When you despair, as I do, frequently, of what will become of you...
When you are out of work and have no money to pay the rent...
When your boss is a tyrant and you don't know how you can last another day...
When the politics finally has you beaten down because the idiots outnumber you...

There is an answer.  Albeit a temporary answer...an answer nonetheless...

And her name is Connie Willis.

Connie is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met...and I consider it an incredible privilege that I was able to meet her at all...at a few cocktail parties, years ago.  She probably doesn't remember me, but that's all right.

She is a brilliant writer.  That's all that matters.

More below the fold.

The whole keffiyeh kerfuffle over Rachael Ray's Dunkin Donuts ad set off a dKos thread (very humorous) that included someone writing about wanting their apple pastries.

Of course we all know that apples aren't native to the western hemisphere--if they were, Johnny Appleseed would have had to find another line of work.  But where are they from?

Biblical references are often ascribed to pomegranates rather than true apples.  But that might be wrong.  Wikipedia points out that one problem with assuming the ancients meant the apple as we know it today is:

   Apples appear in many religious traditions, often as a mystical or forbidden fruit. One of the problems identifying apples in religion, mythology and folktales is that the word "apple" was used as a generic term for all (foreign) fruit, other than berries but including nuts, as late as the 17th C. CE.;[6] For instance, in Greek mythology, the Greek hero Heracles, as a part of his Twelve Labours, was required to travel to the Garden of the Hesperides and pick the golden apples off the Tree of Life growing at its center.[9][10][11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

George Packer has an interesting analysis of the implosion of the GOP in this week's New Yorker, which finally landed in my mailbox yesterday.  It's rather long but well worth reading in full.  He begins in 1966, when Patrick Buchanan went to work for Nixon, and follows the rise of conservatism from that point to the present.  Some of this should sound very familiar, even to those of us who weren't old enough to follow politics back then:

In order to seize the Presidency in 1968, Nixon had to live down his history of nasty politicking, and he ran that year as a uniter. But his Administration adopted an undercover strategy for building a Republican majority, working to create the impression that there were two Americas: the quiet, ordinary, patriotic, religious, law-abiding Many, and the noisy, élitist, amoral, disorderly, condescending Few.

http://www.newyorker.com/...

Get over it!

From where I vote--which is PA right now and for the near future--the primary ain't even happened yet.  April 22, children.  Not till April 22.  And PA, like OH and TX and NY is one of the LARGE states.  So for once those of us who do not pick wheat seeds from our toenails may have a voice in this presidential election.

We were all freaked, I think, very much including those of us who did not have to escape the twin infernos.

Me?  I was at a part-time job for a bar owner, and went into the hardware store next door to buy a few supplies.  This was maybe 5 minutes before 9 a.m.

The owner asked whether I'd heard about a plane flying into the World Trade Center.  I asked, was he joking; but the radio was on, and the DJ said something about it -- honestly, at this point much of the detail is blurry.

This should really be a comment, I know.  I just didn't see anything topical to link it to.

Check out Paul Krugman's blog entry, "I get an endorsement from Tom DeLay":

Do you have an opposition politician you despise but also secretly kind of like?  

Hmm...let me rephrase.

If, like me, you are a progressive or liberal Democrat, is there someone in the GOP that you know is a scumbag and you wouldn't vote for them, but you kind of enjoy watching them in office?

In the hothouse environment of horticulture, there are many pests to combat: gnats, whitefly, slugs, aphids, and the like.  But among the deadliest are the invisible (bacteria that cause rot) or nearly so (fungi like botrytis, or gray mold, and its cousins).  The spores are air-spread and, given proper conditions, grow like crazy.  Botrytis alone can decimate a crop.                                                        
    http://gardening.wsu.edu/...

But it's rarely alone, because the conditions it prefers (dark and wet, and roughly 55-75F for about 8 hours) are the same conditions in which the bacteria that cause leaf and root rot thrive.

So what's the cure?  You can spray or drench the plants with chemicals.  But the only true, permanent cure is plenty of sunshine and fresh air.  You cut back the canopy, revealing the rot and mold within, and you let nature do its work.  

And our current government resembles a greenhouse culture.

Did anybody else catch this page 1 story from today's NY Times?

http://www.nytimes.com/...

It seems to be all-of-a-piece with the melamine-laced wheat gluten (apparently imported as non-food items: i.e., improperly and illegally labeled so that it would not be subject to inspection):

http://www.nytimes.com/...

And I'm pretty sure this one made DKos earlier this week:

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Is there anyone in this administration who does not reek of corruption?  Let us count the smells:

Attorneygate:  I've lost track of the document dumps, but today's includes evidence that, contrary to Kyle Sampson's testimony, yes, of course they were considering who might replace the fired USAs a WHOLE YEAR before anybody got fired.  

Wolfowitz:  Gives girlfriend not one but two big raises.  Will probably be fired from World Bank, like, Monday.

Rove:  Widely reported, but:  why DID the RNC decide that he, and he alone, needed to have his emails saved separately?  Maybe because, of them all, he's the only one who is computer-literate enough to succeed at a document purge?  I dunno -- but it wouldn't surprise me.

And so many more.

Two things I've read recently, a DKos diary, "Why is the military at a breaking point?" by JLFinch, and today's Must Read from TPM Muckraker, which links to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/...

seem inextricably linked.

The common thread, of course, is lack of funds.

Got water?  From today's LA Times:

In North America, snowpack in the West will decline, causing more floods in the winter and reduced flows in the summer, increasing competition for water for crops and people.[end quote]

Here in south-central PA, we have already moved up one USDA heat zone, and summers seem hotter and drier.  It might rain in Maryland; it might rain in Philadelphia; but we can go six weeks without a cloudy day.

A book excerpt in The Nation underscores the validity of Howard Dean's 50-state strategy.  A "perfect storm" of (blue) grassroots efforts to organize in Montana turned this formerly red state decidedly purple, if not totally blue.  It's a terrific read, and a roadmap for progressive efforts nationwide.

One of the strategies grassroots organizers used was targeting low-income women, who historically tend not to vote -- but who also know that what the GOP stands for is not in their best interest.  So there was a strong voter registration drive, backed up with buses to ferry carless people to the polls.  

Meanwhile, groups more typically associated with the right, like hunters, were disgusted with the environmental degradation left by years of mining, and with the pollution that resulted from GOP-led gutting of environmental laws.

Given: that in the rush to bomb Iraq, the Bush administration all but ignored the necessary war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, such that bin-Laden was allowed to escape into the mountains of Pakistan and the warlords who support him were allowed to regroup and reconsolidate their power; and

Given: that last year's opium crop in Afghanistan was the biggest yet and this year's looks to be even bigger:  http://www.nytimes.com/...

Can we safely say that the Bush Administration has taken the pro-drug side in the war on drugs?  I mean, if they were actually against drugs, why would they be quagmired in Iraq and looking for a new quagmire in Iran?  (Of course, you could ask the same thing vis a vis their position on terrorism:  are they for it?  Judging solely by their actions, they sure seem to be.)  Comments, anyone?

There is no polite way to put this:

Rudy Giuliani is the WORST idea for president, second only to the SHRUB.