Right-wing extremist and columnist Robert Novak is in a spot of trouble. You might remember Novak — he gave the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to our enemies because he didn’t like her husband.
Seems Novak, known around Washington as an “aggressive driver” (read: jerk), hit a pedestrian. The pedestrian, described as a “male in his 60s,” slammed against Novak’s windshield before falling off. Novak sped away, and only stopped when a bicyclist moved in front of his car and prevented Novak from going further.
My favorite part, though: Novak claimed he didn’t realize he had hit anyone.
The man bounced off his windshield, and Novak says he didn’t notice this. Maybe I’m a bit more observant than most folks, because if a man slammed into my windshield while I was driving, I think I’d be aware of it.
Ergo, either Novak is inattentive or has a medical condition that prevents him from seeing what’s on the road, or he’s an out and out liar. There aren’t any other options.
“Domestic violence is an intolerable offense that legislatures may choose to combat through many means. But for that serious crime, as for others, abridging the constitutional rights of criminal defendants is not in the State’s arsenal.” — Justice Antonin Scalia, June 25, 2008 (emphasis mine).
(I realize I need to head off comments that misinterpret this. Why “irony”? Because Scalia seems perfectly happy to throw away constitutional rights in other situations.)
I just noticed this on my site. There’s a McCain ad that asks “Is it OK to Unconditionally Meet With Anti-American Foreign Leaders?” (The answer, by the way, is yes, of course it is. Meetings shouldn’t have conditions. Agreements, yes, but if we imposed conditions on any anti-American leader, we wouldn’t have a lot of people talking with us.)
But that’s not the problem. The problem is that it appears you’re given a choice — a Yes box and a No box. But the boxes are fake. No matter what you click, you go to the same place.
To me, that’s slimy – that’s the kind of crap you expect from “Click the monkey to win a prize” ads, not from a candidate for President.
I guess McCain feels he needs to trick people into clicking through to his site.
“In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power…”
I don’t know that any comment I could make would be necessary. This Washington Times editorial pretty much speaks for itself — volumes, really, showcasing a backward-looking, isolationist, narrow mindset.
The Bradley Project on America’s National Identity issued a report which contends that America’s national identity is being weakened by the spread of multiculturalism and globalization.
WAYNE, Mich., June 27 — Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.
“I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply,” Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. “Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot.”
Implicit in his comments was a criticism of the Clinton administration as failing to take advantage of the good will that the United States built with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
I was getting the latest U.S. unemployment figures for a project, and rather than use news reports I went straight to the source: The Bureau of Labor Statistics. The first quick scan seemed to indicate an unemployment rate of 5.0 percent.
But then I actually read the report.
That 5.0-percent figure, which is what most newspapers will, incorrectly, cite, is based on there being 7.63 million unemployed people.
But you have to read past the top of the report. Because that figure doesn’t include some very important people: so-called “marginally attached workers.”
Who are they? They are, the BLS says, “persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past.”
They include people who have run out of unemployment benefits (”discouraged workers”) and those who “want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.”
So that 5.0 percent figure only counts people who are getting unemployment benefits. When your benefits run out, you’re not considered unemployed.
Thankfully, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also gives the actual unemployment numbers (albeit in an easy-to-miss addendum to the monthly labor report called “Alternative measures of labor underutilization“).
The actual unemployment rate in the United States in April 2008 was 9.2 percent.
In response to criticism of his continued and unapologetic use of the word “gooks” to describe his North Vietnamese captors, John McCain had this to say:
“I was referring to my prison guards, and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends.”
Which begs the question: If you hate them so much because they beat and tortured your friends, how the hell can you support the United States continuing to use and support torture, you hypocritical, senile, flip-flopping un-American jerk?
Answer:
Either A) the torture you claim to have undergone wasn’t all that bad, or
B) You’re a racist and sadistic creep who has no business being President
Fight like the Repubs do — get everyone on message for starters, and get them using the same talking points.
On talk shows, when interviewed, whenever — they should start drilling these phrases into people’s minds right now to give them a good chance of catching on.
1. “Republican economy.” Use it all the time to remind people who created this mess. Ex.: “Until we start to get out of the Republican economy, I think gas prices are likely to rise” or “In this Republican economy, I think people need to think about whether they can afford a larger home.”
2. “Old man.” McCain turns 72 on Aug. 29 — that’s three years older than Reagan was in 1980.
3. “Frequent memory lapses.” When McCain either makes up facts or distorts them, don’t argue on a factual basis. Ex.: “When he said that Reagan didn’t negotiate with terrorists, Mr. McCain was having another of his frequent memory lapses” and “Hopefully as president McCain wouldn’t have one of his frequent memory lapses.” Considering how often he’s flip-flopped on issues, this could be a popular phrase.
4. “McCain moment.” When a politician forgets something or misspeaks, refer to it as such. Equate being senile with being McCain. Ex.: “I meant to say that we have 2000 soldiers on the ground, not 2 million. I must have had a McCain moment.”
5. “100 years of war.” Remind folks that it was McCain who suggested that would be fine by him. And tell them that this time women might be drafted, if the law was interpreted the right way. That would mean your grade-school kids might end up fighting McCain’s war.
Finally, they should begin to call into question exactly what happened to McCain when he was a POW. If he’s willing to endorse torture now, either A) it didn’t happen to him, B) it happened to him and he knows it works because it got him to talk, or C) he’s a sadistic, bitter old man.
Hey, if the Repubs could call John Kerry’s service into question over a draft-dodger like Bush, McCain’s time in a POW camp is certainly fair game.
Barack Obama, when he was an Illinois state senator, on October 26, 2002:
Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.
THOMAS: Are you saying that we did not [torture anyone]?
