Getting In Touch With My Feminine Side

Left: The Reverend Mother Joseph was right - these eyelashes are great!

(photo by Michael Manley).

Left: Drama Mama (photo by Michael Manley).

Today, at the end of the show, a little old lady approached me and said "It was a great show, but you make a terrible woman!" Can't please everyone!

Left: Looking way too decadent here. I have to be careful. Since eye surgery in 1994, my left eye doesn't open quite as far as my right eye. So, to have eyes that match, the right eyelash should be just a bit farther out than the left eyelash. Here, it's the opposite (photo by Lavelle Lee).

Left: Self-portrait in the mirror, wearing the white tuxedo outfit.


Left: Half-prepared for the show, and holding a bouquet, people were amused by my ensemble - mesh stockings, sensible black shoes, and black long-sleeved shirt (photo by Dan Petersen).

Walt Goes To A John Edwards Rally

Just as he saw Hillary Clinton in November, Walt went to see John Edwards in Aiken, South Carolina on Saturday, January 12th:

Presidential candidate Senator John Edwards spoke in Aiken yesterday, and I went to see him. He was not the first candidate to visit Aiken – Obama, Hillary, McCain, and Thompson have also been here. I saw Hillary when she came in November. Edwards’ event was held at the USC-Aiken auditorium, but he did not speak in the auditorium itself; he spoke in the lobby. There were not enough people to fill the 1000+ seat auditorium.

I got there an hour early. Most of the volunteers who handed out stickers and petitions were college kids. There were only 50 seats set up, all taken. So I went hunting around the building, found a chair, brought it to the lobby, and then scoped out the audience. There were about 250 people present by the time Edwards arrived. This compares to 1200 in Aiken for Hillary, and 600 for Obama (pre-Oprah). An interesting feature was the lack of black support. Blacks make up 30% of the population in Aiken County, and perhaps 50 or 60% of the Democratic Party, but only 3% of the Edwards audience was black, compared with 10% for the Hillary audience. As it happened, I sat next to one of the only black folks, a guy in his 60s, and had a conversation with him. He was born here, but went north to find work after high school, and worked for Ford in Michigan for 30 years before retiring back home. He will vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination, but he has read a lot of the Bible, and Genesis says that Man should rule over Woman. So he is OK with either Obama or Edwards, but does not really want a woman president. Above everything, however, he will not vote for a Republican: when Democrats are in office, the economy is good, but recessions occur when Republicans rule. I guess Democrats have more business-friendly policies than Republicans. He (the black guy) also knows that foreign cars are better than US cars, but out of loyalty to Ford, always buys American. Nevertheless, he admits that Ford cars of today do not have the quality that they used to. His brother, who is ex-military, is a Republican, and they are always fighting about politics.

An interesting thing about blacks, which I never realized before I began working with them in 1992, is that there are a fair number of blacks – those with military or college backgrounds – who are swing voters, and occasionally vote for the GOP. They don’t exactly advertise it, and of course neither the Media nor black leaders want anyone to know, but a significant percentage of my black coworkers have at least once or twice voted for a Bush, or for Strom Thurmond.

On stage, there was room for about 15-20 people to stand behind Edwards. While I was in the sixth row speaking to the black guy, the organizer of the stage group worked his way over to us and asked the black guy if he would be willing to stand up on the stage. They put him in the front row of the people on stage, in the exact center. I have no idea why they singled him out. A little kid on stage was holding a sign reading “Steelworkers for Edwards”. After awhile, an adult traded signs with him – perhaps he didn’t believe the kid was really a steelworker. The guy who took up the Steelworker sign is the Assistant Principal at an elementary school in Graniteville, outside Aiken. There aren’t any steel foundries in South Carolina.

To my left was a retired couple in their 70s, transplanted northerners like me. They were originally from Michigan, and the man talked with familiarity about Michigan labor unions – he knew the names of union leaders. The woman said that this was the first Presidential Candidate speech they had gone to in 40 years! They were motivated then because of Vietnam, and this time because of Iraq. The man found it incomprehensible that most South Carolinians are Republicans. They have been brainwashed into thinking that Democrats raise taxes! A similar theme was echoed by another guy I spoke with, a young man of about 30, a nursing student at USC-Aiken. He can’t understand why most southerners are Republicans. Republicans only want to help the rich, and southerners aren’t rich. According to him, it doesn’t make any sense at all for a southerner to vote Republican. I told both of these men that in this election, I was a swing voter, and could possibly see myself voting either way. Neither one was curious about why I might consider voting Republican.

