Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:50 PM

Slightly over 6050 words at 11:45 PM and still truckin'

That makes a total of 2901 for the day, and I'm probably going to keep writing until Ian calls from work to figure out how he's getting home.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:11 PM

I just broke 5050 words in this drabble and I'm still going. Just a few more scenes before I hit uncharted territory.

Interested readers welcome.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:00 AM

I just broke 3157 words.

A little polish and some tweaks and I've got an even 3170 at 12:10 AM. And now I really am giving up on the scene and going to sleep for the night. And this time I mean it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:29 PM

So, last night when I went to bed, my head was full of things I wanted to blog today:

• Some cute kitten photos since it was Friday,
• plans to finally post my review of The Hebrew Hammer before Shabbos so folks could read it before it airs on Comedy Central. [In short: Very funny movie, reminds me of early Mel Brooks/ZAZ, so many jokes that if you don't like one, wait 30 seconds and something funny will happen, entire audience laughing so loud that I missed half the lines, and I want to see it again to catch the rest... Comedy Central has apparently made huge cuts in the film to make it "suitable" for family television, and I'm worried they'll ruin much of the humor that way. It's opening on the big screen in select theaters in the NYC, LA and Miami areas on December 19th, and nationwide over the next months. If you think it will hit the theaters in your neck of the woods, I might recommend holding off on Comedy Central's bowdlerized version and waiting to watch it uncut as the director intended. If you do watch it on Comedy Central, bear in mind they are making some deep cuts, so cut it some slack yourself if you don't like it based on their version.]
• I thought some of the early comments on Teresa Nielsen Hayden's post about Mary Sues might make a nice springboard for me to finally write up my intended essay in defense of fanfic and on the commercialization of imagination.
• And her husband, Patrick, manages to host a fairly civil and polite thread about Ralph Nader.
• Conceptual Guerilla makes some excellent points about how Democrats can win. If nothing else, read the section titled "DEFEAT THE RIGHT IN THREE MINUTES"
• I'm still accumulating links elaborating why Wal*Mart is evil
• My father made a comment over IM that I feel deserves wider distribution...

At any rate, those were among my intentions for today when I went to bed last night.

Then, when I woke up this morning, I had a story idea. Or at least, an initial premise and an opening. It's another fanfic set in the Harry Potter universe, although this one has a lot of potential to cross the line into smut, (an area I don't feel terribly confident writing, due to my medical problems). But this idea captivated me and wouldn't let go. And as of 11:15 PM, I have written 2935 words, with little else accomplished over the day. I have one more major scene in mind, and I'm not really sure where the story will go from there.

Call me cowardly, but I'm somewhat tempted to see whether I could hand this off to someone else more experienced at writing erotica to continue and conclude, or whether anybody would be interested in this as a serial exercise, where multiple writers tackle subsequent chapters, each having to follow the predecessors' setups. I don't know yet. It's a bit longer than the usual plot bunny, that's for sure...

Since this could easily turn into an R or NC-17 story (all characters are over the age of consent), I'm a bit uncomfortable just posting the URL for all and sundry. If you're interested, comment with your email or AIMname and I'll send you a link.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:49 PM

It's been two weeks since the SJC ruling, and the influential Speaker of the Massachusetts House, Thomas Finneran has finally spoken publically about the decision. He said:

He apparently also indicated that he still supports an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as one-man one-woman, but I couldn't find a direct quote. For some reason, both the Globe and Herald only have the AP wire story, but I'm sure there will be more details from local reporters tomorrow.

Also, the Herald version omits comments from Barney Frank, in which he predicted the Legislature would take no action and just let the ruling take effect:

''The SJC said to the Legislature: 'Here is this thing that is somewhat controversial in Massachusetts, we think you should enact it, but if you don't enact it, it won't make any difference.''' Frank said. ''The likelihood that a Legislature will voluntarily do something controversial when they've already been told it won't make any difference is quite small.''

