Layups

Sometimes you wonder how on earth things are so obvious, like the kind of hypocritical and disgusting acts of Mark Foley (R-FL), a pederast who chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. That's creepy and awful in so many ways it's not worth talking about, and I assume everyone, on all sides of the aisle, finds it equally wrong.

You have Tom DeLay, supposedly the bastion of conservative morality, charged with using a childrens organization to channel illegal donations to his PAC, among a litany of other improper things. Of course, he forced a rule change to the Ethics Committee so that he couldn't be held accountable for this for years until it caught up with him.

Now, we have this, and frankly it's just funny in its lack of shock:

Mr Tobias resigned last week shortly after US media told him Ms Palfrey had revealed he had made calls to her business.

He told ABC News that he "had some gals come over to the condo for a massage", but denied having sex with any of them.

Before he stepped down, Mr Tobias ran the Bush administration's programme to crack down on prostitution worldwide.

Boldface mine. I mean, this is just easy work at this point. I simply can't wait for someone to try and tell me with a straight face that this isn't the most incompetent AND corrupt administration in our lifetime. It'd be so funny if it wasn't so predictable and tragic.

The Case of My Missing Golf Clubs

We're sorry; we have no updates on this bag and are still trying to locate it. Please check back again.

This is the continuing message I've been receiving about, sadly, my golf clubs in their travel bag, along with a decent amount of clothes, shoes, toiletries, etc. Apparently, that status would be updated if one of a few things happened:
1) It arrived in the wrong city and was not claimed, and the staff there swiped the bag tag.

2) It arrived in SFO as it should have, was not claimed and located by the staff at SFO, who swiped the bag tag.

3) It never actually left either Myrtle Beach or Atlanta, and as such, someone swiped the bag tag because they wanted to update the status and find out where to send it.

It's been over a day, and given that any of those scenarios, to me at least, should have been identified by now, I'm thinking that my bag just might be lost. I'm not sure what that means -- whether someone actually took it home mistakenly or intentionally -- or if it's behind a closet somewhere in Atlanta airport.

All I know is that apparently, if no status change has occured by this weekend, I can file a claim, which Delta will take up to 180 DAYS to repay. That's six months to you and me. And pretty much the entire golf season. Which is going to create some issues for me, one way or another.

Sometimes, flying is a bitch.

Perhaps It's Obvious

It’s worth noting that it’s a pretty great time in music these days. I’m looking at my last.fm rankings for the bands I’ve listened to the most since I signed up (last October). Granted, this doesn’t count music I listen to on my iPod or on those occasions I’m not logged into last.fm, but I think it’s still pretty telling – of the top ten bands, I don’t think I’d listened to SEVEN of them before last year. (The exceptions are those in red, in case it’s not totally obvious otherwise.). The list right now is as such:

• Caesars


• Silversun Pickups


• Mew


• The National


• Sleater-Kinney


• Peter Bjorn and John


• Cat Power


• Victory at Sea


• Minutemen


• Bloc Party

Now, this is not very related to any list I’d create of my all-time favorite bands (of that, Sleater-Kinney and Minutemen would surely make the list, but no others are certain locks) – but it’s a fairly good approximation of what I’ve been listening to lately. Other bands just slightly farther down the list – Battles, Midlake, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, Explosions in the Sky, The Hold Steady, Feist, The Like Young, Frightened Rabbit, The Submarines, Jenny Lewis, Deerhoof, The Constantines, Ratatat, Asobi Seksu, Kaiser Chiefs, Stars of Track and Field, Love is All, The Long Winters, Artic Monkeys, and Trembling Blue Stars are all bands I really didn’t listen to until the last year-plus. Certainly no more than a few years with any of these bands, though some have been around for longer than that. And as far as I know, all of these bands are all around and playing and creating new music. None of these lists are remotely comprehensive of the stuff I have but just haven’t listened to that much in the last few months.

I’m sure this represents about 0.2% of the great bands out there currently. Or less. I simply don’t care what studios think about DRM – but there just can’t be a way that bands getting so much more worldwide distribution should be a bad thing economically.

Just a sample – Caesars -- “It’s Not The Fall That Hurts”.

Shameful

One of the things that most people never noticed in the senior Bush administration was what a completely awful human being Barbara Bush was, and is. (Her comments about Katrina victims having a better situation now that they were in the Houston Astrodome did shine a little light on this, but it's still relatively under the carpet.) I don't know that much about our First Lady, aside from the fact that she once ran a stop sign and killed someone. Of course, this isn't held against her, but it's hard to imagine this wouldn't be a daily "aside" on political talk shows had Hilary Clinton done the same.

