If you’re using a CSS3-compliant browser (e.g., Safari or Chrome) then you may be seeing drop shadows for the blockquote panels, in addition to the font and background changes for the quotes which everyone should be seeing. Just part of a little tweaking which I hope will lead up to a blog design overhaul not too long from now. The blog theme I’ve been using for the past few years is a pretty lousy one, with half-broken comments and other problems, and now I’m dealing with the top-drawing blog post shut down by comment overload. So I am attempting to compensate, and will use a new theme eventually for the blog template, and will make a few changes in visual style.

Strangely, Firefox is not registering drop shadows. I don’t know why not–I suppose they just haven’t implemented the new CSS features yet?

One decision: I am done twisting my code into knots to satisfy Internet Explorer–any version. I will no longer test that browser at all. If you really are married to it, then this blog will start looking worse as time goes on. But I am fed up with having to dumb down the code and surrender really nice design elements, or else contort it in hideous ways just because Microsoft can’t get their act together.

Those of you still using IE version 6 may see the blog’s title with a jarring white back to it. This is because I am switching to using PNG images in the theme which have transparency; IE6 cannot handle these. Solution: upgrade. I am sorry if you don’t like hearing it, but IE6 is the worst browser ever, and barring very unusual circumstances, there is absolutely no reason to use it. Upgrade to version 7 or 8. You might like hearing this less, but even better, switch to Firefox or Safari, possibly Chrome. End of preaching.

It is more than just alarming to note how far some right-wingers are going in their protest against the mostly-imagined threat from the Oval Office.

Ranks of tea-baggers (stop that giggling) railing against what are in fact the lowest tax rates in decades, and the possibility that taxes for the richest people may be raised slightly.

Gun owners and advocates reeling in horror at the prospect of Obama sending jack-booted thugs to break into their homes and strip them of their weapons despite no indication whatsoever of any such intent–indeed, the Supreme Court recently ruled most favorably toward gun rights.

Daily cries of “socialist!” and “communist!” and even “fascist!” government because of the feeblest of demands on corrupt bank executives who brought the economy crashing down. (Glenn Beck actually went on a “First they came for the bankers” rant, equating the Obama administration to the Nazis committing the Holocaust. Yes, he’s a certifiable loon, but he’s got a show that millions of other loons watch.)

And the continuous chant of rebellion against the supposedly unlimited and irresponsible spending spree (mostly on quite responsible infrastructure in efforts to prevent economic disaster) of this new president–though the same people were virtually mute and unprotesting when the previous president (whom they deemed a responsible patriot) spent far, far more money in rash, uncontrolled, and undocumented giveaways to corporations and the rich.

Despite their mocking dismissal as “unpatriotic” and even “treasonous” of many Americans who protested eight years of Bush-Cheney, this same bunch have gone completely off their nut after just a few months of the other party controlling things. They are now raising louder and louder cries to actually secede from the union.

Maybe I’ve got the wrong spin on what “patriotism” is, but if I am not mistaken, forsaking the United States of America and wanting to smash it into tiny little pieces after four months of Democratic leadership and psychotic ravings by the likes of Hannity, Cavuto, and Beck… well, it is slightly less than patriotic.

And this is not exactly just a fringe element we’re talking about. As many as 12% of Republicans think they’d be better off seceding from the country, and 9% would actively approve of it. And it’s not limited to loons on the Beck show or radical wingnuts; prominent Republican politicians, especially at the state level and especially in the South, have not only openly advocated secession but have started actually passing laws which pave the way for an eventual departure from the union.

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s statements were among the early prominent calls for secession. While he carefully stated that he was not calling for secession, he nonetheless threatened exactly that:

Perry told reporters following his speech that Texans might get so frustrated with the government they would want to secede from the union.

“There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”

He and others have started to refer to the Tenth Amendment (reserving to states powers not delegated to Congress) as code for secession, or at least for some form of rebellion. While he carefully stopped short of open approval, the context and thinly veiled intent made the statements rather shocking, even for the governor of Texas.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay supported Perry’s idea and laid out a manner in which Texas could secede. If you watch the video, note DeLay’s reference to the “usurpation of power,” which suggest that there is something nefarious and threatening about the Democrats being elected by the people of the United States and then actually daring to take power as a result–something which DeLay says is threatening the sovereignty of the state of Texas. Apparently, Democrats being lawfully elected is such a horrific fate that Texas is right and just to protect itself by seceding.

Then we have the state legislature in Georgia actually passing a resolution in which they lay the groundwork for secession:

In the waning days of this year’s state legislative session, members of the Georgia Senate reached near-unanimous consent on the terms under which they believe Georgia can secede from the United States, and under which the United States itself can be dissolved. …

Beyond that, the resolution contends there are circumstances under which the federal government can overreach its authority to the point that it nullifies the Constitution, presumably bringing an end to the United States. Among the circumstances under which the federal government can nullify the Constitution is prohibition of any kind of arms or ammunition, meaning presumably that a federal ban on the sale of assault rifles would be sufficient cause to tear the country asunder.

What this leads me to conclude is that a fair number of right-wingers, perhaps the 10% core, are not patriots at all, but instead resemble fair-weather baseball fans who love their team only when it’s winning–otherwise, they’re a bunch of bums who can go to hell. Call them “PatriNots,” people who drape themselves in the flag, claim to love their country no matter what and rail madly at those whom they call “traitors”–but as soon as their party falls out of favor, America is a rotting dung heap from which they cannot wait to bolt.

