few skills and offers very little chance of intracompany advancement” (Wikipedia)
• “a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression and skills that last a lifetime” ( McDonald’s)

The last of these definitions may soon be coming to a dictionary near you.

Anybody can edit Wikipedia–for example on April 5, 2007, one contributor blanked its entire McJobs entry, replacing it with “‘This is unfair and disgusting. Not everybody is unsatisfied with the service industry.”

Such claims crop up often in Wikipedia. Some article should stop describing what *is* (the way a term is actually used) and instead make some objector a happier person.

You or I can edit Wikipedia–giant corporations are more ambitious. McDonald’s has launched a massive PR campaign (with backing from other service-sector employers) to force printed dictionaries to redefine “McJobs.”

Will the OED become a McDictionary? If so, what next? Maybe “health food” defined as “Big Mac with a Diet Coke”?

Energy in New Hampshire

Originally uploaded by John Edwards 2008.

Because my little sister gave me one. But that’s not the only reason…

I’ve been trying to hold back on supporting a candidate for President this time–because I remember way back to the 2000 primary in NH, when Bradley vs. Gore got so hot that many Bradley-ites (OK, my family) ended up disillusioned and sore at heart.

Yes, in November of 2000, my mom drove to the polls and cast a vote for Al Gore–while holding her nose. But she didn’t give money to Gore. She didn’t campaign for him. If election day had been rainy, she might have stayed home. Configure my mom as a lot more unhappy Bradley-ites– you do know that Bush won NH in 2000?

In 2004, Kerry beat Howard Dean in NH–but Kerry didn’t break the hearts of us Dean-supporters. And NH Democrats later went all out to help Kerry beat Bush in the *real* election in 2004.

I like John Edwards. I like Barack Obama. I like Hillary Clinton. (Not necessarily in that exact order.) It saddens me that Obama and Clinton staffers are taking nasty punches at each other’s candidates. I like it that Edwards’s staffers seem to be pro-John, not anti-Barack or anti-Hillary.

Cats talking babytalk (e.g. iCanHasCheezburger) are no longer the silliest thing on the web. Today’s Invisible Lawnmower Prize for Inanity goes to this list of top-ten corporate reputations. Excuse me, Cision (formerly Delahaye Index), but even Numo the hedgehog would look down his little nosicle at your selections–

# 1 on your list is…Microsoft????

Ummm–the security holes in their software, year after year? The ongoing antitrust mess? The embarrassment known as Vista? Heckuva job building that reputation, Microsoft!

# 6 on your list is… Exxon Mobil????

After spending millions of dollars for multiple years to
create fake public doubt about global warming, ExxonMobil declared in 2007 that they will be changing their tactics. Instead, they’ll now be funding doubts about what we should do to address global warming. I don’t think this really makes them good corporate citizens.

# 8 out of 10 is… Wal-Mart Stores????

Wal-Mart’s giant PR blunders in 2006–including the loudly-outed fake grass-roots-iness of Working Families for Walmart–may give some small support to the idea that in 2007 they’re doing better. But–in the top ten of corporate reputations????

lol PR guyz. You can has cheezburger, but you look like m0r0nz.

Greensburg [pre-tornado] has a great BIG WELL-come for YOU!

Originally uploaded by jschumacher.

Route 54 runs kitty-corner into Kansas– “smooth open highway” (says my long-ago diary) “through fields that got greener and lusher, wheat giving way to corn, as the day went by,” said day being June 18, 1987.

Greensburg, Kansas, now so sadly in the news has two local sights of great local pride. One is The World’s Second-Largest Stony-Iron Meteorite. The other is The World’s Largest Hand-Dug Well, 109 feet deep and very cool at the bottom, which is why it made an excellent trip-interruption stop for two little girls, then 12 and 5, in those long-ago not-very-air-conditioned days.

These two magnificent sights were housed right next to each other, so after lunch “at Burke’s coffee shop, enjoying their display of vintage beer ads inside and their little replica western town out back”, we admired the meteorite and then climbed doowwwwn the well before setting off again, “past Wichita, Emporia, and El Dorado…dinner in Ottowa, all you can eat smorgasbord for $3.99.”

Later, my 39 year-old self recorded with disappointment “a very chaste sunset, preppy shades of cream and fading denim.” But the people of Kansas–they were something special– “uniformly friendly, from Tom who swept the hall outside our motel room and brought me a free cup of coffee to every cheerful, pleasant waitress everywhere we stopped.”

And Greensburg itself–its warmth, its civic pride–Greensburg was memorable–so much so that I got email today from my then 12-year-old, “sad news from the home of the hand dug well.”

The Kansas town just tornado-smashed into kindling was little Greensburg. On Friday an F5 class storm leveled the town–this is the strongest and very rare kind of tornado, not seen in the US since 1999.

Says CNN:

Greensburg is best known for having the world’s largest hand-dug well and being home to a 1,000-pound pallasite, or stony-iron, meteorite. After the storm, the structure around the well was gone, and there were reports the meteorite was missing.

So, if you are one of the people who thought, “A tornado in Kansas? No big deal” — the goal of this blogpost is to ask you to think again. And I hope that Tom, and all like him, will be OK.

Marble goddess

Originally uploaded by Trithemius.

Songs that make us cry — one of my favorites, not on the AV club list is “16th Avenue” sung by Lacy J. Dalton.

From the corners of the country

From the cities and the farms

With years and years of living

Tucked up underneath their arms

They walk away from everything

Just to see a dream come true

So God bless the boys who make the noise

On 16th Avenue

I don’t hear Lacy singing only of back-up guitarists. To me this song celebrates geeks of every variety (scientists, poets, programmers…) who woke up one young morning to hear the goddess whisper that–somewhere out there–live people who care about the stuff they do.

An idea that sets your life on a new path was imagined by Homer as a goddess, grabbing the hero’s attention–or, in case of emergency, seizing his hair.

When I hear “16th Avenue,” I re-remember just how grateful I am that the kids who tormented me for being a “brain” no longer inhabit my days or show up in dreams. I’m glad of the friendship of so many folks who, just like me, left home looking for our own 16th Avenue.

(p.s. I found this topic via the always-inspiring and lovable AKMA)