This morning, on the Today show, Laura Bush had the following reprehensible exchange with Ann Curry:

Ann Curry showed some video from Iraq and asked Bush, in a hushed, solicitous tone: "You know the American people are suffering, watching --"

The first lady replied: "Oh, I know that, very much. And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander in chief who has asked our military to go into harm's way --"

Curry: "What do you think the American public need to know about your husband --"

Laura Bush: "Well, I hope they do know the burden of worry that's on his shoulders every single day, for our troops. And I think they do. I mean I think if they don't, they're not seeing what the real responsibilities of our president are."

OK, that's egregious -- the soldiers don't suffer more than him? The families of the soldiers? The patients in Walter Reed? Perhaps you think I'm overreacting here, but Atrios sums up my indignation especially well:

Consider, if you will, a parallel universe in which Bill Clinton presided over a deeply unpopular war in Iraq which was increasingly opposed by members of the Republican party. Thousands of US troops had died, and many thousands more had life-altering injuries. And, then, First Lady Hillary Clinton said, on a popular morning show, that over the course of the war no one had suffered more then she and her husband had.

Just imagine for a moment how that would've played out on talk radio, Drudge, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the nightly news, the Sunday shows, the wingnut columnists, the liberal columnists, NPR, etc...

I imagine few honest members of the media industrial complex could deny this point, though most refuse to learn the broader lesson implied by it.

Your San Francisco Giants

So, the Giants swept the D-Backs last weekend. Abby and I took in our first game, which had Barry Zito throwing seven shutout innings and Barry Bonds hitting a second inning HR for the only run of the game. I have to say it looked like impressive ball, and it’s amazing what three games will do for the way one views their team.

All that being said, it’s impossible to spend too much time looking at this roster and feel it’s truly good. What is redonkulous is that the best “young” hitter on the team is Todd Linden who doesn’t have a starting gig and is likely up with the team at least as much because he’s out of options as because he’s earned his place in the show. Take a spin just through the NL West and you’ll see a litany of good young players – offensive players – that Brian Sabean hasn’t been able to develop. Note that these are promising and or established players UNDER THE AGE OF 30. Not too unreasonable to expect a few of these on your team:

Arizona: Stephen Drew, Conor Jackson, Chad Tracy, Carlos Quentin, Chris B. Young.

Colorado:Chris Ianetta, Garrett Atkins, Troy Tulowitzki, Matt Holliday, Jeff Baker, Brad Hawpe

Los Angeles Dodgers: Russell Martin, Wilson Betemit, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp -- and frankly, Rafael Furcal and Juan Pierre qualify as well.

San Diego: Josh Bard, Marcus Giles, Adrian Gonzalez, Khalil Greene, Kevin Kouzmanoff.

The only offensive players at ALL on the Giants under the age of 30 are…

Eliezer Alfonzo, Lance Niekro, Todd Linden. Perhaps Niekro and Alfonzo are the equivalents of some of the names I’ve posted from other teams above. Certainly all those names won’t pan out to be studs, and some very well might be out of the league sooner than later. But all of these teams (and again, this is just the NL West but it’s the Giants, not the division, that’s the outlier here) have young hitters with promise. Regardless of what happens this season, being a D-Backs fan right now has a brighter future than being a Giants fan…and that’s just wrong.

RIP David Halberstam

Wow, this sucks.

Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist David Halberstam was killed in a three-car accident this morning in Menlo Park near the Dumbarton Bridge, the San Mateo County Coroner's Office announced.

Halberstam, author of several books, died at the scene after the car in which he was a front-seat passenger was broadsided by another vehicle. The coroner's office said he died of massive internal injuries. The driver of the car that Halberstam was in was attempting to make a left turn at the intersection of Bayfront Expressway and Willow Road when it was hit by an oncoming car.

The impact forced the two cars into a third car. The 73-year-old Halberstam, who either leaving a speaking engagement or going to it, was wearing a seat belt, the coroner's office said.

Halberstam's sports writing is somewhat mixed but I loved it. However, his real talent was in general history, and his book The Fifties is a book I can't recommend highly enough. Go buy it and learn a TON.

Real Estate Rollercoaster

Amazing. This is a graphed index of real estate prices since the 1800's, indexed for inflation...then put into a graphic format like a roller-coaster. The last few seconds, as it goes into the last 10-plus years are so...well, I'll leave the conclusion up for debate.

Good stuff, linked courtesy of the Freakonomics blog.

Panic

It's important for baseball fans to realize that it's only April 18. That means there is still literally five and a half MONTHS left in baseball. For fantasy baseball owners, it can seem like a lot has already happened, but the truth is nobody knows what's going on.

Least of all Charlie Manuel of the Phillies:

Manager Charlie Manuel said Wednesday the Phillies will move Brett Myers into the bullpen, while inserting Jon Lieber into the starting rotation.

