This Preposterous Week - Paul Slansky's News Index By Paul Slansky

By Paul Slansky Friday, Jul. 31, 2009

Beck, Glenn
• Obama is doltishly called a "racist" with "a deep-seated hatred for white people" by

beer
• much ado about

Berens, Ricky
• exposed butt of

birthers
• description of by Stephen Colbert as "decent, old-fashioned Americans who just want to overturn a democratic election"
• desperate need of to cast Obama presidency as illegitimate
• imbecility of is so blatant that even the far right is denouncing

Borowitz, Andy
• America is deemed "less safe" by now that Palin is "no longer keeping an eye on Russia"

Cohen, Richard
• self-pitying column by is appropriately savaged

Cunningham, Merce
• death of

Daniels, Stormy
• campaign by for adulterer David Vitter's Senate seat suffers setback with arrest of for battering husband after becoming "upset because the way the laundry had been done"

Denny's
• excessively salt-laden meals served by result in lawsuit against

Dobbs, Lou
• disingenuous defense of by CNN president Jonathan Klein

Foxx, Rep. Virginia
• debunking of claims by that Obama's health care plan will "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government"

Hill, Clayton
• obituary of praises performance in Dawn of the Dead as "one of the most convincing zombies of the bunch"

Jackson, Michael
• doctor who administered fatal injection of propofol to — because, come on, how's a person supposed to fall asleep without an anesthetic drip? — is a candidate for a manslaughter charge
• missing nose of
• rabbi friend of once asked Katie Couric if she was available to go on a date with
• signers of online petitions calling for Nobel Peace Prize nomination for seem destined to be disappointed

Kristol, Bill
• Obama is called "arrogant" by, which is hilarious because, you know, there are those who'd say his predecessor was the walking — scratch that, strutting — embodiment of that particular adjective

Madonna
• terrifying arms of

McCain, Cindy
• opportunity is provided by for all of us to thank husband of for gifting us with Sarah Palin, though it's unclear if your message will be delivered unless you also give him money

Newsweek
• guffaw-inducing proposal is seriously made by

Ojofeitimi, Oyindamola
• scalding water is poured over genitals of unhappily surprised ("I didn't anticipate this at all") sleeping husband by

Palin, Sarah
• bill banning a beloved pastime of — shooting defenseless animals from aircraft — is introduced in the Senate
• Clear Channel is not interested in syndicating a radio show hosted by, so we may never get to hear blithering twaddle like this
• demagoguery of is noted by Carl Bernstein and Maureen Dowd
• hated reporters are told by that "our troops are willing to die for you" so "how 'bout ya quit makin' things up" in honor of the American soldiers so grotesquely exploited by
• quitting speech of is ridiculed by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and William Shatner and this blogger, and that blogger, and this other blogger, but maybe everyone's just being super mean for no reason and you should see the whole thing here, or read the transcript here, and decide for yourself

Rock, Kid
• assessment of Twitter as "gay" by

Rove, Karl
• claims of lack of involvement in firings of federal prosecutors turn out to be, according to newly obtained emails ... well, let's call them "misleading" for now and wait for Justice Department attorneys to weigh in

Shuster, David
• denial by of having a meltdown after accidental on-camera exposure of the bald spot of

Slansky, Paul
• regrets of for accidentally omitting from last week's index David Gregory's nauseating e-mail begging Mark Sanford to come on Meet the Press, the show that "allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to"

Stanley, Paul
• Tennessee state Senate is resigned from by "due to recent events," among them the revelation that an extramarital affair with a 22-year-old intern was had by

tanning beds
• study finds that cancer is caused by

texting truck drivers
• study finds that collision risk of is 23 times greater than that of non-texting truck drivers

Trout, Robert
• closing arguments of in bribery trial of former Rep. William Jefferson suggest that client of has been punished enough by losing his seat and becoming "the object of a national joke about money in the freezer," and besides, everyone in Congress is corrupt so isn't it a little unfair to single out this one guy just because his illegal demands for money were caught on tape?

Vereen, Rodell
• arrest of in 2007 for buggering a horse is followed two years later by arrest of for videotaped buggering of the same horse

Voinovich, Sen. George
• blame for the downfall of the Republican party — "We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns. It's the southerners" — is placed by

Wikipedia
Rorshach test images are posted by, creating unhappiness among psychologists

Livescribe Pulse smartpen - I Gotta Have This!

