Now I'm Bitter

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., eyes her shot of Crown Royal with Bronko's owner Nick Tarailo, right, as she stops at the bar during a campaign stop at Bronko's restaurant in Crown Point, Ind., on Saturday, April 12, 2008.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

I'd like to write an omnibus post about the total ridiculousness of the other candidates reaction to, and the media's running gleefully with, Obama's "bitter" comment, but I'm too busy. (Work going into the electric kiln tomorrow! Whoo-hoo!) So here's an unresearched, unlinked post. Just my opinion.

The triviality of it all, the very same week that we learn that Smirky McConstitutionFucker PERSONALLY ENDORSED TORTURE, the press spends the entire weekend calling Barack Obama an out-of-touch elitist. Barack Obama, child of a single mother. Obama, who went to Harvard -- because he earned a scholarship. And then spurned hundreds of offers to work for corporate law firms, to work as a community organizer. Real elitist.

Multi-millionaire John McCain, owner of eight houses, son of an admiral, dumped his first wife to marry a multi-millionaire heiress twenty-five years his junior, he calls Obama an out-of-touch elitist. Multi-millionaire Hillary Clinton, who together with her husband earned $109 million in their seven short years out of the White House, graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School, has lived either in the White House or a tony suburb of New York City since 1992, she calls Barack Obama an elitist.

It's all bullshit! He wasn't insulting anyone, and they know it, and the media knows it. And Hillary Clinton, who is supposed to be a Democrat, attacks Obama like he's just admitted he authorized the United States military to start torturing prisoners. Oh, that's wrong. She attacks Obama like he's her real opponent, not John McSame, the Republicans and George W. Clusterfuck. Hillary, keep your eyes on the prize. It's not about defeating Obama. It's about beating McCain and taking back the White House in November. Shooting the other Democrat in the race is not helping.

Annie Oakley Clinton then claimed that her father taught her to shoot when she was a little girl (my mother said, my father showed me how to shoot when I was a little girl, but he didn't give me the gun. It was too big. It would have knocked me over.) And she'd gone duck hunting. Funny, I don't remember her ever mentioning that before. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure she was a big opponent of guns when she ran for Senate in 2000.

I looked her father up on wikipedia. The house where he supposedly taught her to shoot? It was a vacation house they owned on a lake in Pennsylvania, and Hillary spent her summers at the summer house. Real working class, summers at the second house.

Then she got photographed in a bar in Indiana throwing back a shot and a beer on Saturday night. What next? A campaign appearance with Clint Eastwood where they both drawl "Go ahead, make my day" and she shoots a paper cutout of Obama? Then goes out for a beer and a shot with McCain where they both laugh about having passed the commander-in-chief threshold? You may have guessed that I'm pretty sick of Hillary Clinton's shtick. Drop out now, Hillary, I would write in the sky over her events. If you can't say anything nice about the Democrat, don't say anything.

So, I said I wouldn't link, but this addendum to a Glenn "Glenzilla" Greenwald post pretty well summed up my opinion of the media's role in the whole debacle. (Go buy his new book, Great American Hypocrites.)

[On weekend television] there was virtually no discussion, at least on any of the news shows to which I was exposed, of the obviously consequential revelations of the President's direct involvement in the creation of America's torture regime. Instead, the vast bulk of attention was paid to depicting Barack Obama as an effete, elitist, deceptive enemy of the Regular Guy -- exactly the way that every national Democratic politician in recent memory has inevitably been depicted (including Hillary Clinton, particularly when the media and the Right thought last year that she would be the nominee).

Our elections are dominated by the same tired personality script, trotted out over and over and over. Democrats and liberals -- no matter how poor their upbringing, no matter how self-made they are, no matter how egalitarian their policies -- are the freakish, out-of-touch elitists who despise the values of the Regular Americans. Right-wing leaders -- no matter how extravagantly rich they are by virtue of other people's money, no matter how insulated their lives are, no matter how indifferent their policies are to the vast rich/poor gap -- are the normal, salt-of-the-earth Regular Folk. These petty, cliched storylines drown out every meaningful consideration and dictate our election outcomes, and they are deployed automatically.

It doesn't matter what the candidates actually say or do. The establishment press just waits for the right episode and then reflexively and eagerly fills in the gaps in the shallow script -- the script with which they are intimately familiar and which serves as their only framework for talking about and understanding political disputes.

John McSame: Four More Years of Bush

This 30 second ad is now running in DC, targeting insiders:

If The Beckhams Lived in Oklahoma

Photoshop rules.

From Wintrest, via Who Ate All the Pies?

Obama Comes Back Fighting

BAGNewsNotes
Yesterday a reporter released audiotape of remarks by Barack Obama at a fundraiser in California in which he said

"But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Both McCain and Hillary Clinton jumped on Obama. McCain said the remarks showed Obama was "out of touch" with American voters. Clinton said he was being condescending.

Here's how Obama responded. (Sorry for the terrible audio; I've included the transcript below.)

“When I go around and I talk to people there is frustration and there is anger and there is bitterness. And what’s worse is when people are expressing their anger then politicians try to say what are you angry about? This just happened – I want to make a point here today.

“I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how’re you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What’s going on there? We hear that’s its hard for some working class people to get behind your campaign. I said, “Well look, they’re frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they’ve seen jobs shipped overseas. They’ve seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.

“And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we’re going to make your community better. We’re going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement-- so, here’s what rich. Senator Clinton says ‘No, I don’t think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he’s obviously out of touch with people.’

"Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain—it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I’m out of touch? No, I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania. I know what’s going on in Indiana. I know what’s going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They’re angry and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.”

