Mad as Hell, There but not Here

After three days of riots, Londoners are not through. Catalyzed by police shooting a young man, Mark Duggan (shown), to death, the U.K. burning, looting and violent protests are about much more. The social programs and policies there are in even worse than than the U.S. equivalents. People are pissed to the point of rage instead of panic.

Here, we shall see the deaths of many, but not from police bullets. Rather, the slow and hidden demise of those from destitution, anguish, despair, anxiety and suicide will come with joblessness, hopelessness, homelessness and other lacks. We have a crazed and craven U.S. House and a timorous eunuch of a chief executive, the former leading us to destruction and the latter leading us not all. Millions of us will suffer.

In London, there's a similar divide separating the very wealthy and secure from hoi polloi. There instead of panic and despair, many express anger and worse. Consider the Amy Weston new pic here of a woman leaping, as it turned out to injured safety, from a torched building.

Here our arson is the dragon's breath of political posturing. Our legislators deny all responsibility for damage to millions of Americans and billions of cosmopolitans from their games.

Before my time, we had riots in many industrial cities and in my life, mass violence in Los Angeles, Newark, Plainfield and more. Americans for the moment seem so stunned by the evil visited upon us and the larger world that we react with sadness and fear instead of flames, stones and pillaging.

Yet we are not that far off of the English disorder.

Traditional Divorce and Adultery

How blissful must be the delusional lives of the anti-marriage equality folk. Neither facts nor observation distract from disdain and hatred of the other.

A splendid recap of U.S. marriage appears in Edge. None of the info is new, but it all bears repeating and is great as needed for debate.

Read the piece for the many numbers and sources. A key overall point is that marriages are healthier in the states with legal same-sex marriage. Wedded couples in places like Massachusetts have lower divorce rates — true for straight and homosexual pairs there.

The reasons are not news either, except maybe for the anti-gay sorts who chose to ignore the obvious. Note that adultery and divorce are most common among the wingers and in the Bible Belt. To those who pay any attention to scholars who measure and analyze such trends, the allegedly traditional marriage — straight, very young and theoretically at least without fornication or cohabitation first — is the one most likely doomed.

People don't know each other or really even themselves. Many feel trapped and cheated of experience when the have been married for a year or two or three. Hence, come infidelity and dissolution of the bonds. Moreover, those marriages are more likely to have very unequal finances and education, with the woman on the weak ends. In the main, it all doesn't seem to work that well.

Other identified factors for strong, lasting marriages include being educated, being tolerant of the spouse and others outside the marriage, and having kids. The wingers and fundies who fantasize about all homosexual couples being sluts forever on the make could hardly be more wrong for the married ones...and less perceptive about their own cohorts.

Scofflaw, I Got Your Ticket Right Here

Paralyzed police are so oppressed by thoughtless lawmakers. Otherwise, for sure dudes and dudettes, they'd do the right thing.

Over at the Globe today, Peter DeMarco does his usual clear writing on bike issues. The gist is that cops in Boston and other cities around aren't writing tickets for cycling infractions, particularly running red lights. It seems there are flaws in the laws.

Rather, there are numerous laws that make it clear that under MA law, a bicycle is a vehicle with similar rights and responsibilities for the operator as motor vehicles. (A later post or two will rip into the inane same-road-same-rules chant.) Yet the three-paragraph law (Ch. 85-Sect. 11E) that passed this January gives the cops a weak excuse not to write tickets for bikers.

The ruse is that as there is no driver's license to suspend or revoke, the constabulary is powerless, powerless I say son, to do anything other than write warning tickets to cyclists. While listening to locals and reading comments on newspaper and websites, you'd believe all drivers are law abiding and all cyclists hellions.The BDP and other cops around feign impotence.

Unfortunately, DeMarco stops with taking them at their word and does not point out the obvious. Nor does the Globe or police or anyone seem interested in a bit of science. Counting and classifying infractions by drivers, bikers and walkers would likely make them all squirm and shuffle their feet.

We really do need to disregard these give perceptions that drive (if you pardon) the related discussions. I've done a few short term counts. I think I'll do some more and publish them. This is a discussion awaiting and some official counter sorts should get involved.

First let's note some Boston road traits:

• Unlike many cities with long, straight runs of well-timed lights, ours are generally low speed.
• This keeps most collisions to non-lethal levels. While it's rare to find a local car without dings, we don't get going fast enough to murder in most cases.
• The sheer number of cars here so vastly exceeds bikes that the numbers of wrecks, hit-and-runs and more commonly moving violations is several orders of magnitude higher for motor vehicles.
• There are virtually no fatalities caused by a bicycle hitting anyone or anything, and numerous ones of car, bus and truck drivers hitting cyclists.

Yet the need of urbanites to identify with fellow drivers and to believe that cyclists are far more likely to disregard traffic laws is terrifically strong. Hence, there is a cry for our cops to crack down on these scofflaws.

Back to my quasi-scientific findings, which I promise to replicate and expand a bit, I went to a few intersections, some with little bike traffic and others with a mix of motor and non-motor. What I found included with the preponderance of cars, trucks and buses, it was extremely rare (under 1%) of traffic lights and stop lights that did not have multiple driver offenses at every light change and every sign stop. These were running the light or sign, not coming to a complete stop, blocking the crosswalk or box, not stopping before the stop line, turning on red where not allowed, speeding, turning or changing lanes without a signal, turning without yielding to pedestrians, and turning from the wrong, marked lane. In general, the law-abiding drivers were the one who were not close enough to commit the moving violations. At nearly all lights, from one to five drivers ran red lights, often tailgating each other through after the change.

Cyclists tended to be guilty most frequently of slowing or stopping for the red light, then proceeding, running the light in vehicular terms. Yet, more and more cyclists are stopping and waiting, including this one. The message seems to be getting through to us. It appears a slight majority do proceed after stopping and before the light changes though.

Of course, cyclists are wont to point out that the risk to anyone from a cyclist stopping and going is tiny contrasted to a motor vehicle driver doing that. It's still illegal tough. Moreover, it is well to a cyclist's safety to get ahead of drivers at a light change. Drivers are much more sensible and safe overtaking cyclists where they can see and feel in charge than leaving a light at the same moment. Yet, even starting a second or two before the change to green is still illegal.

The fact seems to be that most drivers who do not also cycle seem to resent cyclists or anyone who might get to do something they cannot. Despite the vast physical differences, drivers seem from their comments to have a puerile reaction — If I can't, they can't! It's not fair!

Then to the cops, let's be plain about return on their time and effort investment. They roundly hate the $1 MA jaywalking law and the $20 bike tickets. Fair enough for pedestrians, but they know that the bike tickets can be $20 to $50, enough to make it worth the time.

In fairness, we need to be aware that tickets are time consuming, particularly if the receiver fights it and the cop is supposed to appear in court to testify. Understandably, they'd rather not mess with bike and ped tickets. They could enforce these laws, as they have in places like D.C. and occasionally, periodically, in Cambridge.