Meanwhile, I've been holding onto this link for a while, waiting for a chance to blog it. Amanda Butler makes an excellent point about same sex marriage that I haven't seen elsewhere. Forget the legal and moral and political issues for a moment. Just linguistically, a separate-but-equal parallel to marriage won't hold up for very long. A few excerpts:

Now John and Tom have a civil union from the state and a marriage from the church. Are they married? The government might still say no. But when John and Tom talk about themselves, do they say "I am united to him" or "I am married to him"? I predict the latter -- if you have two titles, chose the one you prefer and think most apt.
<snip>
So now we have something that walks, talks, and quacks like a marriage, and we aren't allowed to say otherwise. Qualifiers really don't work well with verbs ('United' is too vague, so -- "Tom is gay married to John" or "Tom is married gayly to John" or "Tom is gayly married to Tom"? perhaps there's some permutation I'm missing), so even our tongues compell us to call it by the same name.
There are some people in the unwavering opposition, but eventually we've got a civil system where homosexuals and heterosexuals have the same relationships, only under different terms, and we speak of them in the same way. Given the lack of material differences, will it still be important for same-sex couples to get the piece of paper that reads "marriage license" and will this be harder or easier than if there were never a gay civil unions?

Just for fun, you know those make your own custom banner/backdrop for Bush. I'm rather fond of these two I created. In a similar vein, the church sign generator has been around for a while, and it looks like the Bayeux tapestry generator is back online again.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:30 PM

Note: For convenience in linking and forwarding, I have put a copy of this post at http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/DeanIsrael.htm. I have also created a version in plain ASCII, formatted for emailing. Use them in good health.

My parents recently received the following email, which is apparently making the rounds. Even though I'm not a Dean supporter (I still haven't picked a favorite candidate among the Dems; I suppose I should really do that one of these days) but I don't like seeing harmful misinformation being spread.

In general, I've gotten an impression from Howard Dean that he sometimes speaks before he has time to think out the most effective way to phrase matters. It's a problem that I have too, which is why I prefer written communications that give me more time to consider and organize my thoughts. That just means we have to listen to what he says more carefully and be wary of brief soundbites taken out of context.

And I want to express my gratitude to my parents, who both sent me copies of this email, trusting me to be able to verify or debunk it. Thanks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:48 AM

Remember when the CEO of Diebold, which manufactures computerized voting machines without paper trails, said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year"? [If you don't, Krugman mentioned it earlier this week.]

Well, according to Susan at Suburban Guerilla, Ohio election officials determined the machines were still too flawed for use and have "called off deploying them in March." They seem to think the problems are reparable and hopes to have them in use by next August, but oof that's gotta hurt.

BTW, thousands of "advanced" Diebold ATMs were victimized by the Nachi virus last month, because the company neglected to install a Microsoft fix/patch. So much for the integrity and security of Diebold systems.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:11 AM

Been meaning to blog this for a while, but hadn't had the chance to test and understand it yet (see why I have such a backlog of things to post?).

Via CalPundit, who credits it to Lisa Williams: a tool to create permanent links to New York Times articles without them reverting to abstracts from the archive. See?

The service only goes back to May 2003, and the generator only goes back to June.

I'm trying to decide whether to edit my old posts to fix up the NYT links accordingly. One concern is that I've changed my template since then, so republishing would lose my older looks from NaNoWriMo or when I was Fair and Balanced.

But now I've shared the knowledge so you can use it in your own posts and in broken links you may come across.

By the way, for folks trying to follow my comments and keep an eye out for updates, YACCS does provide an RSS feed for my comments, showing the most recent 20 entries in any thread with links. I know this doesn't provide threading or notification or all the formatting options of LJ, but it also won't vanish in the night. Just FYI

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:55 AM

In an odd discussion spawned in the comments last week, I wrote:

I keep wincing in pain as I hear about Bush's rudeness to the Queen (covering the artwork with his logo backdrop, bringing his own cooks, trampling the gardens, damaging the palace), because if I had an opportunity to visit the palace those are just the things I'd be aching to see more of. ["May I see the portraits of Elizabeth I? How much of Charles I's art collection is left? Can I tour the Tower?" I think I can resist geeking "So you're actually descended from Mary, Queen of Scots and Darnley! Do you think she really did him in?"] And now our idiot administration has probably ruined it for all future American presidents who wish to visit in state. <sigh>

To which, my friend replied:

I'm sure they'll understand it's just Bush...and does that mean that you're considering running for office? ::innocent wide-eyed look::

I wish I were in a position to do so.

I'll confess, I first dreamed of running for president back in 1984, when I was a 14-year-old in high school. I couldn't stand Reagan by that point, but could also see that Mondale was not a winner. Frankly, I thought that I could do better than either of them. [Hey, the hubris of a teenager.]

