This one is like the Zapruder film – destined to be viewed millions of times by several generations of Americans. The shock-value with both is what links them together in terms of their popularity and staying power. Aside from the man sitting about 10 feet away from him though, Colbert put on a clinic here that must have been widely admired throughout the comedy world. Whether it needed to be done or not, this film redefines the role that comedy plays in our democracy, and I can’t help but remember Bill Hicks as I watch this once again. There’s a piece of Bill’s genius that can be heard in the voices of so many comedians today, but in Colbert’s performance here, it is very thick, like you can almost picture him thinking the same exact things if he were still alive…this one’s in memory of Bill Hicks:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Comedy, Video, politics at 10:46 PM GMT+4
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This 2 minute clip is one you cannot afford to miss!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Comedy, Video at 10:19 PM GMT+4
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Blue Man who blogs on Blue Man in a Red District is doing great things in support of the military these days. Before I had the chance to highlight this first story, there was a second one that blew me away.
A Soldier Speaks Out: “No wonder the military elites have worked to silence these hero’s. They provide an accurate first person account of what exactly is going on in Iraq. This recent post by Alex provides greater perspective on the clusterfuck in Iraq.“
Monthly memorial to replace individual soldier funeral: “Fort Lewis was my favorite duty assignment of all. Not only did I serve in a great unit, the 1st Battalion 23rd Infantry “Tomahawks”, but I enjoyed the mild winters and summers, as well as the scenery of Mt St Helens, Puget Sound and other west coast treasures…Soldier from Fort Lewis are dying in such high numbers that the post is unable to perform individual ceremonies.” From the Post Commander:
“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:03 PM GMT+4
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“Poor people go to hospital for minor surgery of some kind, abdominal surgery, or for women gynecological surgery, and come out of the operation with a longer recovery rate and a larger scar than expected. They learn later on that while they were in for this minor surgery a kidney was taken at the same time.” (1)
A new Dutch reality show from the producers of Big Brother, features 10 contestants competing for 1 kidney. (2)
Another reality show by those same producers, Fat Teens Can’t Hunt, will see 10 overweight British teenagers sent to Australia’s outback to live and eat in the wild. (3)
An elephant in eastern India has sparked complaints from motorists who accuse it of blocking traffic and refusing to allow vehicles to pass unless drivers give it food. (4)
Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom’s brother instead. (5)
A man cut off his penis with a knife in a packed London eatery. (6)
An overweight inmate was executed by injection after a delay of about 90 minutes while prison medical workers struggled to find suitable 
veins in his arms. (7)
Iraq’s president heads to U.S. to lose weight and hopefully improve his overall health. (8)
All men who receive a Prostate Cancer Screening outside the ballpark will receive two free tickets to a future Milwaukee Brewers game. (9)
Oral sex linked to throat cancer – “worse than tobacco” (10)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Comedy, Words at 1:59 AM GMT+4
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FYI – bernie kosar and a few others…my spam filter managed to catch one of my own comments and in reviewing the contents I noticed several others that should have gone through. I’ll be checking this daily from now on, so if you’ve been frustrated with comments not posting, rest assured, I’m on it. Sorry about that!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 10:20 PM GMT+4
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Bad feelings in the captain’s chair last night, all about this recognition of something I’d denied a few times already this year, this biased mind clinging onto hope for a higher peak yet undiscovered, though realistic the entire time about how much extra juice could actually be injected into the bloodstream from the addition of Chris Webber, the Pistons have lost something along the way, and while I wasn’t made to be more optimistic by anything I saw this season, there wasn’t much of a doubt that they’d handle whatever came at them in the East and struggle in the finals. The best that most teams in this league can hope for is a realistic outlook like that.
