Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) So he now has 50 cents?

2) In all seriousness, while Ron Paul appeals to me in a sort of renegade way, I don't trust him, and since he's running as a Republican, I think I have good reason not to. I get a sense out in Blogtopia (© Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo) that there are a number of lefties who would consider him, but they could also be cleverly concealed right wingers.

3)

4) And heyyyyyyyyyyyy here on Actor212 Radio W-A-S-S, we have a special shoutout to Miss Cellania...seriously, lest you think Oxycontin is a problem only for overweight bloviating right wing "talk" show hosts who are afraid to face anyone with a responsible opposing opinion, not so much.

5) Finally, a pepper sauce hot enough for my tastes!

6) Possibly the saddest sports related story of the year. Not for the victim or what happened to her, but for the country at large. Role models are harder to come by these days.

7) I got a suggestion, Big Dog: Keep a low profile, and rebuild that bridge to the 21st Century.

8) The clock is ticking. You've been warned. Might amount to nothing, but it might be tragic.

9) It's only a game, folks! But this is obscene from a cultural standpoint.

10) This is just wrong. JUST. WRONG! I expected better from Will Smith.

11) It's getting so philanderers everywhere will have to stop giving expensive gifts to get laid.

12) Say it with me, everyone: Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore. The only thing sweeter would be to add "former President" to that title.

13) I wonder if there's an orangutan Christian Coalition, and do they know about this?

14) It is nice to know that orangutans and I have something in common, tho.

15) She must have some big-ass tits.

16) OK, I apologize. I should have said hooters.

17) Say goodbye to Fred Thompson:

A Convergence In The Force

One of the Democrats see-saw battles internally has been over free trade/fair trade. On the one hand, middle-to-middle-left Democrats see free trade as a good thing, an almost Republican position if you believe the smears.

On the other hand, more left-of-center Democrats believe free trade is a mask to cover predatory capitalism's exploitation of poorer nations and people, including poorer Americans, and that fair trade or barriers to trade are needed.

Both, sadly, are correct positions, which is what makes trade an issue that is not easily resolved at the grass-roots level, and has given the Republicans an economic and foreign policy plank in their platform, not to mention reinforced their arguments regarding tax cuts.

Until now.:

WASHINGTON -- By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president.

The sign of broadening resistance to globalization came in a new Wall Street Journal-NBC News Poll that showed a fraying of Republican Party orthodoxy on the economy. While 60% of respondents said they want the next president and Congress to continue cutting taxes, 32% said it's time for some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to reduce the budget deficit and pay for health care.

Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush's calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.

Note the slightly subtle undercurrent in general Republican opinion, apart from the trade issue: tax hikes on the wealthiest, and protections for poor working Americans.

All this comes on the heels of seven years of "unfettered economic improvement" (I'll get back to that in a moment), a rising if faltering stock market, and a President who goes out of his way to remind people of how his tax cuts put a lot of money in their pockets.

Um. Yea. Not so much...

If you take a look around the current economic landscape, you see the ghosts of our past fiscal party draped over the furniture: easy credit, rocketing house values, low interest rates, predatory lending.

None of which has anything to do with tax cuts. Where tax cuts could have and should have helped middle class Americans, putting more money in their pockets through reduced tax bites and, more important, higher wages, never happened. Wage growth was actually down for the first term of Bush's administration and it wasn't until 2006 that the average caught up and surpassed the average wage in 2000, adjusted for inflation.

In point of fact, the last seven years' spending is probably the result of one unintended impact of Bush's tax cut and one other factor that had nothing to do with taxes whatsoever.

When Bush cut taxes, three times, the logic should have flowed like this: tax cut equals increased spending by businesses and the public equals higher interest rates as credit tightens (companies leveraging their new-found money into capital purchases, people buying bigger homes).

What happened instead was something a little different: tax cut equals increased dividends and capital gains recognition equals lower economic activity equals a further lowering of interest rates to avoid recession.

That extra money, in other words, flowed to wealthier people who didn't need to spend it, instead investing it where they could get a great return. That would normally be a good thing for America, but here's the unintended consequence and why this happened: the rest of the world's economy was starting to ramp up and catch up to the American economy.

Those extra dollars weren't invested here, but in Europe and Asia, particularly China and India, which explains how, while our economy is basically stagnant at the consumer level, our corporations are still making money hand over fist on their overseas activity and the stock markets, never a good economic indicator except in retrospect, are breaking records.

The other factor? The psychology of September 11 and the fear that the administration has made certain to simmer since.

You get panicked and you need to be comforted. In America, that leaves one thing to do: shop. Bush's speech on this point was unnecessary. People weren't in economic hardship, so they weren't about to stash money in their mattresses, waiting for the rabid Islamist horde to come ravage their daughters and raid their banks.

Material acquisition, for reasons I'm not qualified to truly explore, seem to comfort us. Perhaps it's the whole "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality we've been inculcated with, or perhaps it's merely the feel that, in some bizarre way, we've "conquered" something and gained wealth.

It's the wealth angle that strikes me about the past seven years. The rising housing prices, the increased equity people gain in their homes with each mortgage payment, the ability to trade up, quickly turning a $250,000 investment into a $500,000 one by selling the $250K house for $300K, then buying the $500K house with the proceeds, minus the vig for yourself, and a bigger mortgage, feeds right into this acquisitive mentality.