Taking notes during class — even with the most rapid-fire professor — just got a whole lot easier. The Livescribe Pulse smartpen may look like your average pen (it's about the size of a Sharpie), but it also packs in a voice recorder and up to 2 GB of storage. So far so good, but here's the really cool part: not only does the Pulse remember everything you've written in digital form (you can sync your handwritten notes onto your PC or Mac and even share them online), it also keeps track of whatever was being said while you were scribbling a detail — just tap a word to hear all of what Professor Motormouth was saying at that particular moment. What's the trick? The Pulse smartpen's infrared sensor uses the tiny dots on the custom (and required) Livescribe notebook paper as reference points.

Read more about this here

Franken feuds with T. Boone Pickens

Five years after he put his money behind the Swift Boat ads that helped tank John Kerry’s presidential campaign, Senate Democrats gave T. Boone Pickens a warm welcome at their weekly policy lunch Thursday.

Or at least most of them did.

Kerry skipped the regularly scheduled lunch; his staff said the Massachusetts Democrat “was unable to attend because he had a long scheduled lunch with his interns and pages.”

Sen. Al Franken managed to make time for the lunch — but then let Pickens have it afterward.

According to a source, the wealthy oil and gas magnate and author of “The First Billion Is the Hardest” stepped up to introduce himself to Franken in a room just off the Senate Floor after the lunch ended

Franken, who was seated talking to someone else, did not stand when Pickens said hello. Instead, Franken began to berate him about the billionaire’s financing of the Swift Boat ads in 2004.

According to a source, the confrontation grew heated.

Said Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh: “It was a lively conversation.”

Pickens was on the Hill to address the Senate Democratic Policy Committee lunch about his plans to use wind energy to lower the nation’s dependence on oil and gas. But the thought of Pickens being invited to a Democratic event angered some on the Hill and in the liberal blog

Read more of this article here.

Health Care Realities

Yet private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.

Read the rest of this article here

Ghost of former premier haunts India

MUMBAI

- The mysterious death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, one of India's most popular prime ministers, has returned to haunt the Indian government 43 years later.

Shastri passed away hours after signing a controversial peace accord with Pakistan in a summit meeting in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The pact formally ended the 1965 war between the two sub-continental neighbors.

Shastri, 61, died under strange circumstances in Tashkent, now the capital of Uzbekistan and one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, on January 11, 1966, soon after signing the Tashkent pact with then Pakistan president Mohammad Ayub Khan. (He assumed office in June 1964.)

You can read the rest of the article here

House Approves an Additional $2 Billion For Cash For Clunkers Program

WASHINGTON — The House has voted to rush an additional $2 billion into the popular but financially strapped "cash for clunkers" car purchase program.

The bill was approved on a vote of 316-109. House members acted within hours of learning from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that the program was running out of money.

Called the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS, the program is designed to help the economy and the environment by spurring new car sales. Car owners can receive federal subsidies of up to $4,500 for trading in their old cars for new ones that achieve significantly higher gas mileage.

You can read the rest of this article here.

Economist: U.S. More Permissive Of Torture Than China

Yesterday, The Economist posted poll numbers on global attitudes towards torture, pulled from 2008 research conducted by World Public Opinion. The Economist notes: "Surprisingly, democracies are not necessarily more hostile to the practice than non-democracies. According to the polls, Americans are more willing to tolerate the use of torture than are Chinese."

You can read the rest of this article here

As McCain pal and Republican strategist Mike Murphy so sagely observed recently: “If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, would we even be talking about her today?”

Read the Column this came from here

Crocodile picks beauty queen over chicken dinner

Sydney - Australian beauty queen Rachel Finch was jetting to the Miss Universe contest in the Bahamas Friday hoping the judges would single her out just like one monster crocodile did earlier in the week when she visited Darwin's Crocodylus Park.

"As soon as I saw him move I got nervous," Finch said of Wednesday's heart-stopping encounter with 5-metre Eric.

And with good reason: rather than go for the chicken a keeper dangled in front of those massive jaws, Eric lunged for Finch instead.

Her celebrity had secured Finch a photo opportunity with Eric, one of the biggest and oldest crocs at the far-north tourist attraction. But the beauty-and-the-beast tableau didn't go well.

"There's always an element of, you know, something not going to plan," keeper Charlie Manolis told the Northern Territory News. "He's a nice old croc but I wouldn't like to be on the wrong end of him."

