Smythe's World

Bush AWOL post was on May 9, 2003.

Russian tennis "phenom" Anna Kournikova (subject of posts here and here) is prepared to test the marriage waters once more, this time to international singing "sensation" Enrique Iglesias. Both bride and groom are winless on the women's tennis circuit.

One of the more amusing sidelights of being a sports fan is getting to read English newspapers cover American sporting events. For example, here is the Guardian's take on the Stanley Cup Finals, complete with a reference to Martin Brodeur being the "man of the match" last night.

Since the Game 1 debacle, I will try a different site for tonight's game--Over/Under in Santa Monica. Go Ducks !!

Size Does Matter: According to Adam Felber, there was a side benefit to Clinton's extracurricular activities--it was also good for the economy !!

For those of you missed it this afternoon, AC Milan edged Juventus, 3-2, on penalty kicks, to win the Champions League Final, after playing 120 minutes of breathtakingly dull, scoreless soccer. Milan is owned by an authentic, honest-to-goodness Fascist, Silvio Berlusconi, and like all Italian teams, plays an anally-retentive defensive style. Watching this match was like having to watch this year's Stanley Cup Final, if you're not into either team.

Speaking of fascists, while commenting on another website (and btw, sorry to Mr. Welch for lowering the civility of his comments board, and invoking Godwin's Law), I was surprised that the notion that Ann Coulter is a Nazi isn't universally shared, and that some people even seem to think she makes a lot of sense. In that I have referred to her on occasion as "Fraulein Goebbels" and "Ilsa, she-wolf of the S.S.", it's safe to say I feel pretty strongly that her opinions are extreme, and that she is a dangerous bigot.

In any event, one of the commenters asked me to put up or shut up, so I made the following five points:

1. She said she wished it was the NY Times that had been destroyed on 9/11;
2. She called for the indiscriminate killing of Arabs;
3. She wrote a book (Slander) that utilized fabricated sourcing and footnotes, thereby giving Goebbels "Big Lie" theory a Regnery twist;
4. She's a white supremacist;
5. She told a crippled Vietnam War veteran that our country lost in Indochina because of him.

I thought each of the points above would have been self-evident to anyone who followed the controversy over the past two years. However, as you can see on the comments board, there were people who still weren't convinced, so I now give you footnotes to the above five points:

1. She said she wished it was the NY Times that had been destroyed on 9/11;
My bad--she said that she wished Tim McVeigh had blown up the New York Times, not the 9/11 terrorists. She said that here.

2. She called for the indiscriminate killing of Arabs;
Check here (first paragraph), and here.

3. She wrote a book (Slander) that utilized fabricated sourcing and footnotes, thereby giving Goebbels "Big Lie" theory a Regnery twist;
Check here, and here

4. She's a white supremacist;
As seen here, here (scattered quotes) and here.

5. She told a crippled Vietnam War veteran that our country lost in Indochina because of him.
Here (fourth quote down), here and here.
Q.E.D.

I hope I don't have to do this again.

UPDATE: Michael Totten, in an otherwise favorable reference to the above, takes issue with my use of the term "nazi". Generally speaking, I think his point is well-taken. As I noted in the comments, using that term is not something I do lightly. In an effort to differentiate Ms. Coulter from the historical events of 1933-45, and realizing that there are still actually "Nazis" in the world who believe that Hitler was a great leader with admirable goals, I used a small-case reference. If he (or anyone else) can think of a better term for me to use to describe someone who makes crude, racist statements and advocates right-wing authoritarianism, I'll use it.

A pint or two and the Mighty Ducks await at a friendly neighborhood pub in Culver City....

As if failing to supervise Jayson Blair wasn't bad enough, conservative pundit Mickey Kaus now accuses NY Times editor Howell Raines of attending a trial involving 1963 Birmingham terror bombing suspect Bobby Frank Cherry. According to the Mickster, that Raines "...attended the Ku Klux Klan trial at all (was) more evidence, if any was needed, of Raines self-encasement in the identity of a 'white man from Alabama,' circa 1963." Imagine that; a big city editor whose life was altered by the death of four little girls !!!!

