The Governator

Via Kevin Drum, I read that Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto message for AB 1176 is causing some commotion in California. Why?




In tomorrow's edition, the governor will throw a pipe through the California Legislature and say "Hey Legislature, let off some steam!"

The uber-Royals

I often like to think that the Royals might be the most cursed franchise in professional sports. It's always nice to have some other team that put things into perspective, however.

Blake Griffin's NBA debut has been pushed back indefinitely after the Los Angeles Clippers revealed late Monday night that their No. 1 overall draft pick has a broken left kneecap...Los Angeles was mostly healthy going into this fall, with point guard Baron Davis and center Chris Kaman both ready to play after missing chunks of last season. The Clippers actually have solid frontcourt talent with Marcus Camby, Al Thornton and Rasual Butler alongside Griffin.

Being a Royals fan, I can appreciate the hopelessness that many Clippers fans must feel.

On the other hand, at least L.A. fans have two baseball playoff teams and the Lakers.

The Royals have the Chiefs. We win... and by that I mean we lose.

How You Operate When You Don't Care

From Washington Monthly, explaining what Republicans are currently doing to help our country.

And it's not just judicial nominees. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, pointing to the difficulties of responding to the global flu pandemic, recently noted that the Senate isn't allowed to vote on a surgeon general, because Republicans refuse to let Regina Benjamin's nomination come to the floor. "We are facing a major pandemic, we have a well-qualified candidate for surgeon general, she's been through the committee process. We just need a vote in the Senate," Sebeilus said late last week. "Please give us a surgeon general."

Benjamin was unanimously approved by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Oct. 7, but the Senate minority has decided to block all HHS nominees, flu pandemic or no flu pandemic.

People for the American Way reported last week that between 1949 and 2009 -- spanning 11 presidents -- there were 24 nominees on which cloture was forced. In the first nine months of Obama's first year in office, there have been five, meaning Senate Republicans on track to force more cloture votes on more Obama nominees than practically every modern president combined.

You could almost infer that they just don't care, couldn't you?

Silly Poem for a Friday

"Sonnet" Dan over at Gone Mild may have the territory of beautiful and thought-provoking poetry staked out, but I'll gladly take the short and smirk-provoking poetry territory he has left unattended.

On the Painter, Val Prinsep, by Dante Rossetti

There is a creator called God,
Whose creations are some of them odd.
I maintain, and I shall,
The creation of Val
Reflects little credit on God.

On Another Planet

An interesting study put out by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

Looking at the current political debate, it was evident in our focus group discussions that the divide between conservative Republicans and even the most conservative-leaning independents remains very, very wide. Independents harbor doubts about Obama’s health care reform but are desperate to see some version of health care reform pass this year; the conservative Republicans view any health care reform as a victory for Obama and are militantly opposed. The language they use further reflects this divide. Conservative Republicans fully embrace the ‘socialism’ attacks on Obama and believe it is the best, most accurate way to describe him and his agenda. Independents largely dismiss these attacks as partisan rhetoric detracting from a legitimate debate about what many of them do see as excessive government control and spending.

Matt Yglesias made the point that this fits in with this post that describes how Republicans are missing an opportunity to really pin the Democrats with successful criticism because they are letting their loony media personalities dominate the discussion.

For my money, I'm not sure how you separate the two camps at this point. I know there are plenty of reasonable Republicans out there who probably have very excellent points and are likely very frustrated. But they have allowed the fringe to dominate for such a long time, that I don't know how they escape being tied to the sinking ship as well.

An Argument as Old as the Country

How did the healthcare debate look in the colonies?

Health care in Colonial America looked nothing like what we’d consider medicine today, but the debates it triggered were similar. The danger of smallpox and the high cost of its prevention led to divisive questions about who should pay, whether everyone deserved equal access, and if responsibility lay at the feet of the individual, the state, or the nation. Epidemics forced the early republic to wrestle with the question of the federal government’s proper role in regulating the nation’s health.

Not encouraging.

Making it Official

To those of you out there, thanks for sticking around while I was gone for a bit. It was a rough 10 days, but we're getting through it.

No better way to honor the man I'm missing than to start back off with an NBA post.

The NBA will finally officially allow something they have been unofficially allowing for years:

The NBA has put into writing a rule allowing players on the move to gather the ball, after driving or catching it, and then take two steps. Throughout NBA history, the rulebook said players could take one step.

The new rule reads, in part: "A player who receives the ball while he is progressing or upon completion of a dribble, may take two steps in coming to a stop, passing or shooting the ball."

There is no word on whether Patrick Ewing and Micahel Jordan will come out of retirement to see if they can now get away with three steps.

A Tragic Loss

This afternoon someone who treated me as if I was his own son was taken from us far too soon. Jim Sr. was a role model for anyone who wanted to know what it meant to be an outstanding husband and father.

I grew up with a father who was on the road Monday - Friday, and it meant the world to me to know that I could head over to my friend's house and his dad would be there to watch the big game, shoot hoops with us, or talk to us about life. He was the coolest "un-cool" dad you could have ever met!

The world lost a truly great person today who touched many lives. Here's to you, Jim. I will miss you dearly.

Is There A Nobel Prick Prize?

Look, I don't think Obama deserved a Nobel Peace Prize at this point either. Really, I would guess that he probably doesn't think so. But the right has predictably gone over the edge about it. A roundup is here. But this is probably my favorite (from consistent chucklehead Andy McCarthy).

I'm not all for Americans winning international prizes, especially the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, I'm vigorously against it. The transnational progressives who pass out these accolades believe America is the problem in the world, the main threat to peace, the impediment to "progress," etc. The award is a symbolic statement of opposition to American exceptionalism, American might, American capitalism, American self-determinism, and American pursuit of America's interests in the world. That is why Obama could win it based on only ten days in office -- merely by capturing the White House and the levers of power, he stands to do more for the Left's "knock America off its pedestal" program than any figure in history.

After a number of years, the NFL renamed its Super Bowl trophy after its most fitting recipient -- it's now called the Vince Lombardi Trophy. I'd like to see the Nobel Foundation follow suit. If today's headlines said, "Barack Obama Wins Yasser Arafat Prize," that would be perfect.

These guys are all class.

Jesus Christ

Seriously. Conservatives (some conservatives more appropriately) have taken one more step towards the edge of the flat earth they inhabit. A new project on Conservapedia (yes, a conservative vehicle to combat the liberal bias of wikipedia) aims to create a new conservative Bible translation. To make that happen, they will create a Bible that will do the following:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

How one can both eliminate liberal wordiness and also not dumb down the Bible is not explained. Nor, is it explained how Mark and John's open-mindedness fits in with the rest of the close-mindedness presented here. But all in all a pretty good explanation of what they want to do. The question is, why would they want to? Well, there is an answer for that too.

• mastery of the Bible, which is priceless
• mastery of the English language, which is valuable
• thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version
• benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses
• liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this,
  and that will open their minds

I particularly love the final reason here. Lest you think they don't have compassion and concern for the wicked, they want to let you know that those heathen liberals might be tricked into reading the Bible. What a plot.

There's a lot more interesting stuff to read on the Conservative Bible Project page. There is also a lot you could say about the effort. But the Huffington Post article about it contained the best quote from a conservative but sane columnist from Belief.net. He believes this to be...

