Kevin Bacon and the Oil Spill

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Updated.

For some reason comments are not showing up. You can write them, you can post them, but when you refresh or come back, they are gone. I have alerted the folks at Echo who run the system and told them about it, so we'll see what happens. Hopefully this is a short-term problem, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Update: Comments appear to be working again. You may fire when ready.
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Question of the Day

If things go as I plan, and based on the current system at my workplace, I will retire ten years from today. Then what?

Where would you like to retire to?

I will probably stay here in Florida; perhaps down the road a piece to a nice place in the Keys...


...and then spend my summers in the mountains.



HT to Deeky.
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Her God Must Be Crazy

I could have put this quote in with the one with the other nutsery that Sharron Angle gave forth, but I think it's worth a separate post.

In a radio interview with Bill Manders on Jan. 25, Sharron Angle — the GOP candidate and Tea Party darling challenging Harry Reid for Nevada’s U.S. Senate seat — came out firmly against abortion. She even took the extreme position that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would interfere with God’s “plan” for them.

MANDERS: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

ANGLE: Not in my book.

MANDERS: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

ANGLE: You know, I’m a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

Well, at least she's consistent; if she believes that abortion is murder, then she's not giving any ground on exceptions for mitigating circumstances like rape, incest, or the possibility that the mother might die in bringing the pregnancy to term; the most important thing in the world is the life of the child regardless of circumstance. It's consistent in the extreme.

But then she brings in the God part and it all seems to fall apart. She claims to be a Christian -- and who am I to say she isn't -- but she must be getting her god from somewhere else because the one she's describing doesn't sound like the one I read about in the bible, unless you're talking about the vengeful and manipulative god in the early chapters of the Old Testament. That god toyed with his believers, tested their faith, and often tortured them for his own aggrandizement. Then that god had a change of heart in the New Testament and became a loving and forgiving god, willing to sacrifice for the good of a barely worthy humanity and granting his believers free will to live their lives without the minute and manipulative interference from a distant spirit.

So where Ms. Angle comes up with this hateful and spiteful god who sees fit to bring forth a new life through violence and torture like some spawn rising from the mud of Mordor is beyond my understanding of Christianity. Maybe her god speaks to her the same way he speaks to Fred Phelps or Pat Robertson, but if so, this deity has a poor record in choosing such flawed and arrogant messengers.

I also wonder how far she would go to define "interfering with God's plan." Abortion may be interference in her mind, but what about the child that is born with a horrible birth defect or a disease? Can we not interfere with God's plan to correct the defect or cure the illness? Are we to accept the idea that all things that come to pass are divinely inspired and therefore we must leave them as they are, or are doctors and hospitals interfering with the divine purpose, and if so, how can he permit them to live? Does her god expect us to take this life lying down? Or are we supposed to strive for the perfection that we as humans all try to achieve through the eternal optimism that inspires us to live and reproduce -- and that religion has co-opted into their product from a trademarked and patented corporate identity? Humans are fully capable of being good and moral beings without any help, and crediting -- or blaming -- a deity only shifts the responsibility and liability to someone else. It is easy to blame God for our own failings: God help us.

Ms. Angle's statement is not meant as a point of discussion, it is meant to end the argument: God said it, I believe it, end of story. It also means that she and others who believe the way she does refuse to think beyond it and thereby avoid the nasty and complicated questions about who is more entitled to a right to life; the mother or the child, or if life is such a precious gift from God, why must it be delivered at the point of a knife from a rapist? And it truly makes you wonder why anyone would worship such a being.
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Snuff Said

House Minority Leader John Boehner sat down with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and said that the plan to regulate Wall Street was like "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon."

Boehner criticized the financial regulatory overhaul compromise reached last week between House and Senate negotiators as an overreaction to the financial crisis that triggered the recession. The bill would tighten restrictions on lending, create a consumer protection agency with broad oversight power and give the government an orderly way to dissolve the largest financial institutions if they run out of money.

"This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon," Boehner said. What's most needed is more transparency and better enforcement by regulators, he said.

So he thinks that the worst financial crisis in eighty years was insignificant? Really? What would it take to constitute a real financial crisis? A collapse of the proportion of Germany after World War I where a million marks could buy you a loaf of bread?

Perhaps his dismissal of what happened to millions of jobs and the collapse of the real estate market is based on the fact that it was a Republican who was in charge when it happened and that the loose financial regulations that allowed it to happen were written by Republicans. Had it happened during the term of a Democrat, you can be sure that Mr. Boehner would be calling it the Worst Catastrophe in the world.

He also opined that the Democrats in Washington were "snuffing out the America I grew up in." As Keith Olbermann observed, growing up the 1950's as Mr. Boehner did meant segregated schools, Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation laws, political assassinations, jail time for being gay, and polio. And the Edsel. Does Mr. Boehner really want to bring those things back?

He followed that with the claim that there's "a political rebellion brewing, and I don't think we've seen anything like it since 1776." By this he means, I suppose, those cranky white people who marched on Washington with the funny hats and the racist pictures of President Obama, or the bigmouths on Fox News and talk radio who basically want the government to stop interfering in their lives but then commandeer the boats to clean up the oil spill that was caused by President Obama picking on that nice BP and hey, don't be late with my Social Security check! Is he kidding? I've seen angrier crowds when the manager was ten minutes late opening the doors at a Wal-Mart.

If Mr. Boehner thinks this is a political rebellion on the scale of 1776, I guess he forgot about that little thing called "The Civil War." I know it was 150 years ago, but it was in all the papers. But then, given Mr. Boehner's odd sense of historical proportion concerning the current economic situation, the war that killed millions of Americans and basically redefined the country was nothing more than just a battle between two ants.

I also find it disturbing that Mr. Boehner, along with a number of other Republicans, are cavalierly tossing around death and killing metaphors to describe the Democrats; they're "snuffing out America," or candidates talking freely about "taking out" their opposition through Second Amendment remedies or "gathering your armies," not to mention the ubiquitous Hitler and Holocaust imagery that pops into the campaign ads from Alabama to Alaska. I realize all campaigns go overboard, but where the Democrats were mean to George W. Bush and called him names, these folks are skating a little to close to dangerous. There's a difference between snark and death threats.
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Mixed Nuts

Yesterday seemed to bring out the whack-jobs and some interesting insights into where the campaigns are going.

First we have Patricia Gorman, a candidate in Arizona running for Congress who spends most of the time in her commercial firing off automatic weapons. At one point the voice-over -- read by a guy whose right-wing crew cut you can hear -- says that she's a "conservative Christian ... and a pretty fair shot." This, of course, is based on the fact that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the peacemakers, but firing off ten rounds a second totally kicks ass."