In the Bahamas, Finch is hoping to match the performance of fellow Australian Jennifer Hawkins, who was crowned Miss Universe in 2004.//dpa

Cafe White House - Lunch is on You!

By EAMON JAVERS Politico

Jarrett said the dinners with Emanuel aren’t free, either: Attendees split the tab.

The sessions, Jarrett said, are held “to make sure we are creating the kind of environment where CEOs are creating jobs. It’s to make sure we have the best information to turn the economy around.”

The discussion at the June 25 lunch was open ended, with no set agenda item, and touched on health care, education and the economic recovery

. Jarrett said the four companies were chosen because they are each dominant global corporations. “The president had recently returned from a trip overseas and he was eager to talk to these four huge global corporations about how they see the world economic situation.”

Read more of this story here

Fed Audit Supported By 75% Of Americans

This Is a Very Bad Idea
by Doug Hardin

Now this is one of those things that, on the surface, sounds like a good idea. But, actually, this is just the sort of thing that could tank our entire economic future. The Federal Reserve Bank was set up shortly after the Great Depression to keep our monetary policy stable. The Fed has many responsibilities, but its primary function is to influence interest rates in its monthly meeting.

Our economy is always steering a course between inflation and unemployment. Grow too fast and we get we get inflation. Grow too slowly and the economy shrinks resulting in unemployment. If the managers of the Fed think we are growing to fast, thus headed into inflation, they will increase interest rates to slow things down. If, on the other hand they think the economy needs a bit more growth to remain stable they reduce interest rates. If they are happy with our situation or not convinced that action is required, they leave the rate untouched. If they adjust too fast, in the wrong direction, or both fast and wrong, it will take more effort to get back on course. Wait to long for a course adjustment and it will also take more effort to get back on course. It would take several years, and somebody a lot smarter than me, to explain how they determine what is going on and which direction to steer. But, basically the analysis of keeping a steady hand on the tiller explains a complex set of calculations simply.

The Fed was initially set up to be independent of politics. The Chairman is confirmed by the Senate and serves a 4 year term. He can not be fired during his term, so he is free to act as conscience, experience and wisdom advise. However, this has not stopped every President and politician, since the beginning, trying to influence decisions. Every politician knows you win elections if the economy is growing, so "take your foot off the brake, we'll worry about the speed later."

Now an audit doesn't sound too harmless. After all it is a lot of money and why not audit it? The fact is this is really not an audit. The Fed is already audited and provides freight trains of financial information to Congress and The White House.

What this bill will actually do is subject the Fed to intense scrutiny, including public hearings, over what their next decision should be. Quiet deliberation will be replaced by the Circus we are now seeing over Health Care. The Congress will have the ability to life so difficult for the Fed to act independently, without telegraphing their intent, that it will essentially become a puppet of the politicians. Do we really want the clowns at the wheel of the economy?

This would be a very bad thing. Keep the politicians out of the deep end of the pool. Let the professionals do their job quietly and independent of politic winds. The Fed was, self admittedly, a bit slow catching on to the seriousness of the mortgage crisis, we all were. But, long after the Fed was trying to sort things out, the politicians were still pounding on the podiums chanting, "The Fundamentals of Our Economy are Strong".

The following article recently appeared in the Huffington Post

Fed Audit Supported By 75% Of Americans

The calls to audit the Federal Reserve have come fast and furious in the last few weeks. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is continuing to push back against a House bill that would give the Comptroller General - the head of the Government Accountability Office - the power to audit the central bank.

But, judging by the results of a new survey, the vast majority of Americans already support a Fed audit. 75 percent of Americans back auditing the Federal Reserve, according to Rassmussen Reports.

Opponents of the Federal Reserve Transparency Act Of 2009 - introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) - say that putting the Fed under the control of Congress would limit the bank's independence. (The bill has gained support from over half of the House of Representatives).

There is also growing concern from Fed supporters that Congress could exert political influence over monetary policy - though, many would argue that the Fed is already influenced by politics. But, according to the Rasmussen survey, only nine percent of adults surveyed were against the idea of a Fed audit.

Read the rest of the article here

Pelosi: Health Insurance Companies The Real "Villains"

Forget the Blue Dogs, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday. The real "villains" in the fight for health care reform are insurance companies.

"They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way," Pelosi said of the insurance industry after her weekly press conference. "It's almost immoral, what they are doing," she said, referring to industry lobbying against a public insurance plan option. "Of course, they've been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it."

