I'll be "appearing" at WRITERS CHATROOM this Sunday, June 1, from 7 to 9 PM EDT. There's no password or registration required; just go to http://www.writerschatroom.com, click "Enter Chatroom" and log in.
This should be fun, so drop by!
Thanks to Linda J. Hutchinson and the folks at WC for inviting me.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
Ready to Lead, Huh?
You might be more convincing, Senator if you, oh, I dunno, had a clue what you were talking about:
So I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.
Uh, nope. There are 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, which is, last time I checked, more than the 130,000 we had there pre-surge.
The McCain campaign's reaction?
Advisers to Sen. John McCain said the flap over whether the senator was mistaken about the troop level in Iraq is nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."
McCain's advisers, including Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl and McCain's foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, both hit back hard on a conference call this afternoon.
"It is the essence of semantics," a frustrated Scheunemann told reporters who asked about the mistake. "We're having this call about a verb tense. If you choose to write a story about Senator McCain and a verb tense, you need to hold Senator Obama to the exact same standard."
Let's be clear here: Republicans are lambasting Obama because he misstated the name of the concentration camp his great uncle liberated 63 years ago. McCain doesn't know the number of troops we have in Iraq RIGHT NOW. Either that, or he's lying through his teeth.
"Verb tenses. " Jesus Christ.
If I tell my wife, "yes, I took out the garbage" and I have not, in fact, taken out the garbage, I have not "missed a verb tense." I have lied.
Here's another howler from the McCain campaign:
considering Barack Obama hasn't been to Iraq in 873 days and has never had a one on one meeting with Gen. Petraeus, it isn't a surprise to anyone that he demonstrates weak leadership.
So what does it say that McCain HAS gone to Iraq and HAS met with Gen. Petraeus, and he STILL gets it wrong?
So I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.
Uh, nope. There are 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, which is, last time I checked, more than the 130,000 we had there pre-surge.
The McCain campaign's reaction?
Advisers to Sen. John McCain said the flap over whether the senator was mistaken about the troop level in Iraq is nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."
McCain's advisers, including Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl and McCain's foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, both hit back hard on a conference call this afternoon.
"It is the essence of semantics," a frustrated Scheunemann told reporters who asked about the mistake. "We're having this call about a verb tense. If you choose to write a story about Senator McCain and a verb tense, you need to hold Senator Obama to the exact same standard."
Let's be clear here: Republicans are lambasting Obama because he misstated the name of the concentration camp his great uncle liberated 63 years ago. McCain doesn't know the number of troops we have in Iraq RIGHT NOW. Either that, or he's lying through his teeth.
"Verb tenses. " Jesus Christ.
If I tell my wife, "yes, I took out the garbage" and I have not, in fact, taken out the garbage, I have not "missed a verb tense." I have lied.
Here's another howler from the McCain campaign:
considering Barack Obama hasn't been to Iraq in 873 days and has never had a one on one meeting with Gen. Petraeus, it isn't a surprise to anyone that he demonstrates weak leadership.
So what does it say that McCain HAS gone to Iraq and HAS met with Gen. Petraeus, and he STILL gets it wrong?
Monday, May 26, 2008
MATTERS OF FAITH, Kristy Kiernan
Matters of Faith by Kristy KiernanMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kristy Kiernan has many gifts as a writer (and as for her gifts as a person, well, there's not enough room to write about them on only one Internet).
Two of those gifts shine the most brightly in this, her second book:
1. Characterization: Kristy writes characters so complex, so multidimensional, so REAL, that you feel that any moment they're going to step out of the page and strike up a conversation. When they suffer, you suffer along with them. And when they find their moments of redemption and healing, you feel redeemed as well. The people in this book: Cal, Chloe, Marshall, even (or maybe especially) the Grandma, are going to haunt me for a long time.
2. Setting: Kristy clearly loves her home, the places where she was raised in South Florida, and that affection shows through in all of her description of the settings here. The closest comparison I can make is to Pat Conroy, but with a lighter, more graceful touch. The word "grace" keeps recurring in reviews I've read of Kristy's work, and it's an apt one.
Full disclosure: you may have guessed from this review that Kristy is a friend of mine. True enough. But trust me, this is an amazing book, and I'd be recommending it even if Kristy Kiernan was a total stranger.
View all my reviews.
Quote of the Day
mediabistro.com: FishbowlDC: I do think that the quality which makes a man want to write and be read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and is masochistic. Like one of those guys who has a compulsion to take his thing out and show it on the street. - James Jones
So how does this explain women writers?
So how does this explain women writers?