And now we're seeing the bitter fruit of the leftover market. Sure, some people made a ton of money, early on, in the boom, but now you're seeing house prices slipping, and interest rates creeping up, which means house prices will slip further. Now, add to that the baby boomers downsizing their houses as the kids move on, and you've got a really chance of a shrinkage in wealth not seen since the Great Depression.

And people have less and less money to spend. And now, the job market is starting to catch up.

This is not going to be pretty, but the good news is the other half of the country is starting to wake up and realize how bad things really will be. It's a Pyrrhic victory we financial wonks on the left are celebrating, to be sure, but it bodes well for recovering from this horrible tragedy to come.

My Day Today

...so I'm brainstorming at lunch with an editor from the New York Times, trying to figure out a way to cover poverty and race relations in the country that's comprehensive and would make some good reading...

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

Effin Funny Stand-up - Jimmy Dore

Posted Jul 08, 2007

On today's theme of being scared by our own government, George Bush loves to scare the crap out of you.

The Most Laughable Story You'll Read This Week

This is a joke, right?:

MIAMI (Reuters) - Seven men plotted to bring down the U.S. government by poisoning saltshakers and bombing landmark buildings, a prosecutor told Miami jurors as their terrorism conspiracy trial opened on Tuesday.

The "Liberty City Seven" aimed to create chaos as part of a holy war to pave the way for al Qaeda-affiliated guerrillas to take over the United States, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Gregorie said in the prosecution's opening statement.

"We need to make the people go crazy in the streets," Gregorie quoted alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste as saying. "Allah is going to take over through us."

BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!

OK, some background on this: About fifteen months ago, a huge breaking story that ran across the front pages of newspapers all across the country went something like this: "Terror Plot To Blow Sears Tower Busted."

Note the timing: nearly one year after the 7/7/05 terror bombings in London, and just ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.

Homegrown terrorists, ties to Al Qaeda, massive bombing plot...soopersecret stuff, right? Probably busted wide open by an undercover FBI mole who, as his patriotic duty insisted, turned on his friends and narced.

Eh. Not so much:

Rather than trained terrorists for whom stealth and secrecy is the golden rule, these guys seem to have strutted around a poor African-American neighborhood in Miami wearing military-style garb (sometimes also turbans), standing guard and doing exercise drills. You know, like the S1Ws in the old Public Enemy hip-hop shows. And just like the S1Ws, seems like these guys didn’t have any real weapons either. The indictment against them is pretty hilarious, because it makes clear that the only contact these guys had with “al-Qaeda” was through a U.S. government undercover agent posing as a Qaeda operative. So the indictment says they swore oaths to al-Qaeda and sought its assistance in waging a ground war (yes, a ground war!) against the “devils” on U.S. soil. But, of course, any such “oaths” were administered not by al-Qaeda, but by a U.S. government agent posing as al-Qaeda. (I’m sure the lawyers are going to have fun with this one!)

Sure enough, they will:

Defense lawyers said the charges were "nonsense" scripted by the government and orchestrated by paid FBI informants they called Conman No. 1 and Conman No. 2.

They said the defendants, one of whom was devoted mainly to smoking marijuana, had no weapons or intent to do violence and that it was the informants who suggested poisoning restaurant saltshakers and blowing up buildings.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know too many stoners who would even get up off the couch to blow up a balloon (except for a shotgun hit for someone else) much less a building.

But come on! Think about the implications of this preposterous story: seven men, and only seven men, would poison enough salt shakers and blow up enough buildings to foment panic in the streets sufficient for wave upon wave of Al Qaeda fighters to invade our homeland and overthrow the US government?

Yeeeeeeeeea. Someone's been watching Red Dawn and smoking mesc...

However, it provides a neat segue into something I was thinking about this morning: fear.

I was reading a column by Jeffrey Kluger in Time magazine. He made the following observation:

It's impossible to resist comparing the America of 1957 with the America of 2007-- and finding the modern version wanting. There was a clear-eyed quality to the U.S. commitment to space and a frank understanding of what it would take to get there. This wasn't an effort built on tax credits for willing industries or bipartisan earmarking. It wasn't a program financed by cooked books or off-budget accounting. Most important, it was sustained by appealing not to what scared us but rather to what elevated us. There's no need to invoke WMD when you've got MIT.

In a nativist time like ours, it's hard to imagine a national effort so peopled by foreigners--German expat Wernher von Braun building our rockets, New Zealand immigrant William Pickering heading our unmanned program. In a time of flash-paper attention spans, it's similarly hard to picture any agency surviving the setbacks NASA did. Ranger 7 was the first unmanned U.S. ship to land on the moon--following the sequential failures of Rangers 1 through 6. Think that program would make it as far as Ranger 4 today?

Most remarkable, though, was the odd humility that marked our space enterprise. Yes, in the historical mirror, some of it seems overdone: the astronauts in silver space suits (when military green would have served just as well), shedding names like Virgil and Donald and Gordon for Gus and Deke and Gordo. But that was done with a cultural wink, one that belied the workmanlike ethos beneath the effort.

