Bark Bark Woof Woof: July 2008

Showing newest 70 of 196 posts from July 2008. Show older posts

Showing newest 70 of 196 posts from July 2008. Show older posts

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Better Late Than Never

Beantown Girl had a birthday this month, but she doesn't like to make a big fuss over it. So this will have to do.

ImageChef.com - Custom comment codes for MySpace, Hi5, Friendster and more

Frogmarch Prospects

If the House Judiciary Committee's previous history with contempt citations against Bush administration stonewallers is any guide, Karl Rove will not have to worry about doing time in the jail cell in the basement of the Capitol.

At any rate, I'd much rather Mr. Rove got busted for something like this.

Just Wondering

Do Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have grounds to sue the McCain campaign for using their likenesses without their permission?

Career Advancement

Headline in the New York Times: For White House, Hiring Is Political

On May 17, 2005, the White House’s political affairs office sent an e-mail message to agencies throughout the executive branch directing them to find jobs for 108 people on a list of “priority candidates” who had “loyally served the president.”

“We simply want to place as many of our Bush loyalists as possible,” the White House emphasized in a follow-up message, according to a little-noticed passage of a Justice Department report released Monday about politicization in the department’s hiring of civil-service prosecutors and immigration officials.

The report, the subject of a Senate oversight hearing Wednesday, provided a window into how the administration sought to install politically like-minded officials in positions of government responsibility, and how the efforts at times crossed customary or legal limits.

[...]

“We pledge 7 slots within 40 days and 40 nights. Let the games begin!” Jan Williams, then the White House’s liaison to the Justice Department, said in an e-mail message two days later.

Within a week, messages between Ms. Williams and the White House showed, she began trying to match the White House-vetted names of people who had been “helpful to the president” — like campaign volunteers — with openings for immigration judges, positions that are supposed to be filled using politically neutral, merit-based criteria.

If you make your pledge before midnight, you also get the Armstrong Williams DVD collection, and they'll also include this lovely set of matching steak knives as a bonus!

Spare me the argument that "every administration does it." That's like excusing driving 120 mph on the interstate when the speed limit is 70 and everybody else is nudging 75. Besides, when you frame it in the language of "loyally serving the president," you're getting into the creepy territory of "Come and kneel before Zod!"

Running in Place

Jake Tapper joins the Presumptuous-Talk Express:

"John McCain right now, he's spending an awful lot of time talking about me," Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said today in Rolla, Mo. "You notice that? I haven’t seen an ad yet where he talks about what he’s gonna do. And the reason is because those folks know they don’t have any good answers, they know they’ve had their turn over the last eight years and made a mess of things. They know that you’re not real happy with them."

Obama continued: "And so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me. So what they’re saying is, ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he’s... doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, you know, he’s got a, he’s got a funny name.'

[...]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does it not seem as if Obama just said McCain and his campaign -- presumably the "they" in this construct -- are saying that Obama shouldn't be elected because he's a risk because he's black and has a foreign-sounding name?

[...]

I've seen racism in campaigns before -- I've seen it against Obama in this campaign (more from Democrats than Republicans, at this point, I might add) and I've seen it against McCain in South Carolina in 2000, when his adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget was alleged, by the charming friends and allies of then-Gov. George W. Bush, to have been a McCain love-child with an African-American woman.

What I have not seen is it come from McCain or his campaign in such a way to merit the language Obama used today. Pretty inflammatory.

Mr. Tapper would seem to prefer that Sen. Obama, like all Democratic Party nominees before him, not respond to the attacks from the McCain campaign. But Mr. Obama insists on standing up to them. It's like he doesn't know his place.

Oh, and if Mr. Obama and his campaign is too politically savvy to come out and say outright that the McCain campaign and his minions are doing the racist/xenophobic dog-whistles, a lot of other people are.

Tigers Update

The Tigers trade Pudge to the Yankees for a reliever.

Ivan Rodriguez will go down in history as the player who helped turn the Tigers into a winning franchise again. On Wednesday, the Tigers decided that their best shot at winning this year was to trade him.

In a move that ended an era in Detroit, the Tigers sent the future Hall of Fame catcher to the Yankees for reliever Kyle Farnsworth. It was a deal with fittingly mixed emotions for a club that has been creeping towards the deadline as a potential buyer or seller. And though the Tigers bought the relief help they wanted, they had a keen appreciation for what they gave up.

"As I told him, I will be in Cooperstown the day he's inducted," president/general manager Dave Dombrowski said. "But it's also a situation for us where with Brandon Inge, we think he's ready to be our everyday catcher. Our plans were to make him our everyday catcher going into the future. He's ready for it. So it's a position where for us, we have somebody we think can step up and do that, and we also helped our bullpen, which we think is an area we needed to address."

Thanks, Pudge, for your dedication and hustle -- not to mention great catching -- and good luck to Brandon Inge as the next Bill Freehan.

Meanwhile, the Tigers beat Cleveland 14-12 in extra innings.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Presume This

Dana Milbank column, headlined President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour in today's Washington Post:

Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.

Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.

Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president's. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid $10,000 or more to have photos taken with him. His schedule for the day, announced Monday night, would have made Dick Cheney envious...

"Presumptuous" is the new "uppity."

Grammar Patrol

Driving home from work, I passed this sign:

NOW HIRING
SHEETMETAL TECH'S
AIRFRAME TECH'S
English majors need not apply.

Do the Frogmarch

Congress holds Karl Rove in contempt.

The House Judiciary Committee has just voted to hold Karl Rove in contempt for failing to respond to a subpoena to the committee.

The final vote was 20 ayes and 14 nays. With Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) voting "absolutely, 100% aye."

In a memo on the Full Committee meeting, Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) summarized the facts surrounding Rove's refusal to even appear before the committee and assert executive privilege:
Mr. Rove has refused even to appear before the Committee and assert whatever privileges that he believes may apply to his testimony, relying on excessively broad and legally insufficient claims of "absolute immunity" - never recognized by any court - in declining to appear.

Odds are that he will never see the inside of a courtroom, much less a jail cell, but hey, I can dream, can't I?

Showtime

Strike another blow for liberty.

We had never heard of a member of Congress holding a fundraiser at a Las Vegas burlesque nightclub... until now.

And the culprit is card-carrying conservative Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.). The same Pete Sessions who scolded Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake for forcing "their liberal values upon the rest of the country" after their infamous 2004 Super Bowl halftime striptease.

But that was then.

Now we learn that Sessions held a racey (for Washington) fundraiser for his leadership political action committee last year at Ivan Kane's Forty Deuce nightclub in Sin City. A description of the club on its web site, which features a scantily clad dancer, reads: "A blue light silhouettes the sax man as one of the sexy, sensual dancers slowly slinks down the stairs to the stage and leans out over the crowd, holding on with only a handful of the world-famous curtain of pearls! Jaws drop and drinks are ignored as the tempo picks up and the dancer steps up, shedding boa, gown and gloves towards the electrifying finale."

Sounds like that dancer was forcing something on the audience, and it wasn't just her liberal values (Bah dum bum). Larry Craig couldn't make it; he was stuck at the airport.

Thanks, you're a great crowd; I'll be here all week.