"just crazy ... like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the
College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'."

Hey World, We're A Bunch of Hicks!

As if it weren't enough that we're forced to endure a Garth Brooks sing-along during Royals games (to that family fun classic, I've Got Friends in Low Places), now the Chiefs have made Trace Adkins their new spokesman.

He joins the ranks of Kevin Costner and the guy from Garozzo's as dudes the Chiefs think might inspire you to go drop $100 to see your hometown team beaten like red-headed stepchildren by whatever team they happen to be playing that week.

What is it about this town's athletics franchises that makes them want to portray themselves as the Official Teams of Hee Haws everywhere?

Co-ops: A Compromise... of Effectiveness

A great report on NPR this morning about healthcare co-ops, the supposed replacement for the public option.

Conrad's bill calls for expanding health care cooperatives into all 50 states. There's hardly anyone, anywhere who has studied whether adding more co-ops would make any difference.

Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, is one of the few people who have researched them. Jost suggests that the expenses involved in starting a co-op and the struggle for market share would kill off most of them before they got going. He says it's unlikely they'd make medical care any cheaper.

"Where I've seen cooperatives in operation, they don't really compete on price," he says. "They compete on quality, on customer satisfaction. That's good. We need more quality. We need insurance products people are really happy with. But what we need most is cost control."

Follow the link and listen to the whole report. And then marvel at the lameness of Kent Conrad and Congressional Democrats.

Ardi - The Devil's Bidness

Satan is hard at it again, using fool pawn scientists to distort the Bible's obvious truth that the world was created seven days.

Human origins is a field with high stakes and small bones, and the elaborate roll-out of the Ardipithecus research probably will trigger debate about the message contained in fossils so fragile they had to be excavated with dental picks and porcupine quills. If the scientists who found Ardi are correct, she represents a transitional figure, almost a hybrid -- a tree creature who could carry food in her arms as she explored the woodland floor on two legs.

Political Science!

Some people might read the Thomas Friedman column mentioned yesterday and think about how depressing it is.

Other people read it and wonder how to operationalize his hypothesis. Those people are political scientists.

As a political scientist, my response is that, OK, all of these seem like credible explanations, but how would we know if any of them are actually correct? After all, we’ve got five explanations here for what is essentially one observation: the current state of the US political system. To be fair to Friedman, he’s probably got an implicit N (the number of observations) of 2 in mind: the US now, and the US in the past. This would at least get us variation on some of the variables he has proposed (e.g., the 24 news cycle, the blogosphere, and the permanent presidential campaign), but would still leave us with more explanations than observations.

It's actually a pretty interesting blog post at The Monkey Cage, and a good reminder that there is a hearty band out there trying to make sense of it all.

Not Getting It

Tom Friedman has some concerns about where our politics are headed:

The American political system was, as the saying goes, “designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.” But a cocktail of political and technological trends have converged in the last decade that are making it possible for the idiots of all political stripes to overwhelm and paralyze the genius of our system.

Those factors are: the wild excess of money in politics; the gerrymandering of political districts, making them permanently Republican or Democratic and erasing the political middle; a 24/7 cable news cycle that makes all politics a daily battle of tactics that overwhelm strategic thinking; and a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world. Finally, on top of it all, we now have a permanent presidential campaign that encourages all partisanship, all the time among our leading politicians.

This is a pretty good articulation of some of what has me feeling down in the dumps about our future these days.

The other part of my depression is fueled by another point in Friedman's article.

I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

Most depressing about this is GOP Chairman Michael Steele's response to it:

"Where do these nut jobs come from? Come on, stop this," Steele told CNN's John Roberts on American Morning... "To make those equations, examples and put that out there that way, to me is just crazy and yeah, I'm sorry, but if you're going to approach this discussion, approach it from a rational position," Steele continued. "[They're] saying, because you disagree with the president on policy, that all of the sudden we're going to make this leap into, you know, assassinations and all this other stuff. I mean, at the height of all this stuff on Bush and people complaining and protesting, and jumping up and down, you didn't have this kind of conversation."

Yes, he is pretty much refusing to take the issue seriously. And the fact that so many are behaving the same way makes Friedman's concerns at the top of the post seem much more insurmountable.

Give Him the Award

Zack Greinke deserves the Cy Young Award. I'm stealing the reasons why from Tim Kurkjian.

Greinke leads the AL in ERA, shutouts and WHIP, is second in complete games and ranks in the top five in innings pitched, strikeouts, quality starts and batting average against.

Greinke's ERA, 2.08, is most significant compared to those of Hernandez (2.45), Halladay (3.01), Sabathia (.3.31) and Verlander (3.44). The last AL pitcher to have an ERA as low as Greinke's and not win the Cy Young Award was Roger Clemens in 1990, when he had a 1.93. Bob Welch of the A's won the Cy Young that year because he won 27 games. The AL might not have a 20-game winner this year.

Greinke's team hasn't supported him offensively: His 3.7 runs per start is the lowest of any pitcher with at least 20 starts this season.

The Royals have been a terrible defensive team this year, and their bullpen has blown 21 save opportunities, third-most in the league. Greinke easily could have 21 wins at this point of the season.

One thing to take away from the material above is that if Greinke doesn't win the Cy Young, you can blame the Royals for screwing one more thing up. For the record, I think he is going to win it. But as anyone who reads this blog can attest, my record of predictions related to the Royals are far from prescient.

Maybe He Has an Inner Ear Problem

Via the Huffington Post, a great blog called My Brain is Made of Things Gold poses an interesting question about Matthew McConaughey's stability - physically that is.

The American Public Goes Counterculture

A CBS/NYT poll came out today that showed 65% of the country supports a public option and even more Republicans approve than disapprove.

Then you have Democratic Senator Kent Conrad who says,"I don’t think a government-run plan best fits this culture. A plan that’s not government-run has the best chance of succeeding in being passed into law."

I guess you could say that something that is supported by 2/3 of the country isn't representative of the culture, but I'm not sure why you would. Matt Yglesias knows why Conrad would:

Conrad’s right, of course, that it’s easier to pass a bill that goes easy on for-profit interests than one that includes a public option. But that’s not because of “culture” it’s because of interest-group pressure. And of course one major practical problem with the public option is that powerful senator Kent Conrad opposes it. But Conrad doesn’t—or at least shouldn’t—get to cite his own opposition as the reason he opposes it.

I really like the reference at the end to Conrad's circular reasoning. I think the important cultural question here, however, is whether or not the American public is less conservative than our supposedly wild liberal congress. I suspect it is... and not because the public is a bunch of super liberals.

Doing It When It Doesn't Count

For what it is worth, the Royals' victory on Tuesday night ensured that they will not lose 100 games this season. In fact, they have played great baseball this entire month.

Should we get excited about this development? I'm going to say no.

As of today, the Royals are 55-41 over the last two seasons during April and September. Through the rest of these two seasons they are a remarkable (in a bad way) 83-135.

Well, What Would You Call Them Then?

I an article at Slate, David Greenberg talks about historians dismissive of social scientists like Richard Hofstader.

They fashion the right's midcentury critics as hopelessly elite liberals, peering down their noses at the Southern and Western riffraff mindlessly rallying behind screwball ideas, demagogic leaders, or ethnic hatreds.