In that most American of plays, Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman, father of two layabout sons, is stunned to find that his neighbor's boy is arguing a case before the Supreme Court and hasn't mentioned it. "He don't have to," his neighbor answers. "He's gonna do it." A coda to that idea is offered in the elegiac new documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. One of the scenes shows the men of Mission Control lighting cigars after the 1969 splashdown of Apollo 11. Behind them, on a control room viewing screen, two words are projected: TASK ACCOMPLISHED. That may be a less triumphal phrasing than "mission," but whatever you call it, Americans knew enough not to boast about a thing until we had done it.

Indeed. The unspoken coda to this article is this photo:

What are our leaders-- and through their reactions and calculated efforts, us-- so afraid of?

What do we have to fear from a terror attack? The best Al Qaeda could do in ten plus years of planning was find a small flaw in our civil defenses and exploit it.

Rather than wasting our energy and more important, squandering our justifiable concern over real terrorist actions over idiotic scams like this Miami plot, we ought to be focusing on finding the people who really want to hurt us and stopping them.

And not making up boogeymen so we can burnish our credentials falsely. During the Clinton administration, the Federal government managed to foil 16 terrorist plots, including the famous plot by Ramsi Yussef to blow up seven transPacific airliners, the precursor to the 9/11 hijackings themselves.

No one talked much about it (mostly because Republicans and the media were focused on a different missile), and things were handled. We need to get back to that, to the attitude that it's not talked about, it's just done.

Breaking News!

Another massive Chinese toy recall is underway...

The "So Be It" Barack

Much has been made about the mantle of inevitability of Hillary Clinton's candidacy, if not her Presidency. I tend to agree with this sentiment, and while I have my reservations about Hillary's abilities to lead this country, from a purely political standpoint, I think she's done a fine job of campaigning for the past six years.

The only other candidate, it seems, with the staying power to compete with Hillary as well as the platform that might topples this juggernaut (including Republicans) is Barack Obama.

Now, I like Obama, too, and should the choice come down to these two at the end of the trail, I'd be hard pressed to choose between them.

On one hand, we have the inevitability factor, as well as far more experience than Obama. On the other, we have the certainty of youth and the creativity of an outsider.

Tough choice. Obama is trying to attack Hillary's experience, tho, and I think that's a really dumb mistake:

"He's basically going to lay out a comprehensive case for why his original opposition to the war demonstrates why he has the kind of strength and experience to lead this country," said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Citing aides to Obama, The New York Times reported he will also propose setting a goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world, saying the United States should greatly reduce its stockpiles to lower the threat of nuclear terrorism.

If this is the major theme he's going to attack Clinton on, Obama has some questions to answer, not least of which is why his voting record on the war and war funding since he was elected is nearly identical to Clinton's.

For a strident war opponent, one who nags both Clinton and John Edwards constantly about their vote to authorize, the sense I get from his subsequent votes is that he would have fallen in line right alongside everyone else. I suspect I'm not alone in that impression.

We're Democrats, not Republicans. We can read.

But to go on...:

Obama has tried to turn the tables on Clinton in recent days by saying he has the equivalent experience that her husband, Bill Clinton, had when running for the White House in 1992.

"I remember what was said years ago by a candidate running for president," Obama said in New Hampshire on Saturday. "He said, 'The same old experience is not relevant. You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience.'

"Well that candidate was Bill Clinton. And I think he was absolutely right," Obama said.

Yea, he said that...as a two-term governor of Arkansas, with experience running a bureaucracy, balancing a budget and being directly responsible for administering a government.

Barack, you've got two election wins under your belt, the bigger one based solely on a terrific speech you gave at the national convention, running against a guy who couldn't have beaten OJ Simpson. That's all. To be comparing yourself to Bill (Greatest. President. Ever) Clinton is a little...cocky, to put it mildly.

A better, and perhaps more valid comparison to make is Hillary with George Bush: a family member of a former President being thrust into contention based almost solely on name recognition, with the opposition party lying in the bushes (er, no pun intended), waiting to pounce.

And then hope no one bothers to read up on her Senate record. They might not, because this line of reasoning at least rings true for people.

Look, people out here want change. Even I'm uncomfortable with the fact that it's highly likely that, for 36 years, we could have either a Bush or Clinton in the White House (going back to Bush the Mature as Reagan's VP). Dynasties are supposed to be missed in a democracy.

Whether we still have one is in question and is the subject of a different post. To the point at hand, experience matters, to be sure, when a country is as unsteady as this one is, but change matters, too.

For Barack Obama to come from behind and win this thing is going to require a ground-up rethinking of his campaign, starting with, from all accounts, his stump speech, which I'm told is about as mechanical as John Kerry without any of the glamourous war stories. He's a more vibrant speaker than his stump speech let's him be. He needs to connect with people.

John Edwards is challenging in the one must-win state for both Obama and Edwards, despite being handicapped in fund raising, because Edwards can touch people. He has some of Bill Clinton's sympatico and common man feel, despite the haircuts and fancy suits.

Too, Obama's tone-deafness in Iowa can't be helping. Iowa is an old state, with a high percentage of over 50 voters. To slough off an AARP debate is practically suicide, even if you believe your staff that the under 30 vote is being wildly undercounted.

When a 50 year old says they're going to vote, they're going to vote. When a 20 year old says it, you'd better damned well hope the St. Louis Rams aren't in the playoffs or it's not finals week.

