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Thursday, June 30, 2005
Hey, baby, it's the Fourth of July...almost
In lieu of Friday Random Ten... 
A sampling of 4th of July lyrics from Mariah to Aimee to Bruce to Ani to the great Dave Alvin
***
It was twilight
On the Fourth of July
Sparkling colors were
Strewn across the sky
And we sat close enough
That we just barely touched
While roman candles
Went soaring above us and baby
Fourth of July – Mariah Carey
***
Shower in the dark day
Clean sparks driving down
Cool in the waterway
Where the baptized drown
Naked in the cold sun
Breathing life like fire
Thought I was the only one
But that was just a lie
Cause I heard it in the wind
And I saw it in the sky
And I thought it was the end
And I thought it was the 4th of July
Fourth of July – Soundgarden
***
Well she hated the 4th of july
Bombs bursting in air, and she’d never know why
She’d keep me up all night, too terrified to cry
Oh yes, she hated 4th of July
Don’t you be scared, don’t you start to shake
Go back to sleep because I am wide awake
I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere tonight
Feel my hand, I’m gonna hold you till the early light
4th of July – Blues Traveler
***
Today’s the fourth of July
Another June has gone by
And when they light up our town I just think
What a waste of gunpowder and sky
I’m certain that I am alone
In harbouring thoughts of our home
It’s one of my faults that I can’t quell my past
I ought to have gotten it gone
Oh, baby, I wonder -
If when you are older -
Someday-
You’ll wake up
And say, ’my god, I should have told her -
What would it take?
But now here I am and the world’s gotten colder
And she’s got the river down which I sold her.’
Fourth of July – Aimee Mann
***
She's waiting for me when I get home from work
But things just ain't the same
She turns out the light and cries in the dark
Won't answer when I call her name
On the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone
The Mexican kids are shooting fireworks below
Hey, baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey, baby, it's the Fourth of July
She gives me her cheek when I want her lips
And I don't have the strength to go
On the lost side of town in a dark apartment
We gave up trying so long ago
Whatever happened, I apologize
So dry your tears and baby, walk outside
It's the Fourth of July
Fourth of July – Dave Alvin
***
Sandy the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight
Forcin' a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July
Down in town the circuit's full with switchblade lovers so fast so shiny so sharp
As the wizards play down on Pinball Way on the boardwalk way past dark
And the boys from the casino dance with their shirts open like Latin lovers along the shore
Chasin' all them silly New York girls
Sandy the aurora is risin' behind us
The pier lights our carnival life forever
Love me tonight for I may never see you again
Hey Sandy girl
4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) – Bruce Springsteen
***
Shall I tell it again how we started as friends
Who would run into one another now and again
At the Yippee Cai O or the Mesa Dupree
Or a dozen different everyday places to be
I was loping along living alone
We were ever so brave on the telephone
Would you care to come down for fireworks time
We could each just reach
We step out of line
And the smell of the smoke and the lay of the land
and the feeling of finding one's heart in one's hand
and the tiny tin voice of the radio band singing
love must stand
Love forever and ever must stand
Unbelievable you, impossible me
The fool who fell out of the family tree
The fellow that found the philosopher's stone
Deep underground like a dinosaur bone
Who fell into you at a quarter to two
With a tear in your eye for the Fourth of July
On the Fourth of July - James Taylor
***
you gotta have the right tools
for every job
so I invite myself in
through a hole in the fence
I am tripping through the junkyard
scanning over the piles
the thin cats raise their skin in defense
I know he's watching me
I can see him through the cracks
his eyes are small and shy on my back
he says his name is Jason
he lives in the last trailer on the right
and he'll be seven
on the fourth of July
only the people who live here
know the name of this place
my path through Iowa would be
hard to trace
all the adults in this town
try not to frown
when I walk by
but Jason smiled at me
he met my eye
he don't ask me
where I'm from
or why I came
here alone
we all go looking for paradise
then we go back home
we cut out the small talk
go right to the way things are
he showed me his squirrel skull
I told him I locked myself out of my car
so there goes the only friend
I have in Iowa
his hand flapping behind him
waving good-bye
his name is Jason
he lives in the last trailer on the right
and he'll be seven
on the fourth of July
Fourth of July – Ani DiFranco
***
I'm sure I missed a few. Drop me a line and I'll add them, but none of them can hold a roman candle to Alvin's as done by either him or John Doe with X.
Added: Click on comments (the time stamp) to see some other great additions.
posted by tbogg at 9:39 PM
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Thursday Night Basset Blogging Usually when Beckham has this look on his face it means that somewhere in the house something is destroyed..or on fire...or has poop on it.
posted by tbogg at 9:01 PM
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Modesty ablazeNotRocketTrunk over at Power Line writes: Peggy Noonan has an excellent piece in today's WSJ about the immodesty of some many of our present public officials. Barack ("Honest Abe") Obama is exhibit A, but Noonan also points to Bill Frist, the Senate's gang of 14, the Clintons, and Justices Ginsburg and Stevens.
She could easily have added Al (he invented the internet) Gore and John ( "I don't fall down") Kerry. Has any party ever nominated in back-to back elections two men as pompous and conceited as these two? I'm having trouble thinking of even one other such presidential candidateHmmmmm. Pompous? Conceited? I seem to remember someone like thatYou dumb shit, he didn't get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties' concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing shithead. And don't bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don't qualify, you stupid shit.Nice guy, eh?
posted by tbogg at 1:44 PM
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For 24 hours your wishing me well
364 days I'm in hell
oh well
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to meGo wish Holden, who is Lord of the Gaggle in the same way that Guy Flatley is Lord of the Dance, a happy birthday. Go on. It won't kill you. And stand up straight, for heavens sake....
posted by tbogg at 1:28 PM
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We are all the same people that we were in high schoolFor the moment we don't know if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers in Iran. I'm sure that the Muslim-sniffers over at LGF are wagging their tails, frothing at the mouth and barking up a storm. So, in the meantime, let's play Compare the President: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: -student at the University of Science and Technology -member of the Office for Strengthening Unity -member of the Revolutionary Guard in 1980 and served in the Iran-Iraq war. -Former Mayor of Tehran. George W. Bush- C-student at Yale-Member of Texas Air National Guard who went AWOL. Avoided Vietnam War. -Couldn't find oil in Texas- Inside trader-Became a drunk- Snorted cocaine off of a Mexican hookers ass. - Ran for Congress and lost. -Minority partner in Texas Rangers Baseball club. Made fortune using eminent domain in a landgrab for Arlington Stadium -Governor of Texas. Makes fun of deathrow prisoners. -Elected President of the United States by stopping the vote count in Florida. Reads My Pet Goat to students while city burns and people leap to their death. Lies to American public and invades Iraq. Falls off of Segway. I think my work here is done.
posted by tbogg at 11:45 AM
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Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Marathon man Courtesy of the WaPo  (click to enlarge)
posted by tbogg at 11:47 PM
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FanboyThe Pod on Cinderella Man: Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ron Howard, is a thrilling piece of work. No, more than thrilling. I left the screening room this afternoon exhilarated, moved, excited, stirred and overwhelmed, convinced that Cinderella Man is one of the best movies ever made"Pod on War of the WorldsJust back from seeing it. Fantastic--fantastic--first hour. Incredibly powerful, involving, scary, exhilarating. Then, unfortunately, Tim Robbins shows up and nearly wrecks it. Cruise is pretty good. Dakota Fanning, as his daughter, is sensational. Ending stinks. But man, that first hour. WowRoger Ebert sleeps peacefully tonight, his job secure....
posted by tbogg at 11:15 PM
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LettersTodays U-T published letters that show that George Bush & Karl Rove are losing conservative San Diego. I am a member of the Republican Party, but my friends are of all political persuasions. I don't know a single Democrat who was interested in offering "therapy and understanding" for our attackers after Sept. 11. To a man, they all supported our military invasion against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Of course, we all expected the job in that country to be finished before another attack on a country with no involvement in the World Trade Center attacks was initiated.
Furthermore, no one I know, Republican or Democrat, is interested in giving up our First Amendment right to question and criticize our government on Rove's say-so just because it might be broadcast on Al-Jazeera. I am sick of these types of cheap, inflammatory potshots from both sides and would like to see our country's leadership, my party's leadership, who purport to be grown-ups, start intelligent, conciliatory and productive political dealings with each other no matter what side of the political aisle they come from.
The president, our CEO, should expect good behavior, serve all of us as head of the country we all live in, and fire these playground bullies if they can't shape up. Of course, that might be too "uniting."
ELAINE SHOEMAKER
La Mesa
Karl Rove's ignorant statement that liberals would have just provided therapy for the Sept. 11 attack incensed me. My father was a combat veteran of World War II, my husband is an Army veteran of Vietnam, every man and two women in my family have served in the military. We are patriotic. We have strong family values and a very strong work ethic. And guess what folks? We are Democrats.
That's right, liberals – stemming from the word liberty as in liberty and justice for all, not just the wealthy. What branch of the military did Karl Rove serve in? Or Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly? They are chicken hawks.
CINDY DUNNE
Lakeside There's lots more.
posted by tbogg at 10:26 AM
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Blogging from Cellblock CVia Roger Ailes, we see that the Queen of Iraq has a kinda-sorta blog up. We await the day when Ahmed Chalabi guest-posts for her while she's busy in the prison laundry.
posted by tbogg at 9:49 AM
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Ask for the Podhoretz discountSee the Pod's favorite movie for free. In a rare marketing ploy, the No. 2 U.S. movie theater chain, AMC Entertainment, is offering a money-back guarantee for boxing picture "Cinderella Man," hoping to boost interest in the struggling film amid a record box-office slump.
Advertisements offering on-the-spot refunds to AMC patrons unhappy with the film began running June 24 in newspapers and on the exhibitor's Web site (www.amctheatres.com), AMC spokeswoman Pam Blase said Tuesday.
The ads, welcomed by the film's distributor, Universal Pictures, say in part: "AMC believes Cinderella Man is one of the finest motion pictures of the year!"Okay. We could have done without that concluding exclamation point. This isn't to say that Cinderella Man isn't a good movie. I really don't know; I haven't seen it. I think that Ron Howard is a competent though style-less director, Russell Crowe is an above-average actor, and Renée Zellweger*...well, I don't know anyone who has ever gone to a movie specifically because she was in it. But Cinderella Man (horrible title and all) was released at the wrong time and marketed poorly. Big serious humanistic dramas belong in the late fall when they're all rolled out for Academy consideration. Nobody wants to see a movie about the Depression at a time when all of the other movies have exploding shit in them (see Michael Bay's next opus crappus). And if I really wanted to see a movie about the Depression I would watch Steven Soderbergh's minor masterpiece King of the Hill... except for the fact that it is inexplicably not available on DVD. Now that is wrong. *Bonus Renée Zellweger antipathy note: she is currently slated to play Janis Joplin in Piece of My Heart. You may now commence getting your hate on....
posted by tbogg at 9:06 AM
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Like you needed another reason to hate Oprah I am a contemptible over-pampered bi-atch Oprah shows up at a store after they have closed and they don't open the door because... they're racists. Whether Oprah Winfrey was turned away from a bit of after-hours shopping in Paris because of a racist employee or a special event, news of the confrontation outside a luxury store has evoked empathy and anger from many American minorities.
[...]
The incident occurred when Winfrey stopped by Hermes on June 14 to buy a watch minutes after the boutique closed. Though she and three friends said they saw shoppers inside, neither a sales clerk nor manager would let them in.
Winfrey believes the store's staff had identified her, according to a spokeswoman from Harpo Production Inc., her company. Winfrey's friend, Gayle King, who was there, told Entertainment Tonight, "Oprah describes it as 'one of the most humiliating moments of her life.'" Harpo says Winfrey plans to discuss the incident in the context of race relations on her show this fall.
Hermes said in a statement it "regrets not having been able to welcome" Winfrey to the store, but that "a private public relations event was being prepared inside." The store did not respond to calls seeking comment.
"As retailers, we want to treat every customer well. So I tell retailers not to look at the customer for what they look like but to address the product they want and what service they're looking for," said Daniel Butler, vice president for merchandising and operations at the Washington-based National Retail Federation.
Even if a store is closed, Butler said, the staff should be empowered to "do as much as they can to accommodate a customer and hopefully use common sense."
Winfrey has often plugged Hermes products – a $135 tea cup and saucer was featured in her magazine in 2001 and was still on her Web site Tuesday, along with the company's phone number. But she has said she will no longer be shopping in its stores. First of all, fuck Oprah. They didn't open the doors because...they were closed. The customers who were inside had a better grasp of the concept of space and time and were able to make it through the doors before they were locked and, as far as the employees are concerned, those people had better get their asses in gear and pick out whatever expensive bullshit trinket they want and get the hell out. You see, people in the service industry have lives. They are scheduled to work until, say 9pm, and then they want to go home to their husband and kids or their significant other or even to their dog (or a cat in extreme but unfathomable circumstances). They are tired of pretending to care about your needs. They are tired of making that fake smile that isn't really a smile. They are tired of people demanding and bullying and saying things that, if the employee didn't need that job, would get the customer's asses beat like Steadman's when he hasn't buttered the toast properly. For Gayle King and Oprah to play the race card is contemptible. For Oprah to use it "to discuss the incident in the context of race relations on her show this fall" is even worse. If they recognized her as Oprah and turned their backs it wasn't because she was black; it was because she was Oprah and they could probably see themselves spending the next hour-and-a-half or more catering to her and her friends whims. King said: "Oprah describes it as 'one of the most humiliating moments of her life.'"No. Humiliating is having to have to put your life on hold and re-open the store so that a woman who has made a career out of pretending to care for the common man can come in and browse around with her friends for an overpriced gift watch so that the recipient will be forced to acknowledge how fucking wonderful and generous she is. If Oprah wants to talk about one of the most humiliating moments of her life, she could always re-open the closed wound that was Beloved. She could spend a goddamn week on that.
posted by tbogg at 12:02 AM
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Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Good stuffIt's a link dump. Here is Jane on the understated brilliance of Harry Reid.Here's James humiliating Rich Lowry in a way that that no man deserves...except for Rich Lowry. ...and here's billmon on all of the things that George Bush isn't.
posted by tbogg at 11:25 PM
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Companeeeee! Sit on your hands! Sir. Yes Sir.The Commander in Chief gives a speech that goes over like a belch at a funeral and the guys that he is sending off to die for Halliburton and his phony legacy fail to show their appreciation. So has does General Jack D.Assrocket of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders see it?: Clear, confident, substantive. There was nothing in it that we and our readers didn't already know, but the message is one that many rarely hear. And the networks all carried it after all. That's good; President Bush nearly always does well when people see him, instead of seeing Democrats talking about him, as they will on the evening news.