While his initial statement was inartfully phrased, that's going to happen to everyone who spends 18 hours a day talking. (Only a Democrat would be attacked this way. McCain has confused Sunni and Shia repeatedly in the past few weeks, with barely a mention in the media.) I'm happy to see Obama fighting back and fighting back immediately. I remember 2004 when the Republicans would throw out some ridiculous argument against Kerry, and it would sit there, being repeated over and over and over in the media, for hours and then days, before the Kerry campaign, lumbering like a battleship changing course, finally deigned to answer the charge. And they were always too late to stop the bleeding.

When is Hillary Clinton going to stop campaigning against Obama and start campaigning against McCain? This is why I wish she'd drop out of the race. Democrats always relish in beating up each other. Beating the Republicans is my goal here.

McCain Flips His Housing Stance

March 26, 2008: McCain warns against hasty mortgage bailout

April 11, 2008: McCain reverses himself on mortgage position

These two headlines from the International Herald Tribune tell most of the story. The rest of the story is that McCain's mortgage bailout plan is all smoke and mirrors. His plan is limited to those he calls "deserving homeowners"; almost all of whom are already covered by the existing federal program:

So to be clear, McCain thinks that millions of Americans are going to lose their homes, and all but a few hundred thousand are just getting what they deserve. Specifically, he's prepared to step forward and help only those who:

-Took out a subprime loan after 2005

-Can prove they were "creditworthy" at the time

-Are unable to pay that subprime loan

-But could pay a 30-year fixed rate loan

Of course, pretty much all those folks already qualify for assistance under the existing FHASecure program.

So it's like a double backflip with extra difficulty. McCain is maneuvering by changing his position entirely on the surface -- without changing his position at all, in reality.

That's John McCain McSame McBush, who'd also be happy to see American troops in Iraq for the next 100 years. Your Republican party candidate to replace the Master of Disaster, George W. Clusterfuck, the man McCain has supported wholeheartedly for the past 8 years.

Around the Blogroll

flickr: SI Neg. 92-96. Date: 1992...Snake motif pottery. ..Credit: Laurie Minor-Penland (Smithsonian Institution)

A few matters I've been meaning to write about:

(1) I've been looking at pottery on the internet lots lately, and found a great post on Emily Murphy's Pottery Blog listing 63 blogs that she reads. 63! Eventually I need to add a category of pottery blogs to my blogroll, but not today as taxes loom.

(2) Alas, the best women's soccer blog, USA Women's Soccer, is no more. That's good news for the blogger, however, as she's been hired by the new Women's Professional Soccer League and will be maintaining the WPS website.

(3) Don to Earth is back! Still not updating a lot, but I love the world's oldest blogger's take.

Go Directly to the Dock at the Hague

ABC reports that war criminals Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet and John Ashcroft discussed and approved of specific methods of torturing prisoners during meetings in the White House situation room. And though the reporters do not mention him, I have no doubt that the Master of Disaster himself, the psychopath-in-chief George W. Clusterfuck was right in there with them, gleefully discussing violating the most fundamental of human rights, the right not to be tortured.

Under the rules of their own religions, they will certainly go to hell. Before, that, I hope most sincerely that they are taken to the Hague in shackles and paraded in front of the world as the monstrosities that they are. I think the fact that each of these church-going hypocrites approved of torture proves that there is no God, for if there was a God, surely she would have struck each of them down by now.

ABCNews: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'
Detailed Discussions Were Held About Techniques to Use on al Qaeda Suspects

ABC cited a top official as saying that Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Reuters: Top Bush aides approved interrogation tactics: report

"Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding," ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

The Sisyphean War in Iraq

Q: How do you get to 100 years in Iraq?

A: Six months at a time.

From moveon.org

We Love Lists

#1: "Dead Parrot", Monty Python, 1969

nerve.com: The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

hat tip to BoingBoing

#12: "The Racial Draft" Chappelle's Show

If Woody Allen's monologue qualified as a sketch, I'd add "The Moose" (1965) to the list. The Berkowitzes! The moose is furious!

McCain Still Delusional About Iraq

Remember McCain's "stroll" through a Baghdad market? When he dared to say it was safe to go to the market, when he went there with 100 armed men and 5 combat helicopters?

He's still nuts. He gave a speech on Iraq yesterday extolling the progress of the surge.

Coverage of the speech was interrupted by news reports of bombings of the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Keith Olbermann parses the speech & McCain's delusions:

Obama Has All The Best Videos

Obama's Everywhere:

The Real John McCain

A nasty, cruel man.

Two examples:

(1)

In 1998, at a Republican Party fundraiser, McCain told this joke:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno."

At the time, Chelsea Clinton was 13 years old.

(2)

Reported in Cliff Schecter's new book, The Real McCain (via firedoglake):

In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day.

And those are things he felt comfortable saying in public.

Bush Finally Wins Something

History News Network: HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

Women's Final Set

NYTimes: Candice Wiggins (11), the ebullient guard who was named national player of the year by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, delivered 25 points, 13 rebounds and 5 assists for Stanford.
Photo: Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images


Stanford will play Tennessee for the national championship on Tuesday night. Ice v. Ace, that is, Candice Wiggins of Stanford, the Wade Trophy player of the year winner, v. Candace Parker of Tennessee, AP Player of the Year. And for the fourth year in a row, both coaches in the final are women. No male coach has gotten his team into the final since Geno did it last with Taurasi in 2004. (This isn't an issue in the men's game as men's basketball is still segregated by gender on the coaching side.)

Stanford did a great job on Connecticut (box score), in an exciting and watchable semi last night. (Except for the ever-annoying announcers, the self-important Doris Roberts and half-dead Mike Patrick. Anyone else, please, ESPN.) Connecticut didn't get much from its frontcourt (Hunter 0, McClaren 2, Charles 9, Houston 10) and that was that. Stanford played an outstanding game, got assists on over 75% of its baskets (28 baskets, 20 assists), outrebounded Connecticut 43-37, and shot lights out down the stretch. Wiggins had 25 points and 13 rebounds from the guard position.

