George Mason and George Mason University

Well you can't expect much from the FBI if they can't afford to give agents company email:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/03/20/fbi.email.ap/index.html

In a world where big companies fall over themselves to offer free email accounts...

Our family's very religious William Williams, who worked on the federal Constitution, also gets short shrift in the history books.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a6_3s21.html

However, on July 4 several years ago, I did ask Texas country-western singer Thomas Michael Riley to make a toast at Luckenbach (Texas) to this prominent figure on our family tree.

After forgetting my request (I shouting to him on stage) and after fumbling to find his Wal-Mart reading eyeglasses, the 6'4" Riley finally got his act together (up on the stage with the Note Gropers, who by that time were one sheet to the wind) and said, "Here's to Billy Bob Williams on this 4th of July!"

I'm sorry I asked.

Joel writes: "...when young Bill Clinton was trolling for student government votes..."

Oh, I'm *sure* he went trolling for votes, and whatever else he could snag.

Joel, bravo on your brackets. I've officially filed mine with the state and federal governments to be declared disaster areas, due to the horrible influx of red tide. I listened to the the Colonels/Heels game on the way back from VIR this past Sunday, and enjoyed hearing them beat NC by playing tenacious D. I rooted for them, even though I now have to don Hazmat gear to even look at anything in my DC bracket other than UConn. What's the half-life on a blowed up bracket, anyway? Then there's the Bradley situation in my Oakland bracket...

On a side note, how fast d'ya think Gary Williams was on a plane heading somewhere warm with his golf clubs on Saturday afternoon? Bah!

When there's a real owner and GM for the Gnats (not one paid by MLB), stupid stuff like this sorry Soriano situation won't happen.

GMU is more than a place to see concerts at the Patriot Center now. And that's good.

bc

Yesterday, I made three calls to Portsmouth, New Hampshire (that went very well), one to Las Vegas, one to Culver City, and two to Studio City, plus a handful of e-mails. This is not going to be easy.

OK, I'm a sports fan and all, but George Mason University has had two sitting professors win Nobel Prizes*, for goodness sakes! I think that might make it a "real" university.

*Dr. Vernon L. Smith for Economics in 2002; he pioneered the field of experimental economics nearly 50 years ago. In 1986 Professor James M. Buchanan, Jr. received the award for his pathbreaking work on public choice theory.

Frank Robinson needs to have serious Come to Jesus meeting with Soriano, where he is force to watch footage of what a sucky 2B he is. Pay me a few million and I'd dance around with my underwear on my head in left field, if that's what they wanted.

Re-posted from the previous Kit:

Is it just some weird form of targeted advertising, or does everyone else have their page festooned with ads for "Mate-1. Intimate dating"? The ads are adorned by pictures of young women who would be attractive if you could scrape off the layers of make-up and let their eyebrows grow back. They are posed suggestively, often in their underwear. I'm having trouble conceiving (InconCEIVable!) of any plain-language translation of the language and semiotics of these ads that would not translate to "let us be your internet pimp." Perhaps it's time for Weingarten to repeat his consumer-watchdog column about getting a massage at a massage parlor.

I'm not sure why I would be targeted this way. I am male and in my forties. Other than that, I don't fit any target criteria for a real dating service -- I'm married, educated, and live prosaically, doncha know. Maybe that's what they're looking for. The cookies in my browser's records show no history of visiting porn sites, because I don't. Does my registration show that I'm from a neighborhood with a lot of regular customers for such services? If so, I think I'll be moving.

Hmm. Hmm. The dating ads have disappeared, and now it's advertising HP computers. Even though I have a Mac, and frequently visit Mac-related sites.

I live next to GMU. The students make good neighbors. They keep the University Mall Movie Theater going, where they still play the Rocky Horror Picture Show. If that isn't contributing to the community, I don't know what is.

Bah, I've got two Nobel prizes under my bed in a shoebox.

ha, jw! I think even the Bush Administration would consider having Soraino watch that video as torture.

On the other hand, jw, sounds like you're ready to pick "Jackass" up where Knoxville et. al. left off...

I don't 'spect Soriano to be on the team past Memorial Day. Hopefully, Old School Frank (and I love that guy) won't lose his temper and do something rash.

bc

Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story

http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/sheen_questions_official_911_story_audio.htm

Tim, for a while there, I was getting ads up there enticing me to move to Fairfax County, so obviously The Internet doesn't know where I live. Now I'm getting Dell ads on my G5.

I used to have a lot of some kind of ad on WaPo.com that featured the backside of a bikini-bottom wearing young lady and it just looked like I was getting mooned. Don't even remember what company was doing the advertising.

But the best ones are the Google ads now appearing at the bottom of the page, which includes this one:

George mason university
Get a College Degree in 3 Months & Earn Up To $120/Hr - Free Packet
www.InstantColleges.com

These paragraphs below are from Nicky Kristof's op-ed today at the NYT about the meaning of a real education. (Kristof/NYT is sponsoring a contest to take a journalism student later this year to a remote part of the world--to see, observe, blog, if any of you have a competitive young journalism student under your own roof):

Universities are — oh so slowly — recognizing that they need to prepare students to survive globalization. But most overseas studies programs are both too short and too tame. They typically involve sending a herd of students for a term in France or Italy, where they study a little and drink a lot together, amid occasional sightings of locals.

That's why I bring up Ndjamena, this dusty capital of one of the poorest countries in the world. A student living independently here could learn French and Arabic, and would emerge with a much richer understanding of the world than could be taught in any classroom.

Traditionally, many young Britons, Irish, Australians and New Zealanders take a year to travel around the world on a shoestring, getting menial jobs when they run out of money. We should try to inculcate the custom of such a "gap year" in this country by offering university credit for such experiences.

So here's my proposal. Universities should grant a semester's credit to any incoming freshman who has taken a gap year to travel around the world. In the longer term, universities should move to a three-year academic program, and require all students to live abroad for a fourth year. In that year, each student would ideally live for three months in each of four continents: Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Tim, I ignore the advertising, so I couldn't even tell you what was there. TA, A-fan, mo and TBG would probably be amused to note that if there were scantily clad and suggestively posed women in there, I'd miss it.

Because you brought it up, I see I have an ad for the Kennedy-Warren Grand Apartments and WETA FM Radio (NPR, etc.) on my page at this point.

bc

*rank curiosity on display below*

LindaLoo, what praytell had you calling my former (and sometimes still) stomping grounds on the Seacoast of New Hampshire? Is this related to your quest to view movies abroad?

Tim, those dating ads (and what the advertisers think passes for pulchitrude) are hilarious. Although I THINK they're supposed to be wearing bathing suits, not underwear.

Tim,
I'm om a different WaPo.com server and the ads are now, at this moment, for Dell (in Austin). But I saw the ads of which you speak--not much different than the tease on Page One on Saturday (above the banner) of the San Antonio Express-News hyping the story on Page A3 about how local resident "Desperate Housewife" star Eve Longoria wants to have Spurs star Tony Parker's baby out-of-wedlock and how Parkers was "inexperienced" and had not had a lot of partners previously.

That tease/highly prominent story on A3 prompted a call to my local public editor Bob Richter asking when, precisely, the San Antonio Express News began its slide into tabloid journalism?

My husband joked that, instead, on Saturday, the story should have been run on the front of the Sports section.

Are we on to the "old business" portion of the boodle yet? 'Cause I've still got some space-related old business to discuss.

Joel, been reading more of your book, plus a Miss Manners column, all while watching a Jerry Seinfeld re-run (I know, I know—a very dangerous combination of sensory overload), and have some more technical questions about space aliens (the “Grays”) from the Pleiades, etc., and their constant comings-and-goings here on earth.

For instance, when these “portals” open up (such as the one in my kitchen the other night), do some rude aliens try to enter the portal before other aliens emerging from the portal have time to do so? Do they glare at each other when this happens?

When a bunch of aliens are traveling in a portal, do they all stand facing front, and not talk (even telepathically)? Do practical-joker aliens do wacky things in the portal when they are traveling back and forth to wherever they go? Are there various kinds of “embarrassing moments” inside portals? Do two aliens ever go into a portal, and halfway to wherever they are going hit the “stop” button between planets, and have hot monkey alien sex in the portal, and then get dressed (insofar as they may or may not even wear clothes), and resume their journey, and when the portal opens pretend that nothing has happened en route?

Do portals ever get stuck between planets, and is there a telephone or other communications device so that you can call Intergalactic 9-1-1? Do portals ever get taken out of service from time to time for repairs? Are there “freight” portals as well as regular passenger portals?

We have so much still to learn from the aliens, it just boggles the mind.

--------------

On to other matters:

1) I went to a so-called "commuter college." I'm getting a bit ticked off at people deriding GM because it, too, is a "commuter" college. Some of us had to work our way through.

2) Tim, would you rather look at pictures of buxom babes in those ads you are complaining about, or that *&$@*$#@ Lamasil toenail ad? Jeez, man, leave well enough alone!

3) The Cowboys picked up Terrell Owens. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people. That's kind of like Jack the Ripper joining the Manson Family. (I'm on a metaphor roll today, what with effortlessly channeling Jim Morrison, and whatnot.)

4) Any of you folks west of town got snow yet? Nothin' here.

I have a niece who loves languages, and has taken forever to complete her degree, but she has worked all over Europe, and in South Africa. As a HS student she exchanged with a young South African girl, and she is there again right now, seconded by our government to the UN helping resettle refugees. Her world view, her view of politics, and processes, and cultures is immeasurably richer for her travels. She also reminds us that if we intend to taunt her with Grandma's spritz cookies at Christmas, we'd better be prepared to have some on hand when she gets home. Its a tough world out there and she has informed us that our continued survival is tied directly to those cookies. A girl has to have standards, she says.

Mudge, we all knew the Cowboys would take Owens. We know what kind of players they go for (I hate to admit we've taken a few of their discards, too).

My cousin, who is a novelist who writes about the "real" DC, included this passage in a book he wrote a couple of years ago:

==
Durham wore a Redskins jersey and a matching knit cap. The back of the jersey had the name “Sanders” printed across it. It would be just like Durham, thought Foreman, to look up to a pretty-boy hustler, all flash and no heart Like Deion.
==

Tim, After googling several historical novels (Red Badge of Courage, Dr. Zhivago) for suggestions to No. 2 g-girl for her literature class assignment, I recalled that, at her age, I enjoyed Forever Amber. "Amber" must be a popular name for strip tease artists, because all of a sudden, dozens of ads of scantily clad (and some totally unclad) women popped up on my screen. One stuck and I couldn't find anyway to close it out and had to unplug my computer to make it go away.

