Super Happy Fun Dental Surgery Day!

As I promised yesterday, I did call my dentist this morning. Not so much because of a fear of bacteria, but because pieces of my decaying molar kept falling off. Apparently, teeth breaking apart gets you bumped up to the front of the line — my root canal procedure got moved from next Thursday to today.

So it's done. And while it was a thoroughly unpleasant way to spend 90 minutes, it was pain-free if you don't count the series of shots at the beginning that makes the rest pain-free.

Three weeks until they put in the post and crown, which sounds almost as much fun as the root canal itself. I can't wait.

Holy Enamel, Batman!

I've got some serious decay in a back molar, and I have a root canal scheduled in 10 days. But I'm definitely calling my dentist tomorrow. This scares the crap out of me.

You Make the Call

Joe Lieberman: a man of principle defending our just and good war in Iraq, selflessly suffering the slings and arrows of those who don't love America as much as he does, or just a transparent liar who can't keep his story straight and will say anything to cover up his complicity in that stupid foreign policy disaster? Glenn Greenwald reports, you decide.

Missing the War

Are you worried that the Bush Administration is on the verge of turning the war in Iraq into a full-on regional conflict against Iran and Shia Islam? Well, worry no more — according to Seymour Hersh, that's already happened. It's a "Rube-Goldberg policy contraption" that makes for strange Sunni bedfellows. The US hasn't started sleeping with al-Quaeda yet, but we're coming closer than you might think (or want). As they say, read the whole thing.

I Wish Cheney Would Quit

Yesterday, the Vice President let slip this doggerel of war:

If you look at our history — and crucial moments in history, whether you look at the Civil War, World War II or other conflicts we've been engaged in — there were many, many times when we could have quit, when we could have said, gee, that's just too tough. We're not going to go there. We're not going to make it.

He's speaking, of course, about the war in Iraq, and he's accusing those who would urge a pullout of US forces of being quitters and cowards. According to Cheney, these people have no stomach for the hard slog and would rather we all just go home and to hell with the world.

It's hard to know what to say when confronted by such an obvious straw man. I think that Cheney would like to believe that he and Bush have a monopoly on strength, will and fortitude — a black-and-white world like that is so much easier for those who think in absolutes to deal with. It's not surprising, therefore, that Cheney likes to paint the "war on terror" as a clash of wills, where all that is required for victory is a refusal to give up.

But the war in Iraq won't be won by willpower alone, and most everyone advocating a troop pullout believes that it is the only option left to us to avoid a complete catastrophe in the region. So let me be clear on this, Dick: I want out because I believe that it's in our national interest to get out. (I also believe that it was in our national interest never to start this war in the first place, but that's another story.)

The fact is, Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we're the ones who broke it. The war was a wrong-headed plan badly executed, and it went downhill from there. Perhaps Cheney needs the notion that "victory" is still possible as a way of avoiding taking responsibility for all the mistakes he's made (has he gotten even one important thing right in six years?), but whatever the reason, Cheney now is just a broken record who has nothing of real substance to say.

An Excuse for Doing Nothing

SC Governor Mark Sanford's plea for a conservative environmentalism only proves how vacuous that notion is. I have no doubt that Sanford muses on the value of conservation when strolling around his beach-front property, and that puts him squarely in the camp of the early environmentalists who focused on preserving the grand vistas. But times have changed, and it's no longer enough to talk in such narrow terms.

Sanford's limited horizon is on full display when he says what conservatives should do to promote a clean environment. Here's his rather non-specific list:

• Replace the "left's scare tactics" with the principles of "responsibility and stewardship."
• Emphasize the economic benefits of conservation.
• "[R]espond to climate change with innovation, not regulation."

The left is bad, government is worse, and the free market will solve all of our problems. Where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah — every time conservatives "address" a social problem. I'm almost surprised Sanford didn't include a plea for lower taxes — that would have made the picture complete.

But all snarking aside, there is absolutely no reason to believe that following Sanford's advice would do anything other than make our environmental problems worse. The basic problem is that waste and pollution are cheap — the costs are externalized and not borne directly by the polluter. If you want to encourage innovation and provide incentives to the free market to pollute less, there is no substitute for government action. For example, laws like the Clean Water Act have been very effective in reducing pollution — left to the market's own devices, the Cuyahoga River might still be burning. And when mandates put the cost of pollution back on the polluter, you might even say that encourages "responsibility," one of Sanford's environmental virtues.