However, cops may have seen too many police dramas. Talk to a cop and they would have it they are overwhelmed with major stuff. Yet the danger of some loony or criminal shooting at or trying to stab or club a cop are very low in a given year or decade. Some officers go careers without any of that. More importantly, the vast majority of cops are not detectives bringing to the bar murderers, burglars and such. Most cops do pretty mundane looking and other work all day every day.

They largely have time to do for pay what I have done out of curiosity — go to intersections and observe moving violations. The difference, of course, is that they should then write tickets.

Virtually any intersection any day would provide one violation after another. They would quickly:

• Fill up ticket book
• Shock the drivers used to the no-blood-no-ticket attitude
• Spread the word that urban cops were enforcing laws for a change
• Make our streets safer

The pretense that tweaking the new 85-11E would make a difference is absurd. Facts include that cyclists have advantages here. While they are much more likely to be maimed or killed when hit, they don't have licenses to lose or surchargeable insurance. They don't have to produce their papers (license) and could give false names and addresses.

In comments on sites, a common call is for cyclists to have operator insurance and some form of license. These too are those shallow, emotional responses to someone having something those commenting do not. Plus, I try to imaging the cry over the expense and new bureaucracy in implementing such changes.

Instead, cops should enforce existing laws for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. Police departments can make that happen by mandating enforcement and creating policies for their officers in presently iffy situations.

Sure, cops would whine that they'll spend a lot more time writing tickets and appearing court. I can almost guarantee that this would be only for a few months. When the word got out that the BPD suddenly means to enforce traffic laws, violations will plunge as driver/cyclist/walker behavior changes.

I propose that we measure violations, both by study and by tickets issued. That would certainly take the bluster out of driver's claims that they are the only ones who obey the laws. We could get a much safer city.

Cross-post: This is both legal and personal. I'll post in Harrumph and Marry in Massachusetts.

Clarity of Delusion Up North

A wonderfully clarifying double hit appears in the big Maine newspaper. Writing in the Portland Press Herald, out GOP activist from there Steven Scharf:

• Predicts in no uncertain terms that any 2012 ballot initiative to restore SSM would fail
• Slips in what his side would really like — to redefine marriage as church ritual

I hope Equality Maine distributes this opinion piece widely. It should be a great inspiration in their efforts to turn tens of thousands of indifferent voters to American-style equality fans. They don't have to convert anti-LGBT citizens, just wake up fence sitters to say, "Oh, sure, I'll support fairness and equality."

Scharf's magical numerical thinking runs counter to polls that show the previous urban/rural divide is disappearing. Moreover, Mainers already have an established history of knocking down gay-rights before finally going to the ballot and in effect saying, "OK, we'll jerked you around long enough. You win."

More telling than the piece's bluster is the paragraph that includes, "The fact is, I believe that government should get out of the marriage business altogether." Read the many comments that follow, which jump up and down on that.

Typically the anti-homosexual and anti-SSM organizations bring this up repeatedly, as do some gay-rights splinter groups. Somehow they remain oblivious to the obvious distinction between civil marriage and religious rite.

Facts and history are plain enough. Marriage in this country and most others is a civil matter, a contract recorded by the government and requiring both prior approval (license) and petition to dissolve (divorce). Those, apparently a minority, who choose can layer a religious ceremony on top. Yet the license that the cleric signs legalizing the marriage after that ceremony is a government document, which the minister or cognate does as a temporary government agent.

Getting the government out of marriage is, to finally accurately use the term, redefining marriage. We can temporarily set aide the inefficiency, even chaos, likely to ensue without the civil contract recording and oversight by state governments. Instead concentrate on the underlying message of transferring marriage to religious institutions.

That is an unbelievably terrible idea that would redefine a system that has worked excellently from colonial days into nationhood. The only aim would seem to be to erase another clear First Amendment hands-off separation to make the most reactionary feel better.

No thanks. We have a working system...without redefining marriage to suit the religious right. Marriage is civil. Church ritual is a personal option.

Here's hoping the Press Herald opinion piece gets a lot of pushpin-on-the-corkboard display.

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Tags: massmarrier, Maine, same sex marriage, marriage equality

How Social Boston's At-Large Pols?

How social-media savvy are the seven candidates for the four at-large Boston City Council seats? Let's not ask how important that will be, keeping in mind that our wildly popular Major Tom Menino is not a 21st Century net geek. Yet he keeps winning.

I admit prejudice for social media. In my view, it can't hurt to encourage and enable two-way communication in ways voters know and use. Here we might note immediately at none of the seven seems to have any smartphone app. I bet some pols here will in a year or two.

Instead of my usual inventory of what pol's campaign websites have, I just pored over their relationship with social media. While I did not see who's on Google+ yet, I did scan for presence and links to Facebook, Flickr, RSS new feeds, Twitter and Youtube.

This table recaps what they have included. This may reflect more what their hired designers figured was important, but it's fair to think that any Councilor candidate should know and specify such details.

	Arroyo	Connolly	Dorcena	Flaherty	Murphy	Pressley	Ryan
Main site1	felixarroyo	connollyforboston	willdorcena	FB only	murphyfortreasurer	ayannapressley	seanryanforcitycouncil
buttons2	FB, R, T, Y	FB, F, T, Y	No	No	FB, F, R, T	FB, F, T	FB, T, Y
Twitter	FelixArroyo	johnrconnolly	willdorcena	mfflaherty	councilormurphy	AyannaPressley	ryanforboston
tweets (8/3)	998	133	29	735	222	903	282
followers	1,140	1,999	93	1,041	304	1,676	164
Facebook	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
friends or likes	2,032	4,887	1,010	398	1,575	4,005	212
links out	campaign	campaign	company	no	no	campaign	campaign, FB, T, Y
Youtube	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes
videos	26	4	—	—	—	—	25
length	c. 3-4 min.	1-6 min.	—	—	—	—	c. <2 min.
Flickr	No	Many, new and old, meet and greet	No	No	No	Many, old, with voters and pols	No

¹All campaign sites are .com. Also, see 8/11 update for Murphy's new URL.
²Buttons are easily accessible buttons or links upfront. FB=Facebook, F=Flickr, R=RSS feed, T=Twitter, and Y=Youtube.

Disclaimers: I try not to overtly support candidates I'll have on the Left Ahead podcast. While I tend to endorse, I try to keep things clean by not volunteering for or contributing to any such candidate. I have never worked for or with any of them. I also know and like these candidates. Finally, Murphy and I live a couple of blocks from each other.

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Social savvy

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Overall, no one aces this comparison. Various candidates have areas of strength though. Combining the factors, Connolly is at the top. Arroyo and Pressley are very close behind and to each other. I'd give these three an arbitrary B grade.

Dorcena is at a disadvantage, which he seems to want to overcome quickly. He was the last candidate in, he is new to both campaigning and social media. His website just came on line. He has just started tweeting. His campaign site has political/issues content, but no media. He gets a C-, but I bet he'll up that soon.

