Here's a terrific article about how fossilized Rolling Stone has become, even as the icons of that decade show some growth and humility:
"Do you think it's gloomy on the horizon," Editor Jann Wenner asks Bob Dylan.
"In what sense do you mean," Dylan replies.
"Bob, come on," Wenner goads.
"No, you come on. In what sense do you mean that?" Dylan demands.
Wenner tries again: "We seem to be hell-bent on destruction. Do you worry about global warming?"
"Where's the global warming?" Dylan asks. "It's freezing here."
Jack Nicholson: "I'm a patriotic fella and this factionalism today isn't to my liking. I'm incapable of hating a president of the United States."
Stewart Brand, LSD tripper and inventor of the Whole Earth Catalog: "Almost everything we tried either failed hideously or didn't pan out. Communes failed, drugs went nowhere, free love led pretty much to AIDS. A lot of people thought Mao Tse Tung was a hero."
Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, 30, is the third of 10 members of The Family, a Eugene-based cell of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, to be sentenced. All have pleaded guilty to conspiracy and arson charges in a string of 20 fires that did $40 million worth of damage in five states, including a 1998 fire at the Vail ski resort in Colorado.
I've been covering Ron Paul a lot over at the Screw Loose Change Blog, but mostly on his Truther-friendly comments. Now that seems to be wrapped up for the moment, I thought it might be worth a chuckle to read what Andrew Sullivan thinks of Ron Paul.
Paul also has serious online support. Like Howard Dean – another crank – Ron Paul’s supporters are overrepresented on the web. They blasted all the online polls about the debate, and Paul thereby “won” or came second in the debate, according to the ABC News poll, the Fox News poll and almost every other online poll out there. His campaign has deployed YouTube to great effect as well, and the hostility of the Republican establishment has only given his little political insurgency more oxygen.
Paul has a core of libertarian support that apparently has figured out how to successfully spam internet polls; but the notion that he's got real support is ridiculous. He's not even registering in real polls.
I got on the line for the blogger conference call again this morning. Senator McCain started out by discussing the outlines of a speech he will give to the Oklohama State Legislature today on getting spending under control and being responsible stewards of the people's money. He also mentioned that the much-bruited altercation he had with Senator Cornyn has been greatly exaggerated.
The questions were wide-ranging. As expected the bulk of the questions concerned the immigration bill and whether it constituted amnesty for illegal aliens. Senator McCain cited some of the tougher measures in the bill, including a $5,000 fine, not an insignificant amount to people earning on the order of $15,000 a year. He also stated that those criticizing the plan should offer an alternative of their own.
I managed to ask Senator McCain about the 9-11 conspiracy theories, using Ron Paul's silly comment at the debate as a lead-in and asked if he could comment about the "Truthers" and what more we could do to combat this virus which has now infected an estimated 35% of the Democratic electorate.
Senator McCain responded that these conspiracy theories arise in a democracy where people are free to speak their minds, but that they are damaging to the image of America abroad and disruptive to the fabric of society at home. He did indicate that he was very disturbed by the 35% figure and hoped that was not accurate.
AN Essex girl may be the first lady with a tongue stud to have set her sights on the White House. The wife of Dennis Kucinich, a left-wing Democratic congressman and 2008 presidential candidate, is a 29-year-old hippie chick from Upminster at the end of London Underground’s District line.
Elizabeth Kucinich, née Harper, has been on the stump with her husband, a 60-year-old anti-war campaigner from Cleveland, Ohio, mingling with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama backstage at the Democratic presidential debates. “There’s a kind of camaraderie,” she said.
A 6ft tall willowy redhead who has been compared to Arwen Evenstar, the Lord of the Rings character, she towers over her diminutive husband. “Who cares?” she said in an interview. “I like wearing high heels so I’m used to being taller than most men I stand next to.”
Anybody remember the contest in 2004 to win a date with Dennis (obviously prior to his marriage)? IIRC the second prize was two dates. ;)
Our buddy John Hawkins polled a bunch of center-right bloggers (including yours truly) for their views on the issues of the day. Here's how I responded:
1. A-B 2. A 3. No 4. A 5. B 6. Yes 7. A 8. Tom Tancredo
As you can see, I'm in the minority on a couple of issues there.