The only thing I thought was odd was the unnatural quiet in the hall. It was like the audience at a Presidential debate, which has been cautioned not to express approval or disapproval. Only at the end, apparently, were the soldiers permitted to applaud.Looks like the Rocketman is still in the denial stage. This isn't going to be pretty.
posted by tbogg at 7:56 PM
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Rock and roll is deadOh dear me. Coming soon to a Holiday Inn Boom-Boom Room near you: Jimmy and the Foreheads In the afternoon we went to the Guitar Center to buy an amp for Garageband. It’s been a long time since I went to a guitar store, and I was amazed by the quantity of merchandise; never mind the silly HaRd Rawk axes or the innumerable cheapo Strat knockoffs - they had some vintage Fenders in hues you associate with tailfinned death-cars, and a butterscotch-finish Les Paul that made me weak in the knees. I didn’t know whether to buy it or ask for its neck in marriage. I might go back. (My Strat, she is a heavy burden – literally, the thing weighs nine tons, and as much as I love the whammy bar the guitar is incapable of staying in tune.) Gnat amused herself by playing all the guitars like harps. She sat in my lap as I tried out some pedals. We’ll have to go back; I can only imagine that “going to the electric guitar store with Daddy” might be one of those key memories that leads her to think I’m far cooler than I could ever hope to be.It was with this eventuality in mind that Pete Townshend found the need to write: I hope I die before I get old.I blame this on easy-to-acquire digital audio-editing software that allows anyone whose muse is Night Ranger to become an artiste in the non-critical comfort and sanctity of their own home. Just because You Can Still Rock In America (Ah yeah s'alright), doesn't mean that you should. Remember: The very technology that gave us Trent Reznor also gave us Andrew WK.
posted by tbogg at 10:01 AM
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Monday, June 27, 2005
Would you like foam on your
non-fat, de-caf blood latte? F ill it to the brim... Dick Cheney uses American soldiers to pave the road and Haliburton drives right behind scooping up the cash with shovels and dump trucks: Pentagon auditors have challenged nearly $1.5 billion worth of Halliburton Co.'s bills to the U.S. military, Democratic lawmakers say.
Placing the military's largest private contractor operating in Iraq under the microscope once again, House and Senate Democrats on Monday pointed to Pentagon audits criticizing Halliburton for inflating costs, billing for unnecessary equipment and submitting millions of dollars in duplicate costs on two contracts valued at more than $11 billion.
Halliburton has been able to run up excessive charges largely because of "deficient Defense Department oversight and an unquestioning reliance on Halliburton's assurances," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said in a report released Monday at an ad hoc hearing attended only by Democrats.
Officials at the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $1 billion in "questioned" costs and another $442 million in "unsupported" billings connected with contracts to support U.S. troops and rebuild Iraq's devastated oil infrastructure.
Questioned costs are billings auditors have deemed unacceptable because they are unreasonably high, illegal or not permitted under the contract. Unsupported costs lack the necessary documentation.Here comes the Halliburton response: Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Gist-Mann noted that many of the auditors' questions have already been resolved.
The figure represented in Monday's hearing "stems from an aggregation of many reviews over a three-year period," Gist-Mann said. "The amount is a gross mischaracterization of the true facts."
Many of the auditors' questions centered around the "quality of supporting documentation," Gist-Mann said. "It is completely wrong to say or to imply that any of these costs ... are now 'overcharges.' "So if you amortize the fraud over three years, well, it's not so bad. Is it? Under the company's largest contract — valued, as of last September (the most recent figures available) at $8.6 billion — Halliburton subsidiary KBR builds bases, serves meals, washes clothes and provides a myriad of other support services.
At the start of the war, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had also awarded Halliburton a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure. Under that contract, Halliburton was ordered to truck much-needed fuel into Iraq, and the assignment mushroomed to a total cost of $2.5 billion.
Under that contract, Waxman said, Halliburton was charging about $1.30 a gallon to truck in fuel from Kuwait. Executives from Lloyd-Owen International, which has been trucking in fuel for the last year, said they have been charging about 18 cents a gallon.
While Pentagon officials are supposed to be supervising the company's work in Iraq, the military often fails to challenge Halliburton's cost estimates, even when those numbers are dramatically higher than the government's own projections, the lawmakers said.
Halliburton, for example, provided operations and maintenance support at Baghdad International Airport. The government expected the cost of that assignment to be about $1.9 million. Halliburton's estimate was $12.8 million.
The U.S. Army Audit Agency complained that the military supervisors "were willing to rely on the contractor's cost estimates with little or no question."
Halliburton also came under fire Monday from Rory Mayberry, a former food production manager for the company at Camp Anaconda in Iraq.
Mayberry accused Halliburton of serving U.S. troops food that had passed its expiration date or even had been damaged in an insurgent attack.
"We were told to go into the trucks and remove the food items and use them after removing the bullets and any shrapnel from the bad food," Mayberry, who is now working in Iraq for another contractor, told the lawmakers in a videotape.
Halliburton's Gist-Mann said the company's dining facilities are "thoroughly inspected every month by the Army's Preventive Medicine Services division, and one of the main things they check is the expiration dates on various food products."
Mayberry also accused Halliburton of shipping workers who dared speak to military auditors off to more dangerous locations.If I had to guess, I'd be willing to say that Halliburton's Cathy Gist-Mann goes home each and every night and drinks herself unconscious to escape the psychic pain and the bad karma that is eventually going to snap her in two like a twig in a hurricane.
posted by tbogg at 11:53 PM
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I am become Hannity, destroyer of worlds...We've always known that Sean Hannity can take any topic and suck the life and any hope of rational discourse out of it by exposing it to the black hole of his endless stupidity. He is salt on the snail of intellectualism, to coin a phrase that will never ever be used again for obvious reasons. What kind of devastation can he wreak? I'm glad you asked. Take Debbie Schlussel, right-wing commentator and repository of our National Lip Collagen Reserves: Attorney, Columnist, and Hip, Conservative Info-Babe Commentator, Debbie Schlussel is the VRWC's latest and greatest sexy, blonde, and beautiful commentator. With a law degree, MBA, long blonde tresses, and sports acumen to boot, she's a red-blooded American guy's dream. If you are into Debbie Schlussel's appearances on FOX News Channel, ESPN, FOX Sports Radio, CNN, ABC's "Politically Incorrect," and Howard Stern, and her Townhall.com and PoliticalUSA.com "Debbie Does Politics" columns, then this is the place for you--her unofficial fan club. If you've heard Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern talk about her on their national radio shows or seen her speak at the NRA convention, Debbie is proof positive that "Dumb Blonde" is an oxymoron--her beauty and brains are a lethal combination, the reason Ms. Magazine declared Debbie its #1 enemy. To paraphrase "Wayne's World's" Wayne and Garth, if she were President, Debbie Schlussel would be Babe-raham Lincoln.Fair enough. Outside of her blackened soul she passes a reasonable hottitude level even when we factor in a certain amount of air-brushing. But then came that fateful day when she looked into the howling void that is Sean. The horror...the horror. I report. You avert your eyes.
posted by tbogg at 11:02 PM
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Mike Adams: Beer WhoreWorld O'Crap has already had their fun with Mike Adams...Oh I'm sorry, DR. Mike "Respect My Authoritah" Adams who is now taking sex tips from The Virgin Ben. We'll let that sink in in all it's pathetic glory. So sad. Anyway, I was amused when DR. Mike made up some more fake students writing fake essays so he could make one of his fake points: I noticed that in between the time I began using this exercise (in 1993) and the time I stopped (in 2003) there was a marked increase in reports of bizarre sexual conduct. For example, students began to write occasionally about group sex. Others wrote about posing nude for internet sites. One of my students even dropped out of school to become a Playboy Centerfold in 1996. Another wrote about how she ran out of money on Spring Break and slept with another college student for $40 just so she could have money to stay and get drunk on the last night of her vacation.After you've stopped masturbating.....(I'll wait).......okay (that was quick) consider this college student willing to work for beer: In 1990, he turned down a chance to pursue a PhD in psychology from the University of Georgia, opting instead to remain at Mississippi State to study Sociology/Criminology. This decision was made entirely on the basis of his reluctance to quit his night job as member of a musical duo. Playing music in bars and at fraternity parties and weddings financed his education. He also played for free beer.Mind you, it's no easy task playing accordion after a couple of pitchers of Coors Light. Two words: pinched nipples...
posted by tbogg at 10:32 PM
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Poseur alertRoger Simon: I have an offer to make Mr. Wood. Sir, I will introduce you to the California Guru of Your Choice to help you deal with your "anger problem." Or failing that I'll lend you my dog-eared paperback of Hannah Arendt's The Banality of Evil (if I can find it).Ahem. There is no such book by Hannah Arendt called The Banality of Evil. It must be tough "dog-earing" an imaginary book...even one that is specifically identified as a paperback. Next he'll be telling us about the car chase scene in Ulysses.
posted by tbogg at 10:11 PM
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Sunday, June 26, 2005
Dinner parties of mass destruction One of these people will die tonight... As you may have heard, we are losing more and more "liberals" and "Democrats" at dinner parties where the talk turns from the best ways to prepare portobello mushrooms to war, hatred, destruction, and fear, This usually happens right before dessert, particularly if you're serving crème brûlée which takes a bit more time because of the caramelizing stage. Maybe next time, a nice sorbet. Just to safe. Anyway, it seems like only yesterday that Keith Thompson was quietly enjoying a Sand In You Crack when the unthinkable happened: A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the preeminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan’s use of the word “evil” had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.
When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find “evil’” too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.
My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like “gulag” to the dinner table.
I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings.Keith, we hardly knew ye... Now comes word that another of our brothers-in-arms has taken a hit. This one happens to be a friend of Power Line Boy Band member Scott Johnson: Everything Rove said is absolutely true. I entertained at a 50th anniversary party for a well-known feminist leader about 10 days after 9/11. Much of the liberal elite of the Twin Cities was present. I was wearing a little flag pin that elicited considerable mockery. In a post-performance conversation with 3 prominent DFL activists, they all agreed that 1) America had it coming 2) much of the rest of the world cheered the attacks and that was not a bad thing; 3) the attack was purely a "criminal" matter that required the issuing of indictments, but surely not a war, and finally and most horrifically, a direct quote, "At least we got rid of Barbara Olson."
Like racists who feel free to use the "N" word among themselves, these people felt free to be so frank and unguarded because they absolutely assumed that I shared their worldview. I was so upset I couldn't even EAT, and anyone who knows me knows how serious THAT was. I told them I disagreed completely and left. That was the final straw launching me from my lifelong stint as a Democrat to the Republican party. Yes, one moment you're contemplating the shrimp platter and the next thing you know you're sprawled out on the floor watching as everything you've ever believed in (a world free of poverty and war; a world where you can breathe clean air and drink clean water, where workers rights are respected and the government looks out for the little guy) seeps out of your body. As your life passes before your eyes your body grows cold, your vision narrows, and tragically but mercifully your brain shuts down. When you come to...you're a conservative. It doesn't have to end this way. You could just stay home each night writing letters to the NY Times ombudsman complaining about that bitch Judith Miller while watching and re-watching Fahrenheit 9/11 as you burn American flags in the fireplace, but all human beings (except the Virgin Ben) require some human contact. Lets face it, we're liberals and as everyone knows we're continually rutting away like rabbits on Red Bull when we're not smoking crack and forcing virgins to have abortions. Well, you can't do that at home by yourself (believe me, I've tried) and so we nervously leave our palatial rent-controlled studio apartments in search of human companionship and maybe, if we're lucky, a solitary Christian that we can mock mercilessly. Eventually we reach our destination where we join other fellow-travelers and plot the overthrow of the government, share recipes for serving and eating the rich, and make fun of NASCAR. But there is always the risk that someone will carelessly mention Friedrich Hayek and the next thing you know another liberal will be flopping on the floor like a landed trout and you'll be thinking, "There but for the grace of a completely random sequence of events having nothing to do with a primitive and ridiculous notion of some 'god' or 'cosmic overseer', go I." This is our burden. So let's be careful because somewhere out there, maybe in the mail right this very moment, is an invitation with you name on it. The one you never see coming....
posted by tbogg at 10:22 PM
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No Olympic rings for you. Next! Using her feminine charms... Condoleezza Rice, who failed spectacularly as National Security Advisor (remember 9/11, " Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S"?) and is one of the architects of our sojourn into Iraquagmire has volunteered to help out New York City in attempting to acquire the 2012 Olympics. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is offering herself as a personal ambassador for New York's bid to host the 2012 Olympics.
Rice will appear with New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a rally on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday.
It is a send-off rally for New York's emissaries to the International Olympic Committee, which is to choose a host city July 6 at a meeting in Singapore."New York is an internationally recognized symbol of unity, hope and opportunity and Secretary Rice believes it is the perfect place for the Olympics," Rice senior adviser Jim Wilkinson said Friday.I assume that she'll pitch Rikers as an excellent location for an athletes village for any participants from the Middle East. I'd hold off on printing up those NYC2012 t-shirts for right now.
posted by tbogg at 9:47 PM
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Saturday, June 25, 2005
There goes the neighborhoodIt would be wrong to not share some of the latest on Randy " Your Vote Is In Escrow" Cunningham: Neighbors got their first inkling that something was going on at Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's Del Mar-area home when they saw him packing.
* Procurement deal keeps lawmaker's friend busy
* Poway firm contributed to Cunningham
Next door neighbor Kent Greene asked: "Are you selling your house?"
"Already sold," Cunningham answered.
When neighbors later learned the $1,675,000 price, they were even more astonished.
"There was something fishy with the whole thing," said Mark Konopacke, who had bought his home across the street six months before for $700,000 less.
[...]
Some have dubbed the controversy "Mansiongate," but the house's original owner, Barbara Casino-Mizer, laughs when she sees the house in the papers. She and her husband, Corky Mizer, bought the ocean-view home from the builder in April 1987 for $385,000.
Casino-Mizer loved the big kitchen, the mosaic-tiled bathtub and the mauve carpet that was all the rage in the late '80s. However, when the couple found another home with acreage nine months later, they put the Mercado home on the market. Cunningham, who had been teaching at the Navy's Top Gun flight school, bought it for $435,000.
"I didn't know him from a hole in the wall," said Casino-Mizer. "It broke my heart he was going to put bars over the windows, even on the skylights."
Some neighbors adored the larger-than-life fighter pilot who turned into a politician. One said she walked precincts for him. But he rarely participated in neighborhood get-togethers like the Labor Day block party. Some considered him standoffish.
"On Sundays when we were out washing cars in our shorts and jeans and T-shirts, he would come and go in long-sleeved shirts and cuff links," said neighbor Michele Kipnis.
The decorative bars Cunningham put over the windows gave the stylish home an ominous prison-like look, some neighbors said. They called it an eyesore. The neighborhood, though, was desirable. Many homes have ocean views, and each has its own style. Values shot up.
[...]
Neighbors say they never saw Wade. Some heard the house had been purchased by a government employee with tax dollars. Others heard a friend bought it. The house went on the market again almost immediately for $1,680,000.
"When I saw the price, I said, 'Thank you for raising my property values,' " Kipnis said.
Many neighbors peeked in during the open house.
"We all knew it wasn't market value," said Victoria Konopacke. "It was a dump. The place needed to be gutted."
Her husband, Mark, added: "I'm not surprised at all people are asking questions."
The 3,826-square-foot house sat on the market for months while most homes were getting multiple offers. After the bars were removed, Kerry and Warren Vail put in a "low-ball" offer. Wade didn't respond for more than a month, Kerry Vail said. Then, there was a call, and a deal was struck quickly: $975,000.
