Help I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

It appears as though I've been doing nothing but posting videos here for awhile.  There is a reason or is it an excuse?  Well whatever.  I've had two major (for me at least) trials.

One of the things that make my job more difficult is when I begin to like my clients and care about them as people and begin to believe their stories no matter how unbelievable others find them.

One of the cases was the one I call my "Dog Lady."  She was busted with 70+ dogs.  Not because she had 70+ dogs, but because the dog warden insisted that she wasn't properly caring for them.  After meeting with her several times and seeing what the end results of the dog wardens investigation was, I don't think I agree.  All of the dogs are healthy and living happy lives in foster families.  None except one had to be put down an that one had cancer.

My client is a poor woman who simply didn't have the money to have a nice sparkling clean dog kennel facility.  We she have been busted if she wasn't a little weird and gotten into arguments with her neighbors?  I'm not sure.  She was able to get food for the dogs from the Dollar General warehouse which is located near hear.  Apparently they give away a very large amount of pet food to people who are rescue people.  My client would come away with a heaping full sized pick up truck full of dry dog fool every approximately four to six weeks.  That was how she fed them.

However, the dog warden said that the place wasn't clean and the judge bought it.  I'm not sure I'm in agreement.  The place was a mess, whether or not it was clean was another matter.  All the dogs had names and they all had time on a rotating basis inside the home (in numbers of approximately twenty to thirty at at time) they were all socialized.

One of the things I've noticed in this job over the years (and I started out in Legal Aid) is that very poor people seem to have a lot of time to conspire against each other and do so on a regular basis.  The second point is that I've been to the homes of a couple of the people who were testifying on behalf of the state and saw how many dogs they had and how they were kept.  Trying to keep on the good side of the dog warden was also I suspect a significant part or their desire to testify.  Kind of like the Russian woman throwing out her kids to the chasing wolves.

At any rate the judge found her guilty and sentencing will be in a couple of weeks.

The second case and the more serious of the two is a rape case.  A husband was accused of committing forcible oral sex on his wife.  The husband is my client and we had filed for divorce and he had custody of the kids and exclusive use of the martial residence.  Wife had filed no Answer and did not have a lawyer.  A week before the final hearing is when this alleged incident came down.

Understand that you can't commit rape on your spouse in Ohio unless you are living apart. Further, insertion of anything into the body of another however slight, even a tongue is defined as rape.  Also, my guy claimed to the cops that what they did was consensual.  The cops told him they were investigating and would let him know their decision about prosecuting in about a week. They prosecute an F1 rape.

Couldn't keep his statements out (perhaps more on that another time).  But we ended up negotiating a plea to a non-sex offense F4, down from a rape which is an F1 and carries mandatory prison time and a life time of registration every 90 days.  An F4 of this type is a non-jailable offense.  He has also agreed to plead to a misdemeanor which requires registration for 15 years once a year.

My guy might have won had we gone to trial, but he might have lost and if he lost his life would essentially have been over.  I thought and he agreed with me (eventually) that it was better not to take the chance.  Plea is on November 1 and sentencing will probably be about a month later.

Now to paperwork that has piled up, argh.

Town Hall Debate Songified

This is the way to watch it.

One Million Lawyers

Ok, now I don't understand why I don't remember this.

The Ohio State University's Video Game Tribute

Xaiu

I opened a snail mail from my brother and found this photograph of my first chow in it.  It looks like its at my parents house at some family thing.  Although, it might not be since during my father's final illness which lasted for several years I would drive up there every other weekend and usually bring Xaiu along with me.  He was always a hit with the folks at home and especially the kids because he looked like a teddy bear.  The trouble with that was that he didn't like people, especially kids.  He was never mean, but miserable when the kids tried to get him to play with them.  Once about four of them chased him down the hall and caught him in the corner.  He didn't bite or growl, but his tail uncurled and he looked more miserable then I've ever seen him look.  He was always a gentleman with people though.

He was one of the most dominate dogs I've ever had and he was more then willing to point this out to other male dogs many times his size (he weighed about 45 pounds).  In the end that is what killed him getting in a fight with another dog that was many times his size.  I wasn't there at the time.  I still miss him and that was over ten years ago.

Well this mail came and this photo dropped out and I couldn't believe it.  I walked away from it at least three times before I could actually come back and look at it.  I"m glad I've got it, but it was a shock to first see it.without a warning.

(I'm playing with a scanner and I experimented with this to see if I could scan it and cut the edges so there was nothing other then the photo.  I think it worked well.)

Just finished a really good thriller:  Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo.  The first in a series about a former Amish woman who is the chief of police in a small Ohio town trying to catch a serial killer.  Read it for Booked to Death, the mystery book club I go to at the Newark library.

It has got to be one of the better books like that I've read in some time.  The crimes are incredibly explicit and graphic.  I usually don't like them that graphic, but it seems to work here.

The main character and narrator is an Amish woman (Kate) who is the police chief of this small town in Holmes County, Ohio, with a secondary hero/guy/love interest who is a drunken pill popping BCI agent from Columbus, Ohio.  One of the things that caught my eye was the place names (at least the ones that are real).  Kind of fun, places I spend my work days in.  I guess that people who live in California have the same kind of response to the mysteries coming from there, but it is unusual for one to be set around here.