Tigers Update

Still over .500 after beating the Indians 8-5 in Cleveland. They play there tonight and Thursday, then head down here -- to Tampa -- to play the Rays, who are the AL East division leaders... but not the best in the league. That honor belongs to the Angels (!).

Stevens Indicted

The indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens (R) of Alaska is probably not exactly what the GOP was looking for.

The indictment of Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens on charges that he lied about accepting gifts from an oil contractor only adds to his party's already bleak electoral prospects in November, and not simply because it could cost the GOP a Senate seat that should be safe.

While Stevens has vowed to fight charges and, through a spokesman, to move "full steam ahead" with his re-election bid, he's received little support from Alaska's Republican governor and no comment yet from his own GOP leader in the Capitol.

His indictment, though, could knock Republicans off message just as party leaders hoped to gain traction on one of the few issues in which voters solidly side with them: producing more domestic oil.

Stevens is the single most prominent advocate of oil drilling in protected areas, and charges that he took more than a quarter-million dollars worth of unreported gifts from oil services contractor Veco Corp. and its executives will play right into Democratic efforts to paint Republicans as a party captive to Big Oil.

According NPR, the Democrats are not gloating -- "it's a sad day" -- and I think they're right on that score. It stinks when any elected representative, regardless of party, is accused of this kind of thing.

If you want to see a reason why election turnout is anemic, here's one reason. And Bryan at Why Now? makes a good point:

This is one of the many reasons the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve shouldn’t be opened - these people just can’t control their greed.

There's A Word For It

The Washington Post on the McCain ad about Obama visiting the troops in Germany.

For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.

The word they're looking for is "lie." And yet the campaign intends to keep perpetrating the lie because, as a lot of pundits freely admit, it sells among the "non-college educated voters."

So basically the McCain campaign believes that the only people who will vote for them are the ones who are either too dumb to listen to the truth, or who hear the truth but believe the lie because the lie is much more exciting. There's a word for that: it's "cynicism."

Not that there's anything new about this. At all.

It is nice, however, to see that a presidential campaign is being called out for this lie on the front page of the Washington Post. It's about time.

Quake

A 5.6 in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles knocks stuff off shelves, and Californians take it in stride.

At the Crazy Coyote Mexican Grill, server Maria Ruiz, 21, said she "just kind of like froze" when the shaking started. The picture frames on the wall started moving and then she "heard what sounded like a really loud rattle," Ruiz said. In the kitchen, cups started falling over. "I was pretty scared," she said.

By about 12:15 p.m., things were back to normal in the restaurant, and she had to get off the phone to serve customers.

As a lot of my life-long California relatives tell me, it's just something you get used to...like hurricanes in Florida and volcanoes in Seattle.

If you have a good quake story, share it here.

The Liberals Made Him Do It

Leonard Pitts, Jr. on the shootings at the church in Tennessee:

Your humble correspondent has never been much for ideology. I find it hard to believe liberals have a monopoly on truth. Same for conservatives. And frankly, as far as I'm concerned, any worldview that can be summed up in a word probably isn't much of a worldview.

But it is increasingly the case that what we are being presented isn't a debate between competing worldviews so much as it is a morality play: righteous good versus unholy evil. Conservatives have cast themselves in the former role, leaving liberals the latter. It's a libel to which liberals have responded as the bug does to the windshield: splat.

Unable to say what they believe or to frame it any compelling way, they have allowed themselves to be defined instead from without, standing ineffectual in a mudstorm of invective. They are, the propaganda goes, effete, unpatriotic, unstable, un-American, anti-God, evil, and the source of a voter's every problem, down to and including the death of his goldfish and the breakup of his marriage.

It is so over the top, so patently ridiculous, it's almost funny. Until you remember that dehumanizing people inevitably has consequences.

That's what Knoxville is, a consequence.

No, conservatives did not cause this bloodbath. Jim Adkisson allegedly did. But in telling him ''liberals'' were the source of his every disaffection and woe, conservatives certainly validated the hatred and madness that drove him.

It would be a fitting tribute to those who were lost in Knoxville if this tragedy gave the authors of the ongoing morality play cause for pause -- and reflection. Or is accountability yet another lost conservative value?

As someone noted in a comment at another blog, no one wants censorship; what is needed is responsible judgment.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Crash

My HP Pavilion laptop ground to a halt today. The last thing it muttered before I pulled the plug was "Operating System Not Found."

I have 73 days left on the warranty and I am shipping it back to HP as soon as they get the box to me.

Fortunately, I did a full back-up last Friday night, and I was able to go in and extract all of my current writing projects, including my latest tome that is in process.

If you're going to shake your finger at me and say "Shoulda bought a Mac" or something along those lines, now is not the time.

Oh, and if you're wondering how I'm able to write this, let's just say that I worked it out.

Tomorrow, There'll Be Sun

Please read this first-hand account of the shootings at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church by Bekitty, a regular commenter at Shakesville.

If you can read it without it touching you, I feel sorry for you.

Bleah

I had a headache all day yesterday at work, and I'm still a little rocky this morning, so blogging and everything else will be a little limited today as I take a day to get better. Yes, I'm drinking plenty of fluids.

It's nothing serious, but better safe than sorry.

Raising Kaine

Rumors are flying that Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is under very serious consideration for the veep spot on the Obama ticket.

My guess is that this spate of rumors is a trial balloon to gauge the reaction. It seems to have worked.

I'd be really surprised -- and confused -- if Sen. Obama chooses Gov. Kaine. I can't figure out what he brings to the ticket other than a conservative tilt to the ticket that seems to be gauged only to win the election without seeing beyond that, which seems to run counter to Mr. Obama's own expressed desires for a running mate.

My guess is that if Gov. Kaine is letting this news go forth, he's either being incautious about who his staff talks to and therefore has just knocked himself out of contention, or this is a feint to draw attention away from the real choice. At least I hope so.

The Shootings in Tennessee

There will always be more questions than answers when something like this shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville happens, and as is always the case, people are reaching conclusions based on their perceptions and agendas.

The fact that the accused shooter, Jim Adkisson, targeted a church known for supporting liberal values such as equality for women and gay marriage and that he had a lot of right-wing literature in his house are being used by both sides of the political spectrum to play up the evils of the other side. Some right-wing bloggers are wondering if the UU church was a "gun-free zone" and that it wouldn't have happened if some of the parishioners had been packing heat. All that does is demonstrate a woeful lack of knowledge about the UU's; they might as well ask for a ham sandwich at a bar mitzvah. And no doubt there are those on the left who are seizing on the fact that Mr. Adkisson was reading Bill O'Reilly as reason enough to get him off the air and use the occasion to accuse people like him of promoting such actions. The righties are going to cover to say that just because the accused read the books doesn't mean he was influenced by them, which is a valid argument...but then it makes you wonder why the authors bothered to write the books in the first place. Censorship serves no purpose other than reinforce the paranoid view that there are things the authorities don't want us to know.

In the end, no one yet knows what pushed Mr. Adkisson to snap Sunday morning. What was the trigger, so to speak, that moved him to action rather than just sitting around his house fuming about those damn liberals and queers? He won't say, probably because he doesn't know himself. That should be reason enough for the speculators and prognosticators to stop looking for someone else to blame.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Novak Has Brain Tumor

Columnist Robert Novak has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and is in a Boston hospital awaiting test results.

