Thursday, June 30, 2011

Potato Skins

From our left elbow.
The lower right one is about an inch long, if you give a damn.

Closet Case

Give it a listen.Very interesting that all of the Bachmann's 23 foster children were teen-aged girls. Almost as if Marcus couldn't be trusted around teen-age (Or younger, who knows?) boys, huh?

Well, we have several months in which Dr. Bachmann's proclivities can still surface. He must feel like he's on a tightrope.

How often does Michele have to beatdiscipline the homo out of him?

Good Day For A No-Hitter

June 30
1908 - At 41 years, 3 months, Cy Young of the Boston Red Sox pitched the third no-hitter of his career, an 8-0 win over the New York Highlanders.
1948 - Cleveland's Bob Lemon pitched a 2-0 no-hitter against the Detroit Tigers for the first American League no-hitter at night.
1962 - Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers struck out 13 New York Mets en route to the first of four career no-hitters, a 5-0 victory at Dodger Stadium.
1970 - Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati was dedicated, but Henry Aaron spoiled the show for the crowd of 51,050 with a first-inning homer off Jim McGlothlin as Atlanta beat the Reds 8-2.
1978 - Willie McCovey became the 12th player in major league history to hit 500 home runs. His milestone shot off Atlanta's Jamie Easterly wasn't enough, as the Braves beat the San Francisco Giants 10-5 in the second game of a doubleheader at Fulton County Stadium.
1995 - Eddie Murray of the Cleveland Indians became the second switch-hitter and the 20th player in baseball history to reach 3,000 hits when he singled against the Minnesota Twins. Murray joined Pete Rose, the career hits leader with 4,256, as the only switch-hitters to get 3,000.
1997 - Bobby Witt of Texas hit the first home run by an American League pitcher in a regular-season game in almost 25 years, connecting off Ismael Valdes in the Rangers' 3-2 interleague victory over Los Angeles.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Giant Econ Elf Speaks

She never manages to bring the totally outrageous on the telly.

Well, she's done "this," of course. On grandfather's farm. Must have been awful.

Think Entropy II

SO COMPLETELY FUCKED:
The United States faces daunting economic challenges. Not only are 14 million people currently unemployed, but according to recent estimates from the International Monetary Fund, we’re likely to see economic growth below 3 percent through 2016.

At a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative jobs summit on Wednesday, Laura Tyson, the former chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers put it even more bleakly, saying that the United States might not see employment return to pre-recession levels until 2023.

Economists, of course, always tend to be gloomy; it’s part of their charm (see Roubini, Nouriel ). But Tyson’s point is a good one and illustrates just how dire our current situation is. Yet as she astutely points out, it’s not merely because of the recession.

Indeed, the eight years preceding it were far from boom times. “Job growth in the 2000s was half of what it had been in the previous two decades,” she said.

In his cover story for Newsweek, President Clinton echoed this point: “In the seven years and eight months that preceded the meltdown, our economy produced a meager 4 million new jobs, far too few to cope with millions coming into the workforce.”

Worse still, most of the jobs were related to housing, finance, and consumer spending—all of which were crushed by the downturn.
Not that a lot of this crap didn't start under Clinton's admin.

Think Entropy

FUCKED:
We’re not retailing and we’re not wholesaling. We’re not making things and we’re not shipping things. This isn’t a “fundamental change” away from doing one kind of thing to doing another kind of thing. It’s a fundamental change away from producing goods and services to mass unemployment and reduced living standards.
Whaddya mean "we," paleface?

SO FUCKED:

Essentially, the icecaps melt, the oceans rise & everywhere floods, after which the oceans dry up & blow away. Après nous, le déluge!

Violence Not Obscenity

Not a lawyer or anything (It crossed our mind once, but we took the paper into the men's room for a while & it went away.) but the few excerpts (extracted by those much braver than ourself) that we've seen from the SCOTUS California v. video games decision have provided entire minutes of amusement for us.

So a bit more, dug out from Scalia & Alito by Robert Scheer, w/ another sad conclusion:
Scalia’s withering dismissal of Alito’s concerns is revealing of his tolerance for violent imagery as opposed to that which is merely sexual: “Justice Alito has done considerable independent research to identify video games in which ‘the violence is astounding. … Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. … Blood gushes, splatters, and pools.’ Justice Alito recounts all these disgusting video games in order to disgust us—but disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression. … Thus, ironically, Justice Alito’s argument highlights the precise danger posed by the California Act: that the ideas expressed by speech—whether it be violence, or gore, or racism—and not its objective effects, may be the real reason for governmental proscription.”

Hear, hear to such a bold defense of the right of minors to consider a full range of controversial thought, but if the claimed harmful effects of minors’ exposure to violence, gore and racism do not warrant a governmental limitation on free speech, why isn’t sexually prurient material—for adults if not minors—deserving of equal First Amendment protection? The unspoken answer that runs through Scalia’s opinion, and that of the court down though the ages, is that violence is normal while sex is obscene.
Nine old men, as Roosevelt said.