Lindaloo, how does one acquire access to the Cannes Festival? I know it isn't open to the public; so do you need a formal invitation? Do you need to prove worthiness to attend?

Snuke, I think I may have forgotten that you are from Portsmouth. New Hampshire, yes, but I didn't realize that Portsmouth is your hometown? *anyhow, I would give you a big kiss on the check right now for giving me this lead-in!*

Author (publicity-shy) Dan Brown will be making only one public appearance after his London trial wraps up (with a decision by Judge Jones expected on April 13) and the screening of the film "The Da Vinci Code" on May 17 at the Cannes (France) Film Festival. Brown is scheduled to appear the evening of April 23 at the Music Hall in Portsmouth.

I called yesterday and left a message for Margaret Talcott, marketing director for the Music Hall. I phoned back and spoke to the assistant marketing director Andrea Van Os, then I spoke with Kathleen Soldati of Soldati Public Relations, who is handling the press side of the Dan Brown's appearance (She was unable to fully answer my questions yesterday). I had just gotten off the phone for a few minutes when Margaret Talcott returned my call.

Come to find out, Margaret Talcott is a Rev. Thomas Hooker descendant, as am I, so we are very distant cousins! Talcott's father's name was Hooker Talcott, as was his own father's name before him. The conversation was fun, with lots of laughter and we promised each other that we would speak again!

But the nice thing is that I could fill her in on a little history. The Talcotts and Loomises came from Braintree, England. The Talcotts left Braintree in 1632, before my distant great-grandparents Joseph and Mary White Loomis left in 1638. The Talcotts settled in New town (now Cambridge), Mass., awaiting the arrival of their pastor, Hooker, who arrived several years later on the ship Griffin. Before long, this religious group decided to strike out on its own and settle in Hartford. The Talcotts were prominent members of this community who followed Hooker, with one Talcott even becoming governor of the colony of Connecticut. You can find Talcott graves rather easily behind Hartford's first church near the very large Bushnell Park.

The Music Hall is a 900-seat theater, with tickets for Dan Brown's speaking engagement going on sale on March 25. Van Os and Talcott believe that the approximately 2,000 members who belong to the Music Hall will scoop up the tickets, in a sell-out, before any remaining tickets will (or can) possibly be made available to the public at large.

They anticipate that Dan Brown's presentation on April 23 will last between 60 and 90 minutes, with a two-part format. First, Brown will speak to the audience. Then the format will shift to a Q&A, with Laura Knoy of New Hampshire Public Radio asking questions of Brown during the latter part of the program. The lecture series that evening is titled, "The Book, The Movie, The Controversy," but as of yesterday morning, both Margaret Talcott and I assumed that Brown would not speak of the legal controversy swirling around his book, but about the religious controversy that Brown's work has created. (However, if the court case is settled between Baigent and Leigh v. Brown by that time, this could change?)

More information is here:

http://www.themusichall.org/about_us/press_detail.cfm?id=95

The website thedavincichallenge.com picked up on the Music Hall press release immediately and added it to the site, unbeknownst to Margaret Talcott. Grace Hill Media, in Studio City, is responsible for the Sony-sponsored website. My phone calls yesterday gave me a look or a glimpse into the inner workings of Hollywood (the tales I'm beginning to be able to tell). Sony is looking like a very tough nut to crack.

I called the French consulate in Houston this morning, speaking to a Ann Pons, in the cultural affairs division. She, of France, was not help to me in my quest, but she has a humourous Scottish or Irish English accent for a Frenchwoman. I also placed calls to Sen. John Kerry's Boston and D.C. offices.

*I'm determined to work every possible angle of this, Snuke. I am persistent.*

Cur, GMU's a good school, and the food was better than my other college by a mile. It's comparable to U of MD, also a "commuter" college for many.
There's nothing wrong with commuter colleges. I'm sure all the universties in NYC are commuter colleges to NYC residents.

You often get a healthy cultural mix, especially in this area, and you don't deal with as many students in culture shock/homesickness or just partying way wild and screwing up at college.

Oh dr, my mother was famous for her Spritz cookies! She shaped the dough through a metal press into 4-5 inch-long ridged strips. They were light and melt in your mouth heavenly. My sis inheirited that metal press; mine is a plastic thingie. Our Spritz cookies are "good", but Mom's were the best.

I used to visit Roosevelt Island, I mean Mason's Island, frequently when I worked in Rosslyn. It is beautiful, peaceful, and a fun place to have lunch. I had no idea that it was associated with Mason. I guess the imposing statue of Teddy kind of fooled me.

Nani asks:
Lindaloo, how does one acquire access to the Cannes Festival? I know it isn't open to the public; so do you need a formal invitation? Do you need to prove worthiness to attend?

Nani, I'm asking these same questions myself! How does one prove worthiness? Ron Howard (of Oklahoma) and Tom Hanks (of Oakland/Sacramento) made great progress just by dropping in on President Jacques Chrirac at his office. Jacques said "Oui, Oui, yeah, sure, fine...You want to film in the Louvre? Just go right ahead! Be my guests! France loves American filmmakers!

Hanks and Howard got a much chillier reception in England, with their request to film at an historical side.

Playing the Eleanor of Aquitaine card with Jacques in not out of the question! Or the de Lusignan card either!

Also, I am disturbed at the notion that the reputation of a college is so closely linked to the sports program. Where I went to school the most popular sport was frisbee golf. And unicycles. Which probably explains a lot of things now that I think about it.

To handle the religious backlash:

http://thedavincichallenge.com/

LindaLoo, you can kiss my checks anytime! *LOL*

Portsmouth is very close to my hometown, and I wrote for the paper there for several years. The Music Hall is a wonderful venue and Portsmouth is a fantastic city if you've never been. I'll gladly provide recommendations on lodging, etc. :-) Although the Seacoast isn't heavily Catholic, I'm sure your contacts are correct in thinking the Music Hall members will monopolize the tickets.

Unicycles? Was it unicycle racing? I admire anyone who can stay up on a unicycle. I admire anyone who can stay up on a bike, actually. (For the record, I can stay up on a bike. I'm just terrified of them because of an accident about 10 years ago.)

Nani, I've never been a fan of the texture of the Spritz cookie. I like the flavor, but the texture kind of freaks my mouth out. Maybe it's something acquired over the years, though. My mother likes them now when she hated them for the same texture reason when she was my age. And I used to hate sparkling water, but recently I acquired a love of it. I find it to be more refreshing that flat water.

On a food related note--I am a good cook. I just needed good pans and a little bit of motivation for it to come out.

Note to self: don't give Sara the Spritz cookie recipe at her and jw's Achenweddingshower. (But she does want the chicken/dumplings recipe)

Note to Lindaloo: No doubt whatsoever. You'll be there.

Good article in today's Post. Man Overboard

By Ruth Marcus
Tuesday, March 21, 2006; Page A17

I have a new theory about what's behind everything that's wrong with the Bush administration: manliness.

I really don't understand the dynamic whereby a university that suddenly has a great basketball or football team gets ranked as a great school.

I would be more impressed by the two Nobel Laureates at George Mason than by the basketball team (not to dismiss the fabulous accomplishment of the team).

My alma mater, The University of Colorado - Boulder, is still suffering from the sex-and-drugs-for -football- players scandal.

The whole country knows about this mess. Less known is that in the mid-nineties, CU was ranked as the number one school for physics, over MIT and Cal Tech. I heard this from no less an authority than the University President at the time, at an alumni event on Capitol Hill.

There are many Nobel Laureates at CU -- the Anthropology department is consistently ranked in the top 25 in the country, and so on.

Between the football scandal and the reputation (well-deserved) as a party school, the shining lights of CU always get obscured.

When I was a senior (many, many moons ago) CU brought in the former coach of the Buffalo Bills, Chuck Fairbanks, to bring the struggling football team back to its glory days.

Fairbanks spent outlandish sums of money redoing his offices and on other debatabled enterprises. The school actually tried to raise student fees to cover his spending!

Fortunately, there was still some fighting spirit left in the student body from the old protest days -- we held huge protests near the student center -- and the university actually backed down. I think Fairbanks quit . . . don't really remember what happened to him.

But I do remember that football was sacred. And it still is. That's perfectly fine, as long as the school also touts its academic bona fides.

My niece recently told me she would never go to CU because it's not a serious school. I was hurt!

Perhaps someone can explain how Georgetown became a great school because of the Hoyas? Or do I have it backwards? Was Georgetown an excellent but unknown school before the Hoyas became a dominant national team?

Back to the nieces and nephews:
My sibs and I have never figured out how all their kids are so different from the way we were. My sisters and I were hard-partying, who-cares-about-tomorrow types. I'm not really sure why I got into college (I did redeem myself once there; got serious and did very well). My brother is the cow-tipper of another boodle. All their kids, except one, are serious, straight-shooters. My oldest niece went to TJHS for Science and Tech, published a paper as first author as a senior at William and Mary and graduated magna cum laude.

Her sister, a George Mason success story, was co-captain of the women's lacrosse team. And so on for all of them, except one nephew, who we all hope will eventually find his way back to college and away from the bars. But he's a cool kid.

Big digression from schools and their sports' teams.

I do want to comment on Nani's post from yesterday's boodle about gardening under a full moon. I am your sister on this one Nani! I like to garden at nite, when it's a bit cooler in the summer. A full moon makes it a mystic occasion. My one cat adores gardening. When I'm in the house, she is always coming to the sliding glass door that opens onto the garden and plaintively calls for me to come out and play. She loves to roll around on her back, or lie in the shade between the tall Miscanthus grasses.

Also linking to full moons and yesterday's boodle -- in Colorado, in winter when there is full snow coverage, the night is clear and the moon is full - it's possible (in rural areas away from the light pollution) to drive a car without headlights on. Light from the moon reflects on the snow and an ethereal, mind-altering glowing whiteness envelops the world. I miss this intently.

No Sarah, the unicycles were more of a cult. I tried, but gave up for fear of injuring myself and those around me. Sort of like what happened with frisbee golf. I am hopeless in any sport that requires balance, coordination, the ability to catch, the ability to throw, or the ability to strike one object with another. Outside of that I am, like, a total uberjock.

http://www.gracehillmedia.com/pastprojects/

Here's the Grace Hill Media website, this link specifically to the past (movies)projects they've worked on, "worked on" meaning "helped provide publicity for."