I wish him the best.

HT to TPM.

Question of the Day

People are lined up around the block to see movies like The Dark Knight and the other summer blockbusters, but for those of us who don't like going to a movie gigaplex and sharing a theatre with a bunch of ill-mannered teenagers, ringing cell phones, and screaming babies, there's always the little gems that come and go so that you have to wait for them on HBO or some such. But they're worth the wait. This weekend (and last), I treated myself to a little gem of a film from 2000 called The Dish, which tells the story of the people who manned the radio telescope in Parkes, Australia, that picked up the TV signals of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon on July 20, 1969 and sent them around the world. Even though it was the highest-grossing film in Australia in 2000, nobody I know has even heard of it. So...

What film have you seen recently that deserves more attention?

Another McCain Flip-Flop

This time it's on affirmative action. John McCain was for it before he was against it.

Just add this one to the list.

Whack-A-Smear

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report keeps up with the smears so you don't have to.

The first is the basis of the McCain campaign’s new television ad, which argues that Obama blew off wounded troops to go to the gym, because the Pentagon “wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.” This is [...] a blatant and disgusting lie.

The second is an email that’s making the rounds in far-right circles, ostensibly written by a National Guardsman stationed in Afghanistan.

[...]

When the email arrives in your inbox from your crazed, right-wing family member, feel free to set the record straight. It may not do any good, but it’s probably good to have the information on hand anyway.

Steve must have the same family members I do.

Train to Nowhere

The as-yet unfinished Metrorail here in South Florida has yet another plan heading for a dead end.

If commissioners want to build the so-called Orange Line -- expanding Metrorail to the north, the west and through the transportation hub near the airport -- Miami-Dade needs to come up with another $9.4 billion over the next 30 years.

That's $9.4 billion -- with a ''b'' -- on top of the property, sales and gas taxes, fares and parking fees and federal and state grants that are already supporting the deficit-plagued transit agency.

To fill that hole, commissioners were going to have to raise fares and parking fees; increase the gas tax by two cents a gallon and pony up $5.4 billion in new property taxes over the next 30 years.

[...]

While transit agencies around the country are raising fares to deal with the crush of new passengers and the rising cost of fuel, Miami-Dade commissioners stuck their heads in the sand.

So what happens when the regulators take a look at this $9.4 billion plan and ask the inevitable next question: ''Who's agreeing to implement these fare hikes and tax increases?''

Well, uh...

Remember, this is the same set of federal analysts who called out last year's plan as utterly unrealistic and ridiculous.

So why submit a plan that is doomed to fail? Politics, naturally. Six commissioners are up for reelection next month.

Politics never seems to have an energy shortage.

Say What?

TPM via the Salon.com archives (February 20, 2007) reminds us that John McCain did the double-talk express on the the Surge back when it was first being proposed.

A war veteran and presidential contender for 2008, McCain seemed to be squarely in the president's corner during the Senate debate.

In fact, McCain has increasingly hedged his position on the surge, showing full support for Bush's plan one moment and then pivoting at another moment to point out grievous tactical errors he says are being made by the White House. For example, in front of a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute in January, McCain said that while the president was sending the minimum number of soldiers to Baghdad needed to make the plan work, the plan would indeed work. Then, on the Senate floor on Feb. 8, he announced that he was "very doubtful that we have enough troops" there to get the job done. Furthermore, while Bush agreed to an unconventional arrangement in which command for the surge will be split between U.S. and Iraqi military leaders, McCain warned the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 23 that he knew of "no successful military operation where you have dual command." He has also suggested the Iraqis might not contribute adequately in the operation to secure Baghdad.

[...]

At times, McCain has come across as one of the Senate's harshest critics of the surge plan's tactics, stopping just short of predicting failure in Baghdad. He has certainly been far more critical of its tactical aspects than Bush's other main ally in the Senate, Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, who has stuck to unflagging endorsements of Bush's war policy.

Nowadays he tells you that he was before the surge before it was the surge, that he says he is in favor of timetables -- and then he says he never said it...

Let me know if you can figure out what he really means.

Kristol: Be Afraid

William Kristol is afraid that Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress could actually win.

I read a report of a fund-raising letter from Obama on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, arguing that “We must have a deadlock-proof Democratic majority.”

Yikes.

So, the idea that a Democratic president might have a Democratic Congress, and they might actually pass some legislation -- just like the Republicans did during the first six years of the Bush administration -- fills him with fear?

One could only hope.

Frankly, if the last two years of Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are any guide, I don't give them that much credit for being able to work with anyone, including a president of their own party. As it is, they'll be so busy cleaning up their own mess of the last two years that a President Obama will have to take a number before they get around to actually doing anything that he wants. By that time it will time to run for re-election again.

So while Mr. Kristol may mock the Obama "got hope?" bumper stickers, I think that it's meant to suggest that one can only hope that the Democrats perform as well as Mr. Kristol is afraid that they will.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Songs of Summer

The Beach Boys in concert in 1964.

Quote of the Day

From John McCain yesterday:

Good morning. I'm John McCain, and this week the presidential contest was a long-distance affair, with my opponent touring various continents and arriving yesterday in Paris. With all the breathless coverage from abroad, and with Senator Obama now addressing his speeches to 'the people of the world,' I'm starting to feel a little left out. Maybe you are too.

Sheesh. You want some cheese with that whine? (As Bob notes, Phil Gramm was right; we have become a nation of whiners.)

What's doubly ironic is that -- as I'm sure everyone has noted -- it was John McCain's goading, gulling, teasing, and prodding that got Barack Obama to go overseas in the first place. Now that he's done it, here's McCain complaining that he's alone and feeling blue.

Didn't see that coming.

Sunday Reading

- Buff Beach: No, not a place with muscle boys in Speedos... at least not the Speedos. Haulover Beach in Miami celebrates an anniversary.

No one at a Haulover Beach party on Saturday seemed embarrassed that nearly everyone showed up in the same outfit -- their birthday suit.

The party was on Day 2 of a three-part celebration of the 17th anniversary of Haulover's establishment as a ''clothing-optional'' stretch of sand. It also marks a belated observance of National Nude Recreation Week. Festivities continue Sunday.

The activists who worked to get Miami-Dade County to allow them to swim without swimsuits were out in force to mark the occasion.

''We've seen so many people learn to enjoy the beach. It really does feel good,'' said Shirley Mason, one of the early pioneers with the group South Florida Free Beaches that brought nude bathing to Haulover in July 1991.

Mason said she realized the county needed a nude beach when a doctor told her husband that sun and salt water may help treat his painful full-body psoriasis. But they had trouble finding a place to go.

After researching the law and working to raise awareness, Mason's group succeeded in getting the county to designate several hundred yards of Haulover Beach as clothing optional.

But after all her work, on Saturday Mason was one of the only clothed people in sight. She said she had too much organizing to do outside the beach for the party to relax in the buff.

Almost everyone else on the crowded beach was stripped down to bare skin, lounging under umbrellas or soaking up rays for a line-free tan. A picnic, ice-cold margaritas and even a kiosk offering therapeutic massages were all part of the fun-in-the-sun festivities.