The young man was wearing an Edwards sticker, and I asked why he supported Edwards, as opposed to Hillary or Obama. It’s because Edwards is anti-nuke. The guy is correct. Of the three big Democratic contenders, only Edwards explicitly rules out a nuclear future for the US. Bechtel Corp sends out a weekly newsletter to its employees. The last one had an article about the candidates’ positions on nuclear power, based on their statements in New Hampshire. According to Bechtel, all Republican candidates support nuclear power. On the Democrat side, Edwards is against it, and Hillary is evasive. I take that to mean that she will not veto pro-nuke legislation, and might even appoint pro-nuke people to cabinet positions. Obama actually said that nuclear power should be seriously considered as an option. When I read that, I thought “O, the times, they are a changin’!” Only ten years ago, no Democrat anywhere would allow for the possibility of building more nuclear plants.

Senator Edwards showed up exactly on time, not even one minute late! There was absolutely no security protection. No secret service men, and no local cops. He wore a navy blue sport jacket with a white dress shirt, but the shirt was unbuttoned and he did not wear a tie. He wore blue jeans which were precision aged so that they did not look new, but neither did they look worn or faded. Overall, a perfect mix of formality and laid-backness. I envy him his youthfulness; he is 54, but really does look 35. I do have one cost-saving suggestion for Edwards. My haircuts cost $12, but look just as good as his $400 cuts. He is wasting his supporters’ hard-earned money on those fancy barbers.

I’m going to compare his speech to Hillary’s, because I saw both of them here in Aiken. Edwards spoke for 25 minutes (Hillary spoke for 45). He is a good public speaker, and knew exactly what he wanted to say, and used appropriate inflections and gestures at all times. Compared to Hillary, Edwards has just about exactly the same goals (considering only what they said in Aiken). Subsidized health care for all Americans is number one priority. Second place is getting out of Iraq, but recognizing that American servicemen and women are heroes. We need to combat global warming, using carbon emission ceilings, carbon sequestration, and alternative energy sources (but not nuclear). Neither candidate mentioned any foreign policy goals at all, other than getting out of Iraq. He said nothing about homeland security, except that he would put a stop to covert surveillance of US citizens. I take that to mean that he would repeal the Patriot Act. He said nothing about controlling illegal immigration.

Edwards is a genuine rags-to-riches story. He talked about being born in a South Carolina textile mill, and how his father and both grandparents spent their whole careers as millworkers. In this respect – humble beginnings – he is like Reagan and Bill Clinton, but unlike the Bushes, Kerry, Gore, and Hillary. I like to see that in US politics.

Although Edwards and Hillary have pretty much the same policy goals, there were some stylistic differences. First, Hillary used some conservative Christian buzzwords when she spoke; Edwards did not. Second, although both want to combat global warming, Edwards seems to have given the issue some more careful thought than Hillary has. But the major difference was their attitude toward social programs. Hillary wanted more social programs because it is the right thing to do. Edwards wanted this too, but there was another element in his mind. Several times in his speech he contrasted the position of the “struggling middle class” with the exalted position of the rich fatcats. There are drug company fatcats, insurance company fatcats, banker fatcats, and oil company fatcats. He wants to encourage middle class and poor Americans into conscious conflict with wealthy Americans. There was no hint of this emotion when Hillary spoke. I guess this comes out of their backgrounds. Hillary was born rich, and Edwards only became rich after 20 years of litigating against rich corporations on behalf of employees and customers. After hundred of court cases where he encouraged juries to hate defendants, perhaps hatred of his fellow rich Americans is indelibly carved into his soul. Does he feel guilty for making all that money? I wonder.

After his 25-minute speech, he spent some time shaking hands, but did not take any questions from the audience. Not a single local Democratic officeholder was present to host his visit. The closest thing was a former Aiken County Democratic Party Chairman – but not the current Chairman. No city or county councilmen were there, no state senators, and no mayors. If I had to guess, based only on crowd size and degree of support by local Democratic leaders, I’d say that Edwards will finish 3rd in South Carolina. There is a special place in Dante’s Inferno for politicians who can’t win in their own home state.

