Jorma Kaukonen just played this on A Prairie Home Companion and I remembered again just how much I adore Embryonic Journey:

Labels: music

He's getting more like Bush every day:

An aide to Iowa's governor said Thursday that Republican presidential candidate John McCain ignored the governor's request to cancel a campaign visit amid a massive flood recovery effort in the state.
McCain toured flood-damaged sites in Iowa on Thursday, including the town of Columbus Junction in the southeast.

Patrick Dillon, Gov. Chet Culver's chief of staff, said the governor was concerned that McCain's trip would divert local law enforcement from the flood recovery effort to provide security for McCain.

David Roederer, who chairs McCain's campaign in Iowa, said McCain's trip didn't hamper Iowa's recovery operation. He said McCain proceeded with the visit because the campaign was providing much of its own security.

"There was really no state resources diverted," Roederer said.

Note how that assurance doesn't come from Iowa officials, but from the McCain campaign.

Pathological narcissism? Check.

Daddy issues? Check.

Insistence in staying in Iraq till "victory" is achieved but not defining what that would look like? Check.

Selling America's coasts to Big Oil? Check.

So just where DOES John McCain differ from George W. Bush?

Labels: assholes, John McCain, narcissism

Sorry, Senator, but you are 100% wrong:

"Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.

"That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.

"After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act.

"Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

"It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people."

Not good enough, Senator. As clammyc points out, there is no guarantee that you are going to be the next president. And even if you were, don't think that the support you have means that we want to give YOU carte blanche to eviscerate the Constitution just because you have a "D" after your name. This bill is no compromise. This bill is a rubber stamp for George W. Bush -- and yes, you, if you should prevail in November, to flagrantly violate the 4th Amendment in the Bill of Rights -- with no consequences.

We who decided to support you put our trust in the idea that you are not going to be just another sellout hack. I realize that you come from Chicago politics, but this is unacceptable.

If there is information about you, and about other Democrats who voted for this travesty in the House and who plan to vote for it in the Senate, that you have been told has been gathered as part of this operation, then you all should come clean now. Do not legislate based on blackmail.

On Monday, Steny Hoyer, who spearheaded this atrocity, came to New Jersey to appear with 5th District candidate Dennis Shulman -- and hand him a check for $2500. I want to know if Dr. Shulman supports amnesty for those who break the law and violate the very Constitution they swore to uphold. As you can see, there are those who think this is "no big deal" and shouldn't affect how we vote under the "Any Democrat is Better than a Republican" doctrine. And especially this year, when Justice John Paul Stevens is pushing 90 with a steamroller, this is true. To not vote, or to vote for John McCain, because of what the person with whom I'm arguing calls a "litmus test on one issue" is of course silly -- and not a viable option this year.

But is "We're not quite as bad as they are" the best we can do as Democrats? Has our party strayed so far from "We the people" that even those who talk about change are willing to sell out everything this nation stands for -- for a few pieces of silver?

You are supposed to be a different kind of politician, Mr. Obama. Act like one.

Labels: Barack Obama, FISA, spinelessness

Today's honoree: Earth-Bound Misfit. With a DOUBLE What She Said.

Money quote:

Fucking Democratic surrender monkeys. They are a bunch of gutless weasels. Their idea of "compromise" was nothing of the sort, it was nothing more than the abject and total appeasement of a tyrant.

Labels: Democrats, FISA, spinelessness

Actual e-mail received yesterday:

Dear female progressive blogger:

Sadly the party unity that Democrats enjoyed during the Bush years now lays in tatters. It has been destroyed by the sexist media and the arrogant and mysoginist Obama campaign. Not only is Barack Obama dangerously unqualified to be president but he has demonstrated time and time again that he will sell out our interests (or indeed anybody!) whenever it becomes politically expedient.

The good news is it's not too late to stop this, despite what they media says. Hillary has neither ended her campaign nor released her delegates even though you might believe otherwise from listening to the Obama-loving media. If we band together now before the convention we can still have some valid options other than electing John McCain. Please join our blogroll at http://pumaparty.com/. I'm not thrilled about voting for McCain either, but like many Democrats, I will do so if Obama is our nominee. Let's work together to prevent that while we still can.

And my reply:

I am not interested in joining your group. Your organization is one of the most cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face efforts I've ever seen.

We have seen a great deal of appalling sexism in this primary campaign, but it has come from the mainstream media, not from the Obama campaign. And now they are doing the same thing to Michelle Obama, but you people don't care about that. This is not about feminism, and you folks have no business calling yourselves feminists. Here's why:

In adopting Hillary Clinton as your warrior-princess, you are holding up as a feminist icon a woman who put any political aspirations she had on hold to go to Arkansas and be helpmeet to her husband. There's nothing wrong with that, but it was her choice. Then she managed to parlay her status as first lady into a Senate seat, when most ordinary women have to climb through the political ranks. This is a woman who has put up with her husband humiliating her in front of an entire nation -- and stayed with him. I don't fault her for that; there are many reasons people stay in marriages, and often the good outweighs the bad. I believe she knows full well who she's married to. But when part of feminism has been for women not to be doormats, she seems an odd and counterintuitive choice as a feminist heroine.

Finally, I fail to see how turning Hillary Clinton into a hapless victim of the Evil Sexist Obama(TM) or even of an admittedly Evil Sexist Media is "feminist." I thought feminism was supposed to be about female empowerment, not painting oneself as a victim. Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and John Edwards all dropped out of the race. Was that because of misogyny too? If so, how?

The primary rules were set up well in advance, and Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff agreed with them. To start squawking about it only after it no longer played to her advantage is something out of the playbook of the Bush family.

As for your little campaign to elect John McCain, well, that's where the "intelligent people of goodwill can disagree" doctrine falls apart. John McCain has a ghastly voting record on women. He is NOT pro-choice. Justice Stevens is 88 years old and cannot live forever. John McCain WILL appoint a replacement along the lines of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You persist in this little "hold my breath till my face turns blue", "take my dollies and dishes and go home and sulk" childish tantrum of yours (and the others in your little club) and YOU will have to answer when your daughters are forced to be nothing but brood mares.

Just who do you think you're getting revenge against by doing this? Barack Obama? If you help John McCain get elected, he goes back to the Senate and Michelle Obama gets her husband back. He will be fine. The people you'll hurt are yourselves, your daughters, and their daughters.

If you are unaware of John McCain's record on women's issues, I suspect you check out the following:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/unmasking-mccain-his-reac_b_103580.html

http://www.ppaction.org/ppvotes/08_antichoicemccain.html

http://www.juancole.com/2008/06/real-question-is-would-president-mccain.html

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/06/mccains-problem-with-women-part-ii.html

Unless you believe that it's a good thing to help create a country that is TRULY hell for women -- working class women, not white middle-class professional women who have the luxury of sitting around sulking because the candidate they wanted isn't going to be the nominee -- because it will let you and your compatriots wallow in your own sense of victimization, then all you're telling me and other women like me with your ridiculous club is that you are a bunch of spoiled babies.

Grow the hell up already. Hold the feet of media executives to the fire. Write the Obama campaign and demand a dialogue with them to air your grievances. Do something besides sit around and whinge about how oppressed you are.

But for God's sake, don't help to elect a man who called his own wife a trollop and a cunt in public. By doing so, you just look foolish.

