Here’s a rundown of the disability-related provisions contained in the proposed stimulus bill that was unveiled today. This information comes from the summary released by the House leadership:

• IDEA Special Education: $13 billion for formula grants to increase the federal share of special education costs and prevent these mandatory costs from forcing states to cut other areas of education.
• IDEA Infants and Families: $600 million for formula grants to help states serve children with disabilities age 2 and younger.
• Vocational Rehabilitation State Grants: $500 million for state formula grants for construction and rehabilitation of facilities to help persons with disabilities prepare for gainful employment.
• Payments to Disabled and Elderly: $4.2 billion to help 7.5 million low-income disabled and elderly individuals with rising costs by providing an additional SSI payment in 2009 equal to the average monthly federal payment under the program (approximately $450 for an individual and $630 for a couple). This one-time payment will serve as an immediate economic stimulus as half of SSI recipients have no other form of income and the other half average outside income of less than $450 per month.
• Social Security Administration Disability Backlog and Claims Processing: $500 million to help the Social Security Administration process a steep rise in disability and retirement claims, getting people their benefits faster, and preventing existing backlogs from getting worse. Within this total, $40 million will help SSI upgrade health information technology.
• Centers for Independent Living: $200 million for state formula grants to help individuals with disabilities continue to live in their communities.

The disability community may also find other provisions interesting, such as the $87 billion to shore up Medicaid and the $6 billion to improve broadband access in rural and underserved areas. These details will almost certainly change in the course of subsequent negotiations, but I would be surprised if the final bill didn’t include these items in one form or another.

A lot of us who have grown up in the Midwest have probably known someone like Walt Kowalski, the gruff protagonist of Gran Torino. He was the blue-collar retiree who lived down the street; the one who was always working in his garage and had a tendency to drink too many beers at the summer block party. He was the guy your parents avoided after he told one too many racist jokes while holding court on his front porch. Eastwood plays Walt with a kind of grumpy xenophobia that, the audience is supposed to surmise, obscures Walt’s true decency and kind-heartedness.

The movie has been garnering a lot of positive buzz and it is by no means terrible. But after the credits began to roll, I wondered what the fuss was about. The movie unfolds with all the subtlety of an after-school special. Meet old racist white guy. See white guy bitch about his Hmong neighbors. See white guy inadvertently come to the rescue of his neighbors. See white guy start to turn into an old softie who mentors the nerdy Hmong kid in the ways of home maintenance. But then the movie swings dramatically in tone without much of a set-up. Also hampering matters is the flat delivery of most of Eastwood’s co-stars. After eliciting some truly marvelous performances in Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, I’m not sure why he was content with such amateurish performances here.

I was hoping for more, especially considering that the script was written by someone who used to call Minnesota home. I’m hoping that Clint has one more great movie in him because it would be a shame if Gran Torino became his coda.

Salon has a sobering itemized list of the wreckage left in the wake of the Bush administration. A few of the most egregious examples:

• Number of manufacturing jobs lost since 2000: 3.78 million

• Increase in number of unemployed workers from 2001 to 2008: 4 million, a jump of 2.7 percent in the unemployment rate
• Cost to conduct the Iraq war per month: $12 billion
• Amount the Bush administration estimated the war would cost from start to finish: $60 billion
• Increase in the amount that the average employee pays toward employer-provided healthcare since 2000: 120 percent

And over at the New York Times, both Frank Rich and Dahlia Lithwick deliver a couple great op-ed pieces urging the country not to simply turn the page on the Bush years and move on. I have to admit that I haven’t had much patience for those who advocated trying administration officials on war crimes. After reading these articles, I’m a little less certain of my position. We Americans like to think of ourselves as eternal optimists who can shrug off our past failures; we aren’t inclined to sit around and deconstruct our fuck-ups. And in some ways, that’s probably a pretty healthy component for a national psyche to possess. But the last eight years have been bad; probably worse than we realize in our current shellshocked state. This administration has buried a lot of secrets that need to have a light shined on them, even as we look forward to a new political era.

I just passed the 100-friend milepost on Facebook. I’m expecting a suitable-for-framing certificate to arrive shortly in the mail. You know, the one that says “Congratulations! At least 100 people in this world are willing to admit they know you. Now do you feel validated?”

Many of my new Facebook friends ask me about my profile picture, which happens to be the one of me and then-Senator Obama. And every time, I’m tempted to make up some story about how the photo was taken after my job interview with the President-Elect for the position of Undersecretary of Gimp Affairs, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Shortly after I started my new position, I realized that my colleagues might be wondering about the strange beeping noises sometimes emanating from my office. The co-workers in my former division had grown largely accustomed to my vent’s assorted alarms in the seven years I had worked there, but my new associates are still getting to know me and my many quirks. I sent out a brief e-mail explaining my vent beeps when the tube is disconnected from me and is usually no cause for concern. I also pointed out that disconnecting me from the vent is a quick and efficient way to silence me, should they feel so inclined.

In time, I might teach a few of them to drive my wheelchair. My standard response to people who get nervous about crashing me or similarly unjustified fears: “Take a good look at me. You’re going to have to try really hard to mess me up any further.”