Breaching The Web

Here’s a useful guide for attacking that overgrown, long-ignored, bothersome shrub that’s just outside the door of your newly purchased house (or at least, my newly purchased house): Pruning Trees and Shrubs.

The Minnesota Extension Service never fails me — it’s the best extension service webpage around, and contains all sorts of information about food preservation, food handling, gardening and landscaping. It’s really magnificent.

What does it mean if I kill my lucky bamboo?

Terry Neal’s article in today’s WaPo, GOP Corporate Donors Cash In on Smut, is a bit muddled, but it makes two very good points:

1. The “moral” values of people in red states are as “compromised” as those of people in blue states — as exhibited by unwed birth rates, divorce rates, pop culture consumption, and pr*n consumption. In some cases, red states are in “worse” shape. [note: the quotation marks do mean something here -- I'm intentionally distancing.]

2. Many of the big corporate GOP donors reap big profits from peddling pr*n, much of which comes from selling pr*n to red states. This suggests that these big corporate donors don’t care much about pr*n.

So who’s moral here? Certainly not people who vote based on “moral” issues, then pick up a skin flick on DVD. Certainly not people who vote against gay marriage, then go home and catch the latest ep of Desperate Housewives before renting pay-per-view pr*n on DirectTV and having non-marital sex. Certainly not voters who pay more attention to the morals of others than they do the morals of themselves. Certainly not.

Hypocrisy is not a moral value.

The moral values issue is a sham. It’s a lie socially conservative voters tell themselves to explain away the desperate deal they have made with economically regressive corporations. A deal brokered by the Republican Party, whose true agenda is to undo 70 years of progressive tax and economic reforms.

Any immorality in our current political climate lives in that deal and its attendant hypocrisy.

While this story about Christians suing to get religion into schools generally pisses me off (what is it about the separation of Church and State that these people don’t understand?) and scares me, I thought the part about suing or threatening suit to get Christmas trees into schools was funny — since Christmas trees are a co-opted pagan symbol!

I love Christmas trees and I’ve always found their dual symbolism fascinating. It’s like they are secret messengers from the past, whispering to us about other people and other beliefs. Unfortunately, they have been so completely subsumed by the Christmas holiday (both secular and religious), that their whispers are nearly too quiet to hear.

Sea-fever is doing a master’s thesis about the self-presentation of bloggers, and the effect that perceived audience may have on that self-presentation. She’s looking for interview subjects if you’d like to help out.

Politics in the Zeros brings us a list of Some things to do before the Inagural. I have no favorites to point too, because every time I pick one as a favorite, I get sad. Just go read the list.