Nobody Asked Me, But...

 

Special Get Carter edition

 

I figure I have about five more of these I'll have to write to cover my sports heroes.

 

It's hard to believe he was only four years older than I was. In point of fact, it's hard to believe he was older than I am.

 

Gary Carter, baseball Hall of Famer, perennial All-Star, and former New York Met, died last evening at age 57.

 

The one thing I remember most about his play and his attitude was, it transported me back to a time when ballplayers had to dig ditches in the offseason, when the game was fun and not dominated by money, when it was still viewed as a child's game. He got a hit, he smiled. Even when he lost a game, it might take him a while, but he could be counted on for a level-headed interview and a smile. It was as if he had been blessed to remain a kid all his life, and he knew it and appreciated every second of it.

 

Let me get some of the negativity out now about this: number one, Carter was a devout born again Christian. He was arrogant and self-indulgent and self-promoting. And his death from gliobastoma in his brain suggests the possibility that at some point Carter experimented with steroids, probably late in his career.

 

All that said, he's a hard man to hate. There are very few people in this world, much less professional sport, who combine cheerful positivity with the smoldering intensity needed to compete and win at the very highest level of achievement that Cary Carter managed. He rarely wore his heart out on his sleeve (especially with respect to his faith) and encouraged everyone by meeting them on their map of the world and making them better players, better people.

 

You saw this on the playing field when he would handle a young pitcher, like Ron Darling or Dwight Gooden in the mid-1980s. Somehow, he made them believe even more in their ability and themselves.

 

It showed in his own performances, too, that he could will himself to greatness. Take his first game with the New York Mets in 1985. I will never forget his rextra-inning walk off homerun. I was jogging along 30 Street in Long Island City, a few blocks from home, passing a Greek Orthodox church and I remember glancing over as he stepped up to the plate and throwing a quick prayer skyward.

 

I don't know if God heard either my prayer or Carter's prayer, or if he even cared. All I know is, with one swing of his bat, Gary Carter created a whole new legend in New York Sports.

 

It seemed to happen over and over: when the chips were down, when the Mets needed a kick in the ass, Carter provided one. In 1986, in the playoffs against the Houston Astros, he had struggled at the plate, until he squibbed a single over second base, and sparked a rally.

 

In the World Series that year, he really could have been the MVP of the contest between the Red Sox and the Mets. After the Mets lost two games at home, they stormed into Fenway Park in Boston, winning game three, and making Boston remember that they had won 108 games that year and weren't going to go quietly.

 

And then Carter took the reins in Game Four and unleashed two titanic homeruns that tied the Series and set up one of the most remarkable games in baseball history, Game Six of the 1986 series.

 

If you say "Game Six" to any baseball fan, they will immediately know the game you're talking about. Carter set up the most memborable inning in baseball history by tying the game on a sacrifice fly in the eighth. He scored the first run in tenth after singling with two out, and down three runs.

 

All he could think as he stepped to the plate was, "I will not make the last out of a World Series." That spark, that decision to practically will a ball past the infield and to drop into the outfield safely, inspired the next three hitters-- Kevin Mitchell, Series MVP Ray Knight and of course, Mookie Wilson-- to keep the rally going.

 

The Mets of Gary Carter, after all, "invented" the rally cap. If it hadn't already been a hackneyed and ancient phrase, "You Gotta Believe!" would have been this team's motto.

 

This is not to take anything away from the great players on those teams, like Keith Hernandez or Darryl Strawberry or Gooden or Darling or Knight, but Carter really was the impact player that a championship is built around.

 

I had season tickets for parts of the seasons of 1987 and 1988, and so Carter became something of a must-see player. I remember sitting with a pregnant wife, cheering Carter on in 1988 as he sought his 300th career homerun, and every time he came to the plate at Shea, the thundering cheer "Gah-REE! Gah-REE! Gah-REE!" would rise from the stands like a sudden release of skyrockets. Even the fetus that would later become my daughter got into the action, stomping her feet on the placenta.

 

There were three pregnant women in that section, Mezzanine section 27, that year. It was funny.

 

Carter's career effectively ended that year, 1988. He hit 11 home runs, and the Mets, the dazzling team that just kept winning, won a hundred games, and met the LA Dodgers in the playoffs.

 

A team they went 10-1 against during the regular season. In a cold and rainy playoff series, the Mets lost. The crushing blow actually came early in the series, in game four, when Mike Sciosia hit a two run homer in the ninth off Dwight Gooden who was pitching a one hitter up until then, and who was seriously coked up.

 

What is it about boyhood heroes that cause us to reflect in their glory as if it was our own?

 

To some extent, Carter's death is a sudden reminder that life does end, sometimes earlier than we expect, and that each day is precious enough to treasure and cherish as tho it all ends tomorrow. Carter was 57. He was the last of my sports heroes that I thought I'd have to memorialize, as he was the youngest. He was also among a handful of men I admired as an adult, as opposed to an adolescent who was still wet behind the ears and hadn't experienced the heartbreak and ennui of adulthood.