There was a brief period of time when the Libertarian option appealed to me. Oh, not enough to get me to vote for the kooks, but enough to make their positions seem more consistent than the Democrats or Republicans.
But the Libertarians always fell down on foreign policy, where their positions are largely indistinguishable from the radical left, as Lew Rockwell reveals in a column today:
Such was the case after 9-11. Every close observer of the events of those days knows full well that these crimes were acts of revenge for US policy in the Muslim world. The CIA and the 911 Commission said as much, the terrorists themselves proclaimed it, and Osama underscored the point by naming three issues in particular: US troops in Saudi Arabia, US sanctions against Iraq, and US funding of Israeli expansionism.
Chickens coming home to roost, as F-Troop Indian Ward Churchill put it. Of course, if the US had removed its troops from Saudi Arabia, lifted the sanctions, and stopped funding the Israelis, Osama would have been happy with us, right?
Uh, no. Then it would have been some issues nearer and dearer to Rockwell's heart, like US licentiousness, gay marriage, etc. The idea that these are legitimate grievances that we should heed leads to Chamberlain. Rockwell quotes Ron Paul:
"I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, 'I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.' They have already now since that time – have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary."
Romney, who also shows a small lead in Zogby International’s latest poll in Iowa, leads the GOP field in New Hampshire with 35%, and distances himself from McCain and Giuliani who are tied at 19% support. While Romney has surged ahead 10 points since Zogby’s April poll in New Hampshire, McCain has seen his support decrease from 25%, and Giuliani holds steady at 19% – the same level of support he received in last month’s poll.
The lawsuit alleges a plot among government officials to expose Ms. Plame's CIA affiliation as retribution for her husband's criticism of claims Mr. Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq. In particular, the suit claims that the defendants violated Mr. Wilson's right to freedom of speech, violated the couple's rights to equal protection under the law, violated Ms. Plame's constitutional right to privacy, and deprived Ms. Plame of her property interest in continuing employment at the CIA. The suit also alleges that the defendants committed a tort against her by disclosing "private facts," namely her classified affiliation with the agency.
Why do so many people get this "freedom of speech" stuff wrong? Did the government refuse to let Joe Wilson speak? No. Did they censor his speech? No. What they did was to exercise their own right to free speech to denounce his lies.
I strongly suspect this one's going to get laughed out of court.
But things have been changing recently. Giuliani appears to have benefited from a great many Republicans who simply did not know where he stood on these bedrock issues of conservative Republican principles. In the last two or three months that has begun to change as Giuliani has become the focus of news coverage that has emphasized his positions. Giuliani's recent clarification of his positions, and his performance in tonight's second Republican debate, is likely to further increase awareness among Republican voters.
While polling has found, somewhat surprisingly, that many Republicans say they are willing to overlook these issues I think there has been an inevitable drag on Giuliani, and that is now showing up in the Red estimator.
At the same time, McCain has tried to restart his campaign and it appears to have at least stopped his falling support and perhaps begun to produce some gains.
As always, I emphasize that polls don't mean much at this stage of the game. But I suspect as conservatives begin to look at their core issues, they'll find themselves more in tune with John McCain than with Rudy Giuliani.
Ron Paul Provides 9-11 Wackery At Republican Debate
Reminding us once again of the difference between small-l libertarian ideas and Big-L Libertarian craziness:
"They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. ... We've been in the Middle East," Paul said in explaining his opposition to going to war in Iraq. "Right now, we're building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases.
Predictably, the delusional kooks over at 9-11 Blogger are griping that Paul didn't get asked the same questions or get the same amount of camera time as the real candidates.
Fox News is clearly worried about the recent national success of Ron Paul. They begin the debate, by inserting the false notion that candidate order has a place within their format. They state that the order of the candidates on the stage is random. This statement while possibly true, is completely irrelevant if all candidates are not asked the same question, in order. By asking specific questions, in a non linear order, Fox News negates the importance of order all together. Yet they state that it is random, as if it matters in this format. Is that fair or balanced?
