I was going to do an April Fool’s post, but before I could write it, I noticed that an old friend from NY is off doing what I’ve wanted to do — eating his way through New Orleans post Katrina. The first installment of his trip report is up.
Read ’em & eat.
As I was waking up this morning, I hear on the radio that 25 of the last 31 days have been rainy ones here in the Bay Area. We’re fractions of an inch from being the wettest March on record.
I wonder if that’s why I’ve been feeling so draggy, tired, and generally uninspired recently.
UPDATE: SFGate has more.
Liteblogging on Wednesdays this semester, but I did want to point out that Steve Clemons has a good wrapup of yesterday’s Israeli elections. Check it out while I slog through work & class on Yet Another Rainy Day.
The Palestinian elections didn’t leave me feeling very good, but I’m more hopeful today.
Many years ago, the very first gift Scott bought me was a new video card for my woefully underpowered x386 box. This showed up for me today. Ah, geeks in love….
I’m really bad at buying things for myself, especially the more expensive stuff. My current video card is about 2 years old, and I have been puttering along with its limitations because, well, it works, and new cards are expensive. We’re doing better these days now that I’m working again, but still, more often than not the “oh, we don’t have any money” fears linger and inhibit my buying behavior.
Flashback: Some years ago, I went out one Saturday with my grandmother to shop for kitchen curtains to replace ones that after many years of service and laundering were starting to look a little ratty. We went to several stores, but Grandma ended up not buying any new ones because everything was either too ugly or too expensive. We went home without any because she couldn’t bring herself to pay “too much” for new curtains, even though she could well afford them.
Grandma came to this country quite poor and then weathered the Depression, so her frugality is understandable. But here I am, years later, doing much the same thing. Is it learned behavior from my family, a sign of ageing, or or did the years Scott and I spend struggling financially change my behavior in similar ways?
Orcinus started my online Sunday with a long assessment of the current situation around illegal immigration. Kevin Drum and Nathan Newman also weigh in (and I haven’t made it through all of my blogroll yet today, so there are probably others as well).
My gut feeling is this: it seems more than a little unfair to slam the door shut on other people when you yourself have benefited from the same avenue to a better life. We are all of us children of immigrants. The only difference is how many generations it has been since we got here.
I also think some of the anti-illegal immigration foes need to get their arguments straight and stop fear-mongering. I don’t like “rewarding lawbreaking” either, and I understand not wanting to be flooded with residents who are a net drain the local tax base. That’s why we need immigration reform. But the answer is not about building a nice high wall and shutting the rest of the world out. We’re people, not ostriches.
There’s a lot that could be done to make it easier for people to come here legally, and to smack down employers who employ (and all too often exploit) illegal immigrants. It would be nice if Congress could come up with some good legislation on that front (getting it past the White House would be a whole other issue, but let’s let that sit for the moment). As Orcinus points out, even the McCain-Kennedy bill isn’t a comprehensive solution to the problem.
I’m less sure that we can do much about the global wage inequalities that are a major driver of immigration to America, although I agree that without some sort of solution to this root cause then the pressure for immigration will continue. I think that’s a problem that the world community as a whole needs to address. We can’t do it alone. Even so, that doesn’t reduce our responsibility to work on the issues we do have control over.
The bottom line is this — why would we not want people who want to come here and contribute in a positive way to this country? Because they don’t look and talk like we do? If that’s the best you can come up with, that’s pathetic.
Perhaps it’s only funny because despite being exhausted I only managed to get 4 hours of sleep, but seamus over at Rangelife has a very funny mockup of the “new” SF Examiner at the end of a rant on the GWOT and the media.
If you’re not a SF area resident you might not get the joke though.
Let’s see if I can fall back asleep now or not.