The second game was a dreary affair of missed shots and free throws (box score). The end was exciting, but a great final 10 seconds didn't make up for the tediousness of the whole game. The leading scorers were Parker for Tennessee (who shot 6 for 27 from the floor) and Fowles for LSU (a blistering 10 for 24). Ugly.

I'll be rooting for Stanford to knock Tennessee off its perch as national champions.

Harvey Araton, NYTImes: At Peace With Memory of Father’s Fall

Harvey Araton, NYTimes: The Top 10 Reasons to Cover the Women’s Final Four

Baby Heads

Reuters: Visitors look at a sculpture by Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts April 1, 2008, ahead of an exhibition of the artist's work that opens April13. Titled "Day and Night", the bronze sculptures of two babies' heads are modeled after the artist's grandchildren and weigh 1.65 tons each.
REUTERS/Brian Snyder (UNITED STATES)
Boston Globe: A slow, steady hand
A methodical Spanish painter has his first major US show at the MFA

The Media's False Narrative on McCain

Two peas in the media pod
Glenn Greenwald, HuffPo: Great American Hypocrites: McCain's Old Packaging

An excerpt from Greenwald's new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Myths of Republican Politics. Think about this when you hear the media say, reflexively, the buzzwords they have adopted to help brand McCain: maverick, iconoclast, foreign policy credentials, convictions, truthteller, etc.

The press's veneration of McCain as "a different type of Republican" has echoes of how George Bush was built into an iconic hero. In 2000, we were inundated with claims that Bush was a departure from the hard-core, Gingrichian right-wing Republican. Bush was no mere conservative, but a "compassionate conservative," someone who, exactly like McCain, combined the most admirable virtues of the conservative man with a streak of idiosyncratic independence that rendered him substantially different -- better -- than the standard right-wing Republican.

And exactly like the media's hero worship of McCain now, Bush in 2000 was presented as the sole figure capable of healing our partisan rift. He was a "uniter, not a divider," who venerated solutions above partisan bickering. Bush would reach across the aisle, recruit Democrats to his side, and just as he changed the tenor of politics in Texas, so, too, would he bridge the partisan divide in Washington after eight long years of Clintonian divisiveness.

Here is how then-RNC chairman Jim Nicholson put it during his 2000 Convention speech: "My friends, this is going to be a different kind of convention for a different kind of Republican." Bush spokesman Ray Sullivan mouthed a similar line during the campaign: "Gov. Bush has shown time and time again that he is a different kind of Republican."

Replace "McCain" in 2008 with "Bush" in 2000, and the cliché-ridden script has barely changed. Both then and now, the GOP nominee, despite a virtually unbroken record of standard conservative orthodoxy, is depicted as far too honorable and independent to be considered an ordinary politician, let alone a standard conservative partisan. Both the 2000 Bush and the 2008 McCain were mavericks -- inspiring, honest figures who transcend partisan warfare and piously float far above the muck of traditional politics.

Indeed, the central praise typically heaped by journalists on McCain -- that no matter what one thinks of his views, he always says what he thinks, because he is a man of real conviction -- is exactly the marketing package in which George Bush was wrapped, particularly when he ran for reelection. Just compare McCain's media reputation as a plain-spoken, truth-telling maverick with the crown jewel of George Bush's 2004 GOP Convention acceptance speech:

THE PRESIDENT: In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand.
[applause]

The depiction of McCain as a truth-telling, apolitical maverick is just about as accurate as previous similar depictions of Bush were. On virtually every policy issue of significance, McCain's positions -- not his rhetoric but his actual positions -- ultimately transform into those held by the dominant right-wing faction of the Republican Party and, even more so, are identical to the positions that shaped and defined the failed Bush presidency.

Pat Buchanan, Equal Opportunity Hatemonger

FAIR Report: PATRICK BUCHANAN -- IN HIS OWN WORDS

February 26, 1996 Contact: Steven Rendall

In the flap over Larry Pratt and other unsavory characters associated with the Patrick Buchanan campaign, journalists typically framed the question: Is Buchanan linked to extremists and bigots? But there is a more basic question journalists should ask: Is Patrick Buchanan himself an extremist and bigot?

Here is a sampling of Buchanan's views.

I just chose one paragraph (of many) per hated group from the original, well-documented article.

ON AFRICAN-AMERICANS

On race relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s: "There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The 'negroes' of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours." (Right from the Beginning,
Buchanan's 1988 autobiography, p. 131)

ON IMMIGRANTS AND PEOPLE OF COLOR

"If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?" ("This Week With David Brinkley," 1/8/91)

ON JEWS

Buchanan was vehement in pushing President Reagan -- despite protests -- to visit Germany's Bitburg cemetery, where Nazi SS troops were buried. At a White House meeting, Buchanan reportedly reminded Jewish leaders that they were "Americans first" -- and repeatedly scrawled the phrase "Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews" in his notebook. Buchanan was credited with crafting Ronald Reagan's line that the SS troops buried at Bitburg were "victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." (New York Times, 5/16/85; New Republic, 1/22/96)

ON GAYS

On AIDS, Buchanan wrote in 1983: "The poor homosexuals -- they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution (AIDS)." (Los Angeles Times, 11/28/86) Later that year, he demanded that New York City Ed Koch and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo cancel the Gay Pride Parade or else "be held personally responsible for the spread of the AIDS plague." "With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide," Buchanan wrote in 1990 (syndicated column, 10/17/90). In the 1992 campaign, he declared: AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature." (Seattle Times, 7/31/93)

ON WOMEN

"The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the asher-dryer, the freezer." (Right from the Beginning, p. 149)

ON DEMOCRACY

In a January, 1991 column, Buchanan suggested that "quasi-dictatorial rule" might be the solution to the problems of big municipalities and the federal fiscal crisis: "If the people are corrupt, the more democracy, the worse the government." (Washington Times, 1/9/91) He has written disparagingly of the "one man, one vote Earl Warren system."

