A Babbling Stream of Semi-Consciousness
Yet another lost verse from the Woody Guthrie song This Land is Your Land:
As I was walkin’ — I saw a sign there
And that sign said —
But on the other side … it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!
Yeah! We’re born free!
(With thanks to A Blog Around the Clock.)
Inspired by a FOX News documentary on George W. Bush’s final year, The Daily Show‘s John Oliver looks at the stunning history of FOX News itself:
I guess “real” journalists don’t want to expose FOX, because it looks like they’re just trashing the competition. But FOX News isn’t in the journalism business, and it’s bad policy to go along with the pretense that they are.
Via Atrios, MoveOn’s quick review of the Hundred Years War strategy.
The Daily Show has the best analysis of the Petraeus hearings, because they cut through the crap.
Aasif Mandvi:
You know what they say on the Arab street, Jon? “It is not an ethno-sectarian competition unless you break a couple of eggs.”
There was another campaign shakeup earlier this week:
“After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton Campaign,” campaign manager Maggie Williams said in a statement released Sunday. “Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.”
Communications director Howard Wolfson and pollster Geoff Garin will craft strategy for the campaign going forward, Williams said.
Yes, the Clinton campaign is going all the way to the convention.
It may be an uphill battle, but Hillary’s no quitter.
This might be useful: Gas Price Watch.
The site tracks gas prices at over 100,000 stations. The prices are reported by volunteer “spotters.”
Cartoonist Ruben Bolling shows us How America Was Destroyed.
And yet, in a surprise twist, we were doomed anyway!
And, as we all know, if a bad person were to become president, there is no possible way to oppose the destruction of America.
She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. —Norman Bates, Psycho
Oh, you don’t want to be an atheist in this country.
Via Crooks and Liars: an Illinois state legislator clears up that whole “freedom of religion” misunderstanding:
The following exchange between atheist activist Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove and Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) took place Wednesday afternoon in the General Assembly as Sherman testified before the House State Government Administration Committee.
Davis: I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children…. What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous —
Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?
Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!
Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court —
Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.
There’s an audio clip here. You can hear she got a little applause.
“It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!” and “Get out of that seat! You have no right to be here!” — those belong in the pantheon of great all-American words, alongside these: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The authors of the Bill of Rights — they just went a little mad, that’s all. We all go a little mad sometimes.
I could hardly believe this.
I used to watch The Adventures of Robin Hood, a weekly TV show starring Richard Greene. I enjoyed it then, but I was very young, and now I don’t know whether it was any good or not.
We shall see.
Amazon.com is offering the complete first season on DVD for only $5.49. It’s 39 half-hour episodes on three discs. Even if my memories are wrong and the show is terrible, that might be a fair price for three shiny coasters to put under a drink.
A joke, via Daily Kos:
A big insurance company just announced they will give $10 million to anyone who can invent a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. Meanwhile, Exxon says they’ll give $11 million to anyone who kills that guy.
—Conan O’Brien
Reminds me of Dick Cheney dismissing conservation as “a sign of personal virtue,” not a basis for an energy policy, and this White House press briefing from May 2001:
Q: Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?
MR. FLEISCHER: That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country.
Future generations — our children, our grandchildren — are just going to have to look out for themselves. In this administration, we’ve got our hands full just grabbing everything we possibly can for ourselves. It’s the American Way. “Don’t start thinking about tomorrow.”
This short-sightedness has been a cornerstone of the Bush Administration, it’s true. But it’s not just them. It’s been U.S. policy for decades. When do we grow up?
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget,
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
Until, in our own despair, against our will,
Comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God—Robert F. Kennedy, quoting Aeschylus
When the news bulletin flashed onto the television screen forty years ago tonight, the announcer said that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed.
I had never heard Martin Luther King referred to as “Junior” before, and for a few minutes, I thought, “Maybe it’s not him.” But it was him.