My List For You Checks Off As Null

John Dean's checked his list on Justice Thomas. Twice. He starts by raking the Justice over the coals, then describes recent Justice-removal.
There is a way, nonetheless. As a young official in Nixon’s Department of Justice—and, I must admit, with some amazement—I watched a Republican Justice Department and a conservative attorney general go after a liberal Supreme Court justice with remarkable success. Robert Shogan, a former Los Angeles Times and Newsweek reporter, recounted much of the story in “A Question of Judgment: The Fortas Case and the Struggle for the Supreme Court.” I filled in a few missing pieces when I wrote “The Rehnquist Choice.” Rehnquist in those days was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel and prepared a detailed memorandum for Attorney General John Mitchell explaining how to undertake an action that had never before been done, namely for the Justice Department to start a criminal investigation of a sitting justice, not based on hard information but rather based mainly on speculation of a worst-case scenario, i.e., assuming gifts and favors were bribes.
And ends w/ a sadly realistic acknowledgement of the situation.
In short, nothing is going to happen to Clarence Thomas. No one is going to truly challenge his conduct, and he will sit on the Supreme Court until he feels like leaving.
Related, & allows us to leave on a more cheerful note.

It's Still War!

Why BigHollywood, et al., keep up the kulturkampf:
The 21st century is really the moment when everything changes, but Torchwood and other shows aren’t actually doing anything to get us ready or to help us think through those changes ...
No no no. Telebision is to allow us to escape the splatter from the fan (Or, maybe, be art, or aesthetic. Nah. NBL, as they say.) for a few moments. No lessons to be learned, beyond never going broke underestimating the American masses.

Ticking Away

Original title.

This Date In Baseball

June 29
1916 - The Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds played a nine-inning game with just one baseball.
1923 - Brooklyn's Jacques Fournier went 6-for-6 with a home run, two doubles and three singles as the Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies 14-5.
1937 - Chicago Cubs first baseman Rip Collins played an entire game without a putout or an assist.
1941 - In a doubleheader against the Washington Senators, New York's Joe DiMaggio tied and then broke the American League record of hitting safely in 41 consecutive games. DiMaggio doubled in four at-bats in the opener and singled in five at-bats in the nightcap to break the record set by George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns in 1922.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Our Public Servants

Another Politician Caught Sending Underwear Photos

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that local city councilman Joe Stagni (R) admitted "that he sent a picture of himself in his underwear to a city employee 18 months ago and that the image ended up on a city computer server."

Said Stagni: "I asked for God's mercy and forgiveness. I apologized to my wife and family and asked for their forgiveness as well. My actions and bad judgment had nothing to do with my duties and responsibilities as a public official. They were private acts, but I take full responsibility for my irresponsible behavior. "

Niche Nostalgia

Spotting trends in looking backwards: Not the dreary, monochromatic Fifties, nor the post-Kennedy/Beatles/Vietnam/Civil Rights flailing about of The Sixties, but that sliver of history between the two (We could call it "Camelot!") when the world was headed to the stars, or certainly color tee vee for all, is now passing for a trend.

AMC started the ball rolling back to never-was land w/ Mad Men in 2007, now the drones of network telebision have jumped right in w/ two historical dramas that will debut this September, Coffee Tea or Me?Pan Am on the alphabet net, & already controversial The Playboy Club, so unspeakably naughty that the LDS-owned NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City has decided not to show it. (Of course, KSL doesn't run Saturday Night Live either, which, speaking of nostalgia, is apparently still on the air in other parts of the nation.)

Conclusion? None, 'though 1960-63 is one small lode to exploit.

And finishing the telly report, we see that ABC actually has a show about a current war (a mere ten yrs. after the adventure began) on the air ('though just as a summer replacement) startling for an industry whose closest connection to America's wars was a service comedy set in a hospital during the Korean Police Action (M★A★S★H) which aired after the war it was supposed to be about, & China Beach, actually about Vietnam, but not aired until some yrs. after a certain country got its ass handed to it & left 'Nam. The title of ABC's Afghan offering? Combat Hospital.

Interesting (if not telling) that Hollywood prefers to view suffering & murder imposed by Americans from the perspective of dashing doctors & noble nurses, rather than that of the sordid thugs who enforce the will of the oil-igarchy on the other side of the world.

Where We Stopped Reading

First sentence, this time.
When Sarah Palin steps foot in Iowa later today, she’s going to place her toes directly into Iowa’s presidential waters.
We'll "step foot" on your typing fingers, Craig Robinson. And drown you in the presidential waters.

Ari Fleischer Blow Job Up-Date/Follow-Up

Icky, yes, but it's the responsible thing to continue coverage of this very important story.

Kiss and Tell Republicans

Lisa Baron, author of Life of the Party: A Political Press Tart Bares All, is apparently willing to do anything to promote her book including recording a podcast about a sexual encounter with former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

"Ari and I started kissing and I felt giddy, giddy about the primary race, and high on the inappropriateness of the moment. I was not keen on getting that room a-rocking, as I did not want Ralph or his wife to come a-knocking... Since audible sex was out of the question, I immediately headed south and took care of business."
After all, civic responsibilty is why we're here in the first place.