I See Andrea St. Clair

Several times lately, walking down the street, I'll see someone walking along who looks an awful like Andrea St. Clair, but I'll be uncertain enough that, in order to avoid embarrassment, I don't say hello. So, I'm left to wonder. I don't think it is Andrea St. Clair, because they all seem to vary somewhat in look, so they appear to be different people, in different places.

Why the trouble with doppelgangers all of a sudden? Is it an omen, maybe? Is the world deliberately aiming to look more like Andrea St. Clair? Or am I forgetting what she looks like, given the number of different roles she's had on the local stages, so everyone kind of looks like her?

The reason I ask, is that I thought I saw her earlier today, walking eastbound on Capitol, near 18th Street. But I was afraid to say hello.....

Like Hannah Montana, she probably has body doubles....

Coughing Jag

I'm pretty sleepy today - poor Sparky the Dog coughed for hours and hours last night, defying the ameliorative effects of his heart medications, and keeping me in a state of fitful, unrestful unsleep.

I dreamt that a pterodactyl lived in my house, preying on the food in my cupboards and causing trouble for the neighbors.....

Oh, that was reality????

Wall Street Tanks Again

DJI 12,606.30.

They'll have to work through this credit crisis before stocks are strong enough to maintain their advances.

Lame, But Funny

Just trying to comply with the check-cashing rules:

Detective Travis Rapp has seen his share of corpses, but this was new: two men wheeling a rigid, pale body down a Manhattan street in a red office chair, drawing a crowd of suspicious onlookers.

...The man was dead, and two of his friends had hauled his corpse to a store to cash his $355 Social Security check, police said. They were arrested before they could get the money.

The bedraggled suspects, David J. Dalaia and James O'Hare, were scheduled to appear in court Wednesday night. Police said the men, both 65, were petty criminals with long histories of heroin addiction and arrests dating to the 1960s.

The trouble began Tuesday when Dalaia and O'Hare tried to cash Virgilio Cintron's check at a store in Hell's Kitchen on their own, police said. The man at the counter told them that Cintron had to be present to cash the check, so they went back to his apartment, which one of the suspects shared with the dead man.

Cintron was apparently undressed when he died, sometime within the previous 24 hours. Police said Dalaia and O'Hare proceeded to dress him in a faded T-shirt, pants they could only get up part way, and a pair of Velcro sneakers. They threw a coat over his waist to conceal what the pants couldn't cover, police said.

They then put him on the office chair and wheeled the corpse over to the check-cashing store.

The men left Cintron's body outside, went inside and tried to cash his check, authorities said. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O'Hare told the clerk they would go and get him.

At about the same time, Rapp spotted the men and confronted them as they were trying to haul the body into the store. He said that even after he identified himself as a police officer, O'Hare told him, "I have to get my friend in here. I have to cash his check."

He ordered the men to back away from the victim. They feigned surprise when paramedics declared him dead, Rapp said.

"When they said, 'Your friend is dead,' they said, 'Oh my God, he's gone?'"

Hell Freezes Over

It snowed in Baghdad!:

For the first time in memory, snow fell across Baghdad.

Although the white flakes quickly dissolved into gray puddles, they brought an emotion rarely expressed in this desert capital snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings — delight.

"For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad," said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

"When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad," Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. "But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination."

Morning temperatures uncharacteristically hovered around freezing, and the Baghdad airport was closed because of poor visibility. Snow is common in the mountainous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, but residents of the capital and surrounding areas could remember just hail.

"I asked my mother, who is 80, whether she'd ever seen snow in Iraq before, and her answer was no," said Fawzi Karim, a 40-year-old father of five who runs a small restaurant in Hawr Rajab, a village six miles southeast of Baghdad.

"This is so unusual, and I don't know whether or not it's a lesson from God," Karim said.

Some said they'd seen snow only in movies.

Talib Haider, a 19-year-old college student, said "a friend of mine called me at 8 a.m. to wake me up and tell me that the sky is raining snow."

"I rushed quickly to the balcony to see a very beautiful scene," he said. "I tried to film it with my cell phone camera. This scene has really brought me joy. I called my other friends and the morning turned to be a very happy one in my life."

An Iraqi who works for The Associated Press said he woke his wife and children shortly after 7 a.m. to "have a look at this strange thing." He then called his brother and sister and found them awake, also watching the "cotton-like snow drops covering the trees."

