Heh. I Hate It When I'm Right

Yesterday, I made a rather disputatious claim over a news item that has been heralded as a "See? I told you so" moment, to-wit:

12) Men talk as much as women? This study is deeply flawed. They used college kids, which is a little like asking someone on cocaine to do a sleep study. Better they should have asked married men, who have learned to shut up if they want to have sex.

Never trust a scientist when you have me around, folks...

Today comes this little item from the University of Iowa:

NEW YORK, July 6 (Reuters Life!) - Men might still dominate most workplaces but a study has proven what many happy couples know -- the wife runs the roost at home and the husband is happy to let her.

A team of researchers from Iowa State University studied 72 couples and found that the wife's view on how to solve problems within the marriage or the home took precedence over the husband's opinion and he was happy to accept that.

"The women were communicating more powerful messages and men were responding to those messages by agreeing or giving in," Associate Professor of Psychology David Vogel, one of the leaders of the study, said in a statement.

In other words, the men were, um, shutting up because they wanted to have sex. *Ahem*

What's particularly gloating in this little iconoclast's demeanor today is the fact that any number of female conservative bloggers were dumb enough to swallow the original story whole, as if, *poof* somehow at 20, a boy becomes a man, and wringing their hands with glee. (Don't follow the link unless you're really in need of a laugh)

If they fucked this obviously flawed story up, is it any wonder they could swallow bigger fish stories that they were fed at the zippers of their patriarchs, like somehow, Iraq had anything to do with 9/11?

I will admit and give credit, of course, that the interactions of conservative women tend to be around conservative males, and that conservative males tend to be, well, less manly and more womanly, and then, too, there's the whole thing on the right about women being "seen and not heard" to be dealt with, but still, it's OK to hold two divergent thoughts in your head at the same time, ladies, and realize that maybe your personal experience is not how the world itself works.

For me, I've learned across the span of my life, from my mom and my sister to any number of partners, right down to my daughter, that on the whole, women are smarter and savvier than men, so I shut up and listen to them.

Because, you see, I am a man.

Friday Music Blogging

In Honor Of Live Earth tomorrow....David Bowie & Mick Jagger - Dancin' In The Streets

This was originally released as a special video for Live Aid in 1985.

Friday Kitten Blogging

Hm. Mr. Doggity's kid may be right. ThumbPer may not be a kitten anymore...Last SeptemberYesterday

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) The uproar over 7/7/07 and being lucky seems a little silly to me. After all, one year, one month and one day ago, nothing evil happened, yet it was 6/6/6.

2) To give you an idea of just how bad the heatwave in California has been, over the last twelve months, Southern California has received less than one third the rainfall the Sahara Desert receives in a year.

3) Not entirely sure why you'd want to do this, but...AT&T can't be too pleased with it.

4) If you live in one of these towns, consider yourself extremely lucky. Also expect to be inundated with tourists. Welcome to the party, pal!

5) Apparently, even Congressional Republicans can't shut down Al Gore.

6) George Bush accusing Hillary Clinton of hypocrisy is like Satan accusing Job of impatience.

7) Speaking of the Libby commutation, I have yet to hear one responsible voice on the right wing of this country speak out against the hypocrisy of commuting a sentence for a convicted felon.

8) Ah, a good old fashioned Washington sex scandal will deepen. Remember when sex scandals were the obsession for years in DC? How quaint!

9) Speaking of which...she got money for sex? In DC? Pickings must be slim...

10) I may have to move to Belgium...

11) To quote Jon Lovitz' character..."ACTINNNNNNNNNNNG!

12) Men talk as much as women? This study is deeply flawed. They used college kids, which is a little like asking someone on cocaine to do a sleep study. Better they should have asked married men, who have learned to shut up if they want to have sex.