Recent national success of Ron Paul? Yeah, he's pressing Mike Huckabee for 9th place.
Tancredo gets a good line in:
Tancredo took another shot at fellow GOP candidates when he said he is surprised at the number of conversions toward his tough position on illegal immigration as well as abortion and gun control.
"I trust those conversions when they happen on the road to Damascus and not on the road to Des Moines," he said.
My longtime blogger buddy Gayle has more on Ron Paul, although obviously I don't endorse her comments on Senator McCain. If you're going for electability, I would think McCain would be your man.
Amazingly, over twice as many people say they haven't heard of Fred Thompson than say the same about Mitt, but Thompson still gets twice the support of Romney.
McCain has the lead in South Carolina, an important early primary.
Well, it's pleasing to see that after months of "What's wrong with McCain?" the coverage is starting to turn to "The Comeback Kid".
While most have thought that McCain is the candidate in trouble, it is actually Giuliani. He has not developed beyond his strong opening burst in February, and has slid sharply in most national polls since then. Little more than a month ago, he had a clear lead in Nevada. In this latest poll, he is fourth, albeit within a half-dozen points of the leader, McCain. His fundraising in the first quarter was strong, but no stronger than that of the third place Democrat, John Edwards. McCain, who seemed hyper in the begininng, delivered an effective performance at the Reagan Library, but Giuliani tended to fade into the woodwork, impressing only with a remarkably diffident answer on the fate of Roe v. Wade. This led him to refocus his campaign on his historical pro-choice stance, a risky move in the Republican primaries, especially the early ones.
Of course, the sine wave will change again in a few months, but it seems likely we are hitting the "McCain Moment" that Ramesh Ponnuru wrote about a couple months ago.
So his choice to drive a V8 Hemi-powered Chrysler 300C emits a whiff of hypocrisy along with its exhaust fumes. Obama's choice proves once again that fuel economy is seldom the No. 1 factor when Americans buy cars. The 340-horsepower 300C has plenty of room for the lanky senator, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters. It gets 25 miles per gallon on the highway, good for a big sedan, but far short of hybrids and compact cars.
The former New York doctor accused of swearing allegiance to al Qaeda told a federal jury yesterday he was more interested in polygamy than terrorism.
Rafiq Sabir testified in Manhattan federal court that when he worked in Saudi Arabia in 2005, he reflected on the virtues of multiple wives. He read Islamic texts on the subject and wanted to convince his wife it could work.
At the time I reviewed Hugh Hewitt's book, I wrote, "Like Hewitt, were the election held today, I would vote for Mitt Romney, but unlike Hewitt, I am not very passionate about the former governor and have, over time, developed some qualms about him." As late as last week, in email correspondence between friends, I said the same.
I can no longer say that. It is not because Ann Romney gave money to Planned Parenthood. It is because this is the straw that broke the camel's back -- one light piece of straw piled on a mountain of political opportunism and reckless vacillation.
On October 7, 2001, President Bush told the nation, " We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail." I can no longer trust that Mitt Romney has a spine strong enough not to go wobbly with it becomes convenient.
Were the election held today, who'd get my vote? The man I said I would never vote for -- John McCain.
After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.
At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign — seeking to accomplish the unusual task of persuading Republicans to nominate an abortion rights supporter — is eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.
Obviously this will cost him some support among the Right to Life folks, but at least it's more honest that Mitt Romney's position.
Yet more evidence that Romney's position on abortion depends on what audience he's trying to get to vote for him.
ABC News is reporting tonight that Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, contributed $150 to Planned Parenthood in 1994.
That was the year Mitt Romney was running against Sen. Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts. Eleven years later, when he was governor and studying cloning legislation, Romney has said he changed his mind and turned against abortion rights. He is speaking to a Massachusetts group that opposes abortion on Thursday.
Campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said Ann Romney had no recollection of the circumstances under which she donated the money.
