Always a Good Idea to Add Armed Allies

Steves at ATK turned me on to Gun Toting Liberal. His link to "How to Address an Issue Without Addressing the Issue" is a look at the behind-the-scenes amendment processon big legislation like the health care bill. It explains how the opposition party offers amendments to legislation they oppose—not to improve it, but to set up talking points and a win-win situation for them. This was part of what led to Rep. Wilson (R-rich, white suburbs of Charleston, SC) to his outburst during Obama's address.

Today, GTL has a post up on "The Republican Double Standard". It's mostly stuff you've heard about, but it's a nice recap to go with your coffee.

Adding to the blogroll... now.

UPDATE: That blogroll addition is provisionary. After spending a bit of time over there, not so sure about it...some good posts, but absurd guest posters, and the comment threads are worthless.

Worse Than Detroit*

Awhile back, I added Sweet Juniper! to the blogroll and gave particular love to the haunting photos taken by that blog's proprietor, James Griffioen. The latest installment is jdg's story of returning to one of the decaying abandoned schools in Detroit and salvaging some books for his daughter and trying to get SOMEONE to do something about the offices filled with confidential student records...

I am haunted by what I found in one office: hundreds of file folders containing student psychological examinations complete with social security numbers, addresses, and parent information. I sat and thumbed through them. Many contained detailed histories of physical and sexual abuse, stories of home lives so horrifying I still can't get them out of my head: sibling rape, torture, neglect that defies belief. The detailed reports explained emotional impairments, learning disabilities. There was another box full of IEPs. The dates revealed that many of these students are still in the school system somewhere. I found several of their faces in the 2007 yearbook.

These aren't 20-year-old files, this is a school that just closed at the end of the 2007 school year. The names and stories belong to still-little kids shuffled to some other Detroit school.

His photos and a brief essay documenting those schools in Detroit appear in the U.K. magazine, Vice.

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This post tells about an afternoon James spent giving a TIME magazine reporter a tour of the city for a story...His Flickr page reveals that TIME then turned around and screwed him by hiring some NY photographer to come to Detroit and recreate his photographs. Assholes.

*Title of a fantastic Robert Plant song. After contemplating this story its hard for me to imagine a place that actually is...

Births and Resurrections

TWINS!
First of all, congratulations are in order to the Smittys who welcomed two more to the clan late last week. Mrs F gave me the news while I was out of town and unable to go online. I'm out-femaled 3-1 around here, but with new twins boys, Smitty Jr, and a giant boy-at-heart and in-deed (Smitty himself), Mrs Smitty is in a whole other world...

Get your ass off the computer, Smitty, and change a diaper or two! Or ten.

NACHOS!
Earlier today I got a comment from beyond the grave from Otto Man. Actually, I knew OM was still alive from his participation in the comments at KSK, but I was laid low when I saw that Thrillhous and all the boys at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Nachos are back in action. I went over there expecting the same dead site that expired near two years ago just to poach a link, and just about shit my pants when I saw they're back posting and have been for at least a week or so.

Promptly reinstalled in the blogroll where you belong my friends. Welcome back.