And people wonder why the GOP never gets more than 10% of the black vote.

Blew off M2 yesterday and went instead to a second-run cineplex in Northridge to see The Two Towers, a worthy sequel but inferior to the original. A cagey move, on my part: admission was only $3.50, and I didn't have to fight my way through a crowd to see it. Now I know why my friend predicted that if they ever made a movie of my life, I would be played by Brad Dourif. The other important discovery from this film is that Elvish is now the second language in which Liv Tyler cannot act.

The always-amusing Los Angeles Times published one of its hardy perennials this morning, a column decrying the fact that motion pictures are increasingly geared towards teenagers and young adults. Together with the complaint that "there are no roles for women over 40" in movies (btw, why is that supposed to be so outrageous, but not the fact that there are no positions on NFL rosters for men over 40), it's safe to say that some variation of this theme has been published every year since 1960.

C'mon, is anyone really shocked or outraged at this state of affairs? Let's face it, the only people motivated to get out of the house to see a movie (and brave the conditions referenced here) are the young. Movies are a relatively cheap date, where you can kill a couple of hours and maybe even get lucky. Naturally, in the free market, movie studios are going to aim their product at that audience, whilst adults are served for the most part by HBO and the TV networks. If you are a bit more, well, settled, it's much easier just to wait til the films you want to see go to video, where you can watch them in the privacy of your home without losing anything.

Not that adults are missing a whole lot. Just look at the last few movies to win the best film Oscar. Gladiator. A Beautiful Mind. Chicago. The English Patient. Titanic. Braveheart. All of them, pure unadulterated crap. Probably the best of the lot, Shakespeare in Love, will be remembered only because Miramax waged one of the most vulgar campaigns on record to win the award, which it stole from a legitimate classic. I have nothing but kind words for American Beauty, since my sister worked on it as an Assistant Art Director, but lets just say that it loses quite a bit of its sting the second time you see it. And none of those movies are "youth-oriented". You have to go back to Schindler's List to find the last time the Best Film Oscar went to a movie that was better than an average episode of "The Sopranos" or "The Shield".

In any event, complaining that movies are geared to adolescents is a sure sign of fogeyness, hopefully one that I can inure myself to. I may be saddened at my own departed youth when I realize I don't "get" the popularity of Seann William Scott, or that I can't identify any rapper other than Eminem, but there's no point whining about it. Youth shall be served.

Ever wondered what would happen if all (or most) of Congress were to be killed or incapacitated by some cataclysmic event? Well, the A.E.I. and the Brookings Institute have a modest proposal. Although less sweeping than every political scientist's least favorite constitutional amendment, I am still concerned about any measure that might be cooked up by a body that is currently under the control of Tom Delay.

How do Keanu Reeves, media consolidation, Barry Diller, movie marketing, Laci Peterson, Hermann Hesse, Iraqi "possession" of WMD, Jayson Blair, and the crappiness that is Matrix: Reloaded interrelate? Frank Rich explains it all in this column. Quoth the Only Pundit Who Matters:

"The Matrix Reloaded" is so dull, so literally ruled by Laurence Fishburne's trance-inducing Morpheus, that I had to reload the "Matrix" DVD to remember why I had been taken with all those streaming digits the first time around. But never mind. You can't argue with a $135.8 million four-day opening, which in itself validated the movie's premise.

It's the conceit of the "Matrix" films that most of mankind is plugged into a virtual-reality program conjured up by all-powerful machines to tease our brains while they loot our bodies for bioelectric power. AOL Time Warner, the powerful machine behind the films, pulled off a comparable feat by plugging the country into its merchandising program for "The Matrix Reloaded" to loot our wallets."

(link via Matt Y.)
Ironically, there's a good chance I might go see M2 this weekend anyway. The advent of digital technology, DVD's, and cable have made actually going to a movie theatre to see a movie rather pointless. With few exceptions, there is more creativity on television now than there is in motion pictures, the acting is better, the stories are more original: only a few films (M2 possibly being one of them) actually gain anything artistically by being seen in a movie theatre. And of course, you're not being gouged for $20 a person for popcorn, soft drinks, parking and all the other accoutrements arising from a trip to the neighborhood mall.