Then Sharron Angle, the Republican running for the Senate in Nevada, finally got cornered into giving an interview with a reporter that doesn't work for a right-wing radio station or website. She made a valiant attempt to crawfish away from her earlier statement that there were "Second Amendment remedies" to the problems in Washington. She said she was "speaking broadly" about the Constitution and "and that was the context of that rhetoric." Okay, but speaking broadly or narrowly, the Second Amendment talks about guns and militias, period. The implication is pretty clear.

And then there's Rep. Michele Bachman (R-MN), who is always good for a laugh and whose understanding of economics is as loose as her grip on reality.

President Obama is trying to bind the United States into a global economy where all of our nations come together in a global economy. I don't want the United States to be in a global economy where, where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe. I can't, we can't necessarily trust the decisions that are being made financially in other countries.

A couple of little tidbits of news for Ms. Bachmann: first, one of the reasons we had a revolution against the British in 1776 was because they were restricting the trade the colonies were conducting with other countries without giving London a piece of the action. So the founding of this country was based, in part, on becoming a part of the global economy. Second, and more immediate, is the fact that our current debt -- you know, the one run up by the Republicans paying for two wars and a bunch of tax cuts -- is held by other countries, and that includes our biggest creditor, China. So if we suddenly decided we didn't want to be a part of the global economy, two things would happen: we'd be broke in a hurry when China calls in their debts, and we wouldn't have any way to pay for it because we wouldn't be selling anything to anybody. Now I realize that this basic high school history and economics lesson may be a little hard for Ms. Bachmann to grasp since she's spending all of her time hunting out anti-Americans in Congress, but certainly she understands that companies in her own state of Minnesota like General Mills, 3M, and Target are counting on selling their goods and services to places like Zimbabwe and paying for it with money from China.

So that was yesterday, and it's still June in a long campaign season. Stock up on the popcorn.
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Short Takes

Day 2 for Elena Kagan in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The financial overhaul bill gets an overhaul.

Gen. David Petraeus was confirmed by the Senate Armed Services Committee as the new head of the Afghanistan operation.

Google caves to China's demands.

Good grades: Miami-Dade school students did well on the FCAT, the state's standardized tests.

Bill McCollum is going after Rick Scott in more ways than one.

Tropical update: It's now Hurricane Alex and heading west into Mexico.

Fun while it lasted; the Tigers lost in Minnesota, giving up their lead in the division that they held for about 24 hours.
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Ancient Geek History

Check out this promotional video from Fox Software -- The Evolution of a New Standard -- from 1990.


I get all nostalgic for those big old clunky monitors, the mouses that look like armored personnel carriers, and floppy discs. But not so nostalgic that I'd use them any more....
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Question of the Day

Inspired by this article at Slate ("The Best Movies Never Made," including the Beatles in The Lord of the Rings), the idea being that it's wonderful they were never made...

What is the one movie you've seen that should never have been made?

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Have No Fear; Underdog Is Here

Updated.

Elena Kagan's first day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings revealed some interesting points of view from the current crop of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. For instance, the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was the first African-American to serve on the Court and who argued successfully the case of Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, was dismissed as an "activist" judge by several GOP members of the panel. If Mr. Marshall was the one facing confirmation today, he wouldn't make it if Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) or Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) had anything to say about it. As Dana Milbank noted, "With Kagan's confirmation hearings expected to last most of the week, Republicans may still have time to make cases against Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Gandhi."

In his opening statement, Mr. Kyl attacked Ms. Kagan for her admiration for Justice Marshall:

Kagan wrote a tribute to Justice Marshall in which she said in his view it was the role of the courts and interpreting the Constitution to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government. The court existed primarily to fulfill this mission. And later, when she was working in the Clinton administration, she encouraged a colleague working on a speech about Justice Marshall to emphasize his unshakable determination to protect the underdog.

He said it with an audible sneer; the nerve of her believing that the law was there to defend the rights of the powerless.

The Republicans were in such a frenzy to trash Ms. Kagan that they went into the hearing without coordinating their message. Before Mr. Kyl got to his screed against the underdogs of America, we were treated to a lecture from Sen. Sessions, who used a variety of dog-whistles to the right-wing base to say that Ms. Kagan was an elitist: "Manhattan Upper East Side" (New York Jewish, possibly lesbian) and "Harvard Law School", all done with a Southern drawl that would have done George Wallace proud. So which is it; Elena Kagan shouldn't serve on the court because she only cares about the powerless, or she should be rejected because she lives in an ivory tower and munches on arugula while skimming through volumes of the Harvard Law Review while wearing her Birkenstocks?

I get it that the GOP is opposed to "activist judges" -- unless they're activist in the right way as in the Citizens United ruling -- and I also get it that their core constituency is the angry white guy who resents the idea that equal protection under the law really does apply to everyone. But it's not exactly something you want to have out there as a YouTube clip of the cream of the GOP attacking someone for admiring one of the most important judicial figures in American civil rights of the last century -- how's that campaign to bring in more minorities to the GOP going?

Update: Joe Scarborough nails the GOP for attacking Thurgood Marshall.


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Supreme Rulings

The Supreme Court handed down a couple of interesting rulings yesterday as it wraps up the term and Justice John Paul Stevens retires.

The court ruled 5-4 that the Second Amendment applies to all state and local governments.

The decision extended the court's 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that "the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home." That decision applied only to federal laws and federal enclaves such as Washington; it was the first time the court had said there was an individual right to gun ownership rather than one related to military service.

Monday's decision might be more symbolic than substantive, at least initially. No cities have laws as restrictive as the handgun bans in the District and in Monday's case from Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park. Although the court's decision did not specifically strike down those laws, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said it will make the city's 28-year-old law "unenforceable."

This will keep the NRA happy for a while, at least until they come up with some other threat to guns that they'll use to raise money. And while it was somewhat a study in foregone conclusions after the ruling in 2008, it still does not address the real-world issue of effective law enforcement at the local level in dealing with guns. It's also ironic that people who normally support the states' rights point of view when it comes to federal interference are only too happy to have the Supreme Court step in and re-write the local laws. I guess they're in love with the Supremes when they rule in their favor.

Adam Serwer notes, "The gun wars are pretty much over, and the gun rights side won. One wonders when they'll will figure it out." Frankly, I don't think they will. The NRA makes its fortune -- and buys off Congress and state legislators -- by being the perpetual victim. They know all too well that their members are tinged with paranoia: Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are, at this very moment, drawing up plans to go house-to-house with their jack-booted thugs to seize everything from AK-47's to the "ladies' companion" derringer that grandma keeps in her knitting basket. Now they want to go after licensing gun dealers and registration, making the case that if gun ownership is a Constitutional right, then why should they need a license to exercise it? After all, bookstores aren't licensed. No, they're not, but I don't think anyone was ever robbed by someone threatening them with a copy of Pride and Prejudice.