These people are not patriots, they are loyal only to their political worldview and nothing else. They don’t love America, they love their party, and would just as soon burn the Constitution and throw America into the trash bin.

They say, “America, love it or leave it.” And now they want to leave it. Goes to show.

It’s amazing how the right-wing establishment can still control and steer the “Liberal Media™” so adroitly. Despite more and more alarming revelations coming out about Cheney, Bush, and illegal torture, the media still seems more interested on whether or not waterboarding was mentioned in a CIA briefing to Nancy Pelosi years back–as if that somehow is just as compelling as the executive branch violating U.S. law and principle in a horrific manner.

In 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell asked his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, to look into the Abu Ghraib scandal. After years of digging, Wilkerson, a retired Army Colonel and a Republican, has uncovered some alarming facts, the most jarring of which is that Cheney ordered torture not to protect the country, but rather to further a political cause. Cheney ordered the torture of an al Qaeda operative in order to manufacture some kind of link between al Qaeda and Iraq.

The usual justification of torture is to save lives and protect the country. The favorite scenario is the “ticking time bomb” where a terror suspect has information which could be used to stop an imminent attack, and torture is the only way to get that information. But the torture of al-Libi was not done for any purpose even resembling that. According to Wilkerson:

…what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just “committed suicide” in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)

What we have here is a compelling case that the vice president of the United States illegally ordered torture to fabricate evidence that would help promote a costly, disastrous, and just-as-illegal war that has led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and has devastated our economy and our standing in the world.

And yet the media seems intent on focusing instead on the charge that Nancy Pelosi was briefed by the CIA in September of 2002 on the waterboarding of suspects when she claimed that she had not been. This news is insignificant for many reasons. First of all, it changes nothing in terms of the fact that officials in the Bush administration ordered the torture illegally for political purposes. Second, even if she had been so briefed, it would have meant little as Pelosi was not authorized to say or really do anything regarding what she was briefed on. And third, the claims appear to be wrong–inaccurate at best, politically-motivated lies at worst.

And yet, a Google News search on “Cheney Wilkerson torture” brings up only 66 hits, while “Pelosi briefed CIA torture” produces 3,752 hits–more than 50 times the coverage.

How, exactly, can that be justified by any reasonable standard?

Interesting. Google is going to reboot Street View in Japan:

The photos currently on the Web site were taken by cameras mounted on a stick attached to a car roof. Google Japan said it would lower the cameras after many residents complained they were high enough to look over fences around their homes, company product manager Keiichi Kawai said in a statement.

I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I think people go a wee bit too far in their complaints over privacy, especially in terms of what can be seen in public. I mean, face it, that’s why “public” is the opposite of “private.” On the other hand, anything that protects privacy, even if it goes further than seems reasonable, strikes me as a good thing–especially if it is a matter of precedent or policy.

And when it comes down to it, it really does make good sense to keep Street View at eye level, thus replicating that much more accurately what you actually see on the street when you are there in person.

Wow. Republicans are set to pass a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party.” Seriously. Since we are now unilaterally renaming other parties, can the Democrats rename the Republican Party the “Whining Dumbass Party”?

Michael Steele, in an uncharacteristic bout of non-idiocy, is actually against the resolution:

Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

Maybe I am unclear on the language, but if Republicans act like whining dumbasses and the Democrats point this out, then how exactly is this “mischaracterizing” them?

On a side note, it is good to see that the Republicans are continuing their drive to generate new ideas to solve the nation’s many problems.

Interesting take from the news:

Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate affiliated with several Christian right groups over the years, said the discussion should not come down to “Would Jesus torture?”

“There are a lot of things Jesus wouldn’t do because he’s the son of God,” he said. “I can’t imagine Jesus being a Marine or a policeman or a bank president, for that matter. The more appropriate question is, ‘What is a follower of Jesus permitted to do?’”

This is a good clue as to why so many–perhaps most–Christians seem to stray so far from the philosophy of Christ. Why people who profess to hold Christ above all others nevertheless seem to disregard what Christ himself said and instead focus on other stuff in the bible crafted for more barbaric times which more closely represents their own base instincts. Instead of trying to raise themselves above those ancient ways and become more like the man Jesus was, they seem content to remain what they are.

What Bauer is essentially doing here is saying that Christ lives in his own godly sphere, therefore what we do is pretty much disconnected from what he does; that followers of Christ do not need to follow his example too closely. What he is saying is that because the image of Jesus is inconsistent with the behavior of people in certain roles, that means it is OK to stray from his principles.

Bauer misses the point here, completely. If the behavior of a bank president is inconsistent with Christ, one should not say that it is OK and the bank president be given more latitude to violate Christian principles. One should instead say, if Christ were put in that position, how would he apply his morality to it, and go from there. To what possible degree can we apply those principles to banking and still have banking function? And if that’s not possible, then maybe there’s something wrong with banking.

Am I mistaken, or is it not the idea that Christians, while not expected to be perfect, should be at least trying to follow Christ’s example as closely as possible, not excusing themselves from it?

Bauer instead begins with the assumption that since we are not Christ, we can be immoral and that’s OK. We’re not expected to be as good or as perfect as Christ, so we can play roles that stray quite far from anything Christ would approve of. From there, he takes only a few small steps to condoning torture.

…the moral equation changes when the suspect is not a soldier captured on a battlefield but a terrorist who may have knowledge of an impending attack. He said he does not consider water-boarding — a form of interrogation that simulates drowning — to be torture.