[...]
Next door to the congressman's old place, Kent Greene has a for-sale sign posted in front of his house. He's asking $1,650,000.
Greene said that while the price may have been "ridiculous" for Cunningham's house in 2003, his home is highly upgraded and the market has moved up.
"It's a good neighborhood," he said, "an improved house, and, let me put it this way, it's better without him here." For this we will break our ' heh' embargo and just say, "Heh".
posted by tbogg at 1:58 PM
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Advertisements for myself Buy my book or I'll perky the fuck out of you... Lest anyone think that Clownhall columns serve anything other than egos that should rightfully remain small, keep in mind that they also serve mammon in the form of flogging otherwise negligible literary efforts. Take the case of Rebecca Hagelin who is Meghan Cox Gurdon without the anglophilia. Rebecca, whom I'm sure goes by Becky, Becs, and I Used To Be A Real Catch Back In High School, regularly uses her columns to impart mom-ish common sense in interpretive dance as underwritten by the Heritage Society. That is unless she's got a minivan payment coming due, in which case it's time to start pimping her latest book, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family From A Culture That Makes My Husband Want To Put His "You-Know-What" Somewhere God Never Intended. And if you didn't know that she had a new book out, it's probably because you were only pretending to listen to her drone on and on while you were watching Sportscenter. June 17, 2005Along with the honor of being a father comes tremendous responsibility. In my newly released book, "Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad", I dedicate an entire chapter to Dads, outlining a half a dozen virtues that are particularly important for fathers to model for their families. Included in my list are reverence, commitment, honesty, pleasantness and respect, fitness and communication. I’ve excerpted below the section on reverenceJune 10, 2005Amen. As I write in my book Home Invasion, fathers should add tangible spiritual elements to family life. This means taking your family to church, of course, because being active in a congregation grounds you in faith. But it also means bringing spirituality into your home. Play spiritual music. Incorporate grace into mealtimes. Institute regular family prayer and study. Talk about what you believe, why you believe it, and how it applies to your daily lives.May 27, 2005As I discuss in my book, Home Invasion, my Heritage Foundation colleague, researcher and policy analyst Patrick Fagan points to the sad state of the American family as one key causal factor that has led to what he calls our "culture of rejection:"May 19, 2005Townhall.com columnist Rebecca Hagelin can be heard today on Focus on the Family, hosted by Dr. James Dobson, discussing her new book, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture that's Gone Stark Raving Mad. Focus on the Family is heard on 3,500 stations nationwide and 5,000 internationally in 163 countries. Below is an excerpt from Home Invasion.May 13, 2005After listening to caller feedback on the scores of radio interviews I’ve done so far on my new book, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That’s Gone Stark Raving Mad, I’ve got a renewed passion for my heartfelt message: Parents can fight the culture -- and win.
May 6, 2005 In short, Katrina is an inspiration -- not just for single moms, but for married moms, too. As I point out in my book, Home Invasion (www.HomeInvasion.org), when it comes to the extraordinarily hard task of raising our children with character, parents get only one chance to do it right. The job is much harder for the single parent, but Hunter is living proof that the children of single moms can thrive and rise to the top of their peers when they are blessed with a mother like Katrina.April 22, 2005This week, our dear Papa John died. But although I grieve that I no longer will be able to hear his gentle voice on the phone, or see the glimmer in his eye, or watch his warm embrace of my husband and our children, I am so blessed in having learned from this great champion of faith, family and freedom.
What follows is an excerpt from my newly released book, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad.April 15, 2005The following is an excerpt from Rebecca Hagelin's new book, Home Invasion : Protecting Your Family in a Culture that's Gone Stark Raving Mad, which hit Amazon.com's best seller list within 24 hours of release.You really have to appreciate the kind of stick-to-it-ness that allows someone to use the death of her father-in-law in order to promote her book. Let's just hope that she didn't autograph copies of it at the funeral using the casket for a table. That would have been tacky.
posted by tbogg at 12:01 AM
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Friday, June 24, 2005
Shorter Victor Davis Thermopylae Agamemnon HansonA sober American Public won't give George Bush the keys to the car so that he can careen around the world in a drunken killing spree of power and this makes George a victim and it makes me very sad. I think I'm going to cry.(Added): Jesus. As usual James Wolcott (who is a professional, by gum) covers Hanson and the Panic Posse in greater detail, minutes before I did. Damned Eastern Standard Time elitist...
posted by tbogg at 10:26 PM
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Friday neologism bloggingBill Yates, who writes reviews of Christian CD's ( "DJ Stigmata's Hollaback Jesus is the new gold standard in Christian hip-hop with enough funky samples and phat beats that'll make even old school evangelicals get up and get their phreak on...condemning them to a fiery hell where they will be sodomized by Satan for eternity for the sin of dancing.") has come up with a new wingnutbag term: To Durbinize
Durbinize, verb.
1. To make, either explicitly or implicitly, a moral, political, or factual equivalence between two situations which in reality have little or nothing in common. (After U. S. Senator Richard Durbin (D, ILL) who compared the alleged abusive treatment of a terrorist detainee held at Guantanamo Bay with the depraved horrors of the Nazis, Soviet gulags, and Pol Pot’s mass murders, thereby equating the U. S. personnel with these murderous despots.)
2. To apparently apologize without actually doing so by subtly placing the blame for legitimate objections to the actions of definition 1 on the objectors. This may be accomplished by expressing disappointment that the objectors have “misunderstood” the speaker’s remarks or by stating the speaker’s sorrow that feelings were hurt. In reality, the speaker is implying that the objectors are too stupid to understand plain English or are insufficiently educated or mature to accept the speaker’s remarks as truth.Which, of course, reminded me of this one: Yattering, verb. 1.)To feign outrage at or deliberately misunderstand simple english in an effort to score cheap political points or deflect from the issue at hand, "He was still yattering on about it long after we went out to buy beer and Slim Jims. What a dumbass.".Synonyms: malkinize, malangalanging. 2.) A pathological condition characterized by misinterpreting the words of others and endowing them with a nonsensical amount of hyperbole in order to drown out the cognitive dissonance. See also; bullshitting oneself, delusions of competency, and what a dumbass.
posted by tbogg at 1:19 PM
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Friday Random TenFor your listening reading pleasure... A Case of You - Joni Mitchell (live Miles of Aisles) Green Flower Street - Donald Fagen Sleeps With Butterflies - Tori Amos Parade - Garbage Put 'Em Up - Neptunes N.O.R.E. All Lifestyles - Beastie Boys Casualties of War (Main Theme) - Yo-Yo Ma California Stars - Billy Bragg & Wilco The Medication Is Wearing Off - The Eels Embrasse Moi- Les Nubians
posted by tbogg at 10:53 AM
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Friday Call Karl Rove BloggingVia Americablog you can call Karl at (202) 456-2369. Bonus points for actually getting through to him. By 'getting through to him', I mean talking to him. I don't think it's possible to "get through to him". He's too far gone.
posted by tbogg at 10:35 AM
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Thursday, June 23, 2005
Thursday Night Right-Aligned Basset Blogging From the archives... Since I was so wrapped up with fixing the blog (which, as you can see, hasn't happened yet) I almost forgot Basset Blogging. Oh yeah, we also went and saw Batman. Anyway, a quick search pulled up this one from the day Beckham came home. This is his pre-evil little bastard period. ..as for the format, apparently it has to do with a div that is not closed. Problem is, I can't find the little bastard.
posted by tbogg at 10:53 PM
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I Hate BloggerOkay. I did absolutely nothing that should have made the format change and, being the computer wiz that I'm not, I have no idea how to fix it. If anyone has any suggestions...email me. (grumble...grumble...grumble)
posted by tbogg at 4:26 PM
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Why Jonah isn't a political consultantOh. This is good advice: THE POLITICS OF SCOTUS [Jonah Goldberg]
I fall somewhere between Ramesh and Rod on this. But I don't see any downside whatsoever in George W. Bush going before the cameras and delivering a sober but stern denunciation of this ruling. The principles are obvious. On the political front, it sets the stage for nomination battles to come in a new and helpful way. Home-owners hitch many of their political views to the set of interests revolving around their homes, and for good reason. Moreover, home-ownership is at an all time high, including black home ownership, which means there are large numbers of middle and lower-middle income voters who are in a moment of political transition where they see their interests in a new light. Why shouldn't Bush go out there and say we need judges who appreciate that property rights are just as valuable as any other right, that the state shouldn't be able to seize your home to reward political contributors? He already has a lot of talking points about how owning a home is the ticket to the American dream. Well there is that little problem with Arlington Stadium on which George Bush's fortune lies: In 1993, while walking through the stadium, Bush told the Houston Chronicle, "When all those people in Austin say, 'He ain't never done anything,' well, this is it." But Bush would have never gotten the stadium deal off the ground if the city of Arlington had not agreed to use its power of eminent domain to seize the property that belonged to the Mathes family. And evidence presented in the Mathes lawsuit suggests that the Rangers' owners -- remember that Bush was the managing general partner -- were conspiring to use the city's condemnation powers to obtain the thirteen-acre tract a full six months before the ASFDA was even created.I think that George Bush should hold a press conference on this.
posted by tbogg at 4:19 PM
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WTFI have no idea why the blog has reformatted itself. I'm working on it. In the meantime comments are down.
posted by tbogg at 2:24 PM
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Me look at purty pictures..not read stuff insideTim Graham- Stupidest Man on Earth: MAO Z. HUFFINGTON [Tim Graham]
Forgive me for noticing so late in the week, but why does Time look like a pathetic communist poster this week? (Mao is not the subject inside.) Is this any way to show the world your fervor for the people and their human rights? Presenting like a sun god a man who slaughtered millions?Here is the offending cover that Tim can't seem to wrap his cashew-sized brain around. ...and here is Ed Driscoll, the Second Stupidest Man on Earth, agreeing: Earlier this month, we linked to an Australian article about Chang and Halliday which had this classic radical chic rebuttal from Philip Short, a British author and journalist who published his own book on Mao in 1999:
"Mao was ruthless and tyrannical enough in real life that there's no need to reduce him to a cardboard cut-out of Satan. Do we really gain in understanding by denying his complexity, his perversity, his genius and reducing him to a one-dimensional caricature?
"Mao was a tyrant, but [also] much more than that. He was the reverse of a one-dimensional man. He was a great poet, a visionary and, I would argue, a military strategist of genius. He had great skills and enormous failings. Let's not oversimplify and pretend he was just a monster.
Fine. But the reverse should be equally true: let's not oversimplify as Time does on their cover this week and imply that he was just a beneficent leader and kindly father-figure, either.You see the Mao jacket has Luis Vuitton logos so it's a parody of---- Oh fuck it. Why bother.
posted by tbogg at 12:39 PM
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Oi, a shkandal!When rabbis go bad: Yesterday's Senate hearing into superlobbyist Jack Abramoff's alleged defrauding of Indian tribes had something for everyone. There was the yoga instructor who took the Fifth. There was the lifeguard selected to run a think tank from a beach house at Rehoboth. And there was Exhibit 31, an e-mail from Abramoff to a rabbi friend.
"I hate to ask you for your help with something so silly but I've been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, which is a very distinguished club in Washington, DC, comprised of Nobel Prize winners, etc.," Abramoff wrote. "Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none. I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies?"
There were titters in the audience as Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) read aloud the e-mail, then outright laughter as he continued reading: "Indeed, it would be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean."
The rabbi, conservative radio host Daniel Lapin, gave his blessing. "I just need to know what needs to be produced," he wrote. "Letters? Plaques?"This would be Rabbi Lapin. Prior to his immigration to the United States from South Africa in 1973 Rabbi Daniel Lapin studied theology, physics, economics, and mathematics in London and Jerusalem . He is the founding Rabbi of the Pacific Jewish Center, a now legendary Orthodox synagogue in Venice , California . He and his family relocated to Washington State in 1991 to develop Toward Tradition and host a nationally syndicated weekly radio show. Rabbi Lapin has written for the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Commentary, the American Enterprise, and the Washington Times, and has taught at the Christian Coalition, U.S. Army, Harvard Law School , and the Family Research Council. He is also the author of America’s Real War, Buried Treasure and most recently Thou Shall Prosper. He also serves on the board of the Jewish Policy Center in Washington , DC, and was recently appointed to a U.S. presidential commission.Whose organization, Toward Tradition: ... is a non-profit (501.c.3), educational organization working to advance our nation toward the traditional Judeo-Christian values that defined America’s creation and became the blueprint for her greatness. We believe that only a new alliance of concerned citizens can re-identify and dramatically strengthen the core values necessary for America to maintain that greatness and moral leadership. These values are: faith-based American principles of constitutional and limited government; the rule of law; representative democracy; free markets; a strong military; and, a moral public culture....and if you need a little help with fraud, a little this, a little that...you came to the right place, bubee.
posted by tbogg at 11:49 AM
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...and I should know.Peggy Noonan, who once wrote a book about Hillary Clinton that contained fictionalized Clinton coversations, complains about Ed Klein. No. Really. I have read the Hillary book by Ed Klein, which has been heavily dumped on by conservatives, and understandably. In terms of political impact it is not a takedown but a buildup. Dick Morris says its sensational charges will only "embolden" her. They will certainly tend to inoculate her against future and legitimate criticism and revelations. The book is poorly written, poorly thought, poorly sourced and full of the kind of loaded language that is appropriate to a polemic but not an investigative work.
Here are some significant things about Mr. Klein's book: It comes from an establishment journalist who's had his professional ticket punched at the New York Times magazine and Newsweek. He has no conservative bona fides; he says he is and appears to be essentially apolitical.Before we get to "apolitical" Ed Klein, here is a sample review from Amazon of Peggy's book: Ms. Noonan's case could have benefited from stronger editing. I felt, for example, a hypothetical conversation snippet imagined at Hillary's future gravesite was regrettable and tasteless. More concerning - especially after Ms. Noonan wrote negatively (and accurately) about Edmund Morris fiction/non-fiction Ronald Reagan biography - was an extremely interesting portion of her book set at Michael Eisner's home; a scene which turns out, in the end, to be entirely made up by Ms Noonan. She describes how she wound up watching this (fictional) scene, as the friend of Eisner's housekeeper! I felt disappointed and manipulated after reading this fascinating scene to find out at its close that Ms. Noonan had imagined it entirely - including fictional quotes from Ted Turner, etc.And now, here is "apoltical" Ed Klein: NRO: Do you believe, as Hillary expressed around impeachment time, that there was a "vast-right-wing conspiracy" out to do her husband in?
Klein: The only conspiracy that existed during impeachment time was Bill and Hillary’s attempt to hide the truth.
NRO: Are you now part of some "Republican scream machine"? What was your intention in writing the book?
Klein: I’m a journalist who writes about fascinating people. I spent many years writing about the Kennedys. But the Clintons have eclipsed them in national interest. Right now, Hillary is the most fascinating woman in America.
I don’t know if all Republicans will like this book, but I call them as I see them.
NRO: Did you vote for Bill Clinton?
Klein: No.