The fear hadn’t crept in to stay until last night. It was hard to watch Chauncey Billups single-handedly blow the game in the final two minutes. My yearly playoff dream team has had Chauncey at the point for 3 years running, but if last night’s game was a sign of things to come, the ride may be coming to an end. Analysis will point out the disgraceful numbers produced by Webber and a bad night from Rasheed, but like I said before, expecting Webber to make your team better is a mistake, and with Sheed’s production throughout the playoffs, I’m not laying game four on his shoulders. This one belongs to my guy Billups, and worse than anything, his poor decision-making spanned a couple timeouts, plenty of time to get your head back to where it needs to be.
That didn’t happen. He iced the game for Cleveland with a stupid pull up 3 pointer in transition. So maybe he figures out what made him lose 50 points on his basketball IQ in game 4, and it turns out to be a fluke. I hope that’s the case. Because if Detroit has a 3:1 or 4:1 chance of beating San Antonio in the finals, then I’d put Cleveland at 6:1. I’m rooting for the Pistons, but above everything else, I’m rooting for the chance to see San Antonio sweat at some point in their series. And yes, that means I have indeed written off Utah. Deron Williams cannot do it alone. Kirilenko and Okur need to donate their game 4 checks to charity. Doom and gloom…
Posted by Al Swearengen as sports at 12:50 PM GMT+4
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SoundStage (1975) – 2 Parts
Posted by Al Swearengen as Music, Video at 12:40 AM GMT+4
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Andrew Sullivan: “In Norway, we actually have a 1948 court case that weighs whether “enhanced interrogation” using the methods approved by president Bush amounted to torture. The proceedings are fascinating, with specific reference to the hypothermia used in Gitmo, and throughout interrogation centers across the field of conflict. The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration…Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.” (t/b)
Posted by Al Swearengen as History, Military at 12:27 AM GMT+4
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TPMmuckraker: “Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) jacked his house off the ground, inserted a new first story and placed the old first floor on top, thanks to the help of a top executive at local oil company Veco Corp. who hired at least one key contractor to complete the feat of a job…two former Veco Corp. executives who pled guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges…The sentence, preceded by a listing of a dozen Veco-related enterprises around the world, said: “Veco was not in the business of residential construction or remodeling.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words, politics at 12:16 AM GMT+4
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“Here’s a 6-foot-6, 300-pound guy, as intimidating as can be, and yet every time you approached him he always welcomed you with big old smile. In between the lines, he had his game-face on, but outside the lines, in the community or in the weight room, he was always smiling and having good time.” – LSU athletics spokesman Michael Bonnette
“Marquise will be remembered as a thoughtful and caring young man who established himself as one of the year-round daily fixtures of our team. I send my deepest condolences to the Hill family.” - Bill Belichick
“We are absolutely heartbroken to learn of Marquise’s death. Our immediate thoughts go to Marquise’s mother, Sherry, and the rest of his family. He was only 24 years old and his death is hard to comprehend. Marquise was a very respectful young man who worked hard to improve and was always eager to contribute to the team, both on the field and in the community. On behalf of the entire Patriots organization, we extend our most heartfelt sympathies to Marquise’s family and friends who mourn his loss.” – Robert Kraft
Hill’s agent, Albert Elias, said the player spent much of his time since Hurricane Katrina helping rebuild the homes of family members including his mother, Sherry, and the mother of his 2-year-old son.
Posted by Al Swearengen as sports at 11:57 AM GMT+4
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This really broke my heart to read, as it is yet another example of the collateral damage this compromise over the Iraq war funding has created. It confirms that as a people, we were too collectively fucked up at this point in our existence to do the right thing. This country chewed up Cindy Sheehan and spit her out. This outcome is a symptom of something that is historically significant, and in 100 years, if we made it out of this dark age better for the experience, I’m sure that the treatment of our military and Mrs. Sheehan will play a major role in that process. Politics aside…if you are ambivalent to the plight of these people or unwilling to take them seriously for one reason or another, THEN YOU ARE LACKING! As a human being, as an American…this storyline of Iraq and terrorism is barely B-movie plot worthy at this point, and on Memorial Day it’s a sad thing that the unbelievable bullshit won out over reason once again. We honored those who served, those who died, all across the country as my family did in our town today. How are we honoring those who have died in Iraq? How are we honoring those who are still there? How about the ones who have been cast aside and defecated upon by the system? Will the millions we blow on fireworks in a little over a month come at the expense of a hundred veterans out there, unable to get treatment for PTSD – or – at the expense of a hundred soldiers in Iraq patrolling streets driving in an IED’s dream?