In the end, Sanford's conservative environmentalism is nothing else but the hope that our problems will solve themselves through the invisible hand of the marketplace. As such, it's just another excuse for doing nothing.

For It Before He Was Against It

Today Ruth Marcus puts the smackdown on Romney for his pandering ways. On all the hot-botton social issues, the old Mitt "I'm running for Governor of a liberal state" Romney was much the self-proclaimed moderate, while the new Mitt "I'm running for the GOP Presidential nomination" Romney looks like he's trying to outflank Tony Perkins on the right. Oh, and that vote for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic primary?

To give this explanation the credit it doesn't deserve, Romney's rationale boils down to arguing that he didn't really mean his vote; he was just trying to game the political process. Those considering Romney in 2008 have reason to wonder what a politician who admits so freely to that kind of manipulation is willing to do to win their votes.

Actually, I don't think we have to wonder much at all.

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Just over 52 hours after starting my trip from NYC back to Charlotte, I walked in through my front door. Mary had the comfort food ready for the oven and a bottle of prosecco at the ready. A happy thing to see as I began my collapse into the rest of the evening.

When I last wrote about my trip it was Thursday evening, and I was sitting in the airport bar in the JetBlue terminal at JFK. About an hour and a half later, I found out that my delayed flight was finally canceled. I had no luck getting a room at any of the airport hotels, but Mary had better luck on one of the internets, and found me a room at the LaGuardia airport Marriott, which was thankfully only a 20 minute cab ride away. Of course, the wait in line at the cab stand about froze me solid — the wind chill must have put the temperature down close to zero. Lucky for me, I had packed a pair of gloves and a hat; unlucky for me, I had lost the gloves earlier that day.

I finally get through to JetBlue about 2am, and I'm told that they can get me on a flight on Monday, or I can cancel and get a refund. "Uh, I'll call back later." I see a few flights to Charlotte still on Travelocity, but I need to sleep now. Lights out, crash.

I decide to forgo a trip back to JFK for what's most likely a futile attempt to fly standby on the two Charlotte flights that morning, so I hop back on Travelocity and find that the Charlotte flights are gone, but I can get to Columbia, SC that evening, which is only 90 miles away and has father-powered transportation options. Of course, I can't find a way to actually purchase this ticket. So over to Expedia — they don't even show the flight. Over to Delta's site — they don't show availability for the flights that Travelocity shows, either. Crap.

I call Mary at work to see if she can find a way to get a ticket on one of the Travelocity flights. Nope, but working together we finally come up with a plan. Amtrak to BWI on Friday, overnight at the airport Hilton, and a direct flight from BWI to Charlotte Saturday afternoon. Lots of stuff has to go right for all this to work, but that's the fastest way home for me we can find.

Long story short, it all worked, except for the flight being 45 minutes late. A delay like on most trips would have me seething, but now it's trivial. As a bonus, I get the cabbie whose not afraid to speed like crazy getting me home from the airport.

So, morals of the story: 1) Really try hard to stop your company from flying you into the middle of a giant winter storm. 2) Don't hurry up to fly JetBlue — they have some work to do first. 3) It's good to pack an extra day of clothes; it would be better to pack two day's worth.

Stuck

My day did not begin well, and I should have taken that as a sign of disaster to come (see below). After a completely uneventful morning and commute in to the office in NYC, navigating unknown subway systems yet making good time, I ran to catch the up elevator. I made it, and I didn't see any indication from my soon-to-be new bestest friends that I had been a jerk about the whole thing, so I was feeling like I had cheated fate a bit — the elevators at 50 Broadway can be kind of slow.

But no, my hubris caught up with me. About 15 seconds into the ride, the elevator jerked to a stop and all our various floor selections blinked out. We dutifully pressed the buttons again and starting moving, this time to jerk to a stop after only another 5 seconds or so. This time we hit the alarm button, and should have been suspicious when the front desk lady immediately asked, "Are you stuck in the elevator?"

