If you’ve been a good little blogger today, you’ve been following the Iowa straw polls, and if you’ve been a really good little blogger, you’ve been following it more diligently and responsibly than the AP news wire service that made no mention whatsoever of the irregularities such as malfunctioning machines and the longer-than-expected time needed for the hand recounts.

Fortunately, via Buzzflash.net, Todd at Blue State has been live-blogging the event all night. If we were to depend on AP, we’d never know that Diebold machines were being used in Romney’s stunningly predictable “victory” in Iowa. (Free Market News has more on the Republican fuckuppery that AP and other news outlets will be too chivalrous to mention.)

Ron Paul, who actually tried to poach votes by telling people to take advantage of Romney’s buses to the straw polls and paying the $35 registration fee so they could vote for him, is hopping mad so don’t think that this will gently go into that good night.

They can't even have a one party straw poll without poking and slapping themselves like Moe, Larry and Curly. This is going to be a wild and wooly presidential election so make sure you bring seat belts to the polls next November.

Here’s some good news: According to FMN,

The scuttlebutt is that about 14,000 votes were cast. The Iowa GOP was saying they were expecting up to 30,000 votes, so getting only half that many -- and therefore only half as much money -- will likely cause them some hardship.

To reverse the old show business adage, if you don’t give them what they want, they won’t come out for it, even if there is roast pig and Elvis impersonators.

Update: Thank you, New York Times, for mentioning that Diebold machines were used.

"For John Edwards to lecture Rudy Giuliani about September 11 is laughable at best. This is, after all, the same guy who thinks the 'war on terror' is simply a bumper sticker." - Giuliani communications director Katie Levinson

All too healthy, it seems. At a Cincinnati Reds game last Thursday, Rudy Giuliani said, "I was at Ground Zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers." The good news?

Former NC Senator John Edwards pushed back against this blatant lie. The bad news? Well, none of the other Democratic presidential candidates piped in to blast Giuliani for his faux macho statements, which seems to suggest that Giuliani‘s reputation as the hero of 9/11 is too sacred to take on.

Nothing’s sacred. The right wing backlash against Cindy Sheehan proved that. You want votes, people, in the straw polls and primaries? Learn to push back against the bullshit lest you make us think that you either don’t care about the truth or, even worse, actually buy into it. Perhaps they’re afraid of being compared to the Swiftboaters that slandered John Kerry like the IAFF was in their damning video about Giuliani last month.

Luckily for the American voter, the NY Times’ Anthony DePalma, bless his heart, has been as instrumental in peeling back the layers of bullshit surrounding Giuliani’s “leadership skills” from 9/11 until the end of his administration as Wayne Barrett and his own verbal 9/11 on Giuliani’s towering tales of personal heroism.

Here are some of the facts, in case you haven’t the time or the inclination to read Barrett’s very lengthy but excellent analysis of the Giuliani myth:

Giuliani, having learned nothing from the 1993 WTC bombing, despite being warned by the mastermind that they were going after the WTC again, seemed to do his level-headed best to not equip the NYFD and NYPD with the proper radios that could’ve saved hundreds of lives.

Giuliani only appeared at Ground Zero for photo ops with Bush and Rumsfeld and other neocons who wanted to vulture some glory while literally standing on the pulverized remains of the victims. The fact that he wasn’t ever once seen wearing a respirator only showed his colossal ignorance of the harmful fallout that even now is affecting countless Ground Zero rescue workers. Later Giuliani would subsequently blame former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman for assuring the public that the air was fit to breathe.

Giuliani, because he insisted on having his OEM’s emergency command center at WTC 7, the one that we know for a fact was deliberately pulled down for no earthly reason since it wasn’t even on fire, so he could have a hide-away for his extramarital tryst with Judith Nathan and to provide “political payback to a major contributor”, to quote the late Steve Gilliard. $61,000,000 was spent on that ill-placed bunker partly so Giuliani could have monogrammed bath towels. Giuliani subsequently blamed Jerry Hauer for that, despite the fact that Hauer, the mayor’s director of emergency management, wanted the command center across the river in Brooklyn. He only supported the WTC 7 site when it became clear that Giuliani was going to get his way no matter what.

And, what Barrett never mentioned was the fact that Giuliani cracked the whip to have the rubble from the WTC carted away ASAP despite the fact that much of the human remains hadn’t been recovered (they would later be found to have been used as road fill for potholes).

Giuliani also closed off streets so he could avoid dealing with the 9/11 victims’ families.

The Democrats have all the ammo in the world to shoot at this balding, lying asshole yet the ammo dump remains untouched. Why? Not calling out this mobbed up, loathsome, vulture fund-loving prick is not supporting the IAFF and the FDNY (which lost 343 union firefighters on 9/11), as far as I’m concerned.

Captain America is dead.

It’s one of the oldest and most predictable lessons in the comic book “how-to” manual. If a new costume, a different writer/artist team, or a female character suddenly discovering she’s a lesbian doesn’t pump up declining sales, then killing the super-hero is usually what happens next. Ho hum. If the right number of outraged fans make enough noise, then a magical McGuffin is found, and one timely resurrection later, the Corpse In Tights comes back. If not, oh well.

With Captain America, however, I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. It wasn’t just a sniper that killed America's super soldier: It was an identity crisis. Captain America was an anachronism; a heroic relic from WWII who didn't belong in George Bush's America.

The super heroes who matter, the icons who last for decades and sink deep roots into our collective consciousness are primal archetypes that have a singular purpose. There's much more to their existence than gamma rays, a funny green lamp, or a bite from a radioactive spider. They are what the culture needs.

Batman is a ferocious and relentless avenger seeking justice for helpless victims in the lawless streets. Superman represents the power of an America with open borders that freely welcomes refugees fleeing oppressive countries. The idea of Captain America was born during World War II, when the horror of Nazi Germany threatened to transform the planet into a concentration camp.

The lines dividing good and evil were clearly defined then. Captain America knew who the bad guys were. We all did.

But what about now?

Where is Captain America's place in the ugly America of George Bush and Dick Cheney? What does Captain America do when he has witnessed a stolen presidential election, 9/11, the swift boating of John Kerry, fraudulent WMDs, Shock and Awe, Abu Grahib, the erosion of habeus corpus, torture, Alberto Gonzales, No Child Left Behind, Enron, "Intelligent Design", the Supreme Court putting out the welcome mat for Jim Crow, and Katrina? In Karl Rove's broken mirror, Captain America would be beating up abortion doctors and appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

Is it any wonder that the myth of Captain America was lost, confused, and burdened by a bleak sense of irrelevancy? Naturally, as bad as things got for Captain America, it got worse for the United States of America.

As usual, Tristero from Hullaboo nails it. Hard.

“Once Bush stole his way into the White House, America entered a period of decline. Declining influence in the world, declining pre-eminence in science, and declining trust in international affairs. Some of this is normal and some of America's decline is not necessarily such a bad thing. But a lot of it is very bad news indeed. Perhaps the worst decline is that last one I mentioned, trust that the American system will, at the very least, place major checks upon, the megalomania of mentally unstable executives. And here's the nut of the problem:

“Even assuming the next president makes Lincoln look like a log, would you trust this country if you were a foreign leader, knowing that not only had it enabled a George W. Bush to run the show but, worse, never held either him or his administration accountable for its serial crimes and failures? What - you think it's gonna be easy to say it's the dawning of a new era? Y'think the next President can just appeal to multiculturalism and s'plain away Bush? Like "it's just our culture" to let monumentally incompetent and murderous fuck-ups get off scot-free?

“No. Until the Whole Sick Crew of Bushites is held accountable, this country will continue to lose influence and trust. It will mean that life for Americans who deal with other countries - that means all of us, Chucko, 'cause of the importance of our imports - will become increasingly more inconvenient. And the United States on many fronts, will continue to become less secure. It's hard to build alliances with assholes."

Exactly.

Let's not forget, it wasn't specifically Bush that was voted into power, it was what Bush represented. I don’t care how many votes Bush stole; it never should have been that close in the first place. What myopic white people wanted, I think, was for America to stumble backwards into an Utopian Pleasantville, where there were no scary jigaboos, queers, ragheads, or feminazis to worry about. It was a cold, narrow-minded ideology that brutally excluded everyone and everything that gave the United States its unique identity. No, you can't see the "White Only" signs, but we know where they are, and there's more of them every day.