NRO: You're a New Yorker. Did you vote for Hillary for senator? Would you vote for Hillary for president?
Klein: No and no.
I think Elizabeth Moynihan, Senator Moynihan’s wife, had it right when she told me that Hillary is “duplicitous.” Hillary acts as though she is chosen by God, and that gives her the right to use any means to justify her ends.
If she becomes president, it’s going to be deja Clinton all over again. And as far as I’m concerned, we’ve already had the Clinton presidency for its full constitutional eight years.
NRO: Is Sidney Blumenthal still "Hillary's brain"?
Klein: I don’t know, but he’s still her pit bull attack dog. Blumenthal was the first person to attack my book as soon as Vanity Fair’s excerpt appeared.
NRO: A Sentinel spokesman said recently that The Truth about Hillary could be Hillary's Swift Boat Vets. Do you intend that or expect that?
Klein: I intended my book to take a good hard look at Hillary’s true character, and if the book is being compared to the Swift Boat Vets’ book on that account, then I am proud of the comparison.Now back to La Loon: The real problem with Hillary biographies is that the picture they paint, if it is true, is difficult for a normal person to believe. No one could be that bad. No one who has risen so high in American politics could possibly be that bad. To believe is to go to a dark place.
And the charges seem so at odds--so utterly at odds--with the nice, smiling woman who calls abortion a tragedy and enjoys speaking of how much she prays. This is the problem all Hillary biographers have: It's too grim to believe. To believe that her story as presented by the books so far is true is to believe that she has clung to a premeditated plan for 40 years, that she is ruthless in the pursuit both of her own ambitions and of a deep and intractable leftist political agenda. And that she found her equal in a partner sufficiently hardhearted to stick with the plan, and the secrecy, and the weirdness. It's too over the top. It seems hard to believe, not because it isn't true but because it isn't likely, usual, expected. It isn't the kind of biography we are used to in our leaders. That is her great advantage. (my emphasis) In other words we are back to Noonan's Law: Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.Ed Klein need not apply.
posted by tbogg at 1:48 AM
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Shorter David Brooks The illustrated David Brooks Normally we would write something short and pithy, but we thought the above pretty much describes todays column.
posted by tbogg at 12:35 AM
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005
All I got was a nasty tobacco burn...Ed Klein has officially become the national pinata of both the left and the right ( John Podhoretz and Sean Hannity). Whacked on both sides he starts talking crazy shit: The book doesn’t come out and say that the woman in the photo is the “stunning divorcée.” But the picture was clearly selected and positioned to bolster the book's lurid allegations. And the book does not specify the circumstances or the date of the event in the photo. Sharing the fact that it took place at a campaign rally would obviously have undercut the book’s claims of extramarital intimacy.
What’s more, the photo is in fact one of several taken by Clendenin—which New York has obtained—showing a sequence in which a female supporter approaches Bill amid an adoring throng and leans in for what appears to be a kiss on the cheek. Klein’s book reprinted the closest shot of the kiss—the only one that could conceivably be construed as “mouth-kissing.”
Klein dismissed the photographer's charges, arguing that the two pictures on the page reinforced the impression of an overall pattern. "The pictures speak for themselves," he said. "They make the point I was trying to make in the book, which is that he hasn't stopped being a philanderer."
Klein bristled when asked if juxtaposing the photo with a caption charging extramarital affairs was misleading in that it invited the reader to see the photo as proof of misbehavior. He said, "It invites the reader to see a pattern of behavior on his part. A man who masturbated in the Oval Office with a cigar shouldn't be going around leering at women and kissing them on the mouth."If masturbating with a cigar is a crime then lock this guy up.
posted by tbogg at 3:12 PM
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Pay for playLocal Congressman "Duke" Cunningham's problems take a turn for the interesting: Mitchell Wade, founder of the defense contracting firm MZM Inc., pressured employees to donate to a political fund that benefited Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and other members of Congress, according to three former employees of the company.
Wade, who took a $700,000 loss on the purchase of Cunningham's Del Mar home and allows the congressman to stay on his yacht while in Washington, demanded employees tomake donations to the company's political action committee, MZM PAC, they said.
"By the spring of '02, Mitch was twisting employees' arms to donate to his MZM PAC," said one former employee. "We were called in and told basically either donate to the MZM PAC or we would be fired."
Many companies have PACs, but campaign finance laws prohibit employers from pressuring workers to contribute to the PAC. They may encourage contributions, but not compel them.Here is where the fun starts: MZM has been seeking to increase its contracts with the Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Special Operations Command, both based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., according to former employees.
The three former MZM employees who said Wade pressured them and others to donate money to the company PAC declined to be identified, saying they feared for their careers if their names were disclosed. All continue to work in the military and intelligence fields.
They and other former MZM employees questioned the way Wade solicited contracts from Defense Department intelligence agencies during the time they worked for the company.
They also expressed concerns about Wade's dealings with three House members who received a large portion of the money disbursed by MZM's PAC. The three ... all Republicans ... are Cunningham and Reps. Virgil Goode of Virginia and Katherine Harris of Florida.
[...]
MZM officials and their family members gave Harris, who ran for Congress in 2002, a total of $44,000 during 2003 and 2004. Goode received a total of $27,851 between 2000 and 2004.
[...]
Ashdown echoed the comments of former MZM employees in saying Wade strategically targeted MZM's donations.
"A lot of people will throw a lot of money at a lot of different people," Ashdown said. Wade's "strategy was, `I need to make friends with a few very influential lawmakers and really, really schmooze and coddle them and that's how I'm going to make my money.' And that's what he did.
"The first person is Cunningham, a senior guy on the (defense appropriations) committee, and he helps them get business. Then they go to another guy on the (defense appropriations) committee, Goode, who's more junior but has the benefit of getting a facility in his district. And then they go to Katherine Harris, who isn't on the committee but needs lots of money for her Senate race and would be bringing business and new jobs to her area," Ashdown said.
Harris plans to run for Senate next year.By the way, people are asking if Cunningham is either arrogant or just stupid to think that he could get away with the house selling scam. As an interested observer of Cunningham for many years I can attest to the fact that he is profoundly stupid as in JD Hayworth-stupid which is just short of stick-your-tongue-in-a-light-socket kind of stupid.
posted by tbogg at 12:38 AM
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In the very near future accomplished will mean not accomplished Pay no attention to that curtain behind the man... Karl Rove does Hardball: GREGORY: But if you're talking about the number of troops necessary, the level of American casualties, the force and intensity of the insurgency…did the president mislead the American people about the cost of the war or was he just simply surprised by what happened?
ROVE: I would go back to the president’s statements over the last several years and I would defy you to find one speech which he talked about Iraq where he doesn’t say there would be difficult times ahead, that we had a long road to hope that a great deal of sacrifice was going to be called for by both the American people and by the Iraqis to achieve this goal.But...but...it says... Oh. Never mind.
posted by tbogg at 12:11 AM
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Tuesday, June 21, 2005
No. Duh.Get the hell out of here...Really? Washington Post headline: Republican Rule Makes Lobbying Big Business
With pro-business officials running executive and legislative branches, lobbyists seek ways to profit from tax breaks, loosened regulationsComing up... Water: It's Really Really Wet. A five-part series.
posted by tbogg at 11:53 PM
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Brief baseball interludeWe heard about this while watching the Padre game tonight: The Yankees were behind by 10-2 after four innings, but they erased that deficit and roughed up four Tampa Bay pitchers. Getting the worst of it was Travis Harper, who took the loss that lowered his record to 1-6. He entered with one out in the eighth and gave up eight hits and nine runs, including four home runs.
Three of the home runs were in succession - by Sheffield, Rodriguez and Matsui. Asked why he left his pitcher in to suffer as he did, Tampa Manager Lou Piniella said: "I was hoping to get one more out. That's what we were hoping for. Just get one more out and get the inning over with. You hate to see that happen."To quote my fifteen year-old daughter, "What idiot manager left him in long enough to give up nine runs and only two outs?" Now we know. Lou Piniella makes Bob Brenly look like a managerial genius.
posted by tbogg at 11:47 PM
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The downward spiral "What kind of a girl do you think I am?" she said
"We've already determined ...
"Now, we're just haggling over the price!" Has anyone ever had a worse career than Susan Estrich? The Dukakis campaign...her slapfight with Michael Kinsley...her hiring at Fox in an effort to make Alan Colmes appear bright and articulate...and now this. I've come to expect the jabs at Fox News - because being a liberal, I get more than most. I work there in part because, six or seven years ago, they offered me a better deal than NBC at the time; and because, as a feminist and a Democrat, I think it's particularly important to have a dialogue with people who aren't already members of the same choir - that's the way we will ultimately have to win elections.I'll take advice from Estrich on how to "win elections" right after I finish Dick Cheney's Healthy Heart Living diet book. Added... From the comments: That looks like the prelude to the worst blowjob ever.
# posted by The Chemist : 10:08 AMOh man. That is funny.
posted by tbogg at 11:13 PM
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Why bother?Dick Durbin issues an unnecessary mea culpa to people who have deliberately misinterpreted his words: “Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line,” the Illinois Democrat said. “To them I extend my heartfelt apologies.”
His voice quaking and tears welling in his eyes, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate also apologized to any soldiers who felt insulted by his remarks.
“They’re the best. I never, ever intended any disrespect for them,” he said....and here is what he gets for his pains from Captain Cubicle: At least this is an apology, instead of a "statement of regret". However tearfully delivered, though, it still contains qualifiers that shift the responsibility to everyone but Durbin. "Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line, and to them I extend my heartfelt apologies."
No, no, no.
Your remarks did cross the line, Senator. Why can't you just admit that, without qualification? This is yet another halfway dodge in putting the onus onto those whom you offended instead of taking responsibility for your own actions and comments.
Color me unimpressed.How about color you disingenuous. If you don't understand what he said...admit it. We wouldn't think any less of you. We couldn't. Then there is Scott "Hattie Carroll Is My Muse" Johnson of the Power Line boy band (he's the " edgy" one): Senator Dick Durbin characterizes his incessant imputation of heinous misconduct to the American military as "a very poor choice of words": "Sen. Durbin apologizes for Gitmo remarks." Does he retract his comparison of our soldiers to mass murdering Nazis and Communists? The answer, the Minneapolis Star Tribune will be happy to know, is "no."Oooooo. " incessant imputation of heinous misconduct". Someone got a coupon from the thesaurus store. Fake outrage is the new black and Scott and the Ass Rocket and that other guy wear it so well. The reality at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is that these weren't and aren't soldiers making rash decisions in action or commiting acts that can be blamed on the 'fog of war'. They are systematically and deliberately torturing people in the name of 'freedom'. And when they get caught they toss the world a bone like Lyndie England while Ricardo Sanchez gets a bonus. Don't want to be compared to torturers of yore? Quit fucking acting like Torquemadas in training. If anyone should be pissed it should be the soldiers in the field whose impossible job is made even harder by those who act like thugs under the color of authority. Every time the chickenhawks endorse torture they make it more dangerous for American service people. Do they care? Not really. They don't have any kids in the line of fire. Not Hindrocket Jr and not the lil' Surbers. Their kids are too white and too special to make any sacrifices. Let's be honest here. These people fit into two categories. 1) They know what they are saying is bullshit but they have to deflect the emerging storyline that the war is being lost, public opinion is running away from them, and they were wrong wrong wrong and now 1724 American soldiers are dead because their President lied, they knew it, but they wanted someone to go kick some raghead ass so they could feel safe at night because they're congenital cowards at heart. Who cares what they think? Fuck 'em. 2) They're stupid. Stone cold, paste-eating, ditto-headed walking advertisements for eugenics who want so hard to fit in that they'll parrot any talking point that is explained to them in easy to understand terms as long as you keep it within the two syllable limit. To respond to them with anything more than a patronizing pat on the head and an offer of pudding or a shiny dime is a waste of time. So fuck them too. The only thing that needs to be done is to decide which group each 101st Keyboarder belongs to and then...ignore them. Don't play their game. Fuck 'em.
posted by tbogg at 8:12 PM
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Monday, June 20, 2005
It's sorta like Red Dawn meets Grumpy Old Men. You know...old guys fighting Islamofacists and then going to Coco's before they turn the steam tables off. Hollywon't Personally I have been up late at night wondering (pondering, wrestling with) why Hollywood is in the doldrums this summer. I mean John Podheretz his own bad self said that Cinderella Man had given him his first erection since the impeachment hearings. But pfffttt, Cinderella Man is dropping out of sight faster than Bo Bice. But if Hollywood wants to know what it's doing wrong, well, intrepid blogger and out-to-pasture screenwriter Roger Simon knows what ails ya: Hollywood box office is off this year by a fairly disastrous nine percent (accounting for ticket price inflation). Marketing people will give dozens of explanations but the reason couldn't be more obvious: The movies - with a few exceptions - are hugely predictable and unimaginative. In other words, who would want to go?
A secondary explanation is that the coveted 17-year old boy audience is staying home to play computer games. Why wouldn't they? I don't play them myself but from what I understand many are far more original than Hollywood pabulum - and they are interactive.
Of course, the other elephant in the room is Hollywood's lack of response to the world conflagration all around us, especially from a direction that would even hint the US was on the right side (other than Team America from the far-hipper-than-the-boomers South Park crew). This is a far cry from WWII when films from Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo to the bizarrely pro-Stalin Mission to Moscow abounded.Yup. If only we had more rah-rah shoot'em-ups with square-jawed American soldiers fighting the good fight for the love of that plucky gal back home then that desirable 17-24 year-old male demographic might race down the the local Megacinemapaloozaplex and plop down ten dollars to get a vicarious jolt of pure Americanized Righteousness which beats the hell out of actually enlisting because, as Roger might put it, "In other words, who would want to go?". After all, these are numbers that even Paul Dergarabedian couldn't put a positive spin on. It's not for nothing that they call Hollywood: The Dream Factory.
posted by tbogg at 11:26 PM
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Shorter John TierneyLet's not let some silly social contract keep us from hiring older people at poverty wages to perform menial work for boomers like mysel--Hey! You stupid old bastard! Where's my goddamn latte?
posted by tbogg at 11:09 PM
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The Lonely Passion of Joel MowbrayPoor Joel. Still flogging it over at confirmbolton.com ("T-shirts half-off! Hurry for best selection! No offer refused!"). All of the other kids, except for Andrew Cochran, are looking for day work. VOINOVICH… WTF?(Mowbray)
Though the GOP managed to pick up three Dem votes–the same as the last time–for giving Bolton an up-or-down vote, Voinovich crossed lines to side with professional hacks Chris Dodd and Joe Biden. He must be too stupid (see earlier analyses) to understand a political ploy when he sees one, thus his seeming indulgence of the Dems’ line that they need more info. To be fair, it could also be that Voinovich is a headline whore, and he perhaps calculated that he could garner still more attention by stabbing his GOP brethen in the back yet again.