A lot of spoilers from this point on.

The book was just fun in a creepy way.  It carried me along and I was able to ignore the inaccuracies.  Mainly the jurisdictional issues.  The hero is a town cop, but her people seem to patrol the entire county even though there is a sheriff's department in the book and another character who is the county sheriff (not, it turns out a nice man at all).

"If you accept the set up you accept the bit."  At least according to Johnny Carson, and that is what one has to do to really enjoy the book.  Kate has left the Amish faith because of a horrific incident in her teen age years and ended up as a cop in Columbus.   She then came home for her mother's final illness and was asked to stay and become the chief of police in the small town in the book.  I'd say the woman's history really isn't that hard to believe, a rape and a killing of her rapist and a life time of hiding the story and stumbling into a job.  Her description of the lifestyle of the Amish and their relationship to the surrounding society makes the actions of hiding the killing very believable.   The BCI guy's is a little more difficult to buy into, that of a mafia type murdering his family as pay back.  On the other hand it is nice to see an unapologetic drunken pill popping cop.

The small police force does seem to have nothing but first class officers, something that is shall we say a little bit of exaggeration, but they are nicely drawn.

Kate is the narrator, but there are also different third party points of view.  One third party point of view is limited to the BCI guy and then there is a more omniscient one.  That is the one that starts the book with a description of one of the murders more or less from the point of view of the victim and it is incredible creepy and violent and sad.  I didn't particularly like the climax, but it was certainly handled well.  That might of been the least successful part of the book, but it was still pretty strong.

Post Debate Thoughts

So once again I am proven right in not having either cable T.V., nor even the other kind whatever that is now called.

One of the severe difficulties I run across is that when I point out to people that their critiques of Obama(or back in the day Clinton) are based on bullshit, is that I am now defending and supporting Obama (or Clinton).  Not so much, I just hate to see people telling me that my lickspittle of an apologist for any corporation president is a socialist or communist.  There as Shakespeare said is the rub.  I am not saying that you should vote for Obama.  I am saying that you are an asshole for claiming that Obama (or Clinton, either of them) is to the left of Grover Cleveland or William McKinley.

So apparently Obama didn't show up to play last night.  He opted instead to be the kindly accountant who is explaining to you that he doesn't want to see you eating dry dog food, but rather canned cat food.  For some reason this didn't go over well with the viewing public.  I do enjoy LGM  (linked to the most recent post, you can follow that to the others, I think) freaking out and spending about half a dozen posts explaining why this doesn't matter.  I'll give him this, Tbogg did apparently recognize this (which I haven't watched and refuse to, so I'll have to believe what people tell me, just like they told me how I should look at the 1960 debates, thank you).

I would like to point out that I have been saying for about four or perhaps more years that Obama never won a close and truly contested election.  First one he lost.  Second one the more popular candidate was forced out by the Chicago democratic machine.  Next contested one he won after the original republican was forced out because of a very interesting divorce complaint and the replacement was bat shit crazy.  Third one, the primaries against Clinton, Clinton managed to hire people (and pay them millions of dollars) who apparently didn't know that since 1970 the democratic party has assigned delegates pursuant to the percentage of the vote you receive.  So you don't receive all the delegate votes if you win 55% to 45%, but rather you receive 55% of the delegates.  Finally, the 2008 election Jesus Christ couldn't have won, had he run on a republican ticket.

So now he is running his first really contested election in at least 20 some years and he lost the last one.

In the mean time I keep looking at the world as I currently know it and seeing that both the republicans and democrats have been heading in exactly the same direction for at least the last thirty years as far as domestic policies are concerned.  The difference is that the republicans have been wanting to get to those Gilded Ages a lot faster then then democrats.  So I guess that I should vote democrat because there is better a chance that I'll be dead before we are completely fucked.

Arghhhh

Well, managed to tear myself away from the Facebook before I became:

The ignorance of the average American about history and economics make me feel like a genius.

UPDATE:  Several people in that thread, which I've stopped commenting on have insisted that their relatives accepted no government help during the Depression.  That would have been impossible if you were any kind of a less then wealthy family or individual, they would have almost not been able to have gotten by without some sort of government help.   Farmers of course got price supports, workers got unemployment insurance, everybody got Social Security.  People lower down the income level got to live in the subsidized housing here.  The WPA built the auditorium that is still in use in this town and the baseball field, also still in use.  So we know that people who lived here in the 30s were employed by the government in construction projects (which would of course include the subsidized housing which is still in use).

Once again I guess I shouldn't be so disgusted about people believing the idea that we can't spend ourselves out of a recession since almost without exception that appears to be what the governments and the opposition parties all over the world now believe.  

There were a couple of comments that disturbed me greatly:  first, people who said that we didn't spend ourselves out of the Depression because we didn't get out of the Depression until we we started spending on WWII.  Spending on war doesn't count as government spending apparently. Second, that G.I.s coming out of WWII got busy without help to speed the economy forward, completely ignoring the G.I. Bill.  