Flaherty was surprising. He is charming and has a long political history, including presidency of the Council. He's a big tweeter and has been for a long time. I have not heard back from him on when he'll have a campaign site up — he uses his Facebook page for that. His sole social-media link there is on the Info tab, which has his twitter handle. Right now, he's a D. Interestingly enough, he comes in with over a thousand twitter followers, a promising number. His old eponymous campaign site is parked under someone else's name (maybe a lawyer holding the place).

August 4 Update: Flaherty let me know that his site will in fact be up and viewable in a day or two. I guess I should get ready for some content analysis.

August 11 Update: Murphy told me he had his folk fix the domain-name issue. The campaign site is now stephenjmurphy.com.

Murphy too is behind on social media. He does have a compaign site, but it's under the last election's domain, when he ran for Treasurer of the Commonwealth. Surely someone in his campaign knows how easy it is to replace the domain name and route the old traffic to it as well. He needs some media hygiene, such as removing a duplicate FB page, updating his most active one to include links to his campaign site, adding some video, and fixing the Flickr link from the current text line. He's a D+ at the moment, mostly because he's made things hard to find with too few links and buttons.

Ryan runs a low-cost gum and paperclip campaign, but isn't too bad on social media. Both his tweets and videos are concise and beefy. He has serious political, economic and philosophical point to make. He clearly writes and video edits to make his view accessible. As we say in the biz, he understands chunking. Modified for new media, he gets his points across in under 2-minute videos.

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Campaign sites

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Six of the seven have formal campaign sites in addition to Facebook pages. These tend to follow the basics, including a bio, an issues page, and tabs for new stories and photographs and video.

Some make better use of social media here. In addition to buttons for donating money or volunteering, there's great opportunity here. Various visitors prefer different social media and will be attracted to related links on buttons.

Everyone except Dorcena and Flaherty present easily accessible social media buttons. Arroyo and Connolly have the widest range. Only Arroyo has an RSS feed button for news, although Pressley serves this function with a newsletter subscription link. Actually her solution is savvy in capturing a voter's email.

Connolly and Pressley both have Flickr links. These would tend to attract those who volunteer or attend rallies and events. People love to see their pictures or those of folk they know. Otherwise, this is not an interactive medium for candidates.

As for URL, the site address, three were smart and fortunate enough to get their names. Mnemonic sites are best. Arroyo is lucky his father didn't squat on that domain. Dorcena and Pressley had singular enough names to grab. The other three ended up with sites have URLs long enough to encourage misspelling and unintuitive enough to make the curious struggle. As for Murphy, he just needs to update the domain to the current race.

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Twitter chatter

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Particularly with smartphones in hand, candidates have gotten into tweeting. I read chatter on Google+ that it will quickly make twitter irrelevant. I remain to be convinced, as it seems a majority of us tweet or at least read those of others. Pols really can't be left out of this medium.

Again, Dorcena is new to this, but all seven tweet. Arroyo and Pressley in particular are prolific, often informing followers where they'll be or have been. Connolly seems the most thoughtful, with only, largely substantive tweets.

The only surprise among the followers to be was how few Murphy has so far, about 300. Three incumbents, plus Flaherty, seem to have made greater efforts. Connolly has the most followers, with Pressley not too far behind.

As with the campaign URL, several were fortunate and savvy enough to end up with eponymous twitter handles that also mirror their site names. That kind of consistency is social-media wise. FelixArroyo, willdorcena, and AyannaPressley fit that. The other four likely ran into the already-taken syndrome of more common names.

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Friends and likers

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All candidates also have Facebook pages. For this, I considered the number of Friends or those who clicked Like, depending on how the page is set. Then I looked at what outgoing page links appear in their Info sections.

Incumbents Connolly and Pressley decidedly have the most chums, over 4,000 each and twice or more fellow incumbent Arroyo. Numbers for the others can be misleading.

Dorcena at over 1,000 inherits from his business activities. Flaherty is just getting the hang of FB. Ryan is much less well known and has targeted contacts.

Perhaps more telling for social media is what Info offers. Arroyo, Connolly, Pressley, and Ryan include their campaign sites. At the moment, Dorcena has not upgraded his to have that as well as his company. Neither Flaherty nor Murphy links to the campaign there. Here Ryan seems to have put the most thought in, with FB, twitter and Youtube links here as well as on his campaign site.

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Picture that

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As for still and video components, three make use of Youtube and two of Flickr. Only one has both.

Flickr streams are available for Connolly and Pressley. His have a wide range from his two terms. There are lots of meet-and-greet, along with the speechifying ones. Many supporters are evident. Hers are similar but outdated and not well organized. She has her 2009 campaign and a bunch from early in this year. She should have someone update this in content and create galleries.

Similarly for Youtube, it is Arroyo, Connolly and Ryan with videos. Connolly's is the sparsest with only four, one amusing one of him speaking at a car-wash opening and three political speeches. These vary from 1 to 6 minutes, or just-right to too long in social-media terms.

Arroyo has 26 in his feed. They are almost all Council speech clips. They tend to run long, most between 3 to 4 minutes. The rule here is that under 2 minutes is OK for keeping people's attention.

Ryan gets Youtube. He has 25 vids, almost all under 2 minutes. Each has been carefully edited to illustrate one of his issues and points.

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So what?

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This social-media campaigning is still relatively new. Plus the platforms and rules continue to change. Even if we watch this election and others carefully, we may not be able to draw too many conclusions yet.

Just as candidates speak of the necessity to knock on as many doors as possible — the wear-out-shoes method, most know social media are now part of meeting people where they live, work, and think.

It is likely impossible to separate the power of incumbency and name recognition from the extra pushes given by social media. What does seem clear in this race is that candidates have bought into the better-safe-than-sorry mentality for social media.

Plus, they have my number and that of many other voters when they make us feel like we are really interacting with them.

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Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, at-large, Arroyo, Dorcena, Connolly, Flaherty, Murphy, Pressley, Ryan, elections

Post-NY SSM

Anti-LGBT/-SSM groups seem to care little for democratic process and a lot of their financial well-being. We'll experience it in a new set of spasms following the NY legalization of same-sex marriage. Already announced are:

• Fund-raising non-stop
• Court appeal to overturn the CA decision that Prop 8 is unconstitutional
• More fund-raising to campaign against NY GOP supporters of SSM
• Quixotic drive to reverse New Hampshire's SSM law
• Fighting the, if you pardon, let-the-people-vote drive in Maine to re-legalize SSM there

Don't expect NOM and other anti-homosexual groups to back off. Just because a huge state, NY, joined the marriage-equality family, that only indicates the irreversible trend. Accepting such reality is beyond the emotionally driven sorts.

There's a detailed projection of what to expect in SSM-headed Maryland and New Jersey in Bay Windows. The piece also gets into the likely battles around the nation.

Facts include the key one, that as socially slow as we are as a nation, we have finally tipped into favoring marriage equality. Yet, undeniably for many, particularly boomers and their parents, confusion remains. Some buy into illogic, such slightly expanding civil marriage to include homosexual couples redefines marriage, interferes in some way with religious marriage rites, will be terrible for children, will mean on the one hand drastic reductions in children born and on the other only a small percentage of civil marriages being of SS couples, or there is some reason other than pure punitive malice to prevent homosexual couples from getting the same benefits as others.