I don't have a problem with the NRA standing up for the Second Amendment. But when they get to the point of such ferocity that if it was the First Amendment they were guarding, they could make the case for child pornography, then I have a problem with it. The ruling by the Supreme Court may be correct in terms of legal issues and interpretation, but it won't make life any easier for the enforcement of other laws.

In another ruling, though, the righties might not be so pleased with the Court's finding that religious groups at a public university are not entitled to public funds when they discriminate against people they don't like.

The court turned away an appeal from the Christian Legal Society, which sued to get funding and recognition from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law. The CLS requires that voting members sign a statement of faith and regards ''unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle'' as being inconsistent with that faith.

But Hastings, which is in San Francisco, said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.

The court on a 5-4 judgment upheld the lower court rulings saying the Christian group's First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college's nondiscrimination policy.

''In requiring CLS -- in common with all other student organizations -- to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations,'' said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion for the court's liberals and moderate Anthony Kennedy. ''CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings' policy.''

Basically the Court is saying that a religious group is free to hate gay people; they just can't do it with public funding. Of course this flies in the face of the well-known legal precedent that is common among the Religious Right: gay-bashing is a fundamental right,it is anti-religious bigotry if anyone says it isn't, and they deserve special rights to object to gays and lesbians getting equal rights.
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Campaign Strategy 101

The elusive Sharron Angle, Republican candidate for the Senate from Nevada runs away -- literally -- from the press unless it's a friendly venue like a conservative radio talk show.

In a segment fit for TMZ, one intrepid reporter chased her on foot outside a restaurant this month, repeatedly asking why she had once said that “if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” She ignored the questioner and tried to outpace him, in a video clip replayed across the state.

One campaign observer noted, “If she’s not answering all the questions, it’s probably because she doesn’t have the answers yet.”

That sounds like the Tea Party kind of campaign strategy.
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Short Takes

The FBI arrested ten people on charges of spying for Russia.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin -- a Democrat -- will appoint someone to fill the late Robert Byrd's seat until the election of 2012.

Gen. McChrystal tells the Army that he's going to retire. (What are the odds that he'll become a paid military analyst for a TV network?)

Mexico's drug wars hit a local election with the murder of a candidate for governor.

They're moving turtle eggs 500 miles to avoid the oil spill.

Tropical update: The storm called Alex will become a Category 1 hurricane later today and head for the Texas/Mexico border.

The Tigers took over the division lead from the Twins by beating them 7-5.
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Enjoy Your Trip

I don't normally pass along e-mailed jokes because they're either juvenile, sexually explicit, or everybody's heard them. I've seen this one before, but what the heck, it cracked me up and I could use a good laugh to counteract the coughs from my cold.

After every flight, pilots fill out a form, called a 'gripe sheet,' which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200-feet-per-minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what friction locks are for.

P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
S: IFF is always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from the midget.

HT to SJW.
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Netroots Awards 2010

The voting is open for the Florida Netroots Awards. Go here to vote.

Bark Bark Woof Woof has been nominated in two areas: "Best National Blog -- Blogs written by Floridians that cover primarily national politics," and "Best Series" for "Question of the Day."

I'm Mustang Bobby, and I approved this message.
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On This Date

June 28, 1914 - Sarajevo, Serbia: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austria-Hungarian empire, was assassinated along with his wife Sophie by 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip while they were riding in a motorcade. The murder led to a series of demands from Austria and her allies to Serbia and her allies, and before anyone could really figure out what was going on, World War I was underway. Millions died, empires crumbled, political movements and revolutions were born, dictatorships were established, and there's little doubt that the hard peace exacted from Germany in 1919 led to the Second World War twenty years later.

It makes you wonder what the world might have been like had the Archduke's chauffeur not made a wrong turn and Gavrilo Princip not been standing on the corner on that June afternoon in downtown Sarajevo.
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Robert Byrd -- 1917-2010

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) has died at the age of 92.

A child of the West Virginia coal fields, Mr. Byrd rose from the grinding poverty that has plagued his state since before the Great Depression, overcame an early and ugly association with the Ku Klux Klan, worked his way through night school and by force of will, determination and iron discipline made himself a person of authority and influence in Washington.

Although he mined extraordinary amounts of federal largesse for his perennially impoverished state, his reach extended beyond the bounds of the Mountain State.

As chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the District from 1961 to 1969, he reveled in his role as scourge, grilling city officials at marathon hearings and railing against unemployed black men and unwed mothers on welfare.

He was known for his stentorian orations seasoned with biblical and classical allusions and took pride in being the Senate's resident constitutional scholar, keeping a copy of the Constitution in his breast pocket. He saw himself both as institutional memory and as guardian of the Senate's prerogatives.

It's hard to imagine that someone who was elected to Congress the year I was born -- 1952 -- was still serving nearly sixty years later. That's impressive no matter what you may have thought of the man and his politics.

Our friends on the right will remind us again and again that Mr. Byrd once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, he did. And he repented and made amends, whereas other senators of the time who outlived the Jim Crow laws in their states did not; they simply became members of the party that didn't seem to mind having old times there not be forgotten. At the least Sen. Byrd didn't carry his past as a badge of honor; it was more a lesson that times change and people have to change with them.

Rest in peace.
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Pop Quiz

Via Bob Cesca, former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin addressing a crowd at the Texas Oil Palace:

"Such oversight is in the best industry of our nation and the public and industry."

"...I think Obama is kind of flirting with also, some government overreach. We are a rule of laws, not a rule of presidential fiats that I think President Obama would rather have sometimes, it seems."

You have ten minutes to make sense out of either one of those quotes. For extra credit, diagram both of them. Show your work.
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Bo and Blondi

As if you didn't need any more proof that Hitler comparisons are a waste of pixels, Steven L. Taylor dismantles the absurdity of them in pure historical context.

That leaves you with the talking point that since both President Obama and the late Chancellor of Germany had dogs as pets, they are exactly the same.

HT John Cole.
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Chronicles of Smaller Government

The mantra of the Tea Party movement has been "smaller government" and variations on the theme of more freedom for businesses without any government assistance or interference, right? Yeah, not so much.

Seventy-four percent of self-described Tea Party Supporters would support a “national manufacturing strategy to make sure that economic, tax, labor, and trade policies in this country work together to help support manufacturing in the United States,” according to the poll, put out by the Mellman Group and the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Likewise, 56 percent of self-described Tea Party Supporters “favor a tariff on products imported from other countries that are cheaper because they came from a country that does not have to comply with any climate change regulations in the country where the products were made.”