Saturday, May 24, 2008
When the Buzzwords Fail
Latest Newpaper Column:
I tell you, folks, last week was not a good one for the favorite buzzwords of the Far Right.
We start with one of those favorite rhetorical bugbears of the wingnut, the so-called "unelected judge." Whenever a legal decision doesn't go their way, the cry goes up by the politicos of the GOP torch-and-pitchfork brigade: "unelected judges!"
It was no different recently when California's Supreme Court struck down that state's ban on gay marriage on state constitutional grounds.
U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, House minority whip, fumed with clockwork predictability: "Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people."
See that? He got the buzzword in twice. I think they get some kind of bonus if they do that. Or maybe Dick Cheney just promises not to shoot you for a whole year .
Well, Roy, old son, there's only one problem. The judges who voted to overturn the ban are, it's true, appointed by the duly elected governor, but they then have to be approved by a vote of the people at the next general election. In fact, all of the seven justices participating in the decision were elected by 69 percent or greater of the voters.
So much for "unelected judges," and so much for the idea that the leadership of the House Republicans has the foggiest idea what it's talking about.
Then you had poor right-wing talk show host Kevin James, who on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" show on MSNBC began literally screaming at the top of his lungs the moment he was allowed to speak about how Barack Obama was another "appeaser like Neville Chamberlain" for his position that the U.S. should have talks with Iran.
Matthews asked, not once but several times, if James actually knew who Neville Chamberlain was and if he knew what Chamberlain had done that constituted appeasement. I won't bore you with the five minutes of twisting, dodging, and outright ignoring of the question that James engaged in, but suffice it to say that the answer was, "No, James had not the slightest idea what Neville Chamberlain actually did that could actually be called appeasement of Adolf Hitler." (Hint: It involved giving up half of Czechoslovakia.)
If simply sitting down and talking with enemies is enough to constitute "appeasement," then let's look at some other famous "appeasers" in history.
Ronald Reagan: The patron saint of the right presided over an administration that conducted numerous high-level meetings with a state that supported terrorism, actually had nuclear weapons that were actually pointed right at us, and who had threatened to destroy us in the name of their ideology. (That would be the Soviet Union, in case you didn't know.) Oh, the shame! Oh, the appeasement! We even, horror of horrors, had an actual embassy, with ambassadors and everything, in the heart of the enemy capital!
But St. Ronald never sat down and talked with any Iranians, by golly, at least according to Sen. John McCain. Well, I suppose that's true, since the hostages were released at the moment he became president. It should be noted, however, that what St. Ronald DID do was approve the sale of weapons to Iran, including sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles that could have been used against American planes, and state-of-the art anti-tank missiles that could have been used against American armor. But he never did talk to them, that's true. That would have been appeasement (insert eye-roll here).
George Bush the Elder: James Baker, Poppy Bush's former secretary of state, made, by his own count, 15 trips to Syria in 1990 and 1991 -- at a time when Syria was on the list as a "state sponsor of terrorism."
And, he noted in a 2006 interview, " On the 16th trip Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in history to come sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time. And, thereby, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist." Talking to an enemy, he said, is not appeasement: "You don't just talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies, as well. And the diplomacy involves talking to your enemies."
But Reagan and Bush the Elder came from another time for the Republican Party, a time that the GOP, whatever its other faults, was at least run by grownups and not by mouth-breathers who have trouble articulating any concept that can't be reduced to a bumper sticker. What will they do now that the buzzwords are failing them?
Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, and practices law in Carthage. His third novel, "Safe and Sound" will be released in paperback on June 3.
I tell you, folks, last week was not a good one for the favorite buzzwords of the Far Right.
We start with one of those favorite rhetorical bugbears of the wingnut, the so-called "unelected judge." Whenever a legal decision doesn't go their way, the cry goes up by the politicos of the GOP torch-and-pitchfork brigade: "unelected judges!"
It was no different recently when California's Supreme Court struck down that state's ban on gay marriage on state constitutional grounds.
U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, House minority whip, fumed with clockwork predictability: "Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people."
See that? He got the buzzword in twice. I think they get some kind of bonus if they do that. Or maybe Dick Cheney just promises not to shoot you for a whole year .
Well, Roy, old son, there's only one problem. The judges who voted to overturn the ban are, it's true, appointed by the duly elected governor, but they then have to be approved by a vote of the people at the next general election. In fact, all of the seven justices participating in the decision were elected by 69 percent or greater of the voters.
So much for "unelected judges," and so much for the idea that the leadership of the House Republicans has the foggiest idea what it's talking about.