The prototype for the great and triumphant return to Republican patriarchy, as interpreted by MST3K:



(h/t)

Labels: comedy

Those of you who are newer visitors may not remember Joycelyn Ward, a.k.a. Maya's Granny, who used to comment here quite often. Joycelyn's blog was a welcome respite for me from the constant rage I've felt so often during the last four years that I've been blogging. Whether it was her own recollections of her childhood and her own children, collected for her granddaughter (the eponymous Maya) or verbal snapshots of life in Alaska, visiting Maya's Granny was like a mini-vacation. And yes, there was even a smattering of politics.

I knew she'd been ill for a while, but it nevertheless came as a shock to me to visit her blog today and find that she passed from this God-forsaken level of reality last Sunday.

We've heard so much lately about the use of the internet to spread scurillous lies and rumors about politicians. Yesterday we saw a pompous comment in a blog comment turn into a LOLCats-style snarky phenomenon. But at its best, what the internet does it allow us to make connections with people with whom we share common interests and who provide us with a perspective and a glimpse at their own interesting lives. I'm glad to have been able to make the connection with Maya's Granny, however fleeting. The blogosphere is poorer today for having lost her.

Those of you who are so inclined may wish to make a memorial donation to Heifer International, her favorite charity.

Well, now we know for certain what over 4000 American kids died for and tens of thousands more gave their body parts and their very sanity for (not that there was ever any doubt in my mind, but too many refused to believe it):

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

And they said "No war for oil!" was just a protest slogan.

Labels: Bush Administration, corporatism, greed, oil

On the Today show, Matt Lauer just referred to those who turned out for Tim Russert's funeral yesterday as "the power elite."

So if this group of politicians and so-called journalists constitute "the power elite", will they PLEASE stop slurring Barack Obama as "an elitist"? Unless, of course, they mean it as "that uppity Negro who wants admission to our club.

Come to think of it, that's probably waht they DO mean.

Labels: assholes, elitism, hack journalism, media whores

In an ideal world, John McCain's latest tirades about Barack Obama having "a September 10 mindset" and his trotting out of the now-hopefully-discredited Rudy Giuliani would be greeted with hoots, catcalls, and the tossing of metaphorical salmonella-tainted tomatoes. And the now-unassailable evidence that whatever George W. Bush says, what the U.S. has inflicted upon its "prisoners" -- in many cases guys they just swept off the street -- is, in fact torture, and that torture has been unacceptable in civilized societies for generations, would be met with horror and calls not just for the impeachment of everyone involved, but prosecution at the World Court, conviction, and punishment.

The problem is that all too many Americans still see people from the Middle East as "them" -- latent terrorists whom we can treat as we wish. And skyrocketing fuel prices don't help. After all, Americans have been told for the last eight years that our profligate, gas-guzzling lifestyle is somehow blessed by God, and it's an easy leap to "these people" interfering with that lifestyle.

So I don't know how much impact the assertion by a two-star general that this administration has, in fact, committed war crimes, is going to have.

In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement.

Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation.

The new report, he writes, "tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual's lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.

"The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full-scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted --both on America's institutions and our nation's founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.

"In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. . . .

In the piece quoted above, Dan Froomkin refers to this series of investigative reports by McClatchy newspapers -- a series that you must take the time to read. It is a devastating indictment of not just the Administration that perpetrated these crimes against humanity, but also of all of us. It's an indictment of a cowardly legislative branch that refuses to exercise its oversight role because its members are afraid of what a media that worships the bellicose hypermacho of the Bush Administration would say. It's an indictment of a frightened American population, too many of whom have applauded the torture in the name of retribution for 9/11. And it's an indictment of thosse of us who have been decrying torture since the beginning -- because we've been so spectacularly ineffective in somehow getting those whose job it is to put the brakes on this bunch of psychopaths that not looking the other way at these crimes is the right thing to do -- no matter what Chris Matthews says.

It should have people congregating outside the White House demanding the arrest of everyone in the West Wing, but it won't.

Labels: Bush Administration, torture, war crimes

Why potential presidential candidates should NEVER, EVER, EVER do sketch comedy:

Labels: John McCain, pukeworthy

It's a new internet meme, that's what! Behold and be present at the birth pangs.

John Cole explains.

The Googles iz already buzzin.

And faster than you can say "Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews", a new meme is born: I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions.

UPDATE: Ah, what the hell:



UPDATE 2: Lauren has unearthed an internet tradition:

In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

[snip]

Otlet’s vision hinged on the idea of a networked machine that joined documents using symbolic links. While that notion may seem obvious today, in 1934 it marked a conceptual breakthrough. “The hyperlink is one of the most underappreciated inventions of the last century,” Mr. Kelly said. “It will go down with radio in the pantheon of great inventions.”

Labels: bloggers, memes, Why They Invented the Intertubes

I have an aversion to taking medication, largely because of an inherent distrust of prescription drugs and the profit motive behind them. I recognize that there are drugs that work wonders for those who need them, but I also think that the rise in direct-to-consumer advertising has created a boom market for pharmaceuticals that may or may not be necessary.

As a person over 50 who battles blood cholesterol levels that are sometimes borderline-high (although the same doctor that used to have canniptions about my levels -- the one who tried to put me on the accupressure bead crash diet -- never once did a fasting lipids profile, just a blood draw at the end of a day at work), I'm probably supposed to be on statin drugs. The cardiologist son of a co-worker puts all his patients over 40 on statins.

The original statin drugs were derived from lovastatin, which is a compound found in red yeast rice. Oh, you can still get red yeast rice at the health food store -- it runs around 15 bucks a bottle, but it won't have the same cholesterol-lowering effect that studies showed it did prior to 1999 -- because the FDA was looking out for capitalism:

Red yeast rice in the past reduced cholesterol levels because it contained (among many other chemicals), one of the statin drugs, namely lovastatin. (The statin drugs are the most effective cholesterol-lowering agents used in medicine today. They were originally derived from yeast products.)

Studies using the "original" form of red yeast rice accordingly confirmed significant reductions in cholesterol levels.

However, the story does not stop there. In fact, the story became pretty confusing right after the clinicals studies confirming the efficacy of red yeast rice were published in 1999. First, because red yeast rice was found to contain lovastatin, the FDA made an administrative decision that this dietary supplement (often sold as Cholestin in earlier times) was a regulable drug, and thus removed it from the unregulated shelves of the health food store.

Then, in 1999, the FDA ruling on red rice yeast was overturned by the court of the District of Utah. But finally, in 2000, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that red yeast rice IS subject to FDA regulation. Since then, the FDA has aggressively gone after companies selling red rice yeast containing lovastatin. While red rice yeast is still available on the grocer's shelf, the stuff that is out there now is apparently fermented using a different process, and apparently (I say "apparently" because it is in fact extraordinarily difficult to find out what dietary supplements do and do not contain) does NOT contain lovastatin. Therefore, (the active ingredient having been removed) its ability to lower cholesterol levels is probably nil. (This explains why the otherwise colorful labels no longer tout the cholesterol-lowering properties of the product.)

I saw a television ad for one of these statin drugs last week, and the small print at the bottom of the screen caught my attention: "Not shown to prevent heart or coronary artery disease."

Uh....well, gee whiz, then, what's the point of taking it?

It's conventional wisdom that high cholesterol --> heart disease, so therefore lowering cholesterol lowers the risk of heart disease. But that doesn't necessarily seem to be so. The medical profession loves to dump responsibility solely into the lap of individuals. Go on a diet. Exercise. If you avoid fast foods and get regular exercise and eat lots of fruits and vegetables and your cholesterol is still high, or you still get heart disease, it isn't because there's "something else" operative, but because you're cheating and lying to your doctor and stuffing your face with donuts on the side. Never mind the fact that there appears to be a genetic component to metabolic syndrome which seems to be a risk factor for heart disease -- let's not talk about that, because it's so much easier to just berate Teh Fat People and tell them they just have to spend more of their lives chasing an impossible goal. It's sort of the way the Christofascist Zombie Brigade is likely to tell gay men that even though the evidence is increasing that sexual orientation is determined in the womb, they have to "try harder" to be straight.