SO is the problem that they were peering down their noses at the riffraff? Because the description of the riffraff sounds awfully dead on.

And On the Subject of Nonsense

The townhall.com page that carries the moronic Chuch Norris column also carries this fine advertisement:



Why don't some people like Americans again?

Unstoppable

Even if Chuck Norris can't beat you with his fists, he will pummel you with his nonsense.

Respecting the Institution

I normally don't like the "what would happen if a Democrat did this" question because you could use it all the time and it really doesn't get to the heart of the problem with our political system. On the other hand, sometimes it is all you can think to say.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has announced to National Review that he will be personally leading a "truth squad" to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, where he will make it clear to international leaders not to believe that the United States will pass legislation to deal with the issue.

"Now, I want to make sure that those attending the Copenhagen conference know what is really happening in the United States Senate," said Inhofe. "Some people, like Senator Barbara Boxer, will tell the conference, with Waxman-Markey having passed in the House, that they can anticipate that some kind of bill will pass EPW."

What would happen if a Democrat did this? The right wing would of course go absolutely ape shit about the importance of speaking with a unified voice abroad and about the proper role a Senator from the minority party. I suspect they won't mind this bit of rogue statesmanship though.

Socialism Spreading Everywhere!

A great piece from M.C. Blakeman:

Of all the current assaults on our noble republic, perhaps none is more dangerous than the public option - specifically, the public library option.

For far too long, this menace has undermined the very foundations of our economy. While companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble struggle valiantly each day to sell books, these communistic cabals known as libraries undercut the hard work of good corporate citizens by letting people read their books for free. How is the private sector supposed to compete with free? And just what does this public option give us? People can spend hours and hours in these dens of socialism without having to buy so much as a cappuccino. Furthermore, not only can anyone read books for free in the library, they can take them home, too. They get a simple card that can be used at any library in town. No checking on the previous condition of books they've read. No literacy test. Nothing. Yet, do these libertines of literature let you choose any book you want, anytime you want it? No. Have you ever tried to get the latest best-seller at a public library? They put you on a waiting list for that, my friend. And if you do ask these government apparatchiks a question about a book, they start talking your ear off, and pretty soon they're telling you what to read.

There's more, of course.

Do you think there is any chance at all that this isn't exactly how the issue would be framed if the idea of libraries was introduced today?

Why Not to Elect People Who Don't Believe in Government Part 56,384 (Irving Kirstol Memorial Edition)

From a man being properly eulogized as a pioneer of modern conservatism, Irving Kristol:

Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists.... This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority - so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government...

Just a Chart

Make of it what you will.

Joy, Joy, Joy

There is big news in the land of Ancillary Adams. Contributor Big Smith Dude and wife are having a baby today. Congrats to the couple, and congrats to the world as it welcomes the future!

So I'm Reading Around the Internet

And things are pretty depressing these days no?

Ask and Ye Shall Receive...

... fried tasty goodness.

New Jersey!

Maybe this isn't fair. Maybe New Jersey wouldn't fair any worse than any other state in this sort of thing. It could be a picture of the insanity of our entier country. But it is what it is, and in New Jersey it is bipartisan and it is scary.

57% of liberals either think George Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand or aren't sure if he did.

35% of conservatives either think Barack Obama is the anti-christ or aren't sure if he is.

My God.

George Bush - Reality Man

In a White House known for believing its own hype, the Cheerleader in Chief was the one who seemed to understand the disaster that was Sarah Palin:

It was clear, though, that the president, ever the skilled politician, had concerns about the choice of Palin, which he called “interesting.” That was the equivalent of calling a fireworks display “satisfactory.”

“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. I’m sure I must have.” His eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”

Ouch.

80's Movie Line Swayze Memorial

It could only come from one 80's movie... Roadhouse. I don't know what it was like for Patrick at the end (and I certainly don't want to make light of his death), but I sure do like to imagine that he uttered this line again sometime in his final hours.

Dalton: Pain don't hurt.

Getting Back

After an absolutely fantastic week in the mountains, I returned to the real world yesterday. I learned a few things upon my return.

1. These tea party people have lost their minds even more than I thought... but maybe they haven't lost too much.

Nearby, a group of well-dressed men and women, calling themselves Billionaires for Wealthcare, who waved signs—"Less Health, More Wealth," "Let Them Eat Advil," "Do No Harm … To Our Bottom Line"—and sang songs about how health care reform would destroy their posh lives. Not everyone realized it was a joke. One protester sang along with the song, sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which had the chorus, "Let's save the status quo." Another protester was baffled. "They spin everything you say!" she said to me. "You think they're on your side, but then they're not!" One volunteer for Tea Party Patriots was convinced they were on his side. "They're for us," he told me. "They're wealthy, so they're thanking everybody for coming."

2. The Chiefs still have a long ways to go.

3. The new Pearl Jam album is probably going to be the best one since Vitalogy. Listen to some of the music here.

4. The public's view on healthcare is somewhat confusing.

5. I kind of miss the mountians already.

beatles still topper most of the popper most

i think it is awesome that the beatles catalog has finally been remastered and re-released. what is even more satisfying is that there is still a market for such a venture, and a lucrative one at that. it is as if they are more popular today then they were 40 years ago, if such a thing is possible.

what i have learned over the years, however, is that when it comes to the fab four, anything is possible. though i have yet to purchases either the mono or stereo box sets, i plan to do so in the near future. in fact, if anyone already has taken the plunge, you are more than welcome to come over this weekend and share with me your investment.

they really are the greatest band ever. come on....

They Have Principals But Not Principles

I've taken a couple of days to think about this post because I didn't want to say anything that I might someday want to take back. After a good 48 hours, however, I pretty much feel the same way.

I am ashamed of my hometown.

I love the place where I grew up. I always have, and I probably always will. I can't imagine a better place to have been raised. But I am afraid it is becoming a different place. There have been signs of this change for the last several years. But an event took place this week that has me feeling completely despondent.

Next week President Obama will address American students in a speech on "the importance of taking responsibility for their success in school." This has, of course, been interpreted by the growing mass of people who have gone completely insane as an attempt to indoctrinate their children.

Across the nation, parents have been calling their school districts to voice their displeasure that the President of the United States of America is being allowed to speak to their children and encourage the values of personal responsibility and education. At the risk of understatement, I find this discouraging.

We have now reached a place in our country where parents are less concerned about the ability of their children to think critically than they are about ensuring those children are exposed only to a self-reinforcing set of ideas that they find comfortable. Perhaps they believe children who learn to assimilate and evaluate different points of view will choose to believe ideas they themselves fear. Or perhaps they simply fear their children having a skill they clearly lack.

But I've already given them too much credit because the above assumes the president was going to speak on a controversial topic. I can't imagine a large set of parents who are uncomfortable with the idea of their children being encouraged to work had and take responsibility for their education. It seems, however, that if that is the message presented by Barack Obama, then it must be a socialist message. Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer explains:

"The Democrats have clearly lost the battle to maintain control of the message this summer,'' the state GOP chairman maintains, "so now that school is back in session, President Obama has turned to American's children to spread his liberal lies, indoctrinating American's youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves."

If the right would like to completely cede the values of hard work and personable responsibility to liberals, I say we take it.