Cindy Sheehan (link): …I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither…The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.
I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions. Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people…
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Military, politics at 2:15 AM GMT+4
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Neoconservative Bill Kristol debates progressive Robert Kuttner:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, politics at 12:40 PM GMT+4
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Dick Cheney at the West Point graduation ceremony on 5/26/07:
Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.
General David Petraeus:
Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows
that they are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value.
Senator Patrick Leahy from ‘The Murder of Maher Arar’:
“Oh…Mr. Attorney General, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to treat this lightly, WE KNEW DAMNED WELL IF HE WENT TO CANADA HE WOULDN’T BE TORTURED, HE’D BE HELD AND INVESTIGATED. AND WE KNEW DAMNED WELL THAT IF HE WENT TO SYRIA HE’D BE TORTURED, AND IT’S BENEATH THE DIGNITY OF THIS COUNTRY, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured. You know and I know, that has happened a number of times in the last five years by this country. It is a black mark on us.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military, politics at 2:09 AM GMT+4
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‘Group Therapy‘ by Marc Olmsted, this one comes with my 100% money-back guarantee!
‘Operation Freedom From Iraqis‘ by Frank Rich
On why Jose Padilla is looking more and more innocent every day, I suggest you read Lewis Z. Koch at Firedoglake
‘The Good Life?‘ by Quinn, is one of many stories to be found on this site pertaining to cocaine addiction and madness.
“Why do the Iranian people not revolt against the regime?” by Hoots
‘Secret memo shows Israel knew building settlements was illegal‘ by Kel at The Osterley Times
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:54 AM GMT+4
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A video clip from my neck of the woods:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, politics at 8:17 PM GMT+4
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Curly in ‘08!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Comedy, Video at 1:40 AM GMT+4
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“I’m tired. This is the beginning of week 12 of my second tour in Iraq. Its not any better than the first time. This time, a lot of things have gotten even worse. The last time, you knew the Iraqi Police were corrupt, but they weren’t all militiamen. Now the IP around here are almost entirely followers of al-Sadr. Or members of the Badr Corps. Or simply corrupt, black-marketeers who’ll siphon off weapons and body armor to be sold to the same. The last time you didn’t have to worry that an Iranian-built (oh yes, they are) EFP (Explosively Formed Penatrator) would tear right through your HMMWV. You wouldn’t worry about the fact that the need to house the extra soldiers of the ’surge’ has left you living in a KBR built mobile home with no overhead cover in an area prone to rocket and mortar attacks.
So I’m a little tired of the worrying, sweating, and the smell. I am one of your soldiers, writing from the front line in a war without any, and I’d really like you to bring me home…I don’t even wake up during mortar attacks anymore. I’m tired of the heat, of carrying an M16 everywhere, of listening to the local Iraqi government rep explain why he needs more money to advance a project that’s a year behind. I’m tired because I just came off of one shift at the battalion TOC, and have just a few hours downtime until the next one. So I send out this diary, this first post on DailyKos and ask everyone back home, and the people who just voted to keep me here for months more; bring me home. (read the rest)“
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:26 AM GMT+4
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My favorite Marley song. My favorite book of the Bible. Enjoy!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Music, Video at 10:33 PM GMT+4
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I get frustrated watching testimony like the Monica episode yesterday, as the short time allotted for each member to ask questions, and the off-topic blah from Republicans about everything but the topic at hand, really work together in a way that makes me feel like I’m being hit in the head with a hammer…a great description of what gets lost in the shuffle with this unfocused format is here in ‘The Mouse That Roared‘ by Dahlia Lithwick.