A thought for the Memorial Day Weekend:

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again,--
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers."

Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it -- more than I would ever have believed -- right on this Senate Floor.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.

Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.

The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.

What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops.

Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk. But, the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?

What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.

Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.

Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?

And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease. "Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.

Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies?

As so many warned this Administration before it launched its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way.

The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions.

Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will.

As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the President's tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.

But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

--Sen. Robert Byrd, May 21, 2003

Quickie Golf Trivia Question: What do Mark Brooks, Steve Elkington, Bob Estes, Sergio Garcia and Tom Lehman all have in common? First to answer gets a free night of drinking at Over/Under in Santa Monica....

Ari Fleischer's first day back in civilian life is off to a rough start....

Here's something for fans of Hans Gruber: his own website.

P.C. Watch: Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Chris Hedges of the NY Times was booed off the stage and had his microphone cut off by angry students at Rockford College in Illinois, when he gave a commencement speech critical of US war aims in Iraq. This is less a free speech issue (the audience has just as much of a right to boo and heckle a speaker, something Jeane Kirkpatrick found out when she gave a lecture at Berkeley 20 years ago) than it is a sign that a substantial portion of the country is not interested in having its views challenged, and will get mighty defensive about it when you try. Further evidence, of course, that modern conservatism is as intolerant of dissident views as your typical campus leftist.

William Buckley again proves that, agree or disagree, his columns are always provocative. His take on the Jayson Blair controversy is perhaps the first by a conservative that doesn't reflexively blame affirmative action for the fiasco; in fact, he brings up two obvious issues that would mediate against that argument, that Blair is an immensely talented writer (albeit a dishonest one) and that the stories he was writing were real (it was the quotes and sources that were fabricated). It is a useful tonic to the conventional wisdom now emerging, that somehow this problem never would have happened with a white reporter.

His second column, on the Bennett gambling controversy, has been widely disseminated in the blogosphere for his prediction that Mr. Virtue is...objectively discredited. He will not be proffered any public post by any president into the foreseeable future. He will not publish another book on another virtue, if there is any he has neglected to write about. It is possible that the books written by him on the subject, sitting in bookstores, will work their way to the remainder houses.

OUCH !! What isn't commented on is Buckley's more important point, regarding Bennett's right to a private life and the advocacy of "virtue". The whole notion that casinos are now trading the gambling records of patrons to the fourth estate strikes me as contemptible, and I'm glad that he agrees. His more important point, though, concerns the glee which many of my compatriots on the left have expressed concerning this whole sordid tale. Even granting the rather banal point that Bennett is a hypocrite, I have yet to hear a compelling argument that everything Bennett believes in should now be discredited.

What is the larger point about hypocrisy, anyway? For example, if Pope John Paul II has a secret wife and children, his hypocrisy would speak to the unnaturalness of the Church's policy towards sex, marriage by priests, etc. In other words, it would concern a policy within the Church that has nothing to do with morality, vice, or anything beyond the fact that it was imposed centuries ago to prevent clerical leaders from passing church property on to their descendents. The hypocrisy would reflect how wrong the policy is, not vindicate my unrelated positions on choice and contraception. No one could plausibly believe that because the Pope had been shown to be a hypocrite on this one issue somehow discredits the Church's teaching on the Immaculate Conception.

Gambling is clearly not like that. A significant percentage of people view it as a vice, and, as with drinking, most people believe that it is wrong if done to excess. In a not-altogether convincing article last weekend, Frank Rich argues that Bennett's downfall stems as much from his destination (Las Vegas) as his choice of vices, since he could play the slots to his heart's content in Delaware, rather than in a city that still celebrates the memory of Bugsy Siegel, and in which Crazy Horse II is one of the most popular tourist destinations.

Still, one can oppose gambling and still have difficulty walking away from a blackjack table. William Bennett is no more discredited now, on this or any other issue, than he was two weeks ago. More to the point, Bennett should not be discredited because he is a hypocrite who preached virtue while practicing vice. He should be discredited because he was an unforgiving, bigoted, sanctimonious, partisan scold, a fact that was not changed by the events of the last two weeks.