By all accounts Obama's fund raising strength plus the broad base of small contributors he's built is formidable, but much of that is from people who just hate Hillary and can't take Edwards seriously added to people who genuinely admire Obama and believe he can win.

It also skews very young, which again doesn't bode well for the commitment to Obama they've made.

He has the stuff to survive Iowa and New Hampshire and perhaps to make a game of it in South Carolina, but he has to start running as opposed to just showing up.

Do As I Promise, Not As I Do

Leave it to New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg to put things in perspective:

Bloomberg earlier gave a speech to the opposition Conservative Party's annual conference in Blackpool and took aim at conservative American politicians who ran up budget deficits.

"It seems to me that the Conservative Party in the UK is much more fiscally conservative than many American politicians who call themselves conservative," he said.

"Too many of them want to run up enormous deficits and hope that some way, somehow -- someone else will pay for it. That's not conservatism, that's alchemy, or if you like, lunacy."

Or, create a problem, then pray it goes away.

But Mayor Mike's comments got me to thinking: why is it that Republicans and particularly conservatives, can't keep their peckers in their pants when it comes to running up a bar tab the size of Montana (or a national debt the size of, literally, China)?

After all, conservatives are supposed to be all about fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, and restraint (of the unfun kind), and yet the last three conservative Presidents have run up massive Federal deficits.

There's a school of thought that says by running up these deficits, conservatives can choke off the money for discretionary spending programs, like Medicaid or welfare or mass transit grants, and to a degree, there's some truth: we probably would have had smaller budget surpluses under Bill Clinton (Greatest. President. Ever.) if we hadn't reformed welfare and cut some of the bloat out of that bureaucracy.

But Clinton's presidency also points out the folly of that plan: unless you can persuade the vast majority...not the majority, the vast majority...of the uselessness of a particular entitlement, all that will happen is a) the entitlement will get funded through deficit spending or b) you're going to have people agreeing to a tax hike to pay for it.

No one objected to Clinton's tax hikes after the fact, because Clinton's tax hikes were directly linked (perhaps justifiably, perhaps not) to the booming economy of the 90s, where Reagan and both Bush's have tax cuts that led nearly directly to recession and even economic depression.

Despite increased Federal spending, something that should mitigate economic slowdowns. Thus you have ballooning deficits, since economic slowdowns produce even less tax revenue than anticipated.

One possible reason, exogenous to any economic or political theory we might examine this issue of conservatives and ballooning deficits, is a psychological one: there are very few fiscally conservative Republicans who had to "come up through the ranks," so to speak, who actually had to scrape from paycheck to paycheck to pay off a mortgage.

And who's businesses always had a bail out at the dead end of the street.

Let that last thought sink in for a moment.

And now let me emphasize this next point:

Don't you think it's odd that the men who have made the most of the American dream, the Bloombergs, the Buffetts, the Gates', the ones who started from the ground up with a business, and struggled and perservered without a hand out, without Daddybucks behind them, are fairly liberal people?

And then there's George W. Bush: a man who has failed at each and every business he's ever run, a man who's had to have handout after handout from the bin Laden family, from the people of the state of Texas, from James R. Bath, from his daddy.

Are we seeing a pattern here? An entirely paternalistic concept-- to let your boy run a business into the ground, then pay off his mistakes-- has become national policy for an entire party.

And we're Daddybigbucks, backing these assholes.

Newt Kapewt

Well, not that this was a huge surprise, but:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ending months of speculation, former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Saturday he would not run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, citing campaign finance law restrictions.

Gingrich, who previously said he was considering joining the race, told Fox News the McCain-Feingold campaign law would have forced him to leave his American Solutions political organization if he declared his candidacy.

"I wasn't prepared to abandon American Solutions, even to explore whether a campaign was realistic," he said.

Damned ehtical Republicans and their damned ethical campaign finance laws that can be circumvented by a twelve year-old with a tin can and ball of twine.

C'mon, Newt, who you kidding? You couldn't have caused even the barest splash in the fountain with your entrance. Look what happened when "Mr. Law And Order" Thompson jumped in.

Nothing. Not even the hint of momentum towards a rolling up of the Giuliani juggernaut. Even Mitt yawned, and it takes a lot to make Mitt publicly bored.

And yet, Thompson was the closest thing you have to a Reagan Republican running, which means even most Republicans realize the failed policies of that era, including the ill-starred coup to take over Congress, was a bad idea who's time should never have come.

Face it, Newt, you and your ilk ruined this country and may even have destroyed the entire planet with your self-righteous greed and hatred. "Anything for a buck" should have been the subtitle to the Contract On With America. The best thing you can do, Newt, to periphrase William Wallace in Braveheart is to "Lower your flags and march straight back to the Confederation of Southern States, stopping at every home to beg forgiveness for a dozen years of theft, rape, and murder."

We are on the brink of a great progressive evolution in this country. You can sense it in the desperation on the right to battle any perceived foible or alleged miscue of the left, yet try to scrape off the dog crap of a thousand worse insults. Each time they criticize Democrats or the left, they find themselves with four fingers pointing right back at themselves.

And not all the money in the world will reverse the tide. The people, long silenced by those who felt their positions gave them power over people, will no longer consent to be ruled rather than governed, as power truly rests with the people.