I just don't understand why such an evil, vituperative person has a prominent position on MSNBC. (MSNBC is owned by GE, my brain answers.)

Media Massage of McCain Continues

100 Year Video
The foul odor of media-in-the-can-for-McCain and the Rethugs hangs over the 2008 campaign. McCain sez: It's fine with me if we're in Iraq for 100 years. The media sez: He didn't say that!

The Washington Post charges Democrats are "distorting" McCain by saying, well, that he said what he said. The New York Times says Democrats are misharacterizing and distorting McCain, by saying, well, that he said what he said. Again, the facts the media is trying so hard to ignore: McCain said he'd be fine if we stayed in Iraq for 100 years. After all, he said (you can watch it here on YouTube),

QUESTIONER: Yes, please. President Bush has talked about our --

McCAIN: Please, please, please start over.

QUESTIONER: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years --

McCAIN: Maybe a hundred.

QUESTIONER: Is that -- is that --

McCAIN: We've been in South Korea -- we've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That'd be fine with me as long as Americans --

QUESTIONER: So that's your policy?

McCAIN: -- As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, then it's fine with me. I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, and equipping and motivating people every single day.

But no, the media cries: He didn't really mean it! Stop picking on our Johnny Boy! They want so badly for their pal John McCain, McSame, McLame, McBush, etc., to take them on BBQs at his "cabin" (read, rich man's estate) in Sedona for the next four years.

Media Matters: When McCain cries foul, the media are eager to agree

And what other zombie lies has the media been feeding us? The bowling prowess, or lack thereof, of Barack Obama is a very significant story, according to graduates of the country's finest schools of journalism. Glenn Greenwald sums it up:

In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to "domestic military operations" within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102

"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73

"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16

"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043

"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607

"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

And as Eric Boehlert documents, even Iraq -- that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in sight -- has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless, stupid, vapid chatter of the type referenced above. "The Clintons are Rich!!!!" will undoubtedly soon be at the top of this heap within a matter of a day or two.

As I write this, "Clinton Tax Returns" google search returns 4,320 news results. "yoo torture" returns 172 results. "mukasey 9/11" 45 results.

The media is dead. Long live the servile, corrupt and shameless corporate media.

As Stephen Colbert said:

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

Replace "president" with "McCain" and you have the current behavior of the media.

Another UConn Fan

 

Tuesday evening, March 25, 2008, Arena at HarborYard, Bridgeport, CT

Martin Luther King Assassinated 40 Years Ago Today

dday at Hullabaloo on King's power.

John McCain and Dick Cheney voted against making Martin Luther King Day a holiday.

Don't you think if MLK were still alive today, Pat Buchanan would be screeching that he is a hateful Afro-centric preacher and condemning all who follow him?

A-Rod: Stay Out of Our House

Alexa Rodriguez was in the upper deck behind home plate, where the tour was being seated. The hawk swooped down as the student was getting ready to leave.
(John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

A middle school teenage girl on a tour of Fenway Park -- whose nickname is A-Rod -- was attacked by a red-tail hawk in the stands behind home plate. The hawk had a nest in front of the press box overhead, with one egg in it. The hawk scratched the girl's head, and she was taken to the hospital, treated and released. After the attack the hawk's nest was removed:

This spring the raptor used a brown-knit cap and twigs from trees on Yawkee Way to build a nest on a green overhang near the press booth above home plate. She laid a brown-speckled egg last week, but it rolled off the nest, wasn't properly incubated, and was no longer viable, French said.

Wildlife officials removed the egg and the nest yesterday after the hawk lashed out at Alexa.

Obviously the hawk struck out because the girl's name was A-Rod. For all we know, she was in the park on July 24, 2004, during the famous fight where Varitek took A-Rod by the throat.

The hawk wasn't just protecting her nest. She was protecting our house.

The Boston Globe article used above contains a hilarious typo. "Yawkee Way" is actually "Yawkey Way". The writer must have been thinking about the Yankees, not the Yawkeys. Just like the hawk; a little confused, but heart in the right place.

Boston Globe: Teen finds fowl territory at Fenway

Boston Globe Photo Gallery: Hawk attack at Fenway Park

Boston Globe: An omen? Hawk attacks girl with a familiar-sounding name at Fenway

July 24, 2004

Read From the Left

Two new books deconstruct the arguments from the right that have distorted our national discourse on two important topics: science and politics.

"Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health" (Oxford University Press, 2008) by David Michaels.

From the author himself, writing at The Pump Handle:

In Doubt, I recount how the strategy of manufacturing uncertainty was pioneered by the tobacco industry. Clearly successful, it has been adopted by the asbestos, beryllium, chromium, and pesticide industries, among others, and it is the strategy used by global warming deniers. There are few industries that haven’t tried it - Andrew Dressler at Grist has a new piece on how the Indoor Tanning Association is trying to convince the public that “there is actually no evidence linking sun exposure with cancer.” (I talk about that in my book, too.)

"Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics" by Glenn Greenwald:

From the time I began blogging in October, 2005, I've written about many different topics, but almost all have a similar undercurrent: the Limbaugh/Kristol/Fox-News right-wing faction that controls the Republican Party and has dominated our political life for the last 15 years, and the multiple ways that our political institutions -- and particularly the Drudgified establishment press -- enable them. Marketing packages aside, this book is about them; how they function; the weakness-driven bloodthirstiness, dishonesty and sleaze which defines them; the indispensable eagerness of the establishment media to be used by them; and what can be done by those opposed to them to change all of that.

All of the radical and reprehensible events of the last eight years -- the commencement and endless prosecution of an indescribably disastrous war, the accelerated dismantling of our Constitutional framework, the creation of a lawless Surveillance State and a virtually omnipotent President, the legitimization of truly grotesque torture and detention regimes, the complete corruption of our political discourse -- have individuals and a political movement behind them, causing all of that to happen. They have cultivated the ability to manipulate media behavior, largely as a result of a media eager to help. But what they do not have is popular support for virtually anything they are doing. And yet they continue to win elections.