13) Barry Bonds will soon surpass Hank Aaron's career home run record, to go along with his single season mark. Much has been made of steroid use in sport. I'd like to add a couple of observations. First, if you're stupid enough to risk your life (and Chris Benoit stands as Exhibit A in this) for the pursuit of some silly record that will mean nothing in less than a hundred years (what WOULD be the extent of your lifetime), then I'm all for it. But don't come whining to America in ten years about your testicles falling off, or your man boobs. Second, Congress has no business spending hard earned tax payer money investigating this scandal. Period. Americans know what they're getting, no one is getting hurt except the athletes, who presumably know the risks going in, whether they take steroids or not, and those who interact directly with them, who also have a choice to opt out. Better you should impeach the motherfucker in the White House than spend a dime more grandstanding.

14) World's Funniest Obituary. You get the feeling the reporter got the clap from this guy. (h/t Agitprop)

15) Finally, courtesy of MissCellania, I have this for your entertainment:Click on the image for full scale

They Need A Study For This?

There seems to me to be an exceedingly simple answer to this admittedly trivial question:

The Senate Commerce Committee has approved a bill to establish a nonprofit public-private corporation to promote the United States as a tourist destination and clear up misperceptions about U.S. travel policies. It also would create a new office in the Commerce Department to work with other agencies on fixing visa policies and entry processes that discourage visits.

Visits to the United States from countries outside of Canada and Mexico totaled 21.7 million in 2006, down 17 percent from a peak of 26 million in 2000, according to Commerce Department figures. In the same period, cross-border travel around the world was up 20 percent.

"The global pie of international travel is steadily increasing, while the U.S. share has been slowly decreasing," said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the Travel Industry Association.

Visits from the six countries that provide the most tourists -- Britain, Japan, Germany, France, South Korea and Australia -- have dropped 15 percent since 2000 while travel from those six to other countries was up a robust 39 percent. There were 4.2 million arrivals from Britain, last year, down 11 percent from 2000, and 3.7 million visits from Japan, down 27 percent.

Now, a 17% drop in tourism overall may not sound like much, especially if you live in Bugtussle, Alabama, but to cities like, say, New York or Washington, it's pretty significant. New York's economy was driven by tourism these past six years since September 11, and on the face of things (particularly when it came to elbowing through crowds of gawking foreigners), the city was thriving on it. What makes this odd little statistic loom so large is, given the abject weakness of the American dollar against other currencies, we ought to be a leading destination for travellers, who like a bargain as much as the next guy.

I, of course, as a candidate for NotPresident in 2008, have both the problem figured out and a solution:

(h/t ImprisonBush.com)

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

1776 - Signing the Declaration

"Comedy" in the old Greek sense of an uplifting ending.

Citizenship

As I pondered what to write for today, July 4, the celebration of our independence from England, I was struck by a subtle-yet-recurring theme of my blog over the past year: the distracted citizenry.

We each of us goes about our lives, trying to get one more day behind us: work, school, family. Hobbies. Sports. Television. The latest celebrity sightings. And yes, for a small percentage of us, politics.

Some few of us are activist, and by "activist," I mean anything from writing a letter to a Congressman up to helping a politician run for office. I despair when I think that, even at political blogs, even among those who write and rant and front a facade of caring and criticism, that percentage that take the next step and even just write a letter to the editor is tiny, a single digit percentage.

That despair deepens when I realize that the population as a whole doesn't even bother to read a political blog (right wing or left, doesn't matter). If, say, Crooks and Liars gets a half-million hits in a day, what's that compared to a population of 300 million people?

We who read these blogs, we obviously care, even if the percentage of people who voice that caring is so small (by my Sitemeter, I get about a five percent commenting rate versus the number of visitors I have in a day). We can't be the only people who care, though?

My despair deepens when I see a story like Bush's inevitable pardon of Scooter Libby hit amidst outrage and uproar, yet I know deep in my heart, this too shall pass with little to show that America lived up to its ideals.

How do you stop time, and grab every single American's attention, shake them, point to this story and say, "Do you understand what this means? This means that the ideals this nation was founded on, that we are ALL equal and that if one of us fucks up, he pays the same price as anyone else!" and make them understand that the very basis for their lives of muddled mediocrity-- their pathetic wage-slavery, their pitiful house still owned largely by their bank, their children's substandard education, their gas-guzzling, carbon emitting, 10 miles to the gallon birthright of a tugboat SUV-- are all in jeopardy from this small cabal of evil men?