It worked, didn’t it? Lots of Americans voted for it twice.

Now look where we are.

And if we choose not to stop our slow descent into the abyss, then Captain America and the ideals he honored is truly dead. Unlike the comic book hero, the America we used to be so proud of won’t be resurrected. It won’t deserve to.

Labels: Captain America, Gil Scott-Heron, President Bush, Winter In America

It was nearly dark outside now, and the rain was still coming down, pattering against the windows and blurring the lights of the cars in the street outside.

Coraline's father stopped working, and made them all dinner.

Coraline was disgusted. "Daddy," she said, "you've made a recipe again."

"It's leek and potato stew, with a tarragon garnish, and melted Gruyere cheese," he admitted.

Coraline sighed. Then she went to the freezer, and got out some microwave chips, and a microwave mini pizza.

"You know I don't like recipes," she told her father, while her dinner went around and around, and the little red numbers on the microwave oven counted down to zero.

"If you tried it, maybe you'd like it," said Coraline's father, but she shook her head.

That night, Coraline lay awake in her bed. The rain had stopped, and she was almost asleep when something went tatatatatat. She sat up in bed.

Something went Kreeee ...

....aaaak

Coraline got out of bed and looked down the hall, but saw nothing strange. She walked down the hall. From her parents' bedroom came a low snoring – that was her father – and an occasional sleeping mutter – that was her mother.

Coraline wondered if she'd dreamed it, whatever it was.

Something moved.

It was little more than a shadow, and it scuttled down the darkened hall fast, like a little patch of night.

She hoped it wasn't a spider. Spiders made Coraline intensely uncomfortable.

The black shape went into the drawing room, and Coraline followed it in, a little nervously.

The room was dark: the only light came from the hall, and Coraline, who was standing in the doorway, cast a huge and distorted shadow onto the drawing room carpet: she looked like a thin giant woman.

Coraline was just wondering whether or not she ought to turn on the lights when she saw the black shape edge slowly out from beneath the sofa. It paused, and then dashed silently across the carpet toward the farthest corner of the room.

There was no furniture in that corner of the room.

Coraline turned on the light.

There was nothing in the corner. Nothing but the old door that opened onto the brick wall.

She was sure that her mother had shut the door, but now it was ever so slightly open. Just a crack. Coraline went over to it, and looked in. There was nothing there – just a wall, built of red bricks.

Coraline closed the old wooden door, turned out the light, and went to bed.

She dreamed of black shapes that slid from place to place, avoiding the light, until they were all gathered together under the moon. Little black shapes with little red eyes and sharp yellow teeth.

They started to sing,

We are small but we are many

We are many we are small

We were here before you rose

We will be here when you fall.

Their voices were high and whispering and slightly whiney. They made Coraline feel uncomfortable.

Then Coraline dreamed a few commercials, and after that she dreamed of nothing at all

Labels: Coraline, Dave McKean, Horror Fiction, Neil Gaiman

“He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.” —Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

In politics, what’s the complete package? In our age of mass market telecommunications, we’re so used to seeing candidates who are so perfectly poised, perfectly scripted,, perfectly groomed and made-up and perfectly tailored that when a curse word, a red truck, an incontinent dog or a campaign contribution from a notorious HMO or lobbyist gets thrown into the script, those flaws are put under a huge magnifying glass under the pitiless sun of public scrutiny. It doesn’t matter that it may not be germane to the candidate’s stance on key issues or even be an indictment against their honesty and ethics.

So we tend to focus on things like Al Gore’s stiffness or Hillary’s cleavage while ignoring George Bush’s horrendous capital punishment record or his stupendous incompetence and self-dealing corruption as a business executive. Molly Ivins saw through him like a pane of glass. Why couldn’t we?

Ergo, we need to shrug our shoulders and abandon all hope for a candidate who doesn’t disappoint us in some way. There’s no such thing as the complete package. If the 1860’s had television, radio and an internet, Stephen Douglas would’ve leaked to CNN about Lincoln’s constant battle with depression and Ann Rutledge’s parents would’ve been doing the morning show circuit. “Well, yes, we had spotted Mr. Lincoln near our daughter’s grave time and time again and, frankly, we thought it was quite creepy.”

The rail-splitter then would’ve lost in a landslide and we would’ve had President Douglas sitting on his booster seat in the Oval Office during the Civil War, one that would’ve surely, under his stewardship, resulted in at least a temporary confederacy, more likely a permanent one. Imagine half the United States entering both world wars, with the confederacy maybe, maybe not fighting as our ally.

So corporately-owned MSM information is not always knowledge and even in the relatively rare occasions when it is, that knowledge can still be dangerously irrelevant and catalytic for reactionary thought. It’s also, for decades now, been able to frame the terms of debate and shape expectations to the point where the candidates have to factor it in. Take the 2004 election.

During the debates, when John Kerry was talking expansively about doing this, doing that, George W. Bush, an intellectual bulimic who thought that “a bunch of numbers” made a budget and championed a Pakistani dictator before taking the time to learn his first name, was nonetheless smart enough to know that he could get the media to ignore, whitewash and spin any other idiocy that dribbled out of his mouth. Ergo, the incumbent could afford to fold his arms, stand back and rightly ask Sen. Kerry, “How do you plan to pay for all this?”

And Kerry ummed and ahhed, knowing that he couldn’t say what he really wanted to say, what he had in store for all of us had he taken over: That he would’ve had to raise taxes. However, pledging to raise taxes is one of the few things that can kill a campaign faster than being caught in bed with an empty syringe and a dead underaged male hooker. Bush knew as well as Kerry that Kerry had to factor in the media as part of his campaign strategy while Bush didn’t.

So, while Chris Matthews, nostrils aquiver like a hyperactive lagomorph, is openly speculating whether or not Fred Thompson owns America’s last stash of Hi-Karate, I’ve been looking at the eight Democratic candidates as well as a couple of undeclared possibilities. We have a clean slate and every candidate, or no candidate, has to factor in the media’s microscope. Let’s start with Illinois’ junior senator:

Barack Obama will never shake the inexperienced tag since he naively said that we could rather than should open up diplomatic relations with hostile countries. Is it a nice scenario? Well, yes, of course. But Obama is running for the presidency of the United States, not the mayoralty of Candyland.

He partly made up for that by subsequently saying that we ought to launch air strikes against Pakistan if they don’t cough up bin Laden. In this, not only does Obama stand alone but the likes of Newt Gingrich agree with him.

All the same, Obama driving home his opposition to the Iraq war two years before entering the Senate has no bearing on what his policy and executive decisions will be two years from now as Chief Executive. All we have is the present, which, we are reminded time and again with every election cycle, is a poor political primer.

I’d feel much more comfortable voting for Senator Obama if he had four more years of seasoning under his belt.

Hillary Clinton. What can be said about her that hasn’t already been said? Hillary Clinton’s taken so much payola from lobbyists, she’s in more pockets than lint. Furthermore, as with her Iraq war vote, she refuses to apologize for it or back away from it, knowing how politically incorrect it is and has been for many years, to take PAC money. In fact, as far back as January, Sen. Clinton was so confident in her fund-raising machine that she’d decided to forgo public financing, meaning that wealthy individuals and corporations were far outpacing money dribbling in from people like us. In other words, we’re getting priced out of elections in which we’d never stood a shot, anyway, against well-monied and self-interested lobbyists.

And can anyone say with a straight face that a candidate, especially one still young enough to get re-elected in ’12, will willingly stab in the back an entity with a lucrative agenda that gave millions to their campaign? In this respect, Obama is no better than Hillary in that, while he may avoid PAC money, he still has no problem taking “bundled” money from lobbyists.