The current system works so well for insurers that they don't even want subsidies, Pelosi claimed. "They've had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country," she said, adding that it will be tough to keep them from getting their way. "This is the fight of our lives."

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Organic food is no healthier, study finds

An article in Reuters reviews 162 studies that shows organic food has no more nutrition than other food. Nothing said, however, about the effect of pesticides and preservatives in non-organic food.

LONDON (Reuters) - Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over ordinary food, according to a major study published Wednesday.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said consumers were paying higher prices for organic food because of its perceived health benefits, creating a global organic market worth an estimated $48 billion in 2007.

A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference.

"A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance," said Alan Dangour, one of the report's authors.

Read the rest of this article here.

Why does Congress get so much vacation?

Recess!

By Christopher Beam

Unless Nancy Pelosi says otherwise, Congress will break for its annual recess on Aug. 3 and return Sept. 4. Lawmakers already enjoyed weeklong breaks this year in February and May, plus a two-week hiatus in April. Why does Congress get so much vacation?

To meet with constituents. Members of Congress don't like to think of themselves as on vacation, which is why they call their recesses "work breaks" or "home-district periods" rather than "time off." Depending on how safe their seat is—and the proximity of the next election—members will probably spend some portion of the recess attending town halls, meeting with community leaders, or visiting local haunts like barbershops to take their district's temperature. But they're free to do as they please—like stay in Washington, D.C., travel abroad with congressional delegations, or work on a tan.

Read the rest of this article here

Could we be wrong about global warming?

In USA Today, By Doyle Rice

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery

Read the rest of this article here

Global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites

Geologist Ian Plimer takes a contrary view, arguing that man-made climate change is a con trick perpetuated by environmentalists

Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him.

Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and he may well be Australia's best-known and most notorious academic.

Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of "anthropogenic global warming" -- man-made climate change to you and me -- and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed.

It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history. Many have made the argument, too, that it is rubbish to contend human behaviour is causing the current climate change. And it has often been well argued that it is totally ridiculous to suppose that changes in human behaviour -- cleaning up our act through expensive slight-of-hand taxation tricks -- can reverse the trend.

But most of these scientific and academic voices have fallen silent in the face of environmental Jacobinism. Purging humankind of its supposed sins of environmental degradation has become a religion with a fanatical and often intolerant priesthood, especially among the First World urban elites.

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Real Canadians Stick Up For Universal Health Care

Anyone who cries 'Socialism!' or 'Communism!' to prevent Americans from achieving universal health care is a liar and a thief -- and more to the point, has plenty of money of his own. He's got his!" wrote Lori Covington. "I just hope the American people won't be dumb enough to continue falling for the line that socialized health care means a loss of personal freedom. In fact, it's quite the opposite."

Read the rest of this article here

It's All In the Blood! Gates and Crowley Are Related!

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard University-owned house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots.

Strangely enough, he and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages.

In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl.

Read the complete story here

50 Essential Travel Tips

By BRAD TUTTLE AND ERIK TORKELLS, Time

Travel is full of pitfalls. One wrong step and your vacation could be ruined by a seedy hotel room, an overpriced restaurant, a wasted afternoon at a tourist-trap attraction or an overnight flight crammed in the middle seat. So, guarantee a smooth trip by planning thoroughly. Here's how to make all the right moves.

Click on the links below for details on each tip

Planning

1. Read Traveler Reviews
2. Join Travel Forums
3. Suck Up to a Blogger
4. Update Your Status
5. Don't Snub the Bus
6. Use Your Miles
7. Spend Credit, Earn Miles
8. Buy Insurance
9. Pack Light
10. Five Must-Haves

Booking

1. Start with Kayak
2. Check Airport Websites
3. Compare Fares
4. Get on the A-List
5. Search a Day, Plus or Minus
6. E-Track Your Fare
7. Ax the Middleman
8. Do Your Own Math
9. Shop After Purchase
10. Getting Credit

Flying

1. Try Coach-Plus
2. Reserve a Seat
3. Pick a 767
4. BYOE
5. DYOE
6. Add Up the Extras
7. E-Babysitters
8. Strategic Boarding
9. Snap a Pic
10. Eke Out Space
11. Snooze Through It
12. Five Flight Tips

Lodging

1. Join the Club
2. Ask Around First
3. Negotiate
4. Alternative Dwellings
5. By-Owner Rentals
6. Rediscover Priceline
7. New or Nothing
8. Don't Prepay
9. Bedbug Alert!