But then along comes Tim Russert, who dies suddenly while at work. Russert appeared to be doing everything the way he was supposed to given his health issues. He was under a doctor's care. He took prescribed medication for hypertension. He took the damn statin drugs for cholesterol. He exercised. He was trying to lose weight -- something that for many of us, isn't just a question of laying off the Big Macs because we don't even eat Big Macs in the first place. Russert's death is a complete confounding of the conventional wisdom given us by the medical profession:

It is not clear whether Mr. Russert’s death could have been prevented. He was doing nearly all he could to lower his risk. He took blood pressure pills and a statin drug to control his cholesterol, he worked out every day on an exercise bike, and he was trying to lose weight, his doctors said on Monday. And still it was not enough.

If there is any lesson in his death, his doctors said, it is a reminder that heart disease can be silent, and that people, especially those with known risk factors, should pay attention to diet, blood pressure, weight and exercise — even if they are feeling fine.

“If there’s one number that’s a predictor of mortality, it’s waist circumference,” said Dr. Michael A. Newman, Mr. Russert’s internist.

But, Dr. Newman added, most people would rather focus on their LDL cholesterol, instead of taking measures to reduce their waist size. Studies have found a waist of over 40 inches in men and 35 inches in women is a risk factor for heart disease.

Mr. Russert’s cholesterol was not high, and medicine controlled his high blood pressure pretty well, Dr. Newman said. But, he added, Mr. Russert was “significantly overweight.” He also had a dangerous combination of other risk factors: high triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood, and a low level of HDL, the “good cholesterol” that can help the body get rid of the bad cholesterol that can damage arteries.

Even so, Dr. Newman said, “the autopsy findings were a surprise.”

My father-in-law passed away in 2001 at the age of 79. He smoked, he was about 100 pounds overweight, he never, ever ate a vegetable. He liked his meat and he liked his potatoes. And he made it to 79, with all the risk factors. Tim Russert only made it to 58.

This is why all these admonitions we get from the medical profession don't guarantee a damn thing. Some of us yo-yo diet our whole lives and are never able to keep weight off. A woman I know at work has lost about 40 pounds and now can't eat more than 1000 calories a day without gaining. People spend hundreds of dollars a month on prescription statin drugs and still get coronary artery disease. Clearly there's something else going on here other than simply a question of what we put into our mouths and how much we move. One aspect to American life that gets little play in the medical press is stress.

It's interesting that American-style diseases such as heart disease are starting to crop up in countries like India, where high-stress call center jobs are increasing. But you don't see the American medical profession call for a societal effort to reduce stress in a country whose citizens are watching their standard of living diminish and the prospects for their children grow increasingly dim. After all, that would require that corporations have to acknowledge their role in fostering that stress. And it's just so much easier to call Tim Russert a fatty and say he died because of his own excesses, when there's very little sign that his premature death could have been prevented.

Labels: health

The banana is probably nature's perfect food. It's nutrient-rich, filling, satisfying, and comes in its own biodegradable package. It's also one of the cheapest fruits around, averaging here in New Jersey at around 69 cents a pound -- 33 cents when they go on sale. But now it appears that the banana may soon go the way of cheap gasoline, college for everyone, progressive talk radio in New York, the New York Mets as an organization with any class at all, Gold Rush Gum, and penny candy:

The banana is a living organism. It can get sick, and since bananas all come from the same gene pool, a virulent enough malady could wipe out the world’s commercial banana crop in a matter of years.

This has happened before. Our great-grandparents grew up eating not the Cavendish but the Gros Michel banana, a variety that everyone agreed was tastier. But starting in the early 1900s, banana plantations were invaded by a fungus called Panama disease and vanished one by one. Forest would be cleared for new banana fields, and healthy fruit would grow there for a while, but eventually succumb.

By 1960, the Gros Michel was essentially extinct and the banana industry nearly bankrupt. It was saved at the last minute by the Cavendish, a Chinese variety that had been considered something close to junk: inferior in taste, easy to bruise (and therefore hard to ship) and too small to appeal to consumers. But it did resist the blight.

Over the past decade, however, a new, more virulent strain of Panama disease has begun to spread across the world, and this time the Cavendish is not immune. The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20. The big banana companies have been slow to finance efforts to find either a cure for the fungus or a banana that resists it. Nor has enough been done to aid efforts to diversify the world’s banana crop by preserving little-known varieties of the fruit that grow in Africa and Asia.

In recent years, American consumers have begun seeing the benefits — to health, to the economy and to the environment — of buying foods that are grown close to our homes. Getting used to life without bananas will take some adjustment. What other fruit can you slice onto your breakfast cereal?

But bananas have always been an emblem of a long-distance food chain. Perhaps it’s time we recognize bananas for what they are: an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach.

Labels: food

For those who don't already know, we here at B@B have a huge girlcrush on Michelle Obama. We think she is Teh Awesome, the cat's meow, and the bees knees. You want yer warrior-princess, ladies, here she is. It isn't just that she's tall and gorgeous with arms that most of us could never hope for no matter how much weight work we do and legs like a graphic novel superheroine. It isn't just that she's mothering two adorable little girls who appear to be as poised as their mother. It isn't just the clear mutual respect she has with her husband (otherwise known as the 44th President of the United States [/hope]). No, it's the very outspokenness that gives the pundit corps, racists, and sexists fits; that unfailing shit detector that brought us this immortal exchange with "Stephen Colbert":



But with Michelle Obama being not just the new Hillary in her status as Candidate's Wife As Lightning Rod for Fear and Loathing of Women, but also the focal point for much of the racism that is is no longer acceptable to direct at her husband, the press is now in full "tame the beast" sic> mode, and the right has teamed up with deranged Hillarions like Larry Johnson to spread the lie that there's some kind of tape out there that shows Michelle Obama referring to "whitey."

I was saying to Mr. Brilliant when I first heard of this that there's no way such a thing even exists, because "whitey" is a word that sounds like something a white person would come up with when trying to sound like a black person. In an article in today's New York Times, ominously written by this year's Adam Nagourney and Jodi Wilgoren, Michael Powell and Jodi Kantor, Mrs. Obama lets us know that great minds think alike:

“You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be,” she says in an interview. Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom, she adds: “I mean, ‘whitey’? That’s something that George Jefferson would say....”

Alas, the article doesn't give her much chance to speak for herself. Instead, in an article that largely covers Mrs. Obama's background, the authors don't miss the opportunity to not just rehash the "whitey" lie, but also revive the old chestnut about her master's thesis and throw in some red meat for those who think that John and Cindy McCain, with Cindy's $100 million, John's $58,000/year tax-free military disablity pension for a disability that doesn't seem to stand in the way of him thinking he's capable of being presidency, and their eight homes, are somehow salt of the earth, by noting Mrs. Obama's salary at her hospital administration job, from which she is now on leave.

Perhaps the most ominous part of the article, however, is Claire McCaskill's admonition to Mrs. Obama as she heads out on the next phase of the campaign, one in which her very hummanness is likely to be unfavorably compared with the blonde, white, aging Barbie doll, frozen-in-the-headlights, Thorazine-stare and complete and utter silence of Cindy McCain:

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, a close ally of the Obama campaign, says Mrs. Obama must stop sounding like a lawyer trying to win an argument. The trick, she said, is “not pushing so hard to persuade people that Barack is the right one.”