Manuel said he was comfortable using Myers in either the seventh or eighth innings and might even use the former starter to close on days when Philly's regular closer, Tom Gordon, is not available for use.

When asked if this was out of desperation, Manuel replied, "No, I think this is a way of us trying to fix our pitching staff, having the best pitching staff we can have."

Myers has struggled so far this season, going 0-2 with a 9.39 ERA. He has failed to even make it out of the fifth inning in each of his last two starts.

Let's be clear - Myers was the OPENING DAY STARTER. That is almost always given to the best starting pitcher on the team. And now he's getting dumped to the pen? If Myers isn't hurt, this is a record for dumbest panic move by a manager.

What a ninny.

Blowhard Express!

With statements like this, it's hard to really still love movies like Fletch and Caddyshack with as much passion as I have had...god, Chevy Chase is a dolt:

Because Time magazine didn't want to waste a reporter resource to interview Chevy Chase, they decided to have him answer questions sent in by readers. One of them asked what he thought of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and he oh so humbly took credit for their success. "My ego tends to think that, you know, I started it with my Weekend Update," he responds, implying that the ideas for both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report came directly from WU.

In a way, he might be right, as his fake newscast came before theirs. But TDS and TCR are so different from Chase's newscast, that his claim of "starting" it is tenuous at best. Never let it be said that, despite a declining career, Chevy didn't still have his mid-career ego intact. At least he admits to it.

Just in case anyone was wondering, when left to his own devices, here is what Chevy Chase came up with - one of the biggest train wrecks in television history. Just painful to watch.

She Came Home For Christmas

For your listening and viewing enjoyment...

Mew: She Came Home For Christmas

Moron

So, everyone makes mistakes -- and certainly, being clueless about any type of culture that isn't your own is something many people are stricken with. But this is not the kind of comment you'd hope a major political figure (albeit a minor Presidential candidate) would make:

"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money," Republican hopeful and former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson said Monday. "You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition."

Sigh.

You'd also hope that someone who'd been in politics for a long time could clean up after himself a little better than this:

After being made aware that his remarks were problematic, Thompson returned to the podium and told the several hundred activists assembled, "I just want to clarify something because I didn't in any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things.

"What I was referring to ladies and gentlemen is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. You have been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that and if anybody took what I said wrong, I apologize. I may have mischaracterized it. You are very successful. I applaud you for that.

True Words

Sometimes, the copy and paste does your work for you -- and often as not, it's Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly who provide the source:

THE WORST OF THE WORST....It occurs to me that I owe you all an explanation of why, earlier today, I chose Nancy Grace and Chris Matthews as our most loathsome media stars, with a bonus honorable mention for the collective id of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. So here it is.

Basically, I figure that although the general phenomenon of right-wing spewing has done serious damage over the past couple of decades, individual wingnut frothers like O'Reilly and Limbaugh, for all their loathsomeness, have limited influence these days. They draw most of their viewers from the ranks of true believers, so their tirades probably change very few minds. Their audience already agrees with them.

But that's not true of my three choices. Matthews' audience is probably mostly liberal and centrist liberal, and he convinces them that liberal politics is an idiotic clown show. Nancy Grace pulls in all types and turns them into slavering lynch mobs convinced that amendments 4 through 8 of the constitution are mere obsolete technicalities. And the WSJ editorial page is read mostly by business people who initially tend toward the right, but are then converted by the WSJ's patented brew of smarminess and intellectual dishonesty into full-time Hillary-hating, supply-side idolizing, worker-loathing zombie shock troops for movement conservatism.

Of these, by the way, the WSJ editorial page is by far the worst. I'm convinced it's done more real damage to the liberal cause than any other single source of the past quarter century. There's probably a good book in that story somewhere.

Testify.

I probably wouldn't choose Matthews - I think Wolf Blitzer or James Carville are pretty huge blowhards on the left, and John Gibson of Fox News (not the same named guy I grew up with who is a peach) is such a monumental douchebag it would be hard not to include him. Nancy Grace seems so hateful and mean, I have to agree - but it's Drum's words on the WSJ Op Ed page I agree with most. Word for word, I should think.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals is a book I’d heard a lot about, but didn’t really know what, exactly, it was. Then I read a long article in the NY Times Magazine by the author Michael Pollan in which he made an inordinate amount of sense about the kind of food we should be eating. (In a nutshell, we should be eating FOOD, not processed things our grandparents wouldn’t recognize.)