 

Perhaps Carter brought me back to my childhood, where I could spend entire days in my backyard playing basketball or throwing a tennis ball against a wall thirty feet away, trying to take self-batting practice, and pitching to a chalk outline on the same wall, adjusted in height to compensate for the short distance. His nickname, after all, was "The Kid."

 

Perhaps it's that I foolishly decided to pick up the scraps of a ballplaying career last year and deluded myself into thinking I still have the chops for this game when I took batting practice and was still able to clear fences. I didn't want to believe in mortality, in aging, in breaking down and atrophying, in eyes that can no longer track a baseball into my waiting glove, in legs that can't break twenty seconds around the bases as I nurse a tearing Achilles tendon and a tennis elbow that screams in terror with each throw and swing, in the pain the days after a game, in the sleepless nights of worrying if I can just get that one last hit to get to .500 again, all things I took for granted in my youth.

 

To see Carter leave this plane means one less hope for a recaptured youth, I guess. We all have totems in our lives, things that mark us as older, signposts that remind us the arrow of time moves left to right and cannot be reversed. You can't make a U-turn, when your favorite childhood actor dies or gets pregnant or becomes a grandmother. You can't bring a favorite aunt or uncle or parent or sister or brother back from the grave. You can't undo the maturation into adulthood and all the responsibilities and duties of life that are thrust upon you, much like life itself is thrust upon you, much like birth is a traumatic experience. 

 

The cocoon of childhood, the womb of baseball, dries and shrivels as we get older. I see it now not as a game but as a business, Baseball Incorporated. It's hard to cheer a bunch of millionaires to win a championship that stands to benefit a cartel of billionaires, but moreso when you've played the game and fell in love with its beauty and elegant simplicity.

 

You throw a ball. You catch a ball. You hit a round ball squarely with a round bat and if you're really good, you hit safely three out of ten times. And yet entire industries have been built around exploiting this play, and others and if you're an astute observer as I pretend to be, you begin to realize it's all a fucking joke, that the ultimate extension of all this is baby's first step becomes a market for collectibles. 

 

I sit here, crying, wishing for one last opportunity to see that smile, to cheer "Gah-REE! Gah-REE! Gah-REE!" once more as he paws the dirt in the batter's box, digging in for one last home run. And one more milestone passed in my own life.

, Chameleon

 

You come and go.

CLIMATEGATE!

 

Only this time, it's the denialists who are being phonied up.

 

That's gonna leave a mark.

Maybe It Was Performance Anxiety

 

Governor Scott Walker cancelled an appearance with President Obama at a Masterlock factory that employs 100 union workers. Said jobs were taken back from China. He cited a stomach flu.

 

Gee...can't imagine why standing up in front of a couple hundred unionized workers would trouble Walker...

Virginia Makes A Run For "Stoopidest State In The Union"

 

Your move, Floriduh!

Shark Jumped? Check

 

OK, I was fine with artisanal breads and cheeses, and microbrewed beers, but this is going a bit too far

Woof!

 

Mitt Romney's "Crategate" may yet bite him in the ass.

 

Gimme your best pun in comments.

China Steps In

 

Interesting development on the world markets today: China has agreed to extend further support to the European Union in an attempt to bailout Greece.

 

In truth, she really was the only nation who could afford to. Now the question is, what's in it for them?

Scientists Have A Bit Of Fun

 

Check out the name of the test given to patients in this article.

Part Of The Budget Collapse

 

NASA is scaling back some fairly interesting planned missions.

Budget For Me, Nothing For Thee

Professor Jeffrey Sachs was on Countdown last night, talking about the budget proposal President Obama submitted to Congress this week. His appearance was in response to an op-ed he submitted to the Financial Times of London in which he states:

President Barack Obama’s budget for 2013 will set off a vitriolic battle. Republicans will rail against the Democrats’ “class warfare” and Democrats will rail against the Republicans’ “coddling of the rich”. Yet it is mostly for show. The rich will win in their fund balances while probably losing at November’s presidential polls, and the poor and working class will probably re-elect Obama but suffer a continuing decline in relative and perhaps absolute incomes.

Consider the bottom line of the Obama budget. The policy is to cut total primary (non-interest) federal spending from about 22.6 to 19.3 per cent of gross domestic product from 2011 to 2020, while revenues would rise from recession lows of about 15.4 per cent of GDP in 2011 to some 19.7 by 2020. Compare that with Republican congressman Paul Ryan’s budget a year ago. Mr Ryan’s budget aimed for about 17 per cent of GDP in primary outlays by 2020, with revenues at about 18 per cent of GDP. The difference is modest, but the important fact is this. Both sides are committed to significant cuts in government programmes relative to GDP. These cuts will be especially swingeing in the discretionary programmes for education; environmental protection; child nutrition; job re-training; transition to low-carbon energy; and infrastructure. The entire civilian discretionary budget will amount to only 2 per cent of GDP, or less, as of 2020, in the budget plans of both Obama and the Republicans.

Sachs is right: The budget battles of the 21st Century have been narrowed down to paring away at the middle class.