“All she has to do is be likable,” Mrs. McCaskill said.

Here at B@B, we think Michelle Obama is likeable enough (heh) just the way she is.

Labels: Michelle Obama

This is odd:



Why military helicopters and not National Guard?

Why a "top-secret" military drill?

Why was it organized by the Justice Department?

And are they conducting similar drills at the site of the Republican National Convention?

Labels: Democratic National Convention, tinfoil

I'm pretty much finished with Air America at this point. I've written to cancel my premium subscription after four years, I no longer listen, and I sure as hell don't download podcasts. When they gave the 3-6 slot to Ron Kuby instead of either Sam Seder or Marc Maron, and pretty much told Seder that he can stay on and edit the web site for the health insurance, I decided it was time to say sayonara.

Oh, there's Rachel Maddow, of course, but the presence of Maddow in David Gregory's chair last night on Race to the White House pretty much told us how things are going to shake out in the post-Russert era at the National Broadcasting Company -- so I would guess her days with Air America are numbered too. After all, how can you keep them down on the farm after they've seen 30 Rock?

Today, Air America, the network that once gave us Morning Sedition, The Majority Report, and yes, even The O'Franken Factor, is now the home for a bunch of old local New York guys and a syndicated outlet for Thom Hartmann.

So given the dessicated skeleton that is Air America, what makes Mark Green think anyone is going to want to go on an Air America cruise? I've been looking at cruises myself lately, and in fact Mr. Brilliant and I were planning to take one to Canada and New England in early fall, were it not for our realization that 1200 bucks a head, what with fuel charges, taxes and all, before you even have a drink or do anything, was a shitload of money to spend to have one of your ports be Boston, which is a four-hour drive.

A number of years ago, Salon did a cruise that featured the likes of Ann Richards, Joe Wilson, and Joe Conason -- which for my money sounded a lot more appealing than Lionel, David Bender, and Mark Green. Yes, Rachel Maddow and Thom Hartmann are scheduled, but if Rachel gets the 6 PM anchor spot on MSNBC, somehow I don't think she's going to be interested in spending a week on a cruise ship with the little old people from Canarsie who followed Lionel over to Air America from WOR, only to find that he isn't even carried in New York.

But here's what shows just how clueless Mark Green is about Air America: one of the "guest speakers" (the other being Ron Reagan) is none other than Mr. 0-for-8 himself, Bob Shrum.

Now, I hang around in progressive circles, and I don't know anyone who would be jumping up and down at the prospect of paying $1472 for an inside cabin to rub elbows with Bob Shrum and Mark Green when you can take the same damn cruise on the same ship a week earlier and get a suite through cruise.com for $1254. I understand that these theme cruises are always more expensive, but it's one thing to spend a bunch of money for the Blues Cruise, where at least you'll be on ship with the likes of Etta James, Taj Mahal, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, and John Hammond. It's quite another to spend a bunch of money to listen to Bob Shrum regale you with his exciting tales of managing his way into eight losing presidential campaigns.

It is just this kind of tin ear that Mark Green has shown in his entire tenure of running Air America. In fact, there hasn't been a soul other than perhaps Jon Sinton and Doug Kreeger and whoever booked the original talent, who HAS had a clue. Somehow I suspect that during a recession, they're going to have trouble attracting people to this little soiree.

Labels: Air America, cluelessness, losers, utter horseshit

That's the Bush Administration, its privatization of the military, the contractors it uses, the coziness of KBR to Dick Cheney.

It's hard to believe that there are Americans who would begrudge the child of an illegal immigrant an education or health care; or who would send death threats to Graeme Frost's family because he got government-paid health care, but they don't seem to give a rat's ass about this:

The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.

The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. “They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” he said in an interview. “Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”

But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR’s claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block.

Army officials denied that Mr. Smith had been removed because of the dispute, but confirmed that they had reversed his decision, arguing that blocking the payments to KBR would have eroded basic services to troops. They said that KBR had warned that if it was not paid, it would reduce payments to subcontractors, which in turn would cut back on services.

Um....excuse me? Doesn't that sound like blackmail? Let's read that last sentence again, shall we?

They said that KBR had warned that if it was not paid, it would reduce payments to subcontractors, which in turn would cut back on services.

Yup, that's exactly what it is: KBR gouges the Federal government, then demands payment or else it will cut services it provides to American troops.

And WHO is it that "supports the troops" again?

There just doesn't seem to be any limit to the amount of filth that passes for policy in the Bush years. This is about as reprehensible as anything I've seen from this bunch in the last eight years. Here we have a company, spun off from a company that employed Dick Cheney for years (and presumably to which he's returning after January), that has received a bunch of no-bid, no-accountability contracts from the United States government. It submits a bunch of questionable charges, then demands payment or else it will stop feeding American soldiers.

Doesn't this bother Americans, or are they too busy looking at pictures of Barack Obama's African relatives and telling their friends that he's really a Muslim? Or are they too busy monitoring the health care given to poor children?

Labels: just another outrage

You'd think that after the oil shocks of the 1970s, the Big Three would have learned that putting all your eggs in the Behemoth Basket may generate short-term profits, but is a lousy strategy in the long run.

I don't know if it's fossilized management or a function of the American corporation's unwillingness to think any farther than the next quarter,but anyone could have seen the demise of the SUV coming a mile away. We didn't see it happening today, or tomorrow, or even the next day, but it was clear that when you have vehicles guzzling a finite resource, sooner or later something's going to give.

And now General Motors is once again taking the hit:

Playing the urban warrior in a Hummer was a fairly inexpensive thrill when a gallon of gas cost just over $1. But at $4 a gallon, driving a full-powered Hummer H3 or a big Ford F-150 would cost a typical driver, who drives 15,000 miles a year, almost $4,300 in gas. This is more than 10 percent of the median earnings of full-time workers and about $2,200 more than it would cost to drive the same distance in a Honda Civic.

By May, there were signs that the S.U.V.-era was over. For the first time, Detroit’s Big Three automakers and their trucks were outsold in the United States by fuel-efficient cars made by Asian companies. And monthly sales of Ford’s muscular F-series pickups fell by a third, bumping it five spots from its previous perch as America’s best-selling vehicle, behind the Honda Civic, the Toyota Corolla, the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. It was the first time since December 1992 that a car, not a truck, claimed the top spot in monthly sales.

The F-series pickup has been the nation’s best-selling vehicle, on an annual basis, since 1981. But last month, the Ford Motor Company said that it would slash production of pickups and S.U.V.’s. Its full-size pickup plant in Cuautitlán, Mexico, is expected to be used to produce the Ford Fiesta, a subcompact car, instead.

None of this is going to help the U.S. automakers, who for two generations now have demonstrated that they are congenitally unable to build a reliable fuel-efficient car. The Ford Fiesta mentioned in the above article used to be sold here in the U.S. It was a hunk of junk, and I don't expect the newer version to be significantly better. The Fiesta is expected to replace the Focus, which was reasonably well-rated by Consumer Reports until 2008, when they said this about the "retooled" version:

The original Focus was agile and fun to drive, but the freshening for 2008 has taken away from that, with handling that is less crisp than before. The seating position is high and commanding, controls are clear and logically placed, and cabin access is easy. The ride is firm yet supple but the car is still noisy. Interior quality is lackluster.

The problem for the U.S. automakers is that for almost 40 years, they have ceded the fuel-efficient vehicle market to the Asian carmakers, to the point that no one in their right mind would even consider buying a Ford or General Motors compact car when for the same money you can get a proven-to-be-reliable player from Toyota, Honda, and now apparently even Hyundai has improved its quality.

