alternative hippopotamus

Bitch PhD relates an uncomfortable story about right-wing politics in your local pharmacy. A customer of the pharmacy receives this note instead of her prescription for birth control:

Snyder Drug has decided to no longer carry oral contraceptives. Although we no longer will carry this particular medication, we will continue to serve your prescription needs with utmost care and trust. We will be happy to transfer your oral contraceptive prescription to another pharmacy of your choice in a timely manner. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please direct them to the pharmacy owners, Stuart Anderson or Kurt and Kori Depner. By the end of May, we will no longer stock this class of medication. Sincerely, Stuart E. Anderson, R.Ph/owner.

I can kind of relate to the pharmacists predicament. A couple of weeks ago a carnivore walked into Bob’s Cosmic Muffin Cafe and Kite Shop, where I freelance on the weekends as a counterperson. I felt kinda bad, but instead of his order for a hamburger and coke, I left this message:

Bob’s Cosmic Muffin Cafe and Kite Shop has decided to no longer carry meat or fizzy big-Media beverages (particularly those suitable only for processing weapons-grade plotunium). Although we no longer will carry these particular poisons, we will continue to serve your dietary needs as we see fit. We will be happy to transfer the object of your current oral fixation to another cafe of your choice. As soon as we purchase a telephone.

I hope he understands our philosophical beliefs trump his right to be a carnivore.

Yesterday’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision on discrimination in the workplace greatly simplifies any future editions of Bigotry, Sexism, and Xenophobia for Dummies. The basic idea, as expressed by the Catholic side of the Supreme Court is that if you don’t complain about a difference in pay within 180 days, then that difference in pay could not have been a result of discrimination. Even if it was due to discrimination as it was in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, the Holier part of the court says that from their viewpoint it doesn’t really matter what actually happened. What’s important is that the majority of the court would prefer to see it in the light of the employer’s (Goodyear’s) eyes. And Goodyear’s eyes say that if you didn’t complain about it in 180 days, then it didn’t really happen.

But what if you didn’t know that you were being discriminated against? The Court has made it clear that in the work place you need to constantly find out what your fellow employees are making. And if you make less, you need to file a complaint.

I know some companies make such a question a firing offense, but that’s not Sam Alito’s problem. It’s yours.

Just to be clear about this, even though the question before the court was about sexism, the result applies to all forms of discrimination. Here’s from last night’s News Hour:

JIM LEHRER: OK. Are there far-reaching implications about this or only short-term things with Ms. Ledbetter and others in her similar situation?

MARCIA COYLE: I think there are really two impacts here. One, it’s going to be very difficult for many workers to challenge illegal pay discrimination for the very reasons that Justice Ginsburg noted in her dissent, the nature of pay discrimination. It’s not like a discriminatory firing or hiring or…

JIM LEHRER: It’s not one act.

MARCIA COYLE: That’s right, exactly. And, secondly, the impact is large because of the reach of Title VII. This case was about gender discrimination, but Title VII also covers discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin and religion.

And, finally, this 180-day rule, the wording in Title VII is very similar to the rule in the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. So workers who feel they’re being discriminated in their pay on the basis of disability and age also will be affected by the court’s interpretation here.

JIM LEHRER: So, potentially, millions of people could be affected?

MARCIA COYLE: Yes, millions of workers.

About a year ago I was at a screening of “Why We Fight,” a political documentary looking at that impulse that makes us want to blow the crap out of other countries. In back of me was Joe Klein, yes that Joe Klein, who kept muttering “He’s just saying the same thing over and over again.” In some ways this says something about Klein, who may not have a taste for political documentaries outside of the variety that you’d see on the History channel.

It’s also may say something about the journo-pundit class here in DC. They seem to have reached a consensus about a vast segment of such films: that they’re lefty agitprop. In particular, Michael Moore’s films are egregiously fat and badly dressed agitprop.

So, it didn’t surprise me when I saw Klein write this: (emphasis mine)

The New York Times does some actual reporting on the health care system in Cuba. This doesn’t mean that the current U.S. system is at all tolerable. We need a universal system, and now. (Regular Swampland readers know that I favor the individual mandate, community rated system that Senator Ron Wyden has proposed.) But the Times does expose Michael Moore’s stunt for what it was: propaganda.

Moore has a tendency to push people’s buttons. But his movies tend to be factual. So, if you believe that the facts themselves have a liberal bias, then Moore’s work is propaganda.