Dedicated to Mittens

Fantasy Land

OK so now I am thinking in a kind of follow up to what I posted yesterday, is what in the fuck are people on the right thinking?

I am continuously amazed at what people who call themselves republicans or conservative seem to believe.  Not so much: that Obama is not eligible to be president because he wasn't born in the United States, although that is kind of weird.

It is why are right wingers to pissed at him.  I had the same trouble with the republican hatred of Clinton and I still haven't been able to figure that out.  But I am told by people who are conservative (and some of whom are not stupid) that Obama is a socialist or communist.  I particularly like that he is one because of his mother although he was raised mostly by his grandmother, a bank vice-president.   My normal response is:  "You need to reread that definition in the dictionary if you think that he is a one of those."  Beyond just that are the attacks on him for cutting military spending and for abandoning Israel (neither of which he has done, of course).

It does not require a great deal of study or research to look and see that the facts are just the opposite of these claims.  One doesn't even have to jump into the Way Back Machine and go back  to either of the Bushs' presidencies or even the Gipper's to see these arguments aren't true.

I suppose I shouldn't knock the average American who thinks that it is necessary to cut government spending to cut the deficit, since apparently everybody in every government in every country in Europe also believes this, but still it is so very strange that they all seem to have forgotten the little period of history that started around 1929 and continued for some time thereafter.

I don't really think that the hatred of Obama is any more intense or nasty than that of the Clintons.  I haven't heard anyone saying that Obama himself loaded cocaine onto planes out of Illinois or that Michelle has had people killed because of........I can't really remember why Hilliary had people killed, not that it matters.  But still the irrational hate seems to be there.

It is not as if there aren't a lot of things to dislike about what Obama has done, still I guess if you attacked him for these things you couldn't attack him from the right, it would have to be from the left.  Still, it becomes a fantasy world of hate for the opponents.  Very strange.

Although it doesn't matter in the long term I guess it does make the end of the Roman republic and the battles among the would be rulers a little more comprehensible.  It is almost as though the fewer differences the more violent the battles for control of the lstate become.

There is definitely a full court press on right now by many of the major "left" wing blogs to attack those of us who have serious questions about voting for Obama.  We are being told over and over that we are just too much into our white male privileged selves and that we don't care about women, LGBT people, or about sick or old people because Obama got us something that FDR and LBJ couldn't get us together (although it hasn't completely started yet, but you just wait and see cause when it does it will be awesome and even though it isn't great it was the best he could do and ignore that he didn't try anything better, so there, also ponies).  Even Firedoglake (if you count Tbogg).  Although in reality Firedoglake or at least the front page seems to be kind of skitsofrantic (which appears to be the way that word is really spelled, who knew?) what with one or another front pager posting things about the awful stuff Obama does and then the ones just before and after them talking about how much worse things will be if Romney gets in.

 When serious matters are raised:  the drone attacks, Obama's attempt to crush dissent, the burgeoning police state, the gifts to Wall Street, and the Cat Food Commission, among other things.  We are told that Romney is going to be a disaster and Obama did many nearly great things: ACA, the end of DADT, and his refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act.   Most of these good things don't involve money being removed from the pockets of the wealthy, in fact I don't think any of the wonderful things Obama has done involved redistributing money in any direction except towards the wealthy.  So my deal breakers are not good enough, but theirs are.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a lot of reliance on certain of Obama's campaign "promises or statements," but not all.  The very same thing they make fun of me for what they say I did back in 2008.  Although I didn't.  I was just scared of Sarah Palin and didn't think that Obama could be this reactionary and politically incompetent.  As an aside how can the first African American elected president be so politically incompetent?

So any way Obama has done great things for women's rights (or at least he hasn't gutted them like Romney says he will do) and LGBT rights, after he was dragged kicking and screaming into the positions he finally, kind of, took.  And, and what then?  A "stimulus" that was one of every four dollars as tax breaks to the wealthy, something I suspect the republican would have been forced into in one form or another.  A bail out of Wall Street to save our banks something we know the republican would have been happy to do and would have done.  The use of the feds to crack down of medical marijuana and whistle blowers, I wonder if there is anyone who thinks that the republican would have done it differently?

Past is prologue.  What will probably be the main domestic goal will be to deal with the deficit with cuts to spending with "everything on the table."  Including things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  So where does that leave us?

Damned if I know, no that isn't true.  I do think that I know.  Unfortunately choosing between Mr. Plutocrat and Mr. I Am A Happy Employee Of The Plutocracy doesn't strike me as much of a choice.

Updated in a couple of places to remove the incoherent parts, I hope.

Mitt Romney Being An Asshole or Just Another Day With Mitt

God this guy is such an asshole.  The only problem is the size of the asshole he is running against.  Is it possible to hope that no one wins?