“I think if we believe the person we have can give us information to stop thousands of Americans from being killed, it would be morally suspect to not use harsh tactics to get that information,” Bauer said.

The question Bauer does not ask is, why would Christ not torture (though it’s not really torture, he claims), even if it would save so many lives? Think about this. Say Christ were in that situation: thousands of innocents are going to be killed, Christ has a terror suspect in custody, and it is possible that the slaughter could be stopped if Christ indulged in a little waterboarding. Would he do it?

You can’t just say, “no he wouldn’t, and that’s the wrong choice, but that’s OK because he’s different from us.” After all, if he’s that different from you, then why are you following him? If he makes the wrong choice out of mislaid tenderness and that results in horrific slaughter, then why do you see such a figure as worthy of praise and worship? The logical conclusion is that Christ’s philosophy is something you see as inappropriate, or at least inapplicable to our lives. And if that is so, then why follow him?

I think the answer is that many people like to clothe themselves in the respectability of Christian values, while at the same time excusing themselves from having to actually follow those values. That’s exactly as wrong as it sounds. If you’re a Christian, than you have to face the fact that it’s not going to be easy. It means that you have to sacrifice, and sacrifice a lot, in order to be the kind of person that your principles tell you to be. People like Bauer–and there are lots of them–want to be members of the club without paying the dues or following the rules.

If you think the price is too high, that being Christlike requires giving up too much, then that’s the first clue that you’re not really a Christian.

It is just so satisfying to hear stories about people scamming scammers. I can’t tell you how many “Nigerian” scammers have sent me email; it’s hard to believe that anyone still falls for that anymore, it’s now a cliche like buying the Brooklyn Bridge. That, along with winning European Lotteries and security alerts from eBay.

But apparently they still work, and there for some years now has been a subculture of people who spend a great deal of time annoying these scammers. Based upon the principle that it is easy to manipulate someone who is greedy (the very same principles the scammers themselves operate under), a number of productive citizens have become quite adept at leading the scammers through quite the merry ride by acting like potential dupes. They build up creative scenarios where they promise to fall into the scammers schemes, but first need this assurance or that precondition. Like, you must be a member of my church before I trust you; the scammer eagerly says they want to join, and then is made to jump through hoops, like painting their bodies in ridiculous ways and then emailing the photographs. Some scammers were even made to take long journeys to pick up the case, which never materialized–one going to Heathrow Airport, told to make himself recognizable by holding his black backpack close to his chest, which of course got him in trouble with security.

If you only have a short time to be entertained by such tales, read this recent article in Ars Technica. If you have more time, go directly to the “419eater” web site, where there are many full transcripts of emails sent back and forth to bait the scammers, complete with commentary and photographs of the scammers making fools of themselves.

While I agree with those who question the ethics of sending the scammers on voyages which potentially threaten their safety, everything short of that is kosher, as far as I am concerned. The point is made in the Ars article: the scam baiters are drawing the scammers away from real victims, wasting their time and resources and hopefully making it more difficult for the scammers to successfully defraud others. In the best-case scenario, the scammers get fed up and and give up.

By the way, sorry to have taken such a long break from blogging. I’ll be back more frequently now.

Lately, there has been a lot of chatter on the right about Obama and what he meant by “Empathy” when he was describing what he was looking for in a Supreme Court justice nominee. The idea is that Obama was using a code word for “liberal activist judge.” The problem is, I’ve never heard that particular code word before. Now, “strict constructionist,” that’s a firmly established code word. But “empathy”? Not really. However, according to Orrin Hatch:

It’s a matter of great concern if he’s saying he wants people who will take sides. He’s also said that the judge has to be a person of empathy. What’s that mean? Usually, that’s a code word for an activist judge.

As I said, that doesn’t sound familiar to me. So I did a search for the term relative the Supreme Court nominees, and found this from last October:

“What I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can’t have access to political power and as a consequence can’t protect themselves from being — from being dealt with sometimes unfairly, that the courts become a refuge for justice,” said Mr. Obama, who taught constitutional law for years at the University of Chicago.

Several conservative observers of the court said they interpreted those remarks as code for Mr. Obama’s intention to select “liberal activist judges.”

“That comment was pretty remarkable to a lot of us,” said Neomi Rao, a teacher at George Mason University Law School who is a former associate counsel in the Bush White House and a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. “When I hear about a judge who rules on the basis of empathy, I think of an activist judge.”

Hmmm. Still Obama, still conservatives reading into his statement. So I went farther back and found this statement:

I regard law as a discipline in which you have to have empathy for people you are trying to understand.

Aha! That quote was not by Obama, and it related directly to the nomination of a Supreme Court justice! So, what liberal activist judge said that? Let’s see… it was… Robert H. Bork.

After leaving the church, we headed toward the Roman Forum, stopping for a break first at the Piazza Venezia, called the hub of modern Rome, in front of the National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II. Mussolini used to give speeches here. We had some gelato.

Behind the monument is the Roman Forum, essentially the central area of ancient Rome. It is a large historical area, like the Ancient Agora in Athens, where visitors can come in and walk around among many of the ancient buildings.

One thing about this area and ones like it: it is very inconvenient to walk in unless you are well-informed, well-prepared, and arrive at just the right locations. With such a huge site, one would expect there to be at least a few places where you could get in. Not so. We had to walk halfway around it before finding an entrance. Later, when we went into the Palatino, we had a similar experience: you have to come out the same way you came in, which means backtracking quite a distance. Sachi and I didn’t look these things up in advance and wound up walking ourselves ragged trying to figure out the entrances and exits.