Go here for a gallery of pictures...all G-rated.

- I Hope I Get It: That song from Chorus Line echoes through the heads of kids at theatre camp.

In the cozy lobby of what was once a Catskills hotel, nearly 300 children were sitting in chairs and on the floor, crammed in and anxious. It was Day 3 at Stagedoor Manor, a theater camp in Loch Sheldrake, N.Y., and in just a moment, the campers would learn which roles they would play in shows like “Aida” and “Les Misérables.” And the wait — the interminable wait — would be over.

For now, the children, age 10 to 18, were singing “All That Jazz” from “Chicago.” In unison.

Matthew Koplik of Tenafly, N.J., now in his sixth summer at Stagedoor Manor, has suffered through this wait before. “I’m trying not to think about it,” said the 18-year-old aspiring actor, a recent graduate of the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan.

Above his shoulder hung a bulletin board showing celebrities who got their start at Stagedoor Manor: there’s a photo of Natalie Portman and Bryce Dallas Howard in a 1996 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” next to one of a young Zach Braff in “Godspell.” A sign reads: “Before they were stars ... they were YOU!!”

In the fall, Mr. Koplik will enroll in the musical theater program at Emerson College, where administrators at his auditions repeatedly praised Stagedoor. “It’s like the secret handshake,” he said.

The cast lists were posted, prompting a mad but orderly dash. Mr. Koplik was pushed and pulled, finally reaching the front. He scanned the list. Hugging and screaming followed: He had been cast as the lead in “Bat Boy: The Musical.”

The frenzy that many children face to get into the right school is particularly acute for those who aspire to a career in the performing arts, and attending camps can be a steppingstone to Broadway or even Hollywood. The competition among these children, and among the camps vying for their tuition money, is more heated than ever.

Then again, spending the summer riding horses and hiking through the Rocky Mountains was good enough for Darryl Hannah, Jason Ritter (son of John) and Ethan Browne (son of Jackson).

- Frank Rich: How Obama became acting president.

It almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.

He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.

The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”

Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.

[...]

The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

- Doonesbury: Remembering George Carlin.

- Opus: Forget the crime; get to the punishment.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Short Takes

- Goodbye Muddah, Goodbye Faddah: As a former camp counselor, I had my share of homesick kids...and my share of parents who couldn't let their kids go when they went to camp.

- School Board Showdown: Politics trumps the kids -- again -- as the Miami-Dade County Public Schools board deals with budget shortfalls and approaching elections.

- Think You Know John McCain? Think again, says Bob Herbert.

We have a monumental double standard here. Mr. McCain has had trouble in his public comments distinguishing Sunnis from Shiites and had to be corrected in one stunningly embarrassing moment by his good friend Joe Lieberman. He has referred to a Iraq-Pakistan border when the two countries do not share a border.

He declared on CBS that Iraq was the first major conflict after 9/11, apparently forgetting — at least for the moment — about the war in Afghanistan. In that same interview, he credited the so-called surge of U.S. forces in Iraq with bringing about the Anbar Awakening, a movement in which thousands of Sunnis turned on insurgents. He was wrong. The awakening preceded the surge.

More important than these endless gaffes are matters that give us glimpses of the fundamental makeup of the man. A celebrated warrior as a young man, he has always believed that the war in Iraq can (and must) be won. As the author Elizabeth Drew has written: “He didn’t seem to seriously consider the huge costs of the war: financial, personal, diplomatic and to the reputation of the United States around the world.”

[...]

Barack Obama is not the only candidate the voters need to know more about

- Tigers Update: They dropped it in the ninth to the White Sox.

- Как сказать по-русски «lemon»?* GAZ is building a version of the Chrysler Sebring in Russia.

*HT to Pyesetz for the correct translation

- Creative Time Wasting: Phun with physics (cornstarch and sound waves)

Friday, July 25, 2008

Hey, Comcast...

Apparently Comcast is doing more than just delivering cable TV and internet service.

Brandon Dilbeck, 20, a student at the University of Washington, was complaining recently on his blog, Brandon Notices, about Comcast’s practice of posting ads in its on-screen programming guide.

He assumed he was writing for his own benefit. “It feels like nobody ever really reads my blog,” he said. “Nobody has left a comment in months.”

Shortly afterward, he received an e-mail message from Comcast, thanking him for the feedback and adding that it was working on a new interactive guide that might “illuminate the issues that you are currently experiencing.”

Mr. Dilbeck found it all a bit creepy. “The rest of his e-mail may as well have read, ‘Big Brother is watching you,’ ” he said.

But Frank Eliason, digital care manager at Comcast, says he was just trying to help.

Well, then, if that's the case, let's see if that's true.

I have a complaint about Comcast. Last month when I moved into my new house, Comcast came out and installed the new cable box; the old one that they told me to take from my old place wouldn't work. The installer showed up on time on moving day and was very polite, and he got the TV's all hooked up. I was in the middle of telling the movers where to put stuff, so when I signed off on the installation paperwork I didn't have time to sit down and actually turn on the TV in the living room, the one with the fancy remote and cable box that gives me access to HBO. Later that evening I did, and when I hit the "On" button, the cable box came on, but the TV only came on for a moment, then shut off. I tried again; same thing. I checked to see if the remote had been programmed correctly; it had. After two phone calls to the Comcast customer service line and endless attempts at getting it to work, I found the only way to get the TV and cable box to work together was to turn the TV on and off by the power button on the front of it and leave the cable box on all the time. So I called Comcast customer service yet again, and they made an appointment for a service technician to come out and see what the problem was.

The service technician arrived within the appointed time (between 8 and 10 on a Saturday) and it was the same friendly guy who had originally set up the box on moving day. Within a few minutes he discovered the problem: when he had plugged in the TV, he had plugged it into the AC outlet on the back of the cable box instead of the wall outlet. He apologized, I thanked him, and he went on his way.

But when I got my cable bill two weeks later, there was a $28 charge for the service call. What? It had been Comcast's fault that the TV didn't work, not mine. I called the Comcast customer service number and asked them why I should pay for a service call when it wasn't my fault that there was a problem in the first place? The customer service rep was polite but indifferent, and he said the best he could do was note the dispute on my record, they would review it, and if they decided that the charge was unfair, it would show up as a credit on my next bill. Meanwhile, I needed to pay the full amount of the bill or my account would be flagged as in arrears. "Thank you for calling Comcast and have a good day." Click.

Well, I haven't gotten my next bill yet, so let's see if they actually did give me credit for a charge for a service call that was their fault. And let's see if Comcast is paying attention to what people are saying about them on the blogs. I'll let you know if I hear from them. If I don't, expect another rant if they don't give me credit on my bill for their mistake.

Stay tuned.

Update: Within a half-hour of putting up this post, I got a comment:

You are correct that you should not have been charged for the service call. I do apologize. If for some reason the credit is not there, let us know.

Frank Eliason
Comcast
We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com

Okay... I will. And enjoy the rest of my blog while you're here...

Friday Blogaround

We didn't go to Berlin to make a speech, but the LC was still looking out for what's there this week.