One of those is Ridkey Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven," which features none other than the de Lusignans and descendants of Geoffrey Plantagenet. I wonder if James Reston Jr. (book) ever pressed his threatened lawsuit against Ridley Scott (film) and how that brouhaha ever came out? I'm interested in the legal action (or lack of it) between Scott/Reston because this particular film "Kingdom of Heaven" last year (May?) with Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson also dealt with members on my family tree.

Unfortunately, Jonathan Bock's secretary at Grace Hill Media, is seemingly screening my calls rather effectively and was telling me some untruths about Bock's availability. Hmmm.

Snuke, I would love to go to New Hampshire, but that isn't the original plan. However, I'd be open to changes in plan. My husband last night was trying to figure out how many Continental air miles he's flown recently.

Snuke writes:
LindaLoo, you can kiss my checks anytime! *LOL*

Snuke, if you have checks that I can kiss, puh-lease send them. I prefer checks made out to me in large amounts or blank checks that I can inscribe for unlimited funds at a later date at my discretion. I appreciate all the help I can get.

*However, I will kiss your cheeks at any time at no extra charge*

Curmudgeon, if you look up accuweather the radar shows it snowing all over DC. Funny thing is, when I look out my window it's clear as far as the eye can see. I know, I know: INCONCEIVABLE.

The Seacoast in late April is delightful, LindaLoo! And of course, what better way than casing the Music Hall's stage door to finagle a face-to-face with Mr. Brown? :-) Actually, I consider it possible he'd stay in the immediate area (many seriously nice lodgings nearby), so perhaps an extended tete-a-tete with the ladies Talcott and Soldati might prove of use if you decided to time your visit accordingly.

LindaLoo, I was thinking more along the lines of your kissing my checks for mutual good luck, but a peck on the cheek is always in order! *grin*

I went to a small technical school that is drying up and blowing away. About five years ago the computer science chair retired. They took about a year to find a replacement. In the meantime, the football coach quit. He was replaced within a month.

And when they come to me asking alumni for support to stop the school from finally being closed, I'll remind them of this and tell 'em to cry my a river....

Ha! RD, your comment actually made my laugh out loud here at my desk.

Nani and Sara, my mom had the metal cookie press too (as do I) and from the sounds of it our moms made the cookie the same way! My mother put 2 together with chocolate icing for the vanilla flavoured cookies and white icing for the chocolate flavoured cookie. These cookies were a prime target for freezer theft, and she was noted for her inability to hide the deep freeze key from dad, who led all freezer raids past. He continues the great freezer raid tradition with his grandkids.

Nani, I posted about wisteria on the last kit. I will see what I can find in my vast store of gardening data, but I know I read about it somewhere.

accuweather shows the storm is about to engulf Baltimore. Funny thig is: I STILL DON'T SEE ANY SNOW. But that's actually a good thing, cause I really really don't want any. I am tired of winter. I want spring to start already. Like yesterday, really.

Nani and Sara, I inherited my mother's cookie press, with just one stencil: the star-shaped one, for cheese straws. They are right much trouble to make, as I have to grate the cheese like she did, but they are fabulous. It's so funny when my family gets together; my cousins and I are definitely carrying on our mothers' culinary traditions: cheese straws, homemade egg noodles cooked in chicken broth, M&M cookies.

There's this on wikipedia:

Wisteria flowers develop in buds near the base of the previous year's growth, so pruning back side shoots to the basal few buds in early spring can enhance the visibility of the flowers. If it is desired to control the size of the plant, the side shoots can be shortened to 20-40 cm long in mid summer, and back to 10-20 cm in the fall. The flowers are edible and tasty and good in salads, and can even be used to make wine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisteria

Omni, there's some really teeny, eeny-beeny white fluff dropping here in McLean. Maybe the clouds are full of the stuff but we're only getting the dandruff or something.

But I'm with you. I actually had to wear real shoes today. When it was 87 degrees last week I got out the flipflops and it's always hard to don actual shoes after that.

Bring on the spring!

Concur big time, omni. It was pretty durn nippy out at the bus stop this morning--not very second-day-of-springlike. I got boats to launch, and the impending start of baseball season to worry about. This is ridikaless.

And don't even mention Soriano. Makes me wish I was a former Post Office employee, so I could just go postal on him.

Nobody said it was 'comfortable' Porch Season.

I'm looking forward to our weather eventually getting to 'durn nippy'.

When we moved into our home the picket fence had been totally engulfed by a testy wisteria vine, which I believe was been planted by retreating Confederate troops out of spite. The vine was impossible to control. Small neighborhood dogs would mysteriously disappear. Finally, the entire fence collapsed leaving nothing but a pile of ill-tempered greenery. We decided a regime change was necessary. After a summer of epic battle I finally subdued the beast. But each year it returns. It cannot be killed. Although cockroaches may inherit the earth after the big ones fall, they will have to share with the wisteria.

One day I will learn not to post in draft mode. "has been" not "was been" But you knew that....

Fascinating article in today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/science/21bedo.html?

HURA, Israel — In a sky blue bedroom they share but rarely leave, a young sister and brother lie in twin beds that swallow up their small motionless bodies, victims of a genetic disease so rare it does not even have a name.

Moshira, 9, and Salame, 8, who began life as apparently healthy babies, fell into vegetative states after their first birthdays.

Now their dark eyes stare enormous and uncomprehending into the stillness of their room. The silence is broken only by the boy's sputtering breaths and the flopping noise his sister's atrophied legs make when they fall, like those of a rag doll, upon the mattress.

"I cannot bear it," said the children's father, Ismail, 37, turning to leave the room as his daughter coughs up strawberry yogurt his wife feeds her through a plastic syringe.

The sick children are Bedouin. Until recently their ancestors were nomads who roamed the deserts of the Middle East and, as tradition dictated, often married cousins. Marrying within the family helped strengthen bonds among extended families struggling to survive the desert. But after centuries this custom of intermarriage has had devastating genetic effects.

Bedouins do not carry more genetic mutations than the general population. But because so many marry relatives — some 65 percent of Bedouin in Israel's Negev marry first or second cousins — they have a significantly higher chance of marrying someone who carries the same mutations, increasing the odds they will have children with genetic diseases, researchers say. Hundreds have been born with such diseases among the Negev Bedouin in the last decade.

Just went out for twenty minutes walking around the neighborhood and saw all of three of the tiniest snow flakes ever. Unless they were the largest dandruff flakes ever. sheesh.

Its so sad that this still happens. Check out the royal Hapsburg dynasty for a centruies long tradition and what happens.

I found one of my old references to the Aliens in My Laundry Chute, anyway, 'mudge...

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2005/07/tom_cruise_on_a.html#c6638783

bc

Just wanted to offer some kudos for a GMU music faculty member, Dr. Anthony Maiello. Our local high school (Odessa, Missouri) had the opportunity for a clinic with Dr. Maiello last July -- and he was phenomenal. In less than 15 minutes, he turned 130 sleepy and grumpy teenagers into a focused, attentive, and enthusiastic band. Hope we get another chance to work with him someday...

My alma mater, The University of Kansas, is a great basketball school. Well, excluding those humiliating losses to Bucknell (last year's NCAA Tournament) and to Bradley (this year's). A few years ago, KU made it to the championship game of the NCAA Tournament. We did not win the big game, but I remember reading later that applications for admission to KU increased tremendously due to the publicity the school got during its run in the NCAA Tournament. Donations from alumni also increased. Apparently, this is a common occurence. When teams do well in sports, admissions and donations go up. No wonder colleges put such emphasis on sports programs.

Susan:
Yes. Not many alumni go Rah Rah for top % of graduates going onto fruitful careers in chemistry, etc.
If the media would cover more geek stuff, maybe donations would go up.

"Holy moley, GMU won first place in the national Robotic soccer expo! I must donate some money, maybe I'll have a robot maid when I retire!"

Um, maybe I'm alone in this kind of reaction. Besides that was sports, just with robots. I need to rethink this.

omni, thank you for the wisteria link. Maybe I'll give pruning the side shoots another shot. The whole idea of the wisteria was (is) to provide a lovely background for my Our Lady of Guadalupe concrete statue. In Spring, my pink and gold daylillies bloom beautifully around her feet; those lavendar wisteria blooms behind her would be glorious, don't you think?

RD, Mine has taken over an ugly hog wire fence. Not only do the vines spread, but the foliage is immensely THICK. One summer the g-girls were playing outside and asked if they could make a coca-cola tree using the bottles I had stacked in the recycle bin. So they happily wiled away the afternoon, poking ate least 25, probably more coke bottles deep inside the wisteria. You really couldn't see the bottles unless you looked inside the bush, but they were happy with the results. After they went home, I promptly forgot about it. Winter came and we had a hard freeze. I looked out the kitchen window and noticed my now naked, save the coke bottles, wisteria. No telling what the recycle collectors thought.

Nani, I am GQSMF (Giggling Quietly with a Smirk on My Face).

As one of my examples of the moderately insane things that physics grad students do in order to survive, I built sculptures out of soda cans. I saved them from my own sodas and from my colleagues, then I glued them together into mighty structures that smelled awful from the glue. I inflected one on an undergrad. After a while, he asked me if I had ever washed the cans. You know the answer. I had to retrieve it and take it to the dump. I only made two. I briefly fantasized (okay, not sufficently briefly) that I would chuck this physics gig and become a sculptor, festooning my soda-can sculptures with free-form fiberglass shapes, building fountains and such-like. My otherwise inevitable success was foiled by the profound ugliness, uninspiring character, and massive size of my creations.

I dumped the second one when I had to move.

Science Tim, considering the august nature of your endeavours into sculpture, you might like this.

http://www.bcrockies.com/attractions/glasshouse.html

--off topic warning--feel free to scroll past--

I got a great book at the library this weekend--it's called Good Poems for Hard Times, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor. I wish I could give a copy of this book to everybody in the world. Some people are probably so prejudiced against poetry that they wouldn't try to read it, and some people are so high-brow about poetry that they would think it was beneath their contempt (these are what you might call "accessible" poems). But anybody who read it with an open heart, I think, would benefit from the experience.

I'm going to share one as an example.