It's merely on loan because we don't have the time to live our lives and govern ourselves. The Democrats ought to remember that as well.

So Newt? Don't let the door hit you on the way out. And I'll be waiting for my apology.

Bush's Self- Backlash

As I read this article and then thought back to my own analysis of the climate talks Bush held this week, I began to wonder if there wasn't a metaphor playing out here that stretches well-beyond the global warming crisis:

"It is striking that the (Bush) administration at the moment in the international conversation seems to be pretty isolated," said John Ashton, Britain's climate envoy. "I think that the argument that we can do this through voluntary approaches is now pretty much discredited internationally."

Bush's rejection of mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that warm the planet is at odds with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and with many who attended on Friday.

"Our message to the U.S. is this: what they placed on the table at this meeting is a first step, but is simply not enough," South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a statement. "We think that the U.S. needs to go back to the drawing board."

The theme of isolation is a curtain draped across the backdrop of history during the Bush years, and speaks to an issue that should trouble even the most strident, ardent defenders of this administration: what is Bush so terrified of?

On a strictly psychological basis, Bush is the most powerful man in the world. A healthy, well-balanced person would exude confidence, and would be able to view world events through that lens: things happen, but at the end of the day, the US is all-powerful, and I lead this country.

Instead, the recurring trope for Bush has been an ill-at-ease demeanor, and a reflexive "I'll show YOU who's boss" attitude that says something to me that this is a man who doesn't want to be "found out".

I once played Risk with a couple of friends, one of whom gradually began to take a large lead over us (I had never played the game before, and didn't understand the strategy, so I just played for the lark). As he neared total domination, a curious thing began to happen with him.

He began to shiver. Nearly uncontrollably. Finally, it became clear (I had been eliminated and the other opponent held Burkina Faso or some such territory) that he would win, he relaxed.

I think about that game now nearly everytime I see Bush give a speech or take questions from the press. Here is a man clearly uncomfortable with his success, as if any minute now, someone would come along and take it away from him. Just as my friend had all but expected to lose a game he had won within fifteen minutes of playing, so too has Bush panicked from day one in the White House.

In the past, I've accused Bush of being a wimp, a charge I think still stands on its own merits.

Now I think that has a new layer added to it: the man can't help himself. He's had so much failure and gotten out of so many scrapes with the help of his family name and connections, that now that he's stuck in a terrible and terrifying situation, there's no one who can extend a hand and lift him out of the morass.

The only person more powerful than himself is...no one. And any group of people who might rally around him, say, like the leaders of the EU, have been so alienated and would face such domestic strife from within their own countries, that Bush is radioactive to them: get away and stay away.

So here we have a situation fairly dripping with irony and long term peril, being handled by someone who's afraid of his own shadow right now: he stands off in one corner, screeching from his soapbox about "voluntary" emissions caps and free market solutions, and the rest of the civilized world, the adults, stand off in the middle of the room discussing how to save the planet.

You'd think Bush would welcome impeachment at this point!

Hm. Maybe Pelosi taking it off the table isn't such a dumb idea after all. Force Bush to deal with his own mess, or quit.

Let's Go Mets!

YA GOTTA BELIEVE!

Guys, ya gotta believe that Tug McGraw is looking down from high holy heaven and while he may have won one world championship with the Phillies, he knows, he knows, he's a Met, through and through. Remember, he was in TWO World Series with you.

And he's grinning that idiotic grin of his. This is precisely the kind of situation he would have loved.

Ya gotta believe, you're going to win this thing, that it's out of your hands and your bats and that fate has given you an opportunity to pull this out of the fire. You've set a record for despair now, but it has been at times like this that the Mets have always prevailed. Give a Mets team a chance at the brass ring, and they'll grab it and hold on tight.

1969. 1973. Game six in 1986, of both the playoffs AND the series.

Ya. Just. Gotta. Believe!

We do.

Friday Music Blogging

B.O.C. - Don't Fear The Reaper

Best song about teen suicide ever written. It's ghastly in its beauty.

Friday Kitten Blogging

Dadby got a new cambera.

I don' thnk he nos how to oose et yet.

Nobody Asked Me, But....

1) When you see a headline "Court Won't Declare Chimp a Person", you keep hoping it means that Nancy Pelosi will be declared President by a court.

2) While not so lucky, it's still a pretty interesting story, and probably the first of many to come. The idea is that, while not a human, this chimp could conceivably be declared a legal person, with the rights accruing to such status, in this case, the right not to be sold without consent of a guardian.

3) Most people move TO Florida from Long Island...

4) She probably produces better paintings than Mark Rothko.

5) Not good news for Michael Vick.

6) In human animal news...apparently Pervez Musharraf has made peace with the ruling Pakistani courts.

7) Very quietly, OJ Simpson has crept to the top of the best-seller list, like a thug about to kill his wife and a friend of hers.

8) And don't that say more about America than all the silence about the September 11 attacks and our failure to capture the criminals who perpetrated it?

9) John Edwards is getting desperate. Seeing Hillary with a 20 point lead in New Hampshire and opening up a big lead in (for now irrelevant) Florida, facing a difficult challenge in Iowa from Barack Obama, the former Senator is looking to South Carolina for an early win. The victory would be Pyrrhic if the polls break in the other early states the way they appear to be.

10) It's nice to see a wireless company join the 20th century.