And sadly, some of us have been reduced to hailing Hillary’s obstinacy as “consistency.” Well, yeah, that’s a virtue if you insist on being consistently stupid and intractable. Hillary perhaps got the first taste of the hostility awaiting her at this month’s Yearly Kos when she was hissed after claiming that taking money from lobbyists would not affect her judgment as President (Don't forget, Tom DeLay made much the same claim while still standing on the tarmac after flying in on a Big Tobacco corporate jet on the way to his arraignment for money laundering). Then after saying earlier in her campaign that she hoped to sign into law a health care package at the end of her second term, she then told the masses at YKos that she would make universal health care her number one priority.

Problem? She still hasn’t advanced a plan of her own and after the debacle of 1994, who can blame her?

John Edwards, no thanks to Ann Coulter’s despicable remarks at CPAC last March, Bill Donahue’s jihad against his staff bloggers whom he refused to support and the Clintonian furor over his $400 haircut, will never shake the image of being wishy-washy and effeminate. Despite the former North Carolina senator’s sincere dedication to ending poverty in America and not-bad health care plan of his own, about the best thing he has going for him is his wife Elizabeth, a committed, blogger-friendly liberal who more often than not shows more fire and commitment than her husband. Out of all eight candidates, Edwards, to me, is the most likable.

But electing a president based on his likeability already has a poor track record.

Labels: President, The Worst President Ever

Back in 1983, when Mr. Brilliant and I were dating, I had just taken sixteen weeks to lose only thirteen pounds on something called the Cambridge Diet (which alas, still exists. This was essentially three glasses of chocolate milk made with this Product of Satan -- and nothing else, for 330 calories a day. And I still lost less than a pound a week.

Now, I'm one of those "grazers" -- people who need to eat smaller meals throughout the day. When I was a kid, and we'd do something like go to the World's Fair, my parents had to feed me every two hours or I'd get cranky. So imagine how I was on Cambridge Diet, with a new boyfriend that I'd meet in the city and we'd go out for dinner. It's a miracle, and to his eternal credit, that Mr. B. even stayed around, for watching me scatter food I was afraid to eat around the plate and cry in a public restaurant was not a pretty sight.

And of course twenty years later, my metabolism is STILL completely screwed up from this. And ironically, Cambridge is not all that qualitatively different from the nutty diet my gynecologist wanted me to try. The only difference is that HER nutty diet uses accupressure beads, which supposedly trick you into thinking you're not really, really effing hungry.

Women's eating habits have been fodder for everything from comedians to researchers. Even Eddie Murphy, who is hardly known for being women-friendly, said this in his stand-up film Raw:

If I ever get married, I got to marry somebody with personality.

For instance, I hate those quiet, salad-eating bitches, those real quiet ones, you know.

The kind of women, you take them out to dinner, you say: "Hey, what you wanna eat?"

They go, "I'll just have a salad."

And you hear their stomach going: "I don't know why my stomach is making that noise."

Because you're hungry, bitch. "Why don't you have something to eat?"

"No, no, no. I'm fine, I'm fine. I'll just have a salad."

In the late 1980's, three researchers found that college women eat less when trying to appear feminine. And worse, that both the women and the men rated women who eat less as being just plain nicer:

Video. Four meals were chosen based on the results of a pilot study in which 33 college students rated nine meals on a 7-point Likert scale from (1) very masculine to (7) very feminine: Meal 1 - a small "feminine" meal, consisting of a small salad (lettuce and tomato presented in a 5-inch diameter bowl) and a glass of seltzer (M = 6.4, SD = 0.67); a large "feminine" meal, consisting of a large Greek salad (lettuce, tomatoes, olives, cheese, eggs, presented on an 8-inch diameter plate) and diet soda M = 4.7, SD = 1.10); a small "masculine" meal, consisting of a half-size meatball sandwich (approximately 6 inches in length presented on an 8-inch diameter plate) with 6 mozzarella sticks and a large Coke (M = 2.9, SD = 0.83)h and a large "masculine" meal, consisting of a full-size meatball hoagie (approximately 1 ft. in length, cut in half, and presented on an 8-inch diameter plate) with 6 mozzarella sticks, large fries, a piece of cake, and a large Coke (M = 1.6, SD = 0.66). Meals thus varied both in physical size as well as calorie content. Scheffe analyses demonstrate that these four meals differ significantly from one another. A one-way within-subjects ANOVA by gender demonstrated a gender difference on ratings of Meal 1 [F(1, 31) = 6.20, p < .01] and Meal 4 [F(1, 31) = 6.91, p < .01]. Females tended to rate more extremely than males, but both females and males rated Meal I as most "feminine," Meal 2 moderately "feminine," Meal 3 as moderately "masculine," and Meal 4 as most "masculine."

We then scripted a scene in which a young woman sits down at a table by herself, orders one of these four meals, then proceeds to eat it. We chose a college-aged woman of average weight and attractiveness to act out the four scenarios, and we videotaped her ordering, beginning to eat each meal, and finishing each meal. The sequence of movements was identical in the four meal conditions, with the pace and number of bites and sips carefully choreographed. Because a large meal takes longer to eat than a small meal, we controlled for the time factor by only showing the beginnings and ends of each meal with fadeouts between scenes. Each of the final tapes was five minutes in length.

[snip]

We then scripted a scene in which a young woman sits down at a table by herself, orders one of these four meals, then proceeds to eat it. We chose a college-aged woman of average weight and attractiveness to act out the four scenarios, and we videotaped her ordering, beginning to eat each meal, and finishing each meal. The sequence of movements was identical in the four meal conditions, with the pace and number of bites and sips carefully choreographed. Because a large meal takes longer to eat than a small meal, we controlled for the time factor by only showing the beginnings and ends of each meal with fadeouts between scenes. Each of the final tapes was five minutes in length.

Given that now women are expected to not just be a size 4 or 6, as I was at my thinnest (a time which lasted about 3.2 minutes), but a size 0, I can't imagine things have changed much. Therefore, I don't put a whole lot of stock in this article from yesterday's New York Times:

Ms. Wilkie was a vegetarian in her teens, and even wore a “Meat Is Murder” T-shirt. But by her 30s, she had started eating cow. By the time she placed the personal ad, she had come to realize that ordering steak on a first date had the potential to sate appetites not only of the stomach but of the heart.

Red meat sent a message that she was “unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic,” she said, “that I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin, and I don’t have any food issues.” She added, “In terms of the burgers, it said I’m a cheap date, low maintenance.”

Salad, it seems, is out. Gusto, medium rare, is in.

Restaurateurs and veterans of the dating scene say that for many women, meat is no longer murder. Instead, meat is strategy. “I’ve been shocked at the number of women actually ordering steak,” said Michael Stillman, vice president of concept development for the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group, which opened the restaurant Quality Meats in April 2006 on West 58th Street. He said Quality Meats’ contemporary design and menu, including extensive seafood offerings, were designed to attract more women than a traditional steakhouse. “But the meat is appealing to them, much more than what I saw two or three years ago at our other restaurants,” Mr. Stillman said. “They are going for our bone-in sirloin and our cowboy-cut rib steak.”

In an earlier era, conventional dating wisdom for women was to eat something at home alone before a date, and then in company order a light dinner to portray oneself as dainty and ladylike. For some women, that is still the practice. “It’s better not to have a jalapeño fajita plate, especially on the first date,” said Andrea Bey, 28, who sells video surveillance equipment in Irving, Tex., and describes herself as “curvy.” “You don’t want to be labeled as ‘princess gassy’ on the first date.”

But others, especially those who are thin, say ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness.

“It seems wimpy, insipid, childish,” said Michelle Heller, 34, a copy editor at TV Guide. “I don’t want to be considered vapid and uninteresting.”

Ordering meat, on the other hand, is a declarative statement, something along the lines of “I am woman, hear me chew.”

In fact, red meat on a date has become such an effective statement of self-acceptance that even a vegetarian like Sloane Crosley, a publicist at Random House, sometimes longs to order a burger.

“Being a vegetarian puts you at a disadvantage,” Ms. Crosley said. “You’re in the most basic category of finicky. Even women who order chicken, it isn’t enough.” She said she has thought of ordering shots of Jägermeister, famous for its frat boy associations, to prove that she is “a guy’s girl.”

“Everyone wants to be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson,” Ms. Crosley, 28, said.