It isn't just about the speech either. Supposedly what is getting people all agitated is the lesson plan that was sent to schools to go along with the speech. It includes such suspicious questions as:

What is the President trying to tell me?
What is the President asking me to do?
What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

If those sound like questions designed to inspire critical thinking then you maybe don't understand what liberal indoctrination looks like. Actually, one of the questions that seems to be raising some ire is this:

Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

How you interpret this question, I think, says a lot about your worldview. If you read the word "listen" as "obey" (as in "listen to your parents") then you could argue that this is dangerous speech. If you interpret the word "listen" as "hear and consider" then you realize that a lesson to be drawn is that those opposed to a particular leader have perhaps an even greater stake in "listening." But I think some people are predisposed to believing the first interpretation of the word. That is how they use the word, and so it is how they hear the word.

A quick aside, Fox News helped me understand that it isn't just parents who are concerned about these lesson plans. "Education experts" are also concerned. Reading the story you find out that the concerned education experts are exclusively from the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute. Color me surprised.

But, this post is supposed to be about my shame. My shame is not directed at the parents who complained. Those parents are disappointing to me, but as I've mentioned they are present nationwide. My shame stems from the response of the school system.

The school system that taught me and helped instill in me the value of critical thinking, education and awareness has decided to abandon all of those principles for the purpose of avoiding the ire of a group of lunatics. The school superintendent sent out an email to all of his staff indicating that he "refused to get caught up in all the political wrangling associated with this video presentation."

The school district will not show the broadcast live. Instead:

It will be reviewed within 48 hours and a decision will be made to allow or not allow the speech to be presented to students. Administration will also determine if it is appropriate for all grade levels or should only be viewed by older students. Once again our decision will in no way be based upon political motivations but based upon what is best for XXXXXXX students.

So that's it. My school is now an institution that:

• Values public relations over principles.
• Places no value on critical thinking.
• Holds no interest in helping students become alert members of society.
• Believes that school administrators need to evaluate a speech intended for school children by the President of the United States to see if it is suitable for children.
• Believes that not hearing what the elected leader of our country has to say could be of benefit to students.
• Is prepared to sacrifice a learning opportunity for students for a thoughtless political gambit by a few parents.
• Has no spine.

This is beyond depressing for me. I don't understand how we've gotten to this point as a society. I don't know how professional educators can let the forces of know-nothingism win battles that they should never even be able to start. I don't have the ability to envision where this ends, or how it possibly ends well. And I definitely don't know what happened to my school.

Kansas City in the News

Not for anything good of course:

"Nothing makes me more angry," said Sen. Mitch McConnell at a health care town hall in Kansas City today, "… than the suggestion that America does not already have the finest health care in the world." Sen. John McCain, appearing alongside him, agreed: "The quality of health care in America is the best in the world." Contrast that with what health care journalist T.R. Reid writes in his new book comparing various global health care systems: "Today, any U.S. politician who dared to make that claim … would be hooted out of the room." Reid clearly has yet to visit Kansas City.

Hey man, don't shoot the messenger! Or the city that hosted the messenger? Or the...you know what I mean.

Nancy Pelosi Was a Friend of Mine...

Two of my favorite blogs pointed me to a story in Vanity Fair about Hank Paulson. Hank had comments on several of those he worked with. Kevin Drum pulled out a few of his opinions.

On Barney Frank:

This is a guy that’s got the intellect, he’s got the energy, he cares, and he
wants to legislate, knows how to legislate. He’s interested in getting across
the finish line... I just wish he were a Republican.

On Nancy Pelosi:

“She was engaged, she was decisive, and she was really willing to just get
involved with all of her people on a hands-on basis."

On His Republican Brethren:

“It’s not enough to just sit there and say, ‘I’m right, the other guys are
wrong,’ ” he told me at one point, explaining why it was often so difficult
working with some of the more doctrinaire members of the White House staff.
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with ideology. I’ve got my ideology and my
philosophy. But those that say, ‘I won’t compromise,’ to prove a point, and then
‘I’m going to point a finger afterwards and say, See, I was right ... ’ ”

And Matt Yglesias ties this opinion to fellow Republican Bruce Bartlett's opinion on what is wrong with his party.

I think the party got seriously on the wrong track during the George W. Bush years, as I explained in my Impostor book. In my opinion, it no longer bears any resemblance to the party of Ronald Reagan. I still consider myself to be a Reaganite. But I don’t see any others anywhere in the GOP these days, which is why I consider myself to be an independent. Mindless partisanship has replaced principled conservatism. What passes for principle in the party these days is “what can we do to screw the Democrats today.” How else can you explain things like that insane op-ed Michael Steele had in the Washington Post on Monday?

I'm not sure that I have much more to add to any of that other than to say for the 1,417th time that this is what happens when you elect people whose total philosophy of government is that government is bad.

A Whole New World (Of Crazy)

So I was reading a TPM article about one of the gun toters at an Obama rally attending a church where the preacher said that he was praying for Obama to die. Actually, what he said was this:

... you're going to tell me that I'm supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things -- you're gonna tell me I'm supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he's in Phoenix, Arizona?

Nope. I'm not gonna pray for his good. I'm going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.

The sermon was rather well-titled, "Why I Hate Barack Obama."

Perhaps, I just don't know when to ignore the ignorant, but I felt like going to this church's website would be a few minutes well-spent. Forget a few minutes. The Faithful Word Baptist Church website is a doorway to a world of insanity and stupidity that can boggle the mind for hours. Here is a quick tour of the site:

The sermons page:
Every sermon from 2006 on is here. You can listen to any of them with quicktime. If you choose to do so you could here such highlights as:

"The Whore's Denominations"
"Suffering Many Things of Physicians"
"How to Handle Abusive Government"
"Barack Obama Melting as a Snail"
"Principles on Dating"
"How to Have Joy in Your Life" (how long could this one be?)
"God Deals in Extremes" (specially denoted with an unexplained flame graphic)
"Circumcision"
"The Seven Sins of Halloween" (with fire graphic)
"Why Billy Graham will go to Hell" (tough crowd here, also with fire graphic)

and so many more!

It actually looks like the fire graphic is used to denote sermons that will scare the shit out you. The specially mark them why? I guess because that is what you are hoping for if you go to this church.

The doctrine page:
The main tenants of insane Christianity are all here. Two of my favorites:

We believe that the King James Bible is the word of God without error.

There is no explanation as to why God graced 17th century England with the literal truth or what happened to all the poor saps who read the BS versions that were produced for the first 1600 years after Christ. Maybe that's in one of the sermons.

We believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty.

Does this mean that church would like the U.S. to punish homosexuals by putting them to death, or are they simply saying that if you get down with your own kind that God immediately starts looking for ways to take you out?

The ministries page:
This seems to be the advertising page where Pastor Steve talks about all of his great services. If you want to learn what it is like to have Pastor Steve stop by your house, check out "Door to door soulwinning evangelism."

And of course they also do language classes... huh?

The Bible memory page:
Since the King James version of the Bible is unerring, it makes sense that we would want to memorize it right? Pastor Steve will tell you how! This is his revelatory method:

If I were memorizing Acts 5:42, I would break it down in this way:

1) And daily in the temple..., And daily in the temple... (about 100X)
2) ...and in every house..., ...and in every house... (about 100X)
3)...they ceased not to teach and preach..., ...they ceased not to teach and preach... (about 100X)
4)...to teach and preach Jesus Christ., ...to teach and preach Jesus Christ. (about 100X)

Notice the overlapping of sections 3 & 4. This is very helpful.