Losers B Us

I've been thinking about the incredibly nasty arguments against either not voting in the prez. race or voting for a third party.  Tbogg  (although Tbogg seems to do one of these every week now or even more frequently as he sees the end times approaching) and his Sparkle Pony and Lawyers, Guns, and Money and their Gush v. Bore.  I realized yesterday that they all come down to the same argument:  "If you people (meaning I guess liberals) hadn't voted for Nadier then it wouldn't have been so close and Gore would have won and we would not have had 9/11 and the depression. Therefore, if you do it again it will be your fault if we get Romney.  And if we get Romney he will be a lot worse then Obama because Bush was both a reactionary and incompetent so he was cleverly able to get a lot of reactionary things done and the same thing will happen this time."

I really do think that is the argument.  It doesn't seem to matter that Gore was willing to give up and that the Supreme Court was willing to steal the election, it is always the fault of the people who were trying to show the democrats that governing has consequences and therefore they refused to vote for a guy who proudly endorsed everything Clinton (gutting the banking regulations, various wars, NAFTA, screwing welfare recipients) did.  The only thing Gore would not support was the fun part of the Clinton presidency:  free and easy sex.

Well at any rate, it wasn't Gore's fault for not fighting, it wasn't Gore's fault for losing his own state, it wasn't every single democratic senator's fault for refusing to challenge Florida's electoral votes.  Oh no, it was the fault of the people who voted for Nadier.

Maybe, but now I think that in actuality the nefarious plan by Ralph was working at first.  Before 9/11 Bush was unpopular and his programs were unpopular and his administration was going down the toilet.  Then came 9/11 and Bush some how became a war time hero president.  It didn't matter that the guy and his people really fucked up and failed in ways that have now been made clear.  It didn't matter that he ran like a scared rabbit on 9/11.  He became the Big Daddy we all needed to defend us and we had to believe in him.  Certainly the MSM felt that way and either because of the never ending propaganda of the media or simply because they too needed a Big Daddy to protect them so did a majority of the voting population.

So had 9/11 not happened Bush would have been a failure and it is entirely possible that we would have had a more liberal president and congress.  Now this may be pie in the sky, because I am presuming that there were democrats out there who were liberal and who might have gotten nominated, which admittedly may be a little silly, but still.

Which means Bush owes a great deal to Osama Bin Laden so I guess I can see were one might begin to question whether or not Bush was in on it since he got so much out of it.  I personally don't think he was.  I just think that he and his people were so incompetent that they let it happen and then were clever enough to capitalize on it.  This could only happen with an adversarial press that is so far in the tank that it isn't what anybody with a rational mind could think of as "an adversarial press."  But none the less it did happen.

So short of another 9/11 kind of thing (which is not really all that out of the question) a vote for a third party president and letting Romney in might mean that he will screw up so badly that there is a possibility people will see that that kind of reactionary governance is bad.  I mean it was working before.

So as the saying goes we live life forward, but understand it backward.  In other words the people who tell me that if only Ralph wasn't in the election 9/11 and the depression wouldn't have happened only know that those things happened because they are looking back and they did.  There was no reason to expect that a vote for Ralph was a vote Osama bin Laden.

Fucking Politics

I'd been looking for this Simpson Episode for some time and I do want to thank Alicublog for finding it for me.  It is true I'd wanted the video, but this is even more pithy I do believe.  The problem with it is that I sometimes think that I can just re-post this every day until the election and it about says it all.

A couple of points, first this Greenwald column about Obama's protection of the former "President" of Bolivia, wanted to stand trial in that country for ordering the killing of unarmed demonstrators and then this from Lawyers, Guns and Money (not everybody posting there is totally in the bag, just most) about how it appears as though the democrats are going all out for privatizing schools.  How is this so different then what the republicans seem to want to do?  Not a lot.  I do think that the ACA is probably better then the health care that exists in this country right now, (which is interesting since it has been the law for some time, but it hasn't yet totally kicked in [wonder why?]) but not a lot and the cost will simply put us more in debt to the various corporations that already rule us.

How different are the parties?  Clinton wanted to gut Social Security and Lewinsky prevented that (he needed all the allies he could get to stay in office), Bush wanted to gut Social Security and the democrats rose as one against him and prevented it, now Obama wants to gut Social Security and the democrats seem more then willing to go along as long as it is a democrat who wants to do it.

Punishing bankers, waging war, blindly supporting Israel, punishing whistle blowers (well alright that seems to be mostly an Obama thing).

There are things that are peripheral that Obama has been forced to accomplish (and good for those who didn't listen when told to back off). But when this issues involve money and empowerment of the wealthy there is not much if any difference between the parties.

The economic well being of the general population strikes me as the core of any kind of democratic (semi or otherwise) government and this is unfortunately the one thing that both the republicans and democrats agree about.  More money to the very wealthiest (and jobs for their kids) and fuck the rest of you.  So when I say peripheral I do not mean to denigrate the issues of race or women's rights or or LGBT rights, but without a fairly strong economy the majority (that would be us white males no matter what the census tells you) will be encouraged to blame their economic woes on the bitches, niggers and faggots, and a lot of them will.  So those hard won rights might just find themselves defenestrated thank you very much.

Lying Politicians And Words

How to Piss People Off and Get Insulted in the Process

Now that was fun.

I Think That We Just Need To Compromise Some More

Henry Clay, the (really) Great Compromiser

I thought about putting Obama's acceptance speech up, but then I thought fuck it.  If you want to see it you can go somewhere someone gives a shit.