Even back in those days, they loved huge doors. So I guess it’s a traditional thing.

Another common sight is the celebratory arches.

Called the “Arch of Titis,” what’s written is “Tito.”

And the final arch, of Constantine.

Right across from that is the Colosseum. Instead of boring you with the traditional view, I thought I’d focus on less-traditional ones. We wondered, by the way, at all the holes in it, and later discovered that although some were for scaffolding, most were made by scavengers over history digging in and taking away metal parts of the building. In fact, much of the building’s missing parts are due more to using the building as a source of raw material than because of other kinds of damage. Italians call it “Swiss Cheese.”

Outside were the inevitable centurions, a cute dress-up element seen in historical areas of Rome.

On the southeast side, there is the church’s placard.

It was a bit late in the day to go in, so Sachi and I just looked from the outside, deciding to see the inside the next day.

After we left the Piazza del Popolo, we walked due west. We had not intended to walk so far north and had planned to just go directly back into the old town to Plaza Navona, but since we had gone so far, we decided to cross the Tiber and walk to the Castel Sant’Angelo. We stopped along the bank when we found a nice cafe, and had some snacks–mine resembling a grilled-cheese-and-ham sandwich.

We then took the back streets to the castle, thinking we could walk onto the grounds from there, but you can’t–so we had to walk all the way around the star-shaped complex until we got to the front again. We decided not to go into the museum (we would not have gone halfway through our planned walk had we went into every interesting exhibit), but we did rest outside for a few minutes before crossing the Bridge of Hadrian. The castle was originally Hadrian’s tomb, though it and the bridge Hadrian built leading to it have been pretty completed taken over by Christian iconography.

After crossing the bridge into central Rome, we took another tangent to lead us to the northern end of Piazza Navona. On the way, we walked along some of the old, narrow streets that we love so much.

The Piazza Navona was recommended to us, and was a nice stop, but nothing overly spectacular. The fountain in the center was nice, and we enjoyed the musicians playing at the south end of the plaza.

One thing you’ll see a lot of are street performers. Interestingly, many seem to be common between many cities in Europe–we saw almost identical acts in many places. A common one seen often is the Egyptian Sarcophagus, but an interesting one is the Invisible Man–a guy seated on a chair below a hat and sunglasses, with his head hidden beneath the collar. Here’s one such guy enjoying a break.

Next stop: The Pantheon. From Greek meaning “every god,” it was originally a Roman temple for the worship of all gods, but nowadays it’s just used for the only one really left in Rome these days. The day we visited, it was closed, and everyone was reduced to peeking through a crack in the door. But the outside is impressive enough.

click on the image above for a larger version of this stitched-together panoramic view.

On the way from the Pantheon, we saw and stopped at the Basilica of Saint Mary Above Minerva, a gothic church built in 1280 over the remains of a temple for Isis (but thought to be for Minerva). This is where Galileo renounced his scientific findings. A beautiful church, with some less-than-beautiful history. And big front doors…

I was a bit surprised that they allowed photos inside.

This stained-glass window was particularly attractive.

Greater detail here.

The final leg of the walk coming next.

A conservative makes some pretty mild charges about Democrats concerning the reaction to Obama speaking at Notre Dame–relatively mild considering that they are coming from a conservative, at this point in time:

They may see one of America’s leading religious conservatives repudiating the moral legitimacy of the president of the United States.

There was too much of that in the past eight years. …

I fear our side is becoming like the leftists we used to mock. We refuse to recognize the American president as our president. And we reduce our politics to a single issue, showing no tolerance or desire for engagement with our opponents, including those who dissent within our own ranks.

In the coming four years, all conservatives will have cause to oppose and fight the Obama administration on many, many fronts. But let’s not imitate the past eight years of political opposition. We are better than that. And we should—we must—be willing to share a platform with our elected President.

Yes, we liberals were so unreasonable to object to Bush and his policies over the past eight years. We should have done what many conservatives did, which was to wait eight years for Bush to shred the country to pieces, and then disown his administration whilst urging that stuff like committing torture is not worthy of prosecutions–after all, it’s not like it was a blow job happening or anything. Let’s face it, it was the Democrats who were such jerks all this time, and we should not lower ourselves to their depths.

I am beginning to come to the conclusion that so many conservatives are not being disingenuous at all–that they actually believe that they have been the calm, fair-minded, consistent voices of reason over the past few decades. And that’s scary.

David Frum encourages this commentator’s point of view:

A large part of the secret of President Obama’s political success is his self-presentation as calm, judicious, and fair-minded – and his ability to depict his opponents as intemperate and extreme. You’d think by now that Obama’s opponents would have figured out this trick. You want to beat him? Great. Be more calm, more judicious, and more fair-minded. Don’t be provoked. Don’t throw wild allegations. Don’t boycott. Don’t lose your temper.

Instead, we get Anger Theater. It’s not smart. And it’s not working.

Of course, the interesting thing here is that the comment he is presenting as one of reason and common sense is one who thought it was just to mock Democrats for opposing the Bush administration, for arguing that it wasn’t moral. The voice of reason. Let’s not get into the details of the charges–that Dems were the ones not willing to debate, that Dems were unwilling to allow dissenting voices. I disagree strongly with those assertions, especially from a relative standpoint. Instead, the main point here is that these people are throwing around all kinds of wild charges about Democrats, rather strongly biased and clearly so, admitting to mocking your opponents–and at the same time saying that the debate must become more civilized, and they themselves must be more “fair-minded” and should not “throw wild allegations.”