(Note to buildings with elevators: If the passenger has to do something unintuitive, like hit a second, unhelpfully labeled button (Signal?) to talk into the speaker, then you should either post instructions inside the elevator or train the staff to explain the system the first time she talks to trapped riders, and not say something like (I'm not making this up) "Hello? Hello?!? Hey, does anyone speak English in there?!?!"

After several purposefully vague "Someone's on the way" calls from the front desk, we were finally rescued after 45 minutes of captivity. Fortunately, nobody freaked and nobody had to really go the bathroom, so we avoided the worst "Lord of the Flies" scenarios. A few jokes were had at the intercom lady's expense, but I was worried for a while — only one of us had cellphone signal, and that could have gotten ugly fast.

The bravest thing I did all day was get back into an elevator to go up to the office on the 28th floor before going to the bathroom. Where's my medal?

I Want Out

I can't tell you how relieved I was when the JetBlue kiosk at JFK printed out a boarding pass for me when I checked in. When I walked in the terminal was absolutely wall-to-wall bodies and luggage, which wasn't a good sign. And the night before I saw a story on the local news that some JetBlue flight had spent something like 11 hours on the tarmac before they finally canceled the flight. So color me nervous when I walked into the airport.

My fellow traveler was going to a different destination, and his kiosk politely told him that he needed to get in an extremely long line for a reason it wouldn't reveal. Maybe my flight isn't completely fucked, I thought.

I didn't see my flight on the departures board, however, so I started to get nervous again. But I got through security and to my gate without a problem, so…. Of course, I also walked by several dozen people asleep in the hallways, and one area was just like a giant slum, with empty bottles and plates scattered among the sleeping or reading passengers and their bags.

It was when I arrived at the gate that I knew something was wrong. My gate wasn't my gate anymore, it was a customer service line at least 100 feet long. The departures board still didn't have my flight, but I did notice that the morning flight to Charlotte was scheduled to leave just a few minutes before my 5:25 flight was supposed to go. That can't be good, I thought.

So a call to Mary, who confirmed that my flight had been delayed for 5 hours. After an hour in a shorter service line at the other end of the terminal, I found out the flight number of the inbound plane for my flight, and it too was delayed out of Austin. So right now I'm doing the only thing that I can do — having a drink at the bar and trying to get on JetBlue's free wireless that it advertises as an apology for the mess of their new terminal construction. Looks like that's not the only thing that's a mess.

Famous Enough for Spam

I've always been a little disappointed when I don't get the latest and greatest spam email. I think the Nigerian scam was already several years old before I got my first, for example. But I guess I've finally made the big time: I did get this one yesterday. Ah, the perils of fame.

Luce

Last Saturday night, Mary and I had dinner at Luce. We've been to its more casual sister restaurant, Coco Osteria, several times, but we were hesitant to try Luce because of its reputation of being overpriced. But after watching Rudy Maxa traipse around the Amalfi Coast, we decided to give Luce a try.

We arrived about 15 minutes before our 8pm reservation, hoping to get a glass of prosecco at the bar before dinner. When we called for the reservation, we also heard someone in the background saying how they were fully-booked and anyone who was late would just have to wait. But early wasn't a guarantee of not waiting, as it turned out; we weren't seated until around 8:20. True, it's a small restaurant, but the wait was rather frustrating. The prosecco, however, was tasty.

The menu is set up American style — no primi or secondi here, just appetizers, salads, and entrees. We were pleased to find that the food was reasonably priced — most entrees were in the $18-25 range, and the salads and appetizers were generally under $10.

Mary and I both had a Caesar salad. It was fine, but there wasn't anything special or memorable about it. For the main course, I had the garganelli — beef tips and penne pasta in a rich gravy. It tasted wonderful, and while the pasta was probably a minute past al dente, that didn't detract that much from the dish. Mary had the veal picatta, which was also quite good.

They have a nice wine list with a strong emphasis on Italian reds. We had a nice Brunello, although not the one I intended to order when I arrived. I spent about 15 minutes going over the wine list online, and had settled on a nice 1999 Il Poggione, but the website's list is horribly out of date and that bottle wasn't available.

The service was spotty, from start to finish. We had to wait for everything — the table, the food, and the check. It was a busy night, but the delays were a bit much. But Mary and I are going to give Luce a second chance — the food is worth at least that.