===========

Afraid So

Is it starting to rain?
Did the check bounce?
Are we out of coffee?
Is this going to hurt?
Could you lose your job?
Did the glass break?
Was the baggage misrouted?
Will this go on my record?
Are you missing much money?
Was anyone injured?
Is the traffic heavy?
Do I have to remove my clothes?
Will it leave a scar?
Must you go?
Will this be in the papers?
Is my time up already?
Are we seeing the understudy?
Will it affect my eyesight?
Did all the books burn?
Are you still smoking?
Is the bone broken?
Will I have to put him to sleep?
Was the car totaled?
Am I responsible for these charges?
Are you contagious?
Will we have to wait long?
Is the runway icy?
Was the gun loaded?
Could this cause side effects?
Do you know who betrayed you?
Is the wound infected?
Are we lost?
Will it get any worse?

--Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Am I following the logic here correctly? Bush said (in the WaPo lede story) that if he had doubts about Iraq, he'd pull the troops out. But he also said there would be no "complete withdrawal" while he remains president. So not only does he not have any doubts now, he also knows he's not going to have any doubts in the future/next three years. Can one know ahead of time if one is not going to have doubts?

And does that not commit us to three more years of occupation, *no matter what happens* or if anyone proposes a withdrawl plan? I mean, just for argument's sake, supposed the Iraqs get their act together, form a government, the civil war (that doesn't exist, of course) stops, etc.? We'd saty even then?

(I know, I know, the man isn't playing with a full deck, but seriously...)

>Can one know ahead of time if one is not going to have doubts?

'Mudge, I refer you to the joke about the man who refuses two boats and a chopper during the flood. No doubts there.

The joke is: the joke is the refutation to Pascal's Wager.

'Mudge, I think that the language that so alarms, frustrates, exasperates us is very comforting to a lot of folks. Our President. He is resolute, he stays the course. He's not a waffler. America is surely safe and secure!

dr,
Remember, those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Loved, loved, loved the link you provided, dr, as well as the story. *L,L,L,*

kbertocci,
I have seen that poetry book by G.K. and would recommend it!

>advertising on this page

Hal the Schemer deserves a lot of credit here. Clicking on the comment link in the Kit automatically scrolls my browser past the adverts and down to the first comment. Perfect.

Of course, there wouldn't be any bikini advertising down here in TN anyway. Pretty conservative area. For instance, Jack Daniel's distillery is in a dry county. At the end of their tours, they serve Jack Daniel's lemonade.

Science Tim writes:
My otherwise inevitable success was foiled by the profound ugliness, uninspiring character, and massive size of my creations.

Science Tim, you couldn't do any worse than Claes Oldenburg. These knife ships can come in handy...or his giant trowel, not to mention his uber-sized lipstick container...(Are you ready for my close-up, Mr. Demille?)

http://www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com/knifeshipii.htm

It's warming up. I am so tempted to go for my first swim of the season...

I'm gonna wander back on topic here...

I think I read or heard somwhere that George Mason located Gunston Hall pretty much on the route between Williamsburg and Philadelphia and other points north. That way, all the important people would stop on their way and he would have plenty of company and always be "in the know."

That sounds like my kind of guy.

I know (it is comforting to some people), bertooch, but what is the point of only addressing one's base in this case? That's what I can't understand. (Especially when everyone else is also listening in. It's not like he just whispered it to "his side" or anything.)

The point is, it isn't the hardcore base he needs to worry about; it's the people who have been slipping away. And those people aren't going to be pulled back into his camp by using coded rhetoric.

Loomis, now you're just being cruel.

C'mudgeon,

Hey, it got him elected--as far as he's concerned, this is a winning formula and he's sticking to it. For his Base (the "haves" and the "have-mores") times have NEVER been better. They are more than satisfied with where we are. Down the road? I guess they will worry about that when they get there.

Aren't we mortals so fortunate to have poets, sculptors and artists of all kinds among us? I feel like an artist when my plants produce vegetables and flowers; well MOST of my plants.

I would have loved to see Christo and his Umbrellas (pasted below, a portion of the narrative on the website:

Christo and his Umbrellas
Umbrella project took five years of preparations, including securing the necessary permits and performing tests in wind tunnels to make sure they would withstand winds up to 65 mph when open and up to 110 mph when closed. He chose two sites to display his umbrellas: an area which is 60 miles north of Los Angeles along Interstate 5 south of Gorman, through the Tejon Pass until Grapevine, and Ibaraki, Japan which is 75 miles north of Tokyo around route 349 and the Sato River. The California umbrellas were yellow in color and the Japanese umbrellas were blue in color. Both colors were chosen to represent the environment in which they were placed. I can't vouch for Japan, but the Southern Californian landscape in October is a rich yellow contrasting against the green scrub oak which is part of the natural chaparral of the region. The two regions were also chosen as a joint art project to reflect the similarities and differences in the ways of life in the two inland valleys. The 1,340 blue umbrellas in Ibaraki and the 1,760 yellow umbrellas in California were placed sometimes in clusters covering entire fields, or deployed in a line, or randomly spaced from each other, running alongside roads, villages and river banks.
Eleven manufacturers prepared the various elements (fabric, aluminum, steel, and molded base cover), of the umbrellas. Christo's 26 million dollar temporary work of art was entirely financed by The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and U.S.A. So how in the heck did he make any money out of this without charging admission and it being only temporary? I found out later that all of his previous projects and this one were financed in similar manners through the sale of his studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models, early works and original lithographs. The umbrellas were in place during October 1991 for almost three weeks. Unfortunately, his studies of the umbrellas were not quite accurate enough and on the day I was there, the wind from the storm you can see in the picture below, lifted several umbrellas up and caused one to crush a woman. Christo immediately called a halt to the project on both continents. Depending on where you were the umbrellas displayed a variety of moods. I got up at 4:00 in the morning to get up to the site at dawn. I drove all the way over Tejon Pass and down to Grapevine in the Central Valley of California and then slowly took side roads back, stopping here and there to take some pictures. I found the umbrellas most impressive when you were above them looking down. I was also especially intrigued by the 4 umbrellas that were placed in the pond. I loved the look of the reflection of the umbrellas in the water. The first thing I said to my wife when I got back home was that I wanted to go to Japan to see the blue ones.

I'm kind of let down here, people. Yesterday's 'Boodle had loads of great rock 'n' roll references. The Doors. Neil Young. Elton John. We could've started up a classic rock radio station. Or our own sat channel. Yeah, the 'Boodle Channel. But today? Bah.

Remember, this is the guy who got elected by a few thousand (questionable) votes in Ohio and said it was "political capital."

Let's face it. The man is stupid.

And as my father often says about people, "He doesn't want to know."

Mudge,
I am not being cruel. It's a gorgeous, warm spring day. Plants are blooming, color is everywhere. Some plants, like the Texas mountain laurels, that look much like wisteria, have already finished their flowering cycle. Red oaks are almost in full leaf. I won't stay here in my home office much longer. I'm in shorts and a T-shirt. If the pool doesn't beckon, the outside patio and a good book do, too.

Forget John Kerry, our Mayor, forget the San Antonio Film Commission. I did get an e-mail from Cannes this morning, though. It was so short, I really couldn't figure out what the person who sent it was trying to say?

The community/homeowner's association pool is full, the warm, gentle breezes beckon, the lawn furniture is out around the light azure waters of the pool. I have only to take a few steps before I reach my beachbag and the swimsuit therein. Perhaps I should begin to work on my Cannes tan?

You all are invited to join me, of course!

(There was a small tornado out near Uvalde last night, though.)

the umbrella thing was me.

anonymous:
I myself, too, saw the Christo umbrellas in person on the Tejon Pass/Grapevine (freeway between Bakersfiled and L.A.), and was aware that one blew over and crushed a woman.

What an obit. Killed by artwork!

Since I Achenboodle illicitly from a cubicle, I immediately resize the window so that only the corporate looking white text shows. I also have the pop-up blocker feature of Firefox enabled. Hence, I almost never, except perhaps subliminally, see the banner or sidebar ads. I consider this the internet equivalent of taping television shows and fast-forwarding throught the commercials.

Bayou, sometimes we don't do rock and roll, sometimes we do corny, 40's jazz and so on.

Here's my boodle song from the weekend:

Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

--Harold Arlen (b. Hyman Arluck)
c. 1932

I was listening to Natalie Cole's rendition of this song on Saturday and I kept thinking of the boodle, and how it runs on faith, not to say projection and delusion. And defining "love" as the willingness to acknowledge another person's existence.

Rock n roll is great, but it's not everything, right, Nani?

Here's a telling development...

WaPo now has a "Red State America" blog.

Really.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/redamerica/

"This is a blog for the majority of Americans."

Where you can't post a live comment.

Really.

Loomis, Oldenburg's sculpture on that link has something that mine lacked -- remember, uninspiring character also was one of my defects. The Knife Ship may be silly, but it's also funny, and it gives the brain a jiggle. My sculptures were simply... there. And they smelled bad. And had ants foraging for the dried-up sugar inside.

I have always been contemptuous of a lot of lauded modern sculpture, which makes it difficult to parody in any meaningful way. If you despise it, all you can do is express contempt, because you can't understand it enough to poke fun at its foibles and conventions. That being said, I always wanted to make an enormous pile of defective computer circuit boards, mixed with a few functional circuits that flash lights (LEDs), then pour epoxy over the whole mess so it solidifies into a single lump. I'd call it "Computer."

SCC: (half-hearted) "Red America" blog

Pardon the faux pas.

That's funny. I thought population-wise, there were actually more Blue-state Americans.

There are, TBG, but to the Red State mindset such people are not, you know, real 'mericans.

TBG:

Apparently "Red America" takes its "majority" cue from elections.

No matter how slim the "majority" was.

And IMHO, the blogger's really got a "we won, now shut up and take it" kind of tone.

It would have been nice if more of blue state America had actually voted. You are quite right Scottynuke,I have seen that point of view many, many times. It is as if to many an election were a NASCAR race.

Red State Guy is right about "Red Dawn". Greatest anti-gun control movie ever made.

Opening narration: "Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years... Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade... Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall... Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil... Mexico plunged into revolution... NATO dissolves. United States stands alone."

In one of the first scenes, the Russo-Cuban commander sends a squad to the sporting goods store to round up the gun licenses. A bunch of high school kids including Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen head for the hills and become commandos.

This movie immortalizes Reagan America way more than any of the Rambo movies.

I ask people to imagine the movie being remade in Iraq except with the commandos being Iraqi. Almost no one ever gets my point that in any battle the insurgents are the heroes. There aren't any movies about the heroism of the Vichy French.

