Iyow - in your own words

The past couple of weeks on my way to work, and on my way to lunch, I’ve seen people stacked up in line at the SF Passport Office on Folsom, between 2nd and 3rd.

I’d wondered if it was some new legislation impending, but it looks like it’s actually bad planning, post-9/11 travel restrictions:

Apparently, some people had been traveling across state lines to Seattle (the most efficient passport office) – but that secret’s been out in the open for awhile now.

The Chinese New Year, the Year of the Purple Boar began on Sunday, February 18, 2007. What’s special about the year of the Purple Boar? It closes the 12-year cycle in the Chinese calendar, making it a time for reaping benefits from past efforts. It should also be a time of peace. We’re two months in, but here’s a little background on what you can expect for the next ten months….
(Image linked from http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca.)

“Gung Hai Fat Choi!”
The traditional new year greeting literally means “congratulations on prospering in money.” But it generallyis used more like “trick or treat” on Halloween—except that kids who say “Gung Hai Fat Choi” may be hitting you up for lai see (cash in red envelopes).

What can you expect from a pig year?
The Year of the Boar is a time of fun and some licentiousness. Pleasure and enjoyment of the good life will be valued more than power and status. Pig years are a time to be close to the people you care about. Most people splurge a bit on extravagances this year and then scale back in the rat year.

The Chinese believe that the Boar year brings good fortune for intellectuals, financiers, and best of all for… women. While this is a time to enjoy, some cautions I feel duty bound to pass on—make sure your pleasures don’t yield pains to you or those you care about.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair. I feel bad for the women who has tasted the seed of Gingrich. That must of been such a wretched experience.

Try to subvert the will of the voters again… and again…

The South Dakota legislature, dissatisfied that the voters struck down their attempt at banning abortion, has introduced a new bill:

Bill Number: SD H 1293
Summary: Prohibits abortion throughout all stages of pregnancy except in cases of life endangerment, rape, or incest. Also contains an inadequate health exception. Amended in February 2007 to add a section that automatically refers the bill, if enacted by the legislature and governor, to the 2008 general election ballot.
Sponsor: DeVries ®
Introduced: 01/31/2007
Last Action: Introduced

This bill adds a clause for rape and incest, likely hoping that change would make it pass this time, and added a clause that would automatically send the bill to the ballot.

‘All the necessary conditions to perpetrate a murder are met by locking two men in a cabin of 18 by 20 feet … for two months.’
— Cosmonaut Valery Ryumin

Or two women. Or a family in a station wagon for two weeks.

I’m strangely intrigued by this astronaut love triangle story, though it stops just short of tragedy only because nobody died (yet). Yet why all the handwringing about psychological screening of astronauts? This doesn’t seem to be a normative trend, like going postal. Sometimes, Stuff Just Happens.

What happened in my country last week? The American public voted decisively for change. And their anger seems directed at the Republican party, more than at the Iraq War or President Bush. This suggests a general feeling of malaise, that things aren’t going as they ought, but nothing specific. No Democratic incumbent lost, whether they voted for the Iraq War, ran in Hurricane Katrina-affected districts, or had political baggage of their own.

And kibbosh on the notion that ’ they shoulda won more’ – this was the most number of seats lost by a sixth-year president since Eisenhower. Most importantly, they won back both houses despite having significantly less support from the moneymen. (Notwithstanding any defections.) Previous Democratic National Chair Terry McAuliffe was esteemed as a fund-raiser, but couldn’t failed when it came to the only metric that really counts – winning elections.

Yet, Americans don’t seem particularly mad at President Bush.

My favorite libertarian recently told me that the President had signed some provision invoking martial law. Not quite, but he definitely, quietly got the ducks lined up that would make it easy to go there.

With legal wordsmithing over the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act, President Bush’s administration can take over the National Guard for purposes deemed “National Public Emergencies” and not the harder-to-satisfy criteria of “Interference with State and Federal Law.”

What’s the significance? It’s a lot easier for President Bush to use states’ National Guard – any states’ National Guard – as a law enforcement tool at home. Previously, he had to have a specifically good reason, say, terrorist activity, or Hurricane Katrina – and even then states’ government could insist on their own authority.

It seems like a bad flashback from high school civics classes, but is shaping up to be real-time history in the making.

Daily Kos’s Major Danby breaks it all down. It’s worth the read.

Sometimes a good fight is a good thing. Although everybody likes to take the ‘high ground,’ what is more important now than evaluating what we’re doing about the true terrorist threat?

More he said, she said quotes here, between the big guy himself and current administration spokeswoman Secretary of State Rice, re President Clinton’s admnistration’s proactivity trying to shut down Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and President Bush’s in comparison.

And a very funny bit on Clinton as Elvis by Bernie Quigley at Free Market News:’When I worked in the South they used to say about Elvis, “He never should have married that Yankee woman.” Caused him to want to rise above himself and cursed him to chase it back throughout his life in Graceland’s Jungle Room with any woman on hand. But Elvis would go home too and sing Gospel – beautiful, simple and utterly sincere, as none other could, to the very end of his life. When I left the South they started saying the same thing about Bill Clinton: “He never should have married that Yankee woman.”’ For the record, I’m a Yankee woman myself.

The cost of the cassette to videotape a campaign speech: Two bucks.

The value of capturing and broadcasting your poltical opponent cheerfully referring to your American campaign volunteer of Indian descent as ‘Macaca’: Priceless.

(This clip is almost a month old – see Wonkette’s A-Big-Pile-of-Macaca for theories on what exactly Senate incumbent Allen meant – but who could resist getting to use the word macaca in a post headline? Really, I just like saying it as often as possible. Macaca macaca macaca.)

A tip of the hat to former Texas Governor and knife-edged wit Ann Richards, who passed on Wednesday night due to esophageal cancer.

She was an inspiration and role model to women everywhere, especially those who grew up during the ‘80s, the first female to be elected to the Texas governor’s mansion in 50 years in 1990. Moreover, she was one of the few women then on the national political stage. I remember as a teenager watching her on TV do the keynote address for the 1988 Democratic National Convention, wondering who was this silver-haired, teacherly woman with the perfect comic timing and glint in her eye.

It’s a sign you’ve lived a good life when those you’ve served and even your professional opponents remember you with respect and wamth. She was famous for the line, at the same keynote speech, of then-Vice President Bush (I): “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”