Ever since then, it's been a recurring fantasy of mine, that's waxed and waned depending upon my satisfaction with the political scene. Although I've got some things going for me, on the whole I don't think I'm cut out for politics. One of the cool things about my relationship with Ian is that we really do complement one another. If we could somehow merge our strengths into one person, we could be an ideal candidate. Unfortunately, voters didn't seem to like Bill Clinton's 1992 pitch that with Hillary, voters would get two for the price of one. And on our own we've each got major weaknesses from a political standpoint:

I think I would enjoy being a policy wonk, and I can see ways my femaleness could be an advantage in a campaign. And I believe my years in the software industry have given me a useful set of skills for politics. I worked for six years in QA and Product Design. I'm good at both coming up with creative ideas and figuring out the flaws before implementation. I can take either side in the iterative design process, until something works or it's proven impossible. And, what are bad bureaucratic procedures but symptoms of a flawed design? I've even got a slogan, should I ever choose to run: "Debug the State" Prevent bad bills from becoming Murphy's Laws.

But, as I said, I suspect political campaigning will remain in the realm of fantasy for me. I'm more interested in the national scene than local politics, and I don't have a family fortune to springboard off of. Besides, I get the impression that if one actually wants to make it in Washington, you have to be one of those people who was running student government in HS or at least college. Which I wasn't. Also, the current mess is beginning to look like a such a no-win situation that I don't think I'd want to be saddled with the responsibility.

That's why I've revised my goals slightly and want to be a pundit instead. I'd love to show Ann Coulter what it means to be a frigid bitch...

More seriously, I have given thought to what I can do to make a difference.
I'm both skilled at and enjoy: reading and gathering information, research (definitely research), writing, brainstorming, the design process I described above...
I have no formal training in law (but oh do I wish I had), but I derive satisfaction from pulling legislation and rulings apart to render them comprehensible and critique their logic.

And that's largely what I do in this blog. I read, I research, and I communicate what I uncover in ways I hope are persuasive and can help others. I wish I had a larger soapbox and more readers [I'm but a Flappy Bird in the TTLB Ecosystem] to increase my influence. I just wish this were my job rather than just a hobby. Since noticing that Kicking Ass credits some posts to DNC Research, I've contacted them to ask if they have any openings. If I lived near DC, I'd jump at the chance to work someplace like the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service. That just sounds so cool to me.

Anyway, must dash. My paying work calls. <sigh>

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:10 AM

I believe I've identified one thing our current government is doing wrong that might be both simple and noncontroversial to fix and would bring about positive benefits.

I think that a big reason why pork and spending have spiralled out of control is because bills have become too big. They're too broad, covering too many topics, and all with cute pithy names that makes them sound good in the ads:

The names are misleading, but my issue is primarily with the bills' size. They're bloated, and that's not healthy. When a bill does 95 things that are beneficial, but has buried within 5 truly odious amendments that are actively harmful, how should a responsible legislator vote? What if a bill is 95% beneficial, but the other 5% is wasteful and ineffective?

The recent Energy bill included provisions that would pay for the construction of a Hooters and a shopping mall.

Over the last year, I've read about a lot of dangerous provisions too controversial or unpopular to pass on their own, that were tacked on as riders to more popular legislation.

This has to stop.

Each bill should be about one issue and one issue only. Simple, straightforward and to the point, with no additions or exceptions. Instead of big massive omnibus spending bills, lots and lots of little bills (or just trust the departments enough to allocate their own funds). Instead of big massive omnibus reforms, break them down piecemeal and vote on them each individually.

May mean much more wheeling and dealing, I support your pet project if you support mine, but at least that way it's done in the open, rather than buried somewhere down where nobody notices until it's too late.

Breaking bills down this way also gives people -- citizens and politicians -- a greater chance of actually being able to read the bill and comprehend it. As I've tried to examine other laws, I frequently wind up running all over the US Code, hither and yon across governmental websites, just to understand what it actually does. Laws shouldn't be this difficult.

And, this would also eliminate the need for a line-item veto, a longtime wish of the executive branch.

Yes, there is a downside to all this -- I'm sure there has been worthwhile legislation that wouldn't pass on its own, whether it's unpopular or too controversial or could easily be miscronstrued by an opponent's soundbite. I know that's a risk. But these riders are being used far more for pork than for good, and we need to stop it.

This would help reduce pork and wasteful government spending.