I should also say that I suspect that if Romney wins, then the democrats will lurch to the right because that is obviously where the votes are.  On the other hand if Obama wins then expect the democrats to lurch to the right because that is obviously where the votes are.  Or at least that is what the "smart" money keeps telling me about where the votes are.  If Obama loses it will be my fault because I am a progressive and I didn't get out and work for him and said mean things about him.  Although I will not be as much at fault as Glenn Greenwald, because he says really mean things about Obama and more people read him (Krugman on the other hand is an economist who doesn't believe in austerity and so no body cares what he says). If I work for Obama and  Obama wins I will not have caused it or helped in any way.  He will have won because America is conservative and we (progressives/liberals) must understand that.

I think in all probability life will be worse under Romney for the next four years.  But to be honest I'm not sure that things will be that much different over the slightly longer haul if Obama wins.   All of the horrors people keep pointing out that will occur with another republican administration will probably happen anyway within ten or fifteen years even with a democrat in the White House.  Short, of course, of some cataclysm that we don't clearly foresee.

Now that Obama has made it clear that he still wants his Grand Bargain  no matter what (in the very same speech I said fuck it about up there a ways) we know that he really wants to cut Social Security, just probably not as much as Romney, well maybe not as much as Romney right at this minute.

One of the mantras of A.A. is:  "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."  I tend to believe that there are many different versions of insanity, but I do think that is certainly one of them.  So Obama is begging the republicans to meet with him and compromise, not exactly a new idea for him.  And one that really hasn't worked at all no matter what his goal really was.  The guy must think that the 1840s and 50s were the most wonderful times ever in American political history will all those great compromisers, which I'm sure Obama would have participated in with gusto, except of course Obama wouldn't have been able to compromise at that time since he would have been chattel.  And incidentally none of the compromises did anything at all to change that fact, it was only those who would not compromise who could fix that little problem.

So anyway apparently Obama is insane, or perhaps I am if I work and vote for him again and expect him to do anything more then give shit away to his corporate buddies.

More Stuff

I was over at Tbogg's place to participate in the hooha about how Obama is apparently the best we can ever get.  Also don't forget that he really can't do anything more then he's done because this is the best of all possible democratic presidencies.  Also too, You Want A Sparkle Pony if you want Obama and the democrats to be anything other then Plutocrats (capitalized unlike republican or democrat, because it is a real political party).  Or perhaps Corporatist as Mussolini would have us call them.  Although Mussolini did provie the bread to the citizens to go along with the sale of the state to the Italian Corporations (I wonder if corporations are people in Italy, too).  That won't happen here.

Sorry Benito you are so yesterday.
( Spelled his name right after a couple of people helpfully pointed out that I am
 not a nice or intelligent person and I spell bad too.)

Crap, the people who back Obama seem to be unable to comprehend the idea that timing might indeed be everything. What could be done today is certainly a lot less then could have been done on January 25th 2009. What could have been done on January 25th 2009 was certainly a lot less then what might have been done if he had not personally voted for the various Bush bail outs of the banksters. Now the republicans are threatening to completely destroy Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and are running against a president who clearly only wants to gut Social Security, but wants to leave a kind of half dead carcase (I'd written this a couple of days ago, but apparently he made it clear last night, see Eschaton), but makes great promises, which it will be pointed out if he gets re-elected, I should not have believed, or perhaps just listened to the fine "print" more closely and so the fault is again, mine.  Mine because I didn't work hard enough at the local level, mine because I didn't work hard enough before the nominations (although had I done so and Obama lost, the fault would still be mine because I didn't work hard enough for the "centrist" candidate who could really win.

The argument that elections have consequences which is the one made by the in the bag for Obama sites to scare you into voting for Obama over Romney seems to ignore the corollary which is, or rather should be, governing has consequences, which it apparently does not at the level of president, not at least if the president is a democrat.

A busy year, made more busy since I appear to be the go to guy in my little county for defense of sex crimes, which is kind of creepy especially when it is combined as a couple of them with mental retardation (of the accused) and significantly under aged victims.  I do have a trial coming up which should be interesting, but which I can't really say much about until after the end of September, if then.

Clint Eastwood speaks

Jesus H. Christ

So losing another secretary (a word I invariably miss-spell and need to rely on spell check to get me out of,  which is kind of weird since I was, in another lifetime, a president of a union made up mostly of secretaries [but that is another story for another time Mouseketeers]).  To get back on track, losing another secretary because of the sickness or weirdness of the guy I share office space with (not partner, my malpractice carriers are happy to note).  And hey asshole, if you are reading this fuck you.

So where was I before I got sidetracked, oh yes losing another secretary.  Through once again, apparently through no fault of my own.  Well I look at it as a way to save about $500.00 a month or more.

Well, I've come to the conclusion that the semi-virtual office is now the way to go.  My ex-wife and former law partner was way ahead of her time a couple of decades ago when she started private practice (we both worked for legal aid for a couple of years just out of law school I remained with Legal Aid for a couple of more years) with only a Mac and an office she shared with another guy who was a graphics designer (for that year).  Now in real cities (not just burgs with a population of more then 10gs which is what causes a place to be called a city in Ohio, at least) dozens of people share the same office and schedule it through the landlord amongst themselves for use when the client comes in only.  There are a couple of people doing something similar to this in this podunk place and I guess I will probably join them sooner rather than later.