Jeez, Scott Weiland just got popped for possession of drugs. The "unidentified narcotics" were reportedly discovered by police after they pulled him over last night for driving without his lights. This is the type of story that you are never quite sure if it actually happened, or whether it just gets spit out automatically by the A.P. wire every five months.

The perils of writing under the influence: Mr. Samgrass attempts to "set the record straight" concerning his former friend Sid Blumenthal. Someone please do me the courtesy of translating this into English....

I plan on editing the blogroll to the right in the next couple of days. I have some ideas as to what sites I want to add, delete, etc.(while maintaining all of the sites of bloggers who've honored my life's work by linking to Smythe's World), but I am open to suggestions. If anyone has a favorite link that they access here, let me know, either in the comments box or by e-mail, so that I don't remove it.

The incomparable Ms. Annette Summersett now has a website. It's still under construction, but you can download some of her choicest tunes, and for those of you who can't make it to the Sherman Oaks Lounge every Saturday night, you can hear what all the buzz is about. Unfortunately, the two of us are feuding right now, due to her determined, unqualified hatred of the Mighty Ducks.

Finally, an article in the mainstream press about blogging that doesn't treat the medium like it's some bizarre tribal mating ritual. The focus is on those unfortunate many who become fodder for erstwhile friends who blog, even though they aren't public figures. I think I've successfully avoided that problem, since the few friends I have are either too stupid to know how to use a computer, or already understand that most of the stuff I publish about my life is bullshit anyways.

How is it, exactly, that Halle Berry is the world's most beautiful woman, when she was famously only a first runner-up in the Miss U.S.A. pageant? Granted, it was seventeen years ago, but I doubt Christy Fichtner has aged that badly.


Christy Fichtner (more)

I was hoping that if I didn't write about last night, it never happened. That the Lakers were uninspired at the defensive end goes without saying. More interesting was how dominating San Antonio looked in Game 6. After losing back-to-back games, then getting a reprieve in the final seconds of Game 5, a lot of fans expected the Spurs to get blown out by the Lakers, but Tim Duncan, et al., seemed determined last night not just to beat the Lakers, but bury them. And bury them they did, particularly after an impressive 14-minute stretch of the third and fourth quarter when they scored on 18 of 22 possessions.

Last year, the Lakers were a game away from elimination, having just lost a game in Sacramento, due in large part to some questionable calls at the end of the game. When it was the Lakers turn to get the breaks (and the calls) in Game 6, the Kings players whined like schoolgirls. Of course, in Game 7 the refs bent over backwards to assist Sacramento, but the Kings couldn't hit their frees, and the Lakers pulled out another title. Last night, after a Game 5 partly decided on some questionable non-calls late, and with the expectation that the Lakers were going to turn on the afterburners again, the Spurs took the officials out of the game. They will deserve their likely championship.

UPDATE: A touching elegy from Tony Pierce. The best line comes at the end: "the fans were booing because the eggs are cold, the butters getting hard, and the jellos jiggling, except this time, for the first time in a generation, the jello was jiggling for thee."

About a month ago, there were stories about how documents "uncovered" after the fall of Baghdad revealed that a major anti-war figure in British politics, George Galloway, was on Saddam's payroll, as well as showing that the French had provided intelligence about UN activities to Iraq (Galloway was on a short list of people that John Malkovich wanted dead awhile back). Quite a bit of damage was done as a result, both to Galloway's reputation and to France's policy of opposing military action. Well, it turns out those some of those documents were (surprise, surprise) obvious forgeries. [link via Daily Kos]

The story of the renegade Texas Democrats goes from comical to sinister....

Because David Duke doesn't blog:
Kausfiles desperate attempt to connect minority hiring to the Jayson Blair story has led to this approving link to Ilsa, She-wolf of the SS. I mean, if you're trying to slam the honesty and integrity of a third party, or discredit policies in which unqualified candidates are given a leg up on the competition for reasons other than merit, Ann Coulter is not exactly your ideal "go-to" source.