Justice: (noun) the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness
With that in mind, consider the following:
Number of local Republican officials who have been investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice since 2001: 37
Number of local Democratic officials who have been: 262
I hope this gets covered at some point, along with McClatchy: ‘Missouri Was Ground Zero’ For GOP ‘Voter Fraud’ Scam, Thor Hearne and ACVR at Center of Scheme – - – My point being, the scandal regarding the firings is a great vehicle, but in the midst of all this, there’s got to be a point where the “facts on the ground” earn some time in the spotlight.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Words, politics at 1:04 AM GMT+4
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(HT: The Largest Minority) Keith Olbermann is right on the money regarding the capitulation of Democrats on the war:
Rep. Dennis Kucinich:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military, Video, politics at 9:06 PM GMT+4
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I did see the movie “Borat” and yes, I am stealing that joke for the title of this piece. Our ‘War of Terror’ is defined by the applause that backs it up during an event like the Republican primary debate in South Carolina, where the notion of feeling righteous because you are terrified of terrorists is the tie that binds everyone together as a team (minus Ron Paul of course, who is cruising for a trip behind the woodshed). Someone like me is then terrified, not of terrorists, but of my fellow citizens being terrified by terrorists. The genesis of this terror for me resides in the fact that anyone is terrified of anything in the first place.
Eager to be terrified, for the portion of our republic represented by folks who expect the rapture to take place soon, getting on board the 9/11 train and remaining in their seat forever is a piece of cake. Not to pick on the Revelations-enthusiasts out there, but to make a connection between the strategy employed by Republicans in securing the fear of their base, it is quite easy to identify the wisdom behind their strategy. Because just as a belief in the ‘end of days’ goes along nicely with the idea of ’something much worse than 9/11′, so does the militaristic, no holds barred defiance of these abstract evils partner up exceptionally well with the ’spiritual warrior’ persona that understands how strong of a grip Satan or al-Qaeda has on the majority of others, who will therefore never truly ‘get it’.
To perceive the world in those terms to begin with, you have to be driven by faith. When that is the fuel that powers your motor, it is much easier to accept things like torture, Guantanamo and the notion that we’re “making progress” in Iraq. The collateral damage that is rung up along the way is only pointed out and dwelt upon by those who don’t ‘get it’. And so the graphic mutilated fetus posters are co-opted and employed by the movement for the sake of terrifying those who do not ‘get it’ into feeling ashamed for simply disagreeing. How can that shame be forced to grow, so that the harvesting of it benefits the movement? Who or what can be used as an adequate lever to force this issue?
Democrats in Congress proved today that the military is a lever, and the war of terror waged against them centered around the notion that to cut off funding for the occupation of Iraq would mean that the military somehow suffers. Lest the Democratic Party have to take off the gloves and point the finger directly back at the President who remains responsible for the suffering of our military up till this point, I suppose the fear of being incapable of prevailing in that argument tells us all we need to know. Besides John Murtha scaring the Republicans right back by doing just that, who else within the leadership of either house is willing to get angry, point the finger right back at this President and get dirty on behalf of these same troops that everyone is supposedly so concerned about? Can the Republicans manage to terrify these Democrats into believing that it is only the party that sends the troops off to die in a lost war, shorts them on armor, equipment, recovery time, benefits and a strategy, that can then prevail in a battle over who really had their best interests at heart?
Besides a small contingent of loud and ignorant Republicans, most of whom never fought in a war, who will tell you that we could have won the war in Vietnam if we’d stayed longer, the vast majority of Americans aren’t second-guessing the wisdom of our withdrawal. Besides the millions of Americans who rightly protested for it to have happened years earlier than it eventually did, I don’t think you’re going to find many people today who are willing to pretend that the outcome wasn’t inevitable. Just as the specter of communism drove the faithful into a posture of righteous terrorization towards whoever doubted what the stated “cost of failure” in Vietnam would be, the specter of al-Qaeda is now the preferred catalyst of righteous terrorization agents bearing similar “cost of failure” warnings. That a Democratic member of congress would fall victim to either of these lazy and predictable constructs, is the only thing that has managed to terrify me since the day after the towers fell.