Madden said he did not know whether the former governor was aware of the donation, but he noted that Romney had been publicly committed to upholding a woman's right to an abortion until late 2004.
"This is an issue that the governor has changed his position on, that the governor was wrong on in the past and believes he is right on now," he said.
The article also notes that Rudy Giuliani has also donated to Planned Parenthood, but at least his position on abortion has been consistently pro-choice.
On the day before Thanksgiving, Professor Walter Kehowski sent out the text of George Washington’s "Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789" and a link to the webpage where he’d found it—on Pat Buchanan’s web log. After several recipients complained of being offended by the e-mail, MCCCD found Kehowski guilty of violating the district’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy and technology usage standards. Kehowski then contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
Let's be clear here. He's not being fired for quoting George Washington, or (surprisingly perhaps) for mentioning God. He's being fired for linking to Pat Buchanan's website, as this article states:
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Philadelphia-based group, said Kehowski is being targeted because of the e-mail, sent Nov. 22, with the 1789 proclamation and the link to the site of Buchanan, a conservative commentator and former presidential candidate. Lukianoff said five employees filed complaints because the Buchanan site criticized immigration policies.
To begin at the beginning, in October 2003, Kehowski objected to a “Dia de la Raza” event scheduled at the Glendale Community College and organized by the Movimiento Estudiantil de Aztlan.
Kehowski suggested instead a celebration of Columbus Day and Western culture. In a mass e-mail to his list containing links that challenge multiculturalism, Kehowski asked why the district was “endorsing an explicitly racist event.”
I'd certainly agree that the latter incident was a clear example of academic freedom, and sent to an email list presumably made up of people who wanted to receive emails from him. On the other hand this incident is murkier:
This year, district Chancellor Rufus Glasper notified the professor March 9 that he intended to recommend to the governing board that Kehowski be dismissed. He said Kehowski's Nov. 22 e-mail violated the district's electronic communications policy, which prohibits using district e-mail for private or personal matters.
Glasper's letter says the professor continued to disregard district policies despite previous sanctions and directives. Kehowski was suspended without pay for five days in September 2005 for a similar violation.
Of course, I would like to see some evidence that other employees of the community college district had been fired for similar violations of the email policy; I'm going to take a guess that this is one of those rules that is routinely ignored.
Our buddy Lone Star Pundit has a post about a soldier who had to take out a loan against his army pay in order to bury his father, who died at age 47 of lung cancer.
Sadler and his church are planning a benefit May 6 at Christian Life Church, 27501 SH 249 near Decker Prairie Rosehill Road, in the parking lot of his auto shop. Sadler said funeral expenses alone amount to $7,200. So far, $1,200 has come in from various donations. Sadler said that unless the community can help, the rest will be being taken out of Christopher Cooper's son's military pay for the next two years.
Hugh Hewitt was talking about this on the radio yesterday.
But Mr. Sharpton, in a jab at Mitt Romney (and the Mormon religion, which Mr. Hitchens had criticized because it once endorsed racial segregation), added, “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don’t worry, that’s a temporary situation.”
Simply disgusting. Mormons are genuine people of faith, who really believe in God.
I missed the first episode of this season's series and now I missed the end, unavoidably. I could have taped it but I am heading out of town tomorrow morning and knew I would not be able to watch it until Wednesday.
Eric has his thoughts here. The overwhelming theme after watching all-stars in both Survivor and The Amazing Race is that these folks may have enough personality to entertain for one season, but two is too much. I hope never to see Rob & Ambuh again, and ditto for the rest of this season's crew.
As usual, the Democrats find that maintaining their coalition of special interest groups inevitably leads to conflict:
On Thursday, leaders of the liberal group MoveOn.org, including Tom Matzzie, the group’s Washington director who also serves as the campaign manager for the coalition, sent a harshly worded warning to the Democratic leadership.
“In the past few days, we have seen what appear to be trial balloons signaling a significant weakening of the Democratic position,” the letter read. “On this, we want to be perfectly clear: if Democrats appear to capitulate to Bush — passing a bill without measures to end the war — the unity Democrats have enjoyed and Democratic leadership has so expertly built, will immediately disappear.”