Hmm... sounds suspiciously liberal to me; especially that part about climate change, which, of course, we all know is a plot by the Socialists to take over the world and force us to watch The Weather Channel.
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Today's Adventures in Pot & Kettle

Via Think Progress:

As significant amounts of oil from the BP disaster moved past Mississippi’s barrier islands this week, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) partied in Washington DC to raise money for Republicans. On Wednesday, boats were skimming oil near the Petit Bois Island at the Mississippi-Alabama border. Barbour decided to attend to his duties as a political fundraiser:

Barbour on Thursday held Washington fund-raisers for the Republican Governors Association, which he heads, and for one of his political action committees, which is raising money for GOP congressional candidates. His fund-raising is receiving some national media attention and feuling speculation that he is already gearing up for a run for president in 2012.

“The most important thing right now is the 2010 elections,” Barbour told reporters.

Let's not hear any more about President Obama playing a round of golf, shall we?
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Perfect Timing

I started coming down with a cold Friday night. I was miserable Saturday and Sunday; coughing, sneezing, the works. And now that I'm getting ready to go to work, it's beginning to back off.
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Short Takes

The G-summit leaders in Toronto agree to try to cut the budget deficit in half by 2013.

Over 500 protesters were arrested in Toronto.

CIA Chief Leon Panetta doesn't think that power-sharing in Afghanistan is a good idea.

Nevertheless, Afghanistan President Karzai has been holding secret talks with militants. (Well, it was a secret.)

Hearings on the confirmation of Elena Kagan begin today.

R.I.P. Martin Ginsburg, husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

You knew it couldn't last -- Gas prices are up 5 cents over the last two weeks.

Tropical update: Tropical Storm Alex is keeping away from the oil spill.

The Tigers finally win against the Braves 10-4. They head home to take on the Twins, who haven't been doing that well, either; the Tigers are a half-game back in the division.
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Sad State

Dennis G at Balloon Juice comments on the latest right-wing tantrum and the media powers that indulge and enable them.

Journalism in our era is mostly pathetic.

If there is a bright spot, it is the new media and principles of reporting coming from blogs and the great unwashed freelancers of the world. Every now and then, somebody from these unwashed masses is hired by the “old guard” media—sometimes to a good end and sometimes to a bad one.

Journalism should be a thing alive that always questions motives, understanding, assumptions and the facts of the moment. It does not need to lapse in false standards of purity, impartiality, conventional wisdom and the mythology of ‘objectivity’. When these whims become rules that trump good reporting and writing then the powerful can use these ‘rules’ to purge voices they find ‘offensive.’

This is how a free press is controlled and silenced. The latest example was the firing of Dave Weigel over at the Washington Post for some statements in a private email listserve.

The WP Ombudsman put up an idiotic column about the incident. In this drivel, he argued that the lesson to be learned is that the WP was too mean to wingnuts. And so he defended the cowardly act of firing Weigel.

My how far the state of journalism has fallen.

Mr. Weigel's firing is bothersome for more than just the fact that the release of his private e-mails hurt the feelings of some conservatives; we always knew that these bullies and poseurs were thin-skinned and would react with juvenile tantrums. What is really sad is that Mr. Weigel's comments were not, for the most part, about people in power. They were about commentators and pundits on the right; Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are talking heads, as are most of his targets. In other words, this whole flap is a schoolyard squabble over who gets to sit at the Kool Kidz table in the Beltway cafeteria.

Sheesh.
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Sunday Reading

This is Reality -- Carl Hiaasen on the harsh realities of the oil spill.

Far from Pensacola Beach, where tears were shed last week, a certifiable idiot named Joe Barton was apologizing to BP because President Obama had pressured the company into creating a $20 billion compensation fund for victims of the Deepwater Horizon accident.

Barton is a Republican congressman whose district in Texas includes Arlington and parts of Fort Worth, a long way from the Gulf of Mexico. Although he later was forced to apologize for his apology to BP, Barton was cheered by some Tea Party bloggers and others who accuse Obama of shaking down the oil giant.

Talk about misplaced sympathy.

Being clueless is one thing. To showcase such an obscene insensitivity to suffering is something else.

With the encroaching oil slick comes a mugging for all whose livelihood depends on the robust health of the Gulf. Hotels stand nearly empty, shop and restaurant workers are being laid off, and fishing boats sit idle at the docks.

The folks staring out at a befouled horizon have mortgages, car payments, medical bills and kids who need clothes for school. Their lives are upended, and might never be the same.

Marine experts say it will take many years for the gulf waters to heal, long after the tar balls and glop are cleaned off the beaches. A spill so deep and so torrential has no precedent, so no model exists to tell us what happens next.

For the millions of Americans who live on or near the ocean, from Kennebunkport to Seattle, the consequences of the accident don't need to be elucidated. The environment is the economy.

Interestingly, those who denounce Obama's ''shakedown'' of BP use no such criminal terms for what the oil company has done to the coastal communities of Louisiana, Alabama and northwest Florida.

Assault would be the word for it. Negligence would be the cause.

Once the oil arrives and the nightmare becomes reality, those who must deal with the stink and the slop are moving past the questions that preoccupy cable news and radio talk shows.

No deep, dark mystery remains.

The rig blew up because somebody made a terrible mistake, period. The well is still gushing and will keep gushing until August, at the earliest.

Exactly how many barrels a day is now an academic debate; the volume remains so immense that it's virtually impossible to comprehend, a number that fluctuates from one press release to another.

Just get the damn leak plugged. That's what matters.

More below the fold.

Congress at War -- The Philadelphia Inquirer says the way to get Congress to work is by fixing the redistricting process.

One key way to ease partisanship is for more states to adopt nonpartisan redistricting. Every 10 years, after the census, states redraw the boundaries of congressional and legislative districts. Too often in states such as Pennsylvania, the process is controlled by partisans. Their goal is to protect incumbents by creating "safe" districts that are contorted to include more Democratic or Republican voters.

The advent of computer technology using voter registration patterns to redraw district boundaries has turned protecting incumbents into a science. The trend makes elections less competitive, and incumbents concern themselves more with satisfying their base of partisan voters.

"That polarizes the two parties," said former Rep. Martin Frost, a Democrat from Texas.

The Iowa system, which uses a nonpartisan commission and requires geographically compact districts, helps to produce competitive elections. Pennsylvania, one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation, would need to approve a constitutional amendment to change its reapportionment system. Not surprisingly, the legislature has resisted this important reform. (New Jersey uses a bipartisan commission with a nonpartisan "tiebreaker" member.)

Voters, too, have the ability to bring about changes in attitudes among lawmakers. It can be as simple as asking a candidate to name one major piece of bipartisan legislation that he or she intends to support if elected.

In the end, it requires voters who truly want their representatives to find common ground.

A noble sentiment indeed. Chances are it will never happen.

Frank Rich -- May we have some more, please? Mr. Rich says the firing of General McChrystal should be the first of many bold moves by the president.