That aside, has Frum checked recently and noted about whom he is speaking? Very, very few notable voices on the right are anywhere close to toning it down.

And, lest the point not be noted, Obama actually is of that temperament. Frum and his colleague are asking conservatives to change to mimic it. A point to be made there. But at least they are on the right track, even if it has to be faked.

A problem has come up. The site’s most popular page, the Eyelid Twitching post, seems to have hit some kind of limit. With 1,945 comments, it now returns an Internal Server Error when you try to list all the comments. I have tried using some comment plug-ins, but to no avail. Therefore, I will try to upgrade the blog software–which may cause intermittent outages. Please be patient. Thanks.

Greta Van Susteren interviewing Newt Gingrich:

Van Susteren: Well, you know, Fox News Channel got, quote, punished — Fox News Channel didn’t get a question the other night — Major Garrett, our White House correspondent — because the Fox broadcast, not the Fox News Channel, but the Fox broadcast decided not to air the press conference.

Gingrich: Right. Which should tell all of you about the abuse of power inherent in this administration. They now control General Motors, they basically control Chrysler, they control Citibank, they control AIG, and they are prepared to punish people.

I think that’s very dangerous, to have a president who thinks he should get up in the morning and punish Americans. You know, appease foreigners, bow to the Saudi king, embrace the Venezuelan dictator, and punish Americans? I think that’s a very dangerous attitude.

Wow. I mean, I have heard that Fox News people have been going ballistic for the past few days over this, but this is a bit much.

Let’s leave aside the idea that Fox News is, from a fully objective and 100% factual standpoint, a political propaganda machine of an opposition party. Leave aside for the sake of this argument the fact that Fox News has been close to the edge of insanity in its virtually non-stop, hysterical, fear-mongering, sleazy smear-fest of this president even before he got elected. Forget for the moment that during the Bush administration, reporters were often frozen out, not just for one press conference, but for long periods of time, because of their political orientation (witness Helen Thomas). And set aside for now the fact that Obama has respected Fox News in the past far more than Bush or McCain did for similarly biased newscasts–after all, Obama actually had the guts and fortitude to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s show–did Bush or McCain ever even think of coming on Keith Olbermann’s show? Hell no. And let’s ignore Newt’s reference to wingnut blathering about bowing to Saudi Princes (as opposed to holding hands) and all that other unhinged nonsense.

Set all of that aside for a moment. How the hell can you say that failing to call on a news network a single time is equal to “punishing Americans” every morning? I would hardly call it “punishing Fox News,” but to call it “punishing Americans” is to presume such status for Fox News, that they somehow hold such an honored, beloved and revered place in the hearts of all Americans that a snub to them is a snub to the whole country–well, I mean, wow.

And “abuse of power”? Really? How is not calling on Fox News an “abuse of power”?

And “they” (who are “they” exactly?) somehow “control” GM, Chrysler, Citibank and AIG? I used to think that Gingrich was relatively reasonable, but this is on par with some of the more paranoid rantings of people like Glenn Beck. The administration, in exchange for bailout money, was able to negotiate some concessions from these corporations necessary to the health of the American economy, but not nearly enough to even come close to being called in “control” of them, and certainly not so the president could wake up in the morning and decide to incur his wrath on the American people by calling the corporations up and, well, doing what exactly with them?

To make the jump from the president failing to call on a news network dedicated to destroying him for a single news conference, to the conclusion that the President of the United States has absolute control over major corporations and uses them in an iron-fisted manner to attack all of the American people while in obeisance to foreign powers–that’s deeply into heavy schizophrenic-delusion territory.

When you add this to all of the crazy stuff being said by so many on the right, including state governors openly suggesting secession and stuff like that, one has to reflect on the fact that Obama has been president for less than four months and then wonder where this will all lead to, eventually. The mind boggles at the inability of conservatives to tolerate even the smallest amount of power in the hands of someone aside from themselves. Frankly, it is more than just a bit worrying.

Sachi and I were never sure of the weather. As I mentioned before, probably 80% or more of the days we were there were slated for rain in the weather forecasts, only to clear up most of the time. Still, we did not want to press our luck, and since rain was forecast for the next day, we decided to do all of our walking tours in the one good-weather day we were fairly sure of. By the end of the day, we had walked at least 10 km (as measured by Google Maps Distance Calculator), not counting the backtracking and walking around inside places like the Roman Forum. This is what the walk eventually looked like:

We started out at the Spanish Steps, a tourist spot which is apparently used mostly for sitting and chatting, at least for tourists. There is a big floral display, and across the plaza there is a market street.

We then headed south, and stopped along the way for gelato. From the incredible abundance of pizzerias and gelato shops, I can only conclude that those two foods are the foundation of a typical Roman’s diet.

By the way, a note on Roman pizza: multiple toppings are not a big thing. Usually there are only one or two toppings, and despite looking carefully, I never found a pizza that had more than one meat topping. Prosciutto was common (and delicious!), and I found hot salami (I presume the same as pepperoni, but not called that), and sausage of some sort… but not together. A lot of pizzas were short on cheese also, at least from an American standpoint.

This is not to say that I didn’t eat a lot of it!

Also found everywhere are tourist stalls, everything kitschy that you can imagine. Big sellers seem to include short pants with Michelangelo’s David’s nether regions printed on them, and hand-drawn caricatures of Sylvester Stallone. T-shirts, bags, calendars, magnets, statuettes, caps, scarves–everything you can imagine they could sell they sell. A lot of street artists have their work on display, and a lot of musicians play for spare change. (Accordions are big in Europe, I noticed.)