FILIBUSTER, REDUX(Mowbray)
Not to anyone’s great shock, the Dems today filibustered Bolton yet again. They want to continue fishing, and the White House has not effectively rebuked the Dems. Biden and Dodd have nearly succeeded in sounding reasonable, yet the White House merely says that the Senate has all the information it needs. Yes, that’s true, but truth isn’t exactly paramount in politics.How very fucking sad. But this should cheer you up. They really don't pay Scottie enough.
posted by tbogg at 10:27 PM
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Pecksniff & Co.Jane has a wrap-up on The Virgin Ben's kerfluffle (or we could call it a 'ker-fluffer" but then we would have to explain that to Ben and who has that much spare time on their hands?) Oh yeah. And there's also a Mary Carey picture... not that you're the type to go to another blog just to see a picture of a porn star. I have more respect for you than that. No. Really. I do.
posted by tbogg at 12:31 AM
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Sunday, June 19, 2005
Bill Frist: Cheating, two-timing man-slutDavid Brooks finds honor in sleeping around on your fiancé: Bill Frist was his high school's class president. He was a quarterback on the football team and a member of the honor society, and lived amid the upper crust of Nashville society. He dated the head cheerleader, and while he was in med school they were engaged to be married.
But while interning in Boston, he met another woman, spent a dinner and a night with her, and fell in love. Two days before his wedding, he flew back to Nashville and broke off his engagement. "Everyone listened carefully to what I said, all the lame explanations I had that were and were not the truth," Frist later wrote, "and they nodded and dealt with it and I went on my way."
I've always admired that anecdote. It took guts to break off the grand wedding that was in the works - to risk alienating everyone he had grown up with for the sake of the woman he had suddenly come to love. Furthermore here was a Bill Frist who knew his own heart.Here we see Frist and the slut who slept with him on their first date. I blame the culture: The most extreme manifestation of the new culture is the mainstream acceptance of pornography. Pornography is no longer relegated to the dark corners of the newsstand or the skuzzy box in the video store; it's now in your inbox. It's on the radio, the television and the billboards. We live in an America that makes Paris Hilton a cultural icon and Jenna Jameson a New York Times best-selling author....and makes a man who cheats on his fiancé the Senate Majority Leader. Bobo's World: Where your wedding is only a dinner and a blow job away from collapsing like a Papier Mâchè submarine.
posted by tbogg at 11:43 PM
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Pissing down their trunkI was quite pleased to see that the General, manly man that he am, is 'spearheading' (a term so butch it makes Ken Mehlman blush) Operation Yellow Elephant in an effort to beat Islamofascism or make Dick Durbin look bad. Whichever. Naturally this made me check on my pal Don Surber of 101st Fighting Keyboarders/ Poca Patrol, whose hit counts are way down since I took my little trip. Sadly it appears that Don has been so busy giving lessons to "libs" that he hasn't had time to drive his boys, who must surely be on break now from Marshall U, down to the recruiters where they could have signed up to make dad feel proud on this Father's Day. Oh. And did I mention that, seeing as I was out of the country, Don enabled his comments again? I'd say "be polite" but I expect that by time I get up in the morning Surber will have disabled them again. But only because there is a war on, of course.
posted by tbogg at 11:20 PM
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Heated, inarticulate*...and backSo I leave for a few days and I come back to find out that you've all been: Driving on the lawn
Sleeping on the roof
Drinking all the alcohol. Honestly. Okay. Let's get the cruise out of the way. Cruises were not intended for people like myself. Let's review: -I don't drink. -I don't gamble. -I don't smoke. -I'm not a big eater. (I gained two pounds: Me 1, the Buffet 0. Ha!) -I am pretty big on the whole "sex" thing but since we shared a cabin with Casey, we'll just call this one "not applicable at this time". -I'm not a "joiner". Conga line? Meet Mr. Pepperspray. -I don't want my picture taken. -I am not entertained by Las Vegas style "reviews". -I don't like dressing up for formal dinners. (A rule for life: you should not have to dress better on your vacation than you have to for work. I wear shorts to work everyday. Class over) -I don't chit-chat with strangers or goggle and make comments about the exotic natives in their colorful indigenous garb. Just give me a deck chair, a book, and five hours of good tanning-rays and nobody gets hurt. Having said all that, we had an excellent time and I would do it all again. What was the lowlight? How about sailing all night and then waking up in Mazatlan and this (I swear to God even if I don't believe in Him) is the first thing that you see.  Click for larger picture. Consider the vacation mellow harshed. *As for "heated and inarticulate" see here while I contact Harvard about lack of attribution by virgins.
posted by tbogg at 10:44 PM
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Duke 'n DuncanOf course as soon as I step out of the country for awhile, two of my favorite local dumbasses congressmen show the world what kind of stuff they are made of. Let's start with Duncan Hunter (R-Food Network) who uses the five major food groups in an effort to call the FBI liars (pdf). Lovely. Surprising? Not really. FreedomDrone reminds us that Dunc has never let reality get in the way of his stumbling around to make a point. Then there is Randy "Duke" Cunningham. A local congressman is in more hot water after reports that he has been living aboard a boat owned by a military contractor to whom he also sold his San Diego County home.
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, 63, was already defending himself after accusations that he received a sweetheart home deal to help get million-dollar deals for the contractor.
Cunningham said he had done nothing wrong by living aboard the boat and that the home sale was perfectly legal.
"I am putting information and records together so that you will know how much I pay to stay there and you will see that everything we've done is appropriate," Cunningham said in a news release issued Thursday by his office.
[...]
The "Union-Tribune" reported on Monday that defense contractor Mitchell Wade took a $700,000 loss on a Del Mar home he purchased from Cunningham. The paper said Wade wasn't winning Pentagon contracts until the real estate deal with Cunningham. The home, which was sold to Wade for $1,675,000 in November 2003, was resold in July 2004 for $975,000.Jesus. Housing in San Diego is going through the roof. Houses are getting multiple bids above asking price the day they're listed and this guy loses $700,000 in Del Mar? Trust me on this one; nobody, and I mean nobody, in San Diego is buying this one. But then, "Duke" has been kind our local congressional village idiot for years who has traded in on his Top Gun status (which is open to debate) in a very safe district. Only a couple of days in and local Republicans are already starting to walk on his still-warm corpse: Cunningham, a member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, acknowledged he has backed MZM in its bid to win tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts.
Cunningham, a seven-term Republican representing the 50th Congressional District, has portrayed the deal as "aboveboard." More questions have been raised about the home where Cunningham stays while in Washington: a yacht named "Duke-Stir" owned by MZM Inc.
Asked for comment on the public perceptions of his house sale, Cunningham's spokesman released a statement Friday saying Cunningham was "working on a comprehensive statement that will address issues that have been raised recently." The controversy has rippled across the county; the congressman has become a topic of conversation from the coffee shops to the seashore. Republican Jim Rady, the former mayor of Escondido, was photographing plants in his garden yesterday when asked about Cunningham. He said he was "astounded" by the news of the congressman's relationship with the defense contractor.
"Cunningham has an impeccable reputation," Rady said. "I wonder how the hell he could get himself in such a situation. In politics, perception is everything."
[...]
San Diego County Republican Chairman Ron Nehring said it would be impossible to lose the district.
"The likelihood of the Democrats taking over that district are lower than that of hell freezing over," he said.
Republicans are looking forward to Cunningham being able to clear his name, Nehring said.
"Duke Cunningham is very popular in the rank and file of the Republican Party. Not only has he done a good job in Congress for us," Nehring said, "but people know he's a good man."
Interest in Cunningham's seat is increasing, even among Republicans, according to John Dadian, a Republican activist and registered lobbyist.
"Because it's such a solid Republican seat, people have always been eyeing it for when he gives it up," Dadian said. "There are a number of North County Republicans who would love to represent that district, so they are watching developments closely on this issue."
If the seat were to open up, Dadian said, "there would be a mad scramble."Last time Cunningham made big noise in San Diego was when he went from capital punishment for drug lords to defending his drug mule son who is evidence that stupidity is hereditary. Oh, it's good to be back home.
posted by tbogg at 9:30 PM
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Wednesday, June 15, 2005
The $9 postGreetings from somewhere between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. So? Have you guys overthrown the government yet? Internet service, of which I am obviously availing myself, is painfully slow. Like dial-up slow. Like I can barely get baseball scores slow. The great question one has to ask of the cruise line is: how come no ESPN in the staterooms. Talk about your gulag. I'll be back on Sunday. We have lots to talk about.
posted by tbogg at 8:56 PM
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Friday, June 10, 2005
Way down here you need a reason to move
Feel a fool running your stateside games See ya, suckers..... TBogg, a wholly owned subsidiary of TBogg LLC is going on hiatus for a week as Mrs. TBogg, the lovely and talented Casey and I head off for a little vacation by taking a cruise down Mexico way. Now I could continue to blog from the ship except: A) I've got some reading to get caught up on. (For those interested: this , this, and this) B) At 75 cents per minute on-board…well, I love you guys, but it’s not a $45 an hour kinda-love. You know, like the kind of $45 an hour love you get downtown. C) I need to reacquaint myself with my family since we haven't had a vacation together in three years. D) I need a breather, which will allow me to come back tan, rested, and ready snarkier. Yes. It's all about me and my needs. And don't think this isn't a hardship on me. Oh no. As a notorious people-shunner I'm faced with the prospect of sitting at tables or in a deckchair and having to "chit-chat" ( shudder) with strangers who may very well be axe-murderers, pedophiles, or Amway recruiters. I've spent the last few months coming up with ways that will allow me to avoid any possible conversation that might rear it's ugly head including responding to every question or comment by saying " I like the boat!" in an overly loud voice. Originally I was just going to carry around a copy of The 120 Days of Sodom, but then I figured it might instead draw the wrong element (coughAmwaypeoplecough) into my orbit and that just wouldn't do. In the meantime please patronize the wonderful bloggers listed to the left (no...your other left. ...honestly...) and make sure that you contribute here to ensure that I don't come home to the states only to have to live in a gulag. That would suck. By the way...I'm going to miss the release of this. I am displeased but I'm going nonetheless.... el tbogg ha salido de la casa(Added): Satchmo and Beckham will be spending the week at their vet. Four years ago we boarded Satchmo with his vet and took the opportunity to have him "fixed". Since that time we have explained to him over and over that he was at a "spa" and they lost his "luggage". He's still not buying it.
posted by tbogg at 9:47 PM
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Pale imitation of a postInternets service has been down all day so I've been living in an information black hole. Sooooo... Here's Fridays Random Ten to stall, stall, stall:
Fascination - St Etienne A Number of Microphones - The Propellerheads Jigga What/Faint - Linkin Park & Jay-Z Wuz Without You - Alex Gopher/Underwater That's Entertainment - The Jam Crawlspace - The Beastie Boys Bullett Proof - Morcheeba Every Day Is Exactly The Same - Nine Inch Nails Miniature Sun - XTC Righteously - Lucinda Williams Bonus: Big recommendation for Minus the Bear's Menos el Oso and Rilo Kiley's More Adventurous which is the CD that Conor Oberst meant to make.
posted by tbogg at 5:16 PM
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Thursday, June 09, 2005
The Christian fascistsChris Hedges: The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, used to tell us that we would end our careers fighting an ascendant fundamentalist movement, or as he liked to say, "the Christian fascists." He was not a scholar to be disregarded, however implausible such a scenario seemed at the time. There is a danger of a growing fusion between those in the state who wage war -- both for and against modern states -- and those who believe they understand and can act as agents for God.
posted by tbogg at 11:04 PM
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Thursday Night Basset Blogging
 Turn your back for a minute... It is strongly recommended that you make the bed immediately upon arising before the dogs leap up onto it and stake out their territory for the day. Beckham coyly shields his penis but I do believe that we have a bit of basset testicle action going on for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
posted by tbogg at 10:10 PM
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Thanks. We appreciate the information. But you're still going to hell.Deathbed conversion: Jesse Helms compares John Edwards to pop singer Clay Aiken, says he never supported racial segregation and acknowledges he was wrong about the AIDS epidemic.
But despite a few barbs, it's a mellower, statesmanlike Helms -- rather than the conservative firebrand who represented North Carolina for 30 years in the U.S. Senate -- who tells his story in a 303-page memoir, "Here's Where I Stand," scheduled to be published by Random House in September.
[...]
Helms is unapologetic as he writes about his major battles and his efforts to derail "the freight train of liberalism." But he admits to being wrong about the AIDS epidemic. Helms was the subject of strong criticism from the gay community because of his outspoken opposition to laws to protect homosexuals from discrimination, to funding for AIDS research and to other related issues.
But in his final years in the Senate, Helms said his views evolved because of old friends such as North Carolina evangelist Franklin Graham and new ones such as rock singer Bono, both of whom got him involved in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
"Until then," Helms writes, "it had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high risk populations. I was wrong."
Helms is steadfast, though, about his views on race. He was one of North Carolina's leading voices of segregation as a TV commentator in Raleigh in the 1960s. He opposed nearly every civil rights bill while in the Senate and often made black political leaders the focus of his campaigns.
Unlike other prominent segregationists of the era, such as Alabama Gov. George Wallace, Helms has never said his views on race were wrong. And he has never said that segregation was wrong.
Instead, he suggests in the book that he favored voluntary racial integration that would have come about without pressure from the federal government, or from civil rights protests -- which he said only sharpened racial antagonisms.
"I did not advocate segregation, and I did not advocate aggravation," Helms writes. "By that I mean that I thought it was wrong for people who did not know, and who did not care, about the relationships between neighbors and friends to force their ideas about how communities should work on the people who had built those communities in the first place. I believed right would prevail as people followed their own consciences."Gee thanks Jesse. Now why don't you go take a dirt nap while we continue to clean up your mess.
posted by tbogg at 7:24 PM
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Role model I put the rocket in Hindrocket John Hinderaker equates members of the Bush administration with Augusto Pinochet as if that was a good thing: I think I saw a reference to this some days ago but didn't follow it up. Today Captain Ed picked up the story, and Glenn Reynolds linked, so there should be a fair amount of buzz about Amnesty International's call for the arrest of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and pretty much any other Republican whom foreign governments can get their hands on.
Yes, it's true: the official statement by John Kerry and Ted Kennedy donor Bill Schulz, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, is here. Schulz writes:
If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.
Interesting precedent. General Pinochet, traveling with a visa for the United Kingdom and under a diplomatic passport, went to England to have surgery on his back. While recuperating in the hospital, he was arrested so that he could be put on trial on Spain for offenses allegedly committed in Chile. Human rights activists think that this was a good and honorable action on the part of the English authorities, although the extradition effort ultimately failed. (my emphasis) That would be this General Pinochet: Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile in 1973, after deposing democratically-elected President Allende through a violent coup d'etat. It thus began a period of brutal repression at the hands of the armed and intelligence forces operating under the orders of Pinochet. Thousands of people were murdered or "disappeared", taken to concentration camps and brutally tortured; hundreds of thousands were arrested or had to seek exile abroad.
Pinochet exported the repression to other countries through "Operation Condor" - a plan of mutual cooperation among intelligence agencies of different South American countries. Chilean exilees in Argentina, Paraguya and other countries were thus persecuted and killed by Chilean forces.
