three stories and a call to action

The ACLU defends Rush Limbaughs right to privacy… The Atlantic asks, Can we preserve the middle class in America?… The Boston Globe reports that Republicans working on the Senate Judiciary Committee spied on Democrats. Heres a clip:

Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight — and with what tactics.

Investigators apparently even seized a server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist And guess what? It looks like Robert Novak has been implicated again. Just as in the Valerie Plame affair, it would appear that he was acting as the media mouthpiece for the administration, spreading the news of things discovered as a result of this spying And now, if you can believe it, Republicans are saying that they told the Democrats about the glitch that allowed them to peek, but that they chose not to fix it.

And theres still time to write to your Senators about Bushs disastrous energy bill.

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state of the union

Did anyone else here the part in the State of the Union address where Bush called for more money to be spent in schools not for education but for drug testing kids? That didnt really surprise me. What surprised me was the fact that he then said he wanted to do this not because he wanted to punish kids, but so that we could identify and help those that needed help. (Yeah, kids, if you fail the test, we wont put you in a juvenile detention center. Well whisk you away, all expenses paid, to some four-star, spa-like rehab center like the one Rush Limbaugh went to.) I think he may have used the word love. He may have said, We want to do this because we love you. Whatever it was, it sent a cold chill down my spine. I know the word Orwellian gets tossed around a lot these days, but this really calls for it. It was Orwellian.

Im not a fan of drugs. In general, Im not a fan of anything that keeps people sedate and stupid. TV, drugs, spectator sports. Theyre all distractions. With that said, however, I dont think that drug testing teens is an answer. Im not a fan of surveillance culture, and I dont believe, as many do today, that people are guilty until proven innocent

Anyway, the speech was full nice phrases about how much the administration loved us and just wanted to help. It gave me the creeps.

Here, in case youre interested is a point by point response to the claims made in the State of the Union address. (Courtesy of the Center for American Progress.)

And here is what popular conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan had to say after hearing the speech:

It was the worst Bush SOTU yet. Maybe the occasion wasn’t up to the previous ones. But the speech lacked a real theme; it had only a few good lines (at the beginning, on the war); offered no new vision or any concrete future direction in foreign policy; and revealed complete insouciance toward the deficit and, more importantly, toward those who have not yet benefited from the economic recovery. A pretty bad political misjudgment in my view. To brag about a growing economy without some kind of passage of empathy for those still struggling reveals major political obtuseness. I was also struck by how hard right the president was on social policy. $23 million for drug-testing children in schools? A tirade against steroids? (I’m sure Tom Brady was thrilled by that camera shot.) More public money for religious groups? Abstinence only for prevention of STDs? Whatever else this president is, he is no believer in individuals’ running their own lives without government regulation, control or aid. If you’re a fiscal conservative or a social liberal, this was a speech that succeeded in making you take a second look at the Democrats. I sure am.

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anagrams from chelsea

I promised to post these quite a while ago, but I forgot to follow through These are the rest of the anagrams sent in by our friend Chelsea Lowe. (Its not every day that one finds his wifes name anagrammed alongside those of Bush and Ashcroft.)

You didn’t ask, and I don’t know about Linette’s middle name, but I tried Linette Lao. Some anagrams of this almost made sense. Her name, for instance, anagrams rather sweetly into “A little one.” “Linette Lao” contains both “tea” and “latte;” “lion” and “talon;” “alone.” Also “linnet,” which, you may know, is a kind of bird. Other anagrams include:

A lone title
O, let in teal
latte line. O!
O, lie, talent
Tonal elite
To tile lane:
Let NATO lie
Teal lien to
Total E-line
I tell a tone.
All I, O tenet
Ole tat line
A lintel tone.
Lil’ tea note

“John Ashcroft” anagrammed miserably for me, although it contains “cartoons,” “crash,” “jar of hot. . .” “front cash,” “hath scorn,” “shot,” “shoot,” “short,” “scorn,” “con” and other interesting words. But vowels are few, and several of the consonants are hard to use: “J,” for instance. The best I could do was “chant for josh,” as in, a joke.