Presidential Hair Report

Now that it's been confirmed that Erick Erickson is a hoor,
we're not sure what, if anything, this means, 'cause E.E. may well have rec'd. the big bucks to pimp Perry (Imagine! Erick Erickson & RedState are not worthy of trust.) but for those not fortunate enough to get this crap e-mailed to them, we share so you, too, can wonder if Gov. Perry is the great White male hope.
Still going w/ the "Dry Look," we see.

Bears Repeating

Don't make us come out there & reiterate!
(Bores repeating?) From this think-piece on Glenn Beck as he leaves basic-cable:
After the economic collapse and the elections of 2008, the panic on the right was completely understandable. Bush made it clear that everything conservatives had fervently believed was false: tax cuts and deregulation don’t create jobs, American armies can’t remake the Middle East, capitalism is really socialism for the very rich, and the party of fiscal conservatism is in fact more profligate than generations of Democrats.

Taken together, this succession of ideological impossibilities hit the Republican base like the two bullets in Jason Bourne’s back. (Unfortunately, the rank and file do not have a laser signal for a numbered Swiss bank account buried in their hips—only their leadership gets that.) They underwent a severe psychological break, and when they came to they were no longer Republicans at all: They were Tea Partyers.
Needed perspective, even.

Roots Of Low Key Comedy

Yes, we stole it. But we found this one:

This Date In Baseball

June 28
1907 - Twelve Washington baserunners stole against catcher Branch Rickey as the Senators defeated the New York Yankees 16-5.
1910 - Joe Tinker of the Chicago Cubs became the first major leaguer to steal home twice in the same game, an 11-1 win over Cincinnati.
1919 - Carl Mays of Boston pitched two complete games against the New York Yankees. The Red Sox won the first game 2-0 and lost the nightcap 4-1.
1949 - Joe DiMaggio played his first series of the year after a bone spur operation and hit .455, with four home runs and nine RBIs, as the New York Yankees swept Boston at Fenway Park.
1970 - Pittsburgh swept the Chicago Cubs 3-2 and 4-1 in the Pirates' final games at Forbes Field.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Good News For The Cloven-Hoofed

A second disease wiped from the planet by gov't. & UN do-gooders & nanny-statists.
FIELD OF DEATH Cattle carcasses littered a pasture in South Africa in 1900 during a rinderpest epidemic.
But rinderpest is hardly irrelevant to humans. It has been blamed for speeding the fall of the Roman Empire, aiding the conquests of Genghis Khan and hindering those of Charlemagne, opening the way for the French and Russian Revolutions, and subjugating East Africa to colonization.

Any society dependent on cattle — or relatives like African zebu, Asian water buffaloes or Himalayan yaks — was vulnerable.

As meat and milk, cattle were and are both food and income to peasant farmers, as well as the source of calves to sell and manure for fields. Until recently, they were the tractors that dragged plows and the trucks that hauled crops to market. When herds die, their owners starve.

The long but little-known campaign to conquer rinderpest is a tribute to the skill and bravery of “big animal” veterinarians, who fought the disease in remote and sometimes war-torn areas — across arid stretches of Africa bigger than Europe, in the Arabian desert and on the Mongolian steppes.
It goes on & on.

Next eradication: Cooties?

Reuse, Recycle

This will keep an aircraft whose first flight happened in 1968 flying until 2040. DefenseTech.org

Today's Clarence Thomas

We weren't going to bother (Surprise!) but the juxtaposition of the cartoon & article finally motivated us. What a maroon.
Randall Enos, Cagle Cartoons
And then, like a nostalgic colonial version of Michael Chabon, Thomas launches into what is surely one of the oddest, most discursive examinations of the Joys of Puritanical Parenting. He scoots across the centuries, from the late 1600s in "the New England Colonies, [where] fathers ruled families with absolute authority," to late 18th-century Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson told his daughters how to dress. "The Puritans rejected many customs, such as godparenthood, that they considered inconsistent with the patriarchal structure," Thomas notes. He observes that colonial parents were warned not to "let their children read 'vain Books, profane Ballads, and filthy Songs' or 'fond and amorous Romances, … fabulous Histories of Giants, the bombast Achievements of Knight Errantry, and the like.' " He notes, further, that in colonial Massachusetts, "a 'son' of 16 years or more committed a capital offense if he disobeyed 'the voice of his Father, or the voice of his Mother.' " With a nod to Locke and Rousseau and changing views of parenting, Thomas observes that John Adams, Noah Webster, Gouvernor Morris, Sir William Blackstone, and others were adamant that the pliability of the youthful mind required vigilance in the upbringing of one's children, and that this imperative was impressed upon the Founders. He notes, I suppose with approval, Thomas Jefferson's bossy and controlling letters to his daughters. He describes early school textbooks containing "vignettes illustrating the consequences of disobedience," including one called "Pictures of the Vicious ultimately overcome by misery and shame," and a treatise from 1848 warning that the "number of children who die from the effects of disobedience to their parents is very large."
What a maroon. (Oh, did we type that already? It bears repeating. Maroon.)