Testimony: In early November 1973, some peasants traveling over the Las Tejuelas bridge, which crosses the Ñuble River about a mile and a half from Chillán, noted that, as usual, the water level was beginning to drop with the end of the rainy season. Along with this phenomenon, they noticed another one, new and horrifying: the appearance of dozens of headless cadavers with their arms tied behind their backs. Some of the bodies were half decayed. When the peasants notified the military police post at the city gates, they were told curtly: "You saw nothing. If you say anything, we will arrest you and cut your throats, just like those corpses."
Those bodies were the leftovers from the "extermination" operation in Ñuble Province, resembling the "leftovers" in any other province in Chile after September 11, debris left by bayonets, machine guns, and torture devices of the Chilean Air Force, Navy, and Army.
Shortly before this incident at the Las Tejuelas bridge, the Arauco Fishing Association, which produces canned seafood in the port of Talcahuano, had to halt work for several days. The fish they were receiving were full of bits of human flesh from bodies the Chilean Navy had tossed into the ocean after they came out of the naval base's torture chambers
One journalist, still in Chile, whose name I must withhold, told me how corpses of people who had been tortured and later shot appeared in the Mapocho River, which runs through Santiago:
During the first weeks of October I had to cross Bulnes bridge to get over the Mapocho very early every morning. The first time I could not believe my eyes. It couldn't be true. From a distance I could see lots of people gathered along the bridge's railing and the riverbanks. They were looking at the half-floating corpses, four men's bodies. I still remember, one was wearing a red shirt. Farther off, there was a fifth body which had been dragged ashore. This scene went on every day, and not just at this bridge. You could see them at Pedro de Valdivia bridge too. Dozens of women would station themselves at the bridges every day, in hopes of seeing the body of a husband or son who had disappeared after being picked up by the soldiers. One day I saw nine corpses, all with bare chests, hands tied behind their backs. The bodies were perforated by bullet holes. And with them was the body of a girl, apparently fifteen or sixteen years old.
[...]
I was interrogated the second day for more than three hours. They undressed me and beat me, using their fists and boots all over my body. There seemed to be a lot of them. Then they applied electricity to my testicles. When they turned off the current, they began to hit me again with their hands and feet. feet. They concentrated on my stomach. This was because when the torture began I felt a karate chop and instinctively hardened my muscles. The torturer shouted at me: "So you're trained, eh? Now you're going to get it" During the entire interrogation they kept me blindfolded and my wrists handcuffed. The muscular contractions caused by the electricity made the handcuffs tighter each time, and the flesh of my wrists was cut down to the bone. By that point I didn't feel pain anymore. I only realized that I was being burned by the electricity. After the interrogation, in which they hoped to find whether there were weapons in the university, they led me to another room where they took off the blindfold so I could walk, but I kept falling down. They made me crawl to another room where there were tortured people lying on the floor. I knew one of them a university professor, by sight; one whole side of his body was black with 'bruises; they had punctured his eardrum, which made him howl with pain. The rest of them were all as badly beaten up as I was, or worse. Many had broken ribs and couldn't even breathe. None could walk; their legs were fractured both from the blows and from the muscular contractions produced by the electricity,. There were a lot of women as badly beaten up as the men were. They bad also been brutally raped; they had internal ruptures and were bleeding profusely. One kept moaning. The torturers had inserted a sharp object in her vagina, and it had cut through the peritoneum. Some of the people there said they had recognized the interrogators: they were Navy infantrymen trained at the American bases in Panama.It would be lovely if, next time Hinderaker is invited to appear on CNN or MSNBC, that they would identify him as John Hinderaker: Pinochet Apologist.
posted by tbogg at 6:46 PM
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Thursday Duck On The Front Lawn Blogging ...an unplanned feature. This is not normal by San Diego standards.
posted by tbogg at 11:51 AM
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Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Sorry.Went to a ballgame instead. Padres lost 6-1. Don Surber's kids are still pussies.
posted by tbogg at 11:38 PM
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The New Quislingsvia The Department of LouiseHe left Lawrence and landed in a top-ranking job in the Bush administration.
Now, attorney Scott J. Bloch is once again a lightning rod for criticism. This time from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization that Wednesday began demanding Bloch be sacked. Bloch, who worked 15 years for Lawrence’s Stevens & Brand law firm, now heads the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
“Scott Bloch is a rogue official,” said Chris Barron, spokesman for Log Cabin Republicans. “He should be replaced.”
The national organization representing gay and lesbian Republicans on Wednesday began a campaign urging President Bush to fire Bloch.[...] Federal law prohibits employment discrimination based on race, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability and political affiliation. It does not apply to sexual orientation, Bloch said.
But Barron blasted Bloch’s interpretation, saying the special counsel has the legal firepower to safeguard against gay discrimination, if he wanted to use it the way his predecessors have.
“He says he doesn’t have statutory authority, but he knows that since 1974 — the Richard Nixon era! — federal law has been interpreted to prohibit discrimination against federal employees based on sexual orientation,” Barron said.
“And yet, 30 years later, Scott Bloch shows up and decides he no longer has authority. It’s absolutely outrageous.”This would be funny if it weren't so sad for those who rights have been denied by Bloch. The Log Cabin Republicans. Not Too Bright.
posted by tbogg at 9:43 AM
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But the little boys understand...How odd the right doesn't pop a rhoid about all commencement speakers. No More Mr Nice Blog has the details.
posted by tbogg at 9:26 AM
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That's news to usRocketboy: Howard Dean appears to be coming apart before our eyes, and it isn't a pretty sight. The San Francisco Chronicle has the latest, via Drudge. This time, Dean says: "The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. They're a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same and they all look the same. It's pretty much a white, Christian party."
Ah, yes, those Republicans--they all look the same to me!
If the Democrats had any sense, they'd put Dean out of his misery. But they don't, and they won't, at least for now.So what do you think, guys?
posted by tbogg at 8:23 AM
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Tuesday, June 07, 2005
...and still no Surbers in sight.It looks like the Army isn't getting any help from Poca, WV: Even after reducing its recruiting target for May, the Army missed it by about 25 percent, Army officials said on Tuesday. The shortfall would have been even bigger had the Army stuck to its original goal for the month.
On Friday, the Army is expected to announce that it met only 75 percent of its recruiting goal for May, the fourth consecutive monthly shortfall in the number of new recruits sent to basic training. Just over 5,000 new recruits entered boot camp in May.
But the news could have appeared worse. Early last month, the Army, with no public notice, lowered its long-stated May goal to 6,700 recruits from 8,050. Compared with the original target, the Army achieved only 62.6 percent of its goal for the month.
Army officials defended the shift on Tuesday, saying it was not uncommon to change monthly goals at midyear. They said that the latest change reflected the reality that the Army was not going to meet its May goal, and that it made more sense to shift some of that quota to the summer months, traditionally a better season for recruiters to attract new high school graduates. [...] To help offset the recruiting shortfalls, the Army is also trying to keep more soldiers. A memorandum from the Army's top personnel officer last month outlined a plan to reduce attrition among first-term enlistees by 1 percent, and retain 3,000 soldiers.
The memorandum, first reported last week by The Wall Street Journal, requires the approval of more senior-level brigade commanders, instead of battalion commanders, to discharge soldiers for pregnancy, drug or alcohol abuse, or poor fitness. Jesus. Two months from now they're going to be apologizing to Lyndie England and offering her a bonus. ...and speaking of bonuses, here's your Why The Party Doesn't Miss Don Surber moment of dumbassitude: Appointing Dr. Howard Dean as its chief yahoo is a sign that it is about to hit rock bottom. In San Francisco, Dean let loose on anyone who dares to disagree:
Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."
Hmm. Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Alberto Gonzales, Carlos Gutierrez, Elaine Chao, Norman Mineta and Alphonso Jackson might disagree.I think that Norman Mineta might disagree but for different reasons.
posted by tbogg at 11:52 PM
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I'm not a scientist, but I play one for the White HouseTell me anyone is surprised by this: A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.
Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.Here is where it gets good: A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr. Cooney would not be available to comment. "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record," Ms. St. Martin said. "He's not a cleared spokesman."But he is cleared for rewrites....
posted by tbogg at 11:35 PM
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Thin-skinned little dink, isn't he?Mike Adams, who has lots of guns (did he mention that he has lots of guns?...because he does have lots of guns) goes on another of his little warpaths (one in which he will use many of his guns of which he has lots) against another person who has slighted him (and his guns etc. etc.). But what is amusing is Mike takes subtle personal offense with this person because they...well, we'll let you see if you can pick it out: Here's part of what Rita had to say:
"Carrying the banner of higher education, Mr. [sic] Adams today promoted the proliferation of firearms and tied this policy directly to the credentials and advancement of college Republicans. He encouraged conservative college students to promote the establishment of campus chapters of the National Rifle Association, and to align themselves on the other hand with pro-life advocates. I fail to understand the natural relation between guns and a "pro-life" position. It seems to be a progression in logic that is understandable only to Mr. [sic] Adams and his young acolytes. Mr. [sic] Adams reflects poorly on the entire University of North Carolina academic community..." It seems that Rita isn't showing proper deference to Mr. [sic] Adams because Mr. [sic] Adams is actually Dr. Adams and he just sic of nobody noticing. And so each night he goes home to his wife, Krysten and she consoles him with: "Dinner is ready, Dr. Adams!" "Would you please take out the trash, Dr. Adams?" "It happens to all guys, Dr. Adams." "We'd have kids Dr. Adams if you weren't shooting blanks." Which explains why he has all of those guns. Did he mention the guns?
posted by tbogg at 11:02 PM
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A great passing...
Ann(e) Bancroft. Damn. The Miracle Worker The Graduate 84 Charing Cross Rd. (What a gem of a movie) The Turning Point Agnes of God I was dazzled by her elegance and have always had a hard time reconciling that with the fact that she was married to Mel Brooks. Now that was a household I would have liked to have lived in for a year. ...and she was very Italian. Who knew?
posted by tbogg at 4:12 PM
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Nothing matters and what if it didThis morning Kos asks: Unbelievable. Why the hell didn't he release these documents earlier?
Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.
The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.
The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.
But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.
Jesus, they had additional substantive evidence that the Swift Boat Liars were full of shit and refused to release it. The incompetent way that matter was handled knows no bounds.It wouldn't have mattered. The Swift Boat Liars was made up of a bunch guys who served with Kerry...oh wait...no, they were actually a bunch of guys who knew this guy whose cousin had a friend whose brother once said, "I sure didn't like that Kerry guy." which was good enough for Fox News and hate radio. And even though his records indicate that he was a hero, this is a sampling of the responses the records would have received. The Three Stooges: According to the Globe, the only previously undisclosed records are commendations from commanding officers. In the words of the great Peggy Lee song, "Is that all there is?" Either Kerry is the world's worst politician, or something is missing from his file.or professional Swift Boat Liar and Nixon lamprey John O'Neill: We called for Kerry to execute a form which would permit anyone to examine his full and unexpulgated military records at the Navy Department and the National Personnel Records Center. Instead he executed a form permitting his hometown paper to obtain the records currently at the Navy Department. The Navy Department previously indicated its records did not include various materials. This is hardly what we called for. If he did execute a complete release of all records we could then answer questions such as (1)Did he ever receive orders to Cambodia or file any report of such a mission (whether at Christmas or otherwise); (2) What was his discharge status between 1970 and 1978 (when he received a discharge) and was it affected by his meetings in 1970 and 1971 with the North Vietnamese? (3)why did he receive much later citations for medals purportedly signed by Secretary Lehman who said he did not know of them; (4) Are there Hostile Fire and Personnel Injured by Hostile Fire Reports for Kerry's Dec. 1968 Purple Heart (when the officer in charge of the boat Admiral Schacte, the treating Surgeon Louis Letsos, and Kerry's Division Commander deny there was hostile fire causing a scratch) awarded three months later under unknown circumstances.So you see, Kerry would have still had to continually recreate history and explain the actions and thoughts of others...and still they wouldn't have been happy. It also amusing to note that things are " missing" from Kerry's file which makes his well-documented heroics suspicious. However when George Bush went AWOL and nobody could find evidence that he showed up for work and papers kept trickling out even after the Administration said everything had been released...well, that was different. The lesson here: Never defend. Always attack. Kick them in the balls and when they're down...kick them in the face. (Added): As pointed out in comments, August agrees.
posted by tbogg at 11:05 AM
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...and starring Janice Rogers Brown as Atticus FinchThis is Janice Rogers Brown: Civil Rights, Equal Opportunity, and Discrimination
According to the report, "Justice Brown's opinions on civil rights law are perhaps the most troubling area of a very troubling body of work. These opinions reveal significant skepticism about the existence and impact of discrimination and demonstrate repeated efforts to limit the avenues available to victims of discrimination to obtain justice. Brown's opinions in this area reveal a troubling disregard for precedent and stare decisis - even in the context of case law that has been settled by the U.S. Supreme Court."
The report examines Brown opinions in cases involving racial discrimination, discrimination against people with disabilities and older Americans, and affirmative action. California's Chief Justice criticized one of her opinions as arguing that "numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court and this court" were "wrongly decided" and as representing a "serious distortion of history."This is how the Stooges at Power Line see her. ...except that Rogers Brown would have said that that shifty motherfucker Tom Robinson had it coming.
posted by tbogg at 8:21 AM
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Reason to panic...at firedoglake.
posted by tbogg at 7:58 AM
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Monday, June 06, 2005
Locking up our top spot on The Worst List ListAmanda has it... There are two reasons to put together a "women in music" list. One is to highlight talented women who would get the attention and credit they deserve if they weren't constantly fighting an uphill battle against sexism. Lists made like this function to expand the audience's horizons and inspire female fans to look beyond the traditional option of groupie towards being musicians themselves, or at least towards relating to the music in "male" ways like being a music geek. Lists like this are valuable and should be encouraged.
And then you have dribble like this that can barely justify its existence. #1 is Jennifer Lopez, for fuck's sake. I suppose there might be an argument for pointing out the most powerful and popular women in the industry, but I'm not sure I see it. The reason that women need to be singled out and appreciated is because of their powerlessness and to prevent their invisibility. No one thinks J. Lo or Madonna is invisible. Celebrate #1 (Bonus fug)
posted by tbogg at 11:55 PM
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Papal smearThe Guy with The Big Hat says: Pope Benedict, in his first clear pronouncement on gay marriages since his election, on Monday condemned same-sex unions as fake and expressions of "anarchic freedom" that threatened the future of the family.
The Pope, who was elected in April, also condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practices were dangerous for the family.
"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," he said.Shorter version: "All that stuff that I've never done and don't have a fucking clue about? Don't you do it either."
posted by tbogg at 11:43 PM
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Goddamit! Can't you see I'm an old man with no
time for research on your fancy-schmancy internets!It's this kind of ace reporting and commentary that's going to make Pajamas Media™ the Voice of A New But Not Very Smart Generation: June 06, 2005: Attention, Amnesty International!
An Iranian web writer arrested in a crackdown against online dissent has been sentenced to two years behind bars for "insulting the supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Now let's make a bet. Will Amnesty defend this real human rights abuse? Or how about this one - Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi: Collateral Killing of Muslims is Legitimate? Or will they remain, in Orwell's evocative phrase,"objectively pro-fascist"?Roger's first commenter posts this link: Iran
Covering events from January - December 2004
Scores of political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, continued to serve prison sentences imposed following unfair trials in previous years. Scores more were arrested in 2004, many in connection with press articles or publications both in print and on the Internet which were alleged to “endanger national security” or defame senior officials or religious precepts. Many of the families of those arrested also faced intimidation.