But, here, Klein goes beyond saying that he thinks Moore is a propagandist. He’s saying that through “actual reporting” the NYT demonstrates that he’s a propagandist. The article, however, never uses that term, nor demonstrates anything beyond the notion that people in Cuba have the same life expectancy as those of us in the US. And, doesn’t have the horror stories that you hear about here when people can’t afford health care and die as a result.

The point here is not to beat up on Klein. He’s representative of a type that you find around here. I’m suggesting that the bias isn’t personal, it’s institutional.

Recently, I purchased a tomato plant from the Whole Foods in Silver Spring. Here it is:

I was impressed by the notion that tomato plants yield actual tomatoes. I thought this was going to be a plant that would sit around in my apartment next to the fish tank, and look pretty. As it turns out, tomato plants produce actual vegetables, which as far as I can tell, are edible.

I wanted to learn more about this.

So, I went to Takoma Park, a Metro stop on the Red Line.

That’s a picture of the open market held every Sunday in Takoma Park. There were a lot of plants there. Way more than I was expecting. And you know what? A lot of the plants for sale were vegetables or herbs. That’s what I was looking for. Yes, I know flowers are nice. But fresh basil? That’s food for the gods. Assuming of course that gods like fresh herbs.

So, I looked around for a bit and ran into the Purple Mountain Organic gardening store:

That’s Scott. I was very interested in buying something from his store, but first I needed to get a window box. For reasons I can’t explain, it’s not easy to find a store that sells window boxes. Through clenched teeth Scott admitted that the best place was probably Wal Mart. He never said the words “the best place is”, but when there aren’t any other places, you have to draw that conclusion for yourself.

Yesterday my bike was stolen, virtually under my nose, while I got a quick bite to eat in Georgetown.

I wanted to pass on some info that may help the next cyclist. But first, I want to share a surprising observation. Well, it surprises me, anyway.

The observation is that I really didn’t like the bike that was stolen. The bike in question, a Gary Fisher hybrid, was one I bought a year ago in reaction to riding my Jamis Aurora touring bike through Rock Creek and downtown DC.

I’ve always liked the metaphor of the streets being paved with gold. There’s something electric about riding through the business districts of urban areas. You become part of the circulation of energy throughout the city. The streets are the conductors of the life blood of urban life. They are gold indeed. There’s a moment of awe that you can only experience going downhill on 14th street, racing and bobbing with the Metrobuses, the heart of the District in view just above your handlebars.

Still, while the streets may be golden, it’s of the lumpier variety in our fair city. The potholes and wide gaps in the pavement are surely part of the ride, but the bruises on my Jamis Aurora testify to its extremes. I recall mornings where I had been so jostled by the ride that my hands would shake in a manner reminiscent of the “drinking problem” scene in the movie Airplane.

So, I over-reacted. I got a so-called “hybrid,” with heavy front fork suspension. While I could comfortably ride down a flight of stairs or an escalator, in practice I rarely include stairwells as part of my commute. And, if you’re ever tempted to bike down a Metro escalator I can testify that you don’t want to go there. And, it was noticeably heavier than my touring bike. Predictably, as part of city riding, you’ll get yourself into a fix where you have to carry your bike up stairs, or up those same escalators that you dare not ride down. I know I’m getting old, but Holy Mojitos Batman, my wrist snapped from wresting that hybrid from the jaws of the escalator hand rest.

I’ll confess that there was a less technical reason why I didn’t fall in love with the bike that was just stolen. I was never really comfortable with the glossy black paint job. Aesthetics are part of the experience, and the paint job said to me: “I ride this bike on the weekends, but mostly I cruise around in my Porsche 911 and waste as much gas as possible.” It was one of the few bikes that make an anti-environmental statement by appearance alone.

And worse, it made the kind of visual statement that made the bicycle thieves want to steal it. Which they did.

There’s a good article on Slate about protecting your bike from theft. I would highly recommend it. The one point that needs re-emphasizing: if you’re a veteran touring biker, you probably have a cable type lock. While this makes sense if you’re biking through the country side, the urban environment is a different matter. As the Slate article illustrates, a cable lock is useless next to bolt cutters. Be kind to the thieves. Make it hard to for them to sin. Go shock and awe as far as protecting your bicycle.

