doubting thom

We’re here in NYC. Originally scheduled for a 9:00 Peter Pan bus, we got to the bus station at 8, and were able to use our tickets for seats on a Greyhound that was just leaving, so we ended up in the city an hour early. We checked in at the hotel (though we had a bit of a mixup with the room type; I had reserved a penthouse room and they put us in a “deluxe,” actually a little larger, but on a lower floor where we could hear people walking around above us, with a shower and no tub, and no terrace access; we did end up moving to a penthouse room, which is much quieter if teensy tiny). We’ve had lunch at a little hole in the wall cafe directly across the street, and just stopped by the hotel mezzanine where espresso drinks, coffee and tea are complementary 24 hours a day (nice, since the in-room bottles of Evian are $4.00 each), and have stopped briefly in the business center, with free 24-hour Internet access so of course I had to post (we also saw some wireless access points by the elevator, but hadn’t ended up bringing along either laptop); I’ll also be able to transfer my photos here and email them to myself, something I was worried about since I only have a single 32-Mb Memory Stick in the camera, which tops out at around 30 photos or so at high resolution.

We’re about to head back up to the room for a brief lie-down, and then we’re off to some galleries before seeing Rufus tonight.

Today really sucked. In what frustratingly looks like a pattern of suckiness–at least workwise–today ranked right up there near the top. If the year were a college of suck, today would be graduating summa cum laude.

I had a phone conversation with one of those stereotypical foreign service junior officers scrambling for tenure, trying to convince me that his project–for which we’d already gone well above the call of duty–was so important that I needed to pull my staff off of everything else in order to continue to work on it, not-so-subtly suggesting (in fact, practically threatening) that if I thought I had work of higher priority, he’d contact the Undersecretary for his bureau and have her call the director of mine in order to set my priorities straight. Yawn. Then I got roped into a two-hour stretch of being available as a “coach” for other employees required to take an online exam; I had to give up my lunch for it, and then no one even showed up. Additional last-minute unforeseen meetings and tasks, exacerbated by the absence of two of my key employees for the day–kept me from getting to my own scheduled work until after the official close of business.

When I finally left, just barely in time to get to the Metro to pick Jeff up, I was still in cranky work-mind. Fortunately, his own exuberance about the four-day Manhattan vacation rubbed off on me pretty quickly. Now we’re all packed and ready to get some shuteye in preparation for our weekend, which begins Friday morning, in just a few short hours.

I first saw a question about this on another blog, though I can’t remember where. Then today Commissioner Moose, who also works for a government agency, brought it up as well.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, the primary mission of which “is to safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing.” Prohibited personnel practices refer to a variety of discriminatory acts based on a number of classifications. Until recently, sexual orientation has been one of these classifications. Witness this section from the previous version of the OSC’s web site, courtesy of the Wayback Machine at archive.org:

What is the OSC’s policy about allegations of discrimination?

Race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicapping condition. The OSC is statutorily authorized to investigate allegations of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or handicapping condition (see (1), under “Prohibited Personnel Practices,” above). However, procedures for investigating such complaints have already been established in federal agencies and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Therefore, to avoid duplicating those investigative processes, the OSC follows a general policy of deferring complaints involving discrimination to those agencies’ procedures.

Sexual orientation, marital status, political affiliation. Allegations of discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status, and political affiliation are not within the jurisdiction of the EEOC. Such allegations, however, may be prohibited personnel practices or other violations of law subject to investigation by the OSC.

Now see the same section from the recently revised OSC web site:

What is the OSC’s policy about allegations of discrimination?

Race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicapping condition. The OSC is statutorily authorized to investigate allegations of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or handicapping condition (see (1), under “Prohibited Personnel Practices,” above). However, procedures for investigating such complaints have already been established in federal agencies and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Therefore, to avoid duplicating those investigative processes, the OSC follows a general policy of deferring complaints involving discrimination to those agencies’ procedures.

Marital status, political affiliation. Allegations of discrimination based on marital status, and political affiliation are not within the jurisdiction of the EEOC. Such allegations, however, may be prohibited personnel practices or other violations of law subject to investigation by the OSC.

Note that “sexual orientation” is no longer included among the allegations of discrimination the OSC will investigate. This despite the fact that Executive Order 13087, which prohibits discrimination by the federal government on the basis of sexual orientation, is still in effect.

What gives? And why has this been done so silently, and with no apparent ripples in the media or among gay and lesbian advocacy groups? And is it a coincidence that this happened on the watch of the brand-new head of the OSC–Scott J. Bloch, formerly deputy director and counsel to the task force for faith-based [emphasis mine] and community initiatives at John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice?

OK, gay Republicans, the gauntlet has been thrown… your man has decided that “if necessary” means “now.” The press is reporting this morning that Bush has decided to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. So what are you going to do now, Log Cabin? That “seat at the table” you kept crowing about turns out to have been nothing more than a bowl on the floor, empty even of scraps.