The moment he pulled the trigger, there was near-universal agreement that President Obama had done the inevitable thing, the right thing and, best of all, the bold thing. But before we get carried away with relief and elation, let’s not forget what we saw in the tense 36 hours that fell between late Monday night, when word spread of Rolling Stone’s blockbuster article, and high noon Wednesday, when Obama MacArthured his general. That frenzied interlude revealed much about the state of Washington, the Afghanistan war and the Obama presidency — little of it cheering and none of it resolved by the ingenious replacement of Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus, the only militarily and politically bullet-proof alternative.

What we saw was this: 1) Much of the Beltway establishment was blindsided by Michael Hastings’s scoop, an impressive feat of journalism by a Washington outsider who seemed to know more about what was going on in Washington than most insiders did; 2) Obama’s failure to fire McChrystal months ago for both his arrogance and incompetence was a grievous mistake that illuminates a wider management shortfall at the White House; 3) The present strategy has produced no progress in this nearly nine-year-old war, even as the monthly coalition body count has just reached a new high.

If we and the president don’t absorb these revelations and learn from them, the salutary effects of the drama’s denouement, however triumphant for Obama in the short run, will be for naught.

Doonesbury -- Recruiting blues.
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Short Takes

The G-summit is still going on in Canada.

Protests at the G-summit are winding down; over 300 people were arrested.

Dick Cheney did not have a heart attack, but he's still in the hospital.

Protesters demonstrate against off-shore oil drilling.

Florida gets a bunch of new laws on July 1.

Tropical update: Tropical Storm Alex is heading across the Yucatan towards central Mexico.

At the World Cup, the US lost 2-1 to Ghana and is out of the running.

The Tigers lost to the Braves in the ninth with runners stranded.
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Make Way for Ducklings

In a scene right out of Robert McCloskey's classic children's story, look who showed up in the backyard this morning.

(Click to embiggen.)
I'm sure these are Muscovy ducks since there's a large population of them that hang around along the canal and are frequent feeders in my yard.
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My Life On A Plate

The colors on the 1970 Ohio plate honored The Ohio State University's 100th anniversary that year. The grey nicely matched the silver of the Mustang.

In those days you could go to the deputy registrar's office and reserve a plate number at no extra charge, and the following year(s) they would hold it for you. Our family had three cars, so the lowest series of numbers we could get were three numbers followed by a letter marking the county. My plate was 783 N.

In April 1970, I acquired a silver 1957 Chevrolet Two Ten station wagon. It had belonged to the grandmother of a friend, but she didn't want it any more, so it sat behind my friend's garage. His dad said if I could get it started, I could have it, so armed with jumper cables and a bicycle pump to re-inflate the tires, I got it running and down to my local mechanic who gave it a once-over, replaced a couple of brake lines, and I had a car. (Remember, I shared the Mustang with my siblings, and that spring my brother had it at college.) The Chevy wagon had a huge V-8, a two-speed Power Glide automatic, it was rusted through in the rear wheel wells, no seat belts, and the factory-installed air conditioning was dead, but the radio worked and it ran. Back in those days, I named my cars. I christened the Chevy the Silver Meteor for the train that runs along the eastern seaboard and mentioned in a book that I was reading at the time.

That summer I drove it from Perrysburg all the way to Plainfield, Vermont, where I spent a couple of months working on a dairy farm. It made it there and back again without any trouble. The following winter, though, it got into a fender-bender with our garage and we foisted it off onto another family who promptly parked it in their backyard, and there it rusted away.

Photo by David Nicholson.
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Not Very Repealing

Marco Rubio is showing that he's really not thought things through. At first he was in favor of repealing the healthcare reform law; in fact, he's campaigned for the Florida Senate seat on the premise that he would do that if he was elected. Now he's saying, well, I'd only repeal parts of it; there are some good things in it after all, like the pre-conditions ban or the coverage of children up to the age of 26.

Steve Benen outlines the flaws in this argument.

The first is that the Rubio line isn't exactly coherent. If he plays a role in scrapping the entire law, that will get rid of the very provisions he now claims to support. Maybe he'd try to pass the "good" provisions in a new bill, but that would take a lot of time, and may ultimately fail. Ultimately, Rubio can't have a full and partial repeal at the same time.

The second is more substantive, and it's a lesson that Republicans simply refuse to even think about, no matter how many times it's explained to them. If you're prepared to ban discrimination on those with pre-existing conditions, then the policy must include an individual mandate. It's not that complicated -- if those with pre-existing conditions are to be protected, the mandate is necessary to keep costs from spiraling and to prevent the "free rider" problem.

Of course, if there's an individual mandate, then it's also necessary to include subsidies to those who otherwise couldn't afford coverage. And once you put this string together -- protections for those with pre-existing conditions ... which requires a mandate ... which requires subsidies -- what you're left with is the Affordable Care Act that right-wing politicians like Marco Rubio are so anxious to repeal in its entirety.

I think what's really going on is that Mr. Rubio is finding out that the law is gaining in popularity among the voters and that campaigning on the idea of taking it away will go over like a lead pastelito.
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Save The Planet, But...

Plastic grocery bags may be the bane of the environment -- unless you recycle them -- but apparently there's also a danger in the reusable grocery bags, too.

Reusable grocery bags can serve as a breeding ground for dangerous food-borne bacteria and pose a serious risk to public health, according to a joint food safety research report issued today by researchers at the University of Arizona (Tucson) and Loma Linda University (Loma Linda, California).

The research study – which randomly tested reusable grocery bags carried by shoppers in the Los Angeles area, San Francisco, and Tucson– also found consumers were almost completely unaware of the need to regularly wash their bags.

Noted.
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Short Takes

The G8 summit turns to nukes.

The financial reform bill makes it through the conference.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is spending the weekend in a Washington hospital after complaining of "discomfort."

Tropical update: That little disturbance is now Tropical Storm Alex, and it looks like it's headed for the Mexico-Texas border area.

The Tigers lost to the Braves.

Jon Stewart recaps the week.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Recap - Week of 6/21/10
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

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Walking The Plank

I truly think the Texas GOP has lost their mind... assuming they had one in the first place. Take a look at some of the things they demand of their elected leaders.

The GOP there has voted on a platform that would ban oral and anal sex. It also would give jail sentences to anyone who issues a marriage license to a same-sex couple (even though such licenses are already invalid in the state).

“We oppose the legalization of sodomy,” the platform says. “We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.”

The Lone Star state initially passed a law barring sodomy in 1860. Violators faced anywhere from five to 15 years in prison. The ban was overturned in 2003.

In addition, the platform says that homosexuality “tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit and leads to the spread of dangerous communicable diseases.”

It also states that homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in public schools and “family” should not be redefined to include homosexual couples.

They would also ban "all pornography."

I'm not an expert in these matters, but I don't think that the sex acts they describe would apply only to gay people. But what's interesting is that for all their talk about traditional family values, these people sure are hung up on other peoples' sex lives. They obsess more about it than the people they're going after. And I would like to know, just for informational purposes, how they propose enforcing the laws.