In NYC

Work has once again dragged me up to NYC, and it looks like I'm just in time for some winter storm action. Always the lucky one when traveling, it seems. Wish me luck on my flight back Thursday.

Crazy for Free

With the American Enterprise Institute offering 10 grand a pop for folks willing to stand up and reject the scientific consensus on global warming, you'd think the opportunists would be lining up for those checks. But some folks are just crazy on principle, and don't need to get paid to act dumb. Case in point, Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), bringing up an alternative explanation for previous climate fluctuations:

We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?

With freebies like this, Rohrbacher's going to kill the commercial market for fake science.

Friday Cat Blogging

One of the best things about winter is coats hanging on the backs of chairs.

Oops!

I just got my daily email from the fine folks at the Family Research Council, and for the second day in a row, they are asking me to call Texas Governor Perry to protest his mandate that all schoolgirls get vaccinated for HPV, a virus that causes about 70% of all cervical cancers.

While I intend to do no such thing, and actually (gasp!) support the Republican governor in this instance, I assume that today's call to action will have more impact now that the phone number provided is in fact the number of the switchboard, and not, like yesterday, of Perry's fax machine.

General Tso's Chicken

Myself, I don't like the dish, but I've always wondered about it's origin. As it turns out, it's authentically inauthentic, and that I can really appreciate.

You Don't Get to Complain Anymore

Since the right-wing's President-Savior decided to open up the federal spigot and gush billions of tax dollars to religious organizations to push the Baby Jesus at poor people, said right wing no longer gets to bitch and moan when other tax dollars are being spent on stuff that they don't like.

If and when the whole faith-based-initiative bamboozle gets canned, we can have a real conversation about why it's not a good idea to have a bunch of closed-minded bigots decide what passes for art in this country, but until that day comes, just shut the hell up.

No Free Lunches

Q: What do you get when you cross ill-conceived tax give-aways with an expensive and disastrous war?

A: Cuts in health care!

President Bush sent to Congress a $2.9 trillion budget plan that would dramatically increase military spending — including an extra $245 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — but squeeze federal health care programs and most domestic agencies to achieve his goal of eliminating the deficit by 2012.

The proposal seeks to make permanent tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 at a cost of $374 billion over five years. And it would slice nearly $96 billion over five years from Medicare and Medicaid, the government's health care programs for the poor and the elderly. The proposal would also cut spending at eight federal agencies — including the education, environment and interior departments — to below fiscal 2006 levels.

So Bush gets to keep his war, the rich get to keep their tax cuts, and the old and poor get to keep getting sick. I want to hear only one thing from the Democrats about this budget: "Dead on arrival."

Bears or Colts?

This is the question of the day. Manning gives to Republicans while Urlacher gives to Democrats, so that's something. And Tony Dungy hangs out with homophobes, which is something too. On the other hand, Stephen Colbert, whom I have a lot of respect for, has declared bears to be America's #1 security threat, godless killing machines that they are. Not a lot of data points, but an edge to Chicago here.

What about history? I hated the Bears when they were in the Super Bowl 20 years ago — too much show-boating and arrogance for me. But I seemed to be wired to root for the underdog, and that weighs in favor of Chicago this time. As a franchise, the Colts dissed their hometown fans 20 years ago, while the Bears have been solid in Chicago as far as I know. Advantage: Chicago.

Personalities? Both coaches have heart-warming stories about overcoming the odds and achieving success, so nothing determinate here. I've never been a Payton Manning fan, and I'm getting a little bored by all the hype. Will justice not be served if he doesn't win a Super Bowl? I don't know — ask Dan Marino. But all the super-macho posturing about the Chicago defense is getting just as tiresome. This ethos of toughness is one of the things that we just need to get over, and this isn't helping. I'm calling this a draw.

So crunching the numbers, we have a winner. Go Bears! Or whatever.

The Face of Domestic Terrorism

They make no secret of their desire to cause chaos — at the end of their terrorist theme song they admit that they won't stop until "the homies say Ho! and the girlies wanna scream." They truly are a dark force.

But finally America has begun to wake up exactly what a drink, some french fries, and a wad of meat are trying to do. Perhaps after yesterday's attack, we'll finally raise the alert to Threat Level: Milkshake.

Be strong and vigilant, America. And please report any suspicious Happy Meals to the Department of Homeland Security.