Yes, wouldn't we all. But how many women really can? In fact, the Kate Hudson that this woman is talking about is undoubtedly the immediate-post-pregnancy Kate Hudson, the one who gained 60 pounds while pregnant. But the real Kate Hudson embarked on a fast weight loss track after giving birth, one which would hardly be healthy in a woman who doesn't have an army of nutritionists, personal chefs and personal trainers, and 4-5 hours a day to devote to fitness. And in fact, look at the obsession the gossip rags had with Kate Hudson's weight. This is what we're supposed to aspire to?

So in reality, nothing has changed. You're still allowed to drink beer and eat steak -- as long as you don't get fat. If you're overweight, you're stuck with the salad.

Except me. I plan to consume as much ackee and saltfish and callaloo as I want next week.

Labels: weight

Bad Girl, Bad Girl,
What’cha gonna do?
What’cha gonna do
When they come for you?

Why, if you’re Angelina Jolie, you snap your fingers and make ‘em do tricks. Roll over. Play dead. Beg.

Aw, isn’t Brad cute? Tee hee hee.

On Alexander, Oliver Stone’s Achilles heel of an epic, there were rumors that a boozy Colin Farrell opened up his toga and repeatedly exposed himself to the women on the set. Some of the guys thought it was funny. I suppose some of the other guys didn’t think so, but they didn’t say anything. As you know, Angelina played Olympias in the film. No, she wasn’t good. Then again, neither was anybody else.

Anyway, Colin decided to share his dumb parlor trick with Angelina. To his surprise, she didn’t get angry, upset, or embarrassed. Instead, Angelina grinned at the Irish one-dick pony, grabbed not-quite-a-handful of Colin, and squeezed. Hard. Ouch. The other guys cringed. The women didn’t say anything, but they thought it was funny.

That’s what Bad Girls do. Independent, smart, tough-minded women who don’t start trouble but know how to finish it. Ida Lupino, Louise Brooks, Christina Ricci, Debra Winger, Barbara Stanwyck, Denise Crosby, Sharon Stone, Bette Davis, Frances Farmer, Glenda Jackson are in the club. Angelina has a key. Most of the time, they’re better than their movies.

Angelina’s career has been the usual seesaw. Sometimes she’s eye candy on a silver plate, as in the (ugh) ridiculous Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow or forgotten in The Good Shepherd. A Mighty Heart, the biopic about the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, was criminally underrated. The studio's decision to dump it in the middle of the popcorn blockbusters Spider-Man, Pirates, and Shrek was idiotic. (Please see it on DVD, all right?) But, as poor Wynona (“Hey! That was supposed to be my Oscar!”) Ryder found out too late in Girl, Interrupted, Angelina is an excellent actress when given the opportunity. Her three Golden Globe awards next to the two Screen Actors Guild awards, tell you that other people think so too.

Even better, Angelina is one of those celebrities that gets it. The money Lindsay Lohan spent for a limousine to get sick in would have bought a lot of schoolbooks. If you got a few extra bucks to give, why not? Angelina gets it. After a visit to Sierra Leone in 2001, she understood “how completely naive I was to think I had a difficult life. It was as if someone slapped me across the face and said, ‘Oh, my God, you silly young woman from California, do you have any idea how difficult the world really is for so many people?’ I got out of myself pretty quickly.” Angelina is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. Paris Hilton probably thinks the UN is a nightclub.

Does Angelina say dumb things from time to time? Oh yeah. I bet she belches, farts, and picks her nose, too. And I’m sure that there’s a couple of bad films in the future with her name on them waiting to be sold for half price at Blockbuster as well. Hey, she’s not St. Angelina, y’know? But I give Angelina credit for trying, as Gandhi said, “to be the change you want to see in the world.” Maybe she’s a rich white woman living in a bubble, but it’s not a mirror.

Angelina is a Bad Girl who gets it. Good.

Labels: Angelina Jolie, political activism, Sierra Leone

The bags are packed, the housesitter is lined up, and there's nothing left to do but get through a day at work with a ton to do and fight the anxiety about the verbal beating I'm likely to receive when I come back for not having progressed enough on my project. I don't know how much if any time I'll have to post tomorrow, so let me introduce our intrepid team of brilliant guestbloggers:

Bob is the proprietor of The Rix Mix, a blog of New Jersey ephemera.

Derek is an old friend from my Cinemarati days, who with the demise of that venerable organization, has started blogging at Cheek and Bluster to fill his empty days and give him the courage to go on living.

D.R. Scott covers the cultural beat and whatever else seems appropriate at D.R. Scott's Pulp Culture and at the Independent Bloggers Alliance.

jurassicpork is an author and truthseeker who blogs at Welcome to Pottersville. JP has kept readers abreast of all that stuff that's been sitting behind Times Select.

Melina is a whirlwind of peripatetic energy whose current projects are too many to list here. She blogs about politics, media, Air America Radio, and parrots at RIPCoco. (Now with added chicken!)

Renee in Ohio is the founder of the Independent Bloggers Alliance, formed in response to the Big Boiz' Blogroll Amnesty Day. She blogs just about everywhere, as you can see here.

Tata is a truly unique (and truly hilarious) voice from NJ who blogs on the absurdities of her own life, with occasional politics and cats, at Poor Impulse Control.

TRex, who blogs at the mighty Firedoglake, describes himself as "a 60ft. Theropod from the late Jurassic era. He likes volcanoes, Thai food, and has a burning crush on retired NBA star John Amaechi."

Now play nice, kids, have fun, and don't trash the house while I'm gone. The housesitter has been instructed to report to me any wild parties that take place. It's five bucks for fifteen minutes of internet time, which isn't prohibitive. So I'll know if you misbehave.

Labels: bloggers

Yesterday Randi Rhodes had the funniest line of the day when talking about last night's HRC/LOGO Presidential Forum: "The only time you see Republicans talking to gay people it involves meth and a bathroom."

Pam was there, and provides complete coverage here, here, and here.

Other than closeted married conservatives for whom the possibility of living openly as your true self IS a threat to their sham marriages, I've never understood the logic of claiming that gay marriage is somehow a threat to straight marriage. It seems to me that blogging, with the amount of time it consumes, has far more potential to threaten a marriage than gay marriage does.

If you ask someone why they don't think gays should marry, it's always going to come down to something along the lines of "I just don't like thinking about the way they....." -- and then it trails off.

Now I don't know about you, but I just don't spend time thinking about the sex lives of my friends and neighbors. It really never occurs to me.

Doesn't it seem just a bit weird to frame one's acquaintances and even the people one sees on the street in terms of what they do in their bedrooms? And yet, that's all the homophobes seem able to think about.

Pam writes about Bill Richardson's phumphering of the choice/orientation question last night and his clarification following the forum. For all that this is an audience that Democrats SHOULD be embracing instead of deluding themselves that evangelical voters are going to stop voting for guys like George W. Bush and start voting for Democrats, it still takes (for all that it shouldn't) a certain amount of guts to do a debate like this -- and risk a Bill Richardson-style screwup. John Edwards has admitted to wrestling between his rational mind and his Baptist upbringing on the question. But at least he's wrestling with it. I think I know where he's going to end up, and it's not going to be with the Baptists.

Oh, sure, the wingnuts are going to run this fall on the Democratic nominee being the candiate of the sodomites, because it's what their base wants to hear. But this forum last night was a welcome sign that for once, the Democrats aren't basing their decisions on what the Republicans will do to smear them.

Labels: 2008 election, Democrats

I really think it's time we faced the fact that no matter how many times Chris Matthews claims to be disgusted with the right and with the war in Iraq, his closeted manlove of tough talk will ultimately get the best of him every time. This man is so in love with the mythical "big tough guy" of American mythology that it trumps everything else -- the war in Iraq, Alberto Gonzales, the spying on Americans, the funnelling of ever more money into the pockets of the already obscenely wealthy -- everything Republicans stand for. All pales before the Mighty Republican Penis.