PERINO: I am saying we did not, yes.
THOMAS: How can you when you have photographs and everything else? I mean, how can you say that when he admits that he knew about it?
[snip]
PERINO: And what I’m telling you is we have — torture has not occurred. And you can go back through all the public record. Just make sure — I would just respectfully ask you not to misconstrue what the President said.
THOMAS (incredulously): You’re denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?
Meet the aforementioned Roger Byrd, pastor of the Jonesville Church of God in Jonesville, S.C. Pastor Byrd put a sign outside his church reading “Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?”
Pastor Roger Byrd is an ignorant piece of redneck gutter trash.
He’s implying that Barack Obama is a Muslim, linking him to Osama bin Laden. Obama is a Christian and has said so many times; he attends Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and right-wing extremists like Byrd have complained enough about one of its leaders.
So that makes Byrd either uninformed or malicious. Or, more likely, both.
He told the local NBC affiliate that the message wasn’t meant to be racial or political. That makes him a liar, as anyone with a triple-digit IQ can obviously see.
And he said he was concerned about “what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ.” So that makes him a narrow-minded anti-Semite (and anti-Buddhist, anti-Hindu, anti-Taoist…).
And I can guarantee you that pastor Byrd not only thinks that only Christians should hold office in this country, but only his particular sect of Christianity. Catholics, Episcopalians, Unitarians — I bet he has a problem with them, too.
Bottom line: Byrd is a nasty, uniformed, intolerant, ignorant, anti-Semetic redneck preacher here, and he dares to think his opinion should count for anything? If anyone should be denied the rights of citizenship in this country, it’s un-American fools like Roger Byrd.
I’ve said it over and over — ethanol is bad. It’s a lousy substitute for gasoline, and it’s nowhere near as green as people think. In fact, making it does more damage to the environment than not making it.
Slowly but surely people are catching on, as grain prices skyrocket, rainforests are destroyed, and carbon is released all in the name of this ethanol bullshit.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Told you so.
PS, from the same Time story:
The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves.
and
The lesson behind the math is that on a warming planet, land is an incredibly precious commodity, and every acre used to generate fuel is an acre that can’t be used to generate the food needed to feed us or the carbon storage needed to save us.
All right, so here’s the deal. Do I need to explain that China is the bad guy? Do we have to remind people of Tiananmen Square? Or of what’s happening in Tibet? Or of slave wages? Or… well, you know the deal.
And yet, with the kind of logic only the International Olympic Committee can come up with, China gets to host the games. The IOC’s position is that the Olympic transcends politics, but that’s bull and we all know it. It’s a huge international forum. It’s a sign of prestige for the Chinese, and you can bet they’re going to bilk it for all it’s worth.
Although you probably don’t believe you can make a difference, you can. Prettily easily, in fact. You can send a message to the American companies pouring money into the games. And yes, they will hear it. If even a few dozen people write to them, they’ll know there are a lot more who feel the same way.
Believe me, they aren’t getting mail saying “I’m so glad you’re sponsoring the Olympics.” They hope that their advertising will improve their image, so I say we turn it around. Make it an embarrassment to be a sponsor. When a company promotes itself as “the official whatever of the 2008 Olympics,” let it be a signal to shop somewhere else.
More importantly, let these guys know what you think.
You don’t need to do much. Write a short note and snail-mail it — that’s by far the best way to get results. Contact info is below. That’s it. You don’t to get nasty or even long winded. Here, use this as a starting point (or heck, cut and paste it):
I just wanted you to know that I’m incredibly disappointed that you chose to sponsor the Olympics this year. Thanks for helping to support a tyrannical, repressive government in China. I’ll remember that next time I’m shopping for a ________.
You’ll get a form letter back, and maybe even a coupon. But you’ll have made a point. It’s an even better point if next time you’re shopping for, say, paper for your printer, you go to OfficeMax instead of Staples.
Here’s a list of the major American sponsors of the Beijing Olympics. Lazy? Cool. You can cut and paste this list into a Word doc, print it, then cut out the individual addresses and tape them to an envelope.)
The Coca-Cola Company P.O. Box 1734 Atlanta, GA 30301
General Electric General Electric Company (W2E) 3135 Easton Turnpike Fairfield, CT 06828
Johnson & Johnson One Johnson & Johnson Plaza Room WH 2133 New Brunswick, NJ 08933
Lenovo 1009 Think Place Morrisville, NC 27560
Eastman Kodak Company 343 State St. Rochester, NY 14650
John Hancock 200 Clarendon Street Boston, MA 02116
Staples 500 Staples Drive Framingham, MA 01702
Budweiser Anheuser-Busch, Inc. One Busch Place St. Louis, MO 63118
UPS Corporate Headquarters 55 Glenlake Parkway, NE Atlanta, GA 30328
Visa P.O. Box 8999 San Francisco, CA 94128-8999
Samsung 105 Challenger Rd. Ridgefield Park, NJ 07660-0511
OK, you’ve probably heard various musicians and other artists shouting “Free Tibet!” and have at least a vague awareness that the Chinese have occupied it against the wishes of its people.
My understanding, though, was limited to that. But here’s a useful link to a short piece in the Sunday Times, “Long-suffering pawn at mercy of the great powers,” that explains the history. FWIW.
(I note that this is the reason other encyclopediae are all but worthless. While Britannica has an entry on Tibet (”Tibet autonomous region, China”) I doubt it has a separate piece devoted to the sovereignty issue. Further, trying to read the piece about Tibet that Britannica does have is impossible — popups demanding that you pay for the privilege won’t let you.)
When I first heard it, I couldn’t remember whether Eliot Spitzer was a Democrat or Republican. Then I saw that he had been with adult women and I knew he was a Democrat.
