WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

Per the schedule, this was supposed to be PerfectStormer's session. But he e-mailed me to say that something had come up and he couldn't make it tonight. So here I am again, hosting our weekly bitch-and-help-each-other-out session.

There seems to be a little bit of Angst on the site about something involving Obama and the FISA bill. But please leave that out of this diary. There are plenty of other places for venting those frustrations (or for saying things like "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, I told you so!).

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

According to the schedule, today was supposed to be AndyS in Colorado's turn to host our weekly bring-your-problems-to-the-community session. Unfortunately, he had to back out--and that's actually one of my FPs this week. Follow me below the fold for more.

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

Palm Sunday is tomorrow, and that starts what those in the liturgical profession are wont to refer to as "Holy Hell Week" because, at least in high-church circles, this is the week when you pull out all the stops--and that means a lot more work than usual. It doesn't help any that, at least in the Catholic tradition, there are three full all-out services on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday--and then the usual Sunday stuff to attend to afterward.

That's one of my FPs this week. Follow me below the fold for more.

Jesus Christ, inner Light,
Let not our own darkness conquer us.
Jesus Christ, inner Light,
Enable us to welcome Your love.

--Suzanne Toolan, RSM

That song was to have been the signature text for tonight's Taizé service at my parish. It will now be one of the signature texts for a combined Taizé service and healing vigil there. It's also, I would argue, one of the better messages to take away from the horrible events at Northern Illinois University yesterday.

Follow me below the fold for what we know now:

Like mcjoan and many other Democrats and denizens of Left Blogistan, I find myself less than completely thrilled by our two remaining candidates for the presidential nomination. I wanted more--and this year, it seemed like I had a realistic shot at getting it.

I'm fully cognizant that if, as seems quite likely from current polling numbers, trends, and other indicators, either Barack or Hillary wins the 2008 presidential election, he or she will make history as either our first black president or our first woman president. I would have to characterize voting for either one of these candidates solely or primarily on the basis that s/he will make history if elected as being among the more fundamentally galactically stupid ideas I've ever heard. And believe me, I've heard some pretty stupid ideas in my time.

Follow me below the fold and we'll dig into the specifics.

There have been a number of diaries here recently on the issue of gay rights and the top three Democratic candidates' respective stances on that issue. (Obama has probably gotten more of the attention in the diaries, though both of the other two get plenty in the comments.)

One of the refrains I've seen over and over in these diaries is that Obama is allegedly head and shoulders above the rest. I've been told that, as a gay man, I should vote for Obama because he's done more than any other Democrat in the field for gays and lesbians, he's the most liberal/progressive on the issue, and because he'll do far more than either Clinton or Edwards will.

Sadly, those assertions are not borne out by the facts of the matter. Follow me below the fold for an explanation of why all three of the frontrunners are more or less equally bad when it comes to gay rights.

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

It's the holidays, and that could mean either that hardly anyone has an FP this week, or it could mean that there are lots and lots of FPs this week. As for me, I'm doing fairly well. Follow me below the fold and I'll explain, and provide a little more information on how this WYFP? thing works.

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

My main FP tonight is trying to host this diary and pack at the same time. My limousine service is picking me up at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning to whisk me off to the airport, where I will wing my way westward to Portland for an NSF grants conference for a few days. Seems like every business trip I've made thus far this year, I've forgotten to pack something. I'm wondering what that thing will be this time--though I'm hoping that I might get lucky.

We are six years on from the latest date in American history that will live in infamy, to borrow a phrase from a much better orator and a galactically better president than the Boy Who Would Be King could ever hope to be. And what do we have to show for it?

For the most part, bugger all, that's what.

We have not, to any significant degree, done anything to make this nation or its citizens more secure against further attacks by those who perpetrated those of six years ago. Neither have we done much of anything to detain or dispatch the chief architect of those attacks--a fact of which he took great pains to remind us recently in his latest video.

Instead, we have seen six long years of the politics of fear being exploited in the most blatant and bizarre ways, to advance a cynical agenda that benefits the rich and powerful of one political party--and pretty much screws everybody else. There is virtually nothing the Bush régime has done since 11 September 2001 that has in any way made us safer. Quite the opposite, in fact.