You knew this was going to happen...as soon as the war ended, the Volkisher Beobachter would report that Salam Pax (in case you've forgotten, he was the blogger who was reporting live from Baghdad during out latest adventure) was actually an agent for Saddam. Of course, there's no evidence yet....

Bloghomie Tony Pierce guarantees a Laker triumph over San Antonio in Games 6 and 7. PRAISE THE LORD !!!

DAMN !!

Hitchens' betrayal of Sidney Blumenthal ("under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me") may have been his nadir, but this latest column merely shows how comfortable he has become speaking power to truth. Apologias for sleazeball Iraqi exiles I suppose are one thing, but to explain away the tolerance of Nazis in post-war Germany, then use it as an excuse for not aggressively pursuing human rights criminals within the Baathist Party is a step away from the madhouse.

Precocious Harvard under-grad non-sequitur roll:

Anytime the sports scene in Southern California is reviewed, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim have usually been treated like the red-headed stepchild. Only two prior playoff appearances in the last ten years, there was no reason that this year would be any different. Unbelievably, the Ducks are now just two games away from the Stanley Cup Finals, and an opportunity to take on either New Jersey or Ottawa for the one title to have alluded the state of California.

As long as we're talking about who belongs and who doesn't belong in a PGA golf tournament, why do male golfers like Vijay Singh, Scott Hoch and Nick Price have a problem playing with perhaps the greatest female golfer of all time, Annika Sorenstam, but not playing with some geezer like Arnold Palmer or Billy Casper at the Masters every year? She's much more likely to the make the cut...btw, check out Off-Wing Opinion on this story; he's covering like it like JS Giguere covers a loose puck in the crease.

I wonder why this sort of guerrilla tactic isn't used more often by a minority legislative party. A far shrewder political leader, the late Jesse Unruh, once locked the doors of the California State Assembly in the mid-60's precisely so the GOP caucus couldn't walk out. In any event, Texas Republicans are now the laughing stock of the nation, victims of the arrogant abuse of their majority.

Most of the attention devoted to this story concerned the initial decision to dock the workers in the audience a day's pay for listening to Bush's speech; after public outrage made itself felt, the company relented, and now the employees of Airlite Plastics will not lose a dime for being used as background props in the President's latest economic scam. However, more Democrats should be pissed at the idiot representing their party in the US Senate, Ben Nelson. This tribune of the underclass claimed he

"...was a little surprised by the company's decision regarding compensation for workers during Bush's visit.

'That could very easily undermine the president's message, but I don't want to be an ungracious host,' Nelson said from his home Sunday. 'If this is Airlite's way of handling it, that's between them and their employees.'"

At least the working men and women of Nebraska know they have a friend in Ben Nelson.

Hope everyone had a happy Mother's Day. I got to watch very little of the Laker game this afternoon, as I had to run a bunch of errands and do a little work at the office. After the rout on Wednesday, I may have been conditioned to expecting that Game 4 would be the final game of the series, and I didn't have much interest in seeing my beloved team swept by the Spurs. After the Lakers blew out San Antonio in Game 3, my interest in the series was rejuvenated, but my mental clock was not reprogrammed. So I listened to most of the game on the radio, as the Lakers came from 16 back in the second quarter to win.

I did watch the final four minutes of the game at home, then did the usual Mothers Day thing: movie (The Dancer Upstairs) and Chinese food (good stuff, too; not Panda Express). The flick was actually quite interesting. Directed by John Malkovich, it features an Hispanic cast, with a South American political theme (a fictionalization of the Peruvian Shining Path movement), but with English dialogue. Malkovich is clearly someone who was changed by the events of September 11; anyone looking for a good neoliberal call-to-arms against terrorism could do worse than start with this movie.

UPDATE: According to this review, Malkovich apparently had this film in the can before 9-11-01, providing a more interesting context for his message.

The principal justification Bush gave the international community for starting a preemptive war with Iraq was the claim that Saddam Hussein was in possession of "weapons of mass destruction". The legalistic figleaf the "Coalition" used to commence hostilities, U.N. Resolution 1441, relied exclusively on that claim; Saddam's human rights record and his ties with terrorist organizations hardly factored in. Foreign opposition, from Russia, France and Germany, centered on skepticism about U.S. claims about the development and extent of the Iraqi program.