Man is this some year.

More Assange

It strikes me that we should all be writing about Julian Assange and his situation, and yet there seems to be little to nothing.  Except in some not particularly mainstream left wing blogs.   Lawyers, guns, and money, haven't written about him since they lost their shit back when the big Wikileaks dump happened and one of the posters there, who has since left, became hysterical and demanded that he be arrested, or perhaps killed I don't remember which.  I was able to point out that they were standing shoulder to shoulder with Lynn Chaney, which seemed to upset them quite a bit.  Some fun.

Greenwald has written a couple of things about him at the Guardian.  I do find the comments section to be depressing to put it mildly.  It does appear as though the people who are commenting either cannot understand English, which is disturbing since their country is the one that invented it.  Or perhaps they just read the headline, it is so much easier that way, don't you know?

The incredible hysteria about his attempt to get asylum is creepy to say the least.  The threat to storm the embassy from the government in order to drag him out is just interesting to watch from the country that gave Pinochet asylum.  There is no self awareness on the part of the government and there is no recognition on the part of most of the media of the hypocrisy.

Then the U.S. chimes in (for what reason no one can tell since we certainly do not want to extradite him to stand trial [or not] to our country or perhaps Cuba) and says that we never did believe in that asylum stuff anyway.  Although someone might tell that to the Chinese government and then someone might want to mention it to the Hungarians also since we sheltered Cardinal Mindszenty for over a decade.  But then that is really very different don't ch no.

The point is that stench of hypocrisy and mendacity as Big Daddy said is nearly overpowering.  It is clear that the only reason Sweden won't agree not to extradite Assange to the U.S. is that they are planning on doing just that.  It is also clear that the only reason we want him is to punish him for trying to practice journalism and force us to practice democracy. .  Well, who cares at this point, we've made our point and have probably stopped many others who might have tried to allow a little light into the decaying carcase of what used to be called a democracy, or a democratic republic, or even for that matter a republic.  The last best hope, etcetera etectera and so forth.    If one gives the people too damn many facts it will just in the end confuse them, after all.

Well That Puts It All In Perspective

Odds and Ends

A couple of more or less brief things.

First, I am amazed at the number of blogs I that mentioned the death of Gore Vidal and then admitted that they hadn't read anything he'd written.  I guess I can understand not finding time to read the Novels, but to not have read any of his essays strikes me as either shocking or sad, I'm not sure which.  He has to have been one of the very greatest essayists in the English language on either side of the big water.

On the other hand, perhaps he would be pleased since this is what he argued for years:  That we are in a post literate society.

I've got mine fuck you.

Second, In reading about Paul Ryan's saving his dad's social security death benefits while he was in high school to go to college on got me thinking.  (Am I the only one who thinks that a 16/17 year old who is in control enough to save all of daddy's death benefits is a little creepy?}  So anyway, in the late 60s and early 70s my girl friend of the time (with whom I lived for a couple of years) got a little over $300.00 a months in death benefits as long as she was in an accredited four year program and progressing towards a degree.

I looked it up and that sort of thing stopped in May 1982.  Reagan was president but there was a democratic congress.  I guess my excuse for not noticing, was that I was in my second year of law school.  Although, I was aware of the way that the G.I. Bill was cut.  I got less then my father a WWII veteran got for college:  he got his tuition paid plus a stipend, I got around $330.00 a month.  A friend joined in the middle 70s and had to put money away while he was in the military in order have a "G.I.Bill" to use to go to college with.  I do remember listening to the radio one day during or just after one of the Gulf Wars while the administration was talking about cutting the benefits again.  I thought it took a lot of balls to try to cut veteran's benefits during a war, but apparently I'm wrong.

So, anyway my entire adult life has been spent watching ordinary Americans government benefits get cut, under one or the other political parties.  While the rich get richer.  We live in a country that is, apparently, full of people who see themselves as subjects rather then citizens and will willingly tug their forelock when their betters pass by.

UPDATE:  I've looked around and see that the Ryan family owns a fairly impressive construction company that's been around since the 1880's doing, it appears, mostly government work: railroads, highways, airports, etc.  I haven't been able to figure out how close the owners are to Paul baby.  That is, is he a shit tail relation or is he close enough that they would have helped him.

Merely a simulation, the hookers in this town tend, if the arrest photos are accurate,
to north of 300 pounds with one full set of teeth amongst them.

Finally, some fun.  The City Law Director got busted by a city cop for solicitation of a prostitute and criminal trespassing.  Now understand this it is the City Law Director who takes the criminal cases filed by the police department and prosecutes them.  This is not a large place, somebody was seriously pissed at this guy and I wonder who.

Gore Vidal

Been busy, but I did want to post a little something about Vidal.  I had noticed that his most recent thing, which, if I remember correctly was many months ago was not up to his old stuff.  I'd seen him on TV and he wasn't looking great, so I cannot say that I was particularly surprised when I read that he'd died.