The very idea of this happening once the power to end the war was finally in our hands, had never entered my mind in such a way that my hope was entirely trounced. I’d doubted Harry Reid’s game for a while, and didn’t honestly know whether he was up to the historic challenge facing him. Even so, it wasn’t until today that I finally managed to ‘get the fear’ for the first time since the towers fell. Not until today did I officially fall victim to this war of terror.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, History, Military, Religion, politics at 1:22 AM GMT+4
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Of notable historic significance, this particular unit was an elite fighting force constructed in the 1800s of proven soldiers from many of the separate states that comprised the Union at that time. Its more recent mixture of armor and mechanized infantry units made it a tremendously effective force, and to its credit, 1-5 Cavalry was the first unit to conduct a ground attack on the Iraqi army during Operation Desert Storm. Currently the unit is involved in the “surge” within western Baghdad, and like every other unit there today, the “Black Knights” are carrying out their mission, which is to force Iraqi Crips, Bloods, Croods and Blips to forget about vengeance, Allah and wiring up explosives once and for all – - – to come together as one people and agree to having the oil services industry of the United States “help them” to nurse the deep wounds still open and dirty from the violent tyrannical reign of Saddam Hussein. Here are some words from some of the leaders of this outstanding unit about their mission:
CPT Brendan Gallagher: “Sometimes, we like to comfort ourselves when we are taking a lot of IEDs and casualties by saying that the enemy is desperate, they are doing this because they are scared. But how many times can they actually be desperate? I sometimes worry that this period will end up going down here as their surge, not ours.”
Staff Sgt. Mike Perez: “They tell us to come here and do a job. But we’ve got a pregnant beast and it’s opening up on us. It’s not getting any better, and I don’t see when it will.”
Sgt. Cyr: “I miss when the worst thing we had to do is go around this neighborhood picking up dead bodies. It’s sick, but true.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:57 PM GMT+4
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After tonight, I’m sure it’s in there somewhere…
As NBA commissioner, David Stern has made sure that the kids understand how vital it is to have a pair of his player’s sneakers. He’s promoted the game for years now as if every single fan out there is a kid who wants to be like Mike. Diluting the value of a franchise’s players, while risking serious injury, he has made it a point to ensure that a tired batch of meal tickets get embarrassed annually in some international tournament that nobody in this country even gives a shit about anyway. And then to compensate for the fact that his product consists of a couple hundred young millionaires, many of whom grew up on some very mean streets, he has introduced “mandatory minimums” and kept them in place year after year, in spite of the arbitrary way they have helped to ruin entire seasons.
The Phoenix Suns, their fans and also fans like me, who deserved better this year, can all attest to this. I was sitting in a hotel room in Venice, CA in 1997, when Stern’s brainchild turned an assault of a point guard by a power forward into the worst miscarriage of justice his leadership had yet to produce. PJ Brown chucked a much smaller Charlie Ward into the stands behind one of the baselines, and somehow the Knicks ended up being the team with 4 players suspended. Rules and discipline had nothing to do with the decisions that were handed down, but rather the general mindset of this man and how the natural physicality and raw emotion of this great sport of basketball offends him so much, that whenever anything bad happens, all you can hear is “Shakedown!” as prison warden Stern puts the organization on high alert, with guards swapping out rubber bullets for the real deal should any of the inmates happen to step one foot over one of those painted lines on the floor.
That’s who he is and that is what his influence has created here. So 10 years later another power forward decides to take out his aggression on a point guard, and again the natural instinct of a couple of players to stand up for their teammate caused them to take a single step onto the court from the bench area. Neither Diaw nor Stoudamire got close enough to the action to even spit on anyone involved, and both moved back onto the sidelines. There was absolutely no malicious intent on the part of a single player on that court, besides of course the one that initiated the violence in the first place. Nonetheless, mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines are not something that can be overruled by a lower court, and in a situation where David Stern must choose between the game of basketball or a Napoleon-moment for himself, he always chooses wrong.