Of course, the Democrats did not run on an explicit campaign of surrender in Iraq; it was only implicit, for the simple reason they would not have won behind the white banner. This is, of course, the real problem with running a "stealth" campaign; you cannot claim to have a mandate for what you really want if you didn't run on that platform.
One of the coalition’s strengths is its diversity, bringing to together groups like MoveOn.org and organized labor on one end and former Iraq veterans in the group Votevets.org on the other, members said. But that diversity can also create some tense moments, as each of the groups have different constituencies and some of the groups are more invested in the Democratic Party than others.
In his continuing series on the bungling at the University of Illinois over a program that was supposed to help our fighting men and women get a degree after their service is completed:
The University has given so many different stories about the number of veteran scholarships granted – 61, 76, 37 or 39 – and the number of years it was planned – two, 3, three-four, "several years" or it's just plain "uncertain." No matter how the university spins this story, the simplest explanation seems to be what Occam's razor tells us. The most obvious explanation, based on the evidence, is 110 scholarships in one year.
John is a superb investigative blogger, whose posts have won him accolades in the mainstream media, and this is one of his best. Highly recommended!
Some excellent responses in here. Obviously Giuliani fumbles the abortion question. I liked Romney's comment that he wouldn't tell Catholic Bishops what to do (see updated below). Ron Paul seems every bit the kook that he is; he trusts the internet more than the mainstream media? That's buffoonish. If you want to say that you trust conservative bloggers more than the New York Times, okay, but if you want to say that you trust the internet, you're a crackpot.
Every campaign needs a narrative, a storyline for why a candidate is in the arena. A while ago Rich noted, in this very helpful post, that the narrative for Giuliani was that he was going to be "a tough S.O.B. — for you." In other words he was gonna go medieval on al Qaeda the way he had on the squeegee men and turnstile-jumpers. This remains the chief source of Giuliani's appeal within the base of the GOP (if not necessarily with average Americans). The McCain camp seems to have understood this better than Giuliani going into last night's debate. His feisty, at times awkward, junkyard dog routine was intended to send the signal that if you want someone to fight the war on terror the Chicago Way, he's your man.
Mr McCain, who according to new polls has bounced back from a lackluster start and now leads his major rivals in the key early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, appeared more sure footed than the current frontrunner, Rudy Giuliani. The former New York mayor particularly struggled on the issue of abortion, a crucial issue for conservative voters who hold the key to choosing the party’s presidential nominee.
John McCain was his old self at Thursday night's Republican presidential debate: feisty, pointed and a straight-talker who wasn't afraid to tell Republican activists things they didn't want to hear.
It made him the big winner of the night.
The senator's campaign has been lagging a bit lately. Despite a slow start in Thursday's gabfest, he turned in an increasingly forceful performance that is sure to re-caffeinate his campaign.
Update: Well, I should have known that Romney's comment about how the Catholic Church was private and could do whatever it wanted to was a flip-flop from a previous position.
This answer represents a significant shift in Gov. Romney’s position. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney ordered Catholic hospitals to administer emergency contraception to women who claim they had been raped.
I am sympathetic to the argument that all assaults are effectively hate crimes. But I do think that there is a difference between hearing that the guy down the street got beat up because of an argument over a parking space, and that he got beat up because he was black, or Jewish, or gay. And it is that in the latter case, it sends an implicit message to other blacks, Jews and gays, that you could be next.
And as Andrew points out, non-gays are not uncommonly attacked because they are perceived to be gay. When I lived in SF, I remember one evening when a gang of 4-5 punks were harrassing several (probably gay) men on the bus. I guess the driver had radioed in that there was trouble going on, because a cop car pulled us over and removed the youths from the bus, to much applause from the passengers.
Looks like the mayor had better not order the new drapes for the Oval Office just yet:
Compared to Quinnipiac's last national poll in February, Mr. Giuliani fell to 27% from 40% — a huge tumble. Mr. Romney barely budged, going to 8% from 7%. Mr. McCain also barely budged, going to 19% from 18%. And Mr. Thompson burst onto the scene, coming in at 14%, having not been included in the last poll (and, as usual, stealing third place from Mr. Romney, despite not having lifted a finger).