As usual I drifted around seeing what others had to say. The New York Times was kind of snotty, which I am sure that he would have expected and probably welcomed. There was also the usual right wing suspects who hated on him, but given what Vidal had said about Buckley after he died one would have expected nothing less.

Going to the “left” wing blogs was interesting, but not particularly surprising to me particularly Lawyers, Guns and Money. The second post by a member of their club was as nasty as I expected, although the fact that he linked to this Slate article was somewhat amusing. It was a particularly weak contrarian piece that claimed Vidal was anti-Semitic because of what he said about the Podhoretzes being “unassemilated Jews.” The crack was of course, about their determination to place the interests of Israel above those of the United States. I thought that point was obvious to anyone who followed their politics even a little.

 Some commentators claimed that he defended McVeigh and justified his actions and those comments caused me to go the the Vanity Fair article to see that in fact he had done no such thing. Although, his conspiracy theories were a little more then I could accept, he seemed to be trying to understand and explain what McVeigh thought and why McVeigh did what he did, not justify it.

Several people argued that Vidal had placed himself beyond they pale with his comments about the Roman Polanski rape charges. I'm not sure I don't more or less agree with him although not precisely the way he phrased it.  But I attempted to make the point that people still read Faulkner even after he talked about shooting people in the streets when asked about civil rights matters of the time. Got me banned from at least one blog to which I choose not to link, thank you very much.

Several people commented that Vidal was well you know simply not that good anyway so that we can safely ignore what he had to say, and any way people no longer read him or pay any attention to him (even though there is a revival of The Best Man currently running on Broadway, very successfully).

His statement that J. Edger Hoover and Clyde Tolson were the only two men who could live together in Washington, D.C. after a discussion of homosexuality in general was a shocker to my little middle class and mid western male mind. Do you think that people who are homosexual can act like just “normal” people? My my was I naive.

I do think that he was as pure, clear and elegant a writer of the English language as there has been this side of the Atlantic (ocean not magazine). I found his essays when I was in my late teens and early 20s and I was amazed at how well and clearly he wrote and the positions he took.  Growing up where I did I had no idea you could take those positions and get away with it in the nation with which I was familiar.   I remember watching him or TV just a month after I returned from Southeast Asia, when he called Buckley at crypto-Nazi (although he did later apologize, he meant crypto-fascist he said, but misspoke in the heat of the moment).  I thought this guy is right and those people in the streets are right and they are going to carry the day.  I want to be there and help.  Little did I realize that this was the high water mark of the left in this country.

Whenever I write anything about Vidal, my own stuff looks and reads clunky to me because I'm always comparing my writing to his, and lets face it I am just not one of the half dozen most elegant prose stylists in the English language.

Well anyway I feel like I can certainly think or curse him for a great deal of my political beliefs and my open mindedness (or at least I hope I'm open minded.

Ch ch ch changes

 I have a theory, which I may have mentioned before.  That all families  or individuals have a "Year."  That is a period of time, usually a year, when bad shit happens to them or those closest on an almost continuing and overwhelming basis.  It is not that bad things don't happen at other times, but there are times when they happen continuously, regardless of what is going on in the greater world.  I think this is my year and I still have five months to go.  I suppose I should look on the bright side, I'm no longer doing illegal drugs or drinking so I stand a less likely chance of being arrested for those things, although knowing the competency of the police, perhaps I should worry even more. And the tax man is still nipping at my heals so there is that to worry about.

What has been happening is that things are happening so fast and hard that I am finding it very hard to do much more then the bare minimum at work or for that matter outside of work.  We are eating out a lot more because neither of us has the energy to cook, or the patience for that matter.  So a lot of cheap greasy Mexican food which I like, but I somehow feel is not the best thing for a gentleman of my advanced age.

Every time I turn around I'm unable to make, what I think are necessary changes or just things I want to do.  Luckily, I appear to be good at my job and I'm able to function, in court, which I find a lot of fun although stressful.   The preparation time is what is being cut and one must normally prepare after all.  Can't wing 'em all.  Luckily I'm helped by clients who will often just drift away and not participate in the preparation for their case.  I say luckily because that does take a load off my shoulders, if they do not help then I often can't do it by myself, so that does free up time.

Looking back at this it looks like I'm whining, but that really isn't it.  I figure shit as they say happens and unless you are a 1%er you've gotta ride with it, that doesn't mean you can't bitch about it.

UPDATE:  I'm told that the above kind of made a reader sad because it seemed to be well kind of depressing.  I had intended it to be more or less humorous or perhaps wry or maybe rye if I could have found the liquor.   I like to think of myself as the kind of :A little song a little dance a little seltzer down your pants kind of guy.  Damn it is hard being funny.

She's Lost All Sense of Time

Arghh, try and try again.

We put my mother in what we thought was an assisted living facility, but it turned out to be independent living, when what it turns out she needed was Skilled Nursing care.