A Pig Is A Pig Is A Pig

Why the hell would it be any different in Afghanistan?
According to a new report to be released tomorrow from Refugees International (RI), the Afghan Local Police (ALP) units are “a major threat to civilians and stability” because they are “poorly vetted, ill-trained and unsupervised.” “These armed groups,” the report says, “have allegedly committed abuses including murder, theft, extortion, bribery and intimidation.”
Repetitious insanity.

This Date In Baseball

June 27
1917 - Catcher Hank Gowdy of the Braves became the first major league player to enter military service in World War I.
1939 - The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves played a 23-inning, 2-2 tie. Whit Wyatt pitched the first 16 innings for the Dodgers. Both clubs played a 26-inning tie in 1920 at the same Braves Field.
1958 - Billy Pierce of the Chicago White Sox retired 26 straight Washington batters before pinch-hitter Ed Fitzgerald hit a double just inside the right-field line for the only hit. Pierce then struck out Albie Pearson on three pitches and beat the Senators 3-0.
1973 - David Clyde, a $125,000, 18-year-old bonus baby with the Rangers, pitched five innings, struck out eight and allowed one hit in his first major league start. Texas beat the Minnesota Twins 4-3 before 35,698 fans - the Rangers' first home sellout at Arlington Stadium.
1980 - The Los Angeles Dodgers' Jerry Reuss pitched a no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants in an 8-0 victory at Candlestick Park. The only player to reach base was Jack Clark in the first inning on a throwing error by shortstop Bill Russell.
1986 - San Francisco rookie Robby Thompson set a major league record when he was caught stealing four times in the Giants' 7-6, 12-inning victory over the Cincinnati Reds. Catcher Bo Diaz threw out Thompson in the fourth, sixth, ninth and 11th innings.
1993 - Anthony Young of the New York Mets set a major league record by losing his 24th straight decision, 5-3 to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

B-1 Bob Explains Newtie For You

Dornan bellows.
You may remember Bob Dornan. Hard-right GOP congressman. Ur-Tea Partier. C-SPAN bellower who, in his Virginia retirement, bellows mostly into my voicemail. Bob has a bone to pick with Newt.

[...]

“Then Newt started talking about Alvin Toffler,” Bob says. “I went, Wait a minute, I guested Toffler on Tempo, my TV show, and The Robert K. Dornan Show in the '70s. This guy is a weirdo!”

For all his idea-mongering, Newt wasn’t a hard worker, Bob maintains. Years later, when Bob offered to take him along on foreign trips, Newt would suggest Bob go and report back to him instead. (Bob declined and broadcast his findings on the House floor.) Bob says Newt’s relationships with the future Marianne and Callista Gingrich were open secrets in the GOP caucus. “At the end of the two years,” Bob recalls, “one of the pages, he said, ‘Do you know what we call Mr. Gingrich behind the scenes?’”

“I said, ‘What?’”

“‘We call him a dork, a geek, and a skank’—a word I’d never heard.”
Innocence lost. Awww ... Whatever. Bob has more. (Our excerpt may not even be the best. Haven't read it all, 'cause why bother, we know Newtie's all nobody now.)

This was worth reading:
Bob has a plan. If Newt stays in the race, Bob wants to fly to the next GOP debate and deliver his anti-Newt tirade to Newt himself. He almost did it a few weeks ago—he even had the plane tickets. Bob wants to rise from the audience to ask a question, or confront Newt in the Spin Room after. “If he shows up at another debate,” Bob says, “I’m pretty much gonna promise you, Bryan, I’m gonna be there.”

He wants Newt to know he’s coming. “If you even put in a slight mention [of me showing up], it’ll come up on his media search. … He’ll know that I’m on the path. And I’m gonna drive him out of this race.”

“I want him out of politics! I will wear that sandwich board!”
Bombs away, Bob!

Herman Cain Explains It All For You

Cain, the one-time Neal Boortz protegé, has a "Business Plan" for America. No, wait, this just in ... He has three principles for America, economic guiding principles (EGPs) specifically, rather than a plan, or any policies or, you know, stuff. Dare we look?
EGP #1: Production must precede consumption

You can’t spend your way to prosperity. The Obama administration has shown this. Most families knew that it would not work because it does not work for a household. My dad had to produce enough cash for a down payment to buy his first home before he could get the keys to the new house. He had to work three jobs at times to produce enough cash, but he did it!

Production is the engine of any economic train, and consumption is the caboose. Before someone consumes, he must produce. The nearly $1 trillion in stimulus spending went into the caboose. It did not help fuel the real engine of the economy.

The engine of our economy is the business sector. It has received only disdain and lectures from the Obama administration, instead of fuel in the form of lower taxes, fewer barriers and more certainty about less government. (Specifics will follow in next week’s commentary.)
How Cain can present himself as a leader yet whine like a sissy about "disdain & lectures" (And "more certainty about less government." Agghh.) & get away therewith is another Republican mystery for the ages. He could demonstrate leadership by getting his cronies w/ the US$960+ billion in profits they're sitting on but not using (Shouldn't the banks be lending that, even if companies aren't willing to invest in their businesses?) but maybe their understanding of the actualities of supply & demand is why they're still in business while Cain has retired to his radio-show hobby, & now this leisure activity of bullshitting on the national stage. Or they might laugh their high-finance heads off at that pizza guy. Either way, we hope he enjoys his 15 mins.