It's amazing because it is so simple that you might have thought that someone else would've come up with the idea to just repeat something over and over to memorize it. Ingenious!

The essays page:
This is where Pastor Steve really lays it down. In fact, there is an answer to my question about the King James Bible and its antecedents. Steve says about the Hebrew and Greek translations:

Many believe that God’s preservation and perfection only exist in the “original” Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. There are several problems with this. First of all, the original manuscripts no longer exist. There is no manuscript of any book of the Bible that is even within a hundred years of the original age. This is because paper decomposes and does not last through the centuries. Therefore, the Greek and Hebrew texts we have today are copies of copies, translations, compilations, etc.

If you can find any holes in that logic, why you must be God himself!

The great thing about the essays page is that it isn't just essays. There are charts, satire regarding "liberal" churches, statistics and Pastor Steve even shows off his poetry skills. All you need to know about the formidability of those skills is that there are 22 verses like this:

They used to know “Wounded for Me”
Now they know “CSI Miami”

I don't want to give away the final line of the poem, but I bet if you thought about it real hard you could figure out what it is.

Pro-life studies page:
Really should be called the IVF page. I think Pastor Steve was getting lazy by the time he put this one together.

Our pastor page:
This is actually the first tab, but I had to save it for last. This page is your introduction to the one and only Pastor Steve "I Hate Barack Obama" Anderson. Among the things you could learn about Pastor Steve is that he "holds no college degree but has well over 100 chapters of the Bible committed to memory, including almost half of the New Testament. See you doubted the memorization method from earlier, but you couldn't memorize 100 chapters of the Bible in your entire life if you didn't use such an incredibly advanced method of memorization. Could you? I didn't think so.

But what really makes the page so great is that it links to the family blog of Mrs. Anderson. Perhaps, there will be a future post dedicated entirely to the oddly named "Are they all yours?" blog from Mrs. Anderson.

"Are They All Yours?!??"
The main piece of information to know is that the blog is about usual mom blog topics - pictures of kids, family vacation descriptions, canning tips, socialized medicine rants, a fairly regular habit of calling people perverts and fairies, and of course documentation of Pastor Anderson's court case from some run in with the border patrol (more in a bit).

The most current post is titled "Another perverted male OB/GYN" and is about a doctor who, if everything in the post is true, is a terrible doctor and a real asshole. However, unless I missed something the term pervert seems misapplied.

I'm not sure that factual correctness is the main thrust of Mrs. Anderson's blog, however. I think the point is to push this point:

It is called "The Holy Bible", and you will find definite answers to all of life's questions and issues in it. -- Mrs. Anderson

It also has a link to the blog of Pastor Steve. You probably already know that is also a very special blog.

Steven L Anderson:

This blog has a few topics but lately it is almost entirely about Pastor Steve getting a beat down from the border patrol. I can't tell too much about what really went down other than that Pastor Steve was being belligerent about a request to get out of his car so the officers forcibly removed him from the car.

I'm too tired to read or watch more right now. You all can figure it out if you want. It's a nice piece of drama, however, that links the tea party crowd (there is another video of him speaking at an event) with religious nuts. That's the thing about nuts really. They generally attract their own kind.

Happy reading everyone!

A Question Worth Considering

Kevin Drum in a post on drone aircraft:

It's the entire robotic revolution in warfare. When we get to the point where one side is able to conduct war effectively with virtually no fear of loss of life, does that mean that public pressure against war will start to fade away? After all, demand curves slope downward. When war becomes cheaper, we'll get more war. Right?

Sounds awfully plausible to me.

Robert Dylan, one helluva guy, probably

It turns out that Bob Dylan, along with being the most influential Caucasian musician since Elvis Presley, is a pretty nice fellow. In addition to all of the royalties for his forthcoming album going to charity to help feed the hungry in America, he has pledged future royalties from international sales to overseas charities. At least he mumbled something that sounded like a charitable pledge, but he may also have said that he's planning to buy Sub-Saharan Africa for personal use. Although I typically cringe at holiday music, Dylan's forthcoming album of yuletide tunes has me as excited and curious as, well, a kid on Christmas.

The Fall of America (or what I'm having for dinner tonight)

I know about our societal obesity problem. I know about the American culture of gluttony. I know about the quality of the food used in producing KFC meals. I know that I would like to drop a couple of pounds myself.

And yet, I see this thing and I think, "Hey, that looks pretty good."

Maybe I'm part of the problem.

A Wrong Turn in Evolution

I am, personally, a believer in evolution. There is solid evidence of evolution, such as fossils. However, there is also evidence against evolution in the form of the rare being that begs the question, "This design helped the animal survive?" One example, the platypus, for which even the spelling of the name is awkward. Another such creature is James Oseland of Top Chef fame. As I watch each week's episode, I'm constantly befuddled by the creature's behavior, appearance, and uncanny ability to form words in English without using the same mouth shapes as the rest of us. I've spent many viewings trying to divine the formula that yielded him unto this world, and the following is the best I've come up with: the color of tangerine {(a single tooth + a half expression of confusion) the human scalp} / a half expression of smelling something bad = James Oseland. If any paleontologists happen to read this blog, I will happily treat you to a beer or wine of your choice in exchange for an explanation of the existence of this foggy and bewildering creature.

An Onion Classic

For those of us who grew up watching wrestling in the 80's anyway.

Ted DiBiase Worried About Current Status Of His Million Dollars

BEL, CA—Once known for his extravagant spending and diamond-studded outfits, former professional wrestler "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase has reportedly fallen on hard times, admitting Tuesday that he did not know the exact status of his $1 million fortune. "Well, the economy has been real bad lately, and Virgil has made some terrible investments over the years," said DiBiase, shaking his head and adding that he hadn't slowly counted a stack of bills in the backseat of a limousine in more than a decade. "I also lost track of where my briefcase is, and that had about $5,000 plus a bunch of IOUs in it." DiBiase went on to claim that "everybody has a price," and said he was currently accepting offers to kiss people's feet for $100.

I'd just like to point out that one of the curious aspects of the Ted DiBiase character was that he looked like all the guys who worked at the feed mill in my home town. I feel certain none of those guys had a million dollars.

80's Movie Line of the Week Undefined Period of Time

It's been awhile since I did one of these. But I'm going to a show tonight inspired partially by one of my very favorite 80's movies, Three Amigos. I learned a lot from the the Amigos. One of the things I learned was the importance of an ability to improvise.

Dusty Bottoms: Time for plan B. Plan A was to break into El Guapo's fortress.

Carmen: And that you have done, now what?

Dusty Bottoms: Well we really dont have a plan B. We didn't expect for the first plan to work. Sometimes you can overplan these things.

Being Frank

Good idea or bad idea from Barney Frank?



I say good idea. Every time one of these nuts gets up and says whatever they want, and a Democrat's response is to treat the question like it is legitimate but misguided, the entire thing becomes a semi-legitimization of the nuts. Good for Frank.

Missing Something

Someone is missing something. It is either me and understanding, or it is Antonin Scalia and a conscience.