(ed. note. run on sentence, I know, I'm sorry, I'm basically dictating this as I go)

In short, how do we get them to be citizens again?

Aristotle once said, "To take no part in the running of the community's affairs is to be either a beast or a god!” To put it in modern terms, we Americans, along with a Bill of Rights, should have had a Bill of Responsibilities handed down to us, to ensure that we'd maintain at least a minimal involvement in our community.

Without that, our community has grown so large and so interconnected that we've become less of a community and more of an agglomeration of subnations: blue states, red states, Progressive, Regressive Conservative, black, white, Latino, Asian.

We've forgotten what it means to be a citizen of the greatest society in the history of the planet, and as such, we've allowed these evil-doers freedom to tear the fabric of society asunder. Not ten years ago, America enjoyed its golden age: a decade, a decade, mind you, of unparalleled peace and unparalleled prosperity for all its citizens.

And we, Americans, gave it all back: "Here, this is too much for us to handle! You guys take it!" We elected Bush, and despite all the signs of stolen elections, gave in with nary a whimper. Don't blame Al Gore or any one Senator: we could have, should have, as a people, made a bigger stink. Democrats would have lined up to co-sponsor that challenge in Congress to the Electoral Congress if they believed there was a bigger risk in silently assenting to this coronation than in challenging it.

And you'll notice, I'm not talking to the small percentage of us here who actually DID register a protest, did write a letter, did make a call, but to the cowards here, and in the population in general, who couldn't be bothered to be heard out of fear of...what? Sticking your neck out?

We're all going to hang now, when we should have hung together then. Then, we would have hung as free men (and women), making the point that our citizenship meant more to us than "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor". Now, we hang as slaves, lynched from the tree of indifference.

It's all for naught if we don't have freedom. And I, for one, would trade all the days that have passed since that cold January morning for the chance to stand up and let the world hear us, with one voice, say "No, our freedom is not for sale, will not be bartered and cannnot be stolen!"

We are citizens, and by whatever deity you believe in, it is our god-given duty , our natural born responsibility, our birthright, to stand up now and be heard, lest the hangman's noose of history's judgement tighten around our necks. Ask a German what it feels like to have lived Pastor Niemoller's lament:

"When Hitler attacked the Jews
I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the Catholics,
I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists,
I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned.
Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church --
and there was nobody left to be concerned."

More, it's our honor and our challenge to go out and make people care. We need, on this July Fourth especially, since it falls midweek and people aren't going to completely disconnect from the world around them, to stop being polite about getting into a confrontation (while being polite IN that confrontation) and start speaking out.

The temptation is great to just ignore differing opinions, particularly when they are extremist and hate-filled: what good can come of it? Heinlein once wrote: "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”

We need to annoy the pigs. We need to present, not to those who hold irresponsible opposing views, but to the vast majority of people who hear both sides, shrug, and walk away, the passion that we feel about this country and about our freedoms, both of which are so desperately in trouble now. Don't be concerned if some right winger throws out a "fact (read: talking point)" that you can't answer: challenge him on it. Make him prove it. ADMIT YOU DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING, but that in your heart, you know that you're right.

Every poll ever taken in the past seven years tells us the American people as a whole more generally favor the liberal agenda to the conservative agenda. We have that on our side, but what we don't have is an army of passionates, apostles, and disciples, who will show people that it's not only church that is a calling.

It's the Fourth Of July. Today, with one voice, with one thought in mind, we declare our independence. We will not vanish without a fight. We will be Americans.

Keith Olbermann Squares It Up

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.[...]

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Taking A Libby-eral Interpretation

Who said this?

My opinion is I will -- should I decide to grant pardons, I will do so in a fair way. I'll have the highest of high standards.

Yes, George W. Bush said that.