Oh, yeah, and there's that red herring about marriage being primarily for reproduction. That excludes the vast majority who are incapable or uninterested in having kids, or who adopt.

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Plug away until they go away

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To most of us though, it is increasingly plain that the anti-marriage equality sorts really care about perpetuating their business as long as they can. As long as they can convince oldsters and younger befuddleds that there is a reason to contribute, the longer they get their platform and paycheck. Unfortunately for them, their universe of suckers is dwindling, but fortunately for them, there are still quite a few to contribute.

While places like Maine have relative few citizens, voters, contributors, the symbolic value is high. I have long envisioned a regional equality block — all of New England, with New York and New Jersey. Moreover, Maine has an obstinate history, including in LGBT rights. Its lawmakers voted for gay rights a few times, to be overturned by petition, and now once for SSM, also overturned. When the pro-SSM petition goes to ballot, there's a high likelihood it will pass. So, as thinly populated as the state is, the anti-gay types want a victory there.

NOM's Maggie Gallagher says and has written that "history is not unidirectional" pointing to the Maine SSM vote. Of course, that remains true in Maine and elsewhere. Her group and similar ones love to crow "The people have spoken!," but those people are often not through thinking or voting.

The anti-SSM folk should at least be an inspiration in one way. They clearly don't like democracy, which can come with messy separation of powers. Marriage equality can come from the legislature or court or in half the states ballot initiative. Whenever the tide turns against the anti-SSM folk, they cry foul and turn to another branch of government.

Mainers have already learned such perseverance. It is not enough that the anti-SSM prophesies of horrible aftereffects of marriage equality always are proven wrong. The good guys have to keep plugging away until the bad guys go away.

You Look Just Like (No!)

The tactlessness of our fellows is a massive force. I have experienced it in the you-look-just-like trope since childhood. If you do it, stop immediately.

The routine goes like this. You are in a social or work/social setting with anywhere from four to 50 people. You exclaim at high volume to someone, "You look just like..." and insert a name of someone either unknown to others or famous.

Cross-post note: This kind of rant seems to belong both here and on Harrumph!

Let me make it plain. Regardless of lack of sobriety or imagined perceptiveness, you are wrong, very wrong. The object of your exclamation and other will know you're an ill-mannered ass, whose mother had trailer trash pretensions of sociability. Whomever you are comparing to whomever looks at best only vaguely like each other. Moreover, it's almost certain that you are a different ethnic background that the alleged twins, with the added flavor of racism.

I've been hearing that from elementary school. It took me quite awhile to realize that the folk who said it invariably were of different ethnic or racial backgrounds...that all of the other looked alike to them. So, I have always been blond and kind of Nordic looking. Yet whether I was trim or chubby, had lots or little hair, or whatever gross anatomical status and age I was, I heard it.

If you do that, think and stop.

For the object of your attention, the proper answer is along the lines of, "Horse feathers!" or some other contradiction. Without the other person handy corporeally or photographically, you've put the just-like person in the flight-or-fight situation. You are also really revealing:

• You're a poor visualizer
• You have intrusive, poor and self-centered behavior
• You are indifferent to whether you are insulting someone or putting someone on the spot
• If you look little like the two people compared, you likely are revealing your stereotypes, racial and otherwise
• You expect everyone to shift his or her attention to you
• You are so arrogant that you don't consider the near certainty that you are very wrong

When this shtick gets amusing is when you can check on the spot. This is easier with smart-phones, iPads and such. Honest to God, if you get called on this even once, and proven to be way off base, take the lesson.

For me, it was finally realizing it was the swarthy Mediterranean types, Ashkenazim, Asians and others who had none of my physical characteristics that pronounced my twins. Boy or girl, man or woman, young or old, it was invariably someone who looked nothing like anyone in my family who'd say, "I know this guy you look exactly like," or "You know that actor (name); you could be his twin."

At last, I heard the real message. That was, "All you blond, WASP types look just alike to me."

How dumb is that?

The times there was a picture of the alleged twin or the rarer occasions when we could be together with the proclaimer, without a single exception, the consensus was either, "You look nothing alike," or "Gee, I guess you are not that much alike." Never once was the follow-up, "Oh, sorry. I'm a jerk."

With my many experiences like this, I've never done it. In fact, I felt for our middle son, who did, truly and unmistakably, look like Daniel Radcliffe in the Harry Potter movies, particularly the first several. People would stop him on the street, either to inform him of that or to ask if he was the actor. I am pretty sure if Radcliffe had met Eli or saw pictures of him then, he would have agreed there was a similarity. There too I see the humor in that among our three sons, he looks the least like my side of the family and the most like my wife's. He'd never be seen as twin of a Norseman or blond WASP.

I should have been more racially savvy about this by high school and figured out the cultural component. I got a flavor of it then with a Chinese friend. She was born in Canton, came to America at 8, and was the only Chinese student in our three-year high school of over 2,000 students. She grew up with white folk, black folk and no Asians outside her family.

One day she and I were in NYC, playing around in the West Village, Little Italy and Chinatown. As we walked around the latter, suddenly she turned to me and said with surprise, "All these Chinese people look alike to me."

GOP LGBT Humor

Y'all know what's funny today? GOP attack dogs are making Dan Savage look wholesome.

Sen. Scott Brown's political adviser Eric Fehrnstrom did the I'm-rubber-you're-glue routine in a pathetic attempt to wipe the excrement off (brown off Brown, as it were). He'd have it that the GOP, the party of adulterers, liars, and general anti-ethical behavior, is too good to associate with the sex-advice columnist.

In case you have been on vacation and not aware, of the 12-member MA Congressional delegation, only the only Republican, a certain Mr. Brown, could not spare five to 10 minutes to record a clip for an it-gets-better video speaking to LGBT youth. Of course that makes it plain he's an absolute, callous hypocrite, claiming to be for equal rights, until he has to prove it.

Piling on, Brian Walsh, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee said, "If, as the old saying goes, you're known by the company you keep, than the voters of Massachusetts deserve to know who Democrat party operatives are teaming up with to spread outrageous attacks on Scott Brown's character."

So, the outrageous attacks would comprise actually noting what happened, what Brown did and would not do.

Last September, Savage started the project of getting various celebrities in numerous fields — think our Red Sox and the POTUS — to contribute to short videos for LGBT teens. In response to the high suicide rates in the group, the simple message is to stick out the periods of bullying and self-doubt, because life will get better.

So when called out because he alone refused to join the Congressional delegation, Brown's response was not to admit his error. Instead, he had minions say he was busy on national debt and job issues. Oddly enough, the other 11 members of the delegation were too, but each found a few minutes to speak to teens in need.

