Hmmmmmm......

Recently, a certain blogger was speculating about the real motives about the Bush administration's attempt to fire to fire every single U.S. Attorney-- that the ultimate target was Patrick Fitzgerald.

Yesterday's Chicago Tribune had a front page article with the headline: Gonazales aide rated Fitzgerald mediocre: Prosecutor's ranking same as 2 others who were fired."

This ranking came while Fitzgerald was bringing down corrupt Illinois Governor Ryan, and was investigating the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, which had been in retaliation for her husband refusing to lie to support the administration's run to war. This investigation led to the conviction of Scooter Libby, and aide to Vice-President Cheney.

The chief criterion in ranking, according to the article, was willingness to be compliant to the administration's demands.

The article quoted Fitzgerald's former supervisor, Mary Jo White as saying that the rankings of Fitzgerald as a mediocre prosecutor "lacks credibility across the board," and that "He is probably the best prosecutor in the nation, certainly one of them."

That, of course, is the problem, in the administration's eyes.

We'll Dance Like We're Hypnotizing Chickens...

Got my ticket for Iggy Pop and the Stooges in the mail yesterday. See you there.

I Will Not Lie Down

I have blogged about the war in Iraq at times. I blogged about re-reading an Atlantic Monthly article from shortly before the beginning of the war-- an article that pretty much predicted the course of events that have taken place. I also blogged about how the death toll from this war has surpassed that of the 9/11 attacks, the putative reason for the war.

Today, Bush asked for more time for this war to work.

At 45, I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam War. I remember the exhaustion this country had at the end of it. I remember the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976-- how there was a sadness and escapism to them. The United States had slunk from Vietnam, tail between its legs. The most powerful nation in history had lost a war to a bunch of guys in black pajamas. Or at least that was the perception. It was a war that need never have been fought. And it was a war that began on false premises.

I'm surprised that more people haven't drawn the analogy between the fake "Weapons of Mass Destruction" of this war and the fake "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" that began our involvement in the Vietnam War in earnest.

In early August of 1964, an American destroyer, the USS Maddox was off the coast near where a South Vietnamese commando raid into North Vietnamese territory was taking place. Believing the Maddox was part of the raid, North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the Maddox, inflicting virtually no damage. Two days later, the Maddox' crew mistakenly thought they were being attacked again. It was pretty clear immediately that there had been no attack.

One of the people witnessing the second event was a naval aviator named James Stockdale. He happened to be flying overhead and knew that day that there had been no attack. His superiors told him to keep quiet about that fact.

The "attacks" were highly publicized in the United States. President Lyndon Johnson used them as rationale for greatly expanding the war. He stampeded the House and Senate into passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

The resolution, which granted Johnson a virtual carte blanche to wage war on North Vietnam, passed the House 416-0. It passed the Senate 88-2. Two Senators, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon and Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, were the only two members of Congress to vote against it. Morse would warn, "I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake."

Stockdale was later shot down. He spent years as a POW, being beaten and tortured, fearing that he'd reveal his secret-- that the Gulf of Tonkin "Incident" was a fabrication-- to his captors. This would have been a propaganda coup.

Some of you may remember that Stockdale, who retired as an Admiral, was Ross Perot's running mate in 1992. When he was ridiculed for his behavior in the 1992 debates-- behavior that was largely a consequence of his hearing loss due to beatings suffered as a POW, it pained me. I knew what he'd suffered and why. Most people didn't know that. Most people didn't even know what the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was. I guess that Master's in Political Science I got comes in handy sometimes.

The current war was founded on blatant lies, greed and corruption. It has exacted a toll on individuals and families. It has exacted a toll on the body politic-- blogger Chris wrote today of how dispiriting this whole thing has been. And it has. But, as Flannery pointed out in response, even right-wingers are seeing the light.

Bush has chutzpah to insist that, after four years that we have to stay the course in a war that he started with brazenly false premises, and was clearly motivated by the prospect of monsterous corporate profits.