This book is a much lengthier and interesting exploration of the state of food in America. Pollan starts by talking about the crisis the country currently faces, as evidenced by the “fact” that many Americans now view bread as something sinful, courtesy of the Atkins diet. Immediately, I was hooked, as I’ve never found anything that bans bread and oranges, but encourages the eating of bacon, to be anything but nonsense. But the book is much more than this – indeed, Pollan explores the mass production of food and the role that corn plays in it. Yes, corn. Pollan estimates that the average American meal is more than half comprised of corn – our pigs, cows and chickens all feed off it, despite the fact that it’s not naturally part of all of their diets. It shows up in our fertilizer, which goes into vegetable production. Ethanol has been mandated as an additive to our gas, despite the fact that there are other ways to create cleaner fuels. Corn syrup has replaced sugar in numerous products – and all of this is government subsidized, because it now costs more to grow corn than the market price.

Pollan breaks down what organic food means now that it’s become a big business, and spends quality time on farms that are doing things in a way that is self-sustaining. Notably, Polyface Farms, run by a man named Joel Salatin, has found a way to bring back the nature into farm production. Cows roam along the land, rotating where they eat the grass so that regrowth can occur, aided by moving chickens over the land the cows have recently grazed upon. Fertilizer and such is created similarly, by bringing pigs in to help root through the compost and manure to help aerate things. If that sounds a bit gross, compare that with Pollan’s tour of the mass manufacturers. If you read this book, it will be hard to forget the image of the cows most of us eat standing ankle deep in feces, shot up with antibiotics and hormones to stave off the infection they are at risk for.

But even for folks who buy organic meats and milks, we impact this in other ways I hadn’t thought of. We are now a culture, Pollan points out, that wants asparagus in the winter – so we import it from Chile. The fossil fuels alone in doing that, and the required things that have to go into that production, are totally out of whack with the way we really should want our food produced. From an economic perspective, it’s the kind of globalization that most folks are happy about. But it helps sustain an industry that doesn’t support local farms, where the food is not only…well, food, but tastier and healthier.

The book ends with Pollan creating his own meal – hunting for wild pig, picking chantrelle and morel mushrooms from around the Bay Area on special mushroom hunts, and creating a dessert from fruit found on local trees.

It’s hard to imagine completely changing my lifestyle as a result of this book, but this book serves as a capstone to a theme that grows more prevalent every day – we are totally disconnected from the food we eat, not just in geography but in even the way we describe it. We never talk about having pig for dinner – it’s pork. It’s not a cowburger, it’s (somehow) a hamburger – chicken escapes this errant nomenclature, probably because they seem to have little in the way of intelligence. Pollan takes the logical step many might expect – he gives up meat…but only to see if he can justify eating meat. I’m not sure how vegetarians react to this, but to me he makes a perfect case for being an omnivore, eating everything.

One thing I admit I never thought of is his stating that, were humans not eating pigs or chickens, those species probably would have been hunted to near extinction by larger animals.

But however it may appear to those of us living at such a remove from the natural world, predation is not a matter of morality or of politics; it, too, is a matter of symbiosis. Brutal as the wolf may be to the individual deer, the herd depends on him for its well-being. Without predators to cull the herd deer overrun their habitat and starve – all suffer, and not only the deer but the plants they browse and every other species that depends on those plants. In a sense, the “good life” for deer, and even their creaturely character, which has been forged in the crucible of predation, depends on the existence of the wolf. In a similar way chickens depend for their well-being on the existence of their human predators. Not the individual chicken, perhaps, but Chicken – the species. The surest way to achieve the extinction of the species would be to grant chickens a right to life.

Of course, Pollan goes much deeper – for a book just over 400 pages, it’s dense enough that it took me much longer than it normally would, because there’s a lot here. That being said, I never once got bored with the material and truly loved it. I recommend it to everybody, regardless of what your diet is – it’s information that impacts all of us. I’ll think about it over my pork chop – er, pig chop (?) – tonight at dinner.

Rating: 9.0/10.0

TV Roundup

Now that the TV season is starting to wrap up, I thought it would be fun to jot down my thoughts on the season as I have a few times in the past. As in those instances, let’s walk it through on a day-by-day basis.

SUNDAY

For the majority of this year, Sunday has been home to the second half of the third season (got that?) of Battlestar Galactica. I had to be persuaded by about ten different people to try this show out, but overall the series is absolutely one of my favorites. This season spent too much time talking about my least favorite part of the show – the “relationship” between Apollo, Dualla, Starbuck and Anders. I don’t mind a little of this, but it’s not even remotely as interesting as whatever the fuck is going on with the Cylons. When the Cylon Basestars finally appeared in one of the last episodes of the year, I think I actually shouted out loud.

God, I’m a loser.

In any event, the show is still good though this season didn’t quite compare to those of the past. Still, 2008 is a long time to wait for Season 4, though apparently some type of mini-series will air in the fall, but one out of sequence and not relevant to the serious cliffhanger this season ended with.