Cruising

1. Free Parking
2. Book Last Minute
3. Tip Generously

On the Ground

1. Car-Rental Clubs
2. Advance Tix
3. Souvenir Shopping
4. Bypass the Concierge
5. Call Home for Pennies (or Free)
6. Maximize Your iPhone

Inside Bush and Cheney's Final Days

By Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf Friday, Jul. 24, 2009

Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate of his former aide. "We don't want to leave anyone on the battlefield," Cheney argued.

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Rolls-Royce Unveils a Recession-Ready Limousine

By: Thomas K. Grose / London Time

To put a slight spin on the name of a popular folk song from the Great Depression, "How can a rich man stand such times and live?" He could buy a smaller car, for starters, such as the about-to-be-released Rolls-Royce Ghost, the first lower-cost limousine to be produced by the world's luxury automaker in more than a decade

Read the rest of this article here

In France, a New Generation of Women Says Non to Nude Sunbathing

By: Bruce Crumley, Paris, Time

For decades, the French have relished any opportunity to mock Americans for their supposed childish Yankee puritanisme when it comes to matters of sex. These days, though, France is experiencing its own blush of youthful prudishness as an entire generation of younger French women says non, merci to the summer tradition of topless sunbathing.

Click here to read to rest of this article

Concerns rise as El Nino approaches

By Steff Gaulter - Al Jazeera

The waters of the Pacific are moving and in Australia farmers are getting nervous. El Niño, the natural phenomenon known to bring turmoil to global weather patterns, is back.

Over the last couple of months the waters of the Pacific have shifted and the first impacts are already being seen.

During a 'normal' year, the prevailing winds push the warm surface waters of the Pacific toward Indonesia. This makes the waters there about 8°C warmer and half a metre higher than the waters along the west coast of South America.

During El Niño, the winds ease and this allows warmer waters to well up along the west coast of South America, around Peru and Ecuador.

The change is tiny, just a couple of degrees Celsius, but it has a dramatic affect.

Read more of this article here.

Virgin's 'Eve' Wows Starry-Eyed Crowd

Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo, nicknamed "Eve" for Richard Branson's mother, soared across the sky above an air show in OshKosh, Wis., on Monday, delighting observers on the ground and chalking up another achievement for commercial space travel. The craft is designed to launch spaceships carrying tourists beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Read More About this at Tech News World

Is the Arctic Really Warmer?

Statement on Arctic Climate Change from the President of the Royal Society

28 07 2009

While we are on the subject of the APS and their consideration of their stance on climate, this statement came to me today via Philip Bratby in comments. I thought it presicent and worthwhile sharing, since once again there is great concern in the alarmosphere about the levels of Arctic sea ice this summer.

‘It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has been during the last two years greatly abated. This affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened, and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them, not only interesting to the advancement of science, but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.’

President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817, Minutes of Council, Volume 8. pp.149-153, Royal Society, London. 20th November, 1817.(from)

Did Obama Really Mis-speak?

Did President Obama really mis-speak or did he say exactly what he meant to say? Consider.......

1. I can't recall the President ever using such a childish out-of-place term as stupid, and he has been up against some really stupid people. His references are always polite and dignified, even when being lectured to by the likes of John McCain and Hilary Clinton.
   
2. He was prepared for this question and knew it was coming.
   
3. The President has said, and rightfully so, that we need further engagement on race.
4. The unsightly Health Care negotiation process was getting too much coverage, Americans were growing frustrated by all the confusing and contradictory information.
5. This administration has been known to use timing and statements to control the news cycle.
   

So, did the President misspeak, or like any accomplished magician, perform a slight of hand to focus our attention away from the details of political sausage making?

What's at the top of the news now, dominating all the news shows? A meaningful and comprehensive discussion of race, police relations and courtesy. Health Care has retreated to page 3.

Meanwhile, back at the Sausage Factory politicians are actually making progress pulling health care rabbits out of a hat instead of freezing, speechifying and polarizing in the bright lights of public attention.

Call me crazy, .............................

RealityTakes a Holiday

I go up and down about posting here depending on how strong I feel and what is happening in the Unreal World. Today I planned to introduce a whole bunch of great news and commentary.

But, it soon became clear all this relatively unimportant news was going to be eclipsed by events in Roxbury Massachusetts, home of Harvard and, depending on the way you look at it, the Police Invade Home of Harvard Professor or Harvard Professor Arrested for Public Disturbance.
The details of the above story are, of course, familiar to anybody who lives on the planet and reads, watches TV or watched last nights press conference. So, today, reality takes a holiday. Instead of introducing other peoples commentaries I actually took the time to write my own. You can read it below.