We made our way to Trevi Fountain, where legend has it that if you toss a coin into the fountain over your shoulder, you are assured to return to Rome some day. Some €3000 are thrown into the fountain every day (it’s collected and used to fund a supermarket for the poor). Sachi did it when she visited Rome in her younger days, and there she was, back again, so I figure it works. We did it together, and so we’ll probably be back some day.

Next, we hit the Piazza Colonna, which features the Column of Marcus Aurelius. This was a monument built to honor the emperor’s war efforts, illustrated in the relief sculptures spiraling up the column.

Something that I noticed in Rome was that the Catholic Church seems to have a habit of branding everything of note. This column was built for Marcus Aurelius, who, while not particularly anti-Christian, was not an avid pro-Christian, either, and under his reign, Christians suffered. So why is there a statue of St. Paul atop the column? The thing is, it’s not just this; any number of pre-Christian monuments, all of the major ones that I could see, are in some way stamped with the cross or other Christian icons. The various Egyptian obelisks all are capped by crucifixes, and the Colosseum has a prominent Christian placard installed. While some Christian history has taken place at and around these sites, slapping Christian symbols and signs on them smacks a bit of territoriality. I’m just saying. It kind of stood out.

Moving on, we went north, intending to stop somewhere along the Via del Corso, but we overshot and ended up at the Piazza del Popolo, dominated by an obelisk of Ramesses II (again, note the crucifix cap).

The plaza is ringed by churches and fountains, and is a nice place to relax. However, you also have to watch out for the hucksters. Several people of south Asian origin were wandering the plaza with bunches of roses. They walk up to couples and offer them a few as a “gift for the beautiful lady.” I made very clear that I had no intention of buying any, telling the guy that we were walking all day and could not carry flowers. He insisted, and I said, even for free, we could not, because we had no place to keep long-stemmed roses. Still, he refused to acquiesce, and just to get rid of him, we said, OK, we’ll take them, intending to hand them off to someone else first chance we got. But of course, the guy would not leave. He stayed planted in front of us, trying to do something for a tip. He offered to take a photo and we declined. In the awkward silence after that, his eyes darted this way and that, and then he put our his hand and made the finger-rubbing gesture for cash.

We gave him back the flowers.

More on the walk through Old Rome later–it’s getting late, and there’s too much here for one post.

Due to the early flight into Italy, we arrived early as well–a bit after 10 am. We came through Leonardo da Vinci airport, and found our way to the trains, where I found some weirdness in ticket pricing.

In fact, in Greece, we had a similar problem. Arriving, the cost of the ticket charged us from the airport to Omonia Station was €4 apiece. Leaving, it was €5. Either we were undercharged coming in or overcharged going out. Seeing as how on the departure trip it was so early that no one was around and the ticket seller was somewhat rude, I have a suspicion that we were overcharged.

In Rome, buying tickets for the Leonardo Express, everything around us said it was €11 per person–our guide book and even the prices listed on the ticket window. But when I bought the tickets, I was charged €12 per person. Later, someone at a ticket office run by the same company tried to claim that it was some sort of commission fee. The problem is, when I asked a few Italian passengers on the train what they were charged, they all said they were asked to pay only €11. Something smells wrong there. Is it SOP in some European countries for train ticket sellers to rip off tourists?

In any case, I eventually discovered that I had bought from a private ticket seller at da Vinci. I always assumed that train tickets were sold by the train line, and it was not freelanced right there in the station. If you can, find the official sales booth.

When we got to Termini Station, we had another problem: we just followed the crowd leaving our car of the train. This led us to the diametrically opposite corner of the station we intended to come out from–and it’s a big station. It took us 15 minutes to even understand where we were, and then quite a bit of time after that to walk all the way round after that. I should have paid more attention–I knew that we should have walked in the direction the trains were traveling, which would have saved us a lot of time, effort, and confusion. Ah well.

This time around, we didn’t stay in a hotel. Instead, we found a place called “Delia Accommodation,” referred to in places as a “bed and breakfast.” A family (Delia, her husband and her daughter) have a floor of apartments (single room plus bath), and rent them out to visitors. On the plus side, the rooms are nice, centrally located, and cheap (for Rome). On the down side, it is less than full-service, and the place is kind of hard to find. On hotel review sites, a common complaint was the inability to find the place–it is marked only by a small placard next to the door, and you have to enter into a courtyard, enter a locked building, and take a narrow elevator up to the 4th floor. If doors are locked, you have to buzz the front desk to be let in–and the front desk is often unoccupied. Thanks to Google Street View, however, I was able to figure out where to go exactly, and when we arrived, we just happened to catch Delia’s husband who waved us in.

Another benefit of the place is that there’s a great, reasonably-priced restaurant (“La Famiglia”) right downstairs. We ordered their 1-liter beer, and found it to be a lot bigger than we thought–we got a few laughs from an adjacent table (everyone else was having bottled water), and we thought it was pretty funny ourselves.

After getting settled, we researched the local neighborhood, identifying a supermarket and laundry shop within a few blocks of the Delia. In the supermarket, I noted a Japanese snack, called “Pocky” in Japan–but dubbed “Mikado” in Italy. I have to wonder if it was made by the same company and simply rebranded.

Then we set out on a longer walk, which ended up being about 4 km. We went to the Plaza of the Republic. On one side there was a basilica with interesting door panels. We didn’t go inside until later in the trip.