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Dead, Dishonorable and Daunted Recap

I've not been totally asleep on the huge issues, including:

• NY State SSM
• Norwegian domestic terrorism
• U.S. debt crisis
• Amy Winehouse
• News Corp.
• DOMA

It's been a great month for justice, gossip, fear, comedy. I am not sure I have meaningful insights to those topics so many have covered in such detail and often with such conviction and passion.

Yesterday, Ryan and I did rant for 20 minutes on Murdoch and his minions at News Corp. My conclusions include that both in the UK and here, a lot of damage has been done to the power of winger media. It remains to be seen whether this will sap Fox/WSJ and the like's influence in our 2012 election. I predict yes, but not as much as I'd like. Media moguls and other mean millionaires will still buy votes per our Supreme Court's decision.

For SSM, the delirious stampede of newly enable marriers is a delight all around. This is a great pro-marriage/pro-family victory from the slight expansion of civil marriage. We see the contrast in Rhode Island, where a tiny number of homosexual couples has applied for civil unions. No surprise there. Perhaps it will spur the cowards in Providence to duplicate CT's correction to full marriage equality.

For debt, I can't avoid criticizing the POTUS. Of course, the GOP leaders and winger members are absolute asses about this, as we knew going in. Even so, a leader and progressive as President would have been tough with the lying fools who don't care about America long ago, long enough to have prevented this panic. Yet, writing of going in, we knew Obama was a centrist and will remain so. Instead if being a crazy woman always depending on the kindness of strangers, he is an academic always relying on the reasoning ability of the TV audience, once he has lectured them. It's like he's playing Battleship when there's a real battle to be fought.

Likewise, the DOMA is finally staggering to its death. That was, as the cliché goes, low-hanging fruit, that Obama should have picked and pickled in his first year in office. Yet, he didn't have the vision and courage to pick an even lower fruit — don't ask/don't tell. Dumping those two would have set a tone of equality and civil rights. Instead, we continue to be the red lantern among Western nations in rights.

On Winehouse, I am astonished at how many commenting fairly scream, "How dare you!" when anyone else says it was bound to happen. All of us who have known addicts are surprised when they live, not when they die. In this case, I'm not in the camp who think she was one of our greatest singers. She was pretty good and had a couple of superior cuts, but I can name a lot better singers I listen to regularly. Such highly public and publicized deaths reasonably make us think of the mortality of those we know, including ourselves. Personally, I have very small gossip muscles, which I don't flex much. I'm more in the Morse Peckham mold, like his Beyond the Tragic Vision. Deaths are rarely real tragedies. We live and we all die.

That written, in contrast to the singer's death, the murders in Oslo and on Utoya Island by Anders Behring Breivik deserves tragedy. The relentless, calculated slaughter of the dozens, particularly those just beginning adulthood, has all the characteristics of a central flawed character bringing great suffering and destruction. I was not surprised at the winger claims this had to be a Muslim (Islamist in their bigoted lingo) and not apologizing or changing when they found how wrong they were. I'm not surprised that assault rifle and semi-automated handguns meant only to kill people fans selectively compared the high-gun owning hunting society with ours to forestall criticism. Alas, as we have seen here as well, a single crazy or small group of them, with or without political drives, are forever lurking in our neighborhoods. Targeting disfavored racial or ethnic groups won't prevent such violence. We can pause to consider the absurd overkill of TSA, wiretapping and torture lunacy, which has not and cannot keep us safe individually or as a nation. The better-safe-than-sorry crowd eager to give up all Americans' liberties to participate in such fantasies don't want to see the real risks.

Destiny or Lifestyle?

Finally, an explanation appears at hand for the previously inexplicable traits and behaviors.

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From Chirigamikokan’s YouTube Channel.

His Holiness Stomps

On Bastille Day, the local Cardinal chopped heads, at least figuratively. Sean Cardinal O'Malley likes folk to see him as avuncular, unlike his Pope, a.k.a. God's Rottweiler, Benedict XVI. Yet, O'Malley played sub-papa and announced he'd desanctify six Boston area R.C. churches, formally close them and sell them for profit.

As his press release puts it:

After several weeks of consultation, reflection and prayer, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley has made several decisions regarding eight Church buildings in the Archdiocese of Boston. Six Churches have been relegated to profane use and two Churches have been designated or transferred by the Archdiocese for other future ecclesial uses.

One could cut that 18 different ways, but to a Bostonian, the Cardinal's message is still STFU.

Legally, there seems little question that the R.C. structure and polity gives it physical and financial ownership of its parishes' property. Except for the many Catholics around here who have been holding vigils and refusing to abandon the churches where they were baptized, wed, confirmed and on and on, where their parents' funerals were held, where their grandparents literally built the structures by hand and from their meager saving, the faithful (and holiday faithful) are with the program.

For a typical response by an area R.C., click in to Emily Rooney's radio roundup. She starts around 12:15 on how the protesters have lost and should do what they're told or cough up enough money to buy off O'Malley's team.

We should bear in mind:

• Massachusetts still has lots of R.C. members, but is not the most Catholic state, not even in New England. That goes to RI.
• The most common form of church polity in this area is congregational, wherein churches are responsible for their own finances, in effect with the congregants owning the works and keeping it going.
• Neither side groks the other.

Many congregational churches do not have a big C Congregational in their name. Yet, their member still own the church and make the major decisions. In UU cases, they don't owe allegiance to precise dogma and certainly not to an authority figure like a Bishop or Pope. Yet like other congregational churches, they make it or break it on their own.

It is a true oddment to not R.C. folk to hear the parent church seizing ownership and disposing of a physical and spiritual home. Likewise, reading and listening to Catholics on O'Malley's actions, it is queer indeed to hear the blind obeisance. I suppose having a hell to threaten with gets one's attention. Alas, poor UU ministers expect you to behave well because it is right and moral and well, golden rule-ish.

Yet in this half dozen most recent R.C. churches, the bifurcation is complete, or in R.C. terms, absolute. Of course, the church can tell you what happens to the property, as they have always told you which parish you can attend. Dictates that are absolutely absurd to non-Catholics are accepted without question and with only a single comment — do what your Bishop/Archbishop/Cardinal/Pope tells you.

The wild card here is that the vigil keepers are resolute. Many have claimed ownership of their churches. They say their parents and grandparents literally built and maintained the property and buildings, that they kept them open with donations, and they are due actual ownership. Somewhere along the line, the builders and tithers formally and informally handed their church to their Church.

This is not going to end with a splash of an aspergillum or utterance of benediction. R.C. pols are saying, "Ours and not yours. Go away." From what I see, they likely have the legal right to the the real estate.

Note that R.C. pols are not alone here. Episcopals have had much the same problem in a few cases and claim that even if the deed shows congregational interest, really the Church owns the works in trust. So there.

Yet, this seems like a huge looming PR issue. The many faithful had, well, faith that their Church would keep their church open, that their sacrifices and good deeds would mean their spiritual home would continue. When O'Malley's lawyers and clerics frame it as a real-estate transaction, it's not the vigil keepers who look evil.