Worse, this was a predictable situation. Indeed, it was predicted ahead of the first Clinton administration, that eventually, defense spending, Social Security and Medicare, and debt service on the cumulative budget deficits, the latter two mandatory figures, would choke the life out of any discretionary spending (except defense, which for some odd reason is not considered discretionary *koffkoffPORKkoffkoff*)

And then President Clinton took the then-bold (and now, radical) step of raising taxes on the wealthy while lowering them on the job-creating middle classes.

Yea, "job-creating middle class." That works in two ways, and please allow me this digression: First, 99% of jobs in this country are created by small businesses. 90% of small businesses are owned by people who make less than $50,000 from those businesses. You can't get much more "middle class" than $50K (use Google, the figures are out there.) Second, the middle class is the engine that keeps consumption going. Computers, cars, housing, iPads, food, clothing, shelter, all these sectors thrive on the middle class.

There are many more poor (Sachs and Olbermann both pointed out last night that one in two Americans now live in a low-income household, a staggering figure,) but they can only spend so much after they've paid rent. And let's face facts, it's the middle class that is caught up in keeping up with the Joneses.

But I digress....Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, created 23 million jobs with his tax cuts on the middle class, and not only balanced the budget, but left a surplus.

Squandered immediately, I should point out, which brings us back to where we are now: the same boat as 20 years ago, deciding who should get hurt least.

In fairness to Obama's budget, he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy while maintaining Bush's middle class tax cuts, such as they were. And it is true that just cutting up the Bush era credit card of tax cuts would provide a neat little surplus in not-too-short order.

Here's the thing, tho: the argument over the budget, centered as it is around discretionary spending, mirrors the battle for re-election that Obama faces this year. There is so little left once you take defense, Social Security, and debt service off the table (in the election, staunch Republicans and Democrats) that the scraps are what will be left.

Similarly, the budget and the election link in this fashion: how those scraps are viewed and disposed of will determine if Obama wins, or whomever the Republicans set up to lose wins.

All Obama really needs to do is to change the dialogue and show that there's more meat than these burnt dry scraps. And that works in both arenas.

 

Red?

Lead!

 

Dead.

Santorum Bubbles Up

 

What does it say about Mitt Romney (or Newt Gingrich, for that matter) that the most improbably credible of Republican candidates is now leading in national polls?

OHGOD! I'M THIRD EYE BLIND!!!!

 

Brain bleach please

Same-Sex Marriage Is Officially Here To Stay

 

A Valentine's Day tradition is for couples to get married at the top of the Empire State Building.

 

Today, the first same-sex couple got hitched up there.

You Kids Get Off My Lawn!

 

Old school Twitter

Interesting Story, If True

So Israel has publicly denied they seriously contemplated a strike against Iran and her nuclear facilities given the current intelligence. This claim has been echoed by American sources, like Leon Panetta.

 

And yet...

THE head of Israel's foreign intelligence service made a secret trip to Washington this month to gauge the likely US reaction to a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

The content of Mossad chief Tamir Pardo's discussion with his American counterparts has been revealed in a Newsweek article titled ''Obama's Dangerous Game With Iran''.

Unnamed US officials claim that Mr Pardo's line of questioning to David Petraeus, the CIA chief, ran: ''What is our [US] posture on Iran? Are we ready to bomb? Would we [do so later]? What does it mean if [Israel] does it anyway?''

That certainly sounds like the contemplation of an imminent attack to me.

Much of this alarm is centered on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report last fall that suggested strongly that Iran was developing a weapons program. Iran has denied that, claiming any nuclear facility development was for peaceful purposes, like domestic energy requirements.

The IAEA has been strangely reticent in the wake of preliminary talks last week, to characterize Iran's defense, saying only that the talks were "good" and that more talks will take place next week.

A clearer picture, however, is given by the reactions of both French and Chinese diplomats have been urging Iran to better cooperate with the IAEA inspectors, who may already have a report in the pipeline that paints a not-flattering picture of Iran.

Today's events make it likely that Iranian policy will stiffen.

Clouds Darken

 

The clouds of world war have already gathered, what with the Arab Spring and the tensions between Iran and Israel, and Syria and the rest of the region.

 

So these headlines are pretty scary, in that context:

 

1) Bombs target Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia; 2 injured

 

2) Pakistan PM indicted for contempt

 

3) Man Held After Amsterdam Threat

 

4) Bahrain Police Fire Tear Gas at Protesters

 

5) Azerbaijan in row with Iran over 'Israeli spies'

 

6) Hamas' Haniyeh: Armed resistance is the only way to fight Israel

 

Yea. Better start stocking up on supplies now.

Assad-hole

The Arab League has offered to send troops in to damp down the civil unrest in Syria while a settlement can be reached.

 

Bashar al-Assad declined the offer.

A Short Prayer

Oh, Lord, please don't let Obama cave on the Bush tax cuts this time...

 

I would really like to believe that he won't, that this is an election year and he needs to rile up his base and show independents that there's a reasonable course for deficit reduction that requires. Doing. Nothing.

 

And it's an optimistic hope, too.

