Quick, say something! Anything!

Oh dear. King of Zembla is plugging me this week, due, I believe, to a comment I left about Covert Truthiness Op Filito. So now I may get some actual readers, and must write something so incisive and interesting that they will add me to their feed reader. I have exactly 20 minutes to do it, as then I must get lunch, bathe, and go off to see The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

Also, my own blogroll is pathetically tiny and needs to be updated. (Dear husband: any interest in signing us up for blogrolling or something like that?) Also, I am preoccupied with events at my cooperative supermarket, at which I have been doing 'member work' in exchange for a 10 or 20 percent discount on groceries. The co-op, quite unexpectedly, announced that its member work program was ending on January 31st, apparently for vague legal reasons involving, of course, liability. This is a huge blow to all of the member workers. The regular member discount is negligible (2%) and prices at the co-op are, frankly, higher than at the local Whole Foods. Member work made groceries more affordable and made me feel part of and invested in an established community of people who cared about healthy, organic, local food. Working alongside regular employees of the co-op was also a great experience for me, since they were people I would otherwise have very little contact with. When legal liability concerns result in the destruction of valuable community links, it's pretty depressing.

In New Zealand, they have an accident compensation program that covers all accidents in the country, even those of visitors. People therefore are not allowed to sue for damages from accidents. This makes the country an amazingly relaxed place to travel in and live in, because people aren't always obsessing about how they could get sued. When we were in New Zealand last march, we were allowed to bring Ari into a workshop where they were using things like blowtorches to restore steam engines. We crawled up into the cabin of a steam engine and felt the engine box, which was still warm from the engine having been used the day before. They just let us come right in and see what they were doing. It was amazing, and it would never, ever happen here. I would also like to note that New Zealand was just rated the number one country for meeting key environmental goals. For those of you just joining us here at Biscuit, we may move to New Zealand, which is why we often talk about it.

I keep meaning to write a post about that Environics research that Garance Franke-Ruta wrote about in The American Prospect recently. But what I want to say somehow doesn't come out right, it's just bouncing around vaguely in my head. Something about values and Democrats.

Speaking of values and Democrats, if they abandon their plans to filibuster Alito, I think I may have to say phooey on them and find a third party to support. I mean, if not now, then FUCKING WHEN???? If the Republicans want to go nuclear, let them go nuclear. According to the President, Congress's power is pretty much completely illusory in any case, so it's not like you have much to lose. Make your stand, guys, or resign your damn seats and stop lending legitimacy to this corrupt administration.

I have some ideas about a minimalist third party platform, focused on the essentials of reviving Congress's power, full public financing of election campaigns, reigning in the executive, civil liberties, and serious attention to the environment and global warming. I'm willing to call a truce on almost anything else, I think, so we can put in place the minimum requirements for resurrecting our democracy. But that, too, will be for another post.

I have read that the State of the Union will be all about how great health savings accounts are, and I would just like to say that we have a health savings account (because otherwise we couldn't really afford to buy our health insurance, as we don't get any employee coverage) and it is the suckiest idea ever invented. I can't even be completely certain that it saves us any money, because it's too complicated to figure out. It adds far too much accounting and paperwork to my life, complicates getting the insurance to pay anything at all, and, as far as I'm concerned, primarily functions to enrich the banks that manage the accounts (for a fee, of course).

Finally, why would Maureen Dowd (yeah, paywall, so sue me - hah!) say this: "As the White House drives its truckload of lies around the country, it becomes ever clearer that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore are just not the right people to respond to the administration's national security scare-a-thon." Um, what is wrong with this sentence? Which of these people are not like the other ones? Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, and Kerry are all serving in Congress, so they are, in some sense, collaborators. Gore (did I mention that I love Al Gore!?) is not serving in Congress. He is telling us the truth. He is not up there thinking of abandoning plans to filibuster Alito (though I'd like to point out, that I have it on good authority that, however many Democratic Senators are dithering about it and however many newspaper headlines insist that Alito Seems Assured of a Seat on High Court, the Alito filibuster is unstoppable. Be sure to call your Senators and tell them so.).

Okay, Internets, that is all. I must go see some talking beavers now.