Independent human rights defenders were harassed. At least two individuals died in custody and 159 people were executed, including one minor. At least two of the 36 people who were flogged reportedly died following the implementation of the punishment; no investigations were carried out into these deaths. The true number of those executed or subjected to corporal punishment was believed to be considerably higher.But as some of Roger's brighter followers point out: AI doesn't use the word "gulag" so it doesn't count. Three Card Monte was invented for people like this.
posted by tbogg at 11:27 PM
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Meanwhile...back at the henhouse All talk...no action Super-duper über patriot Don Surber sez: We are at war. How about we act that way? Dissent is one thing. "I have no idea" charges are more than irresponsible. They are seditious.
Politicizing a war endangers U.S. lives and serves no purpose other than personal power. I am sick of it. Congress voted in 2002. The American public voted in 2002 and 2004. And finally, the people of Iraq voted on 30 January.
To the antiwar left: You also have the right to remain silent. Please, do so.Because that why Don Surber's sons other people are fighting in Iraq. For your freedom to shut the hell up.
posted by tbogg at 11:11 PM
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Beckham Destruction Watch: Chapter 14 Back in the shithouse again... Today: a leather iPod cover. Don't let the previous picture fool you. He had pneumonia then. Has it been the iPod this would be the Late Beckham Destruction Watch: The Final Chapter. (Added): People ask: How does Beckham manage to get said items? I'm glad you asked. Bassets are loooooong and Beckham uses all of his length, stretches his neck and uses his freakishly long tongue (the kind of tongue that would make Rick Santorum moisten his tighty-whities) to pull things off my desk no matter how far back I push them. He's evil I tell you. Evil.
posted by tbogg at 10:11 PM
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Confession is only good for the soul when the confessor has a soulGeorge Bush on America under his administration: "...one that includes representative government, integration into world markets and a faith in freedom, and another that seeks to roll back democratic progress by "playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor and blaming others for their own failures to provide for their people."We're two..two...two countries in one. Oh wait.... only one of those is America. My bad.
posted by tbogg at 10:04 PM
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Round up all the chemotherapy criminalsDigby cuts to the chase on todays medical marijuana ruling which has just handed back to the lower courts exactly the type of cases they don't want to handle. What fun! Let's arrest people suffering from cancer and take away something that allows them to live out their last few days in relative comfort because life is all about pain and suffering and why should they get to turn on and drop out? Just explain the commerce clause to them while they puke up their guts over the toilet. They'll understand. In the midst of the Korner Kids trying to half-heartedly rationalize the Supreme Court's ruling the incredibly loathesome Podhoretz lifts up his leg and cuts one and later will wonder why nobody wants to sit next to him at lunch.. MEDICAL MARIJUANA AND YODELS [John Podhoretz]
I just want to say I support the Supreme Court decision, just because some Cornerite should say it so that the legalizers don't take 100 percent of the airspace on the issue here. But rest assured that if they ever outlaw the use of Yodels for medicinal purposes, I will be first in line to storm the Court building.
Posted at 11:00 AM He's making Jonah look more like Alexis de Tocqueville everyday.
posted by tbogg at 10:28 AM
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Sunday, June 05, 2005
Shortlisted for an American Wanker grantYou would think it would be impossible for The Corner to become even more idiotic, tone deaf, and low brow. But that was before hiring John Podhoretz who sneers at genius: A "GENIUS" FINALLY DOES SOMETHING [John Podhoretz]
Tonight, on the Tony Awards, an actor named Bill Irwin won the Best Actor award for his performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Irwin is best known as a so-called New Vaudevillian -- a post-modern clown, is the best way of putting it. (Parents may know him as one of the two people who play "Mr Noodle" during the "Elmo's World" segments on "Sesame Street.") This isn't very interesting, except for the fact that Irwin was one of the first people to win a MacArthur "genius grant" two decades ago.
Which means that he may be the only Genius Grant winner ever to amount to anything after getting his $250,000 prize.Here are few previous recipients: Walter Abish
John Ashbery
Andrea Barrett
Harold Bloom
Anthony Braxton
Joseph Brodsky
Robert Coles
Merce Cunningham
Jared M. Diamond
Andre Dubus
Marian Wright Edelman
William Gaddis
Ernest J. Gaines
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Stephen Jay Gould
Allen Grossman
Irving Howe
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Charles Johnson (not that one)
William Kennedy
Brad Leithauser
Cormac McCarthy
James McPherson
Errol Morris
Richard Powers
Thomas Pynchon
Ishmael Reed
Adrienne Rich
Max Roach
John Sayles
Peter Sellars
Leslie Marmon Silko
Anna Deavere Smith
Susan Sontag
Cecil Taylor
Paul Taylor
Julie Taymor
Twyla Tharp
Derek Walcott
David Foster Wallace
Naomi Wallace
Colson Whitehead
John Edgar WidemanNow my list is arts heavy so it doesn't include all of the researchers, mathematicians, biologists, human rights advocates, economists, historians, and others (that can be found here) who didn't have parents famous enough to get them a gig at a Murdoch paper just to get them out of the basement, but all in all, most of them do pretty good work. Granted...none of them is a Ron Howard, but then, who is?
posted by tbogg at 11:04 PM
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Needs a little workYesterday it seemed like just a dream. Today: It's still in the development stage. Creating a new paradigm is hard work.
posted by tbogg at 1:37 PM
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Saturday, June 04, 2005
I see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Hey! Did you hear a train whistle? Everything is fine. Why do you ask? The Bush WarPresident Bush's portrayal of a wilting insurgency in Iraq at a time of escalating violence and insecurity throughout the country is reviving the debate over the administration's Iraq strategy and the accuracy of its upbeat claims.
While Bush and Vice President Cheney offer optimistic assessments of the situation, a fresh wave of car bombings and other attacks killed 80 U.S. soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis last month alone and prompted Iraqi leaders to appeal to the administration for greater help. Privately, some administration officials have concluded the violence will not subside through this year.
The disconnect between Rose Garden optimism and Baghdad pessimism, according to government officials and independent analysts, stems not only from Bush's focus on tentative signs of long-term progress but also from the shrinking range of policy options available to him if he is wrong. Having set out on a course of trying to stand up a new constitutional, elected government with the security firepower to defend itself, Bush finds himself locked into a strategy that, even if it proves successful, foreshadows many more deadly months to come first, analysts said.
Military commanders in Iraq privately told a visiting congressional delegation last week that the United States is at least two years away from adequately training a viable Iraqi military but that it is no longer reasonable to consider augmenting U.S. troops already strained by the two-year operation, said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). "The idea that the insurgents are on the run and we are about to turn the corner, I did not hear that from anybody," Biden said in an interview.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who joined Biden for part of the trip, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others are misleading Americans about the number of functional Iraqi troops and warned the president to pay more attention to shutting off Syrian and Iranian assistance to the insurgency. "We don't want to raise the expectations of the American people prematurely," he said.[...] "I am pleased that in less than a year's time, there's a democratically elected government in Iraq, there are thousands of Iraq soldiers trained and better equipped to fight for their own country [and] that our strategy is very clear," Bush said during a Rose Garden news conference Tuesday. Overall, he said, "I'm pleased with the progress." Cheney offered an even more hopeful assessment during a CNN interview aired the night before, saying the insurgency was in its "last throes."
Several Republicans questioned that evaluation. "I cannot say with any confidence that that is accurate," said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), a member of the House International Relations Committee. "I think it's impossible to know how close we are to the insurgency being overcome."[...] A Western diplomat in Baghdad said victory would have to be won in a drawn-out struggle that will have peaks and valleys. "We should not expect some big-bang breakthrough so that one day the insurgency ends," he said on the condition of anonymity. "We should expect a long grind-it-out." After all, he said, "this is the hardest thing we've done to try to rebuild a state almost from zero."
"If you pull back far enough," he added, "you see a positive trend. . . . The negative is we've had some really spectacular car bombs, really gruesome car bombs and we've had a terrible civilian death toll. . . . The overall trend lines for the last six to seven months are better, but not so much better that we can say it's over or we won."The "trend line " says that under the pile of horse shit, there lies a pony, and they're just going to keep on digging and digging and digging...
posted by tbogg at 10:00 PM
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When I grow up, I want the world to chew me up and spit me outEverybody else has had their shot at America's Worst Mother™ this week, but I think we have to have a bit of sympathy for only son SpartaGus who will have to live with the equivalent of having his mother post pictures of him sitting on the toilet all over the internets. A boy in a blue zip-up shoulder-to-knee sun-blocking bathing suit intercepts his mother half-way up the stairs. “I’m Oceanic Man!” he cries through the blue ski mask that obscures his features. “I can break tidal waves in half… with these!” And he holds up his hands, instruments of death, and tears dramatically at an invisible tsunami. “Snerggh!”[...] My husband and I are dutifully admiring them when Paris strides in wearing a large deerskin vest, khakis, and brown belt slung over his shoulder, bandito-style. “What are you,” I remark, “the dirt fairy?
“No, “ he says, scornfully. “I’m the imp of the trees. Obviously.”It's probably a good thing that Meghan is going to be home-schooling young Gus, because there are a bunch of middle-schoolers out there who are just aching to kick his ass. Meghan is going to have to spend at least three years writing about Gus talking about nothing except "football and pussy" to obliterate the images of him playing dress-up. Jesus. A " zip-up shoulder-to-knee sun-blocking bathing suit". It must suck to be him. (More AWM™ here and here)
posted by tbogg at 9:13 PM
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Depends on your interpretation of "inanimate object".This is John Podhoretz. The Pod (and has any nickname ever been so appropriate?) sez: CAN YOU TORTURE A BOOK? [John Podhoretz]
Anybody notice that the debate over American conduct at Gitmo has moved from the question of whether detainees were tortured to the question of whether a book was tortured? Granted, we are talking about a holy book. But it is an inanimate object, no?Coming from someone who makes Jonah Goldberg look like a Chippendales dancer...well, you can make your own joke.
posted by tbogg at 8:46 PM
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Misty water-colored memories of the knees we jerkedJane has a round-up of those who shoot first and don't ask questions later.
posted by tbogg at 10:31 AM
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Friday, June 03, 2005
Shorter Victor Davis HansonKill them all. Exterminate the brutes.
posted by tbogg at 9:58 PM
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Friday Random TenBecause I'm not done digesting (urp) AWM™ yet: "Mama's Got A Girlfriend Now" - Ben Harper "Tear Stained Eye" - Son Volt "Outrageous" - Britney Spears (oh shit---why did that have to come up - details below) "Garden of Earthy Delight" - XTC "We Might As Well Be Strangers" - Keane "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" - Jet "With Friends Like These" - Stereolab "Time of The Season" - The Zombies "Only" - Nine Inch Nails "It's Summertime" - The Flaming Lips And now for the completely defensive explanation for the Britney song: Okay. At the office I occasionally hook up the iPod to the sound system and we listen to playlists that I create just to break up the monotony. But we have this one guy in his early twenties who just luvs Britney & Nelly & othercraplikethat, and so, being the nice guy that I am I added some Britney and other acts that I'm not even going to mention to the Pod to make him happy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
posted by tbogg at 3:32 PM
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Thursday, June 02, 2005
We're all fortunate sons nowLosing the war at home: Two years into the war in Iraq, as the Army and Marines struggle to refill their ranks, parents have become boulders of opposition that recruiters cannot move.
Mothers and fathers around the country said they were terrified that their children would have to be killed - or kill - in a war that many see as unnecessary and without end.
Around the dinner table, many parents said, they are discouraging their children from serving.
At schools, they are insisting that recruiters be kept away, incensed at the access that they have to adolescents easily dazzled by incentive packages and flashy equipment.
A Department of Defense survey last November, the latest, shows that only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent in August 2003.
"Parents," said one recruiter in Ohio who insisted on anonymity because the Army ordered all recruiters not to talk to reporters, "are the biggest hurdle we face."
Legally, there is little a parent can do to prevent a child over 18 from enlisting. But in interviews, recruiters said that it was very hard to sign up a young man or woman over the strong objections of a parent.We've already addressed this in a specific way earlier today but I really want to help out the recruiters because it's through no fault of their own that they've been dealt such a shitty hand by the Administration. So here you go recruiter guys. You can thank me later. 1. Hang out in shopping center parking lots and walk up and talk to anyone who has a W2004 sticker on their car. Ask to see pictures of their kids. 2. College campuses: Don't bother with setting up a table and hoping students will stop to chat. Instead find out when the Young Americans for Freedom are meeting and show up. Advertise here. These guys look healthy and ready to go. 3. Contact these guys. If their kids are too old, ask about their grandkids then invite yourself to dinner. 4. Try himand himand especially him5. These guys have a pretty comprehensive mailing list. Buy it. Don't waste your time on this guy, but if you do: don't ask. 6. And since you're going to keep women active.... these girls? Unemployed.
posted by tbogg at 8:56 PM
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Chronicles of Deaths ForetoldQuoth Ben Stein regarding Nixon and Deep Throat: When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:
1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.
2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.