 

But he's disappointed so many times in the past. However, if the rumours of eleven dimensional chess are true, this would be a good place to spring the gambit.

Robert Kagan: So Close, Yet So Far

As I scanned this Wall Street journal article by Robert Kagan ("The Romney advisor read by Democrats"), I started to believe there was hope for the right wing, that somewhere in there was a seed that could germinate and become a 21st century flower in the garden of thought.

 

HAH! Until I got to this:

Both Beijing and Moscow already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. If they gain greater relative influence in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions and more autocrats hanging on to power. The balance in a new, multipolar world might be more favorable to democracy if some of the rising democracies—Brazil, India, Turkey, South Africa—picked up the slack from a declining U.S. Yet not all of them have the desire or the capacity to do it.

Kagan misses an obvious point here: it wasn't until American military power and moral authority began to cave that we saw the Arab Spring, because we propped up our own autocrats, like Saddam Hussein, like the Shah of Iran, like Muammar Qaddafy (at least in the Bush years,) like Hosni Mubarak and any number of felons and thugs that we've given comfort to in the name of "American interests."

 

Bob, you lost all credibility with this. Go back and re-read a history book.

The Definition Of "Behind The Curve"

Meet Richard Florida (pronounced "Flo-rid-DUH," unlike the hip hop artist).

Even with the president’s approval rating showing signs of life and the Republicans busily bashing themselves over the head — “one is a practicing polygamist and he’s not even the Mormon,” retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recently quipped about her party’s two frontrunners — America continues to track right, according to polling data released by the Gallup Organization last week.

Polling on things like political bent is usually inaccurate, wildly so. It is unspecific, and subject to an awful lot of interpretations, particularly if the questions are designed to be clever.

Indeed, this is likely a lagging poll. As was made clear by the Komen debacle, America is starting to realize that the fruits of the progressive movement are in danger of being taken away, and are starting to fight back.

Indeed, all one has to do is to look at the bounce in support, so easily poo-poohed by Floriduh, that Barack Obama has received after starting to stand firm on his ground. And of course, the positive view most Americans have about the Occupy Wall Street movement and its goal of income equality (I'm sure some idiot will troll me with a Rasmussen poll showing high negatives. That happens when you take a poll at the local bierhallen.)

If anything, Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that for thirty years, they've let their lifestyles be dictated by a monster worse than Big Government: Big Business. Every year, the anti-spending protests on Black Friday grow larger. The local food movements increase volume. Local shopping, a way to make the community stronger, is a far more attractive option for people who see the big box stores, both bricks and mortar and in cyberspace, as a metaphor for isolationism.

This will continue, I think. It's an election year, and already the Occupy Movement has made splashes in DC at the CPAC convention, where Andrew Breitbart has his lunch stolen by protestors, similar to his drunken rant out a restaurant window in Santa Monica a few years back: incoherent and irrelevant.

They've followed the primary season around, making small splashes in states and getting on the local news, something they desperately needed in order to put a human face on the protest movement, which had been limited out of necessity to mostly large urban marches and camp-ins.

The conventions will be prime turf for them to make their very non-violent and polite message heard. Indeed, both sides of the aisle have begun to incorporate the OWS message into their rhetoric. When Newt Gingrich...Gingrich!...can attack Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch billionaire corporatist tool, you know you've had an impact!

So while to say America is a conservative country is not totally inaccurate, to say its becoming more conservative is idiotic. About the only "proof" Floriduh provides is a chart that shows America is getting stupider, and as we all know, stupid = conservative.

We smarten up real quick, though.

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

 

1) The 2012 World Press Photos of the Year have been announced. Obviously, they were taken in 2011, but this is the overall winner by Samuel Aranda. You can see the others here.

 

2) The 1% wins again. 99% of women in America, and 98% of Catholic women, use some form of contraception, but because a few non-lay (pun intended) folks and a bunch of right-wing hypocrites get their panties in a knot, Obama will cave. WHEN WILL YOU GROW A DAMNED BACKBONE, MR. PRESIDENT????

 

3) Where do you draw the line, huh? When do you see some benefit for your appeasements? To end the Iraq war, you moved troops to Afghanistan. To close Gitmo, you sent the prisoners home to either stew in anger over their wrongful incarceration or to go right back to fomenting trouble. To pass healthcare reform in the first place, you knelt in front of Ben Nelson and other "moderate Democrats." To get the debt ceiling raised, you collapsed on taxes...and then the damned deal didn't get done anyway. Where does it all end?

 

4) CPAC is happening this week. To quote Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond, "The loons! The loons!"

 

5) Maybe if they'd had brought a TV into the room, we'd have gotten a better deal, and not another bailout.

 

6) Humiliating candidate is humiliating. And humiliated.

 

7) I can certainly understand targeting Apple over the deplorable conditions at Foxconn, but the message has to be expanded. ALL technology companies employ workers who are paid below-market wages and work in deplorable conditions. Either we have to go full-on Luddite or we have to figure a way to get everyone on board.

 

8) There's some good news for people who are concerned about developing Alzheimer's Disease.