“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

If any of you with a substantial knowledge of the legal system can explain to me why he doesn't mean what I think he means, please do. Otherwise, I am hereby unable to reconcile my baseline for the term justice with that of a member of the United States Supreme Court.

Crazy - A Historical Perspective

In the Washington Post, Rick Perlstein says tea partiers have always been around. The problem, he points out, is that the media hasn't always given them the platform they now have:

It used to be different. You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to "debunk" claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president's program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist" -- out of bounds.

The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest. Latest word is that the enlightened and mild provision in the draft legislation to help elderly people who want living wills -- the one hysterics turned into the "death panel" canard -- is losing favor, according to the Wall Street Journal, because of "complaints over the provision."

Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill -- because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.

That last statement refers to an earlier paragraph, but those of you good with context clues probably already get the idea.

Time Machine Blues

An article on Slate talks about the physics of time travel. Well, it talks about what the physics of time travel would theoretically be if there were time travel. At any rate, I was devastated to learn that Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is based on completely bogus time travel theory.

According to Einstein's picture of the universe, space and time are curved and very closely related to each other. This means that traveling through time would be much like traveling through a tunnel in space—in which case you'd need both an entrance and an exit. As a time traveler, you can't visit an era unless there's already a time machine when you get there—an off-ramp. This helps explain why we're not visited by time-traveling tourists from our own future. Futuristic humans don't drop in for dinner because we haven't yet invented time travel.

The main I thing I take from this is that as a historical device, time machines actually are crap. If you want to go to the future, great. If you want to see dinosaurs, go to the Field Museum.

The whole article is interesting. Free will takes a bit of a beating, but your grandpa should feel good about it. Unfortunately, time traveling dudes that will someday be leaders of the world may not actually be able to marry most excellent medieval princesses. Heinous.

Glimmers

So much happens during NFL training camp that you can hear conflicting reports about a guy in one afternoon. It's also true that much of what goes on translates very little into what happens once the season begins. Still in the latest Chiefs Buzz on the Star site, I was very happy to hear this:

Rookie defensive end Tyson Jackson played on the right side in some situations, usually when the Chiefs lined up in a four-man front. Jackson, this year’s No. 3 overall pick, went against Albert, a first-rounder last year, in those situations. Jackson appeared to be a handful for the second-year tackle. …

One consistent thing I've been hearing out of camp is how good Albert looks, so if Tyson Jackson is giving him a run for his money there is at least a shred of hope that the Chiefs might improve to like 1-6 (maybe 1-??, not looking it up) in drafting defensive linemen early in the draft over the last decade.

I'll Trade You A Davey Crockett for a Scarecrow

The man who once brought Swamp Fox into my living room is now going to try to save one of my other childhood loves - baseball cards.

Fortunately for collectors, Topps can't afford to be complacent these days. What was a $1 billion industry in the early 1990s has shrunk to about a fifth of that size. Topps' helmsman, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner—whose investment firm bought the company in 2007 for $385 million—seems admirably committed to luring children back to cards. The league apparently believes Eisner has a better shot at accomplishing that goal if his company stands alone.

Not sure what to make of that other than it was weird for me to think about The Wonderful World of Disney again, and that is probably the only occurence in history of the someone trying to use the phrase "luring children" in a positive sense.

More Town Hall Madness

Dennis Moore has apparently canceled his town hall meetings because he received threats.

 

These Town Hall Meetings

They are going on around our area, and they pretty much are going like they are in the rest of the country. Claire McCaskill's people held one in Blue Springs last night. The Examiner ran a story about the event which is kind of summed up by this exchange:

“We want an open forum,” a man yelled.
“They don’t want to know what people are feeling about this,” another woman yelled. “We want an open discussion.”
Another man, who refused to identify himself to the media, said: “It’s time for a revolution.”
Sarah Jordan, a Blue Springs resident, stood up on a chair and asked that everyone remain calm, and that everyone realize that’s what the opposition wants.
“Keep this calm,” she said. “That’s what they want – chaos. Our point will never be heard. We don’t want this to turn into a riot.”
“You don’t sound calm!” a man shouted from the rear of the crowd, followed by more shouts of displeasure, and demands that a microphone be plugged in so everyone could hear.
When library officials attempted to plug in the microphone, one man yelled: “They can’t fix the microphone, but they want to fix our health care. Call FOX News, they’ll fix it!”

A blogger named "Nice Deb" was also at the event and posted about her experience (as well as taking the photo above). Deb was also apparently an active participant.

I asked a question, myself. (Man, was I nervous!) I asked if Senator McCaskill would support tort reform in the Senate bill, and she said she didn’t know. I did get her to confirm that the Senator supported the public option. I then faced the audience and said, (paraphrasing): “I think we all know, because Obama has said so himself on several occasions that the public option would necessarily lead to a single payer, universal health care system”. I said that many Democrats had admitted this, including Jacob Hacker, the Berkeley professor who designed the plan. He said, ‘this isn’t a Trojan horse…it’s right in there!’ I went on, “Now, nevermind that the White House has been…*thinking feverishly for a more delicate term, and failing*…lying profusely about what he has said, the bottom line is, the American people do not support a universal health care plan” (Applause). I turned to her and asked, “Does Senator McCaskill support universal health care? She shook her head no.

Why one has to paraphrase herself is unclear to me, but she at least asked a question. Another guy described in her post used the opportunity to instead talk about his love of the Constitution.

So that was one of our local events. Elsewhere, Arlen Specter was busy fending off the wrath of God and taking suggestions that all laws be written in junior high level English so everyone can read them.

All of this, and how heated it has become makes a quote I read yesterday on Andrew Sullivan's blog seem pretty poignant. It is from Colin Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson.

"One of the most dramatic moments [of the campaign] for me was when I was watching McCain on television, and I thought I saw in McCain’s eyes himself, when someone yelled something out, a recognition of, ‘Oh, God, what have I done?’ This is not McCain; he doesn’t cater to this. But for the first time in his political life, I think he realized that there are some strange people in the Republican tent. My father used to say, ‘Larry beware of the left because they will bankrupt you; beware of the right because they will kill you,’" - Larry Wilkerson.

It's important not to paint the entire group of protesters at an event like the town hall meetings as potential killers. It's also important to remember, however, that one thing passionate mobs do really well is help provide killers with courage. We would be wise to figure out how to dial things back a bit.

Who Gets to be Beastman?

Was reading a T.A. Frank article about why Bob Herbert is great (a pretty good case actually) and came across this unexpected treasure:

I feel lousy about saying this. Bob Herbert's on my team. By contrast, I could easily name ten other columnists who seem to make it their mission to find new, untested forms of destruction to bring upon us. If you told me that, say, Charles Krauthammer's articles were ghostwritten by Skeletor, I doubt I'd blink.

If you can slam a rightwing blowhard, and do it by referencing an eighties cartoon villain, you'll have my support everytime.