Bush and the confederacy of dunces around him clearly thought that this war was going to be a slamdunk. Run in, be greeted like liberating heroes, set up shop and go home, leaving a puppet government in charge, with a handful of U.S. troops to train Iraqi troops and hand out candy bars to happy children, and multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts for Haliburton (Oh, gee-- Cheney is the vice-president of Haliburton too-- what a coincidence) and cheap oil for a couple of decades. Oh, and for the True Believers, the establishment of a stable democracy among the Arab Mideast. Poor Tom Friedman, a liberal, fell for that one.

Instead, it feels more like the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" part of "Fantasia," with the situation running completely out of control, as an idiot gets in over his head.

The picture at the top of this post is one I clipped from the front page of the New York Times on April 7, 2004. I kept it because it both broke my heart and angered me. 12 US Marines had been killed in firefights with Shiite militiamen in Ramadi and Najaf. A year into the war, it was clearly expanding and spinning out of control.

My brother spent 14 years as a Marine. He was present at the attack in Beirut, Lebanon in October, 1983. He had just turned 21 a few months before. He was fortunate enough to have been in a tent a mile away when the truck bomb obliterated a multi-story concrete building, killing 241 young American soldiers. He spent nearly 4 days digging guys out of those smashed concrete building that had been blown up by one of the factions in the Beirut war. Not quite a year later, I received a letter from him. I found out later, it was the only time he communicated to anybody in his immediate family for decades-- not his wife, not my parents, nobody-- about what happened that week. He wrote about how "fucked up" dead bodies were. He wrote about how awful it was to hold a crushed guy who was screaming and knew he was dying, but lying to him that he was going to be okay, just to make his last few minutes of life a little better. He wrote about how awful it was breaking the arms and legs of guys who were dead, and rigor mortis had set in, so that he could fit them into body bags.

My brother has never recovered. He was eventually given a medical discharge from the service, diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He has never been right since that week.

Seeing that picture on the front page, I had to fight tears-- I realized that both men in the picture, like my brother, were irreperably damaged-- the Marine who'd been killed, in the body bag, and the guy who was carrying him. Look at the pain in his face.

In the next few months, these pictures, also clipped from the front page of the New York Times, broke my heart and angered me.

This one was from June 21, 2004.



I had conflicting feelings on this one-- it broke my heart to see a guy this young, Sgt. Luke Wilson, maimed, but I had admiration for how he clearly intended to go on with his life with vigor and energy.

However, the next picture ended up next to to Sgt. Wilson's picture and the picture of the Marine carrying his slain buddy off of the battlefield. I put it up on my refrigerator because it had made me so angry I was shaking.



The picture borders on being a cartoon. It's from the front page of the New York Times on December 15, 2004. I'm sure you recognize the guy on the far right. That's the imbecile who got us into this war. He's giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to, from left to right, General Tommy Franks, L. Paul Bremer II and George Tenet, who, the caption reads, as director of the CIA built a case for the war.

It's as if, after the Challenger disaster, President Reagan had awarded The Presidential Medal of Technical Prowess and Administrative Competency to the top three people of NASA a year later.

Now we see an adminstration functioning just like any organization that has fucked up badly. They are bickering, practicing desperate damage control, jumping ship and trying to blame others.

There's even that poor vampire Dick Cheney, increasingingly out of the loop, desperately trying to claim his old role as the real boss of the White House back by claiming that a Congressional resolution to end the war would give aid and comfort to the enemy. Sorry Dick-- that old canard is worn out-- it was used up and abused during the Vietnam War-- you remember that one, don't you? The one you didn't fight in, because you had "other priorities."

I didn't go to Vietnam either, but I had a pretty good excuse. I was just finishing junior high school when it ended. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident happened when I was 3.

I remember, when I was 12 or 13 years old, which would have been in 1973 or 1974, my father telling me that if the Vietnam War was still going on as I approached 18, we were moving to Canada. I think the draft was actually done with by that time, but I appreciated the thought.

My son turned 13 just a couple of weeks ago. When this war started, he had just turned 9. When the first Gulf War was fought in January of 1991, he was minus three years old.

When I read the New York Times list of deaths in Iraq, I realize that the guys who were killed that were 19 and 20 years were three and four years old during that war.