Tomorrow, hopefully, we can all return to Silliness as Normal.

Gates, Crowley, Obama and Stupidity - Not a Race Issue

Well, the Gates / Crowley / Obama affair has eclipsed all the less important news like Health Care, Iran and Korea today. This story is so big I won't even use first names. I'll just stick with Gates, Crowley and Obama. Everybody knows who they are, except maybe the Obama guy.

It is not relevant whether Gates was a jerk or not. This was not his arena. This occurred in the Police arena, investigating a crime reportedly in progress. The important questions are:

1) Why was it really necessary to enter the house? The door was open. Gates, an old man with a limp and a cane, in clear sight. A simple, "Excuse me." or a couple taps on the door frame would have sufficed. Gates response (run or limp forward) would have gone a long way toward answering any questions. What citizen would not be alarmed, angry and afraid to see uninvited Police strolling into their house?

2) After Gates provided ID, why did Crowley instruct him to come outside unless it was to arrest him for Disturbing the Peace, which he could not do inside the house? Why didn’t the police just leave? Their business was done there.

3) Gates conduct, if actually loud and obnoxious, does not even come close to the Massachusetts standard for Disturbing the Peace, which essentially calls for behavior likely to cause a riot or civil disturbance. Being rude and yelling at a bunch of armed police on a University residential street does not meet the standard.

4) Massachusetts Police are provided business cards and required by law to provide their name and badge number if asked. Where was the card?

Once ID was clear, the police should have said, “Thank you”, briefly explained the situation and walked away, ignoring any insults. They are the professionals and should be above getting suckered into a Mouth Brawl, even if Gates did act badly, as citizens are prone to do when police barge into their homes. Didn't some colonial sorts actually organize a rebellion over this sort of police behavior some 250 years ago?

Crowley had the opportunity to act like a professional, be the bigger man and walk away. He blew it. Instead, he clearly decided to issue a citation for Failure to Kowtow. If Gates had not been a prominent figure this charge would have remained on his record forever, causing no end of difficulty.

But, this is not mostly about race. Only Crowley can second guess what he might have done if Gates was an Old White Guy with a cane. Underlying all this is the real situation in the USA. Anyone, regardless of race, who interacts with a police officer and does not behave in a sufficiently deferential way has a pretty good chance of being charged with something, or at least be inconveniently detained. Gates apparently is not aware this is no longer only a Black thing. It stopped being a Black thing about the time police uniforms transitioned from Deputy Dawg Official into Storm Trooper Meets Faluja. We’re now all equally subject to the mood swings of Police when we fall within their hailing distance. When was the last time you saw a policeman on the side of the road and did not got through a silent inventory of speed, seat-belt, license and insurance? This is not a step forward for our society.

Finally, the President, himself, probably wishes he had chosen a more adult word than stupid. But, it happens to all of us sooner or later....We make a mistake. The simple way out of a mistake is to apologize, make amends where possible, extend our hand in friendship and try our best not to make the same mistake again.

Bye the way, I forgot, what else was covered in the press conference? Anything important?

A final note and Update....After this was written it was announced that the President has invited Gates and Crowley to the White House for a beer. Good on 'em

But before the beer..............

Gates should have to ride around Roxbury for a night and see what police really have to deal with every day.

Crowley should have to sit around with a bunch of old black farts like Gates and hear what they experienced in Roxbury in the 60’s and what they never forget.

By that time they may both be ready for a beer.

Must Be An Off Day

Plenty to complain about related to my normal peeves today, but instead my attention was grabbed by a Cartoon on Hunger, an Afghanistan Commentary about the new Command Philosophy and, wait for it, 101 Simple Salad Recipes. So, here they are.

Afghanistan Commentary

I’ve long argued that there should be a test for any officer who wants to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan — just one question: “Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer “yes,” you can go to Germany, South Korea or Japan, but not to Iraq or Afghanistan. Well, this war has produced a class of officers who are very out-of-the-box thinkers. They learned everything the hard way — not in classes at Annapolis or West Point, but on the streets of Fallujah and Kandahar. From the Commentary below

The Class Too Dumb To Quit

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: July 21, 2009

Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan

I’m here in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. This is the most dangerous part of the country. It’s where mafia and mullah meet. This is where the Taliban harvest the poppies that get turned into heroin that funds their insurgency. That’s why when President Obama announced the more than doubling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, this is where the Marines landed to take the fight to the Taliban. It is 115 degrees in the sun, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman ofthe Joint Chiefs of Staff, is addressing soldiers in a makeshift theater.