Wolverines!

I am a little touchy about this whole "blue state" "red state" thing because I work with so many people who still have a deep seated hatred for the "hippies." By which they mean anybody who doesn't collect guns.
I'm gonna start before my snarky meter goes off the scale.

Scottynuke: I read today's "Red State America" blog. It's a blast from the past. Basically, Republican talking points from August of 2003. Yawn.

start. stop. whatever it takes.
Been a long, lonnnng day...

kbertocci, that's one of my very favorite songs! I sing it to No. 1 greatgrandboy (Phllip Flavius). Don't worry Bayou Self; his rock n roll education isn't being neglected. I play Roy Orbison's Black and White Night CD for him too. Once Flavvy started crying really loud at the same time Roy hit those high notes in "Cryin". And I just had to laugh.

>people who still have a deep seated hatred for the "hippies."

RD that's ok, we're all running their IT departments now.

I know, CT, I know...

Quite a Bizarro WaPo moment...

The "Red America" blog that doesn't take comments. That's funny, Scotty!

I don't think the Beijing People's Daily "Red China" blog has the comments turned on either.

bc

Oh, Nani, Nani, Nani. That "Black and White" CD...I swear we have identical tastes in music--Roy, Willie, Edith...

I watched it a few months ago when it was on PBS with my son wandering in and out of the room, and pointed out to him who all those "back-up" people were--Bonnie Raitt and k.d., and J.D. Souther, Elvic C, the Boss, Jackson Browne, on and on and on...

My wife and I saw Orbison (can't remember if it was Wolf Trap or Meriweather Post) two weeks before he died.

yellojkt,
My old high school got merged with another high school in the mid-'80s and took 'Wolverines' as their new nickname because of the popularity of that dreadful movie.

For Bayou Self, here are some more music notes. Today is J.S. Bach's birthday and also Modest Mussorgsky's. You can go home tonight and put on your copy of "Pictures at a Brandenburg Exhibition" if you are so inclined. And on a Neil Young (wobbly) note, do you think his Archive series will ever see the light of day? I think it is finally supposed to come out this year. I'd also be really happy if he allowed "Time Fades Away" to show up on CD.

I think I will avoid even looking at the Red America blog. It will only set me off just like watching GWB does. (The Kaiser Permanente waiting room TVs only seem to receive Fox News. My BP is always sky high by the time I get into the exam room.)

Why does the Post have this RA blog, exactly? To pi$$ off the faithful? Do they really think they're going to attract new readership with it?

The good folks at Echelon want to review the emailed posts.

Speaking of Neil Young, has anyone seen the new "Heart of Gold" movie? Young was on Jon Stewart's show the other night, and I'm dying to see the movie.

TBG asks:
"Why does the Post have this RA blog, exactly? To pi$$ off the faithful? Do they really think they're going to attract new readership with it?"

To prove they're fair and balanced. Which is of course playing into the unfair-media-bias trap. I forget who, but several architects of Fox News, et. al., have confessed that complaints of media bias are a red herring to distract from the creation of a right-wing media consortium. Liberals want to be viewed as fair. Conservatives have no such qualms.

Can you imagine WaPo getting away with a liberal blog called "The Real Winners"? They would never live down accusations of finally showing their true colors. It's a cruel double standard that goes unchecked.

JS Bach birthday reminds me of the single most entrancing performance I've ever seen or heard. It was on PBS Spokane and was a festival of Bach where all kinds of musicians interpreted his music. Bobbie McFerrin did a peice where he was the violin, an absolutely flawless, inspired performance. I've seen bits and peices of his other work, but this one performance will forever stand out in my mind for his best of, and Bach's best.

Little known info on k.d., she appeared in a blurb on a tv show, called 'Live it Up' back in the days when she was unknown and singing Patsy Cline songs alternative country style. Jim Carey also first gained national attention on the same show.

No one's fair and balanced. That's not how it works. I thought the Washington Post knew that better than anyone.

Jeesh.

I do hope Fearless Leader has something to say about "Red America"...

*trying to not bate my breath too much*

I looked at the Red America blog. I continue to be irked/amused/mystified how the Repubs, with this guy as the latest example, flog the exceedingly thin majority in the last election to say that "most Americans" agree with them. Technically, yes, any quantity more than precisely half is "most." This also gets interpreted, however, to claim that "most" Americans agree with the entirety of the Republican platform, whereas Mr. Red then points to the most extreme and, yes, hysterical of lefties and equates all Democrats with them. Even though he doesn't precisely accuse us all of agreeing with them, he strongly implies it in the very next sentence. If I, as a Democrat, were to do such a thing then I would claim that Republicans are all equally tainted by their association with the extreme wing of adulterous, lecherous, lying, stealing, embezzling, bribe-taking, civil liberties-stomping, law-breaking, incompetent morons*. But I wouldn't do that, because that would be wrong.

I left out "evil," so I don't think I've gone over the top. Have I?

* Key to the insults:
adulterous, lecherous: Newt Gingrich, who dumped his first wife while she was in chemo, to take up more openly with a younger and less cancerous woman. It's only a problem, to me, when it conflicts with the holier-than-thou espousal of rigid "family values."
lying: too many options to single one out.
stealing: Mr. Bush's recently let-go domestic adviser, what's-his-name.
embezzling: our friends at Enron, and Mr. Abramoff.
bribe-taking: Randy "The Dude" Cunningham.
civil liberties-stomping: Ashcroft, Gonzalez.
law-breaking: Mr. Bush, for unauthorized wire-tapping, and imprisoning an American citizen (Padilla) without criminal due process.
incompetent: Brownie
moron: ...

OK, so this Domenech fellow runs a "Republican community blog."

Is there a "Democrat community" blogger officially writing on wapo.com? Not a liberal blog, but a Democrat blog? I'm asking here.. I really want to know.

Thanks

I do like the Red State map with the huge swaths of corn fields and pig farms that are red so that it looks like just a few small areas of wine-swilling cheese-eating liberals are marginalized at the extremes. This is the same logic that lets US commanders in Iraq say that 75% of the country is pacified.

Ooooh... we can make this the "unofficial" Comments Section of the Red America blog.

yellojkt, here's a good map:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cartlinearlarge.png

I'm tryin' real hard to be good, here...but what Tim said. And TBG.

k'guy is probably celebrating Johann's birthday too. Sure wish he'd celebrate it with us like in the good old days.

I never thought I'd want 2 years to hurry up and come as bad as I do right now.

Speaking of cultural clashes, anybody confessing up to a sick liking for "Wife Swap?" Apparently, the typical american family is a total fiction. Which I kind of knew.
One show I'd like to see: petphobic mother from a uber-clean family with 1 kid, no pets to a dog breeder's house with 30 pooches and relaxed levels of "pretty."

But that's just me.

I should note that although I dislike what I have read of Mr. Red (or Domenech, whatever) -- a paragraph or so was enough to convince me that he had nothing new to say -- I don't oppose the wisdom of putting his blog in the WaPo online. If they open it for comments, that is.

>yes, any quantity more than precisely half is "most."

And as J.R. "Bob" Dobbs of the Church of the SubGenius says:

"Know how dumb the average American is? By definition, half are dumber than that."

i agree with tim, thats its absurd that "red america" keeps flaunting its "most of the country agrees with us" proganda. have they looked at any recent polls, or the president's approval rating? interesting how they dismiss these more current ratings, but are more than willing to bring up Bush's very high approval rating right after 9/11. they base their assumptions on info. that is out-dated, kinda like saying that Iraq has WMD. like their leader, the majority of hard-core, "red america" is disillusioned, and appear to want to stay that way.

First impression: Another "ditto-head" engaging in ad hominem attacks on "libs" and other strawmen. A coworker of mine plays a game when Rush Limbaugh is on the radio. He times the broadcast until Rush makes a personal attack or boldly states a verifiably false statement. It usually takes less than five minutes.

Here's some red-meat bingo words to spread on a card taken from his "Pachyderms" post:

extreme political left
shrieking denizens
left wing
political correctness
unhinged elements
leftist websites

They could get away with "most of the country agrees with us" if we had close to universal participation in elections. When the voting percentage hovers around 50%, however, that argument falls apart quickly. But "most of the country agrees with us" sounds much more convincing than more accurate "at least 25% of the country agrees with us."

Heh, heh, heh. We ARE the shrieking denizens. I like it.

:)

Our primary here in Bexar County several weeks ago drew only 7 percent of the electorate. This is several percentage points lower than the projected 10 percent turn-out expected tat day.

Possible reason for low numbers of voters going to the polls? If you voted in the March primary, you became ineligible to sign the petition to put either/both of the two independents Strayhorn (mother to the McClellan boys) or Kinky Friedman (Texas Jewboys...hey, that's the name the Kinkster chose for his band) on the gubernatorial ticket.

People here in the Lone Star state, IMHO, are fed up, literally fed up, with politics as unusal. Let's hope that's the reason for the electoral no-shows. It's going to be an interesting year here politically.

Thanks for the graphic, TBG.

Yeah, 'Mudge, everybody's preaching to the choir here, aren't we? There are hopeful signs here and there - my militantly Republican ex-husband voted for Kerry. When my daughters told me that, it blew me away. And mine is a red, red, red state. I sure hope we get a good (electable) candidate on the Democratic side the next time around. Anybody got favorites to talk about? I'm completely open.

Ben Domenech of the Red Blog was a speech writer for two years for Sen. John Cornyn of Texas?

*slaps thigh, rolls on the floor laughing out loud, wipes tears from eyes*

That just about says it all!!!

High School: Japan (1969)

University: BA Journalism, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX (1973)

Law School: JD, St. Mary's School of Law, San Antonio, TX (1977)

Law School: LLM, University of Virginia (1995)

U.S. Senator, Texas
State Attorney General Texas 1999-2002
State Supreme Court Texas

Dubya Nickname: Corndog

Maureen Dowd and the NYT have been floating Barak Obama's name for '08.

Note:
Domensch the Red does not appear to have flyaway hair.

In fact, it looks an awful lot like a mirror image of George Will's. Coincidence?

For all that, I doubt George Will will go and see Ben D over there other than to poke at him for fun.

bc

Much as I like Obama it'd be a mistake. (and anyway, he's way too new and inexperienced). I'd vote for him, but he has no chance whatsoever. He needs some time in office. I'm tired of voting for people who can't win.