By coincidence, the bicycle shop mentioned in the article, City Bikes, is where I bought my Jamis Aurora, as well as my new Jamis Coda. I bought the Gary Fisher hybrid at Capitol Hill Bikes. These are both first-rate shops and I’ll note that when I was at City Bikes, the salesman directed another customer to Capitol Hill Bikes. Still, I want to pass on this caveat. I had a bike mechanic look at the Gary Fisher. His first comment: “I like this bike.” Second comment was that the brakes were not set up correctly. Way off. These brakes were set up so badly, that he was personally insulted.

I mention this, because even the best shops get busy on the weekends, and make mistakes. That means that your bike may not be at 100 percent when it leaves the shop.

So, I hope this is helpful to my fellow cyclists. Let the good times roll.

Froomkin:

Tim Grieve, in Salon, finds this fascinating and troubling e-mail chain:

“On March 3, [Justice Department spokesman Brian] Roehrkasse forwarded to his Justice Department colleagues a copy of a Washington Post story on the purge that he said was ‘far better than most recent Post stories on this subject.’ The piece minimized White House involvement in the purge; quoting sources, it said that the White House had approved the list of prosecutors to be fired only after ’senior Justice Department officials identified the prosecutors they believed were not doing enough to carry out President Bush’s policies on immigration, firearms and other issues.’ For the folks working the issue at the Department of Justice, that amounted to a victory. Deputy Attorney General Richard Hertling declared the Post’s piece ‘by far and away the best story I’ve seen on the subject’ and expressed relief that an accompanying Post editorial– ‘The Justice Department’s firing of a group of U.S. attorneys is neither as sinister as critics suggest nor as benign as the department would have you believe’ — was ‘not a bad beating, though against our interests.’

“‘Great work, Brian,’ [then-Gonzales chief of staff Kyle] Sampson said in an e-mail to group. ‘Kudos to you and the [deputy attorney general].’”

Looking back at the original story, the Justice Department spin was that the White House did not direct or plan the US Attorney Purge, but merely approved of it after all the Goody-Goodlings at Justice signed off on it.

As for the motivation for the purge, the Post story indicates that it was: “the concern raised by various members of Congress and law enforcement officials that some U.S. attorneys were not following Bush administration policies or federal sentencing rules, administration officials said.”

Isn’t that great? The Justice Department successfully spun the Washington Post. Just the way our founding fathers wanted the country to work. The Executive branch hatches a scheme to maintain Republican Party control of government through the placement of compliant US Attorneys. These attorneys then prosecute “voter fraud,” a rare infraction at the polls whose eradication requires purging voter rolls of likely Democrats. Then, and here’s where the rubber meets the Fourth Estate, the Justice Department spins the story to the Washington Post. The Post prints the spin as fact, and the Justice Department celebrates to a rousing chorus of “boys will be boys.”

US Attorneys aren’t the only ones with a compliant streak it turns out.

I know I flog to death the issue of bicycling as a form of transportation. Particularly in our fair city. Well, it turns out I’m not the only zealot. I got into a conversation with DC Councilperson Tommy Wells about this just last Saturday at the DC for Democracy picnic. Wells is very serious about using biking to reduce the congestion and pollution in the District.

He did have an important observation about his participation in Bike to Work Day last Friday. His commute down Pennsylvania Ave would have been dangerous if he weren’t in a pack. And, of course, it’s not always possible to call up 5-10 of your closest friends so you can have the protection of large numbers. The main thoroughfares, and I’m thinking of Wisconsin and Connecticut in particular, are a deathtrap during rush hour. Yes, I see people biking on both streets, but they’re taking their lives in their hands. This is a problem.

But, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. It turns out that at the moment I was talking to Wells some dude I’ve heard of was making the case for biking in DC in his own fashion:

If you found yourself doing a double take along the Potomac Saturday, that really was Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes biking the C&O Canal towpath into Georgetown, reports the Reliable Source’s Amy Argetsinger. The Hollywood twosome made a weekend trip to Potomac to visit Redskins owner Dan Snyder and wife Tanya, Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson confirmed yesterday. The two couples (with at least two bodyguards) biked down to Georgetown and hung out at the waterfront park, where they drew a crowd. TomKat graciously signed autographs and posed for photos…. They stopped off to dine at the Old Angler’s Inn on the way back.

A couple of times over this long beautiful weekend in our nation’s capitol I was tempted to post something to the effect of: I’m just tired of the political hackery of the current administration. It’s time to get back to some very silly posts that reflect my general outlook on life.

Look, I’m a comic. It’s what I do. While I haven’t actually written anything funny in a couple of years, much less do a show about stuff, my nature is to write jokes. I really enjoy writing jokes, and it gives me a great deal of pleasure when people laugh at jokes I’ve written.