Of course the last thing that American autoworkers need is the shuttering of more plants and the destruction of more jobs. But I wonder when the executives who make decisions like that to focus on gas-guzzlers are going to start paying some of the consequences of their actions instead of it always being the rank-and-file. General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner received a 64% bump in compensation while GM stock fell 19%. How many people below the CEO level would even still have their jobs with a performance like that?

Labels: automobile industry, corporatism

In the wee hours of this morning, the Mets stopped playing Henry VIII, waiting for the swordsman to arrive from Calais, and fired Willie Randolph.

Like this is going to make one damn bit of difference.

Mets announcer and former #2 starter during the Glory Days Ron Darling had some thoughts last week about why this team is SO godawful:

“We’re back to the days where 35 is old again,” Darling said. “Except for the last 10 years, when a player reached his mid-30s, he was done, he was old. And old players play like horse-[bleep]. That’s the tradition of the game for the last 50 years.”

I'm sorry to see Willie go, because I don't think this team's problems are his fault. I was happy to see the Mets be the first New York team to hire a black manager, and I would hate to think that the next manager may be just another old white retread who's knocked around the majors for decades. While I got tired of listening to Willie's platitudes too, he is a classy guy and he deserves a better team than the Mets organization gave him to manage. But it's an unfortunate reality of baseball that the manager gets too much glory when teams win, and too much blame when they don't.

Those of us who have been following the Team in the Toilet (I mean Flushing) for decades remember the likes of George Foster and Vince Coleman and Eddie Murray -- aging stars who were brought in during Times of Mets Suckitude in an attempt to get something going. I wonder just how Fred Wilpon, who in theory was around when they brought in Frank Cashen, who quietly stocked the organization's minor league system with young pitching and young players like Darryl Strawberry and Wally Backman and Lenny Dykstra and ignored the yowling of the New York sports press until he could display these prizes for all the world to see, could possibly stand by while Omar Minaya stocked this team with retreads and scrap heap reclamation projects. Of course I don't believe for one minute that they stood by, I think they DEMANDED players who would "win now" -- players like Pedro Martinez and Moises Alou -- proven veterans who were good, solid players but on the down side of their careers.

The problem with "Win Now" as an organizational philosophy is that you end up with this -- a team with too many old, big names, and not enough young talent -- and no guarantees. This team was built to win now, but now was 2006, and they came in just shy of the goal. Now how much of this is Omar Minaya's fault and now much is the Wilpons, only those who were flies on the walls in the organizational meetings know for certain.

But this much IS for certain: the departure of Willie Randolph isn't going to make one damn bit of difference. Oh, this team will win a few games in a row now, like they did in Anaheim last night. But that won't change the reality that Carlos Delgado is essentially done, and Luis Castillo has no legs left, and Ryan Church may never be the same and it's questionable if someone who had two concussions in a month should even be playing. It won't solve the mystery that is Carlos Beltran and it won't magically create a left fielder to replace the ancient and always-on-the-DL Moises Alou. The bench is adequate, but Damion Easley can't play a half-dozen field positions at the same time, and even HE's 38. Endy Chavez isn't an everyday player, and Fernando Tatis was in AAA a month ago.

The reality is that there's no patching this team. There's no late-season comeback and triumphant return to the playoffs for this bunch of gimpy, if valiant, old warriors, a brilliant but mystefying young shortstop, a few young pitchers, and David Wright. So it's time to close the curtain on 2007 and look to the future. And it it means you have to field a AAA team around Wright, José Reyes, John Maine and Mike Pelfrey, so be it. Castillo, Delgado, and Alou are, I think gone after this season anyway. So are Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez, if the latter comes off the DL. That potentially makes the team younger right there.

Metsgrrl has a list of 10 things she wants to see the Mets do right now.

I would add the following:

1) If you're going to fire Omar Minaya, hire Ron Darling to be the General Manager of this team. This idea comes from Mr. Brilliant, and I think it's a good one. Darling is an educated guy who's been watching this team for over twenty years (yikes). He's become a terrific announcer, not because he's such a great schmoozer, but because he clearly knows this game inside and out. He's a legacy of the Glory Years and he'd be embraced by a fan base that's pretty disgusted right about now. The Wilpons understand the Power of 1986, or they wouldn't have kept Howard Johnson as one of only two of Willie Randolph's staff to keep their jobs.

2) Start. Trading. Now. Start with the Yankees, who are in desperate need of starting pitching, with Chien-Ming Wang on the DL. Forget the crosstown rivalry. The Yankees may yet catch up, but the Mets have to look ahead. Swallow your pride and offer up Pedro Martinez (who's still a reasonably solid, smart, if fragile pitcher) and Oliver Perez (who's gone after this year anyway) for, say, four or five really solid, nearly-major-league-ready prospects. The Yankees are always a "win now" team, and this trade gives them two things -- a young pitcher that they can keep in the fold for a long time with enough money, and another old Red Sox player that they can use to taunt Boston down the stretch.

Assume that the nucleus of the Future Mets is David Wright, José Reyes, John Maine, and Mike Pelfrey. EVERYONE else is on the block. A team needs a closer? Billy Wagner can still throw 96 miles an hour and probably needs a change of scene right about now. You want a marquee center fielder? How many top-of-the-line prospects will you give us for Carlos Beltran? EVERYONE.

Yes, the Mets will suck royally for a year or two. But I'm always reminded of Frank Cashen taking Keith Hernandez down to Tidewater when Hernandez was so miserable after being traded to the Mets, to show him what was sprouting down there -- kids named Gooden and Darling and Fernandez and Terrell and Dykstra and Backman.

"Win Now" only works if you're the Yankees and have unlimited money and a seemingly unlimited ability to strongarm other teams into giving up their players for a song to plug holes in your lineup. The Mets aren't that team, and God knows this team is never, ever, ever going to "win now" as currently configured.

Labels: New York Mets

After over five years of war in a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush has finally laid off the sauce long enough to rememeber who the hell he was supposed to go after in the first place:

President George W Bush has enlisted British special forces in a final attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden before he leaves the White House.

Defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

Having Osama Bin Laden "out there" has been very useful to George W. Bush. It kept people afraid enough that they were willing to give up their freedom, willing to have their phone conversations and internet activity monitored, willing to have their bodies X-rayed at airports, willing to look the other way while this Administration destroyed this country. Now that Bush is a few months away from leaving office, with his so-called legacy in ruins, NOW he's decided again that Bin Laden matters.

Sorry, George. Your legacy is fucked no matter what happens with Bin Laden. Because even if British Special Forces (what, you couldn't get our own to do it?) manage to capture Bin Laden, all it will do is show all Americans what some of us have already known -- that you cynically allowed him to roam free because it played into your goal of being a dictator. There's no getting around it, George. You are the worst president in the history of this nation, and you may very well have destroyed it beyond repair.

Mission accomplished, you lifelong fuckup.

Labels: George W. Bush, icepick meet forehead, Osama bin Laden

Anyone who follows the whole H-1B/L-1 visa debate knows that each side of the controversy takes their turn at lobbing reports, charts and statistics back and forth. I personally find the whole routine kind of a time-waster. No one's going to change their minds just because they're looking at a new set of numbers. That said, it's still important to get the facts established to counteract a lot of misinformation put out by deep-pocketed interests who are still trying to pretend that their primary intent is not to hire people at lower wages. So, I've decided to go ahead and promote this fine report prepared for the Center for Immigration Studies by prominent anti-H-1B attorney (and co-founder of The Programmers Guild) John Miano.