And:
While Mr. McCain's favorable-unfavorable ratings have deteriorated slightly with the public at large, he's gained among white Evangelicals while Mr. Giuliani has seen an erosion. In February, Mr. McCain's fav-unfav with white Evangelicals was 53%-24%; now, it's 58%-15%. Among the same group, Mr. Giuliani went from 62%-16% in February to 57%-19% today.
These aren't huge jumps on either side. But they are evidence that Mr. Giuliani's liberal social views are catching up with him, while Mr. McCain is having some success reminding social conservatives that, though he's had some spats with the religious right, his views aren't that far out of the Republican mainstream.
All in all, a good week so far for Mr. McCain in the polls.
Rolling Stone Prints Kook Story About JFK Assassination
This is crap, but you can tell that it will be entertaining crap to the JFK conspirazoids and will be cited endlessly by the 9-11 Deniers.
E. Howard scribbled the initials "LBJ," standing for Kennedy's ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under "LBJ," connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that's never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer's name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer's name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales' name, with a line, the framed words "French Gunman Grassy Knoll."
So there it was, according to E. Howard Hunt. LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had long been speculated upon. But now E. Howard was saying that's the way it was. And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only shooter in Dallas. There was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the Corsican Mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in other assassination theories.
However, amazingly, Hunt himself was not in on the assassination or in Dallas. Given that the whole reason that Hunt was suspected was the grainy photo which apparently showed him in Big D, this strains credulity.
It's not hard to spot the warning signals that his son, oddly named Saint, the source for the story, is unreliable:
Saint had come to Miami from Eureka, California, borrowing money to fly because he was broke. Though clean now, he had been a meth addict for twenty years, a meth dealer for ten of those years and a source of frustration and anger to his father for much of his life.
Out in eureka (sic), a few days before his father's death, St. John is driving through town in a beat-up mottled-brown '88 Cutlass Sierra. He is fifty-two. His hair is dark, worn long, and despite his decades as a drug addict, he's still looking good. He has a Wiccan girlfriend named Mona.
At the moment, Saint doesn't have a job; his felonies have gotten in the way. He has to borrow money to put gas in his Cutlass. Beach chairs substitute for furniture in the tiny apartment where, until recently, he lived with an ex-girlfriend, herself a reformed meth addict, and two kids, one hers, one theirs.
That the son is not a big fan of his dad comes through loud and clear:
"Whenever I made a sound, he looked at me with those hateful, steely eyes of his, a look of utter contempt and disgust, like he could kill," St. John says. "He was a mean-spirited person and an extremely cruel father. I was his firstborn son, and I was born with a clubfoot and had to have operations. I suffered from petit-mal seizures. I was dyslexic and developed a stutter. For the superspy not to have a superson was the ultimate disappointment, like, 'Here's my idiot son with the clubfoot and glasses. Can we keep him in the closet, Dorothy?'"
There is reportedly a tape recording but you know the problem with that. Who's to say that's E. Howard Hunt speaking? He's dead now. And despite his son's claims that he 'fessed up in 2003, the old man wrote a memoir that was published earlier this year that does not include a confession to knowing about JFK's assassination.
Apparently the campaign got a little heavy-handed with a MySpace guy who had 160,000 friends.
Whatever the case, at this point it appears the Obama people simply decided that they would get control of the myspace.com/barackobama url by going around Anthony and getting MySpace to lock down his access to it. In their view, Anthony was violating MySpace's terms of service by falsely representing himself as Obama, and thus they didn't have to pay him anything. The worst that would happen, they reasoned, is that they would have to rebuild the candidate's network of friends.
Now, you know how it is; there are arguments to be made on both sides here. But the important thing is that Obama's campaign has just ticked off the netkooks and so there will be hell to pay.
A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players.
Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.”
But to get an idea of how hard it is to really analyze this stuff, get this part:
With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white; that veteran players and All-Stars tended to draw foul calls at different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise; particular coaches on the sidelines; the players’ assertiveness on the court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals, turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some substitute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.