We found another place only three minutes from home which does provide the Skilled Nursing and moved her two weeks ago.  The relief is palpable.  Within a couple of days we realized how much we'd been doing and how much less we had to do here.  Essentially, they do the care and we do the visits.  Either Traci or I have been going every day, usually both of us, sometimes together and sometimes separately.  My Mom has certainly made major improvements in just a couple of weeks.

She has to do an irrigation on her colostomy every other day and she had simply forgotten how to do it, that combined with the fact that she seems to no longer have any sense of time, made many accidents.  Now that there are nurses coming to make sure things get done it seems like a miracle to us.  Traci was in there anywhere from two to four hours every morning at the other place.  I was there from one to two hours every night and we were both making sure that she took her meds properly (she really doesn't take that many, but they are important) and just to give her some time around other people.

Luckily, my Mom is considered "delightful" (the exact word that most of the staff uses about her) so they are more then willing to go the extra distance for her.  Our being in there daily helps because they know that we will find out if things are screwed up.

It is interesting that most of what Mom is doing is not different, just more so, if that makes sense. the only thing different is that she now eats a full breakfast which no one in the family can remember her ever doing.

I am still going on with my court cases and at last I seem to be able to provide some more then just minimum attention to them which is good since I have a rape (mandatory prison time if my guy gets convicted), procuring a juvenile (which is the same, essentially since it was a seven year old alleged victim) my guy is "mildly mentally retarded."  Which meant that my guy was sent to a lock down mental hospital for nearly six months to make him competent enough to understand what was happening to him, although he was still not Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity or Mental Defect, tell me how that works?.  Also, tell me how they can make a mentally retarded guy more competent, please.

Well, now to go out and watch the American Masters on Gore Vidal which is finally available for a week for streaming.  I think I will probably post on Vidal since he is one of my favorite writers.  Although, each time I think I am going to start posting, Life intrudes. Several people apparently find him beyond the pale because of his comments on the victim in the Polanski thing, I'm not so sure that I completely disagree with him, and I'm not sure that even one comment that is beyond decent brands everything else a guy does.  If that were the case then none of us would read Faulkner.

Finally I've got to get a letter off to the other place to explain why I do not intend to pay the $4Gs they want for the month my Mom won't be there since they couldn't properly care for her when she was there.   Should be fun

A history of 1960's album art - UNDER THE COVERS - Part 4 of 10

I have been looking for this for a couple of years.  I'll come back when I find the first one. 

I"m Nearly There

Arghh.  I think I know what I did wrong.  Fighting with Linux/Ubuntu and with Android.  My only Microsoft computer seems to be experiencing early onset Alzheimer's.  Speaking of which:

Brought my Mom back from Florida and installed her in Primrose Retirement Community because she could no longer live by herself.  We got the call from her caregiver just the say after I posted last.  My brothers were going down for Mom's 90th and I wasn't, but after the call I cleared my schedule and flew down.  We had been looking around and found a place just literally 5 minutes from our house.  My brothers live in opposite directions from me about  five and six hours each.

Four days later I brought her back on a non-stop from Orlando to Columbus then an hour drive from Columbus to here.  She has been in the place for 9 days at this point and it is exhausting.  We have a friend who put both his parents in Primrose at about the same time and ran into him when he was leaving the other day.  He told us he was planning on hanging himself it was so stressful.  He would hang his parents, but he didn't want that much interaction with them.  I think he was kidding.

My mother has turned into either a 2 year old saying no to everything, or a 13 year old who will not be happy no matter what.  There is no, as my mother used to say about me,  pleasing her.  Payback?

My Mom wasn't eating or leaving the condo nearly at all.  She was forgetting to do the simplest things.  But at any rate I am exhausted as is my wife.  Come home and just stare blankly at the TV or right now where the TV was because we put the TV in my Mom's apartment.  Yes, apartment, about 850 square feet every inch usable.  I think there may be more usable area then is in my house.  One good thing that was to come out of this was that my Mom would get our old TV and I would get a newer and bigger one.  My niece said that she had a TV they weren't using which was bigger then ours so my Plan was for naught, curses.

Ray Bradbury

Damn it is a bad day all around.  Ray Bradbury died. 

How about a short story?

Well at least, given his beliefs their shouldn't be much of a funeral.

I can hire half the working class to kill the other half

- Well, that was kind of just terrible last night.

I am sure that it will be explained to me by the usual suspects.  That is how the national democrats and Obama could not have done anything more then they did (which was next to nothing) to help the democrats in Wisconsin.  I will update when they explain it all.

Ever since I read that the guy who was getting a million bucks from Clinton in the primary to help manage her campaign (and no I don't feel like even taking the few minutes Google will take to find it) did not understand how delegates were awarded in democratic primaries I have felt mostly hopeless as far as the democrats are concerned.  I had thought that they were part of a larger conspiracy, but now I'm not so sure.

I guess one of the really scary things is that a majority of the voters believe that they shouldn't have nice things, but that since they can't have nice things other middle class people just like them shouldn't be allowed to have nice things either.  On the other hand our betters, that is the 1%, if I may be allowed to adopt a cliche, can have very very very nice things.  One says while bowing and tugging on their forelock.

Like Atrios says in another context I'm beginning to think that about all there is left to do is to document the atrocities.