One thing we noticed pretty early on is that a lot of doors to residences in Rome are big. This was true to the residence we stayed in as well as most apartment buildings.

As we walked up the avenue to the north of the plaza, we noticed a whole bunch of five-star hotels, which made Sachi swoon. She has a thing for such hotels, and at some time in the future we’ll undoubtedly stay at one–when we can afford the ridiculous prices…

We also stopped by a wine shop, which was staffed by a very good salesman who sold us a bottle of Pinot Nero, which we enjoyed over the following few evenings.

One thing jumped out at us, though: Rome is a beautiful city. Especially just after leaving Athens, which (aside from the historical areas) is a very unattractive city. But Rome, everything was postcard perfect. Classical buildings, cobblestone streets, cozy restaurants, and very clean.

After it got dark, and not too far from the hotel, it started to rain–making the streets even more beautiful. One of my favorite images:

On our last full day in Athens, Sachi and I decided to simply walk around; we went on roads we had not walked before, but still kept to the Omonia/Monastiraki area. Along one road where there were a lot of public buildings, it was hard to miss the classic influence on their design.

Just as hard to miss were all of the street vendors, again reminding Sachi and I of the streets of Shanghai.

We also saw this kind of sight twice: street vendors who had gathered up their loot quickly and were on the move. Once we saw them dashing rather madly, making us wonder if they’d been chased out by the police or something.

We found that other cafe I mentioned in the last post, which was far cheaper–about €12 for food for the both of us–and was much better food. A Souvlaki sandwich, Caesar salad, and ham & cheese pie, along with drinks, at a place called Coffee Right. Yummy.

We continued our walk, and saw more of the same-shop-type-concentration, this time with candy shops.

Something else you see a lot of on the street in Athens is street vendors selling bread products–not quite pretzels, not quite bagels.

Along the way, we also hit on something relatively common in the city center–a church, or chapel, or whatever kind of religious building.

The artwork over the door was odd; Jesus looks like a dwarf, and Mary looks like a guy in drag with a sardonic expression.

After eventually hitting Monastiraki, we ventured in yet another new direction, and stumbled upon a strikingly different neighborhood: it was clean and nice-looking.

In that area, we stopped at a cafe that sold gelato, which, for some reason, is usually kept heaped in improbably high piles.

While they are present in numbers almost everywhere in the city, we seemed to notice a lot more bikers in this nice area.

At this time, I was finally able to snap a photo of a local swallow. Usually, they are on the move, flying constantly. But if you can catch one landing, it usually is on a bare wire, cable, or branch close above you, and they don’t scare away easily.

One thing that stood out to Sachi and myself was the sheer amount of graffiti on the walls of most neighborhoods. This is everywhere. Although the ‘finest’ and official establishments seem to keep their walls fairly clean and the ancient stuff is unmarked, everything else is fair game–and barely a spot is left unpainted. Graffiti is all over the place.

Eventually, we hit some parks west of the Agora, and decided to call it a day. We headed back to the hotel and packed for our trip into Rome the next day. We had to get to sleep early, because our flight left at 8 am, meaning a 4 am wake-up alarm.

We set aside this day for the Acropolis–and a good thing, as if we had delayed for one day, it would have been chilly instead of warm, and the tour would have been much less pleasant. As it turned out, all but the last day in Athens was warm and pleasant. We seem to have had quite good luck with the weather on this trip, at least relative to what it could have been.

Before we took the subway, Sachi wanted to stop off for a bite to eat. She got a spinach pie at one of the ubiquitous shops that sold these kinds of food.

The one I liked was ham and cheese. The pie is made up of many layers of pastry bread.

We headed off to Acropolis Station, which had an interesting feature: a kind of museum display as you came out. A few stations had displays like this, including one (Monastiraki) that had a whole section of a preserved ruins. Acropolis Station has this:

While I’m on the subject of stations, Sachi and I were puzzled by how they work. There are no gates and no watchers at the ticket-taking machines. There are no barriers to keep anyone from walking through, and no checking of tickets at all upon exiting. It seems as if there is nothing to stop someone from simply walking into the station without a ticket, riding the train, and then leaving–all for free. Sachi and I never tried so we didn’t see how such a transgressor might be caught, but I could not figure any way of doing it. (We encountered a similar experience with buses in Rome.)

Back to the narrative. We left Acropolis Station and followed the signs to the Acropolis itself. The entrance was via other sites, notably the Dionysus Theater. Built in the 5th century B.C., it could seat between ten and twenty thousand people. You can go up and sit in the stands yourself, this being a slightly more hands-on site than others.

A bit farther up the path is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, another theater built about 400-500 years later–and one that is still in use, being partly restored.

Along the way, there were other exhibits. Sometimes the marble pieces were almost scattered, as if left where they fell when buildings collapsed. Others were collections of pieces. One exhibit contained several pieces which, strangely, consisted of engravings on marble blocks above carvings of male genetalia.

When you make it up to the top of the Acropolis, you enter via the Propylaea, the gateway to the top of the mesa. The Acropolis is the name for the area itself, not the individual buildings (many mistakenly identify the Parthenon as the Acropolis).

Just about everybody goes through here, so the traffic is heavy, but often interesting.

After you get through, the Parthenon dominates the view. Built at the roughly the same time as the Propylaea, it was originally used as a temple and a treasury. In the middle ages, it was taken over and used as a Christian Church and then as an Islamic Mosque. A lot of the damage to it happened when an Ottoman ammunition dump housed there exploded when attacked in 1687. When we arrived, it was undergoing some reconstruction and/or maintenance, so there was scaffolding obstructing much of the building.

