Author: Michael Alan Dorman

Yes, I have begun reading “Gawker”:http://gawker.com in order to escape the daily wretcheness of our situation. I mean, this is desperation for Schadenfreude. Anyway, “this was kind of funny”:http://www.gawker.com/topic/when-playwrights-attack-eve-enslers-vday-015984.php

Mark Schmitt (aka “The Decembrist”:http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/) has an article in the latest “American Prospect”:http://www.prospect.org/ discussing “entitlement programs and where we might go from here”:http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7814.

After all, I worked at the University of Miami School of Law as their network administrator during a time of big changes that Michael didn’t see the need for and didn’t want to take part in. Such are the vagaries of institutions.

However, Michael’s “analysis of the Torture Memo”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/06/apologia_pro_tormento_analyzing_the_first_56_pages_of_the_walker_working_group_report_aka_the_torture_memo.html is well worth reading. In fact, I find myself adding his blog to my already overloaded daily reading.

Now to try and do something that will pay, for a change.

The two people who read this space know that I am often proud of Massachusetts and its record of being a relatively progressive state.

Which is why it disappoints me much to find out that the “MBTA has decided it can do random searches of passenger bags”:http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/06/08/t_to_check_packages_bags_at_random?mode=PF

As “jwz said”:http://jwz.livejournal.com/, “Bill of What?”

So, of course, I was travelling last week, which means I wasn’t really in a position to post on D-Day, or Reagan or Tenet, or any number of other things. Instead, I was taking advantage of the fact that you can now ship wine to North Carolina–good for people who come to dinner, bad for the American Express balance–and seeing friends in the Bay Area, some of whom I haven’t seen since before I finished college.

And ultimately, I’m just fine with that. I don’t want to write about all this shit. I’m jet-lagged, still somewhat sleep-deprived and just generally cranky right now. You want to hear intelligent people, “Whiskey Bar”:http://billmon.org/ has the goods on just about everything, from “Reagan”:http://billmon.org/archives/001516.html to “abrogating the Constitution”:http://billmon.org/archives/001514.html to “how the right-wing is conducting itself leading up to the election”:http://billmon.org/archives/001513.html, while “Brad DeLong”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/ links to a very interesting “a NYT article on honesty”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?pagewanted=print&position= as well as a bunch of other stuff that I want to read.

Me, I’m going to be working on posting pictures of the blooming lavender fields at Matanzas Creek.

Well, actually, I cost more than that, but that is the amount we pay to have me covered on Anne’s health insurance.

This is, I think, obviously ridiculous. I am healthy–in fact, I am almost certainly in better health now than I have ever been before, and although I do have asthma, through yoga and sensible diet and losing weight, I haven’t had an acute attack in nearly a decade; in fact, over the last several months, I have scaled back my drug usage dramatically–I use Flonase at a very low dosage to keep my allergies in check, since they are really the only trigger for my asthma, and I have albuterol for those times I do experience any sort of reaction.

I suppose we do get some benefits from all that money–my prescriptions are $25 instead of $75 every couple of months. So I guess you could say I only cost $3400/year.

But all the rest of that money we pay is against the possibility that I might get very sick, or be in an accident or otherwise require medical care. But that’s a ridiculous amount for that purpose; in fact, we all know that it’s actually going to pay for the people who are really sick. That is the nature of insurance.

With all this in mind, I was very interested to read Brad DeLong’s “discussion of the Kerry health care proposals”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000910.html. It looks like it might actually be sensible, and maybe even implementable.

Wired News “has a story”:http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63557,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 about right-wingers google-bombing the word “waffles” to point to Kerry’s site.

I guess around their neck of the woods that counts as reasoned debate.

Yeah, I’m probably just pissed that no one thought to do it to Bush first.

I would hate to have to use a passport to visit family. Thinking about it, I wouldn’t want them to take South Carolina–it’s on the way to Alabama for us–and I think Chet would be disappointed if they took Mississippi.

Why not North Dakota?

Oh, what am I talking about? “These nutjobs”:http://www.christianexodus.org/:

bq. ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives exist, but we are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.

ChristianExodus.org is orchestrating the move of 50,000 or more Christians to one of three States for the express purpose of dissolving that State’s bond with the union. The three States under consideration are Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. The exact destination will be chosen by vote of our membership. Our move will commence when the federal government forces sodomite marriages on our local communities or once we reach the 50,000-member mark, whichever comes first.

The North Carolina Republican Party has decided to “deny the Log Cabin Republicans a table at the state convention”:http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/05/051904ncGOP.htm.

Honestly, I’m always baffled at the way various groups keep going back to the GOP even when, after the election, they don’t even bother to leave $20 on the metaphorical dresser.