- A Blog Around The Clock reviews "WALL-E."
- archy: volcano news
- Bark Bark Woof Woof: bonkers.
- Bloggg: untourism.
- Collective Sigh: helping the Obamas find a pet, among other things.
- Dohiyi Mir: bike for your health.
- Echidne Of The Snakes: economic costs.
- Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: wrapping up NRN.
- Iddybud Journal: time horizons.
- Left Is Right: pay cuts in California.
- Musing's musings: touching history.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web: a blogaround that will make you forget this pathetic effort.
- Rook's Rant: a plane crash and the state of the military.
- rubber hose: surge protection.
- Scrutiny Hooligans: begging is unbecoming...
- SoonerThought: Duncan Hunter the hunter.
- Speedkill: Intolerance?
- Steve Bates, The Yellow Doggerel Democrat: birthright.
- Stupid Enough Unexplanation: the key question.
- The Invisible Library is going to Comic Con.
- WTF Is It Now?? orders some bratwurst.
- ...You Are A Tree shares a shopping adventure.

Enjoy!

Hang Up and Drive

I followed a Land Rover down the Palmetto Expressway the other afternoon. It was going 55 mph in the left lane, its right turn signal on for miles yet giving no indication that it intended to actually move out of the lane, and when it finally dumped off the freeway onto the city street, it crossed several lanes of traffic to the left, the turn signal still steadily blinking for a right turn. I was able to get past it and see the driver and -- you guessed it -- he had a cellphone stuck in his ear.

Perfect timing for this article from Salon.com:

For years, psychologists who study driving and attention have argued that switching to "hands free" is not a real solution to the hazards caused by yacking on the mobile in the car. "The impairments aren't because your hands aren't on the wheel. It's because your mind isn't the road," says David Strayer, professor of psychology at the University of Utah, whose research has found driving while talking on a cellphone to be as dangerous as driving drunk.

Now neuroscience is showing your mind literally isn't on the road. The overtaxed driver's poor brain doesn't distinguish between a conversation that takes place on an iPhone or a Bluetooth headset. In both cases, the chatting driver is distracted, putting herself, her passengers, other drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians at risk.

Say there's an 18-wheeler to your right, an RV to your left, and suddenly a call comes in from that motormouth client in Kansas City. As the client's voice starts buzzing in your ear, the activity in the parts of your brain keeping your car in your lane declines.

"Forty percent of your attention is drawn away when you're on the phone," says Marcel Just, a psychologist who directs Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging. That goes for you too, Mr. Multitasker.

Before you ask; yes, I have driven and talked on my cellphone at the same time. But I haven't done it since my involuntary involvement in that physics experiment back in March. I don't initiate the call unless it's an emergency, and that's happened only once when I saw a car catch fire on I-25 in Albuquerque. But here in Miami, if you see a car weaving all over the road like a skateboarder on crack, chances are the driver is nattering away on their phone. The county tried to pass a hands-on ban like California, but it was overruled by the state legislature -- probably after getting frantic calls from constituents... driving on the Palmetto in their SUV.

But as the article points out, even hands-free cellphone driving is dangerous, and I wonder what they envision the solution for that would be. Frankly, I've been driving long enough -- forty years this September -- to know that there were idiot drivers out there long before cellphones came along, and no amount of legislation, technology, or driver's education will get rid of the old man in the twenty-year old Corolla trundling down the fast lane of I-95 at 45 mph with his turn signal on and a seat belt dangling out the passenger door, the buckle making sparks.

Fan Mail

After cross-posting this piece at Shakesville the other day, I got the following e-mail:

To: MustangBobby @ barkbarkwoofwoof.com
Subject: Bleeding Hear

You fucking bleeding heart liberal's make me sick. God damn queer's trying to overtake this country. Your friends blog is stupid and a haven for queer's and dumb feminazis. You should read more Rush Limbaugh.

I replied:

I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

Mustang Bobby

Yeah, I know; it's an old line attributed to Winston Churchill, but it's better than berating the poor dumb soul for his lack of paying attention in Grade 5 when the basics of English grammar and composition are taught.

By the way, that's the first piece of troll-mail that I've gotten for my work over at Shakesville, so hey, it's nice to be noticed.

Lofty Rhetoric Only Works For Republicans

David Brooks lays into Barack Obama for daring to be optimistic about the future in his speech in Berlin.

Obama’s tone was serious. But he pulled out his “this is our moment” rhetoric and offered visions of a world transformed. Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word “walls” 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down.

The Berlin blockade was thwarted because people came together. Apartheid ended because people came together and walls tumbled. Winning the cold war was the same: “People of the world,” Obama declared, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign.

But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.

When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.” Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements — the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s — but still worked.

[...]

Much of the rest of the speech fed the illusion that we could solve our problems if only people mystically come together. We should help Israelis and Palestinians unite. We should unite to prevent genocide in Darfur. We should unite so the Iranians won’t develop nukes. Or as Obama put it: “The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”

The great illusion of the 1990s was that we were entering an era of global convergence in which politics and power didn’t matter. What Obama offered in Berlin flowed right out of this mind-set. This was the end of history on acid.

Mr. Brooks goes on and explains that the world is a much harsher place, with cruel people and competing interests that are ready to piss all over Obama's "lofty optimism."

But he has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words drift far from reality, and not only when talking about the Senate Banking Committee. His Berlin Victory Column treacle would have made Niebuhr sick to his stomach.

Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney.

But what Mr. Brooks conveniently forgets is that Mr. Obama is not, as all the teeth-gnashing and grumpy McCain campaign shills point out, the president and he does not have the right to go to the Middle East and Europe and put forth foreign policy. And if he did, you can be sure that Mr. Brooks would have been all over him for his presumptuousness. After all of the bumbling and neo-con saber-rattling by an inarticulate goofball who literally rubbed the Germans the wrong way, Mr. Brooks is in no position to dictate to Barack Obama on how to act when he's overseas. America has suffered from eight years of lousy images, so when a presidential candidate is greeted with rapturous relief by our allies abroad -- after being goaded into making the trip by Republicans -- Mr. Brooks should remember that if John McCain had somehow been able to pull off such a feat, he'd have been effusive in his praise for the "new beginning." As it is, his peevish jealousy is just unbecoming... and hilarious.

Friday Catblogging

Snowball checks to see that the vanda orchid made the move without damage.

"What do you mean, 'You vanda be alone'?"

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Obama in Berlin

The speech.

Via TPM.

Meanwhile, jealousy rears its combed-over head.

Question of the Day

Let's turn this one around:

Name something you once did that seemed stupid at the time but turned out to be a good thing?

For me, one was not selling my 1988 Pontiac station wagon when I bought my 1995 Mustang.

Another one was taking a playwriting class in college.

Freudian Marketing

For $70 you can walk all over John McCain:

Heck, I'll do it for free.

HT to TPM.

No Thanks

John McCain was scheduled to go to New Orleans yesterday ostensibly to visit an off-shore oil rig and upstage the Obamapalooza tour of the Middle East, and also to meet with Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) and size him up as a possible running mate.

But the trip was canceled at the last minute, citing the bad weather from Hurricane Dolly, not to mention an oil spill in the Mississippi River ("but there were none after Katrina..."), and Mr. McCain went to Pennsylvania instead.