Commenters on Rooney's show and elsewhere note, as Catholics, that if a congregation buys out the R.C. for a property, which has been reduced from sacred to profane in Church lingo, no priest comes with it. They would have to kind of be their own clerics. Of course, in the vigil churches, they have returned to this St. Paul-style small church ministry, the proto-Catholic Church, for some years. There's no shift or shock for them.

Unfortunately for all concerned, there may be no return to the fold and flock here. The authoritarian pols have long made it plain that they own everything and are in charge of what happens with it and to the congregants. The vigil congregations feel betrayed, rejected, and cheated.

It a world headed by a doctrinally infallible leader, there's really no play in the rope. Rooney says it best on her radio and Greater Boston TV shows, the Church's view is that O'Malley has been a super guy in letting the vigil sort protest and follow the dead end to the Vatican for two years. There's no evidence that the vigil congregants feel obedient gratitude.

At an historical moment when so many American Catholics are dismayed by, disappointed by and even ashamed of their Church's clerics and pols, retrenching into military-style leadership assuages no one.

Oddly this may fit with the Pope's stated plan of a smaller, more obedient church. It would well happen that disaffected congregants who have read the Bible will go with the Apostle's model of small churches, spinning off wee but vibrant groups.

Regardless, as O'Malley made it all to clear yesterday, it's Benny's way or the highway.

Credible Collars

If wingers' Topsiders weren't so soft, they'd allow clicking the heels three times. It would take that...and much more...to pretend that either Scott Brown or Mitt Romney were plain folk, middle class, like most Americans in any substantial way.

Yet Sen. Brown pulled off the magic in the special election and Romney still can't manage it, even with multiple runs for governor and POTUS. This has much more to do with the simple numbers that the former is just wealthy and the latter more like Scrooge McDuck.

As the latest to observe Romney's problem here, today's Boston Herald details just some of his incompetence in trying to seem like you and I. After listing rich-guy-fails moments, the writers' kindest comment is, "Romney’s quirky moments highlight the trouble that rich, well-heeled politicians sometimes have connecting with regular voters."

Yet, Brown made a campaign and won the election on untenable and incredible theater. Think specifically of his famous pickup truck and barn coat. He used these props to do more than bypass cities, going straight to rural without stopping in his tony suburbs.

Panicked Dems pointed out that the shiny, never-off-road pickup was a rich dad's toy to haul hay and tack for his privileged daughter's horse riding. Likewise, the clean and very expensive coat spoke more to his gentleman-farmer reality than any blue-collar or agricultural needs.

Again though, voters wanted to believe and did.

On a very different plane is Romney. He simply is too tone deaf to fake it. He does not live a plebeian's life, has no intention of doing so, and may even be incapable of it. That became far too obvious six years ago when he did not know what the subway cost in Boston, where he worked (he guessed it was still $1 when it was $1.25 by then and showed he was above commoners' transit).

Brown at least gets the lingo of plain people close enough. He doesn't make ignorant analogies or fail at his class-identity jokes because he doesn't know how things work.

Romney seems to have many handlers around him. You'd suppose they'd rehearse his pseudo-spontaneous quips and comments. Here's betting the problem is that he's too arrogant and self-confidence to ask for help he so clearly needs.

Cassandra on a Cycle, Boston Edition

Gloomy prediction time...I'll say Boston's new bike-rental program fails. There it is and I would sincerely like to think I'd be wrong. My neck is on the block, particularly as a velophile (word?)

I'll plug this on Harrumph! and here, as it has both personal and political angles. I'll admit if I'm wrong and folk can feel gleeful in calling me on it.

Under the urging of Mayor Tom Menino and the excellent dealing and managing from Nicole Freedman, the city's director of bicycle programs, The Hubway rental system is not only zooming into reality, it's still on its original schedule, likely this month. With the outside deals, bureaucracy, and finances, that's close to a miracle (which we have come to expect from Freedman).

Even before the particulars, I was pessimistic on this program. It has worked in other European, Canadian and a few U.S. cities already though. Here though, I don't see it getting enough ridership, nor making the vendor happy with income levels, nor adding substantially to the cycles on the streets, nor getting citizen respect for the property.

To the latter point, we brag about our huge college-student population, while paying for it culturally too often. The tales of disturbances and destruction abound. Far more than other cities, we see that bottles seem meant for peeing in to leave on streets and stoops, or to smash on roads or sidewalks. I recall that lesson when I commuted daily from JP toSouthie by bike. I had to learn to avoid Columbus near Northeastern, particularly by the campus cop station, where broken, tire-ruining beer-bottle shards were the norm.

Prove me wrong, Boston, but I can easily see drunken, drugged or just nasty college students and other youth trashing the bikes in rental stations. What fun, eh?

Today, looking at the announced pricing structure, I think it is too similar to parking garages. In between only a few initial stations and the pricing reality, the system is not all that attractive. Fundamentally, it works only if you will start and finish in those limited locales and can get where you want to go in under 30 minutes.

The stations will be in what most of us think of as the larger downtown area, out to one here and there also in Back Bay, South End, Seaport, Fenway, Longwood, and Brighton/Allston. I don't see the actual spots on the site yet, but it's pretty sure they'll be kind of like Zipcars and only sort of convenient. Yet, this is not Athena emerging from Zeus' head fully grown. It'll take many months to figure out the right station locations.

The nut starts out reasonably enough, with an annual $85 fee (introductory $60). Then the nickels and dimes add up very quickly.

Again, 30 minutes is the magic period (set your carriage-to-pumpkin clock). If you have an annual membership or are an ad hoc renter (Casual member in Hubway lingo), you can theoretically have thousands of 30-minute maximum rides a year for no charge. In fact, if the station locations and timing worked for you, it would make the most sense to go up to a kiosk and use a credit card to reserve a bike every time, so long as you kept to the half hour. Annual memberships come with the convenience of a key that lets you grab a bike, as it maps to your data.

In the real world, if you don't end up in the midway of your trip at a station, you pay by the hour. Here the fees leap up to and then far beyond parking garages. They really, really don't want you having a bike out for more than 30 or 60 minutes. The whole pricing card is here. A taste of the acceleration is:

Time	Annual	Casual
<30	0	0
30-<60	$1.50	$2
60-<90	$4.50	$6
90-<2 hours	$10.50	$14
2-<3 hours	$16.50	$22

And so it climbs by about $8 an hour for casual and $6 per for annual renters. It tops at 6 and one-half to 7 hours at $94 and $70.50 and then from 7 to 24 hours at $100 and $75. Lord help you if you keep the bike over a day. Hubway will consider it stolen and truly put a parking garage's rates to shame — $1,000 on your credit card.

If you think Nexflix' 60% just announced gouging rates are absurd, this gives some perspective.

On the other hand, for a limited number of potential users, $85 for a year of bike use, zero maintenance, and practically unlimited 30-minute trips is such a deal. Truly.

I remain to be convinced that we're collectively mature enough for the Hubway. I simply don't have the faith in Bostonians that Menino and Freedman have exhibited here. In fact, announcing this program at City Hall plaza in April,the Mayor committed to the three Italians, adding U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano and Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone, to taking the first trio of Hubway bikes out of the racks.