In an economy where there are said to be five job-seeking Americans for every open position, how are any of us to get those three jobs that the elder Mr. Cain held down so he could buy his house? A house that probably wasn't overpriced by a mortgage-speculation bubble that was about to blow up in his face, either.

Did Mr. Cain run Godfather's Pizza on his bullshit "produce first" model? Was job one to be sure there was plenty of pizza drying out on the racks before the store opened? Really?

And again w/ analogizing government, business & family finances. Not the same things at all.

Nor is the engine/caboose bit, w/ the train that's eating its own tail, we think he meant. Apples & oranges, really. Because that caboose is looking more & more like a free-riding moocher. What does it produce, anyway?
Concluding note

Prosperity is the natural state of our free-market economy if we get government out of the way, off our backs and out of our pockets. Prosperity begins with production. It requires risk-taking and a stable measure of exchange.

Good economic policy is guided by good principles, not politics.

It’s common sense.
Empty fucking suit. Once "common sense" has been invoked it's over before it began.

This just in: Irony is not yet dead.

Apple, Google, Microsoft Sitting on 58 Billion in Overseas Profits, Blackmailing Us to Avoid Taxes

How does it feel to have the jobs gun pointed at your head? Because that’s what this is: a stickup.
In passing, what have those three entities done that's been of any use ever? Whatever they get their hands on they make worse, even as they copy down everything about us. Tax 'em to death, w/ the churches.

Big One Remains Overdue

Vehicles stranded on I-5 after the 1994 event.
Brant Ward/©San Francisco Chronicle.
Now we may know why.
The seismically-active southern end of the San Andreas Fault Zone lies under the Salton Sea, a wide depression whose bottom is about 250 feet below sea level. The area was regularly flooded by the Colorado River over the relatively-recent millenia, a practice that ended 100 years ago when levees were built to force the Colorado to flow into the Sea of Cortez just south of Yuma, Arizona.

Between that diversion, the construction of upstream dams near Las Vegas and regional droughts, the Colorado has not flooded into the Imperial Valley and Salton Sink, a dry lake bed that was converted to the Salton Sea in gigantic floods in 1906. The Colorado last flooded and reached the Sea of Cortez in 1982, but it now trickles into the sand about where the San Andreas fault crosses the International Boundary 200 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

[...]

The new Scripps study shows that several heretofore unknown fingers of the San Andreas system sit beneath the Salton Sea, and the sand and dirt of the Imperial Valley. The faults let loose with magnitude 7.0 quakes or larger every 180 years until the early 20th century -- the same time that the Colorado floods that had brought billions of pounds of water to the area were stanched.

"It's possible that the ending of the diversion re-set the earthquake clock; we're more than 100 years overdue for a quake that could be as big as 7.5,'' said Neal Driscoll, quoted by signonsandiego.com .

"The fault could send tremendous energy towards the Los Angeles area if it broke from south to north, and could cause shaking that would make soil liquefy in bays and estuaries in San Diego County,'' Driscoll told the U-T's web site.
So. Minus the billions of lbs. of water, tectonic tension has been lower, & events less frequent. Eventually, something will give; when it does & if it breaks south to north
[a] massive 7.5 or larger quake may be the result when the southern San Andreas Fault finally jolts back to life, causing waves of enormous destruction in the Inland Empire and Los Angeles basin, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography study published Sunday said.
Even worse, there are other dangers associated w/ Salton Sea earthquakes.

Serious As Cancer: M.B. 2012!

So, what, 16 mos.? Seven or so until something actually quantifiable happens?
Asked at the end of the show by Fox interviewer Chris Wallace whether she was a "flake" because of a "history of questionable statements" and "gaffes" she had made, Bachmann was clearly irritated.
Election Night, 2010.
"I think that would be insulting, to say something like that," she said, "because I'm a serious person."

This Date In Baseball

June 26
1916 - In a game against the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Indians appeared on the field with numbers on their sleeves. It marked the first time players were identified by numbers corresponding to the scorecard.
1938 - Lonny Frey of the Cincinnati Reds had eight hits in a doubleheader split with the Philadelphia Phillies. Frey had three hits in a 10-3 opening-game loss and collected five in the nightcap, which the Reds won 8-5.
1944 - In an effort to raise funds for war bonds, the New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees played against each other in a six-inning contest at the Polo Grounds. More than 50,000 fans turned out. Each team played successive innings against the other two teams then would sit out an inning. The final score was Dodgers 5, Yankees 1, Giants 0.
1962 - Earl Wilson of the Boston Red Sox pitched a 2-0 no-hitter against the Los Angeles Angels at Fenway Park. Wilson also homered in the game.
1970 - Frank Robinson hit two grand slams for the Orioles as Baltimore defeated the Washington Senators 12-2.
1976 - Shortstop Toby Harrah played an entire doubleheader for the Texas Rangers without handling a batted ball from the Chicago White Sox.
2000 - Minor league sensation Alex Cabrera hit a two-run homer in his first major league at-bat for Arizona as the Diamondbacks beat the Houston Astros 6-1.
2006 - Oregon State beats North Carolina 3-2 for its first College World Series title.
2008 - Matt Garza struck out 10 in a one-hitter, leading Tampa Bay to a 6-1 victory over the Florida Marlins.
2009 - Andre Ethier had his first three-homer game and drove in a career-high six runs to lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to an 8-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners.
Today's birthdays: Lou Marson 25; Derek Jeter 37; Jason Kendall 37
Compiled By PAUL MONTELLA

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Believing Their Own Press

TMZ "exclusive." (Note that we are only 11-ish hrs. behind.)