Indeed, the arbitrary authoritarianism Stern embodies is the essence of how the NBA treats both its players and its fans these days. They are big young guys full of adrenaline, and we are all young, impressionable and bound to learn our most valuable life lessons from a sport we watch on TV. The players are necessary to have a sport in the first place, but in Stern’s mind if you don’t keep them on a short leash, one of these nights they’ll end up somehow causing an entire arena to collapse. What will America think of the sport then? 25,000 fans died because the commissioner wasn’t willing to institute gag orders and mandatory minimums…’they’d tear me apart in the papers’! So the fines are handed out for anyone that even thinks something negative towards the league or its proud ruler, and the lines on the floor of this bloc are there for a reason.
Same goes for draft picks! Unlike every other professional sport on the planet, the NBA doesn’t grant the worst teams with the opportunity to draft the best players coming out of college that year. The draft order is decided by a lottery. This year that lottery managed to give the three teams with the worst records the 4th, 5th and 6th picks respectively. Somehow this nonsense adds value to the sport in Stern’s mind, as do the mandatory minimums and filling up the USA teams with stars who need the off season to rest. And so, the fans of a city like Boston, Milwaukee or Memphis end up lingering in the ether a year or two longer, or perhaps forever if the FUCKING PING-PONG BALLS DECIDE that’s the way it should be. Like there isn’t enough injustice in this world already.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, sports at 11:59 PM GMT+4
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Enjoy!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video at 5:12 PM GMT+4
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I couldn’t help but think of the film Dirty Dancing, when news of his ‘confession’ hit the wire. It’s the scene right after Baby providing the alibi for Swayze, admitting that she’d been sleeping with him when the wallets were stolen, only to find out that they fired him anyway. “So I did it for NOTHING?” She cries out at the injustice, and the hefty price she paid for doing the right thing. Does anyone think Giambi wasn’t feeling those very same emotions yesterday and the day before? The Yankees were using his confession to void the stupid contract they signed him to, and the vultures were already nibbling at his flesh.
First impressions of someone like him or Bonds copping to the fact that they used steroids and HGH, for me are like learning that OJ was writing a book about how he killed his wife and Ron Goldman. Though Giambi isn’t as much of a villain in all this as he’s made out to be by the sporting press. After reading a couple articles on him yesterday, it seemed to me that the press had once again lost itself somewhere up its own ass. Case in point: Giambi’s ‘apology’ is full of holes.
There’s a giant disconnect here when it comes to the impact all of this has had on the game of baseball…basically none that I can see (perhaps being part of Red Sox Nation keeps me blind to the outside universe), but for the players it has absolutely had an impact. For the most part they’re a group of lying cocksuckers, for whom the millions of dollars they’ve made over the years doesn’t provide enough comfort to make it possible for them to simply tell the truth. Mark McGuire is perhaps the worst of them all, with the hero-status he achieved in breaking Marris’s record, and that neck of his resembling an unnatural phenomenon rarely found outside of professional wrestling.
He, like Rafael Palmerio, lied to Congress and to all of us. The lust for a lasting positive persona in the world, a reality only to them and the collections of idiots still out there who can’t put two and two together, is apparantly the vice that drives their ongoing delusional behavior. But to be fair, if I were in their shoes, with Pete Rose still kicking around in the world, it wouldn’t be something to look forward to once the truth was finally out there. Painful and shameful and hasta la vista Cooperstown…there is still something to be said about the actual reach of all this, and the fact that no one player deserves to carry the load for everyone. By every account I’ve seen, the use of drugs was widespread within every clubhouse in baseball.