A couple of months ago, my father called and told me that I needed to get my son a passport. His grandson wasn't fighting in this damned war.

I am a man of milestones. I take note of milestones both personal and society-wide. I was then, today, suprised to realize that I'd missed a milestone.

I have long been interested in World War II. Back in 1993, I went to a wonderful exhibit at the Chicago Historical Society that was entitled "We've Got a Job to Do." It was about how civilian men, women and children pitched in to the war effort, a war to defeat the very real threat of fascism, and how Chicago was changed economically, politically, socially, racially and how the role of women in society changed.

One of the things I came away from after viewing the exhibit was, as the exhibit clearly aimed at, was how much society had changed. Another thing I was surprised to note was how, at the end of the war, people were tired of the war and the sacrifice. They were ready for peace, prosperity and normalcy.

The United States fought in World War II from December 7, 1941 to August 15, 1945. That's about three years and a little over eight months.

We have been in this war for four years now. This war has lasted longer than we were in World War II.

When this war started, I was rooming with a friend. A couple of weeks into the war, as the coalition troops sliced through the Iraqi troops like a hot knife like butter without finding any of the weapons of mass destruction that were the alleged reason for the war, my old roommate and I put up a sign on the back porch as a joke. It's a spoof of the signs in workplaces bragging how many accident-free days there have been. I came across it a few days ago while looking for my tax forms. I'd forgotten that I still had it.



I took the sign down sometime in 2004 for a couple of reasons. Mainly because, as the American deaths in Iraq approached 1,000, it had ceased to be funny.

As of today, March 20, 2007, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website, the number of American dead is 3,218. And rising.

A lot of you are dispirited. Yes, there are still the knuckleheads who desperately cling to the lies of this administration. Hey-- there were still people who believed in Hitler, Stalin and Mao after the damage those sociopaths wrought on their countries. Bush and Company are small potatoes compared to them. People have an amazing ability to cling to horribly misguided beliefs. They get snookered time and time again. They never pay heed to the great Sinclair Lewis quote, which I was just quoting on Vikki's blog, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

People like my father-in-law, who will be 80 soon, and my own father, who will be 70 soon, see these people for what they are and reject them. They see the kind of future these bastards are promising to their children and grandchildren, and they've rejected them and their bullshit.

They have not worn them down, and they have not worn me down. I have not given up.

I'll leave it to someone wiser-- okay, at least a better song-writer than I am-- Don Henley, to sum it all up:

I'm brave enough to be crazy
I'm strong enough to be weak
I see all these heroes with feet of clay
Whose mighty ships have sprung a leak
And I want you to tell me darlin'
Just what do you believe in now?

Yeah, we're gonna tear it up
We gonna trash it up
Gonna round it up
Gonna shake it up
Oh, no no no, I will not lie down

I will not lie down for these assholes.

Middle Managers, In Search of a Reason to Exist

Last week, Barista Brat had an interesting post about changes going on at the Starbuck's chain. She mentioned how people from the corporate offices are pushing baristas to sell expensive espresso and coffee machines. Her reply was great-- "there is a reason i’m not a car salesman." She points out how detrimental it is for the overall functioning of a busy coffeeshop when a barista is pulled from his or her role in production and made to try to sell something that in all liklihood, as she points out, the customer is not interested in.

I'm certain that there was some middle-manager who made that bright decision.

I was reminded of an incident at a restaurant I worked at right out of college, in 1986 and 1987. I usually worked the lunch shift there. This was the Bennigan's on North Michigan Avenue, the one in the ICC building. The lunches were fast and furious. At about 11:30, the place filled up and didn't let up until after 2:30. If you weren't good at what you did, you didn't last. If you weren't prepared, your shift was hell.

One day, as we approached the bewitching hour, ready for a rocking shift, our busboys were suddenly pulled from the floor. Every one of them. The place was filling up, and suddenly we were having to do a bunch of stuff that we normally didn't have to do. It threw off our game badly-- important in a place that advertised "15 Minutes or It's Free" lunches.