Here's hoping they prove me wrong.

Boston Bureaucracy Bops Birds

I am sure there must be a heavily labored pun involved in a young Turk becoming a champion of chickens. I won’t try, but I do predict that Boston City Councilor Rob Consalvo will handle this in a moderately anal retentive, bureaucratically acceptable way. Given that live chickens are for some unfathomable reason a zoning issue controlled by the Board of Appeals, that’s the best possible outcome.

Sorry for the 2 to 3 hour delay from this morning/afternoon’s hearing. Fortunately Universal Hub’s Adam Gaffin was there, along with at least one newspaper reporter. The former’s filing is here.

While the news would appear to be that Roslindale’s chicken ladies lost. They didn’t really, but they did have to continue to play the Boston Political Game. They are likely to prevail…with assistance from Consalvo.

The tale is worthy of a The Daily Show skit, including:

• Boston regs read you can raise chickens if you get a health department permit
• Pay your $50 for the permit application, wait, wait, get denied
• Find that your neighborhood zoning (arbitrary with the effect of law) forbids Accessory keeping of animals other than laboratory animals (page 39)
• Loud, smelly, feces heaping dogs and other pets are OK, but all farm animals are secretly excluded from the alleged permit system
• Endorsements by all abutters are meaningless
• You need to play the game of a Board of Appeals hearing to get a denial to advance

Consalvo is Councilor for the district that includes Hyde Park and a bit of Roslindale, the bit including Audra Karp and her wife, and formerly three hens. The chicken trio are in the Ashland yard of her father, who she says gets to keep the eggs although her family drops by for omelets.

You can read the detailed experience at Legalize Chickens in Boston.

At this point, I see that Consalvo (disclaimer: my district Councilor, whom I know) is going to fix it. He said he was working on doing that after the hearing today denying the couple’s zoning variance to bring the exiled hens back to Firth Road. Glum as I can be, I asked whether we were two or three years out for a solution. He figures one or less.

Of course, with machinations that would outrage a libertarian or small-government type, the underlying issues may not go away even then. First, consider what Consalvo IDs as the underlying problem — a health/animal control issue has been put under the control of the rules-are-rules types at zoning. While the board told the Globe that of course they were reasonable and that the decision on this case would occur at the hearing, the fix was in and that was so much Karp crap.

Even sympathetic Consalvo opposed the women’s appeal, as did the Mayor’s office. Both used the bureaucratic, impotent excuse that the city zoning policy put chickens in a forbidden class for that neighborhood. That’s the big duh in government.

The real solution is what Consalvo hinted at in his opposition comments. He followed Karp, who noted that she had contacted all of her neighbors within 300 feet, had letters of support from 42 of them, hundreds of petition signatures, and zero objections of anyone. Consalvo said that he had a folder with over 200 letters of support as well.

This is not some form of simple democracy.

To help understand the issue more clearly from the peculiar Boston perspective a member of Consalvo’s staff presented a sliver of Roslindale history. I searched the Globe archives (a half dozen for-fee articles; search rats, Roslindale and Samuel Wood) when I returned today to get the time frame as well. It was the early to mid-1980s. Back then, Roslindale was one of many Boston areas overrun with rats, rats and more rats.

Even though it turned out according to rat czar of the time, Sam Wood, that the pests came, played and stayed because a huge percentage of the public as well as restaurants left trash out, not in bags and in uncovered containers, the public was understandably freaked. In what might be a good ad for Scientology, many older residents are still engrammed, figuring it must have been farm animals, not themselves causing the problem. Hence, let’s oppose chickens, even if, as Karp says, she keeps the food in pest-proof containers and only sows small amounts of seed at a time.

Honestly, the folk objections to chickens — noise, food poisoning, smell and such are hooey. Reason is not the dominating factor here however. There’s the possibility of doing what Karp and her wife suggest, considering small numbers of chickens (no roosters, thank you very much) as pets.

For his part, Consalvo has applied his usual intense energy to this. He’s met with the chicken women, and with GreenRozzie and other advocates for them, as well as fielding anti-chicken types’ calls.

Had I been the chicken ladies, I would have been angry. Instead, they said they’d work the system to do what was necessary to get their hens back in town. Even after several of their neighbors praised the pair, said everyone loved seeing hens, applauded the self-sufficiency, and noting there was neither noise nor stink, Board member Michael Monahan expressed the preset tone of the body with a comment about theirs being “not the right house…not the right area.” That sounds like chicken shit to me.

Then again, Consalvo is a very reasonable guy, still energetic enough to pull on the levers of power as many times as it takes to get a prize. I’m not sure he’s going to be able to get chickens taken away from zoning, where they have absolutely no business, but I bet he’ll broker a good deal.

Already, they have been examining the rules at places like New York City that allow and regulate fowl. Apparently, Vancouver’s system is a good model for us. You’d suppose it would be simpler, but let’s recall that somehow we let regulation of agrarian remnants of New England culture come under the BRA satraps. Rules are rules. They don’t really have to think. This is only one more piece of civic silliness.

In the end, the City Council is likely to chat up other, more rational cities’ chicken procedures, pick one or parts of several we can call our own, and pass an ordinance. I’ll bet on Consalvo to get it done.

Cross-post: This appears at Harrumph! as well.

Postprandial Update: The Globe has similar coverage to UH.

Waiting for Godot Obama

Another wearying and maybe accurate assessment of why our POTUS chickens out on same-sex marriage appears by Earl Ofari Hutchinson in the Bay State Banner. The noted author/blogger is no pinko, but he is a strong civil-rights advocate, as was his father.

Hutchinson's view does not satisfy the impatient among us, nor the strongest current civil-rights activists. Yet, this week's piece has both warning and promise. He concludes that Barack Obama truly is evolving, but that he isn't likely to voice SSM support anytime soon. Instead, he offers classical apologies for tossing homosexuals off the end of the pier while throwing ladders and life rings to virtually everyone else.

To me, there are two huge issues here:

• Marriage equality is the civil rights issue of the 21st century so far.
• As an allegedly progressive and liberal sort, the Prez needs to show some guts, compassion, and ability to keep public policy separate from petty personal background.

He's even a lawyer. He can't pretend not to know the distinctions. Nor can he credibly say he does not understand the separation of church and state.

However, Hutchinson falls back on the clichés that may drive Obama. The most cynical on the left say he actually supports SSM, but has lied about it, first to win the Presidency and now to keep it. Perhaps, but the column has it differently.

As he wrote:

But he, like many others, still can draw the line on gay marriage and that’s fueled by deeply ingrained notions of family, church and community, and the need to defend the terribly frayed and fragmented black family structure.

This mix of fear, belief and traditional family protectionism has long been a staple among many blacks and virtually every time the issue of legalizing gay marriage has been put to the ballot, or initiative, or a legal challenge, or just simply the topic of public debate, there has been no shortage of black ministers and public figures willing to rush to the defense of traditional marriage.