11) I may have to go to Shea to give the Mets a piece of my mind tonight.

12) On the other hand, the NHL season starts next Thursday, and the Rangers look to be a lock for the Cup.

13) HOLY SHIT! Poor mom!

14) Say goodbye to polar bears.

15) It could be a black hole. Or it could be Hotblack Desiato & Disaster Area.

16) So much for koffkoff "cheap gas"

Happy Birthday, MissC!

Go over and give her her birthday due, everyone.

Paying Lip Service

(h/t Mindfully.org)
In what would have to be considered one of the most monumental waste of time and petroleum products (shuttling people back and forth), President George W Bush convened a meeting of the world's largest global polluters to talk about global warming and greenhouse gases.

*AHEM*

This, of course, comes just as the Clinton Global Initiative opened, which of course includes plenary sessions with regards to global climate change and how to help poorer nations grow economically without becoming polluters in their own right.

That Bush, always trying to out-Clinton the Clintons! Naturally, Clinton's meeting this year lacks the star power of Bush's...hey, when a President calls, you don't tell him no, even if you'd rather hang out with an ex-President instead...and Bush's meeting comes after a carefully orchestrated speech by UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon Monday.

What makes this meeting so ridiculous is the simple reality of Bush's situation: he has zero credibility on the global warming front, he has less than one year of legislative docket to put to use for any initiative he might deign to impose on the nation, and he already has his escape in South America under construction.

What's at stake for him besides some face time near the words "Climate Change Solution"?

In fact, it's almost as if this is a sop to the United Nations for his harsh and hypocritical words on Tuesday:

The declaration of universal rights at the heart of the UN's mission ``is not being upheld,'' Bush said today in his annual address to the 192 member states of the General Assembly. ``We're not doing our duty in the world.''

The president focused on Myanmar, announcing new sanctions against the military regime that he said has imposed a ``19-year reign of fear'' and urging all member states to use diplomatic and economic pressure to bring about democratic change there. ``Americans are outraged by the situation,'' Bush said.

He also urged UN members to support the fledgling democracies in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan and help moderate Palestinian leaders take the steps necessary toward establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Oppressive regimes elsewhere must be confronted, he said. ``Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship,'' Bush said, citing Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran. [...]

Bush also chided the UN for being ``silent on repression'' in regimes ranging from Caracas to Tehran, ``while focusing its criticism excessively in Israel.''

To be credible, Bush said, ``The United Nations must reform its own human rights council.''

The UN had its, very diplomatic, say:

"U.S. leadership in the area of climate change is essential, not only because it is a big emitter of greenhouse gases, but because the U.S. is on the cutting edge of developing technological solutions and bringing them to the global market," said special U.N. climate envoys Gro Harlem Brundtland, Ricardo Lagos Escobar and Han Seung-soo at a Capitol Hill briefing.

The subtext, of course, is that Bush has not done nearly enough "leadering" in this area, despite the fact that he could have easily made it a free market dynamic, offering incentives for green technology and climate-cleansing solutions.

But he'd rather focus on ANWR and Iraq, apparently. But naturally, he has some form of policy:

The two-day meeting was called by President George W. Bush, whose administration has been criticized for its refusal to adopt mandatory limits for climate-warming emissions. The White House favors "aspirational" targets.

"Aspirational"...see that quote by me at the very top of this blog? "Democrats Work For Solutions; Republicans Pray The Problem Will Go Away" - Actor212 It's not just whistling Dixie!

Naturally, leave it to a democrat to point out the lack of imperial garb:

A letter to Bush from members of Congress, led by Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, who chairs the House of Representatives global warming committee, urged mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions: "We need actual reductions in global warming pollution, not aspirational goals."

And when you've pissed off the Brits, look out!

"What would really galvanize the international efforts on climate would be a set of policies in the United States to put the United States on a fast track to building a low carbon economy," John Ashton, Britain's climate envoy, said in a telephone interview. "We now need to stop talking about talking and start deciding about doing."

(emphasis added)

Unfortunately, Messrs. Markey and Ashton, you'll need to wait for President Hillary for any serious action to be taken.

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

It had to happen, I suppose...

How Bush Still Matters, Apparently

I know I've puzzled over some of his political manuevers, particularly when it came to taking on some of his own party (particularly with immigration), and some of the apparently unnecessary posturing Bush has done since the 2006 elections, like agreeing to have two biographies written about him (one by buttboy Bill "Big Stretch" Sammon, the other by Robert Draper.

This article gives us a clue to what little effectiveness Bush has in politics today:

"Bush will have a large role, after there's a nominee, to help unite the party," said Republican strategist Scott Reed. "And he will still be a strong fund-raising draw with segments of the party. His real strength will be in helping turn out the hard-core base of the party."

The so-called "29%ers" who still think of Bush as a godsend, literally.

Could less than one-third of the party, plus whatever celebrgasmic minions who just want to rub elbows with the (in)famous, really bring in millions of dollars?

And yet...

"Let's face it, you've basically got a president who is radioactive," said Norman Ornstein, a political expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "I'm sure he'll be active, as he said, on the campaign trail. But frankly he's not going to be very visible on it."

If this election has any resemblance to the past, Bush's role will be limited, because the Republican candidate in the November 2008 election will need to escape the shadow of the president.