On the other hand, Garry Shandling had a very observant comment on Bill Maher’s show two weeks ago. I’m paraphrasing, but this is pretty close: “I know I’m a comic. But, in my spare time I worry about things.”

Every time I want to go and write something funny I read something that makes me worry.

For instance, I had started to write a sketch called the “WTF News Hour.” The basic premise is that instead of the straight read of the daily news, the co-hosts of the show react like people do on the streets. So, one newscaster reads off the prompter that Israel is bombing Gaza again, and then launches into “WTF is that about anyway? Wouldn’t it be nice to spend Memorial Day watching the old war films without the real-time re-enactment?”

Then, I read this about a character named von Spakovsky:

WASHINGTON - During four years as a Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky went so far in a crusade against voter fraud as to warn of its dangers under a pseudonym in a law journal article.

Writing as “Publius,” von Spakovsky contended that every voter should be required to produce a photo-identification card and that there was “no evidence” that such restrictions burden minority voters disproportionately.

Now, amid a scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, Congress is beginning to examine allegations that von Spakovsky was a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minority voters.

“Mr. von Spakovsky was central to the administration’s pursuit of strategies that had the effect of suppressing the minority vote,” charged Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief who worked under him.

Here, I’m not focusing on the anonymous article so much, though that’s not so terrific either. What I’m focusing on is his role in voter suppression. What the McClatchy article didn’t mention is von Spakovky’s role in the 2000 election:

In 1997, von Spakovsky wrote an article for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research group, that called for an aggressive campaign to ‘purge’ the election rolls of felons. Within months of that article’s publication, the V.I.P. helped put von Spakovsky’s idea into action. Phillips met with the company that designed the process for the removal of alleged felons from the voting rolls in Florida, a process that led, notoriously, to the mistaken disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, most of them Democratic, before the 2000 election,” Toobin wrote. “During the thirty-six-day recount in Florida, von Spakovsky worked there as a volunteer for the Bush campaign. After the Inauguration, he was hired as an attorney in the Voting Section and was soon promoted to be counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, in what is known as the ‘front office’ of the Civil Rights Division.

I’m just saying. These are the people that keep me worried.

In response to this at TPMCafe:

The White House’s chief negotiator, Joshua Bolten, is now explaining why the Dem offer of waivable timetables was rejected: “We consider that to be not a significant distinction. Whether waivable or not, timelines send exactly the wrong singnal to our adversaries, our allies … our troops in the field.”

a commenter writes:

Yes. Wouldn’t want to send our troops in the field the message, “We’re bringing you home.” That would only embolden their families.

From today’s WaPo, Shaha Riza on the unfairness of Wolfie and her current demise:

On several occasions she noted that there were other couples working at the bank and that some wives of high-ranking officials were not required to leave their jobs, and she said that it would have been nice if a bank official could have “at least explained to me why I was being treated in a different way to all other spouses in this place.”

“Or maybe,” she continued, “I was wondering, maybe because they’re married, they’re seeing that their relationships are asexual. But because I’m dating, there must be sex there.”

Uh, moving right along, Wijffels asked: “Did you consult with” Wolfowitz, “either directly or indirectly, concerning the . . . terms you proposed to” the bank’s personnel chief?

“If you think I’m angry now,” she responded, “you should see me angry then. No, of course not, because I thought he should have fought the decision by the ethics committee. He became them, you, the bank, and I had to fend for myself exactly the same way I’m fending for myself now.”

Either Ms. Riza really doesn’t understand why Wolfowitz set himself up for an ethical conflict, or she’s just screwing with people’s minds. The problem is when one person works for another, and they have a personal relationship, then there’s an imbalance of power that predictably leads to problems. I don’t think anyone cares about two people who are dating in different parts of an organization. Though, where I work all interpersonal relationships are discouraged among employees. I can imagine for some people this would be a problem, but in my case, the people I work with really aren’t that interesting.

Something tells me that Riza understands a thing or two about sex and power. Note the way she answers the question about consulting with Wolfie about getting a raise: ““If you think I’m angry now,” she responded, “you should see me angry then. No, of course not, because I thought he should have fought the decision by the ethics committee.”

So, she let Wolfie know she was very upset, and upset with him specifically, because he wasn’t behaving manly enough in standing up to the committee. So, what could Wolfie do to prove that he was looking out for her interests? Hmm…