For a couple of hours anyway, a city where mortar shells routinely zoom across to the Green Zone became united as one big White Zone. As of late afternoon, there were no reports of violence. The snow showed no favoritism as it fell faintly on neighborhoods Shiite and Sunni alike, and (with apologies to James Joyce) upon all the living and the dead.

Like Atrios Says....

The wonders of capitalism:

Buy Buy Countrywide

Jim Cramer told you to buy at $44.

Countrywide will cease to exist... at $7.16.

Rumor?

Kylie might perform at Coachella?

Likely false.

CLUNK!

What was that loud noise? Nothing, just the sound of my car's automatic transmission changing gears (I have an appointment at the dealership on Monday).

Bill Richardson

Packs it in:

"As I've always said, I'm the luckiest man I know," he said. "I live in a place called the Land of Enchantment. I have the best job in the world, and I got to run for president of the United States. It doesn't get any better than that."

Doolittle Gives Up

Too many investigations, too little time.

Barney's Journey

The Brahman bull takes a trip:

Through an amazing stroke of luck, and perhaps some bovine bravado, Barney survived an 87km journey through raging creeks and rivers during the weekend's wild floods.

He was washed away by a wall of water from the banks of Hopping Dick Creek on his Limpinwood property about 2am on Sunday and was considered lost before being found alive and well seven hours later near the mouth of the Tweed River – almost 90km downstream.

A passer-by at the Fingal ocean entrance spotted the exhausted and shellshocked Barney floating toward the sea and alerted park rangers.

Karl Rove, Employing Racially-Coded Language, Against Barack Obama

Gee, it's only January:

You couldn't help but smile. It reminded Democrats what they occasionally like about her. Then Mr. Obama followed with a needless and dismissive, "You're likable enough, Hillary."

Her remarks helped wash away the memory of her angry replies to attacks at the debate's start. His trash talking was an unattractive carryover from his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard, and capped a mediocre night.

...Former President Bill Clinton hit a nerve by drawing attention to Mr. Obama's conflicting statements on Iraq. There's more -- and more powerful -- material available. Mr. Obama has failed to rise to leadership on a single major issue in the Senate. In the Illinois legislature, he had a habit of ducking major issues, voting "present" on bills important to many Democratic interest groups, like abortion-rights and gun-control advocates. He is often lazy, given to misstatements and exaggerations and, when he doesn't know the answer, too ready to try to bluff his way through.

Countrywide Craziness

Nutso:

Shares of struggling lender Countrywide Financial Corp. rocketed today on news that Bank of America Corp. was in talks to buy the Calabasas-based company.

The stock closed up $2.63, or 51%, to $7.75 after rising as high as $8.91.

A source familiar with the negotiations confirmed the discussions and said an agreement could be reached as soon as Friday, although the person also cautioned that the talks could hit a dead end.

And not helped by:

Two groups representing union pension funds turned their sights on Countrywide Financial Corp.'s directors Thursday, saying board members failed to curb what they called excessive compensation for Chairman and Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo.

One group -- the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees -- said Countrywide directors had become conflicted by their own "excessive pay" and stock options that had allowed five members of the board to cash out more than $20 million in stock gains over the last two years.

"Directors who are making as much as CEOs make at other companies may lose the perspective of shareholder advocate, and instead blur their self-interest with that of the executive," said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the federation, which represents union pensions holding 3.5% of Calabasas-based mortgage lender Countrywide's stock.

Separately, CtW Investment Group, which represents the pension funds for the Teamsters, United Farmworkers and other unions that hold Countrywide shares, also criticized the board for excessive compensation for its directors.

"Current and historic director pay is both unjustified and a likely source of the board's passivity in the face of the company's current crisis," CtW Executive Director William Patterson wrote in a letter to Harley Snyder, Countrywide's lead director.

The letter says Snyder bears "central responsibility for Countrywide's egregious compensation."

"Your excessive compensation, together with your aggressive divestment of your own Countrywide stock at the peak of the housing bubble, militates powerfully against any inclination you might have to lead your fellow independent directors or hold Mr. Mozilo accountable," Patterson wrote.

...As the mortgage industry went into a nose dive in late 2006 and 2007, Mozilo cashed out about $140 million in stock options, becoming one of the highest-paid executives in the country.

The Countrywide board is also well-paid, according to a study released Wednesday by the Corporate Library, which studies executive pay.