What important mission were the busboys on? It turned out that Steve S., the "Associate Manager" of our and three other Bennigan's had shown up and had the busboys moving the crane machine around to decide where it should be. You know-- those crane machines that they have at carnivals. In an attempt to add "ambience" along with the fake old road signs and such, every Bennigan's had one of them in the lobby. It was hilarious-- mass-manufactured ambience.

In the Bennigan's hierarachy of management, we had, at the bottom, assistant managers. There was a General Manager for each store. There was an Associate Manager for every 4 stores, and a Regional Manager that handled about 20 stores.

There were some severe problems in the chain, and at that store in particular. It was the busiest Bennigan's in the country. It was so busy, that they opened two other Bennigan's, down the street across from the Art Institute and across the loop in Presidential Towers, and there was not a blip in their gross income. Yet, there were days and nights the place was a nightmare to work, for various reasons. The place was prone to complete melt-downs, where people were waiting an hour or more for food.

The problems were all solvable-- all it took was the will. Steve S. apparently did not think that these things, which impacted the actual production and profit of the place merited his attention.

In any event, as the place filled up, our busboys continued to be tied up moving the stupid crane machine from one place to another while Steve S. pondered it. This process was beginning to interfere with the restaurant's operation even more, as customers who were in the lobby waiting for tables now had to move as the phone-booth sized machine was moved from place to place in the tiny lobby. It was one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a workplace. And it was not an isolated event.

I was struggling to get started in life at this point-- just out of college, beginning to pay back student loans. I needed every dollar I made every shift. Steve S. lived in Buffalo Grove, one of the richest suburbs in the country. I felt like I could teach him a thing or two about management. Or at least give him a few choice words.

A few weeks ago, my father sent me this great list of office terms. Things like "prarie-dogging"-- peoples' heads popping up out of cubicles in response to a disturbance. My favorite of the list was the "seagull"-- a middle manager who has no idea what is going on, who swoops in, makes a lot of noise, leaves a lot of shit, and then flies away.

At least now I have a nickname for Steve S.

Close Calls

Friday, while I was at work, I got a call a call on my cell phone from my ex. I knew that if she was calling, rather than texting me, it was something urgent. I answered it and she told me that they'd had to pull our son out of his classroom while he was taking the ISAT standardized test; he was coughing so hard and so long that other kids were unable to concentrate. We needed to take him to a doctor.

Our wonderful pediatrician, Doctor Krishnan, passed away a few years ago, and we had not been able to find another doctor we liked. My ex asked me about my step-daughter's pediatrician. My wife raves about her (the pediatrician, not my ex, though they're pretty friendly on the phone these days), so I called, and we were able to get an appointment.

I talked to my boss, who told me it was no problem to take the rest of the day-- there were probably one or two kids in each of my afternoon classes.

I went to pick my son up at school, and was shocked; he'd grown a couple of inches since he was last at my house two weeks ago, and had sprouted a small batch of adolescent pimples on his face.

We drove downtown, swung by to pick my ex up and went to the hospital. I'd thought that he might have a case of bronchitis, which both my ex and I are prone to, but it turned out that the mild asthma he has had since he was 5 or so has kicked up a little bit. She gave him a treatment in the office, gave him some new medicine to try and wrote a prescription for a new inhaler, with plans to see him in five days.

All's well that ends well.

I had feared a rough weekend taking care of a very sick kid, but it has turned out okay. We had some great barbecue at Smokin' Woody's, a restaurant near our house, and went home, where my wife and my stepdaughter were already home. I played poker with my kids, and we did one round of Apples to Apples, a really fun game (even for grown-ups).

Today, we made a run to fill his new prescription, to buy some of those little red potatoes for tonight's St. Paddy's Day corned beef dinner and let him use the Toys 'R' Us gift certificate my parents sent him. Later, in the afternoon, we went to the Cornservatory Theater, a little storefront theater near our home. A couple of times a year, they do kids' productions. We saw "Aunt Nancy's Safari Stories" today.

I'm on the Cornservatory's mailing list, and a couple of times a year I get a notice that there are new productions. And every time I tell him about the new play, not sure if he's still going to like the plays. They're kids' plays, but they're well-written, sophisticated and well-produced, for a little store-front theater. He still enjoys them. All you Chicago-area folks with kids, nieces and nephews, I recommend them.