ThinkProgress has the video. Some excerpts (emphases mine):

That was a powerful press conference by Pres. Bush. I thought in those last couple of moments, those of you who watched, were given a rare opportunity to hear the real philosophy of this administration with regard to the war in Iraq; a powerful rendition by the president of why we're there. When he talked about how we can support emerging democracies in the Middle East, and that's the only way we can prevent future 9/11s, you're getting to the heart of why this administration is fighting that war in Iraq. It's not just about nation-building, it's not just about funding an ally in the war against terror. It's about building a counter force against the sources of all the anti-Western hostility in that part of the world.

I thought, in listening to the President, I was listening to one of the great neoconservative minds who's worked in this administration, the former deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who at lunch with me way before this war began made the case you heard tonight -- the only way we stop 9/11s, the only way we prevent attacks on this country, is to kill the hostility towards this country, and the only way to do that is to build democracies in that part of the world, in the Middle East, where young people in their 20's feel they have opportunities and not where they feel frustrated and feel that they're repressed by governments that although they may be allied with the United States, do not give them freedom. This president is ready to fight like a rock through the rest of his term. He made it clear that he's going to fight as long as it takes to develop a democracy in Iraq; there's not going to be any change come September.

With regard to Iran, he was very subtle today...he talked about the consequences of the fact that Iran is sending IEDs and other arms to be used against American soldiers in Iraq, he said they're going to pay a price for that, he wants Maliki to go along with that, he doesn't care of Maliki smiles when he meets with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today, he does care if Maliki, who we're behind in Iraq, doesn't get the message across to stop sending weaponry against US GIs and against the Iraqis across that Iraq//Iranian border. That was a powerful message, but very subtly delivered

On the subject of bridges, the sexual metaphor continues:

...I believe the president blamed Congress today for pork barrel; instead of building bridges and fixing bridges according to need, according to a reasonable set of national priorities, what Congresspeople do with their offices is use their membership in the public works and the appropriations committees to bring home pork. He stuck it to them.

Rammed 'em. Hard. Forcefully. You can almost hear Tweety start to breathe hard.

When George W. Bush gets up in front of a podium and with his whiny, angry, reedy little voice puts on the bellicosity, Matthews forgets everything he's ever said about this war and fondly remembers the flightsuit -- the one with the padded codpiece that gave him that funny little feeling in his tummy and perhaps even lower.

MediaMatters has more about Matthews' obsession with male....size:

While discussing the Democratic presidential candidates on the August 8 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews asserted: "I don't see a big, beefy alternative to [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] -- a big guy. You know what I mean? An ... every-way big guy. I don't see one out there. I see a lot of slight, skinny, second- and third-rate candidates." Matthews prefaced his comment by saying, "I guess I'm thinking of an Eddie Rendell were in the race -- the governor of Pennsylvania -- or if [former Vice President] Al Gore were in the race or someone else who's a good heavyweight to be running."

As Media Matters for America noted, during MSNBC's August 7 coverage of the AFL-CIO Democratic presidential forum, Matthews asked Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson about former Sen. John Edwards' (NC) performance: "Why did they seem to be glancing blows that didn't grab the audience? Is the fact that he's a small man -- I mean, literally, physically?" Robinson responded: "He's not physically that small."

Isn't it time Chris Matthews came out of the closet already?

Labels: Chris Matthews, hack journalism

On Tuesday, Google announced a new feature in which subjects of news articles will be able to respond to what was written about then, and also the reporter can then respond back or update the story. Currently in the testing phase, the feature depends on a Google News employee checking the identity of the author before posting any response:

If the identity of the author is confirmed, the response is posted on the same page as the story search results.

The feature helps the Google news site evolve from being solely an aggregator of news articles to a forum where news subjects - even the journalists who wrote the stories - can respond publicly to criticism. The company emphasized that the feature is in the testing phase but could be expanded to include other regions and languages.

I don't know about anyone else out there, but I find this to be a thrilling new development in that print news stories will become more of an interactive medium before radio and TV has even fully embraced the possibilities that are obviously out there.

Like anything, I guess this could be used for evil, but I have a feeling that with a strong author checking feature, the responses of scientists and professionals will be taken more seriously than those of wingnuts or say, lying governmental officials. This will be a separate feature from the one already offered that directs the reader to computer generated algorithms that are applicable to the story. According to Google's announcement:

We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we'll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as "comments" so readers know it's the individuals perspective, rather than part of a journalist's report.

I've always predicted that the future of broadcasting lies in the interactive medium that used to be such a big draw on certain Air America Radio shows such as Morning Sedition, and that still plays a big part in what is left of the Sam Seder Show. People all over the world are drawn to the more interactive mediums, and they also want to see many sides of the same story. This is a new dimension to the comments section that we have become used to, and a welcome peek at the future of information dissemination.

Since we know how badly the press has fallen down on the job in the past years, it seems like a good thing that, along with intrepid bloggers breaking stories that used to be the sole domain of "professional" newsfolk, we will also have a major news service offering the subjects of stories the opportunity to provide clarifying information if they feel it is necessary. It won't be long before every news outlet will have to offer this sort of service, in an arena where every American must take hold of the information, or misinformation being shovelled at them at every turn.

Cross Posted from RIPCoco

Labels: Google searches

Put down that cup of coffee, unless you like a mess. Courtesy of TPM Muckraker:


Gitmo to Stay Open as Human Rights Sanctuary


Turns out it's more than just a catchy headline. The story is that the good ol' Bush administration wants to slim down the prisoner headcount at Gitmo from the current 360 to 150. So good news for 210 wrongfully-imprisoned and even-more-wrongfully tortured detainees? Actually, no. We've still got one more level of wrongful to go: there's nowhere to drop them off. Their home countries and all of the possible foster-home states that have been asked either won't take them, or won't take them without promising not to torture or kill them. So they get to stay in Guantánamo, where their human rights will be, uh, protected.

I wonder if they'd take any consolation in not being among the other 150 prisoners - the ones the Bush DoD doesn't want to get rid of. Of those 150, Bush & Co. have selected 80 finalists whom they want to [beverages down again...] charge with war crimes. I shit you not. The Bush administration, having exempted itself from international accords and the U.S. Constitution in order to avoid being charged with war crimes, is gearing up to charge some of the victims of its war crimes with war crimes. Yes, some of them are surely guilty of war crimes, but we'll never really know with the kangaroo-court military tribunals that will try them.

What about the 50 semi-finalists? The Bush junta says that they're too dangerous to release from Gitmo, but not bad enough to put on trial. Um... I have nothing to add to this point. I guess my digust has reached critical mass, at least for the moment.

The thing that's saddening me the most right now is that after 6+ years of Bush, this level of absurdity doesn't even seem unusual anymore. It's like a ghastly, global-scale version of one of the "Cowboys and Indians" games I participated in during my single-digit years: the ones where the biggest kids make up the rules as they go along, and their manipulations become more and more illogical until chaos and disillusionment set in and the game collapses.

Would that I could just say "I'm not playing anymore," quit the war on terror and walk home.

Cross-posted at Cheek and Bluster

Labels: Bush Administration, Gitmo, human rights, war crimes

I thought it was just me.

Maybe I'm still spoiled from the 2004 primary race, when after seeing Howard Dean on Press the Meat for the first time I had that lightning bolt hit me that said "Yes! This is the guy!" -- and immediately went out to Meetups and wrote letters to Iowa voters and all the other grunt work associated with a campaign that isn't really operating in your own state. But I haven't had that electric moment this year.

I know I'm SUPPOSED to support Barack Obama, but he seems to need a bit more seasoning on the campaign trail so that he can better respond on a dime to difficult questions. And there's still a bit too much creeping Joe Liebermanism in him with which I'm not quite comfortable.

I've been lurking around the corners of the Edwards camp for a while now, fully cognizant and respectful of why my sister, who lives in the state he represented, doesn't like him. I'm far more comfortable with that decision after seeing the man in person at Yearly Kos, and I'm sending money and doing what I can, but it's with the knowledge that the party apparatchiks and the mainstream media will never, ever allow someone who thinks all Americans should have a place at the table to get the nomination. You see, I remember what John Kerry and Dick Gephardt did to Dean in Iowa in 2004, and I know who really run t'ings.