 

Um, as I found out this week, that now includes me. I've been debating talking about this, since it's so personal and so very very preliminary, but I've had some genetic testing done and apparently I carry the APOE variant 4 gene. Normal risk for a male of European descent is 7.2% My risk is double that, and that's just based on genotyping. Add in the severe dementia that both my parents suffered-- if it was Alzheimer's related-- and my odds rocket up to 60-80% of developing the disease (assuming both parents had Alzheimer's.)

 

Not that I haven't had my suspicions. Just this week, I tried to shower twice in the same hour.

 

9) Let's lighten the mood: Even conservatives are now acknowledging Ann Coulter's "special status."

 

10) Finally, everybody knows that, after heavy exertion, nothing makes a body feel better than a couple of NSAIDs and a massage. But why does massage work so well? Here's why...

The New York Times: So Close, And Yet So Wrong

Enclosed within this article is a hint that the Times of New York could get their hands on the real story, if they wanted to:

When Fred Wilson, a prominent New York venture capitalist who has backed Twitter and Zynga, wanted to watch the Knicks game last month, he got an unpleasant surprise. Time Warner Cable was not showing the game because of a contract dispute.

Frustrated, he turned to the Internet for help. Within minutes he was streaming the game illegally on his big-screen TV. [...]

Seeking out an illicit stream of a game that you should be able to watch legitimately is one thing. But media companies say they are facing a relentless barrage of far less defensible thefts involving movies, television shows and music.

Now, that's true. No one wants to see piracy be the modus operandi of the Internet, except maybe those megapirates who would stand to become the media conglomerates of piracy.

And there's where the story lies: conglomeration.

See, if you frame the piracty as one of giving the artist his due return for his efforts, people are pretty sympathetic to reforming the internet to ensure that, no matter how you view a film or listen to a record, an artist can be reasonably assured he's getting his fair share for creating it.

After all, what's the incentive to make more music or movies if you aren't going to earn a living at it?

It's the corporatocracy that makes this story. The publishers and producers whose only function is to finance and distribute the works that artists create for it take an undue percentage of the "gate," so to speak.

When you frame the discussion this way, suddenly people are less sympathetic to the production end and more sympathetic to pirates.

Take that Time Warner anecdote. It's true, Time Warner, New York City's biggest cable provider, cannot show games from Madison Square Garden (which, ironically, uses Time Warner in its restaurants to show out of market games.) Cablevision, another conglomerate, owns the Garden and the teams that play in it. It was pretty much fated from the get-go that Time Warner would be barred from broadcasts, or at least charged an insane amount of money.

Which would be passed onto the consumer.

Similarly, DISH Network has opted out of its contract with Cablevision. So people resort to piracy.

But here's the thing: opting for piracy in a more legitimate dispute like this encourages the rationalization that leads to more piracy: "I'm not paying $14 to sit in a theatre! I'll Bittorrent the movie!" or "$49.95 to watch a fight? Why, when I can get it for free!"

And so on. It's a slippery slope before you're downloading albums because the CD costs $15 (and the band gets a few bucks of that).

If the Times covered that story, how revenues in arts and culture are divvied up, then we could have an honest story about piracy and how to control it. Until then, it's all smoke and mirrors.

Deer, Meet Headlights

Ladies and gentlemen, Al Cardenas of CPAC

Al Cardenas, the lead organizer for the Conservative Political Action Conference, said Thursday that attendees were arriving at the conference “angrier than [he’s] seen in some time” in part due to the Health and Human Services decision to mandate contraception coverage in employee health care plans.

That's not why they're all butthurt, Al. It's because they're looking at the dismal prospect of four more years under the Kenyan Usurper, and the best you guys can come up with in response is...Mitt Romney.

Clueless Al.

Supercontinent!

 

Introducing Amnesia!

 

Er, Amasia...

How Much To Screw A Nation Like The United States?

 

$25 billion

 

We are a cheap date.

(dogwhistle)

I think we're going to see this trope more, now that Rick Santorum has reeled off some victories:

The resurgence of social and cultural issues in voters' minds poses new challenges for GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney as he reels from surprising losses Tuesday to conservative favorite Rick Santorum.

The economy remains the No. 1 issue of concern for a majority of Americans. But the recent hoopla surrounding the Obama administration's support of contraceptives, the court ruling against California's same-sex marriage ban and heated debate about abortion access has created a perfect storm that has pushed these seemingly dormant issues to the surface.

"They've never been far from the surface. A lot of people thought the social issues had disappeared but that has never been the case," said Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who focuses on polling data and public opinion. "These issues are obviously very important within a conservative party, the Republican party."

Now, Romney's record indicates a conservative bend on these issues: while he has enacted legislation in Massachussetts requiring hospitals, even religious ones, to perform abortions in the case of rape victims (not an unreasonable position, but more on that in another piece,) he has vetoed bills authorizing the morning-after pill (called the "abortion pill" by the living-room gibbons on the right,) which the legislature passed over his veto.

Yet, Romney gets the blame.

Meanwhile, Santorum has publicly been outspoken on social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion (and likely, the hoopla over contraception for lay employees of the Catholic Church.)