Then you had poor right-wing talk show host Kevin James, who on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" show on MSNBC began literally screaming at the top of his lungs the moment he was allowed to speak about how Barack Obama was another "appeaser like Neville Chamberlain" for his position that the U.S. should have talks with Iran.
Matthews asked, not once but several times, if James actually knew who Neville Chamberlain was and if he knew what Chamberlain had done that constituted appeasement. I won't bore you with the five minutes of twisting, dodging, and outright ignoring of the question that James engaged in, but suffice it to say that the answer was, "No, James had not the slightest idea what Neville Chamberlain actually did that could actually be called appeasement of Adolf Hitler." (Hint: It involved giving up half of Czechoslovakia.)
If simply sitting down and talking with enemies is enough to constitute "appeasement," then let's look at some other famous "appeasers" in history.
Ronald Reagan: The patron saint of the right presided over an administration that conducted numerous high-level meetings with a state that supported terrorism, actually had nuclear weapons that were actually pointed right at us, and who had threatened to destroy us in the name of their ideology. (That would be the Soviet Union, in case you didn't know.) Oh, the shame! Oh, the appeasement! We even, horror of horrors, had an actual embassy, with ambassadors and everything, in the heart of the enemy capital!
But St. Ronald never sat down and talked with any Iranians, by golly, at least according to Sen. John McCain. Well, I suppose that's true, since the hostages were released at the moment he became president. It should be noted, however, that what St. Ronald DID do was approve the sale of weapons to Iran, including sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles that could have been used against American planes, and state-of-the art anti-tank missiles that could have been used against American armor. But he never did talk to them, that's true. That would have been appeasement (insert eye-roll here).
George Bush the Elder: James Baker, Poppy Bush's former secretary of state, made, by his own count, 15 trips to Syria in 1990 and 1991 -- at a time when Syria was on the list as a "state sponsor of terrorism."
And, he noted in a 2006 interview, " On the 16th trip Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in history to come sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time. And, thereby, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist." Talking to an enemy, he said, is not appeasement: "You don't just talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies, as well. And the diplomacy involves talking to your enemies."
But Reagan and Bush the Elder came from another time for the Republican Party, a time that the GOP, whatever its other faults, was at least run by grownups and not by mouth-breathers who have trouble articulating any concept that can't be reduced to a bumper sticker. What will they do now that the buzzwords are failing them?
Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, and practices law in Carthage. His third novel, "Safe and Sound" will be released in paperback on June 3.
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Final Straw
Clinton Invokes RFK Assassination:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked the memory of slain Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy as she explained her persistence in the Democratic race on Friday, saying that although the media and the Barack Obama campaign have been trying to usher her from the race, "historically, that makes no sense."
"We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California," Clinton said in a meeting with the editorial board of the Argus Leader, a newspaper in South Dakota.
You know, however much she may try to wriggle out of it, there's no mistaking the meaning:
"Hey, I'm staying in 'cause someone could pull a James Earl Ray on the black guy."
Anyone who's read this blog knows I'm no Clinton hater. I've taken her side against some of the more ridiculous attacks. But her campaign has sunk farther and farther into the gutter and her more virulent supporters have revealed an ugly racist side that's turned me off even further. She's turned into Karl Rove in a dress, and I have to say, at this point, I think I would do the unthinkable.
I'd stay home on Election Day if she was the nominee.
That's not an easy thing for me to say. But when McCain starts looking like the one who's less likely to stoop to the kind of nasty bullshit the Rethuglican Brownshirts have practiced for so long... I'd rather NOT vote than vote for her.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked the memory of slain Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy as she explained her persistence in the Democratic race on Friday, saying that although the media and the Barack Obama campaign have been trying to usher her from the race, "historically, that makes no sense."
"We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California," Clinton said in a meeting with the editorial board of the Argus Leader, a newspaper in South Dakota.
You know, however much she may try to wriggle out of it, there's no mistaking the meaning:
"Hey, I'm staying in 'cause someone could pull a James Earl Ray on the black guy."
Anyone who's read this blog knows I'm no Clinton hater. I've taken her side against some of the more ridiculous attacks. But her campaign has sunk farther and farther into the gutter and her more virulent supporters have revealed an ugly racist side that's turned me off even further. She's turned into Karl Rove in a dress, and I have to say, at this point, I think I would do the unthinkable.
I'd stay home on Election Day if she was the nominee.
That's not an easy thing for me to say. But when McCain starts looking like the one who's less likely to stoop to the kind of nasty bullshit the Rethuglican Brownshirts have practiced for so long... I'd rather NOT vote than vote for her.
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