Well, today, the other shoe has apparently dropped. The 75th Exploitation Task Force, the principal unit designed to uncover the wherabouts of the Iraqi WMD program, is dissolving, having found nothing to date. According to the Washington Post, "Army Col. Richard McPhee...said he took seriously U.S. intelligence warnings on the eve of war that Hussein had given 'release authority' to subordinates in command of chemical weapons. 'We didn't have all these people in [protective] suits' for nothing, he said. But if Iraq thought of using such weapons, 'there had to have been something to use. And we haven't found it. . . . Books will be written on that in the intelligence community for a long time.' "

Looks like someone owes Jacques Chirac and the cheese-eating surrender monkeys an apology.

A big story back east concerns the travails of NY Times reporter Jayson Blair, who was fired after it became known he had included fabrications in close to 50 articles he had written in the past few years. Since Blair is black, this story is being spun as an example of the evils of affirmative action: hire a non-white reporter, and this is what happens. This is the acceptable face of conservative racism today: make a speech where you apparently yearn for the days when blacks and whites attended separate schools, and you will suffer disgrace; stereotype minorities as incompetent idiots, and you will get your books published and columns printed.

Never mind, as both CalPundit and Atrios point out, that there have been many more examples in recent years of white reporters inventing stories and fabricating sources; if one black reporter does it, than all minority job applicants should be considered suspect. If this is considered mainstream opinion among conservatives, it's no wonder that the GOP continues to be led by the likes of Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, and Rick Santorum.

Below the blogroll to the right I have added a new feature, a real-time Google search result of random items, mainly topics I'll be discussing. Have fun with it. Go Ducks !!!

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH !!



An unidentified fan takes exception to the officiating during last night's 110-95 Laker romp.

I would be remiss if I didn't follow up my earlier post about the Bush-AWOL flap. In particular, two bloggers have put in the time and legwork to examine the record, and have come up with different conclusions. David Neiwert analyzes the public record and concludes that AWOL or not, young W's service record in the Texas Air National Guard is troublesome, and asks the reasonable question as to whether his political connections greased his path through some difficulties, including the fact that his flying privileges were suspended. Noting that two important facts, that Bush had his flying privileges suspended, and that he later failed to report to his superior officer for at least seven months, are not in dispute, he reasonably asks for Bush to release his military record to the public. [link via Atrios]

Bill Hobbs, on the other hand, builds a case that there was nothing improper about Bush's service record: first, that joining the unit he did was not a fail-safe way of ducking service in Vietnam; second, that his family connections back in 1968(the year he joined) were not that great, as his father had not been elected to Congress or served in government yet, and that the absence of any documentation showing he ever served after he was transfered to a unit in Alabama does not necessarily mean he didn't, since the military loses records all the time.

That National Guardsmen gave their lives for the Domino Theory is beyond dispute, and I will concede that there was a possibility that Bush could have been sent to Vietnam. Joining the Air National Guard was not the same thing as enlisting in the Navy, which his father did days after Pearl Harbor, or the Army, which Al Gore did in 1969. In other words, in the last election, one candidate chose a path that made going to Vietnam more likely, and the other a path that made that destination less likely.

Obviously, the second argument is absurd: in 1968, the future President was the grandson of a former U.S. Senator, and the son of a major player in Texas Republican politics, who had already had a narrow loss in a Senate race and was gearing up to run for a House seat. And that was just on his father's side of the family; his mother had an even more distinguished name. That Bush the Elder had not yet become Vice President didn't mean he was without influence.

The third issue, that records are frequently lost, is really beside the point. After all, it's not like we're talking about him missing roll call on a particular date; it's the fact that there is no documentary evidence in the public record that shows he reported for duty for seven months. Hobbs is on much stronger ground when he reminds us that Bush was honorably discharged, and he has a strong circumstantial argument that whatever Bush may have been doing between 1972 and 1973, no one at the time seemed to give it two thoughts, and he was never disciplined or treated in a manner that would suggest he had done anything wrong.