“Let me see a show of hands,” says Admiral Mullen, “how many of you are on your first deployment?” A couple dozen hands go up. “Second deployment?” More hands go up. “Third deployment?” Still lots of hands are raised. “Fourth deployment?” A good dozen hands go up. “Fifth deployment?” Still hands go up. “Sixth deployment?” One hand goes up. Admiral Mullen asks the soldier to step forward to shake his hand.

This scene is a reason for worry, for optimism and for questioning everything we are doing in Afghanistan. It is worrying because between the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are grinding down our military. I don’t know how these people and their families put up with it. Never have so many asked so much of so few.

The reason for optimism? All those deployments have left us with a deep cadre of officers with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, now running both wars — from generals to captains. They know every mistake that has been made, been told every lie, saw their own soldiers killed by stupidity, figured out solutions and built relationships with insurgents, sheikhs and imams on the ground that have given the best of them a granular understanding of the “real” Middle East that would rival any Middle East studies professor.

Read the rest of this commentary here

Before the Fall

101 Simple Salads

OK, so I usually post serious stuff. But, todays New York Times has 101 recipes for simple salads and associated dressings. This is really good, simple and delicious stuff. On the left is a Salmon, Watercress and Red Onion salad.

20. Shred Napa cabbage and radishes. The dressing is roasted peanuts, lime juice, peanut or other oil, cilantro and fresh or dried chili, all whizzed in a blender. Deliciousness belies ease.

55. Mix watercress with chopped smoked salmon, avocado, red onion and capers. Make a vinaigrette with olive oil, sherry vinegar and mustard powder.

70. Shred brussels sprouts in the food processor, preferably with the slicing disk. Toss with vinaigrette and crumbled bacon.

75. The Little Italy salad: Chop or julienne salami and prosciutto, then toss with cubed mozzarella, chopped tomato, pepperoncini, oil and wine vinegar.

93. Mix leftover rice with lemon or lime juice, soy sauce and a combination of sesame and peanut oils. Microwave if necessary to soften the rice, then serve at room temperature, tossed with sprouts, shredded radishes, chopped scallions, bits of cooked meat or fish if you like and more soy sauce.



Link to Salad Recipes

Matters progress. Health Care is disintegrating into a thousand voices. Iran is simmering, waiting for just the right seasoning. Serious matters are tabled in Washington to free time for the inane. And, the World IS or IS NOT getting warmer.

Todays contributions are one Dick Cheney Cartoon (he's such an easy target) and two excellent commentaries; The Status of Iran and the Democrats uncanny talent for making total fools of themselves - just as the people throw them the ball

Dick Cheney

Iran’s Tragic Joke - Roger Cohen

By ROGER COHEN

Published: July 20, 2009

NEW YORK — Allow me to quote the British novelist Martin Amis, writing about Persia in The Guardian: “Iran is one of the most venerable civilizations on earth: it makes China look like an adolescent, and America look like a stripling.”

Iranians, aware of that history, are a proud people. They do not take kindly to being played around with, nor to seeing their country turned into a laughingstock. They do not like the memory of an election campaign that now seems like pure theater, the expression of the sadistic whim of some puppeteer.

So the line I take away from the important Friday sermon of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the two-time former president who believes that the Islamic Republic’s future lies in compromise rather than endless confrontation, is this one: “We shouldn’t let our enemies laugh at us because we’ve imprisoned our own people.”

There’s been tragedy aplenty since June 12 — dozens of killings, thousands of arrests, countless beatings of the innocent — and I hope I belittle none of it when I say there’s also been something laughable.

The rest of this commentary is available here:

Liberal Suicide March - David Brooks

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: July 20, 2009

It was interesting to watch the Republican Party lose touch with America. You had a party led by conservative Southerners who neither understood nor sympathized with moderates or representatives from swing districts.

They brought in pollsters to their party conferences to persuade their members that the country was fervently behind them. They were supported by their interest groups and cheered on by their activists and the partisan press. They spent federal money in an effort to buy support but ended up disgusting the country instead.

It’s not that interesting to watch the Democrats lose touch with America. That’s because the plotline is exactly the same. The party is led by insular liberals from big cities and the coasts, who neither understand nor sympathize with moderates. They have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes.