Afterward, he and I ran to Trader Joe's, and then the cheese store at Western and Wilson that belongs to my work friend Sarah (the restaurant) and her husband Matt, The Cheese Stands Alone. After exacting a promise that he wouldn't eat a pound of cheese curds in two days like he had a couple of weekends ago, we got a pound of cheese curds, a garlic brie that he loves and some smoked gouda.

We got home in time for me to cook up a big St. Paddy's day dinner. Lots of corned beef for everybody, and then boiled red potatoes for my wife, my ever-popular cream cheese mashed potatoes for the girls (my stepdaughter had her best friend over last night) and I, and of course rice for my son.

I played a couple of games of Apples to Apples with the kids, and the girls went to bed. My son and I stayed up and watched a movie I'd wanted to see for years, but had never gotten around to seeing, The Gods Must Be Crazy. We both liked it a lot.

All in all, it was a really enjoyable weekend that could have been pretty miserable.

When Adam and I went to Trader Joe's, I was reminded of the closest call ever in our lives. It was at the intersection behind him in the top of this post.

In early 1995, I was still living with Adam's mother. I had long promised my best friend Jim he could stay with me while he was getting set up, if he ever decided to leave Champaign, Illinois and move up to Chicago. On January 1 that year, he moved in with Adam's mother and I. It worked out well for everybody: he had a place to live while looking for a job and an apartment, we had someone who would help us pay the rent when we were frighteningly broke, and we had a live-in babysitter.

One night, I was at work at the fabled N.N. Smokehouse and I got a call from Adam's mother. Jim had come home from his graphic design temp job not feeling well. Within a couple of hours, he was really sick. She told me she was running him to the emergency room at Ravenswood Hospital.

The next morning, the doctors took out Jim's appendix. The day after that, I got a call from Jim-- that he was being released from the hospital, and could I pick him up? I didn't own a car at the time, and he told me to take his little red Ford Festiva if I wanted to. I debated for a moment in my head. Adam's mother wasn't feeling well, and I thought for a moment of bundling Adam up into his mother's car and taking it to pick Jim up.

For some reason, I decided not to. I hopped in Jim's car and drove over to the hospital.

A check had arrived in the mail from Jim's temp job, and he had asked me to bring it along so he could deposit it on the way home. He did so, and we drove north along Lincoln Avenue to head home. As I approached the intersection of Lincoln and Grace, the one pictured above, the light turned green. I continued on.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it to my left-- a huge pick-up truck, one of those ones with four doors-- was blasting through the intersection. It was like they say-- my life flashed before my eyes. It was headed right into our side. When I heard Jim shout "Fuck!" I realized that he saw it too.

The thought running front and center through my head was that I was suddenly glad that my son wasn't in the car.

I pumped the brakes and swerved the car to the right as hard as I could, muscling every bit of strength I had to steer it to the right. I think the other guy had hit the brakes finally and I'm pretty sure he swerved to the left. A wall of pick-up truck glanced hard off the left side of the Festiva, jarring my left shoulder really hard.

My next thought was Jim's stitches-- I realized he had a belly full of fresh stiches. I hoped they weren't torn out.

The left wheel had been demolished, and I had only a small amount of steering left. And now I had another problem. I had steered the little car far enough right that the left front part of the car had been obliterated instead of us, but now we were heading straight toward the door of Mangi's, the little fast-food place in the picture.

I'll never forget the look on the face of the person who was sitting at the window counter, eating their burger or whatever. Jim remembers it too-- I can't remember if it was a man or a woman, but both Jim and I remember their eyes as they got bigger and bigger as we got closer and closer. I hit the curb, ran up it and with every bit of strength I had left, pulled hard on the steering wheel to the right again. We glanced off the brick, ran down the sidewalk along the building, and finally came to a stop.

It took, probably, two seconds or so for all this to happen, but I remember it like it was a 90 minute movie.