With that in mind, I honestly admire Giambi for coming clean and at least not treating us like we’re idiots. For one player who used the stuff to win an MVP, a home run record or the ability to pitch effectively with a 50 year old body (ahem…Roger), to finally man up and say it, may constitute a reason to hope for the best as this debacle continues to unfold. Because soon enough, Bonds will be one away from tying and then breaking Aaron’s record, and I’m not going to lie and say it won’t matter to me that he cheated. It will. I’ll be pissed off that the guy was able to walk out of the bank holding bags of stolen cash, stroll right past the police and just keep on going. We’re all suckers the day he passes Aaron, and judging by the state of our culture in the year 2007, Giambi will end up being a sucker, while those mentioned previously will ride their silence and false statements into the Hall of Fame.
That sucks! Giambi should be applauded for admitting that he used. I don’t care that he’s a Yankee. I admire his courage. He didn’t do the right thing for a while, but he did do the right thing the other day, and that’s worth something. It should be worth something to all of us. He didn’t have to say it, but he did anyway.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, sports at 2:17 PM GMT+4
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Courtesy of Robert Greenwald:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, politics at 11:50 PM GMT+4
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Today’s NYTimes editorial page features a letter by Holt, touting his legislation to make paper trails mandatory for voting machines, as was endorsed by the Times on May 16th. Having read this endorsement on the day it ran, my first thought was that ‘hope is audacious after all’.
I’m not getting paid to write here, nor am I getting paid to read the newspaper and/or material out on the web. What’s this guy’s excuse? There have been a multitude of articles and professional papers written, and a documentary shot with the voting commissioner of that district in Florida which counted negative votes for Gore, proving that the paper can read one thing and the vote can be tallied another.
For Democrats to still be at this step on an issue this vital is pathetic! Rush Holt is far behind on his homework by the looks of it, as was the NYTimes for endorsing his legislation in the first place. At least they printed three additional letters pointing out what I have here. (Prior Coverage: 5/7/07, Fraud in 2004 Recount – 1/26/07, 10/30/06, 12/3/05)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words, politics at 6:11 AM GMT+4
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I’m not sure if everyone can see the content of these links, but I’m posting them just in case:
Portfolio A
Portfolio B
Porfolio B – transaction log (on Yahoo, when you sell all of your holdings in a stock, it still appears on your list. I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of those, and so I decided to just create a new one on Friday by transferring the info from one to the other)
Basically I’ve decided to liquidate the first one and fold it into the second one, as with another semester starting up tomorrow, having to focus on more than one won’t work. So I sold everything, and added the $102,815.36 from A to B. In calculating the total gain from the new combined portfolio, I’ll use $1,102,815.36 as a starting point. As of Friday, the total value is $1,130,272.77 (+2.49%). Please someone let me know if the holdings don’t show up right by clicking through those links above.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics at 2:54 AM GMT+4
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I saw this on Bill Maher’s show this past Friday:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, politics at 2:31 AM GMT+4
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Padilla Evidence Flimsy? – “This is what we wind up with after spending $20 million in prosecuting Padilla — a goddam form handed to a CIA agent by a stranger appearing out of nowhere in Afghanistan?” (Lewis Z. Koch @ Firedoglake)
Racism goes on trial again in America’s Deep South – The prosecution of three black Louisiana youths reveals the rise of discrimination by stealth
“It is nothing personal,” one businessman told me, “I like you and believe you could be bringing us a better future, but I still sympathize with those who attack the coalition because it is not right for Iraq to be occupied by foreign military forces.” – The source for this quote is from a Microsoft Word document posted on a government website used to share documents relating to the Coalition Provisional Authority. Apparently the people who were putting these together at the time had been using classified documents to cut and paste from, so when you activate the ‘Track Changes’ option, a treasure trove of information is revealed. Discovered by a political scientist’s 8 year old son…you can read about it here.
“As Iraq’s government compiles a record of failure, the Bush administration is under growing pressure to intervene to rearrange Baghdad’s dysfunctional political order, or even install a new leadership…” (Source)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Military, politics at 1:56 AM GMT+4
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