The Amazing Race: All-Stars has been completely enjoyable, despite the cast being far from the best players of the game in prior years. Count me as someone who wishes Rob and Amber had stayed on even longer; they were entirely amusing, and not just because every other racer becomes obsessed by them. I’m rooting for either Danny & Oswald or, surprisingly, the Beauty Queens. I didn’t much care for them in their season but not only do they seem more normal this go-round, but the other two options are decidedly unpalatable. Eric and Danielle (I had to look her name up) are just boring, and mean, in their own ways. They barely tolerate each other and deal with this by making banal but mean-spirited remarks about every racer, including each other. But they are nowhere near as awful as Mirna and Charla. Charla is pretty annoying but also admirable for the way she dives so whole-heartedly into competitions where she’s at a serious disadvantage. Her attitude and sense of entitlement makes her far less likeable, however, and Mirna (her cousin) couldn’t be more obnoxious. If it’s not speaking in broken English to foreigners – repeatedly – it’s the fact that she plays rude and brazenly and is then genuinely shocked when anyone does the same to her.

Typical of most reality show contestants I end up hating, Mirna has absolutely no sense of how she comes across, and it’s possible she’ll watch this whole season and think nothing of it. We really should start making an All-Star list of Most Loathable Reality Stars, as she’d definitely be playing as a starter.

Also watching Desperate Housewives, occasionally, with Abby – it was always something I could tolerate, but it seems somewhat boring thus far this year. It’s a well made show, but definitely not something I really care all that much about. On the other hand, this is a seriously good picture of Marcia Cross.

As of last weekend, The Sopranos and Entourage are back. Both were fun episodes, and I'm hoping the Sopranos wraps things up well. I'm genuinely happy that I know that things will be resolved this year and not, as in every year before, something I'll have to wait years upon end for. And while Entourage was just okay, every episode contains some good laughs -- and it's hard to have a problem with Carla Gugino getting more work.




MONDAY

It feels like Heroes has been on hiatus the entire year, though it’s only been about six weeks. I don’t care that it’s written cheesily – once you accept the comic book tone, I have to admit I love this show. It will be really interesting to see, if what I hear is true, what happens next season with mostly all new characters. I can’t imagine that Hiro and Peter and The Cheerleader could all disappear. There will have to be some continuity, but regardless of next year, the final few episodes of this season are things I’m definitely looking forward to.

On the other hand, I feel pretty strongly that this season of 24 is easily the worst ever. Sure, everyone points to the mountain lion in Season 2, but nothing for me is worse than the two episode stretch of Rain Man Andy Richter, Gredenko cutting his arm off and some of the worst acting by Rick Schroeder the series has ever seen. (Seriously, saying “I’m still looking for answers. You’ve found yours” to Nadia was just phoned in.) I have faith that this show will turn around, but I’m nervous. It doesn’t help that the actor playing Wayne Palmer is, frankly speaking, pretty piss poor. I never buy him, pretty much ever.

We’ve also spent time watching a few failed series -- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and its successor, The Black Donnellys are both probably gone for good. I still have to say, I don’t get why they’d end either of these shows without finishing a year makes any sense. They weren’t terrible shows but apparently got terrible ratings. But they were both well made, and involving people who know what they are doing. Sure, they both could have been one season and out – but why pull the plug so fast? There’s a reason studios do this – I’m sure they think they’ll get more ratings with re-runs or new smaller shows that cost less to make, but … anyhow.

TUESDAY

Not much on these days. Abby watches Gilmore Girls and I do my very best to avoid it completely. I don’t understand it, and frankly am probably annoying enough about it that I make it less fun for Abby to watch. On the other hand, I love Veronica Mars which is another series that apparently is doomed to constantly being under threat of being cancelled. If you don’t watch the show, I don’t blame you – for some reason, the clever writing and genuinely interesting “mysteries” aren’t advertised well at all. The show constantly references films that almost everyone I know loves, and is written as well as anything on television. But nobody who doesn’t watch this knows or believes it. Anyhow, I like it enough that I’m sure it will be cancelled soon.

WEDNESDAY

If Tuesday is a bit sparse in programming, Wednesday is jam packed. We just finished watching Top Design which certainly wasn’t the most exciting show I’ve ever seen but certainly entertaining enough. It seemed pretty obvious that Matt was going to win, but I must say when you only sort of care if certain contestants DON’T win, the show is missing something.

Friday Night Lights just wrapped up its inaugural season, and man is that show fantastic. Though it just got given a measly six-show renewal, the finale was written in a way that would stand up if it had been a single season show or had more episodes later. I was actually a little disappointed when Dillon actually won the title game – seemed a bit too cheesy, until it sunk in how well they handled it. And that’s the thing about the entire show – every choice, pretty much, seems honest and correct. The acting and writing, and the overall tone of the show are all fantastic. I honestly can’t recommend it highly enough.