Thus, we have learned this morning that those "highest of high standards" are about as high off the ground as a burqa. But let not my words speak. Let's let the highest of high (*snark*) authorities speak on this:

NEW YORK TIMES

"When he was running for president, George W. Bush loved to contrast his law-abiding morality with that of President Clinton, who was charged with perjury and acquitted."

"For Mr. Bush, the president ... untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base."

Mr. Bush's assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it's committed by common folk ... As president, he has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law."

WASHINGTON POST

"There were mitigating factors in this case. After two years of investigation, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking (CIA operative Valerie) Plame's name; he never demonstrated that a crime occurred."

"It's true that the felony conviction that remains in place, the $250,000 fine and the reputational damage are far from trivial. But so is lying to a grand jury. To commute the entire prison sentence sends the wrong message about the seriousness of that offense."

WALL STREET JOURNAL

"By failing to issue a full pardon, Mr. Bush is evading responsibility for the role his administration played in letting the Plame affair build into fiasco and, ultimately, this personal tragedy."

"This ... will stand as a dark moment in this administration's history."

"Mr. Bush's commutation statement yesterday is another profile in non-courage ... Mr. Libby deserved better from the president whose policies he tried to defend when others were running for cover."

(ed. note: and that's BEFORE Murdoch owns this rag!)

Unfortunately for jurisprudence and for the future of American democracy, this action cannot be undone. The authority to grant pardons and commute sentences rests with the President, and no authority in this country can overrule him.

One has to ask oneself why Dumbya suddenly decided to take such a liberal interpretation of the legal system and a verdict that was fair, and a sentence that, while harsh, was not unduly burdensome to Libby. I mean, Paris Hilton served a whole three days before she was released from prison and that was for merely driving with a suspended license. You mean to tell me that a man who lies not only to the FBI, but to a Federal prosecutor, even if that lie was to cover up no crime (he was convicted for lying about how he knew Plame was a covert CIA operative, not for lies related to the leak of her name to the press), deserves less than three days in the hoosegow?

Apparently. Remember that this is a man, Dumbya, who was loathe to pardon anyone after a 1998 pardon, while governor, of a cocaine dealer blew up in his face. This is a man who laughed while Karla Faye Tucker was killed in a Texas execution room.

A "tough on crime" man, right?

When did Republicans suddenly become the soft-on-crime liberals they chided and derided for forty years? When did Republicans suddenly become the "mommy party," filled with sympathy and empathy and compassion? And when will they finally drop the facade of being tough old birds and start showing some of that compassion to the people who really need it: the poor, the sick, the war-torn victims of the nations they've raped and pillaged?

The one bright spot in all this is it will force the GOP Presidential candidate in 2008 to step up and excuse and explain yet another Bush corruption, thus neatly tying the entire party to an administration that it was enthralled to like crack addicts.

The overarching question though is, why would Bush do this? Is this an admission on his part that the ballgame's over, and that he has to work now to protect what pitiful legacy he'll leave (I think when the dust settles, Bush will be rated somewhere on a par with the Roman emperor Nero as a leader of a great power)? Is it simply an acknowledgement that he is so out of touch with the average American that he can do as he pleases and remain secure in his delusion that history will bear him out (see above)?

Decisions like this are more troubling for what they don't say than what they do say.

"I Believe The Title Was...."

Just remember, your tax dollars pay these idiots:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Monday played down a report al Qaeda was planning a big attack on the United States, saying there was no credible information about an imminent threat.

As British police investigated two failed car bombs in London and a fiery attack on Glasgow's airport by a fuel-filled vehicle, U.S. officials tightened security at transport hubs without raising the country's overall alert level.

"We do not currently have any specific threat information that is credible about a particular attack on the United States," Chertoff told Fox News.

First off, notice he said it on Fox News, which is about the only network whose viewership is sheeple enough to open wide, and swallow this load whole.

But let's see what else Secretary Chertoff had to say...

"Al Qaeda and its affiliates do intend to carry out further attacks against the United States and the West," Chertoff said.