So the fact that Gov. Jindal said that he was not interested in being Mr. McCain's running mate probably had nothing whatsoever to do with the cancellation. No siree.

Mr. Jindal is being called a "rising star" in the GOP by a lot of people, and to his credit, his political savvy is being demonstrated when he shows the good sense not to hitch his hopes to a fumbling and shuddering campaign like that of John McCain. Being tagged as a part (and likely scapegoat) of a losing presidential ticket is not the way to embark on a political career, and in all likelihood Gov. Jindal knows it.

Michelle Obama in Miami

The wife of the Democratic candidate stopped by Miami to help raise funds for the campaign.

The candidate's wife wore white. Not a hint of camouflage.

Campaigning in a linen sheath one week after The New Yorker magazine caricatured her as a black militant, Michelle Obama addressed hundreds of donors in Miami Wednesday in her largest event in Florida so far. About 800 people contributed between $100 and $5,000 to her husband's presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen Reports show that Mr. Obama has a one-point lead in polling in Florida, up from the seven-point deficit he had last month.

As Obama and McCain trade attacks over domestic and foreign policy, the poll shows that the economy is the most important issue in the election to about half of Florida voters.

The Pre-Surge

Everyone, including the White House, thinks the Surge in Iraq began in January 2007. But according to John McCain, it started before that.

The Arizona senator has told reporters during a stop at a super market in Bethlehem, Pa., that what the Bush administration calls "the surge" was actually "made up of a number of components." McCain says some components of the surge began before Bush ordered more U.S. troops into Iraq.

McCain says U.S. Col. Sean MacFarland started carrying out elements of a new counterinsurgency strategy as early as December 2006.

That still doesn't explain how Mr. McCain's interpretation of history does not violate the Temporal Prime Directive by having the Surge be the impetus for the Anbar Awakening, which began several months before the Surge.

Bonkers

Elaine Donnelly, an anti-gay activist, made a fool of herself in front of a Congressional committee discussing the status of "don't ask, don't tell."

Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of "transgenders in the military." She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading "HIV positivity" through the ranks.

[...]

Inadvertently, Donnelly achieved the opposite of her intended effect. Though there's no expectation that Congress will repeal "don't ask, don't tell" and allow gays to serve openly in the military, the display had the effect of increasing bipartisan sympathy for the cause.

Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) labeled her statement "just bonkers" and "dumb," and he called her claims about an HIV menace "inappropriate." Said Snyder: "By this analysis... we ought to recruit only lesbians for the military, because they have the lowest incidence of HIV in the country."

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a veteran of the war in Iraq, called Donnelly's words "an insult to me and many of the soldiers" by saying they "aren't professional enough to serve openly with gay troops while successfully completing their military mission."

Sometimes the best thing you can do with people like Ms. Donnelly is hand them a shovel and let them keep digging.

Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) pointed a finger at [retired Navy Capt. Joan] Darrah and glared at Donnelly. "Would you please tell me, Miss Donnelly, why I should give one twit about this woman's sexual orientation, when it didn't interfere one bit with her service?"

Donnelly said something about "forced intimacy."

Shays cut her off. "You're saying she has no right to serve her country because she happens to have a different sexual orientation than you."

[...]

Shays, his voice rising with Yankee indignation, continued to lecture Donnelly: "I think the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy is unpatriotic. I think it's counterproductive. In fact, I think it is absolutely cruel."

Donnelly said something about her respect for the service of gay veterans. "How do you respect their service?" Shays demanded. "You want them out."

Donnelly seemed to have unified the lawmakers -- against her. The next questioner was Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), a retired Navy vice admiral. "I couldn't ask it better than you did," he told Shays.

When DADT is repealed, as it will inevitably will be, we should send a dozen roses and a box of candy to Ms. Donnelly for all her help.

Desperation Watch

The McCain campaign whips out a web ad linking Barack Obama to Fidel Castro.

A Democrat in south Florida alerted the Huffington Post to the image, which shows Obama and Castro, profiled side-by-side, above a quote from the Cuban leader praising the Illinois Democrat as "the most advanced candidate."

[...]

But the quote is misleading in regards to the actual political dynamics in play. For starters, since Obama became the de facto nominee, Castro has been critical of his candidacy [also here], arguing that he has not called for serious alterations to U.S.-Cuban relations and would willingly allow the island nation to suffer from hunger. Obama, meanwhile, has criticized Castro as a repeated abuser of human rights and a tyrant whose time has passed.

The McCain campaign is counting on a knee-jerk frothing response from the Cuban community in South Florida, which they take for granted will happen. Actually, it's an insult to the intelligence of the Cubans; the McCain campaign assumes that all they have to do is wave a picture of Fidel and Barack Obama together and they've won. Regardless of party affiliation, I can think of more than just a few Cubans who would think this ad is patronizing and presumptuous.

As Josh Marshall notes, "classier and classier."

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Nature Break

An interesting piece of film from Environment Canada.

Traffic Hazard

Robert Novak has a run-in with a pedestrian.

Politico reports that conservative pundit Robert Novak “was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning.” Novak initially “drove away from the scene,” but turned around when “a bicyclist stopped him and said, ‘You hit someone.’” Novak claimed: “I didn’t know I hit anybody.” But Washington DC’s local ABC affiliate interviewed the bicyclist who saw the incident. WJLA’s Suzanne Kennedy reported live from the scene:
I just spoke with the bicyclist about three minutes ago. He tells me that the pedestrian was actually splayed across the front of Novak’s convertible, and that there would be absolutely no way Novak would have not known that he had hit someone.
Politico notes that in a 2001 interview with the Washington Post, Novak said, “I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don’t run the country, all I can do is yell at ‘em. The other option is to run ‘em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that.”

Better luck next time, Prince of Darkness.

Reports are that the pedestrian had minor injuries. Mr. Novak was cited for failure to yield the right of way. (But he's a Republican and he never gives up a "right" anything.)

Question of the Day

It used to be that hair coloring was strictly for women, but now everyone can do it. So my brother asks...

Do you/would you dye your hair?

My answer: No and No. The reason is simple; I'm getting salt-and-pepper gradually and age-appropriately, and besides, the last time I tried to fool Mother Nature (see below), Mother Nature fought back cruelly.

(HT to Lab Kat for reminding me of this question...)

History Has a Liberal Bias

For someone who says the Surge was the greatest thing for Iraq since the invention of the air conditioner, John McCain seems to be fact-challenged, according to Spencer Ackerman.

For McCain to say that the Anbar Awakening is the product of the surge is either a lie or professional malpractice for a presidential candidate who is staking his election on his allegedly superior Iraq judgment.

It makes you wonder whether or not Sen. McCain actually knows the truth and is willfully telling a lie, or he doesn't know the facts and the timeline and goes ahead with what he thinks is the real history for the sake of making a political point. That makes this somewhat ironic, don't you think?

His Own Man

It's interesting that the right-wingers who crowed when Iraq had "free and democratic elections" (remember the purple-finger craze?) and installed Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister (and defended him against the puppetry charge from liberals) now dismiss him as a political hack because he backs Barack Obama's timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

The simple fact may be that Prime Minister Maliki, whether you see him as a stooge for the Bush administration or a calculating politician who even from Baghdad can see which way the wind is blowing in the U.S. election, is the ultimate pragmatist. In Iraq, that makes him a survivor.