The drum is being beaten consistently for Hillary in the hack corners of the party and in the mainstream media. She's their girl, and it's not because the corporate media believe she can be beaten. It's because even if she isn't (and I don't see how she can win when almost half of Americans say they won't vote for her under any circumstances), they're comfortable that she will represent corporate interests over those of the American people. They can work with her.

I'm not sure Americans are smart enough to realize how they're being played in this race, so the efforts I'm putting out for Edwards are done with the full knowledge that once again, the hacks will prevail.

With Republicans vociferously unhappy with their candidates (and who could be happy, given the utter idiocy of the whole bunch of them), the Democrats SEEM to be sitting pretty. But as Tom Schaller writes, if you look behind the lovefest at the recent debates, there are troubling signs:

The debates and press release battles have been largely confined to nits picked and, aside from an embarrassing haircut and a recent teapot-tempest over whether the next president should or should not wait a year to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez, there have been few stumbles and fewer fireworks. The worst critique of the Democratic primary so far is that it has been boring. That dismal fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Oscar de la Hoya a few months ago packed more punch. Something's got to give, and the most logical disturbance is the eventual collapse of Edwards' campaign.

Good looking and emotively eloquent, the 54-year-old former North Carolina senator is compelling on television and even more compelling in small interpersonal settings. Because he basically never left the state after the 2004 cycle, Edwards has often topped polls in Iowa. But now his lead is either thin or nonexistent, and he has dropped into a statistical tie with Obama and Clinton. Nationally his poll numbers have already crested and, but for a slight bump after the announcement of his wife Elizabeth's cancer, begun to fall. Maybe the media's obsession with his appearance has had an effect, or maybe the death of his son and his wife's health have led to an unfair perception that the legendary trial lawyer is exploiting personal tragedies for the biggest jury payout of his political life.

But Edwards has another unfortunate, ironic problem: During the post-9/11 era in which the Democratic Party has at times been guilty (think 2002, 2003) of focusing too much on domestic policies as a way to de-emphasize foreign and defense issues, Edwards' highly developed domestic proposals to improve life for the poor and working classes reinforce nagging suspicions that he is not quite prepared to inherit the next president's twin burdens of a war in Iraq and a global counterterrorism effort.

More than a few Beltway analysts have noted that the early primary and caucus calendar favors Edwards. He's good in folksy, socially conservative Iowa. Nevada, next up, is a strong union state, and Edwards has aggressively played the economic populist card, as he did during Tuesday's AFL-CIO debate, to labor's delight. And although New Hampshire affords him little hope, if he can survive there and make it to South Carolina -- his birth state and the only one he carried in 2004 -- he could parlay his regional advantage to become the Big Mo candidate heading into the Feb. 5 mega-primary. But given the calendrical advantages, if Edwards doesn't win Iowa, he's finished. (And, interestingly, he has slipped to third in the Palmetto State.)

If and when Edwards fades, the big question is where his 10 to 15 percent of Democratic voters turn next. Are they anybody-but-Hillary Democrats who will gravitate toward Obama? Or are they suburban Democratic women who find Obama's liberalism discomfiting enough to become Clinton converts? Unless this bloc of Democrats simply believes that taking back the White House in 2008 is too important to risk the trailblazing nomination of a woman or an African-American, and they develop a sudden, unlikely interest in one of the second-tier Democrats, these voters could very well decide the nomination. If Clinton gets even half of them, she'll be almost impossible to beat. But if they break disproportionately toward Obama, Clinton is going to have to do something she would very much prefer to avoid -- emerge from her cocoon of control and composure to start mucking it up with the boys, and that could doom her candidacy.

[snip]

Despite all he offers -- the biracial biography, the charisma, the fundraising prowess, the Oprah Winfrey alliance -- the Illinois senator has two serious liabilities. The first, as a recent Slate piece by John Dickerson neatly summarized, can be posed with a simple, five-word question, "What has he ever done?" It's convenient to cite a certain Illinoisan's even thinner pre-presidential résumé, but the lack of even a short list of substantive achievements is hardly an asset. The Clinton-Obama spat that began during the CNN/YouTube debate brought the issue of his experience to the fore. "The reason the fight flared so fast can be found in this result from Gallup poll: The key and overwhelming reason voters prefer Clinton to Obama is that they believe she has more experience," observes Dickerson. "That, and the fact that it finally gave Clinton a chance to call Obama 'naive.'"

Obama's other primary-race problem is less obvious. The media mentions it only as an occupational complaint, and it may turn out to be a general election advantage: He's good, but overrated, as a stump speaker. Not only do his big-change, baby-bust-out themes form the core of his standard speech, but he also sandwiches them around tailored addresses to specific groups. At a major Planned Parenthood event in Washington last month, for example, a much smaller portion of Obama's address than Clinton's was topic specific, giving him room for his change-our-politics themes. The boilerplate refrains cause heads to nod the first time but wear thin with repetition.

[snip]

...presidential elections aren't team competitions between generic party reputations -- they're contests between individual nominees. And the truth is that all three major Democratic candidates have shortcomings. Edwards lacks national security credentials, Clinton revives all sorts of culture war complications, and Obama has little record to tout. If there were a Democratic Dr. Frankenstein, he would fuse Edwards' retail skills, Clinton's operational discipline and Obama's dynamism into an unbeatable Super Candidate. Republicans will have some key weaknesses to exploit and, though their field is not as strong overall, one weakness from which the GOP never suffers is an inability or unwillingness to go for a Democratic candidate's jugular.

There are still far too many people hoping (in vain, I think) for Al Gore to come in on his white horse and rescue us from the two American Political Dynasties with which we seem to be plagued. Al Gore is like the Democrats' Fred Thompson -- someone on which we can pin our hopes for the White House, conveniently forgetting the liabilities.

But the fact remains that Gore is far more effective out of a race than in it. It's only without the pressures of a campaign that he's really hit his stride and shed the woodenness that was such a hallmark of his presidential run. Yes, he did, in fact win that election, but one should never underestimate the ability of the GOP to tap into the reptilian brains of mindless American Idol-watchers and turn Gore's son, or his use of airplanes, or his weight, into a major campaign issue. Would he actually fight back this time? I think that remains to be seen.

But the Gore vigil points out the weakness in the Democratic field. Progressive Democrats in particular are terrified. We're terrified because we are faced with a party that seems to want to lose, one that's more comfortable as the out-crowd than the in-crowd. We are faced with a party that still thinks you can do business with Republicans, that you can argue on the Senate floor, berate each other, then hammer out legislation and go out for steaks and cigars afterwards. But bipartisanship now means "Do it the Republican way", as we saw with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's disgraceful performance in dealing with the FISA legislation last weekend.

John Edwards, despite his aw-shucks demeanor and his preposterously youthful appearance, really is the one guy who's shown the stones to take them on. Hillary gives lip service to it, but someone who's hobnobbed with Rupert Murdoch can't be trusted to not buy into "Do it the Republican way." Obama, having been mentored by Joe Lieberman, talks about "changing the tone", but doesn't seem to realize that the tone CAN'T be changed. Chris Dodd has found his voice a decade too late. Only John Edwards is out there telling the Republicans to go fuck themselves -- and that is why there is this concerted effort to destroy his candidacy. Even Schaller has bought into the meme of the inevitability of an Edwards collapse.

It's very disheartening to watch the process play out this way and watch the Democrats getting ready to fall into the trap once again. Does anyone honestly believe that President Hillary Clinton will get us out of Iraq, keep us out of Iran, put Israel's feet to the fire on human rights, stop the relentless march of American jobs to Bangalore and elsewhere, AND institute not just universal health INSURANCE, but national heath CARE? If so, they're as deluded as those who think that Mitt Romney's sons are doing their part for the war effort.

Labels: 2008 election, Democrats

Aljazeera.Net:

Bonds becomes new home run king

The controversial slugger hit his 756th career homer No. 756 breaking the 33 year old record held by Hank Aaron.

Bonds connected with a fastball from Washington's Mike Bacsik, sending the ball high into the San Francisco night, 435 feet into the right-center field seats.

Later, Bonds refused to admit that the record was tainted by the rumours of steroid abuse.

"This record is not tainted at all. At all. You guys can say whatever you want," Bonds said.