How and why that happens -- the deceitful electoral tactics and manipulative personality-based myths the Right has perfected and continuously deploys to win elections, and the ways in which our slothful, vapid and complicit establishment press propagates those myths -- is the principal subject of this book. And understanding and exposing that right-wing/media partnership is a necessary precondition for weakening it.

It's Been a Long Winter

 

Ice storm, Mass Pike, February 2008

The Real Enemy of Women Soldiers

Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

Congresswoman Jane Harman, Op-Ed, LATimes:
Rapists in the ranks
Sexual assaults are frequent, and frequently ignored, in the armed services.

hat tip to Suburban Guerrilla

"Justice" Department Torture Memo Released

WaPo: Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators
Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes

The Justice Department's horrifying torture memo, stripped to its bare essentials, argues that the ends justify the means. If the Bush administration is fighting terrorists (so much scarier than Nazis, so to hell with those pantywaist Geneva Conventions) it has the right to do so by all means necessary, laws and treaties be damned. Torture is justified as "self-defense":

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a "national and international version of the right to self-defense," Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations -- that it must "shock the conscience" -- that the Bush administration advocated for years.

"Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification," Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.

The former Army judge advocate general says the Justice Department was claiming it was above the law:

Thomas J. Romig, who was then the Army's judge advocate general, said yesterday after reading the memo that it appears to argue there are no rules in a time of war, a concept Romig found "downright offensive."

The authors of this memo have written themselves a one-way ticket to hell. Incredibly, John Yoo, the primary author, is employed by the state of California as a professor of law at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkley. He's teaching two constitutional law courses this spring. What is he teaching these students? That the constitution is akin to a roll of toilet paper, which can be flushed down the toilet whenever it's expedient?

Hey, I can do a service to his students. I'll outline the course so they don't have to:

Laws, schmaws.

Write that, and you pass.

Downsville Opera House Poster

 

The poster above is a new donation to the Colchester Historical Society, from the Opera House in Downsville, which burned down many years ago.

The movies Gunga Din and Renegade Trail were released in 1939, so the poster is probably from 1939 or 1940.

It's really in remarkable condition for being almost 70 years old. The back was used to keep score for some game, in pencil, but the colors are quite vibrant.

McCain Unfit to Be President

Great op-ed piece by a former POW who's known McCain since they were in the Naval Academy together, outlining the reasons he won't vote for John McCain.

Phillip Butler, military.com: Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain

As some of you might know, John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a Senator and candidate for President!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. John had me "coming around" to his room frequently during my plebe year. And on one occasion he took me with him to escape "over the wall" in the dead of night. He had a taxi cab waiting for us that took us to a bar some 7 miles away. John had a few beers, but forbid me to drink (watching out for me I guess) and made me drink cokes. I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

[]

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

Zoological Glass Works

Harvard Museum of Natural History
The glass work of Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, now on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in an exhibit titled "Sea Creatures in Glass," includes jellyfish, anemones, sea slugs, polyps and many other specimens.


I'm making plans to go to this show of beautiful glass sea creatures that were created to teach zoology, but are seen today mostly as spectacular works of art.

The 58 mostly life-size works on display were drawn from the Museum of Comparative Zoology's collection of 430 of the Blaschkas' glass invertebrates, including jellyfish, anemones, sea slugs, polyps and many other specimens.

When Harvard first acquired the Blaschkas' glass specimens, Sacco said they were important tools for teaching zoology because, unlike actual creatures preserved in formaldehyde, they didn't lose their color or collapse.

Metrowest Daily News: Masters of glass

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is located on 26 Oxford St., Cambridge.

All the HMNH exhibits are open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is closed New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Day.

Other exhibits include "Nests & Eggs" through August 2008 and "Arthropods: Creatures that Rule" which is ongoing.

Tickets: Adults, $9; seniors and non-Harvard students, $7; children, 3-18, $6. It is free to Massachusetts residents Sunday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon and Wednesday afternoon from 3 to 5 p.m., September through May.

The museum is wheelchair accessible. For more information, call 617-495-3045 or visit the Internet Web site, www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

USWNT Announces Olympic Qualifying Roster & Schedule

ussoccer: U.S. WNT vs. Denmark - 03-12-08 - Algarve Cup
USSoccer announced the 20-player roster for 2008 Concacaf Olympic women's qualifying tournament yesterday. The squad includes five players who didn't play at the 2007 World Cup: Rachel Buehler (Stanford), Tobin Heath (North Carolina), Kacey White(North Carolina), Lauren Cheney(UCLA) and Amy Rodriguez (USC).

The six players from Greg Ryan's 21-player roster for the World Cup who aren't on the team are: Kristine Lilly, Tina Ellerton, Brianna Scurry, Marian Dalmy, Aly Wagner, and Marci Jobson. Lilly and Ellerton are pregnant and have not retired. Jobson has taken the job as the head women's soccer coach at Baylor. I don't think any of the others have retired, but Wagner has struggled with pace and Dalmy was very young, inexperienced and a surprise addition to the World Cup roster.

As to Brianna Scurry, I think Pia Sundhage handled the Scurry/Solo situation exactly right. She complimented both players when she got the job, invited them both to her early camps, then quietly dropped Scurry, first from the Algarve Cup roster, and now from the Olympic qualifying squad. Scurry was the greatest keeper in the world in the past, but her skills have eroded and her storied mental toughness is no longer enough to keep the ball out of the net. (See Brazil 4, USA 0)

Another omission from the squad I wonder about is Heather Mitts. I thought she would have been sufficiently rehabbed from her knee injury to compete for a spot, but it's her second major knee injury and that can take a long time to heal. This is not the final Olympic roster, either; it's the roster for qualifying, and there could be changes for the actual Olympic team.