If you’re young enough, you might imagine that the whole country joined in mourning the loss of our greatest civil rights leader. But to many Americans, King was nothing but a trouble-maker.
A high school friend asked, “If he was so non-violent, how come there were riots everywhere he went?” The violence was usually started by whites, sometimes by white police and officials, but that was irrelevant — “It’s his fault because he oughtta know that whites aren’t gonna take this sitting down.”
After King’s funeral, I heard a man I knew complain that Robert Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, should be ashamed of himself for attending the funeral.
Time deceives us. It smooths over the ragged edges; it erases the sweat and struggle; it papers over the hatred; it replaces bravery with mythology. We forget that, throughout history, every advance of liberty and human dignity has had to be won against fierce, fiery and often violent opposition. It was true forty years ago, and it’s true today.
On the night Dr. King was murdered, Robert Kennedy was scheduled to speak to a mostly black audience at a campaign rally in Indianapolis. This is what he said:
Didn’t Apollo Creed beat Rocky?
Well, yeah.
That’s why I assumed Hillary was comparing herself to the indomitable Rocky, the Flying Squirrel, not the punch-drunk palooka played by Sylvester Stallone. Stallone has endorsed John McCain and the use of Human Growth Hormone. I don’t understand why so many people are confused about this.
Cartoonist Ruben Bolling takes us to a magical place where the high-rollers never lose:
The physicist Richard Feynman occasionally led workshops at the Esalen Institute, which was attended by lots of people with “new age” ideas. The book No Ordinary Genius includes this brief exchange between a workshop member and Feynman:
You are an original thinker. I would like to ask you, how would you go about designing a miniature antigravity machine?
I can’t. I don’t know how to make any antigravity machine.
You would lick the world’s problems.
It doesn’t make any difference. I still don’t know how to do it. The game I play is a very interesting one. It’s imagination, in a tight straitjacket, which is this: that it has to agree with the known laws of physics. I’m not going to assume that maybe the laws of physics have changed, so that I can design something or other. I operate as if everything that we know is true. If we’re wrong, of course, we can redesign something with the new laws later. But the game is to try to figure things out, with what we know is possible. It requires imagination to think of what’s possible, and then it requires and analysis back, checking to see whether it fits, whether it’s allowed, according to what is known, okay?
In the case of an antigravity machine, I immediately give up, because my understanding of the laws of gravity are such that it doesn’t make sense for antigravity. The only antigravity machines, things which oppose gravity, that is, and which are very effective, are like you’re using now — a pillow, or a floor under your behind. Those are antigravity machines and they will support you in a space, above the earth, a few feet in this case, for a relatively unlimited time. Next?
See, there’s the bottleneck to human creativity. If we can just eliminate reality as a restriction, all sorts of wonderful things become possible.
Lots of prominent people have already managed to slip past this limitation, and they have been very successful, even if only in their own minds.
Another MLB screw-up:
Major League Baseball’s opening day turned into a frustrating affair for many subscribers to its fee-based MLB.TV live game video-streaming service.
Subscribers encountered disruptive technical problems on Monday that included slow response times at the MLB.com site and problems with an upgraded media player.
For starters, the new version of MLB.com’s Mosaic media player remained unavailable until around 4 p.m. Eastern Time, although six games had started between 1:05 p.m. and 3:05 p.m.
…
Frustration was high among premium-level MLB.TV subscribers, who pay either $19.95 per month or $119.95 per year. They were promised an improved “TV-quality” picture this year, thanks to enhancements to Mosaic and to the service in general.
Nick Mavro, a premium subscriber since 2006, is getting tired of MLB.TV opening-day glitches, and the current problems had him questioning whether he should have signed up for this season. “When they cannot get it right on clearly their most ‘glorious’ day, it is very frustrating. In hindsight, I would opt against signing up again,” Mavro, a Toronto businessman, said via e-mail.
Steroids, censorship, and technical foul-ups that stiff paying customers.
Strike three! You’re out!