The report, H-1B Visa Numbers-No Relationship to Economic Need, only uses publicly available data that can easily be verified by others. Miano drew his sources (as outlined on pages 2 and 3 of the .pdf file) from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (and its successor organization, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service), the Department of Labor's Foreign Labor Certification Data Center, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since these are government agencies, the data would presumably be from neutral, third-party sources. I wanted to provide direct links to all of the sources, but it would be a somewhat tedious process. I did find that everything can be found quite easily through your favorite search engine.

The Key Findings, as directly quoted from page 1 of the report, are:

• There is no cause and effect relationship between H-1B visas and job creation. Adding H-1B visas does not create additional jobs for U.S. workers. (This directly refutes the "March Surprise" report making this very claim that came out just before Bill Gates testified in front of Congress this spring.)
• Since 1999, the United States has approved enough H-1B visas for computer workers to fill 87 percent of net computer job growth over that period.
• Since 1999, the United States has had a net loss of 76,000 engineering jobs. Over the same time period, the United States has approved an average of 16,000 new H-1B visas each year for engineers.
• If current employment trends continue and the H-1B quota remains unchanged, the United States will approve enough H-1B visas for computer workers to fill about 79 percent of the computer jobs it creates each year.
• Pending legislation would increase the number of H-1B visas for computer workers to above the number of computer jobs created each year.
• The data suggest that a large percentage of those who legally enter United States on H-1B visas go into the illegal alien pool.

On to other matters. I certainly can't ignore this report out of Edison, New Jersey of the naturalized Indian-American citizen who was arrested last Wednesday and charged with visa fraud and conspiracy to commit visa fraud. Nilesh Dasondi, who is a member of his township's zoning board, owns CyGate Software and Consulting. This company has offices in New Jersey, Canada and (of course) India. According to the Department of Labor's Foreign Labor Certification Data Center, for Fiscal Year 2007 alone, his company filed for, and had approved, 59 Labor Certification Applications for approximately 150 H-1B workers.

It seems that not everyone he has brought into the country has rare computer skills that are in low supply in the United States. Some of the men he brought in have outstanding talents in running greeting card stores, while all of them were falsely put onto his CyGate payroll through a "running the payroll" scheme.

What boggles my mind is that, assuming these men did not have master's degrees or above, they were all subject to the H-1B visa cap of 65,000 per year. Since the number of applications is far higher than the number of visas that are granted, these 6 men were chosen through a random lottery process. What are the odds that all of Dasondi's people would have won the lottery? We can only logically assume that he had filed applications for a much higher number of people than just the six who were ultimately chosen at random.

Update: InfoWorld's Ephraim Schwartz published an excellent Reality Check blog post about Miano's study.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: H-1B

No. Just no. Never. Ever, ever, ever:

The election of 2008 has been widely noted as the possible end of the Bush dynasty. But President Bush and the first lady have another candidate in mind to extend the brand: Bush's brother, Jeb.

During an interview in London with SkyNews, the Rupert Murdoch-owned satellite network, the correspondent asked: "We've had father and son in the White House. Is that the end or not?"

Bush responded: "Well, we've got another one out there who did a fabulous job as governor of Florida, and that's Jeb. But you know, you better ask him whether or not he's thinking of running. But he'd be a great president."

Laura Bush, who was also being interviewed, chimed in, calling public service "an unbelievable life" and saying that "one of the reasons George and his brother, Jeb, served in office is because they admired their father so much."

"So he's not the last Bush?" the reporter asked, referring to the president.

"Well, who knows," Laura Bush responded. "We'll see."

(TUESDAY UPDATE: Steve Rosenbaum thinks McCain won't make it to the convention and will drop out of consideration, whereupon the party will pick a nominee. If he's right, then this can be considered a trial balloon. Nothing to ensure that Captain Codpiece doesn't go to the Hague like having his brother in the White House.)

Labels: Horror, icepick meet forehead, Jeb Bush

Why else would so-called "Democrat" and Clintonista Lanny Davis be joining Faux Noise?

Fox News's newest contributor, to be announced today, may surprise the liberal crowd: former Clinton White House lawyer Lanny Davis.

"Fox has always treated me with respect and given me a chance to express my point of view," Davis says of the network that the Democratic candidates refused to grant a debate out of concern that it favors Republicans. He will be a frequent guest, along with such Fox stalwarts as Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich.

A relentless surrogate for Hillary Clinton, Davis says, he felt "ganged up on" during appearances on the other cable channels. He says that Clinton was "demonized" by MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, and that CNN's primary-night panels were tilted toward the Obama side.

I guess he wants a mouthpiece by which he can tubthump for putting Hillary on the ticket, and if Obama doesn't do it, he can spend the next five months bashing Obama in the name of keeping the presidency open for Hillary in 2012.

These Clintonistas really are repulsive.

Labels: DINOs, Fox News, hypocrisy

Meet the new "faith-based" drugstores:

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That's because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John's and a Kmart, will be a "pro-life pharmacy" -- meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients' rights against those of health-care workers who assert a "right of conscience" to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

"The United States was founded on the idea that people act on their conscience -- that they have a sense of right and wrong and do what they think is right and moral," said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Society, a Chicago public-interest law firm that is defending a pharmacist who was fined and reprimanded for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. "Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing," Brejcha said.

But critics say the stores could create dangerous obstacles for women seeking legal, safe and widely used birth control methods.

"I'm very, very troubled by this," said Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, a Washington advocacy group. "Contraception is essential for women's health. A pharmacy like this is walling off an essential part of health care. That could endanger women's health."

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

The most common, widely publicized conflicts have involved pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception. They say they believe that such methods can cause what amounts to an abortion and that the contraceptives promote promiscuity, divorce, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other societal woes. The result has been confrontations that have left women traumatized and resulted in pharmacists being fired, fined or reprimanded.

In response, some pharmacists have stopped carrying the products or have opened pharmacies that do not stock any.

"This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable," said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill such prescriptions. The group's Web site lists seven pharmacies around the country that have signed a pledge to follow "pro-life" guidelines, but Brauer said there are many others.

"It's just the tip of the iceberg," she said. "And there's new ones happening all the time."

So just go to another drugstore, you say? Like which one? You mean the one at Wal-Mart, where the pharmacist can refuse to fill your contraceptive prescription if you're unmarried, or black, or just because he thinks you should be barefoot and pregnant, or that you should suffer the "consequences of your sins"? Why is it that women should have to shop around to get basic health care, while these very same drugstores that won't sell contraception are perfectly willing to sell Viagra? Who are these men who are taking Viagra supposed to be fucking?

All the WATBs like these idiots, who think they're somehow going to get revenge on the candidate they think "stole" (but never explain quite how) the Democratic nomination from Saint Hillary the Faux Feminist Warrior Queen by voting for a guy who is perfectly willing to turn them and their daughters into brood mares had better wake up and smell the fucking coffee. Because this is the Christofascist Zombie Brigade in action -- and they are NOT going away quietly. And when push comes to shove, they will be good little Republican foot soldiers and vote for John McCain. And these sulking tantrum-throwers are ready to help them do it.

Labels: contraception, faux feminism, John McCain

Today's American Idiot is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who's allegedly on John McCain's short list, presumably under the premise that if Republicans have a "brown guy" on the ticket it'll make them look like something other than the regional racist party.

Jindal is a guy who was a biology major in college but who has performed exorcisms and thinks that intelligent design is simply an "alternate view" that deserves to be taught in schools right alongside evolution. He thinks it should be up to local school boards to decide whether students are taught reality or fairy tales:



We have the likes of John Edwards, Kathleen Sibelius, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and yes, Hillary Clinton under consideration. They have a guy who claims to have driven out the devil and thinks "I don't understand it....it must be MAGIC" (&trade: Marc Maron) constitutes scientific method.