Hillary would be a disaster, not because of her, but because of all the baggage she brings (it ain't her fault, but still...baggage is baggage). And the entire election would be about the rightwingers going batsh--t crazy, and we just plain don't need it.

It's got to be a relative moderate, because the battle is ALWAYS about the middle, not the wings/base. Politics is about the ability to count, and Dems just can't count. It's got to be abvout the middle, 'cause that's where the numbers are. Screw the far left and greens; let 'em stay home and sit on their hands if they want; they've always been politically useless anyway. They got no place else to go.

I'd go for Biden, if he'd only learn to shut up and keep his answers to under 45 minutes.

I'd also go for John Edwards.

No Kerry, no Gore. (I don't care that loosing wasn't their fault--or even that they didn't actually loose. It doesn't matter. They ran lousy campaigns anyway. I want somebody angry, with a fire in the belly to get to the White House and kick the bas***ds out.)

I'm not even convinced the eventual Dem candidate is visible yet--could be some dark horse like Richardson. The good news is, we got two years to find him/her. (The bad news is, we got three years to go.)

Patience, people, patience. Politics is about counting, but it's also about patience. (Which is why it ain't easy.)

Mudge, you are right on. My money's on Richardson or Warner. People like centrist governors. You're also right about the respective wings of each party, neither has the competence or credibility to govern.

Wise, wise, words Curmudgeon.

My question is what can we grass-roots Democrats do to make sure our party doesn't commit suicide again with Hillary (who I love but who is a mistake for all the reasons already cited above) or Obama (same thing)?

How can we as a collective group say, "NO MORE!" and make sure our party nominates a centrist governor who can win (doesn't anyone in the Democratic party remember a fellow named Bill Clinton?)

Yikes.

kbertocci - I'll take any tunes I can get. We just had a great soundtrack playing in the 'Boodle yesterday.

Nani - At the top of the pops for my younguns is The Spender Davis Group's Gimme Some Lovin'. The car gets a'rockin' when I put that on, complete with everybody chiming in when the lyrics include a "hey!"

pj - How about if I play the Emerson, Lake and Palmer version of Pictures at an Exhibition?

As for the current political discussion, I'm hearing Buffalo Springfield's For What it's Worth.

TBG - Which candidate might that be? The more moderate Democrats don't tend to have the fire that Curmudgeon talks about, or so it appears to me.

I just hung out on Raw Fisher for a few minutes. I notice that John Kelly, standing-in for him, gets a heck of a lot more posts than Fisher attracts on his own (20 seems to be a pretty good day).

That said -- there's this real angry back and forth going on over there. "You're a bad parent!" "No, YOU'RE a bad parent!"

Man, those people don't think too hard. Except for that one guy, what's his name? Tim

After about 35--40 angry posts, some reasonable people started to show up (including myself, I say modestly).

TBG - you are so correct. Let's face it, America is a conservative place, but not actually insane. Give the pragmatic conservatives a reasonable alternative and they will come flocking. I know many, many people who voted for Bush with their nostrils firmly pinched shut just because they couldn't stomach voting for somebody enthusiatically endorsed by Barbara Streisand and company. Find somebody Babs only kinda likes, and you got the White House.
The trickier question is how to do this. The only thing I can think of for us commoners to do is to move to Ohio.

Hi everyone, I'm still here fighting this bug. I see we're talking about everything, and everyone, business as usual. On the advertising bit, the WasPost ad with the girl in underwear or swimwear with the sign in big letters "juicy" pops up on my computer all the time, and I really don't like it. It's just too much.

As to the political candidates for the upcoming elections, I hope the Democrats pick someone that can win, and someone that knows what they're doing. Don't have any idea who that could be. If our young people are going to be in Iraq until '08 we need to pray much for them. Everyday the news is not good there, so much killing, and I know it's war, but it's just too much. It bothers me terribly.

You know, it is my understanding that back in the olden days there used to be something called "a party structure" where wise "party officials" picked and funded worthy winning candidates. Such innocent times.

TBG, just keep advancing the arguments above, and telling anybody who will listen (and tell friends on the left--I have them, too--to shut the hell up. They aren't helping. They may be right, but they aren't helping.)

First priority is to win as many seats as possible in 2006. Keep your eye on the prize.

As soon after November as possible, Howard Dean's probably got to go. I don't like it much, either, but he's become a target and a liability. (He was from the git-go, I think, but everybody gave him a fair chance at the job, and he's basically blown it.) Not his fault, probably, but that's beside the point. Head of the DNC HAS to be the de facto head of the party, until such time as the '08 nominee is selected. And Dean's not the man to lead the party to a centrist candidate and a centrist win. So like it or not, he's gotta go.

Harry Reid has done a mediocre-to-lousy job as Senate min. leader, and ought to be replaced. Pelosi has done a mediocre-to-lousy job in the house--mainly not forceful enough. Both gotta go after November. None of this is about issues or ideology or "degrees of liberalism/moderation" etc.--it's just about leadership (or lack thereof). At this point I don't give a rat's a--where any Dem is on the spectrum; I only want to see performance and pragmatism. Either something works, or it doesn't.

Bush didn't win on issues; he won (?)(insofar as he won) on perceived (read: misperceived) performance. He could take care of security/defense; Repubs were "business people" who can manage money. (Nevermind all the fallacies and distortions there; this is about perceptions.)

The Conservatives' biggest mistake is they think they've been winning because of issues and their own pet ideas. That's crap, and it will ultimately be their undoing. It isn't their ideology (issues) that's killing them now: it's lack of performance. It's just about the perception of who can get the job done. Always has been, always will be. The ideology is just window-dressing and self-deception for the ideologically minded.

Between now and then, TBG, there's not a lot us grass roots people can do, except get our strategy and goals properly lined up, and talk up the game. And vote, of course. And send money.

I seem to recall that Reagan ran for President, and lost, more than once before winning. Perseverance is not a bad trait in a President or a political party (not that I can think of much else that I liked about Reagan, politically). The return of Al Gore would not necessarily be a bad thing, especially now that he's appeared in public as a loosened-up guy. One of the reasons that he and Kerry did so poorly, I think, was the lack of authenticity in their public presentation. Dukakis, too, now that I think of it. Now that Gore has appeared in public with a beard and casual clothes, shown that he's willing to talk to normal people (with his slide show), and (most importantly) shown that he is able to live outside the halls of government, maybe he's just about ready to be rehabilitated for another go at it.

Obama would make a pretty good veep candidate. Better than Dan Quayle.

You're correct, Bayou--there's an apparent condradiction between being a moderate on the one hand, but having a fire in the belly on the other. So what we need is an angry moderate. Difficult to find--but not impossible.

*cue up Howard Beale, Mad Prophet of the Airwaves: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!"*

I think Gore is wonderful. Brilliant and truly ethical. I would vote for Gore in a second. Unfortunately, she's stuck with Al.

Actually, I like Al a lot. But my heart really does belong to Tipper...

do you think Warner could get enough money and national recognition to give it a shot? in my mind, he's closer to the moderate Dem. that would be able to get the undecided/moderate population (me included) out. i would say his biggest problem is that he's not well known enough by non-politic folk away from the east coast. is he fiery enough also? we got a couple of years yet, unfortunately.

Rd, I think you may have it. Its no longer about the best candidate, its about who can raise the biggest bucks. And that goes for your nation and mine. The bucks have it.

tangent, I think Warner is one to watch. Who ever heard of Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas? Yeah, I'd vote for John Edwards (again) but he has such limited experience. At least a former governor has really worked on the executive level.

dr - sometimes I think we could use the "vote of no confidence" option here in the US.

Hillary's a non-starter. Pelosi and Howard Dean have to go, I'm lukewarm about Reid. Obama isn't experienced enough. Kerry should forget it. Gore might actually have a shot, but someone else would be better.

Actually, with 8 years of Bush you might as well vote for "Error". I mean, at least be honest about it. I knew who Pervez Musharraf was before Bush did, I knew what had happened in East Timor before he did, and I figured Saddam was bluffing to save face with the Arabs and had no WMD.

And I just want my mortgage paid off, so my graft requirements should be easily handled during the primary.

Hmmmm, "E.F. in 08" does a nice ring to it.

"does have" just a 7 second rewind button. Is that asking so much?

Okay, as a Canadian, I'm an outsider to this discussion (so ignore or disregard as required). However, you should know that probably 95% of our voters (including Conservatives) fit within a broad view of the Dems, so we have a common viewpoint.

It seems to me that Hillary is not the answer. Obama as well. The first black or woman president will probably be a Republican.

My suggestion is Edwards or Richardson, with a 'national security' guy (maybe Cohen from the Clinton era?) as running mate to neutralize that issue.

The non-confidence vote can be a toothless weapon and usually involves a lot of political wangling. Ultimately the governor general can call on whom-so-ever she likes to ask that party to form the government, and it can be the same party as just lost the non-confidence vote. This leads to the sometimes odd bedfellow things that happen in other parliamentary democracies, but here in Canada while law says she can call who she will, the power of tradition says its not quite Canadian to do so. She must by tradition call the opposition party to do so, but mostly she calls a general election. I don't know if this is much better than the electoral college system as in the US, but well both our systems are better than a lot of places on the planet.

We are both lucky enough to live in nations with a culture of freedom. There are few places on the planet where people could speak this freely about a sitting government, and still live to tell about it in the morning.

That last was me.

Appears to be other Canadians here today besides me! We are once again infiltrating venerable Washington institutions.

Son of Carl, you are??!!Wonderful.

[secret handshake and nose rubbing]

Someone else whose porch is still covered in snow.

Tim,

Reagan ran against Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976. He lost, but during the convention there was talk about making him the Vice Presidental candidate with the idea that they would basically function as a co-presidents.

To CowTown (and anyone else who suggests Richardson),

I understand the guy has female problems that would make Bill Clinton look like the Pope.

Good golly! First the Geese, now this!

I was listening to NPR on my way home (of course, what else would you expect the shrieking denizens to listen to?) and after the piece about Bush's optimistic (or fatalistic, depending on how you look at it) statements lately and his lack of doubt about his success in Iraq, there was a segment by Anne Garrels about life in Basra.

I was actually in tears as she described the lives there now. No more music, no women allowed on the streets alone or uncovered. Girls being pulled from school and looking forward to lives behind closed doors married off because they have no education and aren't allowed to work outside the home. Even the weddings are more like funerals, one man said, because people are afraid to incur the wrath of the religious leaders if they laugh and sing and dance.

