The Medieval Presidency

Neal Gabler has an excellent piece about how George Bush may be running the nation’s first medieval presidency—one where rationality and empiricism have gone out the window to be replaced by faith and a preconceived cosmology. There’s lots of discussion of this over at Kos, and I think he’s on to something here. In a similar vein, CalPundit cites a piece for the Boston Globe by Chris Mooney about the 1995 demise of the congressional Office of Technology in the Newt Gingrich-led Congress, and how such an institution is unlikely to be revived in the today’s Republican-led Congress, this reflecting the waning influence of scientists on national policy.

The Recall Farce

After fighting depression for weeks owing to the likelihood of our next governor’s being a woman-groping Nazi sympathizer with steroid-enhanced anatomical bits, I have come to the conclusion that it might not be such a terrible thing after all if Arnold were, in fact, to win the recall election on Tuesday. Here’s why:

1) This would deal a permanent, irrevocable blow to the Republican party in California. Arnold is, remember, pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. The hardline Republican right will never recover if he becomes governor.

2) The legislature will remain untouched by the recall election. It is now, and will remain, so hostile to Mr. Terminator that it will be three months before he can even find the bathroom, let alone get any of his (or Pete Wilson’s) schemes through the door. There will be stalemate for three years at least. Imagine trying to get a Schwarzenegger budget through this crowd…

3) The world needed a good laugh, and it seems we’re providing that in spades.

Remember, none of this would have happened if there had been even the slightest inkling of leadership in the Capitol. Gray Davis has been so incompetent-so SPECTACULARLY and PERFECTLY incompetent-that this makes the Perfect Storm look like a balmy breeze.

Hold on to your hats; it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

[I’m refraining from mentioning the Red Sox win today out of deference to Chris, but that won’t stop me from cheering for the Chicago Cubs, who beat the Braves tonight on Turner Field in admirable fashion.]

For Your Morning Entertainment

Yesterday while browsing the new book shelves at the local library, I came across a copy of Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists, edited by Ted Rall. Hardly for the first time, I’m clearly out of touch. I mean I know about Tom Tomorrow (he also has an excellent blog, which the link takes you to), but the collection contains many other out-of-the-mainstream cartoonists that I didn’t know about. Comics from the likes of Scott Bateman, Lalo Alcarez, Ruben Bolling, Jen Sorensen, and Ted Rall are goodies, and I’ll be looking at their work often.

Haikus for September 11

(written in September 2001)

The Day It Rained

It rains, oh, it rains:
four fat drops collect the dust
of summer swirling.

Standing, I look out
in my nightie in the rain.
I stand there smiling.

They rush to take in
the crates of ripe tomatoes
before the rotting.

Behind me lie hives
and corpses of worker bees
no longer buzzing.

Ahead, discarded
tomatoes—a red carnage—in state are lying.

I do not yet know
that four bomb-planes have wrought
a death-red silence.

In Memoriam
United Nations
1945-2001

Laughing Stock of the World

Our absentee ballots arrived today for the California Recall Election. For any of you who have not been following this circus, Governor Gray Davis has been challenged by the Republican fringe. We are being asked whether or not to recall him (Yes/No) and then to choose between a number of possible replacements on October 7.

And I mean, a NUMBER.

Seven pages’ worth. Among them, the most well-known, Arnold Schwarzenegger (page 4) and Larry Flynt, Publisher of Hustler Magazine (page 7). Among the others, here is a representative sample of their “occupations”:

College Student; Satellite Project Manager; Golf Professional; Artist; Used Car Dealer; Mortgage Broker (could be useful); Custom Denture Manufacturer (this one’s a Green); Retired Meat Packer (could be even more useful); Air Pollution Scientist; Businessman/Prizefighter/Father; Railroad Switchman/Brakeman; Musician/Laborer; Firefighter Paramedic/Nurse; Adult Film Actress; and Middleweight Sumo Wrestler (could be most useful).

You non-Californians are missing ALL the fun.

The Meetup Dance

I went to the first Yolo County Meetup for Howard Dean’s campaign this evening at a coffeehouse in South Davis. The previous local Meetups have been in Sacramento, but there is now sufficient interest in the campaign on the west side of the causeway for groups to start officially meeting over here. There were about 35 attendees, and apparently 8 or so other were meeting closer to campus, as logistics still need to be sorted out. Prominent at the meeting were three local elected Democratic party officials who had seen Dean speak at the California Democratic Party annual conference in March and were amazed and flabbergasted by his performance.

I am an independent voter and haven’t committed to supporting anybody in the Democratic primaries (which apparently I can vote in without having to re-register as a Democrat), but Dean certainly has most of my attention. It comes down to a matter of pragmatics: who has the best shot of sending our loon of a president off to permanent ranchside brush-clearing duties? Dean, a fiscally responsible centrist with a great deal of gumption, is looking very good.