The rest of this commentary can be viewed here

Todays Cartoon

Hypocracy on the Potomac! Really?

Yesterday Maureen Dowd wrote one of her call-to-a-Cat-fight pieces on Washington hypocracy. Absolutely!


Pharisees On the Potomac

By: Maureen Dowd

Like cats that have lost their whiskers, the Republicans seem off balance now that they have lost their talent for hypocrisy.

They are still practicing the ancient political art of Tartuffery, of course, just without their former aplomb.

Who can forget the glory years, when the Gipper invoked God but never went to church? When Arlen Specter accused Anita Hill of perjury to distract from Clarence Thomas’s false witness? When Newt Gingrich and other conservatives indulged in affairs with young Washington peaches as they pushed to impeach Bill Clinton?

To Read the Rest of this column Click Here

Todays Cartoon

The Blob Invades Alaska II - 'IT'S ALIVE"

And they're not worried?

A gigantic smear of gooey, black biological material is making its way through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow in Northern Alaska. Eyewitnesses say it's definitely a living entity, though unlike anything they've seen before. Closeup shot below.


Coast Guard officer Terry Hasenauer said:

It's certainly biological. It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter. It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism. in recent history I don't think we've seen anything like this. Maybe inside lakes or in stagnant water or something, but not (in the ocean) that we could recall ... If it was something we'd seen before, we'd be able to say something about it. But we haven't. [The stuff is] gooey [and dark]. It's pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it. It kind of has an odor; I can't describe it.

Apparently he saw jellyfish tangled in the goo, and somebody else retrieved bones and feathers from a dead goose they found in the goo as well.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A sample of the giant black mystery blob that hunters discovered this month floating in the Chukchi Sea off the north coast of Alaska has been identified.

It looks to be a stringy batch of algae. Not bunker oil seeping from an aging, sunken ship. Not a sea monster.

“We got the results back from the lab today,” said Ed Meggert of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation in Fairbanks on Thursday. “It was marine algae.”

Miles of the thick, dark gunk had been spotted floating between Barrow and Wainwright, prompting North Slope Borough officials and the Coast Guard to investigate last week. A sample was sent to a DEC lab in Anchorage, where workers looked at it under a microscope and declared it some kind of simple plant — an algae, Meggert said.

The goo fast became an Alaska mystery. And the new findings still leave questions unanswered: Why is there so much of it in a region where people say they’ve never seen anything quite like it?

Local hunters and whalers didn’t know what to make of it. The Coast Guard labeled the substance biological, but knew little else. The stuff had hairy strands in it and was tangled with jellyfish, said a borough official.

Terry Whitledge is director of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He hasn’t had a chance to look at the DEC’s sample yet, but a friend with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration e-mailed him a picture of the gunk.

“Filamentous algae,” he concluded.

Filamentous?

“It means it’s just stringy.”

Whitledge said he doesn’t know why an unprecedented bloom of algae appeared off the Arctic coast.

“You’ll find these kind of algae grow in areas that are shallow enough that light can get to the bottom ... If you had a rocky area along the coast, you could have this type of algae.”

It could have been discharged from a river, he said, flushed out by runoff from spring breakup and melting ice. But that’s just speculation, he warned.

The North Slope Borough took samples of the stuff too, for a separate round of testing, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer.

The results of the state’s analysis came in at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. It was the last day on the job for Meggert, the retiring on-scene coordinator.

“Had it been petroleum, then we really would have had our work cut out for us,” he said.

That was the initial fear — that an oil spill had appeared in the Chukchi Sea, or maybe the blob was oil bubbling up from a sunken vessel or underwater seam.

The goo didn’t fit any pattern that made it easy to identify from afar, Meggert said. “First of all, it was at the end of the Earth. Pretty hard to get to.

“While we’ve seen some algae bloom from time to time, we really haven’t seen something quite like this.”

The color, in particular, didn’t make sense, he said. You might expect to see green or reddish algae but not this black, viscous gunk. Whitledge, with the university, said one possible explanation is that the algae has partially decomposed into a darker hue.

He looks forward to the university examining the sample too, to identify exactly what kind of algae it is.

It’s worth noting that Alaska Natives in the region reportedly hadn’t seen anything like it before, he said.

But asked if the blob’s surprise appearance could be connected to Global Warming. Whitledge hesitated to draw a link.

“The water’s actually very cold this year compared to other years,” he said.