Anyways, read both blogs, and come to your own conclusions. And demand that the President release his military records before he gets us into another war, or decides to do some more stunt flying.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs responds on his website, and notes that Bush the Elder actually was a congressman in 1968 running for reelection, contrary to my assertion that he hadn't served in public office at the time the President enlisted in the TANG.

The philosopher-king of Baltimore County, David Johnson, passes this little tidbit along about "Mr. Samgrass":

Today's excerpt from Sidney Blumenthal's *The Clinton Wars* on Salon.com discusses his relationship with Christopher Hitchens.

A choice quote near the end of the story (after a long and detailed discussion of his friendship and subsequent betrayal):

As we walked out of the room, Clinton put his arm around me and made a remark that echoed what I had told him the day the scandal broke, in our Oval Office conversation. "You know," he said with a grin, "you shouldn't be hanging around crazy people." I laughed and said, "You know, that's good advice."

Damn, I love Clinton.

George Bush's "Christophe" moment on board the USS Abraham Lincoln last week continues to draw jeers....

A memorial service will be held this Sunday at the Staples Center. In lieu of flowers for the soon-to-be deceased, Laker management asks that the public renew its search for Samaki Walker and Derek Fisher, both of whom have been missing since the start of the year.

As I've noted in the past, John Kerry has been the victim of some of the most egregious coverage that any political figure has seen since, well, Al Gore, and conservative critic Ben Fritz takes the media to task here. The comparison between the slurs cast upon Gore by the socalledliberalmedia and those pinned on Kerry is clearly disturbing, with the Boston Globe in particular approaching the edge of anti-semitism in its attacks.

Pride goeth before the fall: The vaunted, unbeatable rugby team from my alma mater, profiled here last month, got its ass kicked in the national semifinals by Air Force, 46-28. Come to think of it, we lost to them in football, too.

One of the consequences of President Bush's political stunt last week flying onto an aircraft carrier has been to revive the dormant allegations that he deserted his Air National Guard unit during the Vietnam War. The short story: George Bush evaded serving in Southeast Asia by joining the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 for a five-year hitch. By 1972, with the draft no longer a threat, Bush sought a transfer to a unit in Alabama, where he had been working on a Senate campaign. There is no evidence he ever appeared, and “(h)is final officer-efficiency report from May 1973 noted only that supervisors hadn't seen him or heard from him.”

Of course, there is probably a perfectly good explanation, both for Bush’s apparent violations of Articles 885 and 886 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and for his subsequent non-explanations of his “service” during the Vietnam War. More disappointing has been the lack of pursuit in this story by the “so-called liberal media”. Other than a Boston Globe investigation during the last election, no other publication bothered to raise these questions, and with only a few exceptions, the media has failed to put last week’s flight by an unlicensed pilot into context. As with the coverage of the recent hostilities in the Persian Gulf, Americans are poorly served with a “free press” that is little more than a for-profit propaganda wing of the powers that be.

UPDATE: Bob Somerby nails this story cold, and discredits an attempted apologia from Andrew Sullivan on the matter.

Howard Owens has a good piece on the "outrage" of the disclosure that William Bennett likes to bet; the outrage, of course, being that any sort of public attention is being brought about a legal activity. Of course, $8 million is a lot to burn, and it seems apparent that he (and his family) might have a problem with his recreational activity, and obviously someone who has been as outspoken about the vices of other people should happen to have one that is condemned by a substantial part of our society is bound for a fall. But I'm troubled by the notion that he's not entitled to have a private life, or that he's not allowed to engage in socially questionable activities, or even that he's not permitted to be a hypocrite.

If there is one moral failing that distinguishes man as a species, it's hypocrisy, the homage that vice pays to virtue. This was something the right ignored when the human being in question was Bill Clinton, but now it seems the left is unfortunately enjoying its own version of payback. To say that Bennett is a hypocrite has got to be the single most worthless criticism under the sun. Anyone who aspires to high ideals will eventually be exposed as a hypocrite; it certainly doesn't discredit either the ideals or the pursuit. I don't happen to buy his judgmentalism on the vices of others, including President Clinton, but I certainly do not feel any less sympathy for having his privacy violated in this manner. As a wise man once said, "don't hate the playa, hate the game."