"We also know that they tend to want to do attacks that are spectacular or high-profile, so it's not surprising to have analysts comment on the fact that this kind of an attack is a very definite possibility," he said.

"But again I want to say that's more general analysis that is not based on a specific piece of information about a particular attack."

Sounds somewhat familiar, wouldn't you agree?:

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns ofsuspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations forhijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance offederal buildings in New York.

Oh, but of course, this was a historical document and did not delineate current investigations or current specific threats against the United States! No sirree!

And then four weeks later, the walls came a-tumbling down.

How stupid do you have to be to see how cynically idiotic this administration has treated, and continues to treat, its citizens?

Apparently, this stupid...we in the United States ought to have one of those signs that roller coasters have, but instead of saying "You can ride this coaster if you're at least this tall," it ought to have a picture of Bush with the advisory, "If you are at least smart enough not to have voted for this man, you can be a citizen."

Solidarity

To my friends and readers in the UK, particularly London and Glasgow:

As a New Yorker, I want to express my sympathy and solidarity with your ordeal and your situation.

As an American, I want to apologize for dragging you into our fight. You should never have been in this, and I'm sorry that you're paying the price that America should be paying for electing a cowardly moron. Twice.

Redrawing The Battle Lines

There are a couple of elements to this story which I had to ponder as I read it:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders vowed Friday to keep up the pressure on President George W. Bush to end the Iraq war with more votes next month on withdrawing U.S. troops.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would seek a vote on legislation instructing the Pentagon to begin pulling out U.S. troops within 120 days, similar to a provision Bush vetoed in the first version of a war spending bill Congress sent to him in May.

A comparable provision also is expected to come to the floor of the Senate in July. So far this year, Senate Democrats have been unable to get the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles to proposals to start a pullout from Iraq.

So far, pretty straightforward. Obviously, Pelosi, Reid, & Co decided that they caved a little too easily with Bush on the war funding bill, and heard about it from both the left wing ideologues but also from mainstream Americans who elected them in large part to end this national nightmare. Too, that Senators Richard Lugar and George Voinovich, not exactly firebreathing lefties, came out strongly against the war this week gives them some political cover to reintroduce this withdrawal timetable.

Bbut here's the intriguing bit:

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted legislation from Congress called for progress reports on Iraq in July and September and suggested those should determine any decisions.

"It seems to me that Congress has laid out a sensible timetable and we ought to adhere to it," he told reporters at the Pentagon.

Huh? Is Secretary Gates suggesting, or at least, leaving the door open, to a troop withdrawal this year? After all, those "progress reports" to be delivered by General Petraeus, will show that the surge has had minimal success (the Anbar region is raised continually as a beacon of hope, which neglects the truth that the Anbar region was relatively peaceful right up until the surge) and that the general benchmarks it will report on-- oil revenue sharing, suppression of the sectaraian violence, and regional elections-- will fall woefully short, mostly due to the Iraqi parliament's lack of...passion...in passing legislation.

Meaning the Democrats in Congress will have a field day at Bush's expense.

If in fact, this was the game plan, to give the surge the summer and then cut off funding anyway, then it concerns me that the Democrats would play this so cynically. Hundreds of Americans would have died to gain an incremental political position of giving in one last time and letting the baby have his bottle.

Friday Music Blogging

The Moody Blues - In Your Wildest Dreams

Perhaps one of the most nostalgic songs ever written.

Friday Kitten Blogging

Why is da katnip gone?
On ur bed, kicking ur camra!
Dis iz me wit mah duckie and mah bear!

Nobody Asked Me, But...

This has been a weird week for news. So many little aggravating and annoying stories have surfaced, it's hard to keep track of them all.

1) The car bombs in London are particularly disturbing in light of the fact that London is notorious for its "Ring of Iron" video system which can track a car coming into the city, driving around and leaving without ever being out of camera range. Imagine, instead, this car had been parked on the streets of Manhattan.

2) American forces in Iraq suffered their 100th casualty in June this morning.