Although I don’t disagree with the characterization “miserable failure,” I thought it would be unfair to use that in the president’s name. So I tried “George Walker Bush.” His name contains “rubles” and “shekels.” “Beer” and “keg; “kegger,” “bar” and “sober,” “huge beak,” “globe war,” “lose.” Also “shower gauge” and “wash;” “sugar,” “work release,” “worker’s league;” “arbor” and “logs;” “regal” and “rogue.” “Ogre,” too. “War horse” and “glue horse” and “geese.” And, somewhat interestingly, “Hebrew.” Also:

O, beer-slugger hawk!
O, gush, geek warbler
O, rare whelk-egg sub
Go wash Greek ruble
Huge keg brawl rose.
Gore shark. We bugle.
Wag keg. Heroes blur.
He glues keg barrow.
Huge breakers glow.
Shrub-glare week. Go!
Re: KGB: Lose huge war.
Eek! Go brush war leg.
Huge keg. Lose war. Br!
O, shrub: waggle. Reek.
Egg week. Roar. Blush.
Whale egg. Rusk robe.
Where lurk boa eggs?
Sulk, O beggar. Where?
Growl! He rebukes A.G.
Blue eggs work, hear.
Break leg. Hug. Worse.
Waker: Beg lush ogre.
Re: Wake, gorge, blush.
KGB: You lose guar where?
Rug, bagels. OK, where?
Glue bogs ark where?
Whale egg or busker?
Go! Hark! Bus leg were.
Go, Hebrew. Gale. Rusk.
Rag: Hebrew kugel. So?
Sober whelk gauger.
Egg bushel are work.
Burglar week. She go.
Greek row: bash, glue.
Burger sake. He glow.
Bogus her kale grew
OK: waggle. Beer rush.
Keg horse, wag ruble.
Rub logger. She wake.
Lake surge, hog brew.
Keg law. Rogue herbs.
Sheer bulwark, O, egg.

And you know what? There are more. But those make even less sense and I got tired of typing them in. Surely, you get the idea.

My name, by the way, anagrams into Wall o’ Cheese and “Sell. Owe. Ache,” among other things. It contains both “sell” and “owe;” “seal,” whale,” “sow” and “owl.” Thought you’d like to know. Bush’s name contains “owl” (and “owe”), as well.

La la!

My favorite is O, beer-slugger hawk! Its so succinct, so beautiful. As is “A Little One” for Linette and “Sell. Owe. Ache.” for Chelsea. They’re all so perfect.

Chelsea and I have never talked about it, but my suspicion is that this talent of hers comes at least in part thanks to her OCD (something that both she and I share). I see the same kind of thing in the collages that I make. I cut images into tiny pieces and rearrange them. I keep rearranging them until Ive found something that I like. My sense is that theres some correlation between how I see images and how Chelsea sees words. Its been my experience that having OCD is like having a super-power, if you can channel it away from checking locks, washing hands, worrying and all the rest of it. If you can get into the right frame of mind, you can use it to see all the various permutations of things. Of course, I may be wrong about that

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fan mail

The Monkey Power Trio isn’t the kind of band that attracts fans easily. It happens, on occasion, but it’s not common. About once a year or so we get a very nice letter from somewhere in the world, from someone who has stumbled across our music. This letter came in a few days ago from the Netherlands.

My name is Barthold and I live in the Netherlands in a town called Groningen. I like your songs, I’ve downloaded them all in October last year, and I’ve been listening to those beautiful songs ever since.

Now I want to purchase your complete discography on vinyl, so I can listen everywhere and always to these songs, and treasure them.

Please can you help me dear Monkey Power Trio?

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Regards,
Barthold Boksem

I know it’s probably just an MM.com reader pulling my leg, but I’d like to think that Barthold Boksem is real. I’d like to think that somewhere in the Netherlands there is a middle-aged man dancing around in his parents’ basement to our song, Planet of the Apes is Real. That thought makes me happy, the thought that these silly little things we do can be found by people who genuinely love them. The odds against it are enormous, but yet it keeps happening.

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cnn breaking news

NASA says Spirit rover has failed to transmit data from Mars for 24 hours.

I guess that answers the question, Do the tiny Rock People of Mars enjoy having their heads drilled into?

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