If that is true, that is surely a clear personal failure. His biographers will have already noted it as such. When the time comes for national leadership and policy advancement, he instead would segment himself and align with the least defensible aspects of his background.

Frankly, I cannot believe he does not know SSM is a civil-issue, that he is AWOL, and that he still needs to stock up on courage and morality.

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Tags: massmarrier, same-sex marriage, Obama, Hutchinson, Bay State Banner, civil rights

Newest Un-Freedom Laws

Just in time for our annual celebration of freedom, independence from tyrants, and liberties, a contiguous clot of Southern states have begun implementing anti-freedom, tyrannical and anti-liberty laws. The new immigration-related laws out-Arizona Arizona.

I have a central issue that critics of these laws don't seem to stress. Understandably, many have gone right to the racist nature of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina versions. For example, the NY Times leads with an editorial including, "...following — and in some ways outdoing — Arizona’s attempt to engineer the mass expulsion of the undocumented, no matter the damage to the Constitution, public safety, local economies and immigrant families." Newsmax anticipates bases for legal challenges. The Southern Poverty Law Center's position is in the Huffington Post, emphasizing the costs, inefficiencies and the peril to school children. A newsier item at the Huff touches on the who'll-pick-crops angle; while an Alabama sponsor says more local citizens will take those jobs, that's never been the case and farmers who employ migrants are economically fearful.

A recap of the Alabama version in the best possible light — by the GOP sponsors — is here. The whole text is here.

Yet what keeps bubbling up to me is the willingness of self-identified undocumented-alien fighters to go all totalitarian on all of us. The new laws allow and encourage any kind of law-enforcement official to demand proof of citizenship for any or no particular reason.

When he was Prez, George the Lesser Bush iterated his response to Americans who decried the broad post-9/11 stripping of long-standing, prison and blood-won liberties with glibness. Wiretapping? Airport frisking and worse? Home invasions? His chant was, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

Likewise, the proponents of Homeland Security excesses and these dreadful new laws do the variation, "Better safe than sorry."

Such mentality belies our fight against our colonial masters, particularly unreasonable search and seizure and due process guarantees. Those were rallying cries in our war for independence and became touchstones for all of us in our Bill of Rights.

Now the literal sorts in states and Congress would nibble and chomp away at our liberties. It's as though they forgot the history of our struggle, the shame of our own concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, and even the contrast of us with the Axis powers who could demand of all, "Let me see your papers!"

Here's a solid overlap I find with libertarians. Most of them seem to rail against irrational and despotic laws and regulations favoring police-state actions. The idea that we are to cede the freedoms that have differentiated us is abhorrent.

Under Bush's policies, many continued by the current POTUS, we are already down that road. It's not too far to reverse though. Here and now, on Independence Day, is a good time to do so.

RI Gov. Hates It, But Does It

Lincoln Chafee and Gordon Fox go beyond epitomizing strange bedfellows. The RI Gov. and House Speaker tell everyone in the wee state and beyond what champions they are of LBGT rights and supporters of marriage equality. Yet, because of them, a piss-warm and bigot-friendly civil rights bill is now the law of the Ocean State.

This morning, Chafee signed the bill, cursing it in detail. I hold that the proper action would have been to veto it and tell the legislature they need to show some guts and compassion and love of civil rights — pass same-sex marriage.

Instead, the executive-like person called civil unions with the nation's most sweeping exemptions for even the tangentially vaguest religious affiliations "a step forward." Full speed into the swamp, I suppose, can be a charge as well.

First, it is not what he asked for (allegedly a demand a short time ago) — "...full marriage equality to all Rhode Islanders, a civil right that I strongly support and urged the General Assembly to enact." Second, the religious and quasi-religious exemptions are "too broad" and "a religious exemption of unparalleled and alarming scope." It gives virtual carte blanche to goof with gays. As Chafee put it, "Religious organizations operate hospitals, cemeteries, schools and community centers. As drafted, the bill gives these institutions and their employees the choice of refusing to recognize civil unions."

Fox had been a hero, pushing for full SSM, before wimping out recently. His likewise piss-warm you-just-wait message at the signing was, "I remain committed to the passage of marriage equality, but democracy is about compromise. I am convinced that Rhode Island will someday have full marriage equality and I intend to play a role in that effort."

During the Civil Right Movement's hardest days, there were many terms for such grin and eat the crumbs liberals. None of them was hero.

Once a Lifeguard...

Because it's true for me, I tend to believe that once a lifeguard, always a lifeguard. At a beach or pool, I scan the water for troubled swimmers, and decades have passed since I did the job for pay.

The dreadful tale of a woman missing in a public pool for most of three days in Massachusetts eats on me. There seems to be a long line of folk wonder how that could happened, specifically how both staff and health inspectors who coincidentally OK'ed the pool during that period did not see a corpse in the deep end.

She arrived with a group of relatives and friends. We can likely set aside how there was no missing person report. She was not living with a spouse or equivalent or young kids. Those who knew her figured she had gone home on her own and did try to get her by phone repeatedly. I doubt anyone thought she might have drowned and her corpse might be under 15 feet of murky water, without any lifeguards or other staff seeing or finding her.

I will be found in that winding queue ready to blame the staff. The management apparently allowed an opaque deep end. The procedures did not apparently require daily cleaning. The lifeguards may have blown off the story of a 9-year-old with the late Marie Joseph, who says he told the guards the woman had gone under the water and not resurfaced.

Like most humanoids, I get personally historical and think of my experience and frame of reference. In every pool I worked, we constantly checked, particularly the deep end. We never left without being positive everyone was safe and out.

Moreover, in a comparable club, Candlewood Swim and Racquet, in Lakewood, NJ, where I worked two summers, the first lifeguard on duty arrived early to skim and clean the whole pool floor. The main pool was L-shaped with a separate diving tank, with 1, 3, and 5-meter boards. The tank end was very deep.

Our manager was Les Hashey, who was a champion diver, as well as one of the Band of Brothers. He had great fun with kerosene and diving (see link). He also insisted that we keep the filters working perfectly and maintain all the water from the separate, shallow wading pool, to the long lap one to the diving tank perfect clear.

In Fall River, the guards may well have followed pool procedure. If so, it stank...fatally. There's no excuse for an opaque, or "murky" as the inspectors had it, deep end. If someone reports a missing swimmer, you locate that person, even if it means clearing the pool and searching.

I was a tough lifeguard and did not allow dunking, diving toward swimmers and such. Even so, I had to pull out people over their abilities, those paralyzed with cramps, and the occasional pass-out. I can't imagine how many more there would have been without strict water-safety hygiene.

I'll watch for the follow-up reports on this. If I were involved in the investigation, I'd come in with a long list of questions. Poor Ms. Joseph may well have been dead by the time anyone could have gotten to her — drowning doesn't take long and asphyxiation often kills the brain and heart quickly — but likewise, quick action in a clear pool might have made it possible to save her.

We still have many thousands of drownings a year in the United States. That bothers this old lifeguard mightily.