3) The iPhone. Want it. Won't buy it until they drop the worst carrier in the cellular business. It will be like the low hanging sour grapes of fabledom.

4) Another example of Republicans praying the problem would go away: Bush wishes Cuba's Castro would disappear

5) Paris Who?

6) Speaking of celebrities, this weekend marks what would have been Princess Diana's 46th birthday, and ten years since her death. NBC will be showing highlights of the concert for Diana from London. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I'm not a big celebrity fawner. Titles, accomplishments, crowns, mean very little to me, as does being famous for being rich and famous, but I have a slight fascination with Diana. I've always felt this strange connection to her, even tho I've never met her nor do I know anyone who has. This feeling manifested itself one night in September 1997 when, while in the midst of an existential crisis, I was sitting on my deck staring at the stars. Diana's funeral had ended earlier that afternoon, and I was pondering her troubled life and comparing it to my own, when a question flashed into my head simultaneous to a meteor flashing through the sky. I've always believed that was the spirit of Diana, sending me some sort of message that I have yet to figure out. Perhaps she was part of my karass.

7) One more thing on celebrities: the whole Chris Benoit incident has taken a truly dark and disturbing turn, with the revelation this morning that Benoit's Wikipedia entry was altered to read that he had killed his wife hours before the bodies of his family were "discovered". It wouldn't surprise me to find out that someone from the WWE had entered his house over the weekend and cleaned up a bit before the police were called. More disturbing is the about face that the WWE has taken in portraying Benoit. Monday night saw a three hour tribute to him, often quoting other wrestlers saying Benoit was the consummate family man who always brought his kids to the shows, and how polite and well-behaved they were. One night later, nary a word was said about Benoit. And then there was this reprehensible weasel interview with WWE chairman Vince McMahon on the Today Show.

8) Ironically, the WWE had been running an angle which had McMahon die in a fiery car bombing. Talk about prescient of the news...

9) This would shut down half of Congress.

10) Somewhere, Jerry Falwell is smiling. I've never particularly liked the Teletubbies, to be sure, and always felt that they were a marketing machine wrapped in an educational program.

11) Poor Michael Moore. It seems like no one wants him to talk. Megapoints for trying to walk into the lion's den to speak, tho.

12) Oh, THAT Paris Hilton!

13) Global warming hits Jupiter.

14) My favorite Spice Girl was always Baby Spice, but, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, it looks like she took me up on my offer to have my baby...

Or maybe it was Posh.

Ginger?

No, wait, Scary.

Sporty has gotten cute, too. . Of course, I only know these ladies because my daughter is the right age...

Decay

A couple of items popped up on the radar this morning that made me wonder about just how strong America is right now:

1) New York City blackout:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A power outage struck Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side during a heat wave on Wednesday, snarling subway service during rush hour in another embarrassment for utility Con Edison.

The outage left half a million New Yorkers without power for 50 minutes. Traffic signals died, classrooms went dark, the fire department rescued people from elevators and the Metropolitan Museum of Art was evacuated in scenes that raised fears of another major summer blackout.

This is now five consecutive summers in and around New York City where a blackout has hit a significant number of people, and it's not even July yet. This blackout was minor in comparison to the August 2003, which crippled the entire northeast into Ohio, or even the one last summer, in which parts of western Queens were without power for nine days.

2) US Lags In Internet:

A communications workers union has released a study showing that the median U.S. download speed is a mere 1.97 megabits per second. That number comes into perspective when you consider Japanese users enjoy a whopping 61 mbps for the same price.

We used to be the bastion of advanced technology, in research and development, in pure science for science sake. Now we can't even keep the lights on.

Particularly since the turn of the decade, it seems as though America doesn't do anything anymore. We don't innovate. We don't lead. We don't implement. We don't discover.

This is far deadlier to our society than one might think: without the competitive advantage we've taken in the 20th Century, America would be a second rate agrarian society. Think the Soviet Union, only without the cool uniforms and national health care.