LAPD -- We're Proud 'Columbo'
Was One of Us

The Los Angeles Police Department feels like they lost one of their own in Peter Falk ... even though he only played a cop on TV.

A rep for the LAPD tells TMZ they are "proud" to be associated with Falk's infamous [sic] character, Lt. Columbo, who was an LAPD homicide detective.

The rep tells TMZ, "The Department extends heartfelt condolences to Mr. Falk's family in this most difficult time. He was truly one of the all-time great TV cops. There will never be another one like him."

It's A Free Republic

Straight outta Bakersfield.
To: Steelfish
Memo to NY: since you’ve decided to officially become a degenerate fag state, don’t expect any help or sympathy from me the next time you have a 9/11. Burn in hell, New York.
4 posted on Fri Jun 24 2011 19:50:04 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time) by greene66

Borders Attacked

We were right here all last night. Really.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, "The two small, crude devices partially functioned and caused no damage to the Colorado Mills Mall and minimal damage to a small area inside the Borders Bookstore."

9Wants to Know says two FBI sources also confirm that the devices went off. The FBI says police responded to a store alarm going off and found someone had broken into the Borders store. Officers found two suspicious devices at the scene and called the Jefferson County Bomb Squad.

"I think it's pretty clear [the devices] were intentionally set," Dave Joly, a spokesman with the FBI, said. Joly would not elaborate on the type of devices found.
"I was right here, I tell you — Hey!! Leggo a me! You can't do this!!!"

Famous Literary Smart Guys

Still 'phoning it in, you betcha. There is not enough coffee in the world ...
Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898)

“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
From the readers, slightly more contemporary.

(Need to at least start coffee before going through all 20 for a selection. Just wait right there.)
H.L. Mencken on Gertrude Stein

“It is the great achievement of Miss Stein that she has made English easier to write and harder to read.” – Suggested by Jess
Same thing we try to do here.

Blow-Drying The Helmet

Also: teasing the bump.
The Bump.
The truth is that looking good enough for public appearances, let alone high-def TV, takes a lot of time, whether you’re married to a prince, aiming to be first lady, or husband of the secretary of state.

The Globe asked several local hairdressers for a professional assessment. How much time would Callista Gingrich need in the morning before she could comfortably hit the campaign trail? Almost to a stylist, they said the “helmet’’ look doesn’t come quickly.

“It takes at least 45 minutes to an hour to do that kind of blow-dry,’’ said Clifford Bouvier, artistic director of Crew International, in Brookline. “She’s really bleached out, and to smooth out over-processed hair you have to do a lot of work. You have to use products that put moisture back in the hair.’’

Helena Cohen, owner of Ardan Medspa + Salon, in Wellesley, said that Gingrich’s hair appears to be teased, and that would add time to the morning routine. “She does that bump on the top that gives it height.’’ Time taken away from kissing babies: about 15 minutes.

Celebrity hair guru Sandy Poirier, at Shag, in South Boston, said Gingrich’s hair might take as long as 90 minutes, although he couldn’t be sure. He contrasted her high-maintenance hairstyle with that of a far better-known public figure: “Look at the Queen of England,’’ Poirier said. “She puts on that hat and she’s out the door.’’
Previously on Callista.
More misery: Contemplate the many horrors of the words "Celebrity hair guru Sandy Poirier, at Shag, in South Boston."

Saturday Morning Cartoons:
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

We thought this was in color,& as usual we were somewhat correct.We advise that you DO NOT PLAY THE MUSIC that accompanies this comparison,but relax quietly & enjoy the contrast.

Call us cynical, but how much of a toad is the compiler of "The 10 trippiest movies ever made" when the link provided to his #1 selection is tiled & preceded by an advert, rather than the crisp & absolutely free YouTube upload? And neglects to mention the colored & Dali-ized (Maybe that's the reason.) version?

Friday, June 24, 2011

Things We've Mostly Forgotten:

The last time we gave a flying fuck at a rolling dough-nut.

Slackering Friday

We've always liked the bass on this. (Bassist is the album cover boy.)And may well have run it in the four+(!) yrs. we've been slavtyping here. Suggested by the album version, as linked here.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Didn't There Used To Be Some Amendment Or Something?

We neither know nor care what or who an Instapaper is, but that doesn't mean they're not getting screwed like the rest of us. Except worse, really.

The FBI stole an Instapaper server in an unrelated raid

One of Instapaper’s five leased servers was hosted at DigitalOne, a Swiss hosting company leasing blade servers from a Virginia datacenter. Early Tuesday morning, the FBI raided the datacenter to seize servers used by another DigitalOne customer for fraudulent “scareware” distribution, according to the FBI’s press release, but they seemingly took a lot more servers that happened to be physically near the server(s) they were looking for.