Countrywide's directors each earned $344,988 to $538,824, according to the company's most recent proxy statement, compared with just over $200,000 for a director serving on a company on the Standard & Poor's 500 index of blue-chip companies, according to the study.

What is of concern to shareholders, however, is that directors were unloading Countrywide shares as the real estate market peaked, according to both groups representing union pensions.

A review of stock-trading activity "for the last two years shows directors enriching themselves by unloading Countrywide stock at a time when the CEO was suggesting a positive outlook to shareholders," McEntee said in his letter. "We think these pay practices may have influenced directors so that they crossed the line from independent to captive directors."

A Resounding "NO" From Land Park & Curtis Park

The recent ballot measure in Land Park & Curtis Park on historic street lighting went down to defeat, by a 84% - 16% margin (my "no" vote didn't count, because I turned the ballot into the Post Office on Dec. 31st, and wouldn't you know it, the Post Office closed early on New Year's Eve).

I'm shocked that the folks at City Hall thought this idea would fly. The effort was pretty much under my radar. The first time I heard about it was through an official City of Sacramento mailing that announced I was going to be assessed $5,000 (about $11,000 if I chose the E-Z payment option).

And all this for an amenity.

Then I discovered that my assessment was a bare minimum - apartment building owners, and others with large holdings, would be assessed much, much more.

Livid campaigning by my neighbors ensued, but a big "NO" was all but assured anyway. I wasn't assured by the "YES" campaign that it would all amount to just $1.00 per day. This proposal must have been gold-plated with environmental impact report fees, engineering report and other consultant expenses, plus who knows, maybe even with tasteful, high-tech German lighting design.:

A $10 million plan to install 780 streetlights in the Land Park and Curtis Park neighborhoods has been rejected by property owners who cast ballots, the City Council was told Tuesday.

About 84 percent of the 1,315 ballots returned to City Hall opposed creation of an assessment district to pay for the lights, said Mark Griffin of the city Planning Department.

About 66 percent of the ballots were returned.

If the plan had been approved by a simple majority, and then by the City Council, a typical residential parcel would have paid about $4,940 in additional taxes over a 30-year period, according to the city and neighborhood activists who supported the plan.

Opponents claimed, among other things, that the ballot procedure was not properly announced and the lights were too expensive. City officials said they followed the law in the balloting.

After hearing the results, the council voted to terminate the proceedings for the Land-Curtis Park Street Lighting Assessment District.

Kafkaesque FOX News

Paul Begala's fair, balanced, and fantastical experience:

I've been dealing with the media and politics for 25 years, but I've never had a more surrealistic day than January 8. Several times that day Fox News reported that I was joining Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign. It was a big story - at least until the stunning election returns.

Fox News never even tried to contact me to verify their story, and when I contacted Fox, I felt like a character in a Kafka novel -- or at least Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Fox's Major Garrett -- a good guy whom I've known for years -- broke the story. My phone started ringing off the hook, and my email box bulged. There are still, thank goodness, a lot of real journalists out there. Tim Russert was first. I assured him it wasn't true, he thanked me for waving him off a false story, and that was that. Then my own network, CNN, called. I told them if I were quitting CNN that CNN would know before Fox News.

...After I told Fox it wasn't true -- and this is the surreal part -- they kept reporting it anyway. In fact, Fox's Garrett told me he'd "take it under advisement." Take it under advisement? I realize I'm generally seen as just another liberal with an opinion, but this was not a matter of opinion, it was a matter of fact. Fox now knew their story was flatly, factually wrong, and they took it "under advisement."

Apparently that meant repeating the falsehood with added detail: the "fact" that I had been on a conference call the previous day with the Hillary high command. Again, false. My worry is that if this is what one of Fox's best and most respected reporters is doing, what are the hacks up to?

Green Ham

All we need are green eggs:

A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported.

January 9th Birthdays

1913 - Richard Nixon
1914 - Gypsy Rose Lee

Puzzled About Micellar Water

"La Cage Aux Folles" has provoked me to learn more about cosmetics, in general.

I'm puzzled about "cleansing water" and the amazing way it just strips makeup right off. It seems to be a fairly-new innovation, and depends on micelles formed in the water. When did it get introduced into use?

Soap also depends on micelles. So, is "cleansing water" just a form of soap?

Google runs into all sorts of impediments with a field as old and diverse as "cosmetics." People have used various cleansing solutions and ointments on makeup since the Egyptians raised the Pyramids....