GOALKEEPERS: Nicole Barnhart (Gilbertsville, Pa.), Hope Solo (Richland, Wash.);

DEFENDERS: Rachel Buehler (Del Mar, Calif.), Lori Chalupny (St. Louis, Mo.), Stephanie Cox (Elk Grove, Calif.), Kate Markgraf (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.), Christie Rampone (Point Pleasant, N.J.), Cat Whitehill (Birmingham, Ala.);

MIDFIELDERS: Shannon Boxx (Redondo Beach, Calif.), Tobin Heath (Basking Ridge, N.J.), Angela Hucles (Virginia Beach, Va.), Carli Lloyd (Delran, N.J.), Leslie Osborne (Brookfield, Wis.), Lindsay Tarpley (Kalamazoo, Mich.), Kacey White (Arlington, Texas);

FORWARDS: Lauren Cheney (Indianapolis, Ind.), Natasha Kai (Kahuku, Hawaii), Heather O'Reilly (East Brunswick, N.J.), Amy Rodriguez (Lake Forest, Calif.), Abby Wambach (Rochester, N.Y.).

Here's the qualifying schedule:

USA Olympic Qualification Schedule – Group A
Date Match-Up Kickoff Local / Pacific Time
April 4 USA vs. Jamaica 7:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 p.m. PT
April 6 USA vs. Mexico 1:30 p.m. MT / 12:30 p.m. PT

2008 CONCACAF WOMEN’S OLYMPIC QUALIFICATION SCHEDULE
Group A
Date Match-up Kickoff (Local)
April 2 Mexico vs. Jamaica 7:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 p.m. PT
April 4 USA vs. Jamaica 7:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 p.m. PT
April 6 Mexico vs. USA 1:30 p.m. MT / 12:30 p.m. PT

Group B
Date Match-up Kickoff (Local)
April 2 Trinidad & Tobago vs. Canada 5 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. PT
April 4 Costa Rica vs. Trinidad & Tobago 5 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. PT
April 6 Canada vs. Costa Rica 11 a.m. MT / 10 a.m. PT

Semifinals Kickoff (Local)
April 9 Winner Group A vs. Runner-up Group B 5 p.m. MT / 4 p.m. PT
April 9 Winner Group B vs. Runner-up Group A 7:30 p.m. MT / 6:30 p.m. PT

Final/Third-place Game Kickoff (Local)
April 12 Third-Place Game 5 p.m. MT / 4:00 p.m. PT
April 12 Championship 7:30 p.m. MT / 6:30 p.m. PT

On the Subject of Racists on TV

Talking Points Memo: Oops

Racial healer Lou Dobbs explains how he's sick of "cotton pickin'" black leaders tell him how he can and can't talk about race (he catches himself at the last minute -- sorta) ...

Those cotton-picking racists are enough to drive a rich white man crazy, aren't they.

Pat Buchanan: Stone Cold Racist

Patrick J. Buchanan: A Brief for Whitey

America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

And now for the rest of the story, you myopic moron. Black labor, produced by involuntary slaves, used and abused by white people since the first slaves were brought to this country, manufactured a lot of the wealth that white people continue to hold today. When slavery ended during the Civil War, most black slaves got nothing. 40 acres and a mule was a myth. And freedom for many blacks was a myth, as they were forced into a different form of indentured slavery as sharecroppers and second class workers who did the same jobs as whites while paid far less by the white owners.

Oh yeah, and the largest recipients of the benefits of the welfare state? Not white people. Not black people. Children. Children are the largest recipients of welfare benefits in our country. (I'm sure PatRacist would be quick to say they should get a job.) Because the criteria for receiving government benefits is need, not race. Additionally, since there are more whites than blacks, more government money goes to poor whites than to poor blacks. Those programs were not designed to bring blacks into the mainstream. They were designed to end poverty. That hasn't worked, but it's not a racial issue. Buchanan's argument is based on a big, fat lie. He just hates blacks because they are black.

How is it that this Neanderthal still has a prominent position in American political discourse? Give him a fire hose and have him say this stuff and he's Bull Connor. Give him a white hood and have him make these statements and he's a Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke. But he can make these statements on his website in 2008 and MSNBC invites him on as a guest of political programs several times a day as though his opinions are worth anything.

A pox be upon MSNBC for continuing to employ this unrepentant racist.

Maya Moore: Perfect Form

 

Maya Moore (Renee Montgomery and Assistant Coach Tonya Cardoza in background), open practice, Arena at Harbor Yard, Bridgeport, CT, March 22, 2008

UConn Fan

 

Arena at Harbor Yard, Bridgeport, CT, March 25, 2008, before the UConn-Texas game

New Work

 

This is a plate I made for the Worcester Craft Center's pasta dinner fundraiser. I liked it so much I bought it back! Now I'm working on an entire series to match.

For the pottery geeks out there, it's a combination of temmoku and rutile blue glazes, fired in a cone 10 electric kiln.

 

Another view

Sunset

 

Photo taken over the dam of the Wachusetts Reservoir, January 2008.

I got a camera for Christmas and am finally getting around to learning how to post pictures. More to come.

The End Is Near

With 'Hillary' and 'Clinton' written on their foreheads, Jacob Tow, 9, and his sister Hannah Tow, 11, wait for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., not pictured, as she greets the audience at the Ruby Laffoon Dinner at Madisonville North Hopkins High School in Madisonville, Ky., Saturday, March 29, 2008.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

When campaign staff take pay cuts, or bills go unpaid, it's usually a sign: the end is near. A lot of Clinton's cash-on-hand is only available if she ends up in the general election; it's money she has raised from large donors who've already maxed out on contributing to the primary campaign. So she doesn't really have as much money available as she seems to.