[...]

As far as I know, my single DigitalOne server was among those taken by the FBI (which I’m now calling “stolen” since I assume it was not included in the warrant). I’m assuming this because it became unreachable and stopped sending updates to my internal monitoring system at approximately the time that the FBI raided the datacenter, and has not come online again since then.
"Police culture" here says all that needs to be said.
So the FBI now has illegal possession of nearly all of Instapaper’s data and a moderate portion of its codebase, and as far as I know, this is completely out of my control.

Due to the police culture in the United States, especially at the federal level, I don’t expect to ever get an explanation for this, have the server or its data returned, or be reimbursed for the damage they have illegally caused.

I’m really not sure what to do about this. I’m speaking to my lawyer about it shortly, but as far as I know, there’s nothing I can reasonably do without spending more money, time, and stress than I can afford on a path that would likely lead nowhere productive.
Ground under by the national security state. You have no de facto recourse, sucker.

Moments (or so) after posting: Oh piss. You leave a tab open for six or eight hrs., building the irritation to a point where you might give enough of a shit to type something, & the whole thing, righteous indignation & schadenfreude, falls apart. At least Instapaper is still ticked at host DigitalOne.

Rule 34, Paso Robles

At last we found an angle for this riding public transportation from Frisco to L.A. story.
A wave of euphoria washes over me as I decompress aboard the No. 9. And this is definitely a party bus. A spectacularly inebriated mechanic claims his true calling was to be a chef; he once cooked a meal for Burl Ives. He regales the two other passengers on board. One is Robert Tinker, who rides buses just for the hell of it and calls out all the stops in his best radio announcer voice. On his journeys he met our last rider, Jennifer Perry, who touches up the DVD covers of a Paso Robles–based porn studio. "I know there is lots of porn on the internet, but we only have local girls that there is a very good chance you know," the outfit's website reads. Perry's job is essentially to "make the girls all pretty." Only occasionally does this involve Photoshopping in the local girls' missing teeth.

Pictures: It did happen! This one is more than worth reproducing.
Ventura's Pacific View Mall comes equipped with the oddest transit shelters, well, ever.

Yet Another M.B. Looking Bad

Not that this clown's looking bad is anything new, but, lest we forget:

Mike Barnicle: The best friend a gangster could have

When Whitey Bulger was at the peak of his power, he could always count on a friendly columnist to do his P.R.

Plenty of details on douche-baggery follow, but at the very end is found the grimmest part:
He may not own the Globe today, but don't worry about Mike Barnicle: He remains a fixture on MSNBC, where his history of plagiarism, fabrications and Bulger hagiography doesn't seem to matter.

Elections Around The World

We The People:
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade on Thursday dropped plans to allow presidential candidates to be elected with just a quarter of the vote, as violent opposition protests erupted in the capital.

With elections due next February, the opposition saw the plans as a scheme by Wade, who is 85 and seeking another term, to avoid a second round of voting and line up his 42-year-old son Karim for the succession.

While Justice Minister Cheikh Tidiane Sy was addressing lawmakers debating proposed constitutional reforms, riot police fired tear gas and water cannons trying to disperse thousands of protesters, some hurling stones, gathered outside the parliament building.
From this side of the world.
Gov. Bev Perdue has vetoed a controversial proposal to require voters to show photo ID at the polls.

“The right to choose our leaders is among the most precious freedoms we have – both as Americans and North Carolinians. North Carolinians who are eligible to vote have a constitutionally guaranteed right to cast their ballots, and no one should put up obstacles to citizens exercising that right."

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Well, Where Is It?

We're just astounded (Shocked, even.) that this favicon dealie doesn't work any better now that it's easy to add then it did before.
Really, Chrome & Bugger, it only shows in IdiotExploder? OK, now in Firefox.

Urban Thuggery Up-Date

Look at these punks. No one is safe, anywhere!
David & Melinda Laffer, arrested in drug murders.
David Laffer loved the military, enough to enlist in the Army seven months before graduating from high school. He loved the Islanders, enough to propose to his fiancee on the big screen at Nassau Coliseum during a game, and regularly post comments on fan forums. Despite his slight frame, he played goalie for years in a deck hockey league.

But in recent years, some friends say, the man they...
Subscription required for the rest, but who cares? It's the same story w/ all these people, isn't it?

Radio Report

Trouble up on the mountain.
KPFK transmitter down, station is off the air
[...]
Can I just say: this time I received no complaints from any listeners about KPFK being silent.
Ha ha, commies.

The crisis appears over.

Power Point Presentation

Your taxes* at work.Scribd. Context.

*Offer valid in US, Canada, UK, Australia, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Italy, & Turkey; Israel, Singapore, Japan, South Korea & Spain soon enough. (Slide 15, "F-35 Builds Coalition Interoperability.")