Meanwhile, the latest news from the Let’s Make California A Laughingstock electoral saga is that Arnold is running, Arianna is running, Dianne is not, and the rumors are that Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante will be running as well.

I’ll Raise You One Governor

In the chaos of the California recall election it is heartening to learn that some people are making merry over it: trades at the Ireland-based Internet betting site TradeSports.Com are currently placing the odds of Gray Davis still being in office at the end of December at about 40%.

There don’t seem to be any wagers on that site about who would replace him. Maybe there are too many unknowns for anybody to sensibly bet. Will Arnold step in? Will Dianne Feinstein decide she wants to trade her Senate seat for the Capitol? Will the Huffingtons—Arianna and Mike, now divorced—run against each other???

The Town-Gown Shoving Match

Big front page headlines today in the Davis Enterprise reading “LRDP workshop turns ugly—UCD officials pack up and leave after fracas”. The UC Davis Long Range Development Plan has proved controversial, especially a plan to build 1,600 housing units for faculty, staff and students on UCD-owned agricultural research land just south of West Davis neighborhoods. At last night’s meeting UCD planners and their consultants intended to break the crowd up into small discussion groups to look at how to connect the proposed development with Russell Boulevard, the main artery fronting West Davis. The crowd, several hundred strong, many with protest signs, most believing that on account of the added traffic volume there should be no connection at all between the development and Russell, had other ideas, the meeting ending when the UCD planners walked out after one of the West Davis residents shoved a consultant.

Davis politics is entertainingly contentious. The other major town-gown dispute these days is over the proposed UCD biolab, but I’ll leave that one for later. The answer to the proposed UCD neighborhood seems clear to me though: let the university build the development, but disallow cars from it!

Unseeing and Unseeable?

Last night was the Davis Code Pink gathering, where we (mostly women) wear pink, sing songs, recite poetry, and whackily try and interest passersby in alternatives to war. We were lucky to have Annie last night who is an undergraduate at UC Davis, but also a poet and songwriter with a hauntingly beautiful voice.

We were packing up to leave when a woman with a stroller approached. She was wearing a hijab. Not just a hijab, either: the full-on Saudi head and face veil. She seemed disappointed we were leaving, so a few of us stayed behind to chat. She was so pleased there were still people protesting the madness of the illegal war on Iraq. Her accent was far more American than mine—and when I told her Annie had read some poetry, she produced at least five poems of her own. I read one. I was stunned by the beauty of her words.

I introduced her to Natalie, our local Code Pink organizer. I should explain that Natalie is blind as well as confined to a wheelchair, so she couldn’t see Maria’s hijab. What happened next was extraordinary.

I mentioned once again the Campus Community Book Project for the fall: Mark Juergensmeyer’s Gandhi’s Way. Natalie scowled and said the book wasn’t available on tape so she couldn’t read it. Maria said well, I’ll record it for you, I’ve just finished working at the Student Disability Center. Great, said Natalie, though I think someone’s already doing it. Thank you. Maria’s hijab came up. Is your hijab pink? No, it’s black and mint green… But Adam’s sippy cup is pink, I said. Don’t tell me you aren’t good with kids, said Natalie to me, I know you just picked it up. And how you were with that child.

Riding home with tears in my eyes, I saw the gibbous moon perfectly in line with Scorpius, as though it were the giant head of a dragon. I don’t think I’d have noticed it if it hadn’t been for these two women and their conversation. They were teaching me to see.

What if this lesson could be taught across the world? It’s quite simple: open your heart. You might be surprised by what you see there. It certainly involves more than just your eyes.

Code Pink

Last night I attended my first Code Pink vigil and singalong. Recently launched in Davis by the indefatigable Cindy and Patricia who, unlike me, have refused to be silenced by the triumphalism and smirking that is ubiquitous since the “cessation of hostilities” in Iraq, it’s a bi-monthly gathering of women (and men and children) for an hour in the evening in the E-Street Plaza, in front of the hot-pink Baskin Robbins sign. Pink signs, pink poppies, and pink scarves were in abundance. I felt embraced by the whackiness of it all.

“Wear pink, Pink, PINK” were the instructions and I duly stopped in at the SPCA thrift store on Third Street at lunchtime to try and find something hot pink to wear. I came away with a pair of bluish-pink pants, a reddish-pink blouse, and a baby pink necklace, all for $6.50, figuring the ensemble was sort of hot pink. I was rewarded for my outrageousness with a pot, some (pink) zinnia seeds, and a bag of potting soil with instructions to return with it to the gathering once it had bloomed. (I couldn’t carry this home on my bicycle so I donated it to a likely-looking gardener.)

They say the wings of a butterfly, though imperceptible locally, can cause a storm far away…