"Wall Street Got Drunk"

Via the Huffington Post:

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week -- capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.

The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: "There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk ---that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

Here's the link to the video and transcript. All I can say is, "Wha...?"

Tropical Update

Hurricane Dolly hits the Texas/Mexico border this morning.

Quote of the Day

John McCain in New Hampshire:

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

I think that pretty much qualifies as the winner of today's episode of Desperation Bingo.

Abuse of Power

Salon.com uncovers evidence that the Bush administration's spying on U.S. citizens was -- and remains -- far more widespread than previously thought.

The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

Salon has also uncovered further indications of far-reaching and possibly illegal surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency inside the United States under President Bush. That includes the alleged use of a top-secret, sophisticated database system for monitoring people considered to be a threat to national security. It also includes signs of the NSA's working closely with other U.S. government agencies to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally.

[...]

A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores -- without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security.

According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community."

Some of the former U.S. officials interviewed, although they have no direct knowledge of the issue, said they believe that Main Core may have been used by the NSA to determine who to spy on in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, the NSA's use of the database, they say, may have triggered the now-famous March 2004 confrontation between the White House and the Justice Department that nearly led Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director William Mueller and other top Justice officials to resign en masse.

I think this goes a little beyond the realm of the Fourth Amendment -- not that it matters to these people -- and we're into the place where the folks wearing the tin-foil hats might be on to something.

Estelle Getty - 1923-2008

Estelle Getty has died.

“I am the mother,” she declared in her opening line in “Torch Song Trilogy,” Harvey Fierstein’s 1981 play about the travails of a gay man in New York City, and as a summary of her career, her character was right.

“I’ve played mothers to heroes and mothers to zeroes,” Ms. Getty wrote in her autobiography, “If I Knew Then What I Know Now ... So What?” (Contemporary Books, 1988). “I’ve played Irish mothers, Jewish mothers, Italian mothers, Southern mothers, mothers in plays by Neil Simon and Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. I’ve played mother to everyone but Attila the Hun.”

The book was a response to Ms. Getty’s sudden and resounding popularity in the most famous of her mother roles, the tart-tongued, white-haired Sophia Petrillo, oldest of the four previously married women sharing a Miami home in “The Golden Girls.” In the show, Sophia was the mother of Dorothy Zbornak, played by Bea Arthur who, in real life, was older than Ms. Getty.

Sophia, characterized by her bluntness and cranky lamentations about old age, treated her daughter with a kind of loving contempt, and their two roommates, the man-obsessed Blanche (Rue McClanahan), and the dim-witted Rose (Betty White), with the eye-rolling impatience of one who will not indulge the self-delusions of others. When Blanche complained that her life was an open book, Sophia witheringly replied: “Your life is an open blouse.”

She was the reason I watched The Golden Girls.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Question of the Day

Richard Cohen's tattoo analogy reminded me of something. Back when I went to the gym every day, I had some pretty impressive biceps (if I do say so myself) and a buddy tried to convince me to get one of those bristling barbed-wire tattoos on my arm. Fortunately the expense and my phobia of needles prevailed, and I didn't get it. It also occurred to me that while a tattoo like that would be okay at the time, I wouldn't have 18-inch arms forever, and what would it look like when I was 70...or 55? So...

What was the most foolish thing you did that you thought was a good idea at the time but now look back and say "What was I thinking?"

I didn't get the tattoo, but in the winter of 1976, I did get a perm. The less said about that the better, but suffice it to say that instead of looking like Peter Frampton (and I'm not blond), I looked like I was wearing a bird's nest on my head. Two weeks later I got a really short haircut.

Fact-Checking Patrol

From the Detroit Free Press:

Chevrolet unveiled its long-awaited production version of the 2009 Chevrolet Camaro sports car Monday in the dome in Warren where it was designed, next to historic GM vehicles -- the '50 Corvette Stingray, the '51 LeSabre and the 1969 Camaro -- whose league it hopes to join.

It's a nice story about a cool new -- and fuel-efficient -- car, but it hits a sour note in the very first paragraph with the citation of "the '50 Corvette Stingray." The Chevrolet Corvette wasn't introduced until 1953 and it wasn't called a Sting Ray until 1963.

You would think that the newspaper in Motor City would know better.

I'm Looking Through You

From the Miami Herald:

Travelers, be aware: Your full-blown image -- private parts and all -- could soon be visible to a security officer, on-screen, at an airport near you.

Miami International Airport is one of a dozen airports nationwide that have begun pilot-testing whole-body imaging machines, which reveal weapons and explosives concealed under layers of clothing.

''It allows us to detect threat objects that are not metallic and that cannot be detected by metal detectors, and items that are sometimes missed even in a physical pat-down, in a nonintrusive manner,'' said Mark Hatfield, federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration at MIA.

Is that a threat object in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

On Debt

Both Richard Cohen and David Brooks offer observations on the great American pastime: spending and owing, and according to both of them, it comes back to being a matter of character.

Mr. Brooks first:

Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight.

[...]

And now the reckoning has come. The turn in the market punishes many of those seduced by financial temptations. (Sometimes capitalism undermines the Puritan virtues, but sometimes it reinforces them.)

Meanwhile, social institutions are trying to re-right the norms. The government is sending some messages. The Treasury and the Fed are trying to stabilize the system while still ensuring that those who made mistakes feel the pain.

But the important shifts will be private, as people and communities learn and adopt different social standards. After the Depression, a savings mentality set in. After the dot-com bubble, a bit of sobriety hit Silicon Valley. Now it’s the borrowers’ and lenders’ turn. As the saying goes: People don’t change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat.

Mr. Cohen sees it as if it was like a tattoo; a permanent solution to a temporary fancy.

I asked a college professor what she thought of tattoos, and she said that for young people, they represent permanence in an ever-changing world. But how is that possible? Anyone old enough and smart enough to get into college knows that only impermanence is permanent. Everything changes -- including, sweetie, that tight tummy with its "look at me!" tattoo. Time will turn it into false advertising.

The permanence of the moment -- the conviction that now is forever -- explains what has happened to the American economy. We are, as a people, deeply in debt. We are, as a nation, deeply in debt. The average American household owes more than its yearly income. We save almost nothing (0.4 percent of disposable income) and spend almost everything (99.6 percent of disposable income) in the hope that tomorrow will be a lot like today. We bought homes we could not afford and took out mortgages we could not pay and whipped out the plastic on everything else. Debts would be due in the future, but, with any luck, the future would remain in the future.

Here and there the occasional scold warned that all this was unsustainable. Social Security is underfunded. The government ought to -- just occasionally -- balance its books. But for a long time, the unsustainable seemed sustainable. The immutable rules were mutable. Virtually the entire political establishment insisted that tomorrow would never come. Republicans joined with Democrats in never calling in a loan. Who says bipartisanship is dead? Not when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility.

It's easy to blame our national indebtedness on a lot of factors, but when you get right down to it, it's a matter of greed, envy, and shortsightedness. That's not to be taken as a scold; that's an observation of human nature. Thus have we always been and thus we will always be. The question isn't how to stop the behavior, it's how to manage it. It takes discipline and self-control, two things we expect out of everyone else except ourselves.