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Annals Of Rock&Roll

Another trend of which we've been vaguely aware was bands (or facsimiles thereof) wandering the highways & byways slogging through an entire rendition of certain pivotal, crucial, ground-breaking or really big-selling albums from their ouevre, apparently including the crummy filler tunes they'd never played except during the recording session.

This is now sharply defined by more or less our generation falling into it. Here we see locals X, who will be cranking out Los Angeles "in its entirety" at something called Riot Fest East this September in Philly.
A lot of acts for one day. Just reading the list is exhausting us.Too long; didn't listen. (3:42)? Were they kidding?

Why We Bother

We'd like to thank all the little people, while we can still remember them.
See for yourselves.

Dep't. Of Amplification

To clarify, this image was drawn to our attention, but it is not us. Although we don't blame you for looking twice. (And it could always be Eddie Flowers, a sad but common mistake.) Stalkers be advised: The real M.B. has a longer nose & does not (currently) weigh in at the poundage seen below.

The F.B.I. In Peace & War

Something almost worth anger.

The F.B.I. seized Web servers in a raid on a data center early Tuesday, causing several Web sites, including those run by the New York publisher Curbed Network, to go offline.

The raid happened at 1:15 a.m. at a hosting facility in Reston, Va., used by DigitalOne, which is based in Switzerland, the company said. The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the raid.

In an e-mail to one of its clients on Tuesday afternoon, a DigitalOne employee, Sergej Ostroumow, said: “This problem is caused by the F.B.I., not our company. In the night F.B.I. has taken 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server — we can not check it.”

Mr. Ostroumow said that the F.B.I. was only interested in one of the company’s clients but had taken servers used by “tens of clients.” He wrote: “After F.B.I.’s unprofessional ‘work’ we can not restart our own servers, that’s why our website is offline and support doesn’t work.” The company’s staff had been working to solve the problem for the previous 15 hours, he said.
If we gave a rat's ass.

Summer Here

Not there, 'though.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Ouch

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Sports Illustrated Curse, Web Log-Stylee

No sooner did we wonder whatever happened/where is he now? vis-à-vis Tone Lōc than the Internet responded.
BURBANK, California — The rapper Tone Loc has been arrested on suspicion of felony domestic violence in Southern California.

Burbank police Sgt. Tracy Sanchez says 45-year-old Loc, né Anthony Smith, was arrested Saturday.

Celebrity gossip site TMZ.com reports that the rapper got into an altercation with the mother of his child. He was being held in a Burbank jail on $50,000 bail.

A message left for the rapper's agent Sunday was not immediately returned, and police could not say if he had hired an attorney.

Tone Loc is best known for the 1989 hip-hop hits "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina."

The Associated Press and TMZ.com contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Jerk.

Celebrity losers & has-beens, don't make us mention you here. It can only lead to trouble. And leave your exes alone. We have several, & they never hear from us.

No More Mamet, Damnit!

And then no more lame titles. Xopher Hitchens (a bit of a convert himself; we haven't read to the end to see if he interjects himself in contrast to poor David, but the first few paragraphs are worth it) makes further coverage of newly-minted conservative Mamet unnecessary.
This is an extraordinarily irritating book, written by one of those people who smugly believe that, having lost their faith, they must ipso facto have found their reason. In order to be persuaded by it, you would have to be open to propositions like this:

“Part of the left’s savage animus against Sarah Palin is attributable to her status not as a woman, neither as a Conservative, but as a Worker.”

Or this:

“America is a Christian country. Its Constitution is the distillation of the wisdom and experience of Christian men, in a tradition whose codification is the Bible.”

Some of David Mamet’s unqualified declarations are made even more tersely. On one page affirmative action is described as being “as injust as chattel slavery”; on another as being comparable to the Japanese internment and the Dred Scott decision. We learn that 1973 was the year the United States “won” the Vietnam War, and that Karl Marx — who on the evidence was somewhat more industrious than Sarah Palin — “never worked a day in his life.” Slackness or confusion might explain his reference to the ­Scottish-Canadian newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook as a Jewish courtier in the tradition of Disraeli and Kissinger, but it is more than ignorant to say of Bertrand Russell — author of one of the first reports from Moscow to analyze and excoriate Lenin — that he was a fellow-traveling dupe and tourist of the Jane Fonda style.

Propagandistic writing of this kind can be even more boring than it is irritating. For example, Mamet writes in “The Secret Knowledge” that “the Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.” Whatever one’s opinion of that conflict may be, this (twice-made) claim of his abolishes any need to analyze or even discuss it. It has a long way to go before it can even be called simplistic. By now, perhaps, you will not be surprised to know that Mamet regards global warming as a false alarm, and demands to be told “by what magical process” bumper stickers can “save whales, and free Tibet.” This again is not uncharacteristic of his pointlessly aggressive style: who on earth maintains that they can? If I were as prone to sloganizing as Mamet, I’d keep clear of bumper-sticker comparisons altogether.
Good (by which we mean insulting) parts reproduced as a public service 'cause who knows what's up w/ The NYT paywall.

Obligatory Olio

Much too busy celebrating Juneteenth & ignoring Fathers Day (don't have one, are not one) to accomplish anything around here.
"America" & oil: Bad combination.
The Ultra-Orthodox.