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

I'm sorry to say this is likely to be a bit of a hit-and-run WYFP? session for me, because my fucking problem tonight, which isn't really a problem at all, is that my best buddy from college drove across the Mojave Desert from Las Vegas to come and visit me in Los Angeles, where I've been attending a conference since Wednesday. I'm probably going to post this and then disappear, so apologies in advance for not dishing out mojo or replying quickly to comments.

I was in a meeting this afternoon at work when I heard something that maybe my fellow Kossacks can help out with. There's a bill sitting in Congress that would make it easier for homeless kids to apply for financial aid so they can get a college education and get off the streets.

Obviously, this is not a particularly "sexy" issue, so it hasn't been getting a lot of attention. But a couple of people from the university where I work have been going around interviewing homeless kids all across the country, and they're heading to Washington this week or next to see if they can't light a fire under Congress to do something about the problem.

And that's where I figure y'all come in. Follow me below the fold for some details.

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

This will probably be the last WYFP? diary I get to participate in for a while, since early tomorrow morning I'm climbing into a limousine to head for the airport. Long about 48 hours from now, I should be settling back into my hotel room in a lovely corner of Alsace, where I'll spend a couple of weeks ploughing through stacks of documents pertaining to the sweethearts and the illegitimate children of French occupation soldiers in the French Zone of Occupied Germany after the Second World War. That will be followed by about a week in Paris, doing the same thing.

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

Thanks to Elizabeth D, who hosted this diary on a weekly basis for more than a year, for keeping the tradition alive. We're now rotating the hosting duties, so no one person has to do all the work all the time; the current schedule is posted in one of the early comments here. If you're interested in hosting a session of WYFP?, leave a comment there or send me an e-mail, and I'll put you on in the first available slot. (Right now, that's early June.)

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Thanks to Elizabeth D, who hosted this diary on a weekly basis for more than a year, for keeping the tradition alive. We're now rotating the hosting duties, so no one person has to do all the work all the time; the current schedule is posted in one of the early comments here. If you're interested in hosting a session of WYFP?, leave a comment there or send me an e-mail, and I'll put you on in the first available slot. (Right now, that's early June.)

And right now, I wish it were early June! I'm sick to bloody death of this cold snap thing we've been having here in the Midwest for about the last month. I don't think we've made it up to the freezing point, much less anything above that, since sometime in early January. My poor car desperately needs washing, but I can't do that until we get a day warm enough so that the wash water doesn't freeze on the car.

The 2008 presidential campaign is, for all intents and purposes, underway. Pundits and political analysts have noted, at least in passing, the breadth and depth of the Democratic field, but most of the media attention (and, it would seem, the early money) has gone to just two candidates: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Follow me below the fold for the evidence, and for some recent research that suggests things may not be quite as rosy for Clinton and Obama as they might otherwise seem.

Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and perhaps share advice. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. :-)

Elizabeth D, who is our usual hostess for this weekly event, seems to have taken the weekend off to go shopping. So I've taken it upon myself to fill in for her.

So I woke up this morning to the news that North Korea is denouncing U.N. sanctions imposed on it in the wake of its purported nuclear weapons test last week. According to an AP report in the WaPo:

The North broke two days of silence about the U.N. resolution adopted after its Oct. 9 nuclear test, issuing a Foreign Ministry statement on its official Korean Central News Agency.

"The resolution cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of a war" against the North, also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North warned it "wants peace but is not afraid of war" and that it would "deal merciless blows" against anyone who violates its sovereignty.

We all know that J. Dennis "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Hastert is in deep trouble because of his actions inactions in l'affaire Mark Foley. Just today, the Decider-in-Chief decided to grace us with his presence in Chicagoland to, in the words of the Chicago Tribune, "boost  the campaigns of two Republican candidates as well as to raise the spirits of House Speaker Dennis Hastert."

And just why might Hastert's spirits be in need of a boost, you ask? Well, this might have something to do with da Speaker's depression.