Unfortunately, I don't see any easy way of mandating such a change.

As I described this to Ian, he suggested an alternative approach of requiring that before any vote, the bill's sponsor must read the full text of the bill aloud to the chamber and into the Congressional record. This would act as an incentive to shorten bills (would you want to stand up and recite all 342 pages of the USA PATRIOT Act?) Also, it would ensure that all Congressmen had the chance to actually read the bill in its entirety before voting. There have been several cases recently where large bills were revised by the committee late into the night before the vote, leaving legislators insufficient time to actually read what it is they're being asked to pass.

And a big cheer to Senator Byrd. After I wrote the above (I wrote these three parts last night; they were originally one long post, which I've broken down and am spacing out slightly to give folks a chance to read it all) I saw this article in the morning's Washington Post. Congress is yet again late with the budget (something that can't be blamed on interparty gridlock this time, since it's all Republicans), and the GOP leadership decided to just roll all the appropriations bills together into one big ball of wax with a single Yay/Nay vote, but Byrd is blocking that move:

 Under Senate rules, it would take unanimous consent -- the approval of all 100 senators -- to bring the contentious "omnibus" spending bill up for a vote. Byrd said in a statement issued by his office that he will withhold his consent.
 Under the Republican plan, the bill would be passed without a roll-call vote, which is customary but not required for major legislation.
<snip>
  "Instead of sending 13 fiscally responsible appropriations bills to the president, we are being force-fed a bad piece of legislation dictated to the Congress by the Bush administration," Byrd said. "This is no way to govern. This is no way to serve the American people."
 After a bipartisan start to negotiations on the bill, Republicans "took a balanced package and at the eleventh hour insisted on changes that were never considered when the individual bills passed the House and Senate," Byrd said. As examples, Byrd cited the elimination of provisions overturning regulatory and administration actions on overtime pay and the outsourcing of federal work to the private sector.

PS: comments and criticism of my idea are not only welcome, but I am actively interested them. Do you think I'm completely off-base in thinking that oversized bills are a cause of these problems rather than a correlation? Can you think of other consequences to such a change that I'm not seeing or other ways of fixing this problem? I really want to know.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:56 AM

Two inspiring stories this morning of children standing up to elected officials and refusing to allow themselves to be used as mere props:

Seven-year-old Terrance Martin corrected the President when Bush told the audience the boy was six. Terrence and his family were invited to share the stage as Bush signed a new adoption bill. [Official transcript]

Cute. But what I found much more impressive were the students of Murdock Middle High School, where Governor Romney addressed at an assembly.

[J]unior Sarah Mungeam said, "He didn't come here to help us. He came here to look good for his public relations."

The most dramatic moment came during a question-and-answer session when senior Kim Thurlow escorted sophomore Jeremy Dell -- a severly disabled special-education student from Orange -- to Romney's side at the lectern. Thurlow, a regular-education student who tutors Dell, asked the governor how he thought the teen could pass the MCAS test required for graduation.

"What are these kids going to do? Where are these kids going to go to school?" Thurlow asked, her eyes welling with tears.
<snip>
"How is he going to help us?" asked senior Kate Davidson, who refused to shake Romney's hand afterward and had a sign saying, "I am a $tatistic." "He didn't touch that issue at all, which made his whole visit pointless."

Astute and articulate youths like these teens (and like folzgold and his friends who organized Education First) give me hope for the future, and remind me of the energy I had when I was younger.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:11 AM

A few more articles on income inequity that I've been looking for, from Digby, Susan (who is seeking help with unemployment) and from the City Pages, The Invisible Recovery and The Parent Trap. [And I wish I could find the blog post that linked to both of those articles; I found it last night, it wasn't somebody already on my blogroll, I think I actually left a comment, and I'd really like to (a) give credit and (b) read more of her posts. But a crash wiped it from my history and searches against technorati, blogdex and daypop haven't turned it up yet.]

At any rate, it's fairly clear that income inequity in America is getting worse. The money is becoming more concentrated among fewer people. Tax laws have been revised to further benefit those whose wealth comes from investments or inheritance, to the detriment of those who actually work for a living, as I showed with agricultural workers and California waiters.

And, of course, as the powerful become more powerful, and as they game the system to further increase their influence, it leaves even fewer opportunities for the downtrodden to work within the system for the betterment of the majority. [Hey, just in time for the holidays, Congress extended tax breaks but refused to extend unemployment insurance!]