Which brings me to another former President.

You may recall that, in the 2000 election, Al Gore treated Bill Clinton like a radioactive device, begging him not to campaign with him, in an attempt to step out of Clinton's shadow...and also, it must be admitted, to divorce himself from the dummied up scandals the Republicans had saddled Clinton's second term with.

Clinton's approval ratings at that time were 63% and better. Bush? 29% now, and slipping further still. We can't expect Bush, who's sole salvation from having the worst approval ratings on record is probably the fact that many of the more thick-headed of our brethren still give him credit for handling terrorism, to recover to even the 40% level.

So the question must be raised: despite his ability to raise money --P. T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute, why would ANY candidate want to be seen anywhere near George W Bush?

Charlie Black, a Republican strategist advising McCain's campaign...said the real question will be how to use Bush after Republicans nominate their candidate next September.

"That'll just depend on what the political circumstances are then. With any president, you have to see what his popularity is, which issues he's popular on and which issues he's not. Some states are better than others for him," Black said.

Well, what issues DOES he poll well in? There's the question.

Probably not many. He's made a case for a stronger economy now than four years ago, and that case does seem to resonate in certain quarters where champagne is served in crystal flutes at dinner. Of course, ask Joe Lunchpail and he'll tell you he's working harder and seeing less of his pay than eight years ago, before Bush's tax cuts.

His handling of terrorism? That probably resonates simply because we haven't had an attack on our soil. Whether that's due to diligent work by his administration or whether we've just seen a lull in the action is debatable....highly debatable. For those who are already prone to be sympathetic to this numbnuts, he'll be credited with keeping us "safe".

Of course, the likely targets for any future terror attacks are all blue states, so it's not likely he'd be campaigning in New York City for anyone anytime soon. But scare enough people in a Nebraska corn belt, and you can rustle up some bucks, I'm sure.

There aren't many other areas that Bush can easily claim a clear-cut improvement to any one sector of people. He's in New York City today to tout "No Child Left Behind," which is due for renewal by Congress this session, and indeed, based on test scores, things have improved slightly in nationwide education.

But those test scores are deceiving. For one thing, it's only math that's improved and we lagged much farther behind in math than in reading and English. That was probably the easier of the two scores to bring up, and it came at a cost, several costs, many costs, in fact: teachers suspended for cheating on the test scores, teaching to the test to the detriment of other essential education areas, ignoring things like civics and the arts for a mundane, dronish classroom that will put off more and more children the older they get, things like that.

So we can see that Bush's impact on the 2008 elections, while not zero, will be highly targeted, very specific, and will probably be under the radar.

Unless the Democrats can successfully tie whatever candidate runs to Bush. Then all bets are off.

Not Visiting The Grave

(Posted with aBEEG SHMILE! BEEG SHMILE!)
Following up on my post yesterday, where I pointed out that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had the courage to confront a hostile crowd (and apparently, it took its toll, if news reports are to be believed), both President Bush and President Ahmadinejad will speak today at the opening of the United Nations.

By luck of the draw...koffkoff...Bush will speak first, then disappear long before Ahmadinejad gets up.

So you'd imagine this is an opportunity for Bush to launch some pre-emptive rhetorical strikes against a country he has called a "grave threat" to our national security.

Right?

Wrong:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - President George W. Bush is set to announce new U.S. sanctions against Myanmar over human rights as the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders gets under way on Tuesday.

Bush is one of the first speakers on a list that later features Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and diplomats will be watching to see if the leaders of the two bitterly hostile countries cross paths or exchange words.

But despite the United States leading efforts for more U.N. sanctions against Iran to curtail its nuclear program, Bush will only make a brief mention of Tehran in his speech, the White House said.

"The speech is not about Iran," spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "The speech is about liberation and how liberation from poverty, disease, hunger, tyranny and oppression and ignorance can lift people up out of poverty and despair."

Oh really? Darfur, Ms. Perino? Ring a bell? Nigeria? IRAQ?!?!?!?! (feel free to chime in if I missed any).

Now, that's not to say Myanmar isn't a troubled area and doesn't need some of the world's attention:

YANGON (Reuters) - Chanting "democracy, democracy", 10,000 monks marched through the heart of Myanmar's main city on Tuesday in defiance of a threat by the ruling generals to send in troops to end the biggest anti-junta protests in nearly 20 years.

The streets were lined with people clapping and cheering and there were no overt signs of police or soldiers and no trouble as the campaign against 45 years of military rule swelled in size and scope.

But after the demonstrators left the area around the Sule Pagoda in central Yangon, the focus of a week of marches by the revered maroon-robed monks, riot police and troops moved in.

Eight trucks arrived with police carrying shields, batons and rifles, a Reuters witness said. Eleven army trucks packed with soldiers also drove in, suggesting the junta was filling up the city centre to counter any attempt at a repeat.

In another possible sign of looming confrontation, a well-placed source said detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was moved to the notorious Insein prison on Sunday, a day after she appeared in front of her house to greet monks.

Yes, this long-festering conflict appears to be ready to boil out.

You might recall, or maybe not...it didn't get a whole lot of attention in the States with Bush the Elder in office...in 1988, nearly 3,000 Myanmaris were killed by government troops cracking down on pro-democracy factions.