The Washington Post reports that “Republican officials said Bush’s decision to proceed now was driven partly by his desire to start the general election campaign on a fresh issue, at a time when his credibility has been battered by questions about prewar warnings of unconventional weapons in Iraq, as well as doubts raised by Democrats about his National Guard service.”

Well, isn’t that great. They’ve finally realized, as Bush’s ratings slip, that the public is wising up to his shortcomings as a self-described “war president,” so they’re going to scapegoat gays and lesbians. Gay marriage will be the “fresh issue” they hope to use to divert the public’s attention back away from Bush’s miserable showing on the economy, the failure of his nationbuilding in Iraq, his unprecedented profligacy in terms of federal spending, his pandering to big business and anti-environment concerns… the list goes on.

Can’t find a job? Worried about your children’s future in a world of massive debt? Disgusted by the ever-increasing toll on human life and funnelling of U.S. billions to Halliburton caused by the situation in Iraq? Don’t worry. Be happy. You’re better than those nasty queers, after all. Stick it to them, and everything else will turn out all right, doncha know?

hear the clip

This morning, I cancelled my subscription to audblog. They only bill every three months, so I tend to forget about them until I’m surprised by a PayPal receipt, one of which came last week. Granted, it’s only $3/month, but my last audio post was in October and I’ve only posted a half dozen altogether, while no one among the couple hundred blogs I follow regularly has used the service in quite a while, either. And I never really found the right application for audio posts; I usually wrote them out beforehand, so I wouldn’t sound like a complete idiot and usually transcribed them in the end, anyway, so effectively they were just like my other written posts.

Jeff and I are counting down the days until our four-day Valentine’s/Presidents’ Day weekend in New York City. Five days from now we’ll be sitting just two rows away from the stage at the Rufus Wainwright concert, Saturday afternoon we’ll get Wicked with Kristin Chenoweth and Idine Menzel, and Sunday evening we’ll visit the monsters, humans and puppets who live down on Avenue Q.

Unfortunately, the “Bravehearts: Men in Skirts” exhibition at the Met we’d have liked to visit closes today. In conjunction with that closing, the New York Times reported that about 100 men took to the Manhattan streets today wearing minis, midis and tutus to draw attention to the bias in our society against skirts on men.

So… what else should we do and see in the Big Apple next weekend?

Thanks for nothing, John Kerry. The Boston Globe reported today that the current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president yesterday “vowed yesterday to fight back against Republicans seeking to tie him to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry, and did not rule out supporting a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.” He went on to say, “I have the same position Vice President Dick Cheney has. They ought to talk to Dick Cheney, their own vice president, when they [Republicans] start playing games with this, and we’ll find out how political and how craven they are.” Does Kerry not know that Cheney, as reported just a few weeks ago, has recently said that he would support a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage if the president deems it necessary?

There’s hardly a Democrat left in the race that doesn’t make me sick to my stomach. Yes, we need to get Bush out of the White House, but even the bulk of the Democratic candidates gladly would sell me out and relegate me to second-class citizen status, at best, to get there in his place.

And if the news about the car weren’t exciting enough, when our server brought our bread and butter at CPK this evening, there was an even number of slices on the plate. My observations in the past had led me to a hypothesis that restaurant policy is to provide only (n×2)-1 slices where n = the number of people at the table, meaning that you’re always a slice short of a fair distribution. But tonight we both got two full slices.

And more than two pats of butter per slice, when the usual distribution usually is about a 1:1 ratio. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

When I got home from work this afternoon, before I went to pick Jeff up at the Metro I called my mother to see how she’s doing. After we chatted about some other things, she asked whether I’d heard anything about my car, so I told her about Jay having gotten a Prius just last week, despite only having ordered it two to three weeks earlier. I also noted that I’d spoken to my dealer after that, and had been told that a shipment of 300 (for the entire mid-Atlantic region) was expected soon, but that they didn’t yet know what their specific allocation would be; however, he went on to tell me that someone who ordered a car two weeks before I did was getting his next (meaning this) week, so that he was hopeful I’d be getting one this month.

While I was explaining this to Mom, the call waiting beeped. I looked at the caller ID to see “Alexandria Toyota,” so I told Mom that I’d call her right back. My salesman, Sam, told me that my car–a silver (my first choice), fully-loaded Prius–is on a ship due to dock in New York on February 19, and should be here in Virginia a week or so later, depending on weather and other vagaries. I’ll likely have my new car more or less around the 29th day of February. Keep your fingers crossed.

What a nice ending to what has been a rather rocky week (though with another wonderful high point Wednesday evening, to be sure).

Jeff called a few minutes later to let me know he was a little early at the Metro station so had gone inside to Borders, and I suggested we have dinner at the CPK next to the bookstore. When I got to the mall, I said, “We’re leaving New York on the 16th; guess who’s arriving there on the 19th?” When he answered, “I don’t know… who?” I practically shrieked giddily in reply, “It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s my Prius!”

Yay! I’m so excited. And now I need to come up with a name for the forthcoming four-wheeled addition to the family.