As Dave Johnson's been asking: Who is our economy for? Who is our government for?

And current fiscal policy is only making matters worse. The federal deficit for this year alone is nearly half a trillion dollars. Almost $500,000,000,000 in the red -- and that's before the Medicare bill is factored. Republicans try to claim a lot of it's due to Iraq, but even the recent $87 billion Congress approved is less than one-fifth the total.

An NPR story a few nights ago revealed that the federal government is spending $20,000 per household per year. [For comparison purposes, median household income in 2000 was $42,151, according to Census figures] Budget analyst Brian Riedl, of the Heritage Foundation said:

If the federal government is going to continue spending $20,000 per household, eventually we're going to have to start taxing people $20,000 per household. On top of that, the prescription drug bill, when fully phased in, will probably cost about a thousand more per household, and when that collides with the baby boomers retiring, what you're going to see in the long term is a fiscal train wreck.

I'm actively scared for/about this country.

Don't get me wrong, I love the ideals it stands for, but our current direction seems headed for disaster, maybe generational warfare or something even bloodier. I was talking to Ian about this on our way to dinner, and he pointed out that once income inequity reaches extremes, the only way they're resolved is by violence.

And I'm not sure I want to stick around for that.

If things are going to go sour (and I've been worried for at least a decade about the impact of retiring Baby Boomers) then the time to leave is before it gets too late or things get too bad. Before housing market gets glutted with sellers, causing the prices to crash. Before other countries are flooded with refugees and close their borders.

And I'm really disturbed to be thinking in this way, but once it became clear the Trojans wouldn't listen to Cassandra, she would've been much better off had she just taken care of herself. And, as I said before, being a Jew means never being able to say "it can't happen here." Ian and I have discussed this; for now I've decided to stick it out until the 2004 elections, but if the Republicans retain control over the Presidency and both houses of Congress, I'm not sure I'll want to stay around for more of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, DeLay and crew reigning unchecked.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:05 PM

For two of my earlier posts today, Read this and Ronald Reagan Dime Act, I tried using a Blogger feature to turn the title into an external link.

Unfortunately, I just noticed that LJ did not include those links when it syndicated the posts.

I'm disabling the feature for future posts, but just for the record, here are the links you may have missed:

• Read this goes to Nathan Newman's original post on the issue [my post]
• Ronald Reagan Dime Act goes to the Thomas info about the bill [my post]

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Heck, as long as I'm sending you LJ Friends a message, I may as well reiterate something I've written in the past:

LJ syndication pages vanish after a week or two, causing all comments left on those entries to disappear. I've made it a personal policy to recopy LJ comments into my regular comment pages. I try to post boilerplate to new folks who may not be aware of this, but it gets tiresome after a while. I'm operating under the assumption that people commenting on my blog posts (even in LJ) want me to read them, and thus it's okay to put all such comments in one place. Otherwise, I'm basically relying on people to opt out (which so far, nobody has).

Though I've automated my process somewhat to make it less cumbersome, I still have to manually find the comments (LJ doesn't notify me via email, since it's a syndicated feed) and copy and paste all the fields.

I'd like to request that people post their responses to my comments page if at all possible. I understand about situations when it isn't responding^**, but in general? It would make matters a lot easier for me.

Thanks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:25 PM

On a random wander through the blogosphere, I came across this post by Epeus [by way of Carlson's Chronicles]Though we were both at BloggerCon, I'll confess I can't recall his particular background. At any rate, it sounds like Dave Winer has another grand idea. Since Dave Winer hasn't responded to any comments I've left to his blog entries and Kevin Marks doesn't have a comment field at all (nor could I find his email address), I guess I'll just write about it here and hope they see it. I have got commenting enabled so if anybody wishes to discuss it here, the more the merrier!

Here is the post in question:

Hierarchies, webs and emergence

Last week Dave Sifry and I met up with Dave Winer and Steve Gillmor at Technorati to share ideas. We talked about the public resource that Dave W created in weblogs.com, about Technorati, and about Dave's new idea to help people categorize blog postings and the things they link to.
Dave W said: I feel we're at a turning point in the weblog world, either we're going to be like every other hierarchy that's ever been, with secret deals, lots of impediments to progress, eventual stagnation; or we're going to overcome that.