You have to take my opinion with a grain of salt, though, as I pronounced the end of the Clinton campaign a month and a half ago.

Are those kids cute or what?

The Politico: Cash-strapped Clinton fails to pay bills

The New York senator’s presidential campaign ended February with $38 million in the bank, according to a report filed last week with the Federal Election Commission, but only $16 million of that can be spent on her battle with Obama.

The rest can only be spent in the general election, if she makes it that far, and must be returned if she doesn’t. If she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills she reported as debt and had not loaned her campaign $5 million, the cash she would have had available at the end of last month to spend on television ads and other up-front expenses would have been less than $2 million.

Break Your Oil Habit

Excellent series from the LA Times outlining practical steps you can take to lessen your reliance on products made from oil.

LATimes: The Oil Habit

THE KITCHEN
Changing habits to cut oil use -- one step at a time

THE GARAGE
Garage presents the worst oil picture

THE BATHROOM
Flush with ideas to cut down on oil use

OTHER ROOMS
A power switch and paper trims

'I try to use things as long as I possibly can'
Q & A with actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr.

More Jacoby: '[T]he future of the franchise'

At left, in only his third Major League appearance, Jacoby Ellsbury proved he can change a game with his speed and aggressiveness. At right, Jacoby, with his dad (far left) and mom, was honored in Oregon in November. (Left: Globe Staff / Jim Davis; right: William Hamilton / The Oregonian.)
Boston Globe Sunday Magazine: The Jacoby Factor
The question isn't whether he's ready for the Red Sox, it's whether they're ready for him.

[Ellsbury's younger brother] Matt says that with Jacoby, whom he and his brothers call Coby, "Basically, it's not over until he wins."

Nothing personal. Except it is.

That trait was blindingly obvious when it came to running races. "I was always the fastest kid. But I really worked on it. I didn't want to just be the fastest," Jacoby says. "I wanted to be by far the fastest." All through his school years, he never lost a race.

Spring Fever

Has Sports Illustrated given Jacoby Ellsbury the SI jinx? He's on the extended cover shot, but on the fold-out half, so technically he's not on the cover. Looking forward to a great ROTY season.

Boston Globe Photo Gallery: 5 Things You Didn't Know About Jacoby Ellsbury

Boston Globe Video: The Jacoby Ellsbury Factor

Brockton Enterprise News: Ellsbury Kid Dynamo for Sox in center
Red Sox rookie Jacoby Ellsbury is ready to take center stage this season.

Boston Herald: Safe to say Ellsbury had ’em at hello

The Oregonian: The 'second coming' of Jacoby Ellsbury
Despite a comparison to Ted Williams, the former OSU star just wants to be an improved version of himself

Boston Globe: Ellsbury on the fast track (with video)

Bangor Daily News: Speed marks Ellsbury's career

Sign the FEC Complaint Against John McCain

John McCain signed up for public financing for his campaign in August of 2007. In October of 2007 the McCain campaign got a $4,000,000 line of credit. He pledged the matching funds as collateral.

Then in January he wrote to the FEC stating he was opting out of the public finance system. But you can't do that after you've pledged your public funds to get a loan. In essence, McCain is claiming that the rules don't apply to him. But once he used the promise of public financing to get that loan, he was committed to following the rules.

He's violating the rules of the campaign finance system; the very one he's been claiming to reform for years.

You can sign on to the complaint filed with the Federal Elections Commission here:

firedoglake: Sign the McCain FEC Complaint Letter

4,000 US Soldiers Have Died In Iraq

Nico Pitney, Huffington Post

The official US death toll in Iraq is now over 4,000 US soldiers; but also

[] In addition to the 4,000 dead American soldiers, the following fatalities have also occurred in Iraq over the past five years:

* Journalists: 135 fatalities
* Non-American military coalition forces: 308 fatalities
* Non-military contractors: At least 1,001 fatalities as of June 30th, 2007
* Iraqi Security Forces: At least 8,057
* Iraqi military forces: During the invasion, between 15,000 and 45,000 Iraqi military personnel died.
* Civilians: Between 400,000 and 650,000 as of June 2006, and over 1,000,000 now.

We are way, way past 4,000 deaths in Iraq. The non-civilian death toll, including journalists, all coalition military forces, contractors and Iraqi security forces, currently stands at a minimum of 13,501, or about 15 every two days since the start of the war. The civilian death toll is actually the greatest humanitarian crisis since the Rwanda genocide, and possibly since even before then (I don't want to start ranking genocides). Somewhere between 4% and 5% of the Iraqi population has died what is termed an "excess death" since the start of the Iraq war. For the sake of comparison, Pennsylvania represents just under 4% of the population of the United States.

Also, keep in mind that these are just deaths, and damage has been done in many other ways. Nearly four million living Iraqis are now refugees, roughly 16% of the population, 40% of the middle class, and larger percentages of religious and ethnic minorities. Between 60% and 70% of Iraqi children suffer from psychological trauma. Tens of thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, have been injured. And oh yeah, the war will cost more than two trillion dollars.

Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses

An image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf disintegration taken from the British Antarctic Survey's Twin Otter aircraft reconnaissance flight. Credit: Jim Elliott, British Antarctic Survey

Biggest news (no pun intended) of my week off is the collapse of a portion of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Variously described as "seven times the size of Manhattan" (National Geographic), "the size of the Isle of Man" (BBC News), "bigger than the city of Montreal" and "twice the size of Prince Edward Island" (AP/The Globe and Mail), and "the size of Northern Ireland" (Independent uk), the piece that collapsed is merely the edge of the larger Wilkins Ice Shelf which is "'hanging by a thread' and may soon break up". British scientists predicted the collapse in 1993, but they thought it would take 30 years; it took 15.

The Antarctic peninsula, which stretches north from the frozen continent towards South America, has experienced unprecedented warming over the past 50 years.