In other words, this is a battle of right v. righty-right.

So where's the dogwhistle?

I mean, you have two candidates who have publicly worn their religion on their sleeves, one a church elder in fact. You'd think the choice would be harder.

Except....wellllllll....see, one's a Mormon. And there's where I think Santorum is striking gold, particularly in states that were part of the westward expansion of the nation.

The history of Mormonism in America is a harsh one: kicked out of New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and nearly every other state Mormons tried to settle in, they headed west. In fact, Mormons would end up being a major component and impetus to expand American hegemony to the west coast.

It probably didn't help that Joseph Smith was a crackpot who conned people left and right. He was a product of New York's Chautauqua "Burned-over District", which also produced the first of the apocalyptic preachers, William Miller, as well as the Fox sisters of Hydesville, who used to hold seances complete with table-rappings that were later admitted to be hoaxes.

The Mormons settled in an area they called Deseret, which actually encompassed most of the plains east of the Rockies from Canada to Mexico. The Federal government looked askance at this idea when the Mormons applied for statehood, and gave them Utah as a playground.

Family oral histories of the people the Mormons encountered are probably the most effective smear that Santorum can use without getting in too much trouble. The beauty of these histories is that he doesn't even have to initiate them. Elder family members will recount what their grandparents told them, which may in fact be twice-told tales already.

 

The irony is, as a Catholic, Santorum is really the lesser of two evils for these people.

Delicious Ironies

 

Just the day after the Appelate court in California took down Proposition 8 in a slam-fest against the legislature, one of the couples that started the whole ball rolling announced they are divorcing

 

It's finally come to pass: gay divorces are making news.

Seems To Be A FOX News Kinda Day

Shorter FOX News website

Blacks are still black!

 

The subtext, of course, is "Why can't we still call 'em [insert N word here]?"

How Desperate Is FOX News To Improve Their Falling Ratings?

 

They interview candy

 

By the way, this exchange shows just how ignorant and idiotic Steve Doocy and the other blonde bimbo are:

Host Steve Doocy, however, seemed to be fully invested in the interview. He mentioned that Eddie Van Halen used to stipulate, in his contract riders, that there should be no brown M&M’s in the dressing room.

“That’s got to make a candy feel bad,” Doocy said, feigning a frown.

“Well, he didn’t know what he was missing,” Ms. Brown replied, “and I’m the ruler of all. So…it’s his loss.”

“Take that, Eddie,” Doocy replied.

"Ms. Brown" was the M&M.

The truth of the Van Halen story is, yes, it was in their contract, no brown M&Ms. But here's the thing: it wasn't that they had anything against brown M&Ms.

They put that clause in there as a very clever way to make sure the contract was being adhrered to. It was a down-and-dirty "checksum." If they found brown M&Ms in the dressing room, they could almost be certain the promoter or arena was screwing them in other ways, too. They would then unleash the lawyers and accountants, and usually recoup bookoo bucks.

Yes, it was a cute way to get a gimmick extended another thirty seconds, but the gimmick shouldn't have happened in the first place AND they shouldn't have doubled down on the stoopit.

A Trainwreck

That's sort of the take-away I get from the 9th Circuit decision on the case against Proposition 8 in California.

 

The relevant paragraph:

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," states the opinion written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, one of the court's most liberal judges.

This is the litigatory equivalent of "Ohno, you din't!"

Attorneys on both sides seem prepared to take this case to the Supreme Court, and I'd be willing to bet that at least six justices (the four liberals, Scalia and Roberts) are pawing the ground in the starting gate.

But...

The decision applies strictly to California, even though the 9th Circuit could have extended it over all nine states in its jurisdiction.

Too, the Appeals Court relied heavily on the 1996 Supreme Court ruling which overturned a Colorado law that limited civil rights protections for homosexuals.

Taken together, these conditions may force the SCOTUS to say "Thanks, but no thanks." Not that it has a history of non-intervention (Bush v. Gore *koffkoff*) but that was a different court, almost altogether.

It's going to be an interesting year, as the kids say.

 

Santorum Spreads His Wins Around

 

With three wins last night in state caucuses in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri (technically a primary, altho the results are nonbinding,)  Rick Santorum vaulted rather impressively back into the pack for the Republican nomination for President.

 

See? The MSM isn't the only one who can treat this as a horse-race! But I digress...

 

There are two intriguing results out of these outcomes.

 

First, Missouri should have been solidly in Mitt Romney's column. That there might be a symbolic "Anybody But Mitt" protest in this nonbinding vote is true, and should not be underestimated. Republicans are pretty angry over the weak field of candidates poised to take on the now-formidable re-election effort of President Obama. Will Missouri overturn these results when they choose at convention in March?

 

I think so. I think the voters of Missouri were sending Romney a message to either amp up his volume or expect really tepid support come the fall.

 

Next, Minnesota. What should be considered a moderate state-- after all, this state has sent both Michele Bachmann AND Al Franken to Washington-- should have been a slam-dunk for Romney.