Life moves pretty fast

john hughes was a very smart man. he had a string of hits during the 80's, got rich, left the scene, and lived out his days in virtual anonymity. i am hard pressed to think of a film maker with more films to his credit that i consider favorites: ferris bueller, sixteen candles, weird science, the breakfast club, home alone and the "good" vacation movies just to name a few. surely anyone born before 1980 was touched in someway by the magic of his cinematic touch.

as a writer, director, and producer, hughes essentially developed and perfected the middle-class high school comedy genre. it is to this end that i have been forever changed, owing much of my development as a socially awkward adolescent to hughes' dialogue. his movies were literally the backdrop of my childhood. while mr. hughes hadn't been a force in the industry for sometime, his passing will certainly stir emotions throughout a generation of sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads. we all adored him. we thought he was a righteous dude.

as more of the greats pass on with each coming year, i am left feeling troubled for the youth of tomorrow. in the case of john hughes, what are the films that are shaping the lives of young people today? the fact that i can hardly stomach the "scary movie" or "final destination" series's leads me to believe that there may trouble a brewin'.

luckily, films of yesteryear shall live on through dvd players everywhere. as an expectant parent, i must admit that i have been stocking up on the classics for many years in the hopes that my children with always know: you can never go to far, french chicks don't shave their pits, those aren't pillows, and periods make for interesting honeymoons. perhaps his most enduring words of wisdom should be this:

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it"

if these words have fallen upon deaf ears, than please do yourself a favor. break out of the transformer/terminator/potter rut, and rediscover a john hughes classic this weekend. any of the a fore mentioned films will suffice.

Procurador General de Missouri!

I'm not a big Chris Koster fan, but credit where it is due.

Most of the Missouri Attorney General’s Website, including the consumer protection area, is now available in Spanish.

Attorney General Chris Koster announced the new service today in Kansas City, saying it was important to make sure that Spanish-speaking people have access to state government and to law enforcement. He said about 3 percent of the Missouri population speaks only Spanish.

A 2008 amendment to the state constitution requires government meetings be conducted in English, and Koster said he supports that. But he said he was proud that his department is the first to become bilingual on the Web.

“It’s the new world that we live in,” Koster said. “It’s time Missouri state government understood that and got in the game.

Just how many of our elected state officials do you suppose will take that advice to heart?

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Coming on the heels of a conversation on the same topic friends and I had this weekend, an article on Slate discusses what states are most likely to secede from the Union. I had heard Texans talking about it, but I was a bit surprised to see how many places had small bands of secessionists lurking about.

The article includes the vision of a futurist who sees the U.S. splitting into 8 pieces. It has the west coast, most of the east coast, the south, part of Florida hanging with the Caribbean, Texas, Hawaii, Alaska and the everybody else sticking together.

I'm not sure how likely that scenario is, but I was relieved to see Missouri not falling in with the southern states. This was a big topic of conversation the other day. On the other hand, I'm not sure what the prospects would be for what would have to be one of the biggest landlocked nations on earth.

I would say for those of us in Missouri, this is not a great scenario for the future. I'm also not too crazy about needing my passport to go floating in Arkansas.

Vindication!

Doodlers of the world, rejoice. Scientific proof of what we all already knew has arrived. A study comparing the retention of facts between doodlers and non-doodlers produced a lopsided victory for the irreparably sketchy. Doodlers were almost 30% better in the test, in fact. Why?

Why does doodling aid memory? Andrade offers several theories, but the most persuasive is that when you doodle, you don't daydream. Daydreaming may seem absentminded and pointless, but it actually demands a lot of the brain's processing power. You start daydreaming about a vacation, which leads you to think about potential destinations, how you would pay for the trip, whether you could get the flight upgraded, how you might score a bigger hotel room. These cognitions require what psychologists call "executive functioning" — for example, planning for the future and comparing costs and benefits.

Doodling, in contrast, requires very few executive resources but just enough cognitive effort to keep you from daydreaming, which — if unchecked — will jump-start activity in cortical networks that will keep you from remembering what's going on. Doodling forces your brain to expend just enough energy to stop it from daydreaming but not so much that you don't pay attention.

The moral of this story is that you should stop looking at me that way when you see me drawing cubes and checker patterns during meetings. I'm concentrating.

Breakfast of Champions

A great story on Yahoo Sports about LenDale White losing 30 pounds by cutting Patron from his diet led to this even greater discovery of Drunk Athletes. It includes many photos like the beauty above.

Blunt the Elder Goes Birther

Perhaps Roy Blunt was confused when he voted Monday to recognize Hawaii as the birthplace of President Obama. He apparently hasn't decided on the issue.

"What I don't know is why the president can't produce a birth certificate," said Blunt. "I don't know anybody else that can't produce one. And I think that that's a legitimate question -- no health records, no birth certificate."

Why Blunt would acknowledge the president's birthplace on the official record but propogate a known lie when asked elsewhere is a mystery. Oh wait, it isn't a mystery. Roy Blunt is a bad person.

Identifying the Undead - A Flowchart

Via Yglesias.

The Greatest

Rickey Henderson gave a great speech at the Hall of Fame ceremony. Perhaps it was a bit of a surprise because, as Ricky said recently, "Speech and me don't get along sometimes." But maybe it wasn't a surprise, because the guy was always clutch. He through one more time on Sunday, and I was happy to see him do it.

Quote of the Day

I missed this yesterday, but I kind of can't believe it hasn't been more out there (at least on liberal blogs). It's a quote from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on the PAYGO measures the House is considering.

BLACKBURN: Let’s agree that we’re going to have PAYGO enforcement. That we’re not going to cry ‘emergency’ every time we have a Katrina, every time we have a Tsunami, every time we have a need for extra spending, that we don’t go call for a special appropriation that allows us to circumvent the PAYGO rules.

It seems to me that suggesting that the federal government should not be involved in disaster relief for events like Katrina is a fairly radical position. Not to mention apparently believing that Katrina may not constitute an "emergency." This is what happens when the bar for ridiculous behavior gets set so high. Something like this sort of slips under the radar because it's only 75% as crazy as a lot of the things said in the House of Representatives.

Rickey Still the Best

The Freakanomics blog on the New York Times site hosted Buster Olney as a guest to answer questions about baseball. Many of the questions are stats related, of course, but it also included a question about my favorite player and entertainer.

Q What’s your favorite Rickey Henderson story? — Nann

A Last spring, Rickey went on the ESPN radio show Mike and Mike and, one by one, he addressed the Rickey legends deeming them either truth or myth. He acknowledged that yes, in fact, he did frame the rather large bonus check (I think it was for $1 million) rather than cash it; yes, in fact, he did suffer frost bite in the middle of the summer because he fell asleep on an ice pack in the trainer’s room; and he acknowledged other stories. What I loved about this whole thing was that while a whole other lot of stars would have refused to answer these questions, Rickey answered with candor, and with a smile on his face. It was classic Rickey, because he has always been steeped in confidence, very sure about who he is, and comfortable about who he is.

Rickey Henderson - best leadoff man and most awesome guy in baseball history.

Doing Pretty Well

Unless you're a socialist, you are probably applauding this Wall Street Journal story:

The pay of employees who receive more than the Social Security wage base -- now $106,800 -- increased by 78%, or nearly $1 trillion, over the past decade, exceeding the 61% increase for other workers, according to the analysis. In the five years ending in 2007, earnings for American workers rose 24%, half the 48% gain for the top-paid. The result: The top-paid represent 33% of the total, up from 28% in 2002.

Of course, that means that the rich are continuing to run away and hide from the rest of us in terms of income. But it means a lot more than that too...