I don't like Barry Bonds.

In my opinion, he's just another selfish African-American athlete who speaks his mind about racial injustice only when he's fucked up in a big way (infidelity, tax evasion, being a major league asshole) and needs camouflage. Otherwise, throughout his brilliant but turbulent career, his single response to political questions has always been the same: "I'm here to play the game, man."

Still, when it comes to these allegations about steroids, I think Bonds is being unfairly maligned, and it needs to stop. And no, it's not for the reasons you suspect.

Yeah, Bonds is rude, arrogant, and nasty, but he'll certainly have plenty of company in the Hall of Fame (Oh, Mr. Cobb? When you're finished pulling your cleats out of that guy's face, can you step over here?). More to the point, what really gets me angry is the idea that Bonds has poisoned the spotless purity of Baseball is revisionist bullshit. It's like the guy who thinks he's not cheating on his wife because he took off his wedding ring.

Let's be honest, O.K.? Cheating has always been a part of the game, it's just that the owners, the commissioner, the writers, the players, and the fans have chosen to ignore it. Guys have taken "greenies", thrown spitballs, and corked their bats for decades. Whatever works, right? When Jose Cancesco, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire became these lumbering, muscle-swollen behemoths slamming balls out of stadiums, how did people think they got that way? As Richard Pryor said when his wife caught him in bed with another woman, "Who are you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?"

Although the official rules in baseball say, "Don't Take Steroids", what the fine print says is, "Don't Get Caught". The last I heard, Bonds hasn't been convicted of anything yet, so if they decide to keep Bonds out of the Hall of Fame sometime in the future, they better kick out Gaylord ("I don't where that Vaseline came from") Perry out first.

Oh, by the way, I believe those holy numbers that baseball is so proud of are fraudulent anyway. Before Jackie Robinson knocked down the "White Only" sign in 1946, great African-American baseball players like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, "Cool Papa" Bell, Judy Johnson and Oscar Charleston, were exiled to the Negro Leagues because they weren't allowed to compete with the white guys. If you ask me, that policy of blatant discrimination is a a bigger outrage than a syringe full of HGH. They can't scotch-tape an asterisk on Barry Bonds without giving themselves one first.

Sadly, the eclipsing of Hank Aaron's record has turned into a hollow triumph, and Major League Baseball has nobody else to blame but itself. If Barry Bonds is an embarrassing circus act, then it was the guys running the sport who set up the tent and sold the tickets.

Labels: Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, MLB, Negro Baseball League, Steroids

Can you imagine the hue and cry if, say, progressives were equating writing blog entries with fighting in Iraq?

So why is it OK for conservatives to do so, especially those who are well within the age range of being able to serve?

In 2005, Max Blumenthal reported in The Nation on a convention of College Republicans. Here are some of the chickenhawks he spoke to who think giving lip service to supporting the Iraq war suffices for not serving:

I chatted for a while with Collin Kelley, a senior at Washington State with a vague resemblance to the studly actor Orlando Bloom. Kelley told me he's "sick and tired of people saying our troops are dying in vain" and added, "This isn't an invasion of Iraq, it's a liberation--as David Horowitz said." When I asked him why he was staying on campus rather than fighting the good fight, he rubbed his shoulder and described a nagging football injury from high school. Plus, his parents didn't want him to go. "They're old hippies," Kelley said.

"I know that I'm going to be better staying here and working to convince people why we're there [in Iraq]," Hauser explained, pausing in thought. "I'm a fighter, but with words."

"The country is like a body," Palmer explained, "and each part of the body has a different function. Certain people do certain things better than others." He said his "function" was planning a "Support Our Troops" day on campus this year in which students honored military recruiters from all four branches of the service.

By the time I encountered Cory Bray, a towering senior from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, the beer was flowing freely. "The people opposed to the war aren't putting their asses on the line," Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn't he putting his ass on the line? "I'm not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country," he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, "and I wasn't going to pass that up." [...] "We're the big guys," he said. "We're the ones who stand up for what we believe in. The College Democrats just sit around talking about how much they hate Bush. We actually do shit."

Now we have nine Republican candidates and potential candidates for the presidency, all of whom support endless war in Iraq, only three of whom (John McCain, Ron Paul, and Duncan Hunter) have any military experience at all, and only one of whom (McCain) actually has a child in military service. Sam Brownback was too late for the draft (and never enlisted for post-Vietnam service). Newt Gingrich never served. Rudy Giuliani got work-related and educational deferments. Tom Tancredo was reclassified as not available in 1970 because of "stress-related anxiety". (Today, of course, this wouldn't matter; they'd just fill him up with Xanax and send him off.) Fred Thompson received a "daddy deferment" during the draft years. And Mitt Romney got a deferment so he could proseletyze for the Mormons in France.

Not that stops Romney from being an unabashed supporter of the war, even if it means spouting utter falsehoods (such as the one in the June 5 debate, in which he claimed that Saddam Hussein had refused to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq before the 2003 invasion).

Romney's support for the war is unflinching, except when it comes to encouraging his five strapping sons to serve.

After this story broke yesterday, Romney's campaign released a video of his entire answer to the question. In the interest of accurate reporting, the transcript (courtesy of TPM Cafe) is reprinted below:

"Well, the good news is that we have a volunteer army and that's the way we're going to keep it. My sons are all adults and they've made their decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty. I respect their decision in that regard. I also respect and value very highly those who make a decision to serve in the military. I think we ought to show an outpouring of support just as I suggested. A surge of support for those families and those individuals who are serving. My niece, for instance, just to tell you what a neighborhood can do and how touching it can be.

"My niece, Misha, living out West, her husband I think he got a call on a Tuesday. He's in the National Guard. He got a call on a Tuesday that he was going to be called up and shipped overseas on a Thursday. And they just bought a home -– they hadn’t landscaped it -– but the rules in the neighborhood were that unless you got your home landscaped within a year of the time that you bought your home, they began fining you, because they didn’t want people having mud holes in front of their homes. And she was very worried and just before the year expired, she woke up one morning and looked out the window and all the neighbors were out there, rolling down sod, putting up trees, getting it all done."

"It’s remarkable how we can show our support for our nation and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country."

I'm not sure that it isn't even WORSE in context. For one thing, Romney doesn't say his nephew is going to Iraq, he says he's going "overseas." For another thing, he's describing people who live in the kind of planned community where they fine you if your landscaping isn't in tip-top shape. And this is their biggest concern? There are families just barely making ends meet whose breadwinners signed up for the National Guard thinking they were going to be on call for disaster preparation and relief here in the U.S. and instead are being sent to Iraq. And Romney thinks that neighbors taking care of his nephew's landscaping in an exclusive, gated community is the same as people holding bake sales so that soldiers can have body armor?

Can you imagine the hue and cry from the Republicans if John Edwards had delivered remarks like this?

I can't imagine what it must be like to be a parent whose lost a son or daughter in this war, or a wife who wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with a premonition that her husband is going to be killed, or a child whose father came back a stranger, or a 21-year-old facing a life without any legs, without his sight, and permanently disfigured. And I sure as hell can't imagine what it must be like for such people to hear a presidential candidate from a prominent family equate having his sons campaign for him with breaking down doors in an insurgent stronghold in 115-degree heat.

But what's even more disturbing is that there are enough Republicans who believe that giving lip service to supporting the war is EXACTLY THE SAME as actually fighting it to give Romney a lead in most polls.

Keith? I think you blew it last night. Mitt Romney should have been your Worst Person in the World.

Labels: Mitt Romney

Fox News Headquarters has been inundated by flood-waters.

An emailer writes "The NYC headquarters of Fox News is completely flooded. There's a tarp hanging from the newsroom ceiling and vacuums trying to dry up the soaked rugs. Quite a mess!" FNC's newsroom is in an below-street level area of the News Corp. building on 6th Ave.

The rain of frogs, swarms of locusts, and plagues of boils should be along shortly.

