Coty's Weblog

It's Not You. It's Them.

Jon Swift is dead on in his post on Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year.

They have been all over they place this year. Threatening our heterosexual marriages. Invading our borders and taking our jobs. Not standing up so that we can stand down. Wanting to cut and run. Gays, Mexicans, Iraqis, Liberals, and so many others. Who else has had such an impact? I wish it had been you, or better yet, we, but it was definitely them.

Vote

Not that I think my readership is such that it is going to make a difference, but I just finished voting, and I thought I’d be sure to remind anyone who happened to drop by here.

I think I know the political leanings of my small readership. I’m pretty sure it leans heavily liberal. I know I have at least one Republican, though. If he hadn’t already voted, we could have agreed to net one another out. It was cathartic to vote my straight ticket, yellow dog, Democratic ballot, though, so perhaps it was for the best.

I don’t think I could be any more disappointed and disgusted with a party and an administration as I am with the Republican party and this administration. I desperately hope that today’s election will at least introduce some moderation and oversight.

10 Years

I don't really do much posting of a terribly personal nature here. However, I thought I would mention that today marks 10 years of marriage for me and my lovely wife. Given the homosexual assault on marriage that we've endured during that time, I think that is something.

Sure, it was nip and tuck when an activist judge thwarted the will of the majority and struck down a state amendment banning same sex marriage. (I mean, seriously, this is Atlanta. There is a lot of temptation here if that option is open.) Just in time, though, our Supreme Court overruled that judge and upheld the amendment.

Welcome Bishop Schori

This last Sunday, the Episcopal Church elected Katherine Jefferts Schori to be its presiding bishop. Bishop Schori will be the first female presiding bishop in church history.

Much is being written about how fractious this election will be. This CNN.com article quotes a number of conservative Anglicans who are troubled by Schori's election, including The Rev. Canon Chris Sugden, a leader of the Anglican Mainstream, who said Bishop Schori's election:

...shows that the Episcopal leadership is going to do what they want to do regardless of what it means to the rest of the communion.

I'm not sure I see what it should mean to the rest of the communion. At most it would seem that it will require the other primates in the communion to interact with a woman as an equal. Is that really asking too much?

FWIW, here are the details of the vote:

26th Presiding Bishop election results from the House of Bishops and House of Deputies

I regret that other members of the communion consider issues of gender and sexuality so critical when, as Bishop Schori noted in her first press conference, there are more pressing issues:

When a reporter asked how the "average Anglican who is a black woman under 30, earns two dollars a day and is evangelical," might react to news of her consecration and to her consent to Gene Robinson's consecration, she responded: "If the average Anglican is as you describe, she is dealing with hunger, inadequate housing, unclean water and unavailability of education. Those are the places I would start. The issue of sexuality comes along much higher on the hierarchy of needs."

[Episcopal News Service: Jefferts Schori's 'Reign of God']

More Katrina Tapes

I check my referrer logs from time to time, and I noticed last night that I was getting hits from Yahoo based on searches for "Katrina tapes". Surprisingly enough, my Katrina Tapes post from September is among the first hits in Yahoo. That was about Walter Maestri's tapes of phone calls between local and federal officials. I thought those were pretty damning, but they didn't seem to get much play.

I'm pretty sure what people are looking for now is information about the more recently revealed tapes of the President being briefed the day before Katrina hit. I haven't posted about those tapes because I don't see the point. If you don't already know that this administration was incompetent in its handling of the emergency and that that incompetence went all the way to the top, then these tapes are not going to change anything for you.

However, in the interest of helping those searching Yahoo, here is a link to the story:

Bush Knew Of Katrina's Wrath Day Prior - CBS News

The President believes many things...

I somehow doubt "morphological regularization of toponymic adjectives" is among them, but it was charitable of Language Log to attribute such belief based on his use of "Great British" to describe the (former) nationality of the port management company that is now part of Dubai Ports World and at the center of the controversy over foreign (particularly Arab/Muslim) ownership of U.S. port operations.

Further analysis of the linguistic issue can be found in this Language Log post: W's Conundrum.

As for the political issue, I think Thomas Friedman's War of the Worlds piece has one of the better assessments. The security issues is bogus, but the administration is reaping what they have sown.

How I love Language Log. How I hate this administration.

Retrospective Irony

As Sanjay notes in his Funny Movie Quote About the NSA post, Sneakers is so 1990s:

Dick Gordon (Timothy Busfield’s character who works for the NSA): National Security Agency.

Martin Bishop (Robert Redford’s character who is a security expert): Ah. You’re the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone.

Dick Gordon: No, that’s the FBI. We’re not chartered for domestic surveillance.

Martin Bishop: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators.

Dick Gordon: No, that’s the CIA. We protect our government’s communications, we try to break the other fella’s codes. We’re the good guys, Marty.

Martin Bishop: Gee, I can’t tell you what a relief that is, Dick.

(emphasis added by Sanjay and seconded by me)

Ah, the irony. The sad, sad irony.

Katrina Tapes

NPR : Conference Calls Detail Katrina Concerns, Failings

I heard this on NPR this morning. I think these tapes are going to make it much more difficult for the administration to spin things their way. They record calls between local and federal officials (including FEMA) before and after Katrina hit. They were made by Walter Maestri, emergency manager for Jefferson Parish.

It is funny on The Office...

when Dwight Schrute tries to blur the distinction between being an assistant to the regional manager and being Assistant Regional Manager on NBC's The Office. It is not even a little funny that Michael Brown seems to have done something similar on his resumé.

Even leaving aside what the real nature of the position was, it was a job he had in college. How long do you keep that on your resumé?

Minishel

Brilliant idea. A surprisingly large number of humorless bookstore employees based on the comments. (Of course, on the Internet, nobody knows whether you're really a bookstore employee.)

I think I have enough good reshelving karma that I shouldn't feel too bad anyway. I love the Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter ideas from the comments, too.

Thanks for danah for the pointer.