 

Caucuses are peculiar things, however. A small fraction of the actual voting population participates, and that leaves a much larger margin of error from "what should be." It comes down to commitment and enthusiasm, and as the Missouri results imply, there's very little enthusiasm for Mitt out there. The Minnesota Mitt contingent probably took a flier, assuming he'd get the nod anyway in Tampa.

 

So while it's shocking that a rock-ribbed socially conservative loon like Santorum took such a large plurality of the vote, that Romney couldn't even outdraw Ron Paul suggests that the NotMitt vote is very strong in middle America. Could be Mormonism. Could be Massachussetts. Could be misanthropy.

 

The signs were there that Santorum was going to pull a trifecta yesterday. Even the "esteemed" Wall Street Journal got it ass backwards in analyzing the sudden spate of advertising from Romney attacking Santorum, thinking it was just a champ putting the finishing touches on a wobbling opponent, when in truth, Romney was desperate to salvage any victory in any of the votes yesterday.

 

After all, if your rival is drowning, you don't throw him a life vest. That Romney even acknowledged Santorum's presence in the race was a red alert that things were going squirrely.

 

By winning two binding votes yesterday, Santorum makes a strong case to take this race to the convention. All three that he's won (which includes Iowa), and then Missouri, suggest a strong heartland preference for Santorum. At the very least, this puts him at the very top of any short list for Vice Presidential candidates.

 

 

Just When I Thought I Was Out....

 

...they pull me back in!

 

36.3 megapixels....*whistling*

Is The US Constitution A Dying Document?

 

The rest of the world seems to think so.

 

Among the critiques are that it provides very few rights, that it's old and economically worded (e.g. doesn't do a very good job of explaining precisely what it's trying to say.) Add to that recent SCOTUS rulings that have drastically reinterpreted the document according to "original intent" and the general decline in American power and influence around the globe and you have a recipe for a dying document.

 

And with it, a dying nation.

Uncertain? Or Confused?

The Fatah and Hamas factions of the Palestinian people have come to an understanding on a pact to unify the factions. Mahmoud Abbas will continue to be the chief executive for the interim, supported by an independently elected cabinet until full elections can be organized.

 

This surprising move brings the Gaza Palestinians and the West Bank Palestinians together.

 

Understandably, the Arab street as reflected by its press, is uncertain. Note in particular the Israeli reactions.

 

I suppose there's good reason. When they aren't squaring off against Israeli forces, the two factions have been at each other's throats. This is not conducive to settling the larger issues at hand.

 

But here's the thing: a divided Palestinian people is actually in the best interests of many of the more strident regimes in the region, like Syria and Iran and yes, Israel, who can focus attention on the Israeli conflicts while minimizing the internal strife as just frustration with the "Zionist oppression of Israel," or some such conflated attitude. For Israel's part, the strife merely serves to support their claim that, so long as Hamas is a disruptive force, Israel's existence is threatened, so why should he deal fairly with the Palestinian Authority?

 

And yet, interestingly enough, Hamas' leadership in exile in Syria all left that country (the last departed yesterday) to head for Israel, under the guise of security from that nation's uprisings.

 

Sounds like a cover story to me. It's possible that Syria may have undermined Hamas' position as opposed to Fatah (although I admit that's pure speculation, and I really don't have a particular body of evidence to point to). It's also possible that Hamas has started to cozy up to Iran, which would explain the collapse of Syrian safety.

 

Naturally, Bejamin Netanyahu has begun sabre rattling over the deal, all but threatening Abbas with an "either you're with us, or with the terrorists" posture.

 

And yet, it was Netanyahu himself who insisted on a unified Authority before Israel would sit down and negotiate in good faith.

 

Mr. Netanyahu, peace is not for haggling. It is not sold in the open market like a carpet or a pound of meat. Sit down, and shut up now.

Super ButtHurt

By now, you've probably heard about the foofaraw the Clint Eastwood commercial during halftime at the "Super Bowl" created.

 

Most notably, Karl Rove's "disappointment" with respect to the implied political message that Eastwood is endorsing a second Obama term.

 

Now, the ad itself is pretty inocuous, as political ads go-- assuming you want to call it that, which I'm not ready to. Eastwood narrates a script about "halftime in America" and how Detroit has fought back and so can the country. (transcribed here)

 

It's more of a pep talk than a political ad. That's not to say there isn't an undertone of gratitude for Obama's bailout of Chrysler. That is part of the backdrop. If Obama hadn't bailed them out, they wouldn't have the money to sell cars by running advertisements.

 

And interestingly, Eastwood had criticized the bailouts, yet here he is, getting up in ol' Karl's paranoid face about comebacks. Here's where I suspect Rove gets his panties in a twist:

I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

Given the toxic nature of rhetoric from Rove's party, particularly the Teabaggers, it's hard not to take a comment like that personally, especially since Rove himself has rattled his chains over some of the nonsense that people like Sarah Palin and Rick perry have spouted.