This is the democracy that we brought to Iraq.

But you are right, dr, and it is wonderful that we can say these things here and not worry (well, not too much anyway!).

Bayou Self,

About one minute after I read your post about ELP, the radio started playing "Pictures" tho' not the ELP version. Good timing. Go for it.

E.F., if you really want to help put a decent Dem in thw White House, follow my Oscar night advice. Form a radical far-right party just popular enough to split the Republicans. (But, please. Don't be too good at it.) Third party politics has determined quite a number of elections. It is the crucial swing element that can make all the difference. Like George Mason. (Way to bring it on home...) Now I gotta deal with the children and leave the blog to people who actually know something.

>Someone else whose porch is still covered in snow.

I really wish you guys would trade places with Mexico. If I'm going to move it's going to be towards warm climes, and they made me take French instead of Spanish in high school.

And while we're at it, I'm on record as proposing that Israel and Cuba trade places too. The way I figure, there wouldn't be any hard feelings between the Cubans and Arabs, and the Israeli's would be closer to the relatives in Miami and NY. Disney could build a replica of the temples and Wailing Wall, and we'd have Castro out of the neighborhood, as if I care. The Palestinian cause would cease to be an issue the terrorists could co-opt and the Arabs should be very happy and give us a deal on oil.

Then the Cubans living in Miami could move back to Cuba, thus opening up a great deal of real estate in Miami. We'd have to pay Castro a king's ransom to move, but we'd get all that real estate back. Then we could have a yearly lottery to send average Americans down to a nice place in Miami for two weeks.

It's no less outrageous than thinking you can remake the Mideast into Western-friendly democracies by attacking Iraq, Iran and Syria.

And they say nobody offers solutions.

A very good look at Domenech, the new WaPo.com blogger:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?

'Wash Post' Launches Conservative Blog, Provokes a 'Firestorm'

By E&P [Editor and Publisher] Staff

Published: March 21, 2006 11:35 AM ET

NEW YORK During the recent controversy surrounding Dan Froomkin's blog at The Washington Post, editors not only decided to clearly label his column "opinion" but also to make an effort to hire a conservative blogger to balance his alleged liberal slant.

Today, the Post launched the result: A new blog called "Red America," created by Ben Domenech, co-founder of RedState, a popular community blog.

It immediately set off what Post political reporter Tom Edsall called a "firestorm" in his online chat today.

Washington, D.C.: The hiring of the Red State Blogger is yet another example of why I cancelled my subscription to The Post and do not intend to ever re-instate it. The Post's view that it needs to "balance" viewpoints buys into the notion that The Washington Post adequately provides a forum for a liberal viewpoint. Do you really believe that The Post has an over abundance of liberal viewpoints?

Tom Edsall: In fairness to the many inquiries about the Red State blogger, the questions you raise go to some basic issues of journalism that deserve much more expansive treatment and should get answers defining the principles guiding the Post as it engages with web. I could shoot my mouth off on these questions, but they should be answered by those with the power to set policy.

Hmmmmm.

E.F. in '08!

>E.F. in '08!

Why thank ya, thank ya very much.

I think the Archbishop of Canterbury on our family tree, Edmund Grindal, would be applauding this...

(what you don't find on the web when your hubby is stuck late at the office)
****

Archbishop: stop teaching creationism
Williams backs science over Bible

Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent
Tuesday March 21, 2006
The Guardian

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism - the Bible-based account of the origins of the world - should be taught in schools.

Giving his first, wide-ranging, interview at Lambeth Palace, the archbishop was emphatic in his criticism of creationism being taught in the classroom, as is happening in two city academies founded by the evangelical Christian businessman Sir Peter Vardy and several other schools.

I just absolutely hate that when you go to read the day's discussions on this site, you end up with a list of tomorrow's! It looks like the Discussions staff sets everything up before they leave for home so that they can get in late in the morning.

When I come home in the evening, I want to settle in with the day's Post--paper and online. I don't want to open up my paper to find only a preview Table of Contents of tomorrow's paper any more than I want a preview of tomorrow's Discussions when I go to see what happened today.

Hal the Schemer is holding a post about T. Blair being investigated by British bobbies re; peerage scandal.

This is our big opportunity, boys and girls. If we jump on the E.F. in '08 bandwagon this early, I figure we've all got cabiunet positions and ambassadorships all sewn up! E.F., I call dibs on either press secretary or ambassador to St. Maarten or Sint Martin (either half of the same island; I'm flexible), or maybe one after the other (a year or two as press guy, then a well-deserved ambassadorship to anyplace that serves beverages with tiny umbrellas in them. Loomis? Bayou? bc? TBG? What do you guys want? (No squabbling!)

Error, that is brilliant. Solutions you got! I'll vote for you in a heartbeat!

TBG, yeah, that annoys me too, but I figured out you can go to recent transcripts just below and find what you want. Can't blame the help for not wanting to work 24/7. I would imagine they're not allowed to.

Mudge, I claim the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James! Always wanted to live in London for a while...

Folks, I am deeply honored by your support.

'Mudge, you're on.

They've heard of the Kitchen Cabinet, why not the Porch Cabinet?

Print or save this boodle. When E.F. is president it will be known as the Flynn Blog, when it was first proposed to have a Jewish homeland in Cuba. Also, we second your idea of Canada trading places with Mexico.

IIRC correnctly, one of the members of the Dick Cheney "Gang of Six" "I Shot Harry" was formerly an ambassador to Great Britain, so slyness, you'll have interesting shoes to fill..

I wouldn't mind being ambassador to Monaco.

Switzerland or Portugal wouldn't be bad, either. My sister liked Portugal immensely, tho' I've never set foot there. Canary Islands aren't bad either...

I'll take Vice President. Something about that job just appeals to me.

Speaking of which, my daughter just asked me who was the second U.S. vice president, so I found a site listing them all and have been laughing at the cast of characters. Isn't George Clinton a P.Funk All-Star?

TBG, I'm sure you'd make a great VP, but I was thinking of doing moe of a co-President thing with my accountant. He's a vertiable mountain of a man with financial knowledge to match my technical, young twins and the gravitas of actual stone.

I was thinking he could do the reddest state tour, I'd do the bluest state tour, and we go to the other ones together.

Otherwise I have no doubt we could compile an excellent cast of ambassadors and cabinet officers from the boodle.

We just have to get the right spot for Joel. I'm thinking along the lines of Minister Plenipotentiary of Moderation and Observables.

I think the Republicans won by selling fear to the American people. That's a tough one to counter.

I suspect that 'Mudge is right in his predictions.

That said, how I long for someone with the intestinal fortitude to stand up and claim a few things like: decency (no more torture and indefinite imprisonment), prudence (no more of the Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy let's bomb them before they bomb us) and compassion (protect the rights of those who are not in the majority, feed the hungry, house the homeless, comfort the sick and visit those in prison). These are not table-thumping points, though.

I am so tired of those who don't want to be 'soft on crime' and who not only tolerate, but mandate the warehousing of an enormouse percentage of young black and latino men in our prisons.

I'm tired of the war on terror. It's a war that has no end -- most terrorist attacks happen in democracies and are carried out by citizens of democracies.

I have a sense that others are getting fed up as well. I wonder if we might see change sooner than '08. I don't know how, but the president's remarks about the war lasting until '09 may be the most provocative thing he's ever said...And that's going some.

DV

Error, JA for Homeland Security Director!

SCC: "moe" -> "more", "vertiable" -> "veritable"

See that, I announce for Pres. and do my first SCC.

I'd like to blame it on the new Mac keyboard, but I bought the keyboard and like it otherwise, and will take responsibility for that.

ahem

>I call dibs on either press secretary or ambassador to St. Maarten

'Mudge, I don't see why couldn't do press conferences from St. Maarten. Gotta get out of that either/or thinking.

Think the press would mind?

I'm thinking we have EF do a variety of the ol' door to door campaign -- hitting every porch that is humanly possible, organizing porch gatherings in support of EF, and so on.

I'd like to be the guy in the shadows. Politically, it's a cool place to be. Among other things, I'd be an operative, starting whisper campaigns that opponents are bedwetters and stuff. Operative. It's fun to say. But I will not wear a trench coat.

Let's make an Error, America! An Error we can call our own!

Wow, Error, love your solutions! How about Obama for VP, though? I think he has plenty of experience - had more experience by the time he was 10 than GWB has had up to now! I skimmed Obama's book - very well written, I thought (had to get it back to the library, though, so I didn't finish it).

Bayou Self, I've been listening to Cream and Jack Bruce almost exclusively since the reunion concert. Have you been to Wolfgang's vault -
http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/Static.aspx?Type=Audio/Radio.htm&CategoryID=RA&LeftNav=Audio/RadioNav.htm
Lots of great live stuff there, recorded by Bill Graham. They change playlists on Tue. Last week had quite a bit of CSN (and maybe Y) - who were not always at their best live, IMHO. Their live album way back when put me off live recordings for years.
Listening to Santana now. And there's going to be a blog!

For all the sailors out there, let me recommend Procol Harum's A Salty Dog - fabulous. This is Too Much Between Us -

There's you, you're sleeping over there
whilst me I'm sitting here
with so much sea between us
I can't make it much more clear
There'll be no time for crying
We won't make it more than six
I could change my plea to guilty
but I don't think it would stick
Still those other ratings far too easy to despise
You've said so much in silence now I truly am disguised

Let him who fears his heart alone
stand up and make a speech
For him perhaps an emperor's throne
if he could only speak
Far too few and far to follow
For shame I'll heed the cry
Be with me when I need a drink
be with me when I die
Still those other ratings far too easy to despise
You've said so much in silence now indeed I am disguised

TBG, I agree about the discussions. At work I look at the front page of the WaPo - and usually by noon, my time, the discussions are tomorrow's. Very annoying.

Speaking of time, aren't we getting close to my least favorite day of the year, when we spring ahead? EF, your first duty when you become Prez is to outlaw Spring Ahead Day (you can have as many Fall Back's as you like). Thanks for your consideration.

And I like the idea of not waiting till '08. Elections - who needs stinking elections?