Lost has gotten way back on track, as the episodes before the break were just flat. With the exception of the dumbest episode ever (Jack and his tattoos), the rest this year have been generally quite good. Some actual answers have been provided (go figure!) and things are starting – just a little – to make a bit of sense. I’m in for the long haul.

America’s Next Top Model hasn’t been awful this year – I don’t much like many of the models, but surprisingly there has been a little less self-serving Tyra Banks this year (though obviously still quite a lot.)

THURSDAY

This season of Survivor was primarily a failed stupid experiment with the Haves and the Have Nots, though I think things are coming around. (I haven’t watched this week’s episode, though the previews made it look like the two tribes merge, which is a good thing.) The show has always been good and I’m hoping that the Immunity Idols actually come into play in a real way this season.

I never thought I’d say it, but The Office is probably at this point slightly better than the British version. (I know, I know.) But it’s consistently hilarious. Dwight Schrute rules!

My brother takes pleasure in hating Scrubs, which I don’t really get. When the show doesn’t work, it’s pretty unfunny. But when it works, it’s genuinely funny. I’ve watched this more in reruns than on Thursday nights, but it’s still good.

Finally, Abby got me hooked on CSI, and it’s been really good this year. I am pretty intrigued about the whole “miniature” cases, and overall I’m enjoying the show. I have zero interest in watching any of the other shows (Miami, NY) but this one is solid.

FRIDAY & SATURDAY

Pretty much nothing – or, to be more accurate, watching some of the stuff recorded from the prior days. And whenever they're officially on, this is when we also tend to see things like Ace of Cakes, Good Eats, America's Test Kitchen, Mythbusters and No Reservations. We've also enjoyed the hell out of Planet Earth which probably merits its own post. And the first episode of Deadliest Catch wasn't half bad either.

So yes, we watch a lot of TV, but by and large, it’s good TV. There is a lot of godawful stuff on the tube these days, but there’s also plenty of good things to watch.

Oh, Katie

Increasingly, it's getting harder to find much appealing about Katie Couric. I know a lot of people loathe her (my wife included), but I always found her likeable, perky in a way that didn't grate, and generally speaking someone I felt like I should be sympathetic to, especially after losing her husband.

In truth, I never think or thought about her much at all. But, if pressed, the above is pretty much what I would have thought and said.

But this is pretty pathetic -- her video diary, talking about her first library card, was apparently plagiarized, and Couric didn't even know about it. I would think that for $15 million a year, she could at least take a stab at writing about her own personal history.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric may vividly recall her first library card, but the network says she was unaware that her online video essay about the virtues of libraries was largely a work of plagiarism.

CBS News said this week the April 4 installment of "Katie Couric's Notebook" consisted mostly of passages lifted verbatim from a Wall Street Journal column by Jeffrey Zaslow that was published in March.

...

Although the text for the minute-long video was written in first person -- introduced by Couric with the line, "I still remember when I got my first library card" -- Couric did not compose the piece herself and was unaware that much of it was plagiarized, Genelius said.

"She was stunned, and very upset," Genelius said on Wednesday. "It's the same reaction we all had."

The mishap comes as CBS continues to lag in third place in the network news ratings, behind ABC and NBC, seven months after Couric's much-ballyhooed debut as the first woman solo anchor of a major U.S. evening newscast -- for a salary reportedly worth $15 million a year.

...

The author of The Daily Background blog, Arlen Parsa, faulted Couric for letting others write her own commentaries.

Genelius said Couric met with a group of producers weekly to discuss upcoming topics for her "Notebook" video essays, and "she does write some of them herself."

"Sometimes the text is written by the producer," she added. "That's the way television generally works. It's a very collaborative medium."

This is pretty much the same thing as Charles Barkley claiming he was misquoted in his autobiography, but not nearly as funny.

Predictable

Quite literally, I've been waiting for this since the news broke that Karl Rove used his RNC email for about 95% of his correspondence:

WASHINGTON - The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys' ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

Democrats also have been asking if White House officials are purposely conducting sensitive official presidential business via nongovernmental accounts to get around a law requiring preservation - and eventual disclosure - of presidential records. The announcement of the lost e-mails - a rare admission of error from the Bush White House at a delicate time for the administration's relations with Democratically controlled Capitol Hill - gave new fodder for inquiry on this front.

"This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "I am deeply disturbed that just when this administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information."

Anyone who knows a whit about email knows there is almost no real way to delete email - it's traceable unless you go to EXTREME measures to delete it. If that "accidentally" happened with this stuff - well, it's almost impossible to think of a scenario where that isn't the result of intentional deceit.