(h/t)

Labels: idiocy, John McCain, Republicans

Let's not hear any more bashing Michelle Obama about whether she's "proud of" her country, shall we?

So a man finally got a question into McCain and he had a very different sort of question.

The questioner noted that he had been educated at Princeton and Harvard and made more than $300,000 a year.

"How can I be proud of my country?" he asked.

Get it — he was mocking Michelle Obama and her statement earlier this year that her husband had for the first time in her life made her proud of her country.

Well, McCain either missed the joke or decided to ignore it and answer the question literally. I think it was the former because the individual asking the question had a thick accent that sounded to be either Indian or Pakistani, perhaps suggesting to McCain a recent immigrant grappling with America's image abroad.

"I’ll admit to you that it’s tough, it’s tough in some respects," McCain said, seeming to lend credence to Michelle Obama's observation.

McCain said America needed to be "more humble, more inclusive."

For once in his flip-floppin', lying-ass life, John McCain is right. It IS tough in some aspects to be proud when your country sits by and allows the Supreme Court to install an idiot like George W. Bush as president -- and then elects him to a second term. It's hard to be proud when your fellow citizens succumb time after time to fear and loathing -- whether it's falling for lies about war, falling for lies about a presidential candidate, or believing that we are somehow entitled to go into any country and take its national resources by force. McCain is right, that we DO need to be more humble and more inclusive. Of course this is exactly what Michelle Obama was referring to in her "infamous" remarks now being made into so much hay by wingnut groups. Now if we lived in a country with a media that does its job and populated by people who are willing to do the work of putting two coherent thoughts together, this would give us two candidates both of whom recognize that things have to change. But the reality is that while McCain slipped here, his stated purpose is to continue all of the bellicose policies of George W. Bush, including bombing the bejeezus out of Iran if Bush hasn't already done so. Perhaps McCain's better nature -- the one he's sacrificed in his lust for the presidency -- believes what he said here. But as we've seen, his better nature is not the one that wins out when the goal of his life is at stake.

Labels: John McCain

Today's honoree: Larisa Alexandrovna, for Bush is MIA, again.

Money quote:

It is not that George Bush does not care about black people in particular, he simply does not care about Americans. It is that simple. His legacy - on which he often opines with great pride - will be a single ground zero, like a crater the size of the moon, filled with ashes, bones, bodies, and the stench of lies and decaying flesh.

And the media? Well, you don't even have to wonder. Tim Russert has passed and therefor all news will be suspended until further notice.

Labels: bloggers, Midwest floods of 2008

This is what John McCain did while an American city drowned:



This is what Barack Obama does in an effort to help residents KEEP another American city from drowning:



Any questions?

Labels: Barack Obama, John McCain

Death.
Americans seem to be almost psychotically transfixed with the pomp and circumstance surrounding it as we also seemingly have a real need to connect with those who have died, whether we knew them or not. We have to know exactly what happened, lest it happen to us...and worrying that we might have a sudden heart attack while on the way to work, we're probably a million times more likely to get hit by a truck!

Yeah, in the wake of all this, its imperative that Americans lose weight and eat better. Its imperative that people know that the American diet is so fatty that even slim people have fat around their organs inside; its not about how you look on the outside as much as its the fat in and around your actual organs. They say that Tim Russert's huge fight was with pizza and beer and all that ballgame stuff...well, clearly he enjoyed those things and denied that the trade-off for that moment of sheer enjoyment was less time alive. He did seem to be incredibly happy all the time and it may have been a good trade-off for him; only he knows that now, but I doubt his kid would think so. I just wonder about those of us who are making bad choices because we are miserably overworked or lonely at home and using food as something that its not. So regarding this crazy "can this happen to me?" instinct that we have; well, yes, anything can happen, and Tim had been on his exercise bike that morning...in fact this was such a hidden problem that if he had had a stress test that morning it wouldn't have shown anything. But, should we all be aware of eating healthy to live, unless the food thing is giving us a real life experience that is worth any loss of time? Yes! It needs to be a priority, and we need to realize that we deserve the extra time that it takes to take care of ourselves, regardless of what Tim's problems were.

This well rounded guy, who was likely a very competitive workaholic, (you may not get that from the other workaholics at MSNBC,) was well loved, and from what they say, he was willing to debate anything and everything including his deep, "unquestioning," Catholic faith. He loved politics like a kid in a candy store and he had deep abiding relationships with friends and adored his family. To me, the tragedy of such an early death is blunted by a life well lived. So, off you go Timmy...its sad that it has to happen, but if there is a heaven, then it all makes sense now.

Watching the parade of luminaries taking part in the on air Irish wake for Tim Russert on MSNBC, (and all the other stations,) has been sad, gratifying, horrible, and maddening in that there is just so much of it, and you would think that this was the death of someone who actually DID something for the world, rather than added to the news blackout and cronyism of the past 7+ years and beyond! My first horrible thought after the sheer shock of how young he was, was a very unsavory feeling that this may be the only way to dislodge those crony's from their places as "the most important political pundits in the world."

That said, this same luminary parade is worth looking at because it points to what the problem is and has been with the M$M. As difficult as it is to come to terms with in the moment of their grief, and as much as Russert supposedly did for political reporting and NBC, its just sorta rich to watch everyone from the neutered Howard Dean to his closest friends, Al Hunt and Mike Barnacle, talk about the funny and happy moments fishing in Nantucket, and the way that he took over the Washington bureau and Meet the Press, and saved the NBC political news machine, without having the creepy feeling that somehow the old guard is commenting on themselves and how great they are, and that the bottom line in saving that news machine was and is profit rather than truth.

As a very religious man who personally made it a priority to perform charity work and focused on "truth," its hard for me to come to terms with this array of the older set who managed to sit by as the last 7+ years of neocons lied us into a war with no end, and stole this country blind. As the lie has unraveled, most of these pundits have stated that they believed the lies initially, and tried their best to bring out the truth as they came to their senses along with the rest of the country. To me, these sorts of supposedly hard hitting reporters hiding behind such a weak excuse when even I was shouting harder hitting questions at the screens of this administration, is unforgivable. How does a strong religious faith and belief in the truth fit into the amount of time given to neocons and softball questions? How can the buddy, buddy style of super socializing and cronyism that is infused in the structure of things these days, uncover any hard truths at all?
The Sunday shows and how the usual suspect pundits are trotted out to comment on any little political issue, is almmost like performance art when viewed from above...right Tim?

So, today the pile-on continues. If there is a God, she has dislodged a pretty important cog in the wheel of disinformation, but unfortunately, as is evident from the parade of usual suspects, its just gonna fill in, like so may footprints in the tide line of Nantucket, where these guys seem to spend an inordinate amount quality time together reinforcing their shared reality and access.

Y'know, Ive got a 98 year old grandfather who is very sharp mentally and wakes every morning with a certain fix on reality; you cant fight the numbers, as he says. There is something to be said for all the different ways that people go, and maybe its presumptive to critique one or another, but there is something to be said for the quick and clean end. Most of what goes on around death in this country is for the comfort of the living, and we seem to be largely unable to deal with the realities of aging, putting those who flame out young on a pedestal even if they were dysfunctional drug addicts. We respect our old guard as long as they look like themselves when they toddle out to read from a teleprompter, but we don't want to see the messy part; not at all.