Dave thinks in hierarchies; whether this is because he invented outlining, or why he invented outlining I'm not sure. Along the way he added links into the picture, so his hierarchies can link to other nodes, or other hierarchies to get as complex as you like.

The conventional wisdom is that links beat out hierarchies - Google's link-centric approach beat out Yahoo's hierarchy-centric approach (the HO in Yahoo stood for Hierarchically Oriented).

However, another way of looking at it is top-down versus bottom-up - central design versus emergence.

Dave W wants to build a bottom-up emergent taxonomy, using open debate and open standards.

Steve Gillmor is saying something similar about how we can grow new things.

I have a couple of ideas that I need to write up as spec proposals to try to start such discussions - one about 'vote links', one a new bit of metadata for feeds saying whether they are complete or not.

Okay, this spring I took a Master's-level course in subject analysis, including categorization, hierarchies, taxonomy-development and everything else they're talking about. It's nowhere near as easy as they seem to be making it out to be.

As a matter of fact, I specifically researched weblog indexing for my semester project. I built a subject index for a weblog -- one that's much more narrowly focused than this rambling shambles. And let me tell you, it's damned difficult. [I suspect my annoyance over seeing indexing trivialized in this manner may finally get me off my butt to publish some of my findings, even if only here on the blog. Anybody interested?]

At any rate, reading the above makes me wonder whether they've gotten any professional indexers involved. Otherwise, it sounds like yet another pipe dream that may prove useless in practice.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:15 PM

About 80 Republican congressmen have co-sponsored a bill to put the Ronald Reagan's likeness on all future ten cent coins. Currently, American dimes feature a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The reason FDR's image was placed on the dime in the first place was because he established the March of Dimes, initially founded to fight polio and since then fighting for other issues concerning infant health.

Rep. Gallegly, a supporter of the bill, is quoted as saying "FDR believed the federal government should spend your dimes. Ronald Reagan believed the people should spend their own dimes. I think it's clear that the dimes in your pocket should bear Ronald Reagan's image." But the March of Dimes has always been a nonprofit charity; FDR merely encouraged individuals to donate. But I guess a lasting improvement to infant health worldwide is less important to these people than trying to plaster Reagan's name over yet another American icon.

I've actually read the text of the bill and in some ways it's even more extreme than articles are describing it.

Ignoring all the propaganda in the Findings section, the bill would mandate:

Section 5112(d)(1) of title 31, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the 4th sentence the following new sentence: "Dime coins issued after such date as the Secretary determines to be appropriate shall bear the likeness of President Ronald Reagan, the Freedom President, in honor of his work in restoring American greatness and bringing freedom to captive nations around the world.".

Here's the relevant section of the U.S. Code. As it stands now, it doesn't say anything about Roosevelt. It also doesn't say anything about Lincoln on the penny or Jefferson on the nickel or Washington on the quarter. All it says is that the designs are selected by the Secretary of Treasury as authorized.

But these GOP Congressmen want to overrule all that and codify into Federal law that Reagan's image must be on the dime, enshrining his image above any other image on American currency.

Reading further in the Code, Sec. 5114(b) states: "Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities." Shouldn't they at least have the decency to wait until Reagan's actually dead, first? Or do they know something about his condition that they're not telling us?

According to this article, attempts to plaster Reagan's portrait on the $10 bill (replacing Alexander Hamilton) "fell apart because California politicians couldn't agree on who among them would get to sponsor the House version of the bill. " Somehow, the greed and childishness inherent in that description seems quite appropriate to the entire endeavor. Squabbling over who gets the credit is far more important than actually doing anything constructive... which, when you come right down to it, seems a rather appropriate tribute to Reagan's legacy.

And, yes, I am aware of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which among other goals, wants "significant public landmarks" named after Reagan in every county in the United States. [Ew. I hadn't realized they just renamed Mt. Clay in New Hampshire after him. Ugh.] At least engineering limitations have put a stop to their plans to add an extra head to Mount Rushmore. But I think John Adams is far more deserving of a memorial on the National Mall than Reagan.

The whole thing feels almost Orwellian in its push to establish a legacy for Reagan, rather than permitting time to take its natural course and letting people develop their own opinions. I wonder whether this whole Reagan Legacy project will actually hurt Reagan's legacy because it's all being pushed by a few elites rather than developing naturally out of a groundswell of popular support.

[First seen on Demagogue; ire enough to post about it myself raised through DotCattiness]