...red america?...elephants in the mist?...
i waded into the article having waited
for the slow inet feed here[ on dial up
inet...poky as heck...:-)] only to learn
it was the new wapo fair and balanced site
for lost gop/conservative/neocon/profamily
values/cut my taxes more types...
...and no open comments? that speaks to how confident the wapo is
as to feedback velocity or intensity levels
...well...ben may have something to add
but if he is going to xerox rush,fox news
and the rnc i see little point in reading
his stuff...
...mudge drove the nail in at 3/21 6:07pm
and tbg...thanks for the nice words...your
pointing out where ra comments may find
lodging at 3/21 4:14pm seems on mark :-)
...ef it was amusing to read of your graft
requirements...:-)...such forthrightness
is refreshing indeed...:-)
...i read the story on thailands current
politics with interest...the last ten
years have been a prelude for what is now
taking place...important to understand
20th century thai political history which
will allow best insights into current thai
political currents...the wapo article was
balanced...this is an ungoing reveal type
of situation that may not be resolved any
time soon...the underlying currents being
strong ones...and the surface not always
showing how or where the deeper currents
run to...as most often is so with politics
...see iraq,iran,saudi arabia,russia,china
and usa for surface/depth comparisons...
...and joel...thanks for porchtime and a
place to chit chat about things...someday
may get to meet you...until then i settle
on counting you as an inet friend...:-)

AND THE WINNER OF THE 2006 ELECTIONS IS,,,,,

California Sued Over Diebold Voting Systems

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:13:50 -0800
Summary:

Diebold came under file in California after the state’s March 2004 primary election for glitches at polling places attributed to its voting systems. Some activists have questioned their vulnerability to hacking and manipulation.

“Glitches,” my ass.

What we need are hand-counts and paper-trails. What’s so freaking hard about that?!?
[Posted By ShiftShapers]
By Reuters
Republished from Reuters
The latest salvo in an ongoing dispute about the security of Diebold electronic voting machines.

San Francisco – Some California voters and activist groups sued the state’s top election official on Tuesday in an effort to reverse the certification of certain electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc.

FOR THE REST GO TO:
http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/8228/California_Sued_Over_Diebold_Voting_Systems

WWW.ONLINEJOURNAL.COM
WWW.TAKINGAIM.INFO
WWW.WSWS.ORG
OTHERSIDE123.BLOGSPOT.COM

I don't think the liberals in the blogworld liked the new RedState blog very much. But maybe I'm reading too much into some of the comments (I tend to overinterpret):

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/03/21/late-nite-fdl-aw-shucks-brady-you-shouldnt-have/#more-1508

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washpostblog/2006/03/new_blog_red_america.html#comments

The Post’s hiring of Ben Domenech is sort of like Bush nominating a female justice who just happened to be the grossly incompetent Harriet Meirs. When this atrocity fails, management can shrug and say, “Well, we tried…”

Curmudgeon said "I want somebody angry, with a fire in the belly to get to the White House and kick the bas***ds out."

Will someone please tell me what was wrong with the fire in Howard Dea's belly? Literally, I need an explanation please. He came across to me as a strong, enthusiastic individual who eschews sound bytes and spoke truthfully from his heart.

I daresay I'm kinda proud to be the one to have pointed out the Red America crap first. JA, overinterpret? Never...

And as for '08, I'll be honored to serve at E.F.'s pleasure in an energy-related position. *quickly slipping an honorarium under the table* :-)

DV
That soft of crime thing works because of the racist nature of most Americans. When a candidate gets up talking about soft on crime, it seems to me to be a coded message of saying they're going to put more African-Americans in prison, as if the prisons aren't already full. Let's take this morning on Good Morning America where the lawyer for the young woman accused of molesting the fourteen-year old was set free because the charges were dropped. Her lawyer goes on televison, and what does he do? He lies. He said that in America we don't put mentally ill folks in prison. I said, what? Not only do we put mentally ill people in prison, we give them the death penalty and kill them. Case in point. After the fiasco with Susan Smith in South Carolina, the governor then sent a young African-American man that was certified as being mentally ill, to the death chamber. Even the victim's mother begged for this man's life, but to no avail. The only reason that woman did not go to prison was because the judge couldn't stomach sending a blond blue-eyed female to prison, it went against everything in him, and this society. Statutory rape is what she's done, and she calls it a bump in the road.

Nani, I agree with your view on Dean. I gave him the strongest support I've ever given a presidential candidate--I sent money, I went door to door, I wrote letters. I think he would be a great President.

He is really a common sense moderate, which is to say, he's far to the right of where I fall on the spectrum, but way left of the group that is currently guiding our government.

Myself, I'm more of a far-left extremist/idealist. Yesterday when Curmudgeon was saying the far left should "be quiet" I flinched a little--some of my best friends are Green Party!--but realize I agree with what he's saying in principle. Neither party is strong enough to withstand any third party drain-off at this point.

Joel, what do YOU think of the Red American blog? You can tell us... just sign your comment anonymously. You can be, er, Bachenach or something clever like that.

One theory floating in the blogsphere is that the WaPo is selling RedAmerica enough rope to discredit himself. Like the geniuses that came up with New Coke® I'm not sure they are that smart or that dumb.

I like columnists, right or left, that can do one of two things. Either tell me something I didn't know from reading the front page or put together a few things in a perspective I wasn't aware of. If it's just name-calling, chest-thumping, and I-told-you-so's, you're wasting my time.

It's one thing to be a rockstar in the onanistic Uroboros-like feeding frenzy that is red meat right wing blogging. It's quite another to maintain a shred of credibility as a pundit. With a soapbox as tall as the Post's you have to bring more to the table than the ability to TiVo and paraphrase Sean Hannity.

It's like the Post said "Let's turn over a few rocks and see what we can find." If this is the best conservative blogger the WaPo.com can find on the free agent market, they might as will just deep-link direct to the Freeper comment page.

SCC: In the last sentence change "will" to "well". All this talk about commentators is causing some Froomkin, er, Freudian slips.

If we are discussing potential presidential candidates (and count me among those in favor of Voting Error (what a great bumpersticker that would make)), who on the Republican side is revving the engine other that McCain? I liked McCain but I can't look him straight in the eye without seeing the huge brown stain on his nose from kissing up to the man who scuttled his last bid.

TBG, I reacted to the Red State blog like many people, which is to say, I immediately canceled my subscription to the Post.

Actually I may write a kit on this. I dunno. Not EAGER to wade into those shark-infested waters. Perhaps Mr. Red State can find someone else to be his chum (har).

I wrote a nice poem on the decline of the Post called Post Toasties, very nice, musical almost, no profanity and I tried to post it here but it is being "held for approval by the blog owner", which I understand is a euphemism. Anyone have any idea how these posts get, uh, can I say stigmatized ? Maybe the owner knows ?

C'mon Joel.

I see a Rovestorm II: RedStorm Rising in your future.

Seriously, a Kit about the pros and cons of writing such a Blog item for the WaPo based on past experiences, as well as some inside skinny on the discussion 'mongst cubes there would make for some interesting reading at our end.

bc

Yeah I might do that, bc. Might do. I'm in the mood for the Rovestorm.

pl,

I guarantee that is the last you will ever see of your post. Items "held for approval" are actually sent to Room 101 at the Ministry of Truth never to be seen again.

The Worty Dird Filter™ is both inscrutable and capricious, but not contextually oriented. I suggest rescanning your work for words with potentially offensive meanings that may not have occured to you. Pay particular attention to word fragments embedded in other words. Put on your Beavis and Butthead hearing aid to help you.

Put up the good fight and try again.

Meant to add to Error that I'm availble for "Minister of DOT" should that position become available...

I have a long list of items I believe will make American's Freedom of movement better yet more responsible.

bc

I got your back, Joel.

bc

What other titles were rejected for RedAmerica? We have to be able to do better than that!

Red Eye for the Blogging Guy
Rancid Red Meat
Red Faced Lies
Red Hot Buttons
Red Dawn II: The Battle For Ohio
Git R(ed) Dun!
Red Rover, Red Rover, Conservatives Come Over
Last Of The Red State Lovers

Just heard on radio, today is international goof-off day. Now this is a day I can live with.

Good morning Cassandra. Hope you're feeling better. I too have a problem with the justice system in this country, but not just with racism, although it is obviously rampant and deplorable. Recent trials (Claus von Bulow, William Kennedy Smith, OJ) demonstrate that even in the face of irrefutable evidence, if you have enough money, you can get away with attempted murder, rape and murder.

What this country needs is another Ross Perot.

How about "Red China Wannabe"?

Not that we need reminders that anyone's chipping away at the Constitiution or anything.

bc

bc, you're on for DOT. I'm thinking we can just redefine HOV as Highspeed Only Vehicles and pick up a good deal of commute time right there. Maybe with an extra tech inspection and driver cert. program.

By the way, I'll need some patriotic American car guys to help out those Cuban taxi drivers by exchanging their '55 Chevys for new cars, I'm sure you can help with that.

Nani: how right you are. thinking about OJ, and others, how many gazillionaire athletes do you see getting off simply b/c they pay the right people and/or are famous? then an average guy does the same thing and he's in jail for the rest of his life. i guess not all men are created equal.

I've bookmarked that link, mostlylurking, and I'll check it out when I get the chance. Thanks.

Dear poet laureate: Email it to me at achenbachj@washpost.com and I'll see if there's some way we can get it onto the blog. I have zero idea how the comment filter works but I'll ask the Schemer what's wrong with it.

As Grand Exaulted Minister of DOT, driver certification will be a priority.

Mr. President Error, sir.

bc

I'm sick of Mason being labeled as a "commuter college" or a suburban-community school. You can't really label GMU, because no other school in the nation is quite like it. It's a 21st century college, one that serves the community and houses thousands of residential students. GMU has only existed for just over 30 years, yet we already have a student body of 30,000. No other school in the state of Virginia can say they have two Nobel Prize winners (UVA, I'm looking in your direction). Our law school is ranked in the top 50 in the country (and climbing). Our economics department is regarded as the premier center for the study of Austrian economics. And although some local students have come here reluctantly, they leave with an immense amount of pride for their school.
Students here know how good are school is. It's everyone else that has yet to shed the perception of Mason being the community college it was back in the '80s and early '90s. Those days are long gone, and thanks to our amazing basketball team, so too is that image.

I wonder if Mr. Achenbach has ever come to George Mason to do anything but go to a basketball game or attend a concert at the Patriot Center. Wake up! The university recruits top faculty on a regular basis. In my department (Government) we've had several faculty winners with prominent fellowships and top flight publications. George Mason already had a national reputation in academia as one of the top "up and coming" schools in the country. The basketball team's success is superb, but GMU was already on the map before the 2006 NCAA Tournament.

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