OK, all you Sammy fans, the wait is over:



And if you want posted by the man himself, one that's a bit more complete because he didn't forget that he had a digital camera with him, here you go:

Labels: Sam Seder

With more than twenty years in the business, actor John Cusak was asked if he saw any difference in the way celebrities were covered by the news media. "It's gotten more and more insane," he replied. "Invasive and insane. Now there's not even the pretext that anyone has had to have done anything to get famous. It used to be that at least that someone had an infamous moment. Or they had done something good at some point, or something interesting or successful. Now you can just get into the circuit." Apparently, Cusak isn't the only guy that feels that way:

According to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 87 percent of those surveyed said celebrity scandals receive too much coverage. Only 2 percent responded there wasn't enough coverage. The public put most of the blame for the coverage squarely on the new media, with 54 percent responding that news organizations are at fault; nearly one third (32 percent) blamed the public for paying so much attention to celebrity coverage; 12 percent said the blame should be equally shared between the public and the media."

Look, I can understand the need to unplug the brain once in a while. It's the same insane compulsion that drives health-conscious people tired of tofu and asparagus pizza to suddenly attack Fritos, Twinkies, Big Macs, and Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Of course, just as too much junk food will rot your teeth, too much junk news will turn your brain into pink jello. Britney and Nicole and Lindsay, oh my.

But it's important to be able to tell the difference between news and celebrity puff pieces, and what separates, let's say, Fox News from "Entertainment Tonight" is that Fox News is nastier. ET interviews TV and movie stars, Fox News showcases bad actors who pretend they're journalists. ET pushes gossip, Fox News catapults the propaganda from the White House. ET overpraises untalented celebrities enjoying their fifteen minutes, Fox deifies dirtbag politicians who lie to us.

Fox News is a bad sitcom with a loud soundtrack of canned laughter snickering at ugly jokes that weren't funny twenty years ago, and it needs to be canceled.

(click on image to enlarge)


Cross posted from D.R.Scott's Pulp Culture and The Independent Bloggers Alliance

Labels: The Bush Administration

No, I still haven't gotten that video of Sam Seder's introduction of Howard Dean at YKos up yet. However, since my theory of the reason for the obsession the right has with John Edwards' haircut and unfairly youthful appearance seems to be bearing out, given what has come out from under rocks into the comments, those of you at home might be interested in the video from the breakout session after the debate on Saturday. No, this isn't my video, because my camera's batteries went dead about 2/3 of the way through, but it'll do:



Note in particular how he answers the question from "the atheist guy". It's rare these days to see a politician acknowledge that a) it's about being moral, not about being religious; and b) you can be moral without being religious.

I was somewhat nonplussed to hear Howard Dean invoke Rick Warren in his keynote speech last weekend, because when I hear about "reaching out to evangelicals", all I hear is "throwing women under the bus." Yes, there may be younger evangelicals who are concerned about global warming and poverty, but the bottom line with evangelical Christianity is "I don't understand it....it must be magic!" (™ Marc Maron) This is all well and good if that helps you get through the day, but it has no place in public policy and it sure as hell has no place in anything requiring scientific inquiry. Barbara at Mahablog and Steven at Booman Tribune put this notion that Democrats have to reach out to religious voters in perspective, and points out that sucking up to these people is exactly the WRONG thing to do -- because like it or not, these religious voters aren't buying it.

Labels: Demo

John Edwards really scares the bejeezus out of them, doesn't he?

GIBSON: Our John Gibson program fraud alert today focuses on the biggest fraud running for president, and that takes some doing. We're talking about the Breck Girl, Silky, the former senator from North Carolina, the baron of a 28,000-square-foot manse, the protector of the poor while ensconced on a pillow of 100 million dollars.

ANGRY RICH: A man who whored his wife's cancer as a fundraising gimmick.

GIBSON: John Edwards today was going after other Democratic candidates, and by other he meant Hillary Clinton, for taking money as political contributions from Rupert Murdoch or from certain employees or executives of either the Fox News Channel or News Corporation, which owns the Fox News Channel. Edwards has a real kind of problem about Fox. He just -- well, actually he doesn't have a problem about Fox. He realizes there are a whole bunch of really far-lefters who hate Fox and he's busy sucking up to them.

[snip]

GIBSON: -- bull, bull, bull. I mean, first of all, he won't come on Fox.

ANGRY RICH: Because he's a pansy.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet your Republican Party. The above tells you a lot more about them and what they fear than it does about John Edwards.

Frankly, I think John Gibson wants to fuck John Edwards and he's jealous of Elizabeth. But that's just me.

Labels: assholes, closet cases, conservatives

Between Michael Vick and stories like this, one wonders just what kind of people populate this country:

In early July, authorities seized control of a puppy mill in Hoke County, North Carolina when the owners abandoned the property. The animals were malnourished, suffering from lack of medical care, and kept in deplorable conditions. Within two days of being contacted about six Golden Retrievers at the site, the volunteers of Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue were there to rescue them.

The animals were initially scared of their rescuers, but who could blame them. In their experience, nothing good had come from humans. They didn't know that their lives were about to change for the better.

We rescued five Golden girls and one Golden boy. The first stop on their journey was the vet, where they received complete medical exams. Their weights ranged from 38 to 48 pounds (a typical full-grown Golden should weigh at least 60 pounds). Most of them were running fevers and had ear infections, hookworms, hot spots, skin infections and heartworms. One is suspected to have a heart murmur and another may have hip problems. Two have multiple scars and bite marks and one has a split in her tongue, probably from a bite. One girl has an abscess the size of a tennis ball. All of them were filthy and suffered from ticks, fleas, and matts.

Go here for more information or to donate to help offset the costs of rescuing these dogs.

Labels: pets

And that's what it's really about isn't it? When you put together a conservative movement that wants to deprive poor children of health care, and deprive their mothers of a way to feed them and clothe them and care for them (Melina will have more on this here next week), and combine it with the right's ridiculous stance on abortion that masquerades as pro-life, what else can you think?

Especially when a Supreme Court Justice is allowed to make medical decisions for women and chooses the one that causes the most harm to the woman without doing a damn thing for the fetus he so worships:

When the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to uphold the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act this spring, the ambivalently pro-choice public was largely quiescent, believing, as Congress had previously ruled, that the procedure was “gruesome and inhuman,” medically unnecessary, highly controversial in the medical community and so rare as to be little missed.

What’s clear, however, as the ban has become a reality, is that fetuses will be spared no brutality. Second trimester abortion is still legal and the most common method for it — dismembering a fetus inside the womb before removing it in pieces — is no less awful to contemplate than the outlawed procedure, in which an intact fetus’s skull was punctured and collapsed to ease its removal. But women are now more at risk. And doctors have been forced into a danger zone where they must weigh what they believe to be best medical practices against the need to protect themselves from the threat of prosecution.

[snip]

You see, as it turns out, the Supreme Court didn’t just outlaw “partial-birth” abortions (known in the medical community as “intact dilation and extraction” or D & X,) when it upheld Congress’s ban. It criminalized any second trimester abortion that begins with a live fetus and where “the fetal head or the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother.”

The big problem with this, doctors say, is that, due to the unpredictability of how women’s bodies react to medical procedures, when you set out to do a legal second trimester abortion, something looking very much like a now-illegal abortion can occur. Once you dilate the cervix — something that must be done sufficiently in order to avoid tears, punctures and infection — a fetus can start to slip out. And if this happens, any witness — a family member, a nurse, anyone in the near vicinity with an ax to grind against a certain physician — can report that the ban has been breached. Bringing on stiff fines, jail time and possible civil lawsuits.

[snip]

To escape having to choose between their patients’ interests and their own, physicians who perform abortions around the country now are taking steps to ensure that doctors won’t find themselves accidentally allowing a live fetus to be partially “born” in the course of a second trimester abortion. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America and other independent providers are now making it policy in abortions that could become legally risky for doctors to use digoxin — a cardiac drug — to kill the fetus up to one day in advance of the procedure. The upshot for women will be more time-consuming and costly abortion services, additional rounds of amniocentesis, more pain and more risk of infection.

And the outcome for the fetus won’t change.

But the woman may risk infertility, infection, or even better, death.

Which is a fitting punishment in the eyes of of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade for the evil, unchaste temptresses that torment men like David Vitter every day. And that's the REAL agenda of the fetophiles.

Labels: abortion, misogyny