Bush's solution? Sanctions...which worked nicely against Saddam Hussein basically until Bush's cronies in the oil business started circumventing them.

Not to worry, of course: Myanmar has no oil to speak of, producing only 9,500 barrels a day. It does have some fairly sizable natural gas reserves, however (283 billion cu m), as well as major jade, precious gem, and timber industries.

So we're talking "C" list on the economic impact scale: large enough that local governments and politicians can live nicely by Western standards, but not enough for America to bother invading and raping.

Geopolitically, there's no real advantage to be gained in supporting the pro-democracy forces in Myanmar...the ruling junta has no real allies (China comes closest, but even they keep an arm's length), aside from a "See? We really DO support free people!" posturing.

Which raises the question, "Why is Bush bothering to spotlight this crisis?"

Well, it's clear he's ashamed to face the international community on the 800 lb gorilla in his closet: Iraq. The last thing he wants is to remind people of how his "Coalition of the Bribed Willing" fell apart this past year and how it's been five years and only now are we starting to see even a plateau in the level of violence, much less a consolidation and unification of Iraq under a democratic government.

In other words, he's going to avoid his "miserable failure" like the plague.

So why not Iran, Mr. President? Why not talk about arguably a real threat to the world's security, something the UN might want to actually get involved with, ahead of some insane aggression you would want to indulge your G I Joe fantasies over?

Surely it can't be that you're afraid to say in person to Ahmadinejad's face that which you've plastered all over CNNinternational and every major newspaper in the world?

Hell, even Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University, had bigger grapefruits than that!

Or are you? All your life, you've ducked controversy after controversy and then refused to face up to your critics and victims in a confrontation.

Can you say "passive aggressive"?

You've refused to go to Viet Nam, and then refused to work your full shift in the namby pamby detour that your daddy arranged for you. You've failed in every single business you've gotten involved with, needing family and friends to bail you out, even to the point where you took the Texas Rangers from last to even worse: the laughing stock of the American League.

And here, now, as President, rather than engage in dialogue with anyone who might disagree with you, all signs point to the fact that if you don't have toadies and chimpanzees doing your bidding, you fire them or make life so miserable for them, they leave.

This is not the mark of a President. Hell, it's not even the mark of a good gang leader!

So go. Talk about Myanmar until the heat gets too great and you have to leave the kitchen.

America and the world will be much better off once you're out of the driver's seat and in our rear view mirror.

Words, Words, Words...

...as the Bard said.

An odd confluence of words is at the heart of world events today.

First, finds us contemplating the appearance of, as the Daily News today describes it "evil"Ahmadinejad is scheduled to make an appearance at Columbia University to speak to a forum there, where undoubtedly he will face hostile questions after his remarks and undoubtedly, barring a miraculous maturity on the part of the protestors, some trouble will erupt:

Plans for him to speak at New York's Columbia University have drawn protests from some who say the university should not give a platform to a Holocaust denier accused by Washington of supporting terrorism

Speak he will, however, and I wonder that it's not a good thing that he does.

We (and by we, I mean the American dialogue) spent decades demonizing Saddam Hussein to such an extent that he became an easy mark once we had an excuse to go after him (you'll notice that when an adult was in office, while he was still demonized, that adult was willing to contain him to his crib).

I wonder how willing we would have been to go to war with Hussein if he had spoken, even once, before a hostile American audience or indeed, in front of the United Nations? We as a people would have been able to hear his words and judge him for what he was-- a pompous fool with delusions of grandeur.

Too, with Ahmadinejad, let us hear what he has to say to us. I have no doubt he'll have polished up his words to placate Americans (and to show Iranians back home that he can be conciliatory ahead of an election there), but in front of a hostile, a truly hostile crowd, I have no doubt his views will be fully explored.

Columbia, after all, isn't Liberty University.

More to the point, even just showing up in front of a hostile crowd will make Ahmadinejad twice the man our alleged President is, which brings me to our second set of words:

“She's [Hillary Clinton] got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary,” Bush tells author Bill Sammon in the bombshell book, EVANGELICAL PRESIDENT, set for release Monday. “And therefore the person with the national presence, who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites, has got a good chance to be nominated.”

(no link to the book)

One wonders what febrile seizure clamped onto Bill Sammon's brain to make him do what journalists worldwide would tell you is a no-no: "pipe" a quote, or put words in the mouth of someone in your article/book.

Unless you are marking it as "fiction," and considering that Sammon is a Fox News correspondent, one wonders if that line has become blurred in Sammon's smoked mind.

I mean, come on, Sammon! Bush? Multiplicity???? He probably thinks that's a town just north of New Orleans!

"Big Stretch" Sammon, you might recall, was the reporter at Bush's press conference last week who asked Bush about the Moveon.org ad, which allowed Bush to end his press conference with a savage attack...about a newspaper advertisement.

Must be slow on the right wing these days. "Big Stretch"...an appropriate nickname for Sammon.

I'd prefer "Red Herring" but that's just me.

Contrast, tho, the styles of the two "world leaders", both of whom are ineffectual in their own lands, save for a small but rabid minority who would die rather than admit the liberalization of their countries. Ahmadinejad would face down his critics, and confront them.

Bush hides behind the skirts of "Big Stretch" and others who are dumb enough to take the potshots that ultimately make their way to Bush's feet anyway.