Worse, this ennui about discovery leads us to be a lot more aggressive against those who actually do the work we used to do in our labs. Think about it: why expend the energy and resources to innovate when we can wait for someone else to fund a lab to do all that work, and then move in and either buy it all up, or worse, just take it as if it was our birthright?

Isn't that essentially what Iraq is all about? We can't drill here, so let's drill there?

Quick: name a technological advance of the past ten years that is wholly American.

Google? A couple of Russian emigres (admittedly, they came to America seeking the chance to be something), but even then, what technological advance is it to have a faster librarian, and one that's not even that reliable (in terms of factual content)?

I'm having a hard time even coming up with any technological advances of the past ten years, nevermind American.

What's truly troublesome about this nauseating turn of events is, as the US loses its lustre in the eyes of the world, we will be more and more beholden to the predations of those countries who do take the lead in innovation, to those countries that thought ahead, instead of in the now.

America was about a vision. Now it's about myopia.

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

Billy Connolly - American Food

Oh, Rudy, How Doth Thee Pander!

What a doosh:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Rudy Giuliani charged yesterday that former President Bill Clinton made a "big mistake" when he failed to see the first World Trade Center attack as an act of terror rather thana mere crime - one that set the stage for even bigger and bolder attacks culminating with 9/11.

"The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond," Giuliani said, ticking off terrorist attacks that followed, including the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in 2000. "[Osama] bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it."

We also didn't send hundreds of thousands of troops to a land that had nothing to do with terrorism, terrorist attacks, or frankly anything at all to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Bill Clinton stopped an additional 19 terror attacks by treating that bombing as a crime. Period. He kept the Pope alive. He stopped the Milennium Bomb plot. He kept the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels into New York City from being destroyed.

He stopped a plot to hijack seven planes over the Pacific and crash them, as well as a plot to hijack ONE plane and fly it into a building, CIA headquarters.

Failure of imagination, Condoleeza Rice called the inability to prevent the September 11 attacks, and yet, we managed to do it once, already, under a different president.

Bill Clinton rolled up a terror cell in New York City, and reached into Saudi Arabia and brought to justice a high level Al Qaeda operative there.

Was Bill Clinton lax in responding to the bombings in Africa in 1998? No. It was the Republican witchhunt Congress that prevented President Clinton from doing more than lobbing a few shells into an already-empty tent. What has Bush done with troops on the ground where the bastard was?

A smart man, who wasn't running for any office, once said, "The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it."

His name? Rudy Giuliani. Maybe you ought to listen to that feller?

Unintentionally Funny

I often wonder if Bush, the great American frat boy, does this kind of stuff deliberately:

LONDON (Reuters) - President George W Bush wrote a lengthy tribute to Prime Minister Tony Blair on his last day in power on Wednesday, describing him as "a strong guy" and dismissing claims that the British leader acted as his "poodle."

[...]"I've heard he's been called 'Bush's poodle'. He's bigger than that," he said. "We're working together to achieve global peace in the face of enormous danger. This kind of thing is just silly ridicule."

Presumably, that's intended to mean that Bush and Blair are equals. But you know, you could take that to mean Blair is "just a bigger dog," like maybe a schnauser or terrier, and Bush is sniggering as he baldfacedly insults Blair (and the UK) while paying him a backhanded compliment.

It's likely better, Dumbya, to just let those kind of comments alone, and to focus on the bigger picture of paying tribute to Blair. Since it's unlikely you actually wrote this letter alone and unassisted, I'm going to presume that you meant to say this, and that you phrased it deliberately ambiguously so as to demean Blair, while saying good bye.

Sort of, "So long, suckah!"

The biggest joke of the letter, tho?

"We have very different speaking styles, of course. He's much more kind of lofty and eloquent than I am. I tend to be just pretty matter of fact."

(emphasis added)

If only...

Milestones

We mark our lives by the distance in time between two events: you've been married twelve years, she's expecting in October, he's worked that job for eighteen years. Milestones are particularly important, if totally arbitrary.

Most of them, anyway, are arbitrary. Some, not so much.