Only 649 days to go.

Helping, Not Helping

Helping:

Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler CEO, is not the kind of person who you’d expect to be lashing out at Republicans, and in fact has generally supported the GOP politically, having endorsed GWB back in 2000 as one recent example. But in his new book? The gloves are off:

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”
Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?
I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged…. Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them — or at least some of us did. But I’ll tell you what we didn’t do. We didn’t agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn’t agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Not Helping:

Rosie O’Donnell seems to want to take the mantle away from Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Barbra Streisand as “the lunatic liberal whose views make it easy for us to dismiss rational liberal viewpoints.”
Unfortunately, I can’t find anyone disparaging Rosie from the left – and I really hate posting links from what appear to be all raging wingnut sites. Why aren’t left wing folks talking about Rosie in the way they should – as a nutjob? I’m not saying that anyone who thinks 9/11 was an inside job is crazy – everyone is entitled to their own opinion – but she’s not helping. She’s a joke across the country and is not the kind of spokesperson anyone wants on their side. I’d be a little more impressed with my side of the aisle when and if someone comes out talking about what a ninny she is.

Good on ya, Goodell

I meant to post about this last night but forgot, and then, while reading the Freakonomics Blog, I found that they'd done my job for me:

The National Football League’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, has just made it a lot more expensive to be a thug. Goodell suspended the Titans’ Pacman Jones without pay for the upcoming season (a loss of $1.29 million in base salary) and the Bengals’ Chris Henry for the first half of the season (surrendering as much as $230,000 in base pay). Jones has been arrested five times since he was drafted two years ago; Henry was arrested four times between Dec. 2005 and June 2006.

Although the N.F.L. is not the only sports league that intensely counsels its incoming players about staying out of trouble, it does seem to be the only one willing to discipline its hardcore troublemakers.

These suspensions are far more damaging to the players than to their teams, who are free to replace the players and don’t have to pay their salaries (and, as a bonus, get rid of a huge distraction). This is the sort of thing that makes some people argue that Gene Upshaw, the head of the players’ union, plays too easily into the league’s hands. (I would argue that this is also the sort of thing that makes the N.F.L. so attractive to sponsors and fans.)

Hear hear. From everything I can tell, Pacman Jones has absolutely no clue WHY what he's done is wrong, and it will take hitting in the only place that apparently counts (his wallet) to make that clear. And of course, the only reason I'm upset about Chris Henry being suspended is that it's turned into a running joke about how often he gets arrested. It should also reduce the thuggery that is all too prevalent in sports these days - not as much in baseball, where ironically rules like this could NEVER be instituted as players pretty much have the run of the show there.

In basketball, however, it would be nice to see this extended. On the radio last night, I heard a story - perhaps an incorrect one - that someone in Carmelo Anthony's posse pushed around a kid who wanted Melo's autograph. Melo shrugged it off, saying all that mattered was that Denver won the game. That's the kind of attitude that no one benefits from.

Thoughts on a Tuesday

I've been writing about John McCain fairly frequently, to take a scan through the last few postings. I imagine it's because since the 2004 election, I'd thought that if the GOP could stomach nominating McCain (despite what seem like idiotic reasons, politically speaking), he'd beat any Democrat, regardless of who it was or what the national sentiment was. But now? He's...I don't know, crazy? Craven? It's one thing to be strong in your beliefs, and I don't begrudge anyone for disagreeing with me (and 64% of the country) that Iraq is a mistake and a huge clusterfuck. Opinion is opinion -- but his stunt was ludicrous, and embarassing -- and in any rational world, would be the kind of thing that will haunt him throughout the campaign. Even the biggest optimist in the world doesn't think Iraq will be solved by November 2008, and McCain is way out on a cliff on this one. It's that fall from a presupposed dominant position that is most intriguing, I think.

24 has been an utter travesty this year, but last night may have gotten things back on track. Lost has also gotten back on track in a big way, though I hope and pray that they genuinely answer some questions before the end of the season. Teasing needs a payoff.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll do if Charla and Mirna win The Amazing Race. There is a long and lengthy list of Most Annoying Reality TV Contestants Ever -- but Mirna deserves a high, permanent slot on that chart. Eric and Danielle are a dysfunctional, boring couple who are no fun to watch.

I can't believe it's April 10 and I haven't written about baseball starting. What is up with that, I can't say. But the Giants -- well, the season is obviously insanely early. But when a team looks bad in the exact way you feared - no offense or speed, erratic relief pitching -- that's really something scary. A team that rotates Rich Aurillia into the 3rd slot when Bonds hits cleanup...or puts in Ray Durham (!!) at cleanup when Bonds is in the wheelhouse, that's bad stuff. I love my Giants, but enough is enough. Daiyenu.