We made our way around the building, to an observation platform bearing the Greek flag to the rear, and the other temples and structures on the Acropolis.

Sachi was patient with me as I did some birdwatching as well. Along with the many sparrows, swallows, and magpies, I also saw falcons, I believe Peregrine Falcons; they were elusive at first, but I eventually got a pair that were gliding in front of the Propylaea.

Of course, there were spectacular views.

At the exit, there was no shortage of enterprising salesmen who understood that no drinking water was available on the site.

Later on, we were accosted by cats occupying an abandoned building on the path down.

That evening, Sachi and I tried out a place called “Joy’s Cafe.” We were looking for an intermediate-quality eatery, someplace cheaper than Hermion, but still good. Joy’s was not what we were looking for; the food was not good at all. The bill came out to about €25. Later on we found a different cafe that cost about half that and the food was a lot better.

Now that Sachi and I have finished out honeymoon trip, and I have almost a week off before work starts again (and I have finally recovered from a mild-to-moderate bout of food poisoning), I am taking the time to finish up the series. When I went to Spain 6 years ago, I blogged on the first four days and then stopped, not having the patience apparently to get through the whole thing. I’d like to finish it this time, while the experiences are still fresh.

I have updated the Day 12 post with lots of images I had intended to put in but must have skipped, publishing while forgetting that I had not included them. Accordingly, I have upped the publish date of that post so it appears more recently.

Our first full day in Greece belied some of the opinions we had formed the previous night. While we still concluded that this was a Shanghai-type city, we did very much enjoy our walk south of the hotel to the area just north of the Acropolis.

From the hotel, we headed to Omonia Station, from which a street called Athinas runs south to Monastiraki Station. On Athinas midway between the two stations is a heavy market area. Here we discovered a pattern in Athens: shops of a certain type clump together. If you see one pet shop, you are bound to see several others nearby. Same with meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, spices, jewelry, nuts, plants, electronics, shirts, bags, and so forth. The central market area has nut-sellers on the street; we tried some cashews from one, but they were not very tasty. Go down one lane, there are meat sellers; another lane featured fish; across the street, produce; down the street, spice sellers.

We enjoyed the walk, but didn’t buy much. It was more for sights & sounds. An interesting side note: every once in a while you will see something titled a “sex shop”; it’s not what you may think, it’s just a DVD shop selling porn, unless they had extra rooms in the back selling more (we didn’t check). But we did notice that street kiosks often featured R- and even X-rated material out in plain view. (We also saw a few prostitutes here and there later in the evening.)

We got to Monastiraki Station, at the center of a large shop district, just north of the Acropolis.

We were hungry for lunch, but doubted the cleanliness of many of the eateries we passed, so we opted for some McDonald’s. Again, there was the pushiness. Surprisingly, one of the counter people told me to wait because others had come before me, despite my being ready to order when they were not–and just a few seconds later, the other counter person tool the order of people who had just walked in and pushed by me. Go figure.

The kitchen was upstairs, and a dumb waiter carried finished orders down. We went upstairs to eat the lunch, and were not too impressed with the room, frankly. Despite no-smoking signs throughout, people smoked freely (apparently the norm here, as well as many places in Europe). Beggars walked through the dining room; we were approached three times. When not soliciting free change, they took leftover food and drink from the tables. One of them was a small boy with a pink backpack selling lighters and tissues. His mother (or whomever the woman with him was) sat idly in the square, collecting what he got.

We also noticed another thing about Athens: stray dogs. They are everywhere. Most of them are larger dogs, ranging from Labrador Retriever-size and upwards. They could even be seen at the Acropolis and in many of the ancient sites.

We then went down some of the shopping streets, which abound in the area around Monastiraki. There’s a lot of everything, including the inevitable tourist-oriented shops, but thee were surprisingly many jewelry shops. It was here that we spied the Hermion/Epmeion restaurant, taking note of it so we could return later.

At the end of one of the streets, we found the entrance to the Ancient Agora, and bought our tickets there. You can buy tickets separately, but the best bet is the €12 strip of all-attractions tickets, which gets you in to the Acropolis but also has several miscellaneous tickets which can be used to enter all of the smaller sites spotting the area. I’d recommend that.

The Ancient Agora (agora: a public open space used for assemblies and markets) was very nice, and this is where Sachi and I really began to relax and enjoy. It is essentially a park, but is spotted with all manner of ruins and ancient statues.

Walk up a hill and you are at the Temple of Hephaestus (Vulcan), a beautiful Greek temple which is well-preserved.

On one side of the agora is the Stoa of Attalos, a reconstructed building which houses a museum of artifacts ranging from a 6,000 piece of sculpture, to more modern but still ancient pottery, statues, coins–even a child’s tomb and an infant’s potty trainer from a few thousand years ago.

Nearby were other sites, such as Hadrian’s Library and the Roman Agora. These sites are all over the northern Acropolis area, and are interesting to walk around. Just loads of ruins you just happen to note date back 2,500 or so. Jacketed sentinels shout at anyone touching or sitting on anything they aren’t supposed to. And there were always the wonderful views, with the Acropolis dominating it all.

Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel, and in the evening, returned to that restaurant we found; it was excellent (see review here).

When Bush was selecting Supreme Court justices, conservatives usually cast it in the light of “this is the president’s choice, and Congress is only there to advise.”

Somehow I don’t think they still have the same attitude now. But they will when a Republican comes back in to office.