2007 has been (and will be) a year of such milestones. My daughter turned eighteen. My father died. An old friend leaves work. And today, my daughter graduates high school.

It's the last milestone that means the most to me. For the first time in her life, she struggled with school. Like me, things came very easily to her, she comprehended the basic stuff with breathtaking ease, so easily, in fact, that when she did run into trouble in middle school, her work before then had kept her grades up, and so it was hard to notice.

Thanks, No Child Left Behind! When she needed help, when it really could have meant something, you were there to make sure the curriculum was dumbed down to the test, and that teachers were going to focus on the school as a whole and not a kid who could be brilliant.

She fought her way through this school, one of the premier high schools known to mankind. Put it this way: if it was a country, it would be credit with more Nobel Prizes than all but seven other countries.

For that, I'm proud of her, even proud of her for trying to keep up the image at home that things were going along OK, when in fact she was in danger of failing at times. That told me she gave a damn about her schoolwork, and at least she won't have the adjustment problem to college that so many teens do.

So yes, milestones. Some are worth noting, some (like the fact I turn fifty this year) are mathematical absurdities linked to the fact we have ten toes and fingers.

In the spirit of Kurt Vonnegut, I'd like to "give" my commencement address:

Ladies and gentlemen, for that is who you are now, today, you begin the steps towards adulthood.

It's typical for the speaker at such events to talk long and hard about the struggles you'll face and to offer some advice and insight into how to overcome them to achieve your dream. Who am I to look askance at tradition.

Let's face facts: the vast majority of you will lead lives that are superficially comfortable, but just under the surface, a slick of peace and prosperity, boils a raging torrent of anxiety and tension. You've seen it in your own parents. You will see it in yourself.

You'll learn with time that your dreams change, that your visions change, that your ideals, things you thought were etched in stone, will adjust as you experience life. Experience is the one lesson learned only after you've already taken the test. How true that is.

So how do you deal with this? How do you deal with conformity when right now the last thing you want is to conform? Most people go with the flow and eventually lose their passions, frustrated and disillusioned with reality.

Don't let that happen to you. Don't give into the temptation to do something just to get along. Don't compromise your vision, even as that vision changes, for someone or something else. Find what truly makes you happy, and then find out WHY it makes you happy, because the world is filled with people looking to steal your cookie. You'll want to be able to replace it.

Reality hurts. It does. That can't be helped. You're walking into the maw of six billion other people on this planet, and you can become the short fingered vulgarian who steals in the zero sum game of life, steals food from widows and money from the poor sucker on the corner.

Or you can find some small corner that reality has a hard time penetrating. It can be a lover. It can be a hobby. It can be an avocation and if you're really really lucky, it can be a career. Find out what makes you happy, find out what makes you passionate, and along that path lies your true calling.

And let that path lead you where it must. Don't ever listen to someone who tells you, "No, don't go down that path! It's too...whatever!" This is your life and your path, and when you're dead and gone, those folks will not be clambering into your casket with you to accompany you on your path into history, so why let them choose your path today?

Your parents love you, but they cannot live your lives for you. That's your job...no, that's your privilege. Your spouses and partners will love you, but even they can only follow you on your path so far. If you're really fortunate, they'll make it alongside you to your ultimate destiny. Try to find that person, but failing that, try to find the person who's content to wait for you to report back in.

The Beatles wrote a marvelous little song, "When I'm 64." Memorize this song. This is the person you want to grow old with. And by that, I don't mean your partner. I mean you. Don't lock your own doors because you stayed out til quarter to three. Ultimately, you have to be in love with yourself, in love enough to forgive you your trespasses.

Do not look at life as a challenge. Life will win immediately on the first roll of the dice. Instead, look at life as an adventure, filled with dragons and maidens and princes. Just don't expect the fairy tale ending. Nevertheless, invest your life with the same emotion and passion and breathlessness you experienced when your dad read you a book to help you sleep.

You will become your own Prince Charming and your own fairy princess, and that will be the greatest treasure one could ever find.