I suppose that Tim could have ended up as a veritable McLaughlin in retirement, bungling through a half hour round table like a crazy old uncle, (and I say that fondly because I like the wacky McLaughlin show as the sun room in the old age home,) but then he wouldn't be able to go out at the top of his game, with a dry erase board in his hand and all the crony's parading past.
The only thing that makes me crazy, as someone who is usually acutely aware that anything could happen at any time, is that he shoulda been able to make it through the election...and if there IS a god, then the fact that he was taken out now could be a statement on the state of things.

And if there is nothing out there but ashes for guys like Timmy, then he didn't get to live to see the final ouster of the worst president ever...one who's disinformation campaign he gave a platform to more times than he might have if we weren't living in the atmosphere of spin and fear that was fostered largely thanks to him and these very luminaries... some of whom used to rail against this machine and who are now looking back through Vaseline on the lens . Imagine what things might be like if this one very influential guy had had more courage and less fear himself...imagine it....
RIP Timmeuh....you'll have to sort it out for yourself, wherever you are!

h/t to Trip aka. Vern for this:



c/p RIPCoco

Labels: media, Tim Russert

Last night, with the weather looking threatening, Mr. Brilliant and I changed our plans to have his delayed birthday celebration dinner at the Porter House, an Irish pub that has the nicest outdoor seating in Bergen County, and go to Jack's Cafe instead.

Jack's is an interesting place. It's an old railroad car-style diner that's had trouble keeping a tenant for as long as we've lived in the area. It was a well-reviewed breakfast-and-lunch place called Susan's for a while, and a Chock Full O'Nuts (yes, really) for a while, and now it's Jack's Cafe.

Bergen County restaurants have a very personal relationship with their customers, and for all that there's often high turnover, loyalty runs deep. If a chef goes to another restaurant, the clientele often follows. If a place has been there for decades, and a competing place opens up, the original usually wins that battle. For example, if you opened a thin-crust pizza bar on Franklin Turnpike in Mahwah, you'd be going up against the venerable Kinchley's, and it wouldn't matter how good your pizza was, you would get your ass kicked. Because you don't mess with the Kinchley's. The comings and goings of northern New Jersey restaurants are chronicled in Second Helpings, the food blog of the Bergen Record newspaper.

Chris D'Eletto used to own the adorable Backstreet Cafe, a little place hidden away on a side street in Westwood, NJ now doing business as the Harmony Tea Room. Backstreet had a small-but-loyal clientele that was ready and waiting for D'Eletto to open up again, this time in a more prime location. Jack's is kind of an acquired taste, because two people can easily rack up a $100 check, which seems like a lot in a place that still looks like a diner and where your food is served by a kid in a T-shirt. But the food is fantastic, and the homemade desserts LOOK fantastic, though after a half-plate of blackened tilapia over sesame noodles with steamed vegetables (Mr. B. ate the other half, since it was far too much for me), the thought of homemade carrot cake, or apple pie, or strawberry cheesecake, was more than I could handle.

That Jack's seems to be succeeding may be as much due to the New Jersey fondness for diners as it is to the food. Diners have always fascinated me, mostly because I wonder how any eatery can possibly dish up as many different things as you can get in a diner. Of course, most diners don't do anything other than breakfast particularly well, but the good ones do a decent, reliable burger or sandwich or danish-and-coffee. There are exceptions, such as the State Line Family Restaurant in Tappan, New York, which is the rare case of a diner with upscale pretentions that appears to be owned by Latinos instead of Greeks, and where your lunch special chicken cheesesteak is as likely to come with yucca fries and garlic dipping oil as french fries -- if you can even eat it after a cup of the best split pea soup on the face of the earth.

But the diner is as much a part of New Jersey lore as The Sopranos, which may be why so many scenes were shot in them. One of our favorite waste-of-time shows is Guy Fieri's Drive-ins, Diners and Dives on the Food Network, a show that recently profiled both the Tick-Tock Diner, a frequent Sopranos filming site, and the famous White Manna Hamburgers in Hackensack -- a place that is reputed to have great hamburgers, but which resembles a White Castle too much for me to even try, traumatized as I was by the aftermath of a visit to the White Castle on Elmora Avenue in Elizabeth, circa 1967. Here's Guy doing reconnaissance with the owners of the Jefferson Diner in Lake Hopatcong:



...and at the Brownstone Diner in Jersey City:



When you watch this show, you become aware of why so much Lipitor is sold in this country. But sometimes, watching those drippy, loosely-packed burgers, dripping with soft cheese, fried onions, lettuce, tomato, ketchup and pickle relish, makes you willing to sell your soul to Satan just to have one. Of course, now the beef is about to become scarce and may be riddled with E Coli and the lettuce and tomatoes may be contaminated with salmonella, so someday the old footage from this show will be the closest any American gets to a cheeseburger anymore.

The good old-fashioned New Jersey diner seems to be enjoying a renaissance of late. The Forum in Paramus, which had the best cheesecake on the face of the earth, has gone out of business after trying to hard to turn itself into a fine dining restaurant, with lots of wood carving and fancy food names, and still keep counter service, at least the trend of the 1990's to put false facades on diners to make them look less, well, dinerish, seems to be falling by the wayside. A new diner just opening on Route 303 in Blauvelt, New York, may not be made from an old railroad car, but it's built to look like one. I wonder if it has boomerang formica booth tables.

Why Jack's seems to be succeeding despite its use of sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, brie, and other menu items associated with the latte-and-Volvo set is anyone's guess. I think it's because D'Eletto is confident enough in the quality of his food to say loudly and clearly, "Hey...you can't eat the atmosphere."

Labels: food

Actual letter in the Naples, Florida Daily News, reprinted in its entirety in the name of exposing this sort of crap far and wide so everyone knows what we're up against:

Editor, Daily News:

At last, the Democrats’ charade of selecting a presidential candidate is over. The black won!

I remember the days when the question was can a Catholic win the presidency? This game can go on forever — can a Jew, a Muslim, a homosexual, and so on? All great reasons for choosing a president!

There is no question that the show was perfectly orchestrated. With the unpopularity of the Bush administration affecting the Republican Party, it was a good time to try either a black or a woman for the presidency.

The choice of the woman was easy. Hillary Clinton was there — clever, articulate, ambitious and, thanks to her husband’s indiscretions, with excellent name recognition.

The black was more difficult to choose. Although the Democrat elite pretends to support the American blacks, they couldn’t find a presidential candidate among the 34 million descendents of slaves who have been in this country for over 300 years. Never mind they produced people like Barbara Jordan (for whom I voted), Thomas Sowell or Condoleezza Rice.

So they had to bring out Barack Obama, son of a black Kenyan and one of the many young white American girls who, during the 1960s, had a child from a black man as part of their rebellion against American middle-class values (I personally knew a couple of them).

So Obama has the perfect hippie credentials, and in addition is very eloquent and convincing. He only needed introduction to the public, and Hillary Clinton took good care of it.

Georges Pardo, Naples

Has your head exploded yet? He Who Must Not Be Named should sue for appropriation of the Dirty Fucking Hippies meme. "The black". In the eyes of Mr. Pardo of Naples, Barack Obama isn't even a man, he's "a black." But Mr. Pardo is no racist, no sirree, he actually voted for a black person once.

If you dig down into Mr. Pardo's letter, what you see isn't actually racism, it's fear of a word we have to pull out of the dusty closet in which it belongs -- miscegenation. It's about a white girl, Barack Obama's mother, falling prey to the Oversexed Black Man™. This letter says far more about Mr. Pardo than it does about Barack Obama OR his mother.

Labels: idiocy, racism, sexism