Of course, Bennett is not alone. Yesterday, the head football coach at Alabama, Mike Price, was fired before he ever coached a game at that college not because he broke any rules associated with the game, but because he purchased private dances at a strip club. His transgression was said to violate the "expectations" as to how an Alabama football coach should behave, an interesting standard for a school whose most famous coach resisted the desegregation of his team until the early-70's. Price's impeccable record as a coach both on and off the field was simply not considered relevant. The other figure in the "Coaches Gone Wild" video, Larry Eustachy, may lose his job coaching Iowa State's basketball team due to his antics on the road the last two years, involving heavy drinking and partying. Neither person violated the law, or did anything other than betray the trust of those closest to them.

But such activities are human foibles. It is precisely for that reason that we have moral and ethical codes, and practice religions; not because we are always saints, but because we are often scum. If Price or Eustachy have a drinking problem, than they should deal with it. If Bennett is throwing his children's college tuition away at a baccarat table at the Bellagio, he should seek help. But I won't judge them, because I know that I am in no position to toss the first stone.

The L.A. Times takes the seemingly contrarian view that yesterday's federal court decision was more a victory than a defeat for supporters of campaign finance reform, focusing on the fact that the ban on soft money contributions to candidates in federal elections was upheld. Since the special three-judge panel also struck down other aspects of McCain-Feingold, including the ban on soft money contributions for "party building" and other activities not related to elections, the interesting question becomes whether the parties can resume collecting such funds pending Supreme Court review of the decision. Since the Supreme Court is more likely than not going to overturn the entire law, it would seem to be a no-brainer.

After allowing myself to go to seed for twenty years, I finally took up the gumption to join a fitness club. I was assigned a personal trainer, and began working out on Monday. A few days later, I am now feeling excruciating pain in almost every part of my body. I haven't even attempted the diet that was suggested, a forlorn effort to get me to eat healthier foods. Dodger Dogs, pizza and Chinese food are my staples, and if the gym sincerely wanted me to lose weight, it wouldn't be located in a mall next to Fudruckers, The Cheesecake Factory, and a gang of movie theatres.

Anyway, yesterday at the gym I ran into the subject of this piece, who along with her friend and cohort Shannon Ainsworth make up the dynamic one-two punch behind the bar at the soon-to-be-defunct Sherman Oaks Lounge. As both worked last night, they took note of the fact that I was drinking away whatever benefits the afternoon's exercise gave me. In any event, Ms. Summersett will be performing tonight at the Lounge sometime after the de la Hoya fight ends, and anyone in the area would be a fool to pass up the opportunity to see her.

This burning question from six months ago has been answered, and I have to admit I'm surprised.

Where did Bush learn to fly a plane? It's not like he was ever in the Air Force or anything....

Last night, I attended my first Dodger game of the year, with bloghomies Tony Pierce, Matt Welch, and the exceedingly generous Howard Owens. Great seats! The "other" player the Dodgers acquired in the Sheffield trade, Odalis Perez, pitched a gem, marred only by Jim Tracy's decision to yank him with two runners on and two outs in the top of the ninth. What earthly purpose was served by not allowing his starter the chance for a shut-out? There was no report of an injury to Perez; the tying run was on-deck, so even a home run would have been survivable. He had thrown 132 pitches, but struck out Thome and Lieberthal in the ninth. The cynic within me would say that Tracy brought in Gagne because it was a "save situation", and that mattered more than Perez getting a complete-game shutout.

[BTW, if you ever go somewhere without your wallet, these are the people to go with--most bloggers have PayPal on their sites, so you can pretty much borrow as much as you want, so long as you promise to contribute a like amount to their site. Being with a blogger is like having an extra low-interest VISA card and a fake I.D., unless I'm the blogger you're with, in which case it's like having the elderly Joe DiMaggio hanging out with you]

What's the story with "Catherine Zeta-Jones" and "Clear Channel"? I've had six unique visitors this morning from that Google search request...are they boycotting her too?

UPDATE: Found out. Here's the story (allegedly). Carry on.