Okay, so let's throw out the foul calls on white centers, let's say that all-stars (who are disproportionately black--nine of the ten starters in this year's All-Star game were African-American; the tenth was Yao Ming) should get more fouls than they do, and I don't have a clue as to what they are talking about with the "players' assertiveness on the court".
Do I believe that some racial bias might pop up in foul calls? Sure. Do I believe it's really to this point?
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season.
“Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games,” Mr. Wolfers said.
An increase in fouls of 2.5-4.5% per 48 minutes for African-American players is incredibly low. If state troopers only stopped black drivers 5% more often than white drivers we would be crowing about the incredible reduction of racial profiling.
We'll get back to the bugling in a minute. Earning one merit badge -- much less 122 -- is no easy task. A scout must prove he is proficient at the task and is then quizzed by a professional in the field before he gets to sew that badge on his sash.
"Boy Scouts doesn't have a sash that holds all the badges, so I had to engineer my own sash. So I took three sashes and sewed them together so there are three parts to it," Calderwood said.
However, this is an excellent opportunity to tell of my one moment of glory as a Boy Scout. I was about 12 years old and it was May, when all the troops in the surrounding area got together for a Camporee. Our troop, Troop 59 of Allendale, New Jersey, was one of the great troops of all time. We had about 150 boys in the troop, a huge number compared to the other towns around us who were lucky to muster up 50 or so.
As the Camporee approached, our Scoutmaster, John Cebak, told us that there would be competitions in many events. We would be expected to compete in tasks such as knot-tying, map-making, and a host of other events.
Our patrol, the Apache Patrol, was, shall we say, not exactly made up of high achievers. We knew that our chances of winning things like map-making and knot tying were remote at best. But there was one competition that we thought we could win: Human Pyramid.
As the name implied, six scouts were expected to form a pyramid of their bodies. Three got down on their hands and knees on the ground, while two others got on hands and knees atop them. The final guy had to climb up to the top and hold up his hands in the Scout's Honor position and recite the bit about how "A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly.... etc. This last part was not timed, but was simply a requirement to show that the pyramid was stable.
We drilled and drilled and drilled again. I was one of the middle guys, while the smallest and skinniest kid got up top. I think his name was Steven Hoek. Anyway we come up to the competitions and as predicted we did not do well in map-making or knot-tying. So we were definitely keyed up as we came up to the guy judging the Human Pyramid. What was the record? we asked and laughed when the answer came back that it was 3.6 seconds.
So the guy holds up his stopwatch and says, "Go!"
We did it perfectly and in no time at all, Steve was saying "A scout is trustworthy...."
And the guy looks at his stopwatch and does a classic double-take. "You're going to have to do it over," he says. "Why, what was our time?" "One point eight."
So we did it over again, and this time he clocked us in 1.6 seconds, and finally had to admit that we really were that far above everybody else.
But the best part was when the awards were handed out. We obviously won, no surprise there. But the guy running the awards noted that an Explorer Patrol (Boy Scouts in high school) had performed all the contests as well, and they beat us younger kids in every event.
When asked his favorite novel in an interview shown yesterday on the Fox News Channel, Mitt Romney pointed to “Battlefield Earth,” a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. That book was turned into a film by John Travolta, a Scientologist.
Reason's Dave Wiegel speculates that perhaps Romney was sending a coded message:
If we surmise that politicians are always sending coded messages when they talk about books or movies that they like - think Bush carting around Bernard Goldberg's Bias - what's Romney's message? "So, you think Mormonism is weird?"
Wiegel says that Battlefield Earth is awful. I have not read that one, but Hubbard (or more likely a ghost writer) wrote a 10-book series called Mission Earth in the 1980s that was actually pretty entertaining.
Romney has also claimed in the past that Huckleberry Finn was one of his favorite books. Of course, that's always a risky pick giving the extensive use of the "N-word" by the title character.
My favorite book has been The Count of Monte Cristo since I was a sophomore in high school.