Jim and I looked at one another in disbelief-- mostly, I think, because we were alive. I asked him how he was-- "Okay, I think," was his reply. "Your stitches?" I asked. "I think they're okay."

Then, the one funny moment of it all came, as we both crawled out of the passenger door. A woman who worked at Mangi's stomped out the door of the restaurant, looked at our car and the wall and said "What the fuck is it with this building? Why do people keep hitting it?"

It turned out that it was the third time in a year that this had happened.

The police arrived. Since no one had really seen all that had happened-- who had had a red and who had had a green light-- he issued no tickets. The guy in the pick-up, by what he was driving and by how he was dressed was probably a contractor. And by his breath, I think he'd had a couple of cocktails. The cop did and said nothing about it.

Jim was doubled over trying to catch his breath. I was on the cell phone with my girlfriend telling her I was okay, and could she come pick us up.


Once again, all's well that ends well. My neck, shoulders and arms hurt like hell for a few days-- probably from both the force of the impact and from desperately manhandling the steering wheel. Adam was okay because of my random decision not to take him with. Jim and Jim's stitches were okay. He was alive and well to be the best man at my wedding on December 30, 2005 (that's him to the left, me to the right). The other driver was okay. My girlfriend's car was okay because of the same decision-- a big deal, because it was our only car.

Here's the funny thing. There were only two real casualties that day, and only one of them lasting. Jim's Festiva was one of them. Ironically, though, he'd planned on getting rid of it. Since he was insured for collision, and nobody had been found at fault, they wrote him a check for the bluebook value of the car, which was way more than he'd expected to get for it. He got rid of it, got more money than he'd expected and hadn't had to bother with selling it-- though I suspect he'd rather had hassled with selling it than go through the accident.

The only lasting casualty, then, was the wall. Mangi's is still there, despite the subsequent gentrification of the neighborhood around it. Trader Joe's is now right across the street from it, where the Butera grocery store and laundromat used to be. When we went to Trader Joe's yesterday, Adam and I went up and took a close look at the wall for the first time in many years. The crack is still there. I'd forgotten until yesterday how damned close I'd come to going right through the front door of the place. But I'll never forget how close I came to not being around to raise my son.

Thank God It's Friday Random Ten

The on and off warm weather has made my students more squirrelly than normal. A Friday has never been more welcome.

Before I did my shuffle, I was thinking about how infrequently Bob Dylan makes an appearance, given he is my favorite artist, and I have ton of his music on my itunes. And of course, he obliged me with an appearance immediately.

1. Million Dollar Bash- Bob Dylan
2. Tommy Gun- The Clash
3. Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts VI-IX
4. Passion Is No Ordinary Word- Graham Parker
5. Angel of the Morning- Merilee Rush and the Turnabouts
6. A Hazy Shade of Winter- Simon and Garfunkel
7. Enjoy and Get It On- ZZ Top
8. Ruby Baby- Dion and the Belmonts
9. Far Side Banks of Jordan- Johnny Cash and June Carter
10. Door Number 3- Steve Goodman

Honorable Mentions:
Ruby Tuesday- The Rolling Stones
1969- Iggy and the Stooges

Notes:

1. Classic Dylan wordplay. From the "Biograph" box set.

Well, I looked at my watch
I looked at my wrist
Punched myself in the face
With my fist
I took my potatoes
Down to be mashed
Then I made it over
To that million dollar bash

2. From the "Give 'em Enough Rope" album.

Tommy gun
Tou can be a hero in an age of none
Tommy gun
I'm cutting out your picture from page one
I'm gonna get a jacket just like yours
An' give my false support to your cause
Whatever you want, you're gonna get it!

3. From Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album, their tribute and lament to founder Syd Barrett who they lost to drugs and madness.

Pile on many more layers
And I'll be joining you there

4. From his great "Squeezing Out Sparks" album.

Ain’t got no idols for the screen today
Although they make a lot of noises they got nothing to say
I try to look amazed but it’s an act
The movie might be new but it’s the same soundtrack

5. A lovely little one-hit-wonder. When I'm in charge of things, I'm going to have every copy of the horrendous Juice Newton cover of this song gathered and destroyed.