The growing portion of pay that exceeds the maximum amount subject to payroll taxes has contributed to the weakening of the Social Security trust fund. In May, the government said the Social Security fund would be exhausted in 2037, four years earlier than was predicted in 2008.

All just a part of capitalism right. These people have clearly been working harder, not receiving any special treatment.

For example, health insurer Humana Inc. contributes 4% of pay to employees' retirement accounts on salary up to the taxable-earnings wage base -- and 8% above it. Thanks to the richer contribution, Humana Chief Executive Michael B. McCallister received a total contribution of $22,370 under the plan in 2008. (He also received $314,790 in company contributions to his supplemental executive retirement and savings plan.)

Typically, employers can't discriminate in favor of high-paid employees who participate in taxpayer-subsidized retirement plans. But a "permitted disparity" exception enables them to provide additional benefits on the portion of pay that isn't subject to payroll taxes, ostensibly to replace the Social Security benefits executives won't receive on the portion of their pay that is exempt from payroll taxes.

Oh.

Via Kevin Drum.

UMKC - Famous

UMKC made an appearance in the New York Times today. The article is about law professor and one-time Congressional candidate Kris Kobach's crusade against illegal immigration.

That ought to be a boon for the International Student Office.

Weather

If you don't think weather is a major factor in the public mood (and thus in the entire history of the world), go look at your facebook or twitter feed right now if you live in the midwest. That would be the midwest where it is in the upper-seventies on July 17.

Everyone's feeling good.

Charts and Charts and Charts and...

In case you were getting ready to write your Congressman about the potential devastating effects of raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for universal healthcare.

You can relax.

Recession Solved

A Missouri dealer has a new incentive to buy a truck.

Buy a truck and get a free AK-47 gun.

That's the deal a Missouri truck dealer is offering new customers who buy a pickup truck in August.

Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors in Butler, says he knows people will be bothered by the promotion.

But not to worry, Muller is not handing out free guns. Instead, he will give buyers a voucher to use at a gun store after they obtain a license to carry a concealed weapon.

This could be genius. The firearms industry is one of the few doing well in this economy because of a fear that Obama will take away everyone's guns. So this dealer takes a hard to sell truck and attaches a must-have item in a possibly soon to be banned weapon. He struck on the solution to our economic woes - a fear-based economy.

All we need is to convince conservative websites and news outlets that Obama might soon ban vehicles and sit back while the auto industry magically recovers. Or better, we could suggest that homes are a soon to banned. Housing slump over.

Sometimes you find genius in unexpected places.

Zach Greinke, All-Star

He pitched a great inning in the game last night, throwing only 10 pitches and getting to strikeouts and a foulout. Before that he was an all-star with the media. Sam Mellinger put together a collection of Greinke gems. Like:

On Roy Halladay:

"There's nobody else like him. He throws 93-mph sinkers and cutters, and he never misses his spot. Nobody else can do that. There are maybe a handful of guys out there who can throw 93-mph sinkers. Maybe. But they can't control it. There's not much else to say. It's really simple for him...It's not even that fun to watch. I mean, you can watch it if you want to. But it's like that every time."

Proof Day #2: St. Louis is Full of Snobs

How else to explain the island of "soda" drinkers in the middle of "pop" and "coke" country?

Proof Day #1: Republicans and Science Don't Mix

There you have it, science has a liberal bias.

This, of course, helps explain why so many scientists say climate change is real. They're just a bunch of liberals who have bought in to the b.s. They probably think the world is millions of years old too.

Via Kevin Drum.

Yo Joe!

Slate is on a roll with this summer movies section. The newest treasure is a look back at the G.I. Joe cartoon series of my childhood. The topic is the fact that no one ever dies in the show despite the fact that 75% of each episode is spent with Joes and Cobras trying to kill eachother.

The slide show contains 8 pieces of video about the improbable escapes of each side. There is also a lot of great commentary like this:

Joes who are shot down also have an uncanny ability to parachute directly into an enemy's aircraft and start punching the pilot in the face.

Check it out, especially if you're a child of the eighties.

Kickin' Ass

Slate has a story up about which action movies stuntmen think are most impressive. The list is great, and has a few things I've never seen. Read the story to get the whole explanation, but two pieces of impressive action movie-making I think should be added are the chase at the beginning of Casino Royale (the new one) and something (anything) involving Jackie Chan.

I think Jackie's stunt cred is harmed a little by his affable nature and his willingness to be in Rush Hour 3. But action scenes don't get much better than this from First Strike:

Healthcare Costs

The chart shows healthcare spending by country as a percentage of GDP.

Interesting particularly in light of a Jonathan Cohn story on a couple of the health systems similar to what some have proposed for the U.S.

Last year, I had the opportunity to spend time researching two of these countries: France and the Netherlands. Neither country gets the attention that Canada and England do. That might be because English isn’t their language. Or it might be because they don’t fit the negative stereotypes of life in countries where government is more directly involved in medical care.

But in the course of a few dozen lengthy interviews, not once did I encounter an interview subject who wanted to trade places with an American. And it was easy enough to see why. People in these countries were getting precisely what most Americans say they want: Timely, quality care. Physicians felt free to practice medicine the way they wanted; companies got to concentrate on their lines of business, rather than develop expertise in managing health benefits. But, in contrast with the US, everybody had insurance. The papers weren’t filled with stories of people going bankrupt or skipping medical care because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills. And they did all this while paying substantially less, overall, than we do.

Ladies and gentlemen, the horrors of socialized medicine.

Via Matt Yglesias.

Welcome Interruption

It's been a few days since I got post up, but I can assure you my time was better spent. Headed back to the home town for the 4th of July weekend, and filled four days with all kinds of fun.

I waded through a cattle pond up to my chest in a pair of canvas shoes and some classy swim trunks looking for frogs. I played golf for the first time in a couple of years and almost honored the hole's designation with my score on #14. I attended a baseball game that had a pretty nice fireworks show at the end. I participated in the hometown parade on a family float, and we even won a trophy. I had a great evening playing backyard games, watching fireworks, eating homemade ice cream and shortcake, and sitting around a bonfire.

And for the whole weekend, I had excellent company - the three other names listed on this blog included. Thanks boys.

p.s. BSD and I figured out this weekend that it is 2009, so not only does the end of this year require a best of 2009 music list but also a best of the decade list. If you are inclined to participate in such an activity, I suggest you start now. We have already discovered it is going to be a challenge.

Good News, Bad News

Al Franken finally won Minnesota's second Senate seat after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in his favor. I think that is good news.

But there is plenty of bad news. It is coming mostly in the form of coverage of the event by the media. Everyone is focusing on the idea that the Democrats now have 60 seats and that means they are philibuster proof and able to enact anything they want.

The first part of the statement is true, but the second part is completely false. Democrats have already proven unable to keep all of their Senators on the same page, and that doesn't include the two Independents whose votes help make up the 60.

Given the way American politics have evolved over the last two decades, it seems there are quite a few Senators who might have been Republicans 20 years ago but are now Democrats. That certainly doesn't make them liberals. And they have been pretty loathe to help enact liberal policy so far.

So if the American public thinks the Democrats can do whatever they want, but they never actually have 60 votes for anything, then Republicans are in some ways better off than they were before. It could be a long year and a half until the next elections.