Rove would be on firmer ground if he critiqued the soon-to-be-released film Act of Valor which features a Navy SEAL team sent in to rescue a kidnapped ambassador, which actually features real SEALs. That seems to be a pretty blatant attempt to remind the American people about Obama's foreign policy, which has been effective and has completed steps that the Bush administration...you know, the people Rove worked for?...could only have dreamed of doing.

Still, to me, Rove's complaint about the Chrysler ad sounds more like "Why in the hell didn't I think of that?"

 

 

 

 

There Won't Be Snow In Africa This Christmas Time

 

It will wait until Valentine's Day.

 

But there's no such thing as global climate change, no sirreee!

Hidden Agenda

 

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has released an advertisement endorsing same-sex marriage.

 

Clearly, the logical outcome for Blankfein is to be allowed to marry his money.

Speaking Of Sport

 

Alberto Contador has been stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title after he was unable to convince the Court of Arbitration for Sport that the test results showing he had ingested clenbuterol were erroneous, or more accurately, picked up traces from meat he had eaten. The panel showed great insight by pointing out it was more likely ingested by a "contiminated food supplement," (i.e. pill.)

 

Contrast this with the fact that the US Federal government closed their investigation of Lance Armstrong over allegations he not only used performance-enhancing medications, but pushed them on other teammates. No charges will be filed.

 

This two-year investigation was likely the last Armstrong will be subject to, now that he has ended his professional athletic career, but is also one of at least a half dozen investigations that have throughly looked into the matter and have either cleared Armstrong or refused to level charges.

 

Some would say that's because of Armstrong's pull and his public persona, but here's the thing: Contador had similar pull with the international cycling and sport federations as a multi-time Tour winner and as one of only five men to win the trifecta of the Giro d-Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta d'Espana in the same season. Even Armstrong had not pulled that off. The 2010 victory was arguably one of the most exciting bike races in history, as Contador won by the same margin he gained over eventual second place finisher (and now likely champion) Andy Schleck when Schleck threw a chain on his bike.

 

True, Armstrong is a pretty likable guy, especially after his involvement with his Livestrong organization, while Contador's history is littered with other riders (including, ironically, Armstrong) he's used to climb his way to the top, so there's less loyalty for Contador.

 

But then, Armstrong's personal history is pretty ugly, in and of itself, so six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

For me, there's a certain schadenfreude in seeing an uberaggressive (steroidally so?) rider bumped down a notch. I wonder, had Contador done the gentlemanly thing (and bike racing is nothing if not genteel in such matters) and waited for Schleck when his chain slipped, if any of this would have happened?

Bread And Circuses

 

(photo courtesy)

 

So, I'm led to understand that last night, one group of talentless millionaires defeated another group of even less-talented millionaires, thus earning hundreds of millions of dollars for a cartel of socialist-billionaires. Even deeper irony is that the entire nation stopped for four hours (or more) to watch this spectacle, which included "entertainment" by yet another passel of millionaires on a broadcast that featured hundreds of millions of dollars spent not on improving the country, but on trying to segregate your pocket, green from white.

 

And the deepest irony? The talentless millionaires all perform under the aegis of the least-powerful sports union and performed in a state that hates them for their union. This is something along the lines of a black gospel choir putting on a performance in Mobile, Alabama at a Klan headquarters in the 1950s.

 

I might have been able to stir up some respect for the game if even one player had made mention of this irony even once during the week, and then vowed to do something about it.

 

But it's a joke. And so are Americans for watching a spectacle involving people who have no concept of what a real job entails (having been prepped and pampered all their young lives) playing for a meaningless trophy in a "sport" that requires no talent and is centrally controlled by a bunch of old white men who "coach" players into executing a game plan that they themselves implement and woe betide the player who doesn't follow the playbook!

 

Every player is replaceable, no matter how successful they are, and our nation is littered with the broken bodies of those who put it all out there on the field and now can't even button a shirt to attend a dinner thrown by the billionaire-socialist who exploited their labor.

 

Sounds like how most Americans make a living, yet here they are, celebrating a victory by the more successful work unit. From another company. One they could never work for.

 

Lest you think I'm a "hater," I've played more football at nearly every level of competition than you've had hot meals, and even today can toss a 60 yard bomb and hit a beer can. So it's not about being anti-sport.

 

It's about being anti-...well, whatever sport has devolved to in America.

 

See, we hand these leagues and the owners trillions in tax breaks and benefits, we prevent other people from infringing on their franchises, creating monopolies at all levels, all so we can spend a few hours...hours!...in rapt contemplation of the beer can in our hand.

 

You know who else used to spend lavish amounts of money on games designed to pacify his populace? At least they had the decency to call a slave a slave and not glorify him.

 

We've turned sport from a competition into a spectacle, from a contest between two groups of people into a battle between two corporations vying for the last advertising dollar out there.

 

Remember the old saying, "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game"? That fiction, like the fiction that anyone in American can grow up to be president, or if you just work hard and save some money you can have a comfortable life, is a fairy tale that we are seeing stripped away even as you read this.  

 

So for a few hours last night, hundreds of millions of people got the feel an emotion of some sort-- excitement, anger, sadness, joy-- and paid trillions in sum for the privilege.

 

Ain't that America?