As for banning pornography, I think they're going to have trouble with that, too. I haven't spent a lot of time in Texas -- I was born there but we left within six months and I've only been back for the purpose of passing through on my way to someplace else -- but I'm pretty sure it's a lot like every other state where there's a thriving and tax-generating industry that supplies the wants, needs, and desires of people who partake in what's known as "adult entertainment." In other words, I'm pretty sure there isn't a spot in Texas where you can't drive a relatively short distance to find it, and I'm also willing to bet that a lot of the cars and trucks in the parking lot have "McCain/Palin" or tattered old "Bush/Cheney" bumper stickers.

But wait, there's more.

In addition to this, the Texas GOP seeks to end the state's lottery, which provides millions in funding to public education; restrict citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are citizens; end federal sponsorship of pre-kindergarten schools; impose a jail sentence on any illegal immigrant in the state; shut down all day-labor centers; cut off all bilingual education after a student's fourth year in a U.S. public school; legalize corporal punishment in public schools; mandate that evolution and global warming be "taught as challengeable scientific theory"; and demand that Congress evict the United Nations from U.S. soil and end American membership in the global body.

So basically they want to make the state even more xenophobic, their students less informed about reality, and alienate the sizable Latino population. These people make George W. Bush sound like a flaming liberal.

It's ironic that these people think that the pursuit of happiness and freedom is best achieved by stomping on the rights and pursuits of everybody else. If they can't be happy, no one can. What a sorry lot of pathetic people.

HT to Steve M.
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On This Date

June 25, 1876 - General Custer wore an arrow shirt.

June 25, 1950 - The Korean War started. It ended three years later and left over four million dead, including a lot of civilians. For what it's worth, had it not been for a hit TV sitcom, most of the world would have forgotten about it.

June 25, 1976 - I lost a friend, but in the loss I found something. Rest in peace, Bill.
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Speaking of Parasites

A classic case of stupendous irony:

The Raytown farmer who posted a sign on a semi-truck trailer accusing Democrats of being the “Party of Parasites” received more than $1 million in federal crop subsidies since 1995.

Now he's off to a Tea Party rally to fill in for the folks who had to leave to cash their disability checks so they could go to more rallies to get the government out of their lives.
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Kvetch a Falling Star

David Brooks contemplates the fall of General McChrystal:

General McChrystal was excellent at his job. He had outstanding relations with the White House and entirely proper relationships with his various civilian partners in the State Department and beyond. He set up a superb decision-making apparatus that deftly used military and civilian expertise.

But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.

By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.

The reticent ethos had its flaws. But the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.

So it's the fault of Michael Hastings, the reporter for Rolling Stone, who's to blame for General McChrystal granting him unfettered and unguarded access to him and his staff? It's the reporter's fault that these people suddenly became incredibly garrulous about their true feelings about their bosses and the bosses who boss them? Mr. Hastings must have some awesome powers of persuasion.

Or perhaps Gen. McChrystal and his staff exercised really poor judgment or never learned that most basic lesson you're taught when you get into a position of power: always assume the microphone is on and that what you say will be repeated in some way or another. It doesn't matter if the reporter is from Rolling Stone or Stars and Stripes.

And instead of being shocked and saddened by the vulture culture in Washington -- or anywhere powerful people gather -- Mr. Brooks ought to remember that it's called "reporting" for a reason.
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Short Takes

Toronto braces itself for the G20 summit.

It really sounds like the Republicans really don't care about the unemployed. Maybe they should try it themselves.

The judge in New Orleans won't stay his lifting of the drilling moratorium.

The beaches have been cleaned up in Pensacola in advance of more to come.

You still shouldn't go swimming in Biscayne Bay.

Christopher "Dudus" Coke, the Jamaican gang leader, faces charges in New York.

Somebody needed a time-out at the kindergarten graduation.

Tropical update: this little disturbance could go anywhere.

The Tigers finally beat the Mets.
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Friday Blogaround

It's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the oil still gushes. Here's the first LC blogaround of the season.

- A Blog Around The Clock: the deadly drool of the dragon.
- archy: the real Ice Age.
- Bark Bark Woof Woof: a pacifist looks at the military chain of command.
- Bloggg: rent a white guy.
- Dohiyi Mir: baby's first car.
- Echidne Of The Snakes on the accusations against Al Gore.
- Florida Progressive Coalition Blog looks at the Florida Senate race.
- Left Is Right with some good bits.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web celebrates more than just one World Cup.
- Rook's Rant: Rook offers help to Gen. McChrystal.
- rubber hose: noz will be coming home soon. Alone. But it's not over yet.
- Scrutiny Hooligans reports interesting poll numbers for a Democrat running for the Senate in North Carolina.
- Stupid Enough Unexplanation: Cal Thomas splits his pants trying to both support Gen. McChrystal and slam him.
- The Yellow Something Something on the Supreme Courts support of skating Skilling.

What are you doing this weekend?
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Friday Catblogging

Go nuts.


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Food For Thought

Buddy, can you spare a thyme?
Via Balla Tamas.
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Question of the Day

The earth moved in Canada yesterday. Apparently there's a fault line along the Ottawa River; who knew?

Have you ever been in an earthquake?

I briefly lived in California in a small town in the San Jacinto mountains, which lies on the De Anza fault. It's about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. We got little tremors all the time, it seemed, but nothing major. Still, the feeling and even the noise -- once it sounded like a thunderclap -- was unsettling.
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Springtime for Hitler

Back in 2005 someone responded to a MoveOn.org contest for an anti-Bush ad with a comparison of Mr. Bush to Hitler. The ad never ran on the site, but in the last five years it has become the benchmark for right-wing talking points about liberal extremism. And, paradoxically, it seems to have inspired the conservatives to come up with their own version of the History Channel's "all Hitler all the time" programming. Steve Benen notes,

Far-right rhetoric is routinely exasperating, but this Nazi preoccupation holds a special place in the lexicon. Remember when Obama's efforts to rescue American auto manufacturing were compared to Hitler? And how many times did Republicans compare health care reform to the Nazis? Or how about the time a Republican congressman compared Obama to Hitler over national-service opportunities? Let's also not forget Newt Gingrich's recent assertion that Obama and his backers are actually worse than Nazis.

On its face, the fact that so many conservatives rely on Hitler comparisons so often is a reminder of an unfortunate truth -- much of the discourse on the right has gone hopelessly insane.

I think we can assume that anyone who uses the Hitler comparison has basically exhausted all of their talking points and is thereby conceding that they've lost the argument.
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Irony of the Day

Via Andrew Sullivan, from Mark Steyn, who was a proud member of the Bush administration, comes this little gem:

What is fascinating about the age of Obama, and about what Senator Fulbright was saying, is what I call, “the persistence of the monarchical urge” — two and a third centuries after George III was given the boot, there are a lot of people who want a strong, charismatic leader who knows what’s best for you. I don’t. I like citizen legislators, and I don’t regard the president of the United States as “my leader.”

Yeah, okay.
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Coming Around

Via TPM:

Health care reform turned an important political corner. A Gallup poll released yesterday finds that, for the first time in months, more Americans say that the Affordable Care Act is a good thing than think it's a bad thing. And, though TPM's PollTracker still finds that, on average, health care reform still has fewer supporters than opponents, support for reform has been growing (and opposition to it shrinking) uninterrupted for months.

Today's Gallup poll finds that 49 percent of respondents were in favor of the new health care law and 46 percent were opposed. Previous polls showed that support for reform trailed opposition: for instance, a June 13 USA Today/Gallup poll showed the split at 46 percent for and 49 percent against. On April 11, the split was 45-49.

It's not a huge margin, but it's trending to more and more people liking what they're seeing -- as the President and proponents of the bill said they would.

So if the GOP still plans to campaign this fall on repealing it, go for it. See how that works.

One interesting aspect of the Gallup poll is the age split.

On the basis of age, the largest well of opposition is found among seniors, 60% of whom call passage of the bill a bad thing, similar to the 57% in April. By contrast, attitudes are more favorable than unfavorable among young and middle-aged adults.

What's up with that? Are they afraid the government is going to get involved with their Medicare?
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Just Stop

Mike Huckabee is now trying to explain that he didn't come up with the term "ick factor" to describe gay marriage.

In a statement posted on his PAC's web site, he defends himself, saying the phrase isn't his.

"My use of the phrase 'ick factor' was as the established notion from within the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender (GLBT) community. It was not an indication of personal aversion, but rather a reference to an established phrase used mostly from same-sex marriage advocates and militants - not one I created," he wrote.

"This phrase is not new. This phrase is not mine," he added.

In other words, he's blaming Teh Gayz for making him use the term.

Here's a thought for Mr. Huckabee: when you're in a hole, stop digging.
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Jack Abramoff Is Making Dough

Jack Abramoff, the one-time lobbyist and darling of many GOP senators and congresspeople, is working in a pizza parlor in Baltimore as a part of his release after serving three and a half years in prison for fraud, corruption, and conspiracy.

He has so far stayed largely cloistered in a back office. He will work about 40 hours a week, said the owner, Ron Rosenbluth. He comes in around 10:30 a.m., leaves around 5:30 p.m., and wears a yarmulke to work, as many of the male customers and employees here do. He earns between $7.50 and $10 an hour (“or a little less than what he used to make”). He has been responsible, punctual, courteous. “He is not the monster he has been portrayed as,” Mr. Rosenbluth said.

Everybody deserves a second chance, right?
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Short Takes

The BP gusher went full tilt after a robot sub knocked the cap off. BP says they have now fixed it.

Oil ashore: "Pensacola Beach got the worst wallop so far in Florida from the spreading Gulf of Mexico slick, with eight miles of sticky oil arriving on the area's pristine sands."

Status quo: President Obama says the Afghanistan strategy won't change in the wake of the dismissal of Gen. McChrystal.

Politics down under: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is out after an internal party fight, making Julia Gillard Australia's first woman PM.

Charlie Crist is now looking to Democrats for fund raising.

A 5.0 earthquake gets a little bit of shaking going on in Ottawa.

Landon Donovan scores the one goal needed to keep the US team's hope alive at the World Cup.

Tropical Update: keeping an eye on a system that could come into the Gulf.

The Tigers lose to the Mets again.
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McChrystal Out, Petraeus In

From the New York Times:

Mr. Obama, standing with General Petraeus and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the White House Rose Garden to underline the continuity and solidity of his Afghan policy, said that he had accepted General McChrystal’s resignation “with considerable regret.”

Mr. Obama said he had done so not out of personal insult over a magazine article featuring contemptuous quotes from the general and his staff about senior administration officials, but because it showed the general had not met standards of behavior for a commander, which threatened to erode trust among administration and military officials, as well as undermine civilian control of the military.

“War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or president,” Mr. Obama said. “As difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for our national security.”

“I welcome debate among my team,” he said, “but I won’t tolerate division.”

Harry Truman, take a bow.

I won't pretend to know anything about military strategy, and as a pacifist, I'd rather we weren't in a war at all. But if the appointment of Gen. Petraeus can hasten the end of the war and leave Afghanistan with a hope of some kind of future on their own, then I'm all for it.

And it appears that Mr. Obama flummoxed the right-wingers by appointing the man they all rallied behind in the war in Iraq, and, in canning Gen. McChrystal, proving that he is most assuredly the Commander in Chief. I'm sure that thought never occurred to anyone in the White House.
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Not In the Spirit

Spirit Air, the low-budget airlines based in South Florida, is, at least in terms of advertising, a no-class operation.

Spirit Airlines -- they of the multi-year labor dispute and the charge for carry-on bags -- would like to encourage you to buy tickets to Cancun, Puerto Rico, Atlantic City or Fort Lauderdale with a timely new ad campaign called Best Protection. The tag line? "Check out the oil on our beaches." And you thought Haley Barbour's tourism promotion campaign was offensive.

Spirit Air is using the new campaign to promote its sale fares to beach getaways unaffected by BP's massive oil spill, and they'd like potential customers to know that the only oil you'll find on those beaches is slathered on the bodies of bikini-clad women who will all stare at newcomers with come-hither eyes and pouting lips. Get it? Their oil will protect you -- or, at least the scantily clad women you slather it on.

The campaign is, of course, as sexist as it is offensive to the residents of the Gulf Coast who are watching their livelihoods, wildlife and property values swallowed up in caustic and deadly crude oil as a result of the explosion aboard BP's Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent spill. So, what better time for a few puns about what BP really stands for and some women you can objectify!

Yeah, call me humorless, but this is just not funny. And it would be just as bad if the model was a hunky guy in a Speedo; you're a sexist if you objectify men, too.

There are any number of ways to include the BP disaster in promoting tourism; local governments are scrambling to get funding to do just that, and commercial enterprises can help. But this kind of exploitation and attempt at humor is just dripping with failure.
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Generally Speaking

You don't have to have served in the military to understand the concept of the chain of command. Anybody who works in any type of structured environment, be it the Pentagon or a Wal-Mart, knows that there is an organizational method with some people ranked higher than others and that the operation of the business depends on the people giving orders to people who carry them out.

And as in any human endeavor, there's the inevitable friction between those higher up and those lower down because people are like that; there's always someone who either knows how the place really works and can always offer an opinion on how they would do the job better if they were in charge and how the people in the head office are all a bunch of idiots who have no idea what's really going on. (These people don't have the sense, though, to figure out that the people in the head office must have been smart enough to get there in the first place; it's not all cronyism.)

I'm pretty sure Gen. Stanley McChrystal understands the first concept; after all, you don't rise to become a general in the United States Army by bucking the chain of command. As for the second one, he forgot an essential lesson in management skills: if you're going to complain about how things run in your outfit and the people giving the orders, know who you're talking to when you complain, don't let it become public knowledge to people outside of the office, and for the love of a good dog, don't do it on a road trip with a reporter from Rolling Stone.

Gen. McChrystral's lack of judgment and awareness isn't just an embarrassment for him, for the people around him who joined in the fun, or the people who were the targets of the snide commentary. It calls into question whether or not he and his staff have the maturity and foresight to do the tough job they've been ordered to do. It doesn't really instill confidence in his leadership abilities if he allows this kind of adolescent locker-room towel-snapping commentary to be made public.

As is always the case in these situations, the pressure is on the president as to what to do about an insubordinate general. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last. And as is always the case, there will be politics and the inevitable punditry-enhanced dilemma: fire the general and incur the wrath of the right wing and endangering the mission in Afghanistan. Well, it's not like the president was ever going to win over the right wing on anything, and as for endangering the mission, the war is bigger than one general and there are plenty of others. Besides, if our entire war effort depended on the fate of one man, it was a flawed plan to begin with.

I hope that President Obama shows the maturity and vision that Gen. McChrystal and his staff lack; that their duties, be it winning the war in Afghanistan or defending the country, are far more important than the politics or trying to get good cover on "Morning Joe."

As for Gen. McChrystal, perhaps the president should bust him to corporal until he learns the basic truth taught to every soldier: take your orders, salute, and carry them out.
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Short Takes

There were some more primaries and run-offs yesterday.

Housing sales slumped in May.

Tony Hayward gets a chance to get his life back as another BP executive steps in to handle the spill response.

Try, try again: A judge in New Orleans blocked the drilling moratorium; the Interior Department will issue a new order.

The spill cleanup is hiring the unemployed.

Jamaican police have arrested Christopher "Dudus" Coke, the drug kingpin whose pursuit caused the deadly riots.

Tropical update: the disturbance might head for the oil patch in the Gulf.

It all comes down to one game for the US soccer team at the World Cup.

The Tigers got walloped by the Mets.
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Harry and the General

James Whitmore as President Harry S Truman.


Recent events reminded me of this film.

Part 8 here.

(Sorry about the audio syc fail.)
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Question of the Day

This is from the local oldies (60's & 70's rock music) station:

What was your best summer ever?

The summer of 1971. I had graduated from high school, I took flying lessons and soloed, I went to Europe for six weeks with a bunch of kids from Canada, I did another play at the Cherry County Playhouse (with Bob Crane of Hogan's Heroes) and finished it off by heading off to college here in Miami. Lots of fun, lots of good memories, and I made friends I still have today.
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Fake Tea in Florida?

Christina Bellantoni at TPM reports that the sudden surge in Tea Party candidates in Florida has some folks in the GOP suspicious.

Fearing that even marginal voter preferences for tea party candidates could spell doom in November, Republicans now claim that the dozen or more Florida Tea Party candidates running for statehouse seats are part of some Sunshine State shenanigans.

[...]

Katie Betta, a spokeswoman for the Florida Republicans, said the GOP is adding up the evidence -- five candidates in their 20s, who in some cases live hours from the districts in which they are seeking office, with little voting history.

"A lot of them are just out of college, who don't actually live close to the districts they filed to run in," Betta told TPMDC. "Who are these candidates who have come out of the blue? It really seems in our opinion to be something certainly different than the grassroots tea party movement."

Roll Call is reporting that one candidate has a history of working with Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) who became a liberal darling last fall for his no-holds-barred attacks on the GOP from the floor of the House: "The Republican health care plan is 'Don't Get Sick,' and if you do, die quickly."

One of Rep. Alan Grayson’s pollsters is running for the state House in Florida as a Tea Party candidate, fueling Republican suspicions that the Democratic Congressman is using a newly formed third party to boost his own re-election bid.

On Friday, Victoria Torres, 44, of Orlando qualified to run as a Tea Party candidate in state House district 51 in the last hours of the qualifying period.

A call to Torres was returned by Nick Egoroff, communications director for the Florida Tea Party, who described Torres as a “quasi-paralegal assistant who works in a law office.” But apparently, Torres is also a pollster.

According to records from the Florida Department of State office, Torres incorporated Public Opinion Strategies Inc. in December 2008. In the first quarter of this year, Grayson’s campaign made two payments to her firm, totaling $11,000, for polling and survey expenses.

“She’s got various businesses on the side,” explained Egoroff, who confirmed Torres’ work for Grayson. “It’s just a business relationship. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

I'd love to think that the Democrats here in Florida were that clever by half, but I have a hard time believing that the party that is struggling to get their Senate front-runner Kendrick Meek out of the teens in his polling because hardly anyone outside of his district has heard of him and is facing a serious challenge by a billionaire newcomer would devote any time and energy to covert operations to subvert and discombobulate the Tea Partiers. They seem to be fully capable of doing that on their own without any help from the Democrats.
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Speaking of "Ick"

Mike Huckabee, destined to be the Campaign 2012 version of a folksy Pat Buchanan, is against gay marriage because of what he calls the "ick factor."

"I do believe that God created male and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the two opposite sexes," Huckabee said in a recent New Yorker profile. "Male and female are biologically compatible to have a relationship. We can get into the ick factor, but the fact is two men in a relationship, two women in a relationship, biologically, that doesn't work the same."

Actually, the only ick factor is that apparently Mr. Huckabee is incapable of thinking beyond his adolescent obsession with what other people do with their naughty bits. People who have a healthy understanding of marriage and the relationships between two people realize that there is more to it than what happens in the bedroom.

He later goes on to say that "No culture in the history of mankind has ever tried to redefine marriage." So he thinks marriage today is the same as it was back in the days -- in the Old Testament for example -- when a man had as many wives as he could afford, fathers sold their daughters off as part of a business transaction, and arranged marriages were made between families in order to settle feuds? I guess that means all those June brides and grooms in the Society pages who are getting married for silly reasons such as love and mutual respect are radicals who are redefining marriage, and even the churches are going along with it. Oh, the horror.
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I Am a Trendsetter

Here's a kiss and a smile for Badtux the Snarky Penguin who finally acknowledges the coolness of driving the gayest car evah.

Ford Mustang convertible. On a beach. With beach volleyball courts nearby so you can preen for your boyfriend in action shots. Don't believe me? Just ask Mustang Bobby. I'm sure there's other cars that can make the list (hmm, Volkswagen New Beetle -- that bud vase is just fahhhbulous, eh?). You can even mention a few of them in comments if you wish. But VOLVO?! Doesn't even BEGIN to make that list, yo!

For you, BT.
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