And if we're the victims of the night,
I won't be blinded by light

6. My favorite Simon and Garfunkel song. I also liked the Bangles' cover that was done for the movie "Less Than Zero."

Funny how my memory skips
Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme.
Drinking my vodka and lime

7. Originally on the Tejas album, now on the ZZ Motherf*ckin' Top Six-Pack!

How does it feel holdin' me again
She's holdin' on like it gonna never end
Well I'm home thinkin' I should stay
While I'm here just let me hear you say
Say you enjoyed baby
Really enjoyed gettin' it on

8. Steely Dan guy Donald Fagen covered Dion's ode to unrequited love on his Nightfly solo album.

Ah each time I see you, baby my heart cries
I tell ya I'm gonna steal you away from all those guys
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, from the happy day I met ya
Now I made a bet that I was goin' to get ya
Ruby, Ruby, Ruby will you be mine?

9. I got a chill when June Carter sang this lyric:

If it proves to be his will that I'm the first to go
And some how I've a feeling it will be
When it comes time to travel likewise don't feel lost
For I will be the first one that you'll see

She did indeed precede Johnny in death. I'm convinced that when he died just a few months later, it was of a broken heart. I hope there is a heaven, and I hope his beloved June was the first he saw.



10. About an appearance on the old "Let's Make a Deal" game show. It was co-written with Jimmy Buffett, who had a hit with it.

I held a big sign that said, "Kiss me I'm a baker
And Monty I sure need the dough"
Then I grabbed that sucker by the throat until he called on me
'Cause my whole world lies waiting behind door number three

Though I didnt get rich, you son of a bitch
Ill be back just wait and see
'Cause my whole world lies waiting behind door number three
Yes my whole world lies waiting behind door number three

Et Tu, Raoul?

It's well documented that I hate my job (my teaching job-- I still enjoy my waitering job). I'm not sure, a lot of days, if I can make it to the end of the school year.

I teach at an "alternative" high school. It's the last-chance high school, filled with young adults (17-21 years old) who have dropped out of schools, been kicked out of schools, or been told by a judge that they can avoid jail time by enrolling in high school and getting their diploma. We're contracted out to the Chicago Public School system-- a "charter school."

It's pretty damned frustrating. Sometimes I read JR's blog just to remind myself that it could be worse-- JR teaches high school in a Michigan prison, and somehow amidst working with murderers, robbers, prison system bureaucrats and other sociopaths, retains his wit and perspective. But a lot of days, I just dread coming in. I'd planned for this to be temporary-- I'd expected to make it to the summer, where I can go back to school and start working on other plans.

Once in a while, though, I'm reminded that we're actually doing something that might make a bit of difference for a few young people here. I wrote about this a bit-- something that I took for granted, graduating high school, is a huge hurdle for a lot of kids, and even if we got only a few of them moving forward in life, that's something.

There's one guy I take the time to talk to and encourage. His name is Raoul. He's 20 or 21, and has never attended high school regularly. He's a husband and father-- one kid and one on the way. By his own admission, his priorities weren't smart when he was younger. Maybe it was becoming a father, but something clicked with him-- he gets it. He comes in, gets his work done, and is cooperative and friendly. He helps the custodian do repair work at the school. In addition to full-time attendance here, Raoul goes to night school to get more credits. He wants his high school diploma.

He's in my 2nd period Biology class, at 9:20. Today, I took 5 minutes or so to go over the assignment with the class, and set them to work. I'd forgotten to write the date on the board, and someone asked the date. I told them "March 15--" and added "Beware the Ides of March!"

I saw Raoul's eyes light up with recognition-- that "I've heard that before" look. I sensed a "teachable moment." I told him that it was from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and told him how Caesar had returned to Rome a conquering hero, and become emperor, but the Roman Senate feared his power.

"Yes, I learned about that in Mr. Tobin's class!" (World History), he said, excitedly.

"So the Senate decides they've got to kill Caesar, and for that to work, his best friend Brutus has got to join in. After all the other Senators have stabbed him, Caesar looks to Brutus"

"And then he stabbed him too! And then he said something...," Raoul added.