Six other ice shelves have already been lost entirely — the Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and Jones shelves.

But the Wilkins shelf is farther south than other ice that has retreated, so should be better protected by colder temperatures.

Vaughan said: "It's bigger than any ice shelf we've seen retreating before, and in the long term it could be a taste of other things to come. It is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region."

During the break-up, the Wilkins Ice Shelf broke into a sky-blue pattern of exposed deep glacial ice. This true-color image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was taken by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on March 6, 2008. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

Hiatus

Maya Moore hits a fall away jumper over Alyssa May, No. 10, and Ashley McLaughlin of Holy Cross during the first half. (JOHN WOIKE / November 14, 2007)
Hartford Courant

I'm heading to New York to pick up Coach Mom. We're heading to Bridgeport, CT tomorrow to see the first and second round women's NCAA basketball games there. Looking forward to tomorrow's open practices as well. Go UConn! Maya Moore! Geno! Sweet.

Back next Friday.

MSNBC Allowing Racist Hatemonger Pat Buchanan To Attack Obama

Why is the man who gave the most hateful and racist speech in modern political life on MSNBC telling me that Barack Obama went to a hateful church? How come not one purported journalist who appears with him on MSNBC appears to be aware of his well-earned reputation as a racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic anti-Semite? Why does the crawl under his name read "MSNBC Political Analyst" rather than "Conservative Republican standardholder, Nixon speechwriter, Reagan communications director, complete and utter partisan"? If he's an analyst I'm the fucking Pope.

Here's what Pat Buchanan has added to our national discourse (all are taken from this Jake Tapper profile of Buchanan in salon.com):

- once called Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko "the porch-nigger of the Politburo,"

- labeled the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, in which 67 blacks were killed, "whites mistreating a couple of blacks"

- on the subject of immigration policy, proclaimed, "Jose, we ain't gonna let you in again!"

"Rail as they will against 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism ... The momma bird builds the nest. So it was, so it ever shall be. Ronald Reagan is not responsible for this; God is"

"the poor homosexuals -- they have declared war on nature and now nature is exacting its retribution"

once praised no less than Adolf Hitler, calling him "an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him"

- Buchanan insinuated that Jews were roping America into the Gulf War

- "David Duke is busy stealing from me," Buchanan said in 1991. "I have a mind to go down there and sue that dude for intellectual property theft."

- he blamed the farm crisis on "New York bankers" and "the money boys up in New York."

- in a radio interview, [] Buchanan justified his anti-immigration policies by insinuating that the character of Mexicans was generally criminal -- "60,000 of them are in our prisons." The "railroad killer" is the kind of person we're going to have more of unless we build up the border patrol, he said.

- he promised that, if he were elected, he'd open up China for U.S. trade -- or else China will have sold its "last pair of chopsticks in any mall in the United States of America."

- After Nixon was reelected, Buchanan warned his boss not to "fritter away his present high support in the nation for an ill-advised governmental effort to forcibly integrate races."

- In 1990, Buchanan spewed out another hate-filled sound bite: "With 80,000 dead of AIDS, 3,000 more buried each month, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide."

- Even Richard Nixon found the views of his former speech writer, Buchanan, too extreme on the segregation issue. According to a John Ehrlichman memo referenced in Nicholas Lemann's "The Promised Land," Nixon characterized Buchanan's views as "segregation forever." After Nixon was reelected, Buchanan warned his boss not to "fritter away his present high support in the nation for an ill-advised governmental effort to forcibly integrate races."

And this man is lecturing the country about hate? He's the modern equivalent of George Wallace, Orval Faubus and Lester Maddox. That's why he's so offended by Jeremiah Wright's sermons. Because as the man who believes his white culture is under attack by almost anyone who's not a white male like him, he's personally offended by Wright's sermon. And he is making that the media narrative with the hours and hours of platform he gets to spew his views on MSNBC. When he screws up his face and says hateful, Afro-centric, etc., that's coming from deep down inside him. He feels attacked.

Of course, there are no actual journalists on MSNBC anymore. The closest we have is Keith Olbermann, a sportswriter who is the lonely outpost of semi-liberal news and views, but whose show is more infotainment than journalism. Don't expect Keith Olbermann to take on Pat Buchanan's insane rants against Obama. He's part of the MSNBC club and wants to stay there.

I hope that Obama survives this media attack, but it is clear that he is being Swiftboated; the conservative media are out in full force trying to take him down. And Pat Buchanan is gleefully leading the charge.

Here's what Pat Buchanan said during his 1992 convention speech, a dog whistle to racists about the blacks rioting in the streets of Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict. When he says take back our culture at the end of the speech, he's saying take back our white culture. And you know what? That ignores the history of America. We really are a melting pot. There is no white culture. Pat Buchanan really would like to go back to the days of segregation. He just can't say it outright anymore, so he says it in code, like this:

[]
And there were the brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of the LA riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the American dream.

Friends, in those wonderful 25 weeks, the saddest days were the days of the bloody riot in LA, the worst in our history. But even out of that awful tragedy can come a message of hope.

Hours after the violence ended I visited the Army compound in south LA, where an officer of the 18th Cavalry, that had come to rescue the city, introduced me to two of his troopers. They could not have been 20 years old. He told them to recount their story.

They had come into LA late on the 2nd day, and they walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every building but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women. When the troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready, the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.

Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know. And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.

Video of Obama Speech

Text of Obama Speech

HuffPo: Obama Race Speech: Read The Full Text

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

I had two white grandmothers that this speech described to a T -- revered and flawed.

Bushvilles

Here's a BBC report on people living in campers outside Los Angeles after losing their homes. I propose we call these encampments "Bushvilles"; the Depression had Hoovervilles, Bush's depression should have its own eponymous names.

Tent cities have sprung up outside Los Angeles as people lose their homes in the mortgage crisis.

hat tip to Boing Boing