I can't remember a song that started with a better hook. The "pow" about 12 seconds in is completely irresistable. The Moodys had some terrific intros: Ride My See Saw and You and Me are strong contenders.
If they had stayed together in the 1970s, I think they could have been a stadium band; they had a terrific catalog and when they reformed around 1978 they still could bring it. They just missed their wave, but at the top, they were as good as any band has ever been.
Sarah Palin is a coward and a bully. What kind of politician attacks an ordinary American on the Fourth of July for speaking her mind? What’s wrong with her? The First Amendment was designed to protect people like me from the likes of people like her. Our American Revolution got rid of kings. And queens, too. Am I jacked-up? You betcha.
How dare Sarah Palin exercise her right to free speech! What kind of ordinary American attacks an politician on the Fifth of July for speaking her mind?
My take? For some of them it's nothing more than snobbery; the Mo Dowd, Andrew Sullivan, Tina Fey axis of weasels. She's not one of "us", they sniff. She went to five colleges in four years, whereas we went to Haavaad. She got married to a guy who's not in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman, or even a lawyer. She had five kids and didn't even have the decency to abort the "defective" one.
For most, it's that she's a traitor to her sex. Women are all supposed to vote Democrat, so therefore she's not really a woman. You saw similar reactions to Clarence Thomas (or indeed any black who happens to be a Republican). They're race traitors (as is Michelle Malkin; Filipinos are supposed to stick up for the Japanese).
And once the treason is revealed, who would feel the need to stick up for the traitor? Indeed at that point it's appropriate to express racism or sexism. Sarah is a bimbo; otherwise she'd been a Democrat, QED.
Lots of speculation that Sarahcuda's resignation as governor of Alaska scotches any remaining chance she had of gaining the GOP nomination in 2012 or later. The timing to me seems quite a bit off; she could have finished out most of her term, quitting midyear 2010 and devote the fall to helping GOP candidates for Congress (the Richard Nixon program from 1966). Now it seems just a little too early.
Departing with little or no warning, after about 30 months in office, is beyond surprising. I'm sure the Lieutenant Governor will do fine, but there's definately a sense of leaving with work unfinished and as her career was just beginning to take off.
I know we've heard a lot of chanting "Governor, it's time to resign," but we meant Mark Sanford.
If she's really bowing out of national politics, this pretty much clears the decks for Mitt Romney.
The sense that something is wrong with our food quickly blurs into the suggestion that everything is wrong with our food. It has too much bacteria but also too many pesticides. It is too expensive, but we do not spend enough money on it. We need fewer corporations, or maybe more corporations run by the yogurt guy. With so much wrong, it is hard to know where to start. And sometimes, in fact, it seems that fixing one problem would create another: Making fruits and vegetables cheaper, for instance, is hard to do if you also want them to be organic.
But despite its overwhelming complexity, "Food, Inc." joins "In Defense of Food," "Fast Food Nation," "Super Size Me" and dozens of other polemical books and films in the necessary effort to convince us that checking out at the supermarket is, on some level, a political act, with consequences for ourselves, our families and our world.
You can guess the point here; those who care about ourselves, our familes and our world (and who have nice disposable incomes) should pay more for food.
I swear, you'd think she was the President the way the media can't resist kicking her at every opportunity. Todd Purdum slants his article from the word go:
Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics, with a lucrative book contract for her story.
If there was a disastrous performance, it was by the mainstream media in 2008, which is part of the reason they're in so much trouble these days financially.
The article is tendentious. The most unintentionally hilarious bit comes here:
More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.
Yes, of course, lots of people have the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders lying around for convenient reference, and mention it commonly to traveling reporters. And how about a little pop psychology about the person who's actually the Vice President of the United States, and who's also a bully and an obnoxious jerk?
And then there's this:
What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life?
I dunno, what record of achievement in public life does President Obama have? Purdum's a hack writer and a liberal hired by Graydon Carter; for chrissakes his wife is Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary for Bill Clinton. In fact, since Bill came up, I'll let him have the last word on Purdum:
"He's a really dishonest reporter," Clinton said during the tirade that followed, according to Fowler's report. "And I haven't read (the article). There's just five or six blatant lies in there. But he's a real slimy guy."
Reminded that Purdum is married to his former press secretary Dee Dee Myers, Clinton responded in part: "That's all right - he's still a scumbag." The former president added: "He's just a dishonest guy - can't help it."
New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.
The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.
The two cases handed down yesterday are just two new additions to the trend observed by Jeffrey Toobin, “in every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.” That’s conservative jurisprudence in a nutshell.
Over at the "Moderate Voice" there is a sigh of relief that Obama won the election and so terrible judges like this won't be nominated:
George W. Bush was perfectly within his rights to select Roberts, and the Chief’s credentials remain everything they must be to hold his position. But the man has been nothing short of a disaster for the direction I want to see our highest court going, and if Obama does nothing else right, I hope he at least gets to beat back the tide there. Failing that, he needs to at least preserve the status quo.
There's just one, teeny, tiny little problem. You see, the Obama Administration agrees with Judge Roberts on this one, as even the NY Times admits in a editorial thundering at the decision:
We are also puzzled and disturbed by the Obama administration’s decision to side with Alaska in this case — continuing the Bush administration’s opposition to recognizing a right to access physical evidence for post-conviction DNA testing.
This hints at the real problem in the case at hand. Alaska, where the case took place originally, does not allow a defendant access to DNA evidence (unlike 46 other states). In this particular instance, a convicted rapist has offered to use his own funds to pay for the DNA testing that could exonerate him. Although it is far from certain this would be the case; this particular defendant was convicted on a partial DNA profile anyway:
The state used an old method, known as DQ-alpha testing, that could not identify, with great specificity, the person to whom the DNA belonged. The high court sided with Alaska in its refusal to grant Mr. Osborne access to the physical evidence, the semen. His intent was to obtain a more advanced DNA test that was not available at the time of his trial and that prosecutors agreed could almost definitively prove his guilt or innocence.
I think the state of Alaska is wrong in this instance, and that they should change the laws. But at the same time, I applaud the Supreme Court for not finding another "right" in the constitution buried amid the emanences and penumbras.