"Et tu, Brute? You too, Brutus?"

As maddening as my job can be, there are little flashes of light. We took a young man with an uncertain future in and taught him a little history and a little Shakespeare, and even a little Biology. Raoul, I'm certain, will eventually get his high school diploma. Having a high school diploma will be his ticket out of poverty. We'll help give him that diploma. And in return, he'll give us a little hope.

It's The Same Old Song...

In his 1991 book "Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in America, 1945-1960," author Manning Marable added on a section that was out of the timeframe of his book, about Clarence Thomas, who was then heading the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a job he'd begun in 1982, under Ronald Reagan. Marable pointed out that Thomas, a mediocre lawyer, had been put there by Reagan with the specific purpose of thwarting the mandate of the EEOC, and that his expected payoff would be the next vacated seat on the Supreme Court.

Within a year of publication, Marable's prediction came true. With an awful irony, the seat vacated was by Civil Rights legend Thurgood Marshall, who had, among many other things, argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court for the NAACP. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Thomas' confirmation was a struggle, due to personal and professional issues, but he is now a Supreme Court justice. His loyalty-- and serving as the administration's guy-- paid off.

Yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales addressed the mysterious firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. This story is front and center in the New York Times today. The claim is that this idea originated with White House hack Counsel Harriet Miers, who resigned months ago.

But I've heard this story before.

On June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. discovered a burglary in progress. It was the beginning of the unravelling of the Nixon Presidency, in the Watergate Scandal. To make a long story short, it turned out that former Attorney General John Mitchell, who had resigned his post to manage Nixon's campaign, was the main person behind it all, and that Nixon had known from early on all about it. Nixon practiced damage control, firing aides who had also been involved. He hired a new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and gave him the authority to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the break-in and subsequent cover-up. He appointed Archibald Cox.

Cox pursued his investigation diligently, and discovered, incredibly, that Nixon had taped many of his (incriminating) conversations with Watergate conspirators. Cox subpoenaed the tapes, and Nixon refused to hand them over. He ordered Richardson to fire Cox-- a brazen move. Richardson refused to fire Cox, and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also refused, also resigning. It was dubbed the "Saturday Night Massacre."

Cox, Richarson and Ruckelshaus were "establishment" guys, but they had impeccible credentials-- and, apparently, ethics.

Who, then, was the flunky that went ahead and fired Cox? Why it was Solicitor General Robert Bork. Remember him? He got a Supreme Court nomination, but the nomination was shot down by the Senate. It wasn't a payoff per-se, but he'd demonstrated that he'd toe their line. They knew that if he got on the court, he'd do his job-- working to roll back gains made over many decades on civil rights, women's rights, civil liberties, etc.

And now we have another little scandal brewing.

The plan, apparently, was to fire not just eight, but all of the U.S. Attorneys. There's a note on the front page of the New York Times sent from Gonazales to Miers advising against it.

And if you think it was Harriet Miers' idea to fire all of the U.S. Attorneys, you probably believe in the Easter Bunny, too.

Why did they want to fire all of them? An easy answer would be W's demand for blind, obedient loyalty-- that he simply wanted to fill all of the slots with his own obedient hacks. Some think that the administration was unhappy that some U.S. Attorneys were pursuing allegations of voter fraud. Blogger Vikki has an intriguing notion-- that it would be camoflage to cover the eventual firing of the "Untouchable" Patrick Fitzgerald, the guy who brought down Illinois' corrupt former Governor George Ryan, more recently investigated the Plame affair as Special Counsel, and of course brought the successful prosecution recently of Scooter Libby.

He's on a roll-- right to the White House.

Whatever the case may be, there's a growing estrangement between the White White and Gonzales. I'm not sure that what he did was out of honor so much as covering his ass. I'm pretty certain that there was the promise of an eventual seat on the Supreme Court. That seems to be the Republican payoff for overlooking felonies. I think he can write that off. But I think he'll settle for not going to prison as a consulation prize.

My wife emailed me a petition that's being passed around asking for Gonzales' resignation. He just may resign, but I don't think it'll be admission of guilt-- it'll be a rat deserting a sinking ship.