I had some thoughts about my fantasy team -- and then I realized it was April 10 and I have no concept if my team is going to be good or not. But - for pretty much the first time I can remember - my team is virtually exactly what I planned for it to be in my preparation. These guys might not comprise a winning team, nor will my team in September look exactly like this. (I've already traded away Andruw Jones for Bobby Abreu.) But I can't blame something going wrong with the "drauction" as I got what I wanted.

Irritation, now in triple strength!

Look, I understand that RSS feeds sometimes get klunky, and that sites are often (always?) more up to date than the RSS feeds I see on my Google homepage. But this is so annoying in a multitude of ways:

First of all, it's pretty hard to ignore something that repeats like this...but second and more importantly, IT'S COMPLETELY MISLEADING.

Bush has not said he'll meet with Congress about Iraq - saying so implies a meeting, which is where both parties get to speak their mind and come to an agreement. Bush has said that Congress can come and report to him (something they aren't being paid to do, by the way) but that he won't discuss an Iraq deadline. Because, of course, Bush wants to be in Iraq forever, or at least make sure it's someone else's problem, not his.

The headline is the real problem here, and that's the Washington Post's fault. The triplicate RSS feed? Just something fun to complain about.

McCain's Folly

I don’t get it.

John McCain was – repeat, was – someone whose politics I disagreed with but who I viewed as a rare honest politician, someone truly driven by purpose.

And now he’s apparently totally unhinged. It’s not that he’s insistent that things are great in Baghdad and the media isn’t reporting it – though that is hard to believe, I certainly haven’t been to Iraq, so who the hell knows?

Well, anyone who is in Iraq right now, apparently. When McCain first stated that General Petraeus walked freely down Baghdad streets, the priceless reaction on CNN was this:

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: You know that's where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed Humvee. I think you ought to catch up.

Wolf Blitzer then consulted with the CNN correspondent in Iraq, Michael Ware.

BLITZER: Michael, you've been there, what, for four years. You're walking around Baghdad on a daily basis. Has there been this improvement that Senator McCain is speaking about?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'd certainly like to bring Senator McCain up to speed, if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now, Wolf, that's because of the helicopter circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing just a few blocks down the road.

Is Baghdad any safer? Sectarian violence, one particular type of violence, is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Senator McCain's confidence.

I mean, Senator McCain's credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, has now been left out hanging to dry. To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Senator McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.

And to think that General David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed Humvee? I mean, in the hour since Senator McCain has said this, I've spoken to some military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly, the general travels in a Humvee. There are multiple Humvees around it, heavily armed. There are attack helicopters, Predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection.

So, no, Senator McCain is way off base on this one -- Wolf.

<…snip…>

I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.

OK, so that’s pretty balls out for a news network, and I appreciate it. But again – maybe McCain knows something even Michael Ware doesn’t.

And lo and behold, Sens. McCain and Lindsey Graham show up in Iraq this weekend and proclaim that they just got back from a leisurely, free stroll around Baghdad where Graham boasted of buying five rugs for $5.

Except of course it was not just a lie, it was a bald-faced lie.

Factor out that the area where this press conference was held was bombed just an hour after it was over, suggesting a response time that’s fairly rapid. Forget the point that McCain and Graham’s stroll was in the heart of the Green Zone, the most protected part of the country, let alone the city itself. And add to that that within this Green Zone, McCain and Graham could only walk through these streets while wearing bulletproof vests, flanked by 100 troops, three Blackhawk helicopters and apparently two Apache gunships (which doesn’t quite make sense to me.)

Don't even factor in that security was apparently ramped up everywhere on his route that day far beyond normal.

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

He added, “This will not change anything.”

Regardless, the way McCain and Graham talked of their trip was in such stark contrast to what had literally just occurred that I just don’t get the motivation. McCain is a seasoned politician – surely he knew this would get out. That his transparent, bald-faced lie was not going to simply be covered up.

Either way, McCain knew he was lying – outright LYING – about a war going on with American troops at risk. I don’t get that – how can he hang on to this and hope to be taken seriously even by those who also support the war? Doesn’t this action just make it even more obvious how awful the situation is over there – where two civilians can’t walk through the most secured neighborhood without the protection of one hundred men and women, plus air support?

Frankly, I didn’t think things were THAT bad over there, and was pretty pessimistic about things before this past weekend. I’m genuinely terrified that it’s Thunderdome in there now.

In any case, McCain is either a politician so sleazy he can see some political gain out of lying about something like this, or he’s just lying for lying sakes. Either way, not exactly that inspiring.