05.23.07
Posted in outrage, patriotism, politics at 7:14 am by Hanne Blank
Any of y’all read National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 or Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20? Came out from the White House in May?
No?
Can’t say I blame you, it’s a pile of some of the most deliberately obfuscatory governmental gobbledygook I’ve seen in a long time, and I’m a person who reads federal “abstinence education” policy for laughs.
Even if you haven’t read it, though, you should know what it says. Because it says, in far more words, that if something happens that the President considers sufficiently catastrophic — let’s say a big earthquake, or another Katrina-esque storm, or even an actual attack on a domestic target (launched by whomever… no reason we have to look outside our own borders for terrorists, natch, says the woman who was living in the greater Baltimore/DC area during the period of the Beltway Sniper shootings…) — the President may arrogate unto himself sole responsibility for the entire Federal government.
Not just his usual branch of it. The whole shebang. Supreme Court. State Department. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Coast Guard. Post Office. IRS. FEMA. The FAA. FDA. EPA. CDC/NIH. Even the Capitol Hill cafeterias. All Your Freedom Fries Are Belong To Us.
Additionally, in such an event, the President becomes the agent responsible “for ensuring constitutional government.”
I won’t speculate on whether or not the current administration has the integrity necessary to refrain from creating a suitable incident. After all, the nature of such an event is so deliberately undefined that they’d hardly have to. I mean, really, Gay Pride marches could just about constitute a terrorist crisis by the terms of this legislation.
(You, over there? Please pass this box of tissue back to the sobbing Constitutional Law professor in the back row. It is a nasty shock.)
A quick and dirty rundown of the newly-signed law can be found here: http://progressive.org/mag_wx051807
The text of the directive itself can be read here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
Do you wonder why none of the news media have been covering this story? I sure the hell do. I think I’m going to find some time today or tomorrow to write and call my local newspapers and my local TV news, and to drop a line to CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS news, as well as the BBC and CBC.
Because Bush may not be King just yet. But it wouldn’t take much, now, would it?
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05.11.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:36 am by Hanne Blank
D’ya ever feel like it would be spiffing to run away to someplace really isolated, like some hermitage off the Basque coast or something, where there is no phone, no Internet, and the mail comes once a week by donkey?
I do. And I have to say that nothing brings these fantasies to the fore like being forced to listen to other people’s lengthy cellphone conversations. I find myself really missing the days when telephones had cords that plugged into the wall and therefore, most telephone conversations took place indoors where they could be avoided, and not in various places where the conversations (or their side effects) cannot be avoided, such as on the sidewalk, at the bus stop, in the park, in shops, at theatres, in restaurants, in museums, and let’s not forget, whilst driving cars.
I’m past weary of hearing other folks’ inane chatter. I swear that 2/3 of the people I encounter with their cellular phones surgically attached to their heads really are afraid (pace Douglas Adams) that if they stop talking, their brains will start working. Also, the next person I encounter walking down the street yelling obscenities into hir cellular phone — whether in a jovial blurt or a hostile snarl I care not — is in serious danger of having me go Full Metal Schoolteacher.
I note the irony of complaining about this via blog. I console myself with the facts that blogs are opt-in and, for the most part, silent.
Okay, maybe the isolated hermitage off the Basque coast could have Internet. For an hour or two every morning, or something. But no phones. And no cellular phone coverage. And the mail would still come once a week by donkey.
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05.07.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:37 am by Hanne Blank
The book events in Boston and New York were fantastic — standing room only in both places. I came home and promptly came down with a really gross cold, which went through several aggravating stages of which the penultimate was laryingitis. Now that I am mostly better, I am posting just to let you all know that in the words of the redoubtable Granny Weatherwax, I aten’t dead.
Stuff is percolating, and I’m doing Things here and there. Reflection’s Edge has published my story “Copenhagen or Anywhere.” I cleaned my bedroom pretty vigorously, and have big plans to make my way through the accumulata of the guest room closet sometime soon. The little thingum that goes beep beep beep hey idiot you left your lights on beep beep in my car has gone kaput, and since I am in danger of getting to be on a first-name basis with the AAA jump-start truck guy, I have to find a time to take the car in to the dealer and get whatever the little thingum is that’s broken fixed. I’m going to bake a cake today, because it seems like that would be a good thing to do. I am having a very contentious relationship with my hair lately, and therefore have been wrapping my head up in scarves and such so that I do not have to see my hair. Stuff like that.
Along the way I have been making some jewelry. This is called “The Spirit of Fatima Rules the Earth,” and it’s made mostly of Czech furnace glass, with some jade and silver.
This one is called “The Mermaid Oracle” and is made of jade, silver, peridot, pearls, glass, and a pendant that I did not make but that is made of glass, antique postcard, silver, and mirror.
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