Catching a Monster

From the New York Times:

Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in Serbia that ended a 13-year hunt.

Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, hailed the arrest as an important step in bringing to justice one of the architects of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. He said Mr. Karadzic, 63, the Bosnian Serb president during the war there between 1992 and 1995, would be transferred to The Hague in “due course.”

“This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade,” Mr. Brammertz said. “It is also an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.”

This is the kind of story that reminds us that the while the public may have a short attention span and be easily distracted by "shock and awe," there are those who will relentlessly track down these criminals and bring them to justice.

Ford Has a Smaller Idea

Ford Motor Company looks to the little cars.

The struggling automaker, reacting to what it sees as a rapid and permanent shift in consumer tastes brought on by high gas prices, plans to unveil its new direction on Thursday, when it will report quarterly earnings.

Among the changes, Ford is expected to announce that it will convert three of its North American assembly plants from trucks to cars, according to people familiar with the plans.

And as part of the huge bet it is placing on the future direction of the troubled American auto industry, Ford will realign factories to manufacture more fuel-efficient engines and produce six of its next European car models for the United States market.

The company will also end speculation about its Mercury division by making the brand an integral part of its new small-car strategy, according to these people, who spoke on the condition that they not be quoted by name because of the timing of the official announcement on Thursday.

The sweeping changes are the result of months of strategic discussions by Ford executives, and represent a dramatic response to the woes afflicting Detroit’s automakers.

As long as they don't bring back the Pinto...

Also known as the Ford Flambé.

Tropical Update

Tropical Storm Dolly heads for the border.

It looks like it will be a hurricane when it makes landfall later this week.

All in the Timing

I think it speaks volumes when the McCain campaign thinks it's equally important to choose the timing of the announcement of Mr. McCain's running mate as it is to choose the person himself.

I'm pretty sure that there isn't anything in the Constitution that includes providing scene stealing news coverage in the description of the duties of the vice president, but after the tenure of Dick Cheney, who knows?

Simple Rule

This should be obvious, but let me make it clear: the people who foisted George W. Bush on us do not have the right to criticize Barack Obama for being inexperienced or arrogant.

Nor should they be entitled to a do-over; the GOP was the party that had the chance to nominate John McCain back in 2000 when he first ran, but instead went with Bush. Sorry, you don't get a mulligan on that one, either.

Tigers Update

Wow. The boys finally win one against the Royals, and apparently they got all the runs (19) they've been wanting to get against them since the start of the season.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Question of the Day

From my brother, going round and round...

What is your opinion of roundabouts [traffic circles]? They’re installing them all over the place here, and I have to admit I like them. Sure beats a 4-way stop.

He lives in Seattle, and they're doing the same thing here in Miami, especially in upscale neighborhoods. It sometimes gets interesting if people unfamiliar with the rules of the roundabout arrive at the same time and they don't know who has the right-of-way. I usually yield to the SUV because anyone driving one of these behemoths thinks they're owed the right-of-way and will take it anyway.

Tigers Update

They finally win one against the birds from Baltimore (5-1) to stay at .500. They're off to KC for more on the road.

And I would be remiss if I didn't note that the Marlins are in third place in the NL East with a respectable .531, having won Saturday and Sunday against the Phillies.

Gas Survey

Time for the semi-regular (unleaded) BBWW gas price survey.

Prices are actually going down here in South Florida. I paid $4.07 yesterday at the Marathon station around the corner (Old Cutler Road and SW 168th Street), and I saw it as low as $4.05 at a mini-mart on the way to work north of the airport on NW 36th Street. What are you paying?

Desperate Dobson

James Dobson now may endorse John McCain.

"There's nothing dishonorable in a person rethinking his or her positions, especially in a constantly changing political context," Dobson said in a statement to the AP. "Barack Obama contradicts and threatens everything I believe about the institution of the family and what is best for the nation. His radical positions on life, marriage and national security force me to reevaluate the candidacy of our only other choice, John McCain."

[...]

Of his new position, Dobson said in the statement to the AP, "If that is a flip-flop, then so be it."

Not that it really matters what this hateful and ignorant purveyor of superstition says or thinks, but the very least we can now say that he is doing two things for himself and John McCain: immunizing themselves against the flip-flopping charge (see below) and living up to the Marxist (as in Groucho) dictum that they have firm principles, and if you don't like them, they have others.

Of course, the next time some right-winger accuses Barack Obama of flip-flopping, we can say that according to Jesus's messenger from Colorado Springs, "There's nothing dishonorable in a person rethinking his or her positions, especially in a constantly changing political context." Thanks, Dr. D!

Kristol: A Nostalgic Touch

William Kristol is feeling nostalgic for the Cold War.

When President Kennedy spoke to a huge crowd in front of West Berlin’s city hall in June 1963, victory in the cold war seemed a distant hope. The Soviets had crushed the East German uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian rebellion of 1956. Castro had taken power in 1959. The Berlin Wall had gone up in 1961. The Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the brink of war less than a year before. There were many, in Europe and elsewhere, who wanted to find a way out of the struggle.

Speaking on behalf of “the world of freedom,” Kennedy challenged the anti-anti-Communists and the peaceniks. He chastised the “many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world.” He rebuked those “who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists.” To all of them, Kennedy memorably said: “Let them come to Berlin.”

Perhaps Obama — with the Victory Column at his back — will also challenge those who think it impossible to imagine victory today. Perhaps Obama will also warn of the temptation of assuming we can somehow avoid confronting the terrorists and jihadists, and those who support them.

And perhaps Obama will quote Kennedy to the effect that “freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” Surely he will express pride — whatever his judgment as to the prudence of the effort, and whatever his judgment as to whether it has been worth the cost — in the efforts of American servicemen and women, and those from our coalition partners, who have fought and sacrificed, along with countless Afghans and Iraqis, against those who would kill and subjugate their fellow human beings. And surely he will pledge our continued commitment to the cause of victory in this struggle.

Mr. Kristol is forgetting that at the time President Kennedy delivered his speech in Berlin in 1963, Mr. Kristol's predecessors in the ranks of the hawks dismissed it as idealistic rhetoric and mocked him for the famous Ich bin ein Berliner line which colloquially compared the president to a pastry item (an urban legend that has since been debunked), and was accused of saber-rattling by the left. Oh, well; history has a way of turning things rosy. But then he concludes with an interesting paragraph:

The front lines are elsewhere today, in a struggle against a different enemy. We don’t know whether jihadism will turn out to be a less or more formidable foe than Communism. But at least Obama can say what Kennedy did not live to see: that just over a quarter-century after Kennedy spoke, after much controversy, and despite many mistakes, and thanks to considerable sacrifice, the world of freedom could take sober satisfaction in a remarkable victory.

Wow; jihadism isn't the worst threat to the world since the Black Plague and gay marriage? Is Mr. Kristol getting soft? He's allowing that all-out war might not be the way to defeat Islamofascism, and that Mr. Obama might be worthy of leading the nation if he can pull off a stem-winder in Berlin? He may have to turn in his neo-con secret decoder ring for that.

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