So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.Keep what he said in mind because here is what is going to happen. Like Viet Nam, we are losing in Iraq. That's a fact. You cannot beat an insurgency that seems to have an unlimited amount of "martyrs" willing to walk into the public square and blow themselves up taking twenty or so citizens with them. The American military is bunkered into the Green Zone behind blast-proof walls and razor wire because; if they walk out into the streets...they're going to die. It's Fort Apache the Bronx. Those who are supposed to be in control of the streets are the Iraqi policemen, but if they are in control, then why do they have to wear masks? Because, if they don't the insurgents will come to their houses and kill them. Iraq is probably the only country in the world whose entire police force is in the Witness Protection Program. With every American death, with every request for more billions for Iraq, the American public that initially supported the war starts to edge away from it as if it smells like last weeks garbage. Military recruiters are currently doing everything short of shanghaiing high school kids and they still can't meet their recruitment goals. Soldiers are being kept in Iraq for too long. We are running out of money, soldiers, patience, and more importantly, the will to fight in Iraq. Which is exactly what happened in Viet Nam. So when we finally bow down to public opinion and admit defeat (only we won't admit defeat...we'll just call it a tie) and pull out of Iraq, and the power vacuum that ensues results in tribal warfare and more death and destruction, who do you think the rightwing echo chamber is going to blame? Not the neo-cons who sent us on this fools errand. Not the generals who were whistling past the graveyard when they should have been telling Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to fuck off. Not the 101st Fighting Keyboarders who waved their little flags and their well-thumbed copies of Sun Tzu and pointed out that it looked a hell of a lot easier on the Risk board. No. They're going to blame us because we didn't wear little flag lapel pins and slap yellow ribbon magnetic stickers on our SUV's and we subverted the cause of democracy in the Middle East and that's why 1600 and counting American soldiers are dead, and the blood of every Iraqi killed in the wake of our leaving will be on our hands. And it's all because we didn't stop them before they killed again. Shame on us.
posted by tbogg at 6:59 PM
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Thursday Night Basset Blogging Beckham in more innocent times (Click on picture to enlarge)
posted by tbogg at 6:58 PM
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Headlines... Then & NowThis morning's Drudge headline: Turner: CNN Focuses Too Much on PervertsThis evening: D.A. PLAYS 'VASELINE' CARD IN JACKO FINALEThank the internets god that Drudge doesn't have that 'perverts' fixation.
posted by tbogg at 5:56 PM
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If it's good enough for dad, it's good enough for the kidsI popped over last night to see what was going on with my good buddy Don Surber, whom you'll remember is one of those It's My Party and I'll---Hey! Where Are You Going? types. Now Don hadn't hit his stride as a blogger until Michelle ManglalangIHateBrownPeople gave him a link and, boy oh boy, ever since he got a taste of that sweet traffic lovin' he's been spashing on the Stetson and blogging up a storm. But like a light-hitting shortstop who lucks into a rare homerun, sometimes swinging for the fences at every at bat isn't going to help your average. Take for example this postHistory will record that the left lost the War on Terrorism because it focused on thwarting the re-election of President Bush, rather than on stopping terrorism. Within 10 days of the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, the left was saying: Democratic rights in America: the first casualty of Bush’s anti-terror war. Within two months this red herring had moved from the loony left to the mainstream left, a New York Times editorial on Nov. 16, 2001:
In his effort to defend America from terrorists, Mr. Bush is eroding the very values and principles he seeks to protect, including the rule of law. Because, you see, if we don't curtail our own freedoms the terrorists have won and if the terrorists win we won't have freedom, so it's better to give them up voluntarily to the white guys then have them wrenched from us by swarthy people and either way we're going to lose them because freedom is so pre-9/11. You get the idea. Anyway, Don is all about the war on terrorism because it's only a matter of time before the Islamofascists move on from New York City to Poca, West Virginia. I men, this is big, folks. Nothing less than Western Civilization is at stake here and every able-bodied man should run down to the recruiting office and lay his life on the line for motherhood, apple pie, and Poca, West Virginia. Well, maybe not everybody. You see last night when I stopped by Surber's blog I asked, in comments, when Don's boys would be dropping out of Marshall and signing up for the New American Crusade. This morning we get this: DonSurber said...
Personal attacks will NOT be tolerated.Woah there little buckaroo. That was no personal attack. I just want to know why, if "This war is the Big Picture."..the college-aged Surbers aren't auditioning for a spot in the cast? (Added: see above)
posted by tbogg at 12:14 PM
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Kinda sorta unfortunate event namePersonally I don't think that an organization that "takes in needy pregnant women to help them facilitate the choice to have their children" should call their annual event " Ball for Life". It seems kind of dim... But then we see that the "stars" that will be attending include barren skank Ann Coulter, America's Stupidest Man™ Sean Hannnity, coke whore Larry Kudlow, and a special tribute to Our Lady of the Dolphins, Peggy Noonan and we realize that this event isn't exactly being underwritten by MENSA.
posted by tbogg at 11:31 AM
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What's the frequency, Rushbo?Jane at firedoglake points out that Rush is starting to hanker for the days when his only medical problem was a butt-boil. From the linked article: Attorney Roy Black said the records, which were seized in 2003, should be reviewed by a judge before they are opened to prosecutors.
"We're talking about privacy matters and privileged matters," Black told Palm Beach Circuit Judge Jeffrey A. Winikoff. "The remedy is them not seeing the various procedures and medical things that have nothing do to with the items they are investigating."
Assistant State Attorney James Martz said investigators have agreed not to publicly disclose personal details from the medical records.Let's jump back to The Graduate: Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics..but something more along the lines of... Tbogg: I want to say two words to you. Just two words.
Reader: Yes, sir.
Tbogg: Are you listening?
Reader: Yes, I am.
Tbogg: Erectile dysfunctionYou can bet the house on it. ...and if anyone in the investigator's office happens to scan a copy of those records...well, I guess we could always say that Mark Felt gave them to us.
posted by tbogg at 12:26 AM
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Dumb me downLatest news on the That's Outrageous! I'm Outraged! Harrumph Harrumph front: n April, at an otherwise mundane meeting of the school board here, Brittany Hunsicker, a 16-year-old student at the local high school, stood up and addressed the assembled board members.
"How would you like if your son and daughter had to read this?" Miss Hunsicker asked.
Then she began to recite from "The Buffalo Tree," a novel set in a juvenile detention center and narrated by a tough, 12-year-old boy incarcerated there. What she read was a scene set in a communal shower, where another adolescent boy is sexually aroused.
"I am in the 11th grade," Miss Hunsicker said. "I had to read this junk."
Less than an hour later, by a unanimous vote of the board (two of its nine members were absent) "The Buffalo Tree" was banned, officially excised from the Muhlenberg High School curriculum. By 8:30 the next morning all classroom copies of the book had been collected and stored in a vault in the principal's office. Thus began a still unresolved battle here over the fate of "The Buffalo Tree," a young adult novel by Adam Rapp that was published eight years ago by HarperCollins and has been on the 11th-grade reading list at Muhlenberg High since 2000. Pitting teachers, students and others who say the context of the novel's language makes it appropriate for the classroom against those parents and board members who say context be damned, it is a dispute illustrative of the so-called culture war, which, in spite of its national implications, is fought in almost exclusively local skirmishes. The board was set to meet the evening of June 1 to reconsider its decision.Miss Hunsicker, who is sixteen, is having problems with a book that, according to the School Library Journal is intended for grades 7 and up: From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up. The brutal world of a juvenile detention center is the setting for this compelling story of survival and redemption, re-created through a 13 year old's inventive use of language.Why is this happening now? It's a sign of the times: According to the American Library Association, which asks school districts and libraries to report efforts to ban books - that is, have them removed from shelves or reading lists - they are on the rise again: 547 books were challenged last year, up from 458 in 2003. These aren't record numbers. In the 1990's the appearance of the Harry Potter books, with their themes of witchcraft and wizardry, caused a raft of objections from evangelical Christians.
Judith Krug, director of the library association's office for intellectual freedom, attributed the most recent spike to the empowerment of conservatives in general and to the re-election of President Bush in particular. The same thing happened 25 years ago, she said. "In 1980, we were dealing with an average of 300 or so challenges a year, and then Reagan was elected," she said. "And challenges went to 900 or 1,000 a year."...and the evangelicals are feeling their oats (if that's not a sin, of course): Muhlenberg is a township of modest homes and 10,000 people or so, a bedroom community for the city of Reading, in the southeastern quadrant of the state. It is conservative politically and almost entirely white, and there are a growing number of evangelical Christians. Miss Hunsicker had just returned from a two-week church mission in Honduras when, encouraged by her mother, she made her public complaint...and what follows is the local columnist who is 'agin' it...even though he hasn't read it: In May a column appeared headlined "The Upside of Censorship," by a regular columnist, John D. Forester Jr., who wrote that after reading only "passages" of "The Buffalo Tree," "I am actually applauding the efforts of parents to have books banished in their school libraries and classrooms." A few days later, an editorial took the opposing view....and another one of those dreary well-meaning sensible mothers who wants her babies to remain babies: Several students spoke with more reasonable passion about the value of the novel, and one high school senior, Mary Isamoyer, offered to replace the missing library copies of "The Buffalo Tree" with her own.
"Do not insult our intelligence by keeping this book from us," she said.
Tammy Hahn, a mother of four and perhaps the most outspoken of the book's opponents, responded that the students' view was irrelevant. She was not about to let her daughter take part in a classroom discussion about erections, she said, adding that it amounted to harassment to subject a girl to the smirks and innuendoes of male classmates who would have no sympathy for her discomfort.
"This is not about a child's opinion," she said of the students' defense of the book. "This is about parents."Congratulations Tammy, you've just opened the door to making your daughter the Erection Queen of Muhlenberg High School. When she slams her door on you while screaming "I hate you! I hate you! You fat drunken cow!" you can look back on this moment and be proud.
posted by tbogg at 12:03 AM
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Wednesday, June 01, 2005
We all have a little Watergate story in each of us.When I got home tonight the first thing Mrs. Tbogg said to me (besides " God you're hot. Take off your clothes and make me a woman") was "Did you see that asshole Liddy talking about Felt?" to which I replied (after I said " Okay, but I can only go six times tonight. Big meeting tomorrow morning") that she should read Martini Republic to get a real feel for what a sack of shit Liddy is and how it appears that Paula Zahn doesn't have the brains God gave a Parker House roll. Then we had sex. Okay, we didn't have sex but only because we're too busy fighting the man. But that's not what I want to talk about. First, some back-story: I grew up with Watergate. I was a senior in high school the year of the Watergate hearings (1973) and I had a political science class every morning and each day we would watch the televised hearings in class as well as go over the coverage in the local papers. Our instructor, whose name I have forgotten, told us that we would learn more from those hearings than anything that she could teach us. And so we watched and we discussed and we listened and we became intimately acquainted with the entire cast of characters and the strange workings of our government. Jump ahead to 1995. Still dashingly handsome, I'm the senior buyer at a fairly large retail chain when I get contacted by a recruiter representing a father and son who have bought a business that they're not too sure how to run, and would I take the time to talk to them? What the hell, I'm ready for a change, and I get their names. Because I don't like to go into any meeting without doing some research, I start asking around and one of the first things I'm told is that the father was one of the Watergate Seven. He would be Robert Mardian. So I have dinner with his son Bill (who was a great guy, I might add) and we discuss what they have and what they need and how I fit into the whole shebang. He asks me what I want..I tell him. He agrees. We have a deal. Before we part ways I casually ask him if his dad is the Robert Mardian, and Bill laughed and said yes, and mentioned that he had been in college at Arizona State when all the hearings were going on and that it wasn't the most pleasant thing to have gone through. So I went to work for Bill & Robert Mardian, but I never met Robert until some six months later (he still lived and I assume still lives in Arizona). Bill and Robert and I were going to have lunch, and before Robert met up with us, Bill smirked and said, "When you meet my dad, ask him what he thinks of Richard Nixon." Okay. We're having lunch and finally I got around to it (I thought the whole idea was kind of awkward) and said, "Mr Mardian. (I never called him Robert) Bill said I should ask you what you think of Richard Nixon." Robert Mardian looked at me and said, " Richard Nixon is a lying son of a bitch", and by the way he said it, I knew that the topic was now closed. Bill, on the other hand was laughing his ass off. And that is my Watergate story. Coming soon: Interviewing Spiro Agnew when I was thirteen, and Barry Goldwater walks out of a dinner party to look at a bunch of doves I'd shot. I swear: these are true.
posted by tbogg at 10:35 PM
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Why didn't we think of that? Call marketing.Everybody is having a hoot over Human Events list of the Ten Most Harmful Books but I really enjoyed this from the description of Das Kapital: ...capitalism as an ugly phase in the development of human society in which capitalists inevitably and amorally exploit labor by paying the cheapest possible wages to earn the greatest possible profits.Just reading that must give Lee Scott a boner.
posted by tbogg at 10:18 PM
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Slowly they slipped the meat between the warm inviting buns" Profligate with her favors" Quick! (No! Quicker!) Name one twenty year-old American who would describe a woman using that expression. If you guessed The Virgin Ben, you win! Well, you don't really win anything tangible but you've still got your freedom and democracy and stuff so you're a winner everyday...or so they tell us. Anyway, World O'Crap has the latest from Ben (or as we call him V-Ben or maybe Benny-No-Peepee-Touch) who is all over Paris Hilton (figuratively) while flogging his upcoming porn expose: Caught With My Pants Down or Why I Had To Write This Stupid Book. It seems that Ben is worried that the Hilton/Carl's Jr. $6 burger commercial is provoking youngsters (like Ben) to spontaneously masturbate as opposed to the old $6 burger commercials that only made Jonah Goldberg masturbate. V-Ben sez: ...the plain truth of the situation is that Paris Hilton would be a relative nobody today were she not incredibly rich and profligate with her favors.Ah-yup. He's still a virgin.
posted by tbogg at 3:16 PM
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Messing with a franchiseFox has a guaranteed moneymaker in the X-Men film franchise but they can't even keep a director on board: With just two months until production begins, the director of "X-Men 3" has left the Fox project, citing personal reasons.
The Marvel superhero sequel would have marked the first big-budget studio project for Matthew Vaughn, who made his directing debut with the gangster tale "Layer Cake."
"X3," with a cast that includes Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, is scheduled to begin production August 2 for release on May 26, 2006. Vaughn is the second director to be involved in the project. Bryan Singer, who directed the first two "X-Men" features, had been expected to direct the third, but when he chose to take on Warner Bros. Pictures' upcoming "Superman Returns," Fox abruptly cut its ties with him.
Fox insisted that Vaughn's departure had nothing to do with either creative differences or the pressures of mounting the multimillion-dollar project.
[...]
"Luckily, we have a fantastic script, the original cast is returning, and there will be some great new characters. We will decide shortly among several directors who are keenly interested in the project and are fully committed to remaining right on schedule."Oh jeebus. Nightmares of Joel Schumacher or McG dancing in my head.
posted by tbogg at 9:47 AM
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Penis on loan from RushI'm not exactly sure how I missed this before the holiday weekend, but news like this never gets old: It's not every day that a U.S. senator gives a lecture and slide show about risky sexual activities -- complete with gross pictures of the naughty bits.
This was Sen. Tom Coburn's lecture on sexually transmitted diseases, held yesterday for the young congressional staff in the place where such things are talked about: the basement -- in this case, of the Capitol. It is no small thing to ask an intern who is trying his best to mimic a working adult to come to a lecture like this in the middle of a workday, considering the danger of being transported back to the blushing days of high school sex ed.
[...]
For the first few minutes, it worked, as Coburn flipped through slides showing dry facts and figures about STDs, that 2 of every 3 new cases occur in people younger than 25, that most occur in people with multiple sexual partners. Then Coburn got serious. He flipped to his next slide. It showed a part of the male anatomy but not as a science textbook drawing; this was the real thing, and a particularly sorry example; it looked like it had been left outside by mistake and then rusted in some unnatural way, with scaly dry spots, and warts on an angry red background.
This image was now projected up on a wall of the U.S. Capitol, and the mood shifted instantly. None of the 160 or so audience members shrieked, or giggled, or ran out of the room. They're not 15 anymore, and this is a professional environment. The chatter stopped; everyone looked straight ahead, or down at their BlackBerries. A large number of women crossed their arms over their chests. Most everyone seemed encapsulated in the bit of air around them, afraid to move or touch the person sitting next to them. The half-eaten slices of pizza, now cooling on laps, seemed deeply unappetizing.Professional?: yes. Bright?: maybe not. Coburn always offers to see people in private after the lecture, and his staff say 10 or so people always take him up on it and many more ask follow-up questions after his lectures. No doubt at the very least he's filling in basic gaps in knowledge.
"You keep mentioning the word 'monogamy'," a staffer named Roland Foster recalls one young woman asking after a lecture. "What is that?"
"That's when you have sex with only one partner," Coburn responded.
"You mean at a time